Buzzard Bay (12 page)

“Are they out of their minds? They don’t even know what’s going on out here. What do you mean let him go?” Novak is upset.

“They want him to run. Our friends from the south, as our illustrious commander put it, want Green to make a run for it. They are scared we can’t protect him, and if we put him through diplomatic channels, the Americans claim it will take too long for Green to be any good to them. Ottawa thinks the simplest way would be to let him run, the Americans will pick him up at the border.”

Novak sits back. “How in hell do they know he’ll head for the border? His wife’s in Quebec.”

“No, they say she’s still in the Bahamas, and Bob knows it. Look, this is all cloak-and-dagger stuff from our intelligence arm. All I know is that they told me I was to let him run, and basically I’m the fall guy. One more fuckup one way or the other isn’t going to make any difference, I’m finished.”

“Jeez,” Novak says. “Well, I guess that’s it for me too. I’m next in command.”

“No, I asked about you. Headquarters said you’re too good a man to lose. They’re going to send you to the Bahamas for a while, ‘out of sight, out of mind’ sort of thing. The Americans will release Bob back to Canada through the Bahamian embassy. You’re to wait there for him to make sure he’s being looked after and then escort him back.”

Novak tries to assess what he’d just been told. “So all this has something to do with the time Bob spent in the Bahamas? He must have been mixed up in some pretty serious shit.”

“Well, he was deported back to Canada on that drug charge in Germany,” the sergeant reminds him.

“So were the Drinkwaters and Shonavons, which only confirms our suspicions that it’s their bodies in the burned out Green’s house,” Novak answers.

“Well, we don’t have to worry about any of that now,” the sergeant tells him. “It’s out of our hands.”

The sergeant slowly stands up. “I’m going to let you handle the interview with Mr. Green. I’m going home to give the news to my wife and then, if she’ll let me, get some sleep.”

Novak watches a broken man leave the office. His wife is a snob who thinks her husband should be in Ottawa with some of the guys he graduated with and never let him forget it.

Novak hopes the sergeant won’t tell her before he got some sleep; otherwise, it would be a long night for him.

Corporal Novak meets me at the front desk. He guides me down into the basement where he takes my fingerprints. From there, we go upstairs into the sergeant’s office, where he looks at my statement as to where I had been the last few days and whom I’d been with. He hands me the statement to read, and I sign it. I am hoping he will let me go; but instead, he sits back, apparently wanting to talk.

“I’ve got something to show you, Bob.” He leaves the room and returns almost immediately.

“Have you ever seen this before?” he asks, handing me a small gold medallion in the shape of a lion with a crown. The crown is embedded with what looks like tiny diamonds. My heart sinks.

Hania Shonavon had shown this to July and me one night. We had stopped at Bill and Hania’s after a party. It was after midnight, and they had been in bed. Bill got up and poured us a drink before Hania got up. She came out of the bedroom, giggling that we had picked a bad time to come. Bill looked sheepish enough that we knew what she was talking about. Then July had noticed the beautiful piece of jewelry around her neck. Hania showed it to us.

It consisted of a gold band from which hung a gold medallion. The band around her neck was at least two inches wide, encrusted with gold and diamonds just like the medallion.

“It’s been in the family for centuries,” Hania told us. “It was made in Austria. The gold and diamonds are real. No one outside of our family but you knows that I have it. I only wear it at night,” Hania laughingly told us. “The sight of money turns Bill on.”

“No,” I lie to Corporal Novak. “It’s very beautiful. What is it?”

“We don’t know,” Novak responds. “But it was attached to something by this gold chain, probably a necklace. The doctor found this clenched in Reich’s hand. He had a real death grip on it. We stopped by the jewelers uptown. He says it’s the real Mccoy.”

“You mean the gold and jewels are real?” I ask.

“Yes, even this little piece is very valuable. We think he took it off whoever killed him,” Novak says, looking up at me.

“They’d never have found that bracelet unless Hania was wearing it when they killed her.” It pretty well confirmed to me who the bodies were in Mom’s house.

“Intriguing, isn’t it, trying to piece all this together?” Novak comments.

“Here’s what I think, Bob. I think you’re involved in this up to your eyeballs. These guys came looking for you, and you somehow got away. If you killed anyone, it was in self-defense. When these guys didn’t fulfill their contract, it was probably every man for himself. Two of them got away. They’ll be back for you, Bob. If I were you, I’d get the hell out of here.”

“I can’t really go anywhere. Immigration has my passport, remember,” I sound frustrated.

“Speaking of passports,” Novak opens a desk drawer and pulls one out. “Immigration sent this out to us at the beginning of the week, but we thought we had better hang on to it until we knew how involved you were in all this. Apparently the Germans decided there wasn’t enough evidence to back up their allegations and dropped all charges. You are clear to fly from any airport or cross any border. I just suggest you get yourself lost someplace.”

He hands me my passport. I am almost speechless, this is the best piece of luck I’d had in a long time.

“Thank you,” is all I can say. We shake hands. “I’m free to go?”

“Yup. Good luck, Bob.” Novak watches out the window until Bob drives away, and then goes out to the patrol car and follows him.

Funny how this old world revolves. I’m worried about the police locking me up, and now they’re telling me to run. I’ll take their advice and get out before they change their minds. Then there’s my friends, the Shonavons and the Drinkwaters. We had fought tooth and nail through the Bahamas ordeal, and now it had cost them their lives, and I had to face facts, maybe July’s too.

The question keeps going through my mind: “Why?” Well, maybe I can find that out if I get back to the Bahamas.

I stop at an ATM and take out my remaining cash. Five hundred bucks and whatever is left on my credit card from the German trip, maybe enough for a plane ticket to the Bahamas.

I guess it was all the shit I had been through that made me suspicious, but it did seem very convenient, my passport showing up that way. I begin to twig on to something else that was irregular. Before, there had always been someone else in the room when I was interviewed; there was no witness to what Novak had told me and no way to verify what he had told me was true.

I already have a plan in mind, although a risky one; maybe I will stick to it for now.

My cell phone doesn’t work here, so I’m back to the corner store pay phone. This time it’s a local call to a travel agent who operates from his home. He tells me there’s a nonstop flight leaving Winnipeg to Nassau tomorrow night. I give him my passport number and credit card hoping for the best. A few minutes later, he comes back on the line saying I’m set to go. I thank him and hang up thinking I’ve got a long drive ahead of me tonight.

It’s now after ten at night, and there’s little traffic on the road, but as I leave town, I see a set of lights following me from a distance. I resist the temptation to speed; that’s all I need is to give the police a reason to pick me up. Another thought scares me even more: what if it’s the guys hunting me? The lights follow me for several miles, and then to my relief they turn off leaving me to continue on my own.

Novak stopped his patrol car and phoned the sergeant, “He’s run, sir. He also booked a direct flight from Winnipeg to the Bahamas.”

“All right, I’ll phone Ottawa and tell them it’s in their hands now. You better get some sleep, Novak. There’s a guy I don’t know coming in from Ottawa tomorrow morning. You’re to leave with him for Ottawa when he leaves tomorrow night, so get your sunglasses and suntan oil packed because I’m sure you won’t be back here for a while.”

Novak admires the sergeant’s attempt at humor. “Talk to you tomorrow,” he tells the sarg.

I make good time crossing the Saskatchewan/Manitoba border and travel for another hour before I turn off the highway to Winnipeg and head south toward the American border. It’s around six thirty in the morning when I arrive at the last small town north of the border and find the pickup I’m looking for: a 1956 red GMC; it still looks as good as I remember.

My old friend Curt from university days is as predictable as ever, and he is in the coffee shop having breakfast just as he has done most of his life. I park nearby and wait for him to come out. After an hour and a half he finally shows and gets in his pickup. I pull up beside him and roll down my window.

“Bob, you old son of a gun, what are you doing here? Let’s go out to the farm and we’ll talk,” I tell him.

His wife works at the border, so I am pretty sure she’s at work and his kids will be in school, so we should be alone at the farm. We enter the house, and Curt pours us a coffee. I get right to the point.

“I need to get across the border, Curt, without anyone knowing about it.”

“Shit, Bob, you know I can’t do that. My wife will lose her job, and I won’t be able to farm my land on that side of the border.”

