Tumblin' Dice (24 page)

Detective Maureen McKeon was standing in the playground in Kew Gardens, what everybody called Castle Park because of the big wooden castle in the middle, watching her husband talking to some other parents, when her phone rang.

She was thinking about going over and getting in the conversation but they were mostly people in the movie or
TV
business and they'd be talking politics or some new show she'd never heard of, and she looked at the number on her phone and saw it was Price and answered it thinking, great, another murder, at least it's something I can talk about.

Price said, “Hey,” and she said, “hey,” back and he said, “What're you doing?”

“I'm just about to open a bottle of wine, drink the whole thing, and go for a drive. You?”

“You out with the family?”

“They're here, I'm here.”

Price said okay. Then he said, “There was a murder in the Don last night,” and McKeon said, oh yeah?

“Yeah, Jamal Khan.”

McKeon said, “Holy shit, what happened?”

“Boner beat him to death.”

It didn't really register for McKeon and she said, “What?” and Price said, yeah, I know. “Not many details yet, they were in gen pop, nobody was watching them. Jamal was getting out today and Boner was being transferred up to Orillia. They were both in the can and Boner went off on him.”

“Why?”

Price said he had no idea, but, “It seems like arrangements were made — guys were kept out till he was finished and no one's saying a word.”

“Incredible.”

“Yeah,” Price said, “Boner's walking around today like he's getting his patch for it. Guys are telling him one of these days he needs to kill the right person to get a promotion.”

McKeon said, “He thinks he's getting his full patch?”

“That's the rumour. What an idiot.”

McKeon said yeah, but she was thinking about the biker chick, the wife of the national vice president she talked to in the women's washroom of the police station, and she was smiling. Shit. She said, “Well, are we going to have to talk to him?”

Price said, no, “Levine and Dhaliwal caught it. Levine loves going into the Don. He'll be telling us the history of the place for weeks: how the redcoats bivouacked there in eighteen-something and how it was where the last man was hanged in Canada in nineteen fifty-something,” and McKeon said, “A guy was hung in there last month,” and Price said, “We caught something else.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, real estate agent killed in the Beaches, in one of those condos looking out onto the lake.”

“Real estate's a tough business in the Beaches.”

“You know it. You want me to pick you up on my way?”

“I'm just down the street,” McKeon said, “that park with the castle in it,” and Price said, yeah, just a couple blocks away, and then he said, “I'm at Fifty-Five. I'll swing by, walk up to Queen. Wait for me in front of the library,” and she said okay.

Then she hung up and looked at all the kids playing in the castle, climbing up the ropes on the side and going down the slide, all the parents drinking café lattes and half-gallon jugs of coffee, women in baseball caps and tank tops, the guys in Hawaiian shirts and there was MoGib fitting right in, laughing at something a guy with blond spiky hair was saying.

McKeon was getting the feeling this was it, this was what life was all about — you do your job and then you go spend time with your family.

One day at a time, as they say.

It could be all right.

• • •

Ritchie was pretty happy sitting with Angie in the coffee shop beside the lobby, almost under the big stained glass roof. He had no idea what was going to happen next, if they were going to be able to work anything out and have any kind of a future, but he didn't care.

Then just as she was sipping her latte, Angie looked up, startled, and Ritchie turned his head to see the cop, Detective Sandra Bolduc, walking up to their table and saying, “Just the person I was looking for.”

Angie said yeah, but the cop looked at Ritchie and said, yeah, “The tour bus pulled out in the middle of all that commotion last night, but you weren't on it.”

Ritchie could see Angie relax, just a little but enough for him to be happy for once in his life to be the object of a cop's attention, and he said, “Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

Ritchie didn't say anything and then Angie said, “Oh, do you want to join us, have a cup of coffee?” Bolduc said no, but then she said, “Okay,” and sat down and said, “but I don't need any more coffee this far past noon.”

Ritchie said, “They don't have any doughnuts but they have muffins,” and Bolduc said, “That's okay.”

Then she said, “That was quite a shock last night when that bomb went off,” and Ritchie said, “I didn't know it was official yet — I thought they were still calling it an ‘incident,'” and Bolduc said, yeah, “But you were there.”

“I wasn't there,” Ritchie said, “I was in the hospitality suite,” and he looked at Angie and she nodded and looked at the cop and said, “Yeah, so was I.”

