Buffalo Jump (30 page)

“Makes sense,” Ryan said. “Any time a product becomes contraband, our territorial imperative kicks in.”

“So with Marco dead, that whole load belongs to Vito.”

“Been a good day for him all around,” Ryan said. “He eliminated his competition for boss and his war chest just got heavier by millions.”

“Would Stefano go along with Vito killing their brother?” I asked.

“What’s he gonna do, throw a loafer?”

The truck turned onto Lakeshore Boulevard, then rumbled up the first on-ramp to the elevated Gardiner, bound for Niagara, Fort Erie and the U.S.A.

Dante Ryan and I were off on a Buffalo jump. Minus the Head-Smashed-In part, I hoped.

A
scream was building inside Amy Farber and she wasn’t sure she could keep it in much longer. She could feel it swarming her insides, trying to force its way up through her body and out her mouth. She pursed her lips tighter and breathed in through her nose. It was like fighting the urge to vomit.
It’s okay,
she told herself. You get this way every time. It will be over soon enough. Keep busy, she told herself. Make yourself do something. Come on, girl, get up and go. At least get the table ready.
Now!

She walked unsteadily to the dining room, staying close to the wall, keeping her hand on the wainscotting. She knew she shouldn’t have taken a painkiller, an anti-inflammatory and a sedative all at once, but she also knew when the night was over and all the people had gone, Ricky Messina would come to get his money. She’d have to look him in the face, in the eyes—he would insist—and she’d relive everything that had happened the night he came to their door dressed like a pizza boy.

She pushed the table against the far wall so people would be able to serve themselves buffet-style. Hip-checked it home hard enough to rattle the plates on the wooden rail that ran around the dining room walls above eye level. She opened the bottom drawer of their pine hutch, a Mission-style knock-off
they had found in East Aurora, and took out a clean linen tablecloth. Everything else was going to be plastic so the tablecloth might as well be nice. She had plenty of plastic wineglasses and juice cups left from last month’s event. Barry would be back soon with the paper plates and the fruit platters. Had she asked him to stop at Premier Liquors? She couldn’t remember. She just wished he’d get back. She didn’t like being alone in the house anymore, no matter how many lights she turned on or what music she played. Even low-dose ambient New Age made her jump.

Amy pushed the dining room chairs against the wall to open up some space and unfolded four bridge chairs. At least thirty people would be coming between six and eleven, judging by orders received. That was her deal with Barry: every shipment that came in had to be sorted, sold and out of the house within forty-eight hours. She couldn’t stand it any longer than that.

Amy wondered if Rich Leckie would come. No one was seeing much of him these days. Marty Oliver was picking up his goods for him and paying for them too, all the things Rich had needed before and some new ones too. She admitted to herself she didn’t want Rich to come. She knew she’d take one look at him and burst into tears.

A door banged close by and she grabbed the dining room chair nearest her and held tightly onto its frame until she heard Barry shout, “I’m home.”

He came clumping in with plastic shopping bags in both hands. “That’s everything,” he said. “Plates, forks, knives, spoons, cups, nap—”

“We didn’t need cups.”

“What?”

“You said you got cups. We didn’t need cups. We still have cups left from last time.”

“Okay, so what’s the big deal?”

“We didn’t need them. What’s so hard to understand?”

“Honey, they don’t go bad or anything. We always need cups.”

“That’s right, Barry. Always. For the rest of our goddamn lives, thanks to you.”

“Me? Ah, Christ, what are you crying for?”

“I can’t keep doing it, Barry. Every time I know he’s coming here, I want to run. I want to get in the car and drive to a hotel where nobody knows me and lie in bed with the covers over my head until he goes away or dies. But he won’t let me. He tells me I have to be there, so I am. He tells me I have to look into his eyes, so I do. He tells me … he … oh, Barry,” she sobbed, “what did you do? What did you fucking do?” She sank to the ground slowly, wrapped in her own arms, her face tight to her shoulder and twisted in misery.

“Every time, Barry,” she panted, “every time he comes for the money he makes me hand it to him and he holds onto my hand and won’t let go. He rubs it between his fingers and he smiles at me like I’m supposed to like it or something, and I don’t know if I can make it through without screaming, Barr, I swear I don’t know if I can.”

