Cracked (28 page)

“People are worried about you,” Rosen said quietly. “You left your apartment six hours ago.”

“But who’s counting. I’m fine,” I said. I wasn’t sure what to tell him. “Can I speak to my brother, please?” Rosen didn’t argue. Darren was obviously close by.

I told Darren everything. Well, not everything, but he got the gist.

“So right now, it’s all about finding Jeanette Vasquez,” he said slowly.

“Yes,” I said. “She’s got the boys. I’m sure of it.”

I heard the shower shutting off, and Jack singing “My Way.”

We were silent for a second. “How’s Gene?” Darren asked.

“I have to call and check,” I said. “I’m going to do that right now.”

“With Jack there?”

“Not much choice,” I said.

“You sure he’s okay? Jack, I mean?” Darren said.

“Pretty sure. Pretty very sure,” I said, smiling as Jack came out in a Four Seasons white dressing gown, looking very pleased with himself.

Darren told me that Detective French was conscious, and remembered me belting her, but nothing else. There was a warrant for my arrest.

But nothing, he said, about the incident at Lucky’s.

“I don’t know who to trust,” I said.

“Whom,” Darren said, and I cursed at him. It was like nothing had changed. It made me feel good. I told him I’d call him right after finding the boys. I told him that would be tonight. I knew it. I felt it.

I put the phone down and took a drink from Jack. He was having a Coke.

“What now?” he said.

“I have to call the hospital,” I said. “Sorry.”

“’S’okay,” Jack said. “I just had my way with you. I guess I can be generous to the poor sap in the hospital.”

He kissed me, and it was like the last few years hadn’t happened. But they had, and I had to deal with it. We both did.

I got through to the front desk at Toronto General, and asked for the status of a patient named Eugene Gold. The operator put me on hold, and I listened to a public service announcement about hand washing. It said you were supposed to wash your hands for the amount of time it would take to sing “Happy Birthday.” Useful. A couple of minutes later, a woman came on the line and identified herself as Mona. Said she was a nurse in Intensive Care.

“Intensive Care?” I said.

“What is your relation to Mr. Gold?” she asked.

“I’m his, you know. Friend,” I said. Jack got up and washed his hands. I didn’t hear him singing “Happy Birthday.”

Mona sighed. “Mr. Gold has contracted an infection,” she said. “Doctors are keeping him unconscious until it can be cleared.”

“Is he going to be all right?”

“We certainly hope so,” she said. She told me that I could call back in the morning and check on his condition, then she hung up. When Jack emerged from the bathroom, I told him what Mona had said.

“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” he said.

“Come on,” I said. “Gene is good people. He’s just damaged. You can afford to be emotionally generous. All I’ve ever wanted is you.” Then hot tears started down my face. It was all too much. I wanted to get back into bed with Jack and forget it all. Ginger had said in her note, “find Jack.” I knew now that she meant because Jack was the key to all this. But I also knew that she loved him, and when he got so sick she was one of the only people in his life to stick by him. She wanted me to be with Jack, as long as he was well. And he
was
well. Other than the horror we were dealing with, he seemed healthy and composed.

Jack and I would do this. We would get the boys. I would kill Jeanette. Or maybe I wouldn’t have to now. Maybe it would be enough that she goes to jail. Would Ginger really want me to have all this violence on my soul? Then Jack and I could be together again. He was medicated and fine. And as it turned out, a lot of his paranoia back in the day was actually real. What was the old line? Is it paranoid if they really are out to get you? And if I had Jack, I wouldn’t need crack. I actually laughed out loud.

Jack was coming over to me, a smile on his face, when his phone rang. We looked at each other, and Jack snatched my hand away before I picked it up.

“Yes,” he said. I watched his face. He was listening.

“Thanks. I’ll take care of it,” he said, and hung up.

“We’re on,” he said. “Jeanette is in position, alone with the twins.”

“We’re going to get them?”

“Yes, Danny. We’re going to get them.”

Jack pulled out some clothes from his suitcase, and motioned for me to get dressed.

“Do you know how to shoot that gun in your purse?”

“How did you know?” I said. Jack smiled at me.

“Danny,” he said. “You kept it in your lap when we were in the bar. And look at it.” I did. It was thrown on a chair in the room, and through the fabric of the too-small purse, the outline of something hard and gun-sized was apparent.

