Buffalo jump

CHAPTER 31

When Ryan dropped me at the office, I made straight for the parking lot and stowed the gun and ammunition in the trunk of my car, inside a storage tub that held jumper cables, candles, matches, a blanket and other necessities of life on Canadian roads.

The office was a hive of activity, with most of the worker bees beating a path to and from Clint’s office, accepting or reporting on assignments relating to Franny’s murder. Just as Darrel Mitchell came out with a thick sheaf of pink file folders under one arm, one of two other investigators standing outside the door went in immediately; the other moved closer to the doorway to keep his spot.

Clint paged me at my desk about ten minutes later. Unlike the other bees, I was asked to shut the door to his office and sit.

“So,” he said. “Sergeant Hollinger thinks it’s you they wanted, not Franny.”

“That’s what she thinks.”

“And you? The truth this time: have the Di Pietras made contact with you?”

“No. Why would they? The Ensign case is over and they’ve left me alone so far.”

“The bruise on your face, Jonah.”

“I’m telling you, Marco Di Pietra did not leave these marks on my face.”

“And I’m telling you this is not the time to go off-grid on me. You’ve been a team player from day one. And I need a team now like I never have before, not even when I was a cop.”

“Clint-”

“At least all the cops under me acted like professionals. They never left unannounced or showed up looking like a john who got rolled.” The look on his face started moving past disappointment, headed toward disgust. “All right,” he said without making eye contact. “If you’re through leaving me in the lurch for today, get busy on this.” He handed me five bright yellow folders thick with documents. “These are Franny’s cases for the last year. Cross-reