Cold Comfort (25 page)

“I said throw the weapon aside, Barry. Under that Cadillac.” Matchett’s voice intensified. “Go on, do it! I’ve got fifteen minutes to make my flight.”

Gilbert realized he had no choice; there was something wild in Matchett’s voice.

He bent slowly at the knees, put his revolver on the concrete, and slid it the five meters to the Cadillac. He stood up.

Matchett emerged from the fifth van up on the left. And he had a smile on his face, a smile unlike any smile Gilbert had ever seen on Matchett’s face. Joe remained motionless three cars back, another homicide, another red mark on the clearance board.

“Get on your knees, Barry,” he said. “I want you to beg me for your life. I want you to prove to me that you’re not like all those others, Ling and Marsh, and all the rest of them.”

Gilbert stared at his old partner. “Alvin, I…”

With his bald head and sunglasses, he didn’t look at all like Matchett anymore, or like a cop. He looked more like hired muscle, a hit man.

“You heard me, on your knees, detective!”

Gilbert hesitated, then finally got to his knees. Matchett walked toward him, keeping the Smith and Wesson trained on his forehead, his black cowboy boots making muffled clicks against the concrete.

“Alvin, you don’t want to do this.”

“What do they say these days? Payback time. That’s a popular phrase these days. Only I’ve been thinking about it ever since I got kicked off the force. It’s nothing new to me.”

“Alvin, please, we can work…we can work something out. We’ll talk to the Crown.”

“The Crown can fuck itself. I’m through with the Crown.” The ugly smile came back to his face. “I’m going to retire. And no one’s going to stop me. Not you. Not Cheryl.” He flicked his head toward Lombardo. “Certainly not Joe. I’m going to make my plane. And I can’t have you running after me, trying any…I know you were always one for trying things. Always a smart guy. I’m sorry, Barry. I’m really sorry. But maybe it’ll leave them something to think about. Maybe they might change a few of the regulations, a few guidelines, so an officer isn’t crucified every time he discharges his weapon. Maybe, in the long run, by killing you I might save the lives of a hundred officers after you.”

“You can’t be serious, Alvin,” he said. “This is crazy.”

The smile dropped from Matchett’s face and the bitterness thickened in his eyes. He raised the gun, easily steady in his right hand, an old double-action model, needing a cock of the hammer before it would fire. Matchett was just pressing his thumb to the hammer when Gilbert sensed movement behind him. Lombardo raised his arm and pointed it at Matchett’s back. It seemed Matchett hadn’t learned his lesson from Laraby after all. The dead could still walk.

“Freeze, Matchett!” shouted Joe.

In Matchett’s brief moment of surprise, Gilbert snatched the gun in a lightning sideways swipe, and launched himself head first at Matchett’s solar plexus. His old partner doubled over, the wind knocked out of him. Gilbert maneuvered his thumb behind the trigger; the only way the revolver would fire now was if Matchett fanned the hammer. Lombardo got up, slipping a bit in his own blood, and staggered. He stood over Matchett, raised his .38 high in both hands, and brought the grip crashing down on top of Matchett’s head.

“That’s for ruining my new suit,” he said, his voice breathless with rage.

Matchett slumped to one side. Lombardo yanked him from Gilbert and kneed him in the back.

“That’s for wrecking my new haircut,” he said.

He forced the now stunned Matchett face down on the concrete, wrenched his arms behind his back, and cuffed him. The metallic click of the handcuffs had a finality about it.

“And that’s for what you did to Cheryl and Donna.”

Then all the energy seemed to go out of Lombardo. He sat down, like a child in a sandbox, legs out but knees partially bent, toes pointing skyward. His face was messy with blood. He looked at Gilbert, as if he just realized for the first time that Gilbert was next to him.

“You okay?” asked the young detective.

Gilbert got into a squatting position next to Joe and had a quick look at his head wound. “I’m fine,” he said. The wound was a graze, nothing serious, but enough to knock Lombardo unconscious for a few minutes. “What about you?”

Lombardo nodded, swallowed. “Fine,” he said. He looked at Matchett and gave the prostrate man a last final kick with the heel of his foot. “Never felt better.”

On Monday morning, after getting his coffee and muffin upstairs, Gilbert took the elevator back down to Homicide. The lights were off in Marsh’s office. Usually he was here before everybody else. Now all Gilbert saw were the dark silhouettes of Marsh’s office furniture and a dull grey sky beyond. He wove his way through the cluttered main office to his own large desk at the back. And he found Bob Bannatyne, newly returned from vacation, just taking off his coat.