“Oh,” I said. “I was good at target shooting when I was a kid.”

“That was long ago and far away,” he said. “You have a lot to learn, babycakes. And I have approximately half an hour to teach you.”

My second gun lesson of the day. A record.

* * *

Jack picked up where Dave had left off in the morning. But I still didn’t get to shoot the thing. The Four Seasons tends to frown on guests shooting firearms in the hotel. An archaic rule.

“Shouldn’t we call somebody?” I said. “You know. The police?”

Jack shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know who Jeanette has in her pocket. Or who’s in on this with her.” He pulled on some black pants and a black t-shirt. Commando gear. He looked like a bulked-up version of Rosen, actually.

“This whole thing is a viper’s nest,” he said. “I want to make sure we get the boys out of there safely. After that, we can have every law enforcement agency in the western hemisphere on these people. And we will. But Jeanette is unstable. She has been manipulated and been manipulating, her entire life.” He was pacing a bit, which made me nervous. “That’s why I am going in. Just me. She wants me back. I’m going to get in, disable her, get the boys, get out.”

Disable her. I’d love to disable her. I thought about Dave, back at my apartment. I told Jack about him. Despite Dave having saved Gene’s life, and my instinct that he was on side, Jack wasn’t convinced.

“He had a gun on you, on Darren,” he said. “He sounds like he’s part of this, Danny. I really don’t know how deep this goes. Until all this started happening, I had made it my business to stay out of the way of Michael and any of these people. I could have had them investigated long ago, but I wanted it all out of my life, out of our lives. And look how that turned out.” He checked his ammo.

“Look,” Jack continued. “I’m going to leave calling the police up to you. I guess it is unlikely Jeanette has many contacts here, but we can’t be sure. And I don’t know about this Dave. I don’t know who to trust.”

“Whom,” I corrected.

“Fuck you, babycakes,” Jack said, and I hugged him. “I need her to think that I’m coming after her because I’m in love with her, despite everything.”

“Despite the fact that she’s charging you ten grand a day to keep your nephews alive.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Despite that. She’s playing that as though it’s all on Michael and she’s still his pawn. Listen. I might have to act the part.”

“She’s going to be kissing you and shit, I suppose,” I said.

“If I play my cards right,” he said. “Do you want the boys back or don’t you? You need to carry your gun and stay hidden. We’ll scout out the location, then you can wait outside and I’ll signal from the window if you should come in for the boys. Or call the cops.” So many variables. I suppose that’s what happens, when you’re dealing with highly damaged psychopaths.

Jack gave me his cell phone, and instructed me not to answer any incoming calls. He set the phone to vibrate before he gave it to me.

“Goody,” I said. “I have this, while you’re in there fucking Jeanette.”

“I’m not going to fuck her,” he said. “I don’t think I could, anyway.”

“Stud,” I said.

We left the room half an hour before Jack was supposed to be at Jeanette’s hiding place, an old loft somewhere between Sheppard and Finch, off Yonge Street. Jack got his rental car, a black Escalade, out of the public parking lot next to the hotel. He was worth more than God these days, but he still wouldn’t let a valet park one of his cars.

Traffic was ferocious, but Jack was one of those effortless drivers; smooth, calm, and with an unerring instinct for the best route. We drove up the Don Valley Parkway to Lawrence, then got off onto Avenue Road. On the way, Jack explained that he had learned to shoot in Bermuda, out of boredom, and because it was a skill he didn’t have yet. I knew there was more to it than that, that there was probably still an element of paranoia. I let it pass. But he didn’t have a gun with him in Toronto. It’s difficult to get a firearms licence in Canada, which is one of the reasons it’s named one of the best places in the world to live. It’s a peaceful society. I did not, however, feel that way now.

We drove from Avenue Road to Yonge Street. We weren’t far from where D-Man lived, but I opted not to inform Jack of this. He might want to make a pit stop to give someone a beating to get his blood going.