The cop said, “What about Barry Nemeth and Cliff Moore? Were they in the hospitality suite, too?”

Ritchie said, “Barry and Cliff?”

“Yeah.”

Ritchie said, yeah, they were, and Bolduc said, “After?” and Ritchie thought about it, remembered seeing Barry and the chick he was with, the young hooker with the bruise on her face, and yeah, they were in the suite when they got offstage but he couldn't remember seeing them when everybody came back after going out back and watching the fire department and the ambulance and all the cops showing up, and he said, “Huh, you know, I don't know.”

“Neither one of them?”

And again Ritchie said, “Barry and Cliff?”

“Yeah.”

“I don't know. They were loading up the bus right after the show. I guess they both got on.”

Bolduc said, yeah, okay, and Ritchie said, “It's true — they were hanging around together on this tour, I never would have expected that.” Bolduc said, no?

“They never liked each other — well, none of us were what you'd really call friends. If we hadn't started playing music at the same time we never would've talked to each other in high school. Hell, I remember when I'd started playing with Dale, just the guitar and the drums and Cliff showed up saying he could sing and it turned out he actually could, we still weren't sure we wanted him in the band.”

“And Barry?”

“Barry's brother had a bass, showed him a couple things, walking blues, ‘Sunshine of Your Love,' the usual. We never thought he'd stay in the band when we started to get serious and he had to work at it.”

Angie put her hand on Ritchie's arm and said, “Rich, he never did get any good at it,” and Ritchie said, “Well, not
good
good, but he's all right.”

Then Bolduc stood up and said, well, okay, “If you hear from Barry can you let me know?” and she put a business card on the table.

Ritchie picked it up and said, “And what about if I hear from Cliff?”

Bolduc looked around and then said, “Toronto cops went to talk to Cliff this morning, found his body in his condo.”

Ritchie said, holy shit, “His body?”

“I guess the bus got into Toronto just after midnight last night and he went home. Girlfriend went to see him this morning,”

“And Barry?”

Bolduc shrugged and said, “Is nowhere to be found.”

“Holy shit.”

“It's really up to the Toronto cops — I'm just asking around. Apparently they went to see Frank Kloss while they were here.”

Ritchie said, “Old friends,” and Bolduc said, “Like the old friends in the band?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Bolduc said, okay, “Well, if you hear from him. Do you think you'll be around here much?”

They hadn't really talked about it, but Ritchie said yeah. He looked at Angie and said, “No one really knows what's going on — Frank and Felix were the top two bosses here. Angie's going to hold the fort till they send someone to take over.”

“If,” Angie said, “they send someone.”

Bolduc said, “What a mess,” thanked them for their time, and walked out of the coffee shop.

Ritchie just shook his head and then Angie said, “Someone killed Cliff and Barry,” and Ritchie said, “I wonder what took so long,” and Angie slapped his forearm, but playfully, and said, “You're bad.”

“So who's in charge now?”

Angie said, “You mean the bikers or the mobsters?”

“I guess.”

“I don't know. You think we should stick around and find out?”

Ritchie said, yeah, “We might as well. It's nice up here, quiet now that the bombs have stopped going off.”

Angie took his hand and looked at him and said, “Yeah.”

Then they went to Frank's office to pack up his stuff and found the hockey bag with the half million dollars in it, and they decided not to mention that to anyone.

JOHN McFETRIDGE, author of
Dirty Sweet
,
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
, and
Swap
, became fascinated with crime when attending a murder trial at age 12 with his police officer brother. McFetridge has also co-written a short story collection,
Below the Line
, and wrote for the CBS/CTV television series
The Bridge
. He lives in Toronto with his family and blogs at
johnmcfetridge.blogspot.com
.

copyright © John McFetridge, 2012

Published by ECW Press

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

McFetridge, John, 1959-

Tumblin' dice : a mystery / John McFetridge.

ISBN: 978-1-77090-094-3

also issued as:

978-1-77090-095-0 (PDF); 978-1-55022-977-6 (Print)

I. Title.

PS8575.F48T85 2012 C813'.6 C2011-902911-1

Cover and Text Design: Tania Craan

Typesetting and Production: Rachel Ironstone

The publication of
Tumblin' Dice
has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada, and by the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities, and the contribution of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit. The marketing of this book was made possible with the support of the Ontario Media Development Corporation.