Bannatyne looked tanned and well-rested.

“Did you hear?” asked Gilbert.

Bannatyne nodded. “I heard,” he said. “Congratulations. How’s Joe?”

“He took a nasty graze, lost a lot of blood, but he’ll be all right.”

Bannatyne lifted his briefcase and put it on his desk. “I got something for you,” he said.

Bannatyne opened his briefcase and pulled out a bottle of Glenfiddich single-malt scotch. “From the duty-free,” he said. “You deserve it.” Gilbert took the bottle and gazed at it in genuine admiration. “Oh, and there’s something else,” said Bannatyne. The bearish detective ruffled through some papers in his briefcase and pulled out some paper-clipped documents. “I had some luck with that bank down in Freeport. Made a friend there, Winston Samuels, has a young family, needed some extra cash. I showed him the photos. He recognized Matchett. And get this, he recognized Tom Webb as well.” Bannatyne shook his head, grinning widely. “These are transfer statements.” Gilbert glanced them over. “Monies payable from Latham’s numbered corporation to the Scuba-Tex account in Freeport. Any idea how Latham fits into all this?”

Gilbert glanced over the amounts on the transfer statements, each in the thousands. “Not yet,” he said. “But Alvin’s going to deal with us. The Crown’s arranging things as we speak. They’re going to let me have first go at him. They think that might yield the best result.”

“With his lawyer?”

“I haven’t got all the details, but as far as I know his lawyer will be behind the glass. He can stop the interview whenever he feels Alvin starts to incriminate himself in anything not covered by the deal.”

“What’s the Crown willing to offer?”

“I’ve just got the draft proposal. For Cheryl, it’s manslaughter. Any defense lawyer would be able to argue manslaughter, considering the manner of death. The chest wound is indignity to a corpse. That’s going to be dropped. The kidnapping and forcible confinement, he took a plea to six years, contingent on the quality of his testimony. Embezzlement charges will be dropped. Attempted murder of a police officer, he took another plea, this one for twelve.”

“Is Joe happy with that?”

“Joe would like to see Webb get nailed, so I guess he’s all right.” Gilbert tapped the transfer statements. “This is going to help a lot. Solomon Sing might want you to take the stand so you can tell everybody about Winston Samuels.”

“Who the hell is Solomon Sing?”

“He’s with the financial crimes section of the O.P.P.” Gilbert shrugged wistfully. “Alvin’s old unit.”

Bannatyne lapsed into silence. Outside on College Street, traffic moved sluggishly through the grey day.

“Barry, I’m sorry,” said Bannatyne. “I’m sorry it had to be Alvin.”

“Don’t be,” said Gilbert. “He’s not the same man anymore.”

“Has he said anything about Donna Varley?”

“We’ve got strong circumstantial evidence, Bob, but nothing that directly incriminates him. He’s not saying a word.”

“Shit.”

“Don’t worry. If you add the manslaughter to the other two, you’re still looking at twenty-five years.”

“Which means twelve, if he’s a good boy. That’s cold comfort.”

Gilbert shrugged. “I know you’ll keep digging,” he said. “I know you’ll stick him with Donna Varley sooner or later.”

Bannatyne gave him a gruff determined look. “You’re damn right I will.”

Carol Reid came down the aisle with the morning edition of the
Toronto Star
.

“Did you see this?” she said.

She handed the paper to Gilbert.

Gilbert read the headlines. “Shit,” he said. “I don’t believe it.”

Another story by Ronald Roffey.

“What’s it say?” asked Bannatyne.

“‘Veteran Detective asked to resign in wake of Latham arrest fiasco.’” He looked up from the paper, trying to get used to the news. “I guess we might as well say good-bye to Marsh,” he said, taking absolutely no pleasure in this small but personal vindication.

The interview took place the following Friday, Friday the 13th, as it turned out, in the interrogation room of the Homicide Office. Matchett sat across from Gilbert in a loose blue detention center uniform, a cigarette smoldering in the ashtray to his left, a cup of coffee steaming at his right hand. Just like old times. The Carlton Grill, on patrol, sitting across from each other, shooting the shit. Only there was a one-way mirror, and Gilbert knew that behind the window sat the Crown prosecutor, Matchett’s defense lawyer, Detective Solomon Sing, and Joe Lombardo.