At Yonge and Sheppard, I looked out the window at the new movie theatres and trendy restaurants that had opened up in the neighborhood. When I first came to Toronto, the area was considered to be a no man’s land, strictly for new Asian immigrants and lower-income families. Now, trendsetters from downtown would occasionally make the twenty-minute subway ride from downtown to try one of the newly reviewed restaurants in the area. 1960s- and 70s-era apartment buildings were making way for overpriced condos and lofts. I was expecting Jeanette to have one of these places, but instead Jack kept driving a couple of blocks north, past the well-lit developments, and turned left onto a dark side street. There was a dingy bar on the corner, and a homeless shelter two doors down. A 24-hour convenience store was across the street. Other than that, there was no one on the street on a chilly November evening, and we were out of the trendy loop.

Jack pulled over to consult the address he’d written down at the Four Seasons.

“Get down,” he said, firmly. “We’re here.” This screwed up our plan a bit. We were going to circle whatever block the place was on, suss out which window I could see. But without meaning to, Jack had pulled into a parking spot right by the entrance.

I slumped into the space in front of my seat gracelessly, thankful that he had rented an Escalade. I couldn’t imagine myself doing this in Darren’s Fiat. Jack took off his leather jacket as he opened the car door, and threw it over me casually. If someone was looking out the window, they wouldn’t have thought a thing. I hoped.

“Window on this side of the street,” Jack mumbled, pretending to lean in and grab his keys. “If I put my hand flat on the window, come in. Stay down,” he said. “I may go up the fire escape and see if I can see what’s going on in there, before I go knocking on the door. See if anyone else is there.”

I didn’t have to say anything. Jack knew I heard him.

Jack walked away, and I stayed down. I put my hand into my purse and pulled out the .38, and stuck the knife into the back pocket of my jeans.

After ten minutes, I felt safe enough to stick my head up. We were parked thirty feet or so off Yonge Street, equidistant, I judged, between Sheppard and Finch. Jack had gone left, which meant that Jeanette was above the crappy-looking bar on the corner. The boys were probably up there too. I tried to see if the window looked like the windows in the picture, but I could only see the side of the building. The back and front windows were out of my sightlines.

Crouching in the footwell of a pricey SUV isn’t as glamorous as it sounds. I’m not short, but nobody would find a comfortable position here. And I knew that we were parked in such a way to make any movement on my part dangerous. We had stumbled onto this place by a bit of fluke, without any prior knowledge. If Jeanette Vasquez decided that she didn’t trust Jack and wanted to check out his vehicle, I was in perfect view for her.

To occupy myself, I sang old standards in my head. My parents had reared us on Cole Porter and the Gershwins and Irving Berlin. I sang every Frank Sinatra song I could remember, especially the 60s swinging ones. I sang old Dinah Washington tunes, and Billie Holiday. I sang every song I could remember from Porgy and Bess. Crouched in the footwell of a Cadillac Escalade on a side street off Yonge Street in North York, I covered as much of the American Standards Songbook as I could remember.

Jack, as far as I knew, was fifty feet away, with the woman who murdered my sister.

I kept glancing up at the windows. I couldn’t see anyone in the window, and certainly not Jack giving his signal. But this was taking too long. Far too long.

I held the gun in my hands. I warmed it up, until it felt like part of me. I put it to my cheek and let my tears wet the barrel. I prayed. I hadn’t prayed in such a long time, and it wasn’t something I let anybody know about. Not Jack. Not Darren. Not Ginger. But I talked to God about Matthew and Luke, and I prayed for forgiveness for what I was about to do.

I hoped Ginger would forgive me. I hoped Jack could. I wished I could be a different person. But I wasn’t.

I was going to kill Jeanette Vasquez.

I got out of the car.

The back door to the building was unlocked. I heard Dire Straits playing, but it was from the bar downstairs. “Sultans of Swing.” Good song. Mary J. Blige’s “Family Affair” started next. I debated just going into the bar, ’cause those guys had their groove on. And it would be safer. But instead, I went up the back stairs.

I walked on the outside treads of the stairs. They tend to squeak less; any rebellious teenager will tell you that. I held the .38 in my right hand, against the stairwell. I had Jack’s cell in my jacket pocket, still, I hoped, set on vibrate.

There were three doors at the top of the stairs. I paused for a second, knowing that I might only have that long before somebody came looking for me. Outside, I had done the math. Jack said it was the middle apartment. I crept along the hallway, as quietly as my motorcycle boots would allow. The first apartment I passed was totally silent. I kept going, trying to keep my breath shallow.