“Ssshhh, Amy, you’ll make it through. Take a sedative, honey.”

“I just did, you miserable shit.”

“Amy, please.”

“Well, who got us into this? Who else but you would be stupid enough or stoned enough to steal a shipment of drugs and not expect someone would come for it. For
us,
damn you.”

“I know I fucked up, Amy.”

“Then get us out of this.”

“How?”

“I don’t care. You got us in, get us out.”

“What do you want me to do, go to the cops? Because apart from that I don’t know what else to suggest.”

“At least don’t let him touch me, Barry … Barry? Look at
me, goddamn you. Say you won’t let him touch me, not this time. Not my hands.”

“I …”

“You what?”

“I’ll give him the money.”

“He always says I have to.”

“I’ll do it tonight. I promise.”

“Don’t promise, Barry. Swear. Swear on your life.”

“I do, Amy. I do. I will. I swear.”

She looked up at her husband, so much taller than she was but half her size in heart. She wondered if Rich Leckie even crossed his mind anymore.

I
f you could fly as the crow flies, you could get from Toronto to Buffalo in no time. Thirty-some miles across Lake Ontario and a short run south. Confined to land as we were, the truck barely managing sixty miles an hour, we faced a drive of at least two hours, not counting border delays. Along the curving shore of Lake Ontario we went, passing through Mississauga and Oakville and the Hamilton steelworks sprawled along the harbour, flame coming out of one stack and dark smoke out of the others. Swarms of gulls wheeled through the infernal sky, their bellies grey with soot. Wind buffeted the car as we climbed the steep rise of the Burlington Skyway and left the hellish landscape behind.

At least following a truck on a highway was relatively easy. We could hang back a good number of cars and keep its tall white box in sight.

When my cellphone rang, I checked the caller ID and groaned.

“What?”

“My boss,” I said and pressed Talk.

“Jonah!” Graham McClintock barked. “What the hell is going on? You blew out of here yesterday with barely a word and you skip out today of all days?”

“I’m onto something, Clint. To do with Franny.”

“Not that you’ve seen fit to share with me. Or Homicide.”

“I’m chasing it down now. By tomorrow I should know the whole story. Who killed Franny, everything.”

“Forget tomorrow,” Clint said. “Get down here now.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes you can, if you want to keep your job.”

“Clint, I–”

“You and I need to talk, Jonah. You get to my office now, look me in the goddamn eye and tell me what’s going on!”

I had to buy time. I resorted to an old trick I’ve used on my mother when she gets into one of her “Why isn’t Jonah a doctor/lawyer/husband/father/chief rabbi of Toronto” rants. I turned the radio on and moved the dial between stations, then turned up the volume so the interior of the car was filled with static. I held the phone close to one of the speakers and shouted, “What’s that? I couldn’t hear that last part.”

“Get down here now!” he bellowed.

“Clint? Clint? Are you still there? You’re breaking up.”

“To the office!”

“Clint? Damn this phone! Clint? Can you hear me?”

“Yes, I can hear you perfectly.”

“Clint?”

“You can’t hear me?”

“Are you there?” I asked.

“Ah, fuck!” I heard him say.

I had to face it: there would be no happy ending to this. If I didn’t get killed I’d almost certainly be fired. What then? Hook up with another firm? Strike out on my own? Work for—God forbid—my brother’s law firm? I stared out the window at nothing in particular. The little devil on one shoulder suggested asking Dante Ryan for a cigarette. The angel on the other said,
Who’d blame you if you did?

Some little angel.

While I had my phone out, I called Information and got the number for Beth Israel. I asked the receptionist for Ed Johnston’s room but the call was transferred to a woman with a pronounced Caribbean accent who told me I’d reached the nursing station on his floor.

“Can you tell me how Mr. Johnston is doing?” I asked.

“Are you family?” she asked.

I should have said yes. Instead I said, “I’m his neighbour.”

“You’ll have to speak to a family member then. His daughter’s in his room. Should I transfer you?”

I remembered how Elizabeth Johnston had glared at me, blaming me, this investigator who’d brought trouble to her father’s door. “Could you just tell me if he’s alive?” I asked. “Please. Let me rest easy.”

“He’s doin’ well as could be expected, precious,” she said. “Now do you want his daughter or not?”

I said I’d try again later, thanked her and hung up.

“He hanging in?” Ryan asked.

“From the way the nurse sounded, just barely, I guess.”

For a while I watched wooly grey clouds the size of destroyers stack above each other over the middle of the lake. Then Dante Ryan said, “Want to hear something funny?”

“Please.”

“Or maybe ironic is the right word.”

“What?”

“First time we met, you were driving a truckload of contraband and I was riding shotgun behind. Now these goons are driving a truck half the size, worth five times the profit, and you and me are the ones riding behind.”

“That’s not funny or ironic. It’s plain fucking weird.”

“So I have two questions about that caper,” he said.

“I don’t know, Ryan.”

“What?”

“I can’t tell you company tales. When this thing is resolved, we go back to our respective sides of the fence.”

“I told you plenty about my business. More than I ever told anyone outside the life, my wife included.”

“True.”

“So?”

“Tell me the two questions first.”

“One: how you cracked our gang. And two: how you … how should I say it …”

“Blew the case?”

“Blew the living shit out of it, I was going to say.”

“It’s a long story.”

“We’re an hour from the border.”

“It’s not a bad story,” I allowed.

“Then tell it, brother,” Ryan said. “Let it unfold with the miles.”

I let a minute tick by while I thought about where to begin. “All right. About a year ago, the federal finance minister pushed through a huge tax hike on cigarettes.”

“Six bucks a carton,” Ryan snorted. “I was pissed off and I don’t even pay for mine.”

“He said it would protect the youth of the nation by making smoking hard to afford.”

“Bullshit. The youth of the nation just steal more out of their parents’ wallets.”

“Plus smokers of all ages instinctively started looking for ways around the tax. It’s the Canadian way,” I said. “Tax us if you can.”

“And naturally your criminal element stepped in to provide courteous black-market service,” Ryan grinned. “Christ, everyone and their mother got involved. Natives, bikers, Asians and of course your … ah, traditional organized crime types.”

“Of course. The problem was that smokers didn’t just want cheap cigarettes. They wanted cheap
Canadian
cigarettes.”

“You blame them? You ever smoke an American brand?”

I nodded. “I used to be a smoker. I tried Camels once.”

“And?”

“Didn’t even taste like the best part of a camel.”

“There you go.”

“Anyway, getting the product into the U.S. was easy. The manufacturers ramped up production for the export market, supposedly because more Americans suddenly wanted to enjoy their products. Truckloads—convoys—were lined up at every land border crossing from the Thousand Islands bridge to the Windsor Tunnel. But packages destined for export have a seal that says they can’t be sold in Canada. So they had to be smuggled back.”

“Which is where the Akwesasne Reserve proved so convenient.”

“It was practically designed for smuggling,” I said. “Only one narrow stretch of the St. Lawrence River separates the Canadian and American sides at Cornwall. Every Mohawk with a boat was bringing cartons across the river.”

“And wholesaling them to us.”

“And buying bigger, faster boats with the profits. The OPP and RCMP together couldn’t stop more than one in ten.”

“Ten?” Ryan said. “That’s what they told the media. They were lucky if it was one in twenty.”

“The government finally had to roll back the tax because the only people profiting from it were you criminals.”

“A sad day for us because cigarettes were an attractive product. Big markup, steady market, and they don’t break if a truck rolls. But,” he said, “there’s always other commodities. Booze, guns, people, perfume, knock-offs, dope and now, as we know, basic drugstore crap.”

“The tobacco companies would have gotten away with it too,” I said.

“But?”

“An investigative journalist uncovered documents that left them with a lot of ‘splainin’ to do. To the RCMP in particular.”

“That’s what you get for writing shit down.”

“An investigator told me one executive from Ensign Tobacco couldn’t take a crap without leaving a paper trail.”

“But Ensign turned out to be your client.”

“And you know why.”

“That stupid court order. Thirty million cigarettes, consigned to an incinerator. Going up in smoke for nothing.”