“The money thing started long before Tom hired Cheryl,” he said. “When the Tories were last in power. When was it, seven years ago? And Tom was minister of transportation. He regularly took kickbacks whenever there was any tender, even though the tenders were open to public scrutiny. Go up to Downsview, the MTO building there, you can see how it works. If you’re going to pull off a kickback in that kind of risky environment, you have to establish a chain of corruption. I helped Tom establish that chain. They were more or less just straight bribes. Cheryl wasn’t in on it then, but she figured out what we were doing. Sure her stepdad was a cabinet minister, but he didn’t earn enough to keep a catamaran and a million-dollar home on Grand Bahama Island. You get the Freeport connection now, don’t you?”

Matchett talked in a monotone; there was none of the liveliness Gilbert remembered from their patrol days. It was as if Matchett spoke to a stranger, not to the man he had shared a radio car with for seven years during the most pivotal years of their lives. His scalp was now covered with brown stubble; he looked like a Marine recruit. This was the man who had asked him to get down on his knees and beg for his life last week. Yet there was nothing of that now. This wasn’t Matchett seeking payback. This was Matchett the manipulator, trying to get the best deal he could from the Crown. Gilbert felt a deep hollowness inside.

“You live in the same house with Webb, and a woman as smart as Cheryl is bound to see things. Or maybe Dorothy knew and Dorothy told her. I was a little nervous about it at first, I told Tom maybe we ought to do something about Cheryl, I wasn’t sure if we could trust her, but Tom told me not to worry. Cheryl never mentioned it. Like she didn’t want to know about it. Like it was our business, and she couldn’t care less. So I started to relax. They were cash bribes, small bills, we really had nothing to worry about. Tom bought Cheryl things, a car, a horse, some jewelry, and she seemed happy about it. Things were going well. I took my cut. After Dennison, I felt I was owed.” He shook his head and a flicker of emotion appeared on his face. “You know what that did to me, Barry?”

“I think I do, Alvin.”

Matchett shook his head slowly, meditatively. “All I ever wanted was to be a cop. I should have fought harder. But I didn’t want to turn it into…” He shrugged. “You know.” He looked at the blank wall, turning his head quickly. “I didn’t want to bring dishonor to the force. Christ, we were both so young. So I went, and it was like walking into purgatory. It was easy to justify a lot of things after that. Taking kickbacks, figuring things out for Tom, working the tenders like a card shark. I was good, I knew what to do, I knew how to ride the risks, it was my way of getting even.”

Gilbert grinned; grinned the way he used to grin sometimes when he and Matchett were in patrol. “So you couldn’t have cared less about the money?” he said.

Gilbert expected Matchett to crack a smile but his face remained impassive. “I liked the money,” he said. “I liked it a lot. It made me feel free. It made me feel as if I was getting what I deserved.” He shook his head. “All you dicks, slaving away for fifty grand a year, I thought that was so funny. I still do. I was rolling in it. Tom was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Do you think so?”

Matchett’s face settled. Was that remorse he saw in his old partner’s eyes? “No,” he said. He lifted his cigarette and took a long pull. “No, maybe not. He can be such a sanctimonious son-of-a-bitch. But I won’t get into that.”

The bitterness in Matchett’s voice settled like a grey fog. They were silent for nearly a minute. Then Gilbert grew conscious of the silent and unseen rolling of the videotape.

“So when did Cheryl come into it?”

Matchett blew a smokering, stuck his finger through it—an old habit from patrol—and gave Gilbert a vague nod, as if he were growing fatigued by the whole discussion.

“Officially, she was hired in June. But she came to us in March. She was prepared. She had every angle covered. And she was diplomatic. She could have given us an ultimatum; she knew about the kickbacks. But she took the time to persuade us. The whole thing was her idea right from the start. In June, neither Tom nor I knew anything about Larry or Donna, nothing about the blackmail. Her scheme was simple. Embezzle election funds by purportedly hiring the services of her ex-husband’s numbered corporation. She worked for him part-time. She had a lot of banking privileges. She arranged a subsidiary account for Scuba-Tex in Freeport. That was going to be convenient for Tom because he had a place down there, and it was offshore enough, at least for our purposes.”

“So she more or less used Latham’s corporation as a front for funneling funds to the Bahamas. And Latham didn’t know anything about it.”