“I remember the time I was here before, we crossed over on your farmland.”

“Yeah, that was in the summertime, and I could have been working over there. This is winter, and I have to go around by the border crossing just like everyone else.”

“How will they know?” I ask him.

“I know the sheriff over there. Nothing moves without him knowing about it. You see how flat it is around here. He sees me when I leave the yard,” and he added, “as you see there’s not enough snow around here to take the Ski-Doo.”

My heart sinks, but I am not ready to give up. I tell him the whole story hoping to get his sympathy, and by the end he’d begun pouring whiskey. Maybe Curt is bored with his life, but he certainly becomes interested in mine, and before I knew it we were plotting how to get the bad guys.

“You know Bob, sometimes I go across the border after it’s closed and ride around with the sheriff just to keep him company, then we usually go to the bar for a few beers and go home. You could sneak across with me, but then what would you do? There’s no place to go.”

“I have someone waiting for me on that crossroad just south of town around midnight,” I tell him.

“That’ll work. Don’t tell me anymore.” Curt calls the sheriff over in Antler and turns the speakerphone on.

“Hello, Curt,” Bob hears the sheriff drawl.

“Hey, I’m thinking of coming over tonight and riding for a while, but it will be after the crossing is closed. Is that all right?”

“Ya, come on over. I’ll phone it in. You got time for a few beers later?” the sheriff asks.

“Yep, sounds good,” Curt tells him. “See you then,” and he hangs up.

Okay the die is cast, now I have to get into the details.

“Curt, I don’t want your wife or your kids to know I was here. That means you’ll have to hide me somewhere until we leave tonight.”

“That would be in my doghouse. I have a poker room upstairs in the shop that no one goes in unless I say so. You look dead on your feet, better get some sleep.” Curt tells me.

We went out to the shop, and Curt drove my pickup inside.

“I don’t care what you do with my pickup truck, cut it up, do what you want with it, just don’t leave it where it can tie you into helping me.” With that, I go up to Curt’s doghouse and fall asleep.

A hand shakes my shoulder, and then I hear Curt’s voice telling me it’s almost time to go. I had slept for close to eight hours.

“Have a shower and clean up, I have something to show you,” Curt tells me.

I come down the steps from the doghouse to find my truck has had a complete transformation. Even I don’t recognize it.

“I always wanted a truck like that,” I tell him.

“Yeah, well you may have always wanted a truck like this but this one’s mine. Okay, you ready?” “This is it, buddy.” He threw his big arms around me.

“We probably won’t be able to talk after this, so just stay down in the back of the truck. I’ll knock on the back window when I want you to jump out. Get out in that field as far as you can before you start south. Hopefully, he won’t see you.”

I guess his wife and kids are in bed because there are no lights on in the farmhouse when we leave. I watch as he pulls up to the crossing, lifts the pole holding the chain out of the ground, and drives through. He stops, puts the chain pole back in the ground, and is about to get back in the truck when car lights come on, flooding us in light.

I am ready to bolt and run when the lights go out, and the sheriff walks up the truck. He puts his hand on the truck box about three inches from my head and has a piss. Then he starts telling Curt about how his wife caught him fooling around with some neighbor woman. This seems to go on forever, and all the time he’s pacing back and forth right beside me.

Finally, he gets a call on his radio, “Might as well leave your truck here, Curt, and jump in with me while I go see what my sweet little dispatcher wants,” the sheriff tells Curt.

It’s not freezing but damn close. I’ve had to lay deadly still for over an hour; my body is frozen so stiff I’m having trouble moving, and the wound on my leg is hurting something awful, but the relief of not getting discovered motivates me to get the hell out of here. I run right up the road behind the cop car until I am completely clear of the crossing and then take Curt’s advice and head out into the wide open field.

Curt had hoped to get me close to town so it would have only been a mile walk for me, but now I am at least two miles away from Mindy, if she is there at all. I am about half a mile out in the field when I see lights coming from behind me. I try to flatten myself into the ground, as I watch the lights turn off a side road shining right on me for an instant then swing away and continue toward town. That’s probably Curt and the sheriff coming back to the bar, I reason, as I continue my way toward nothing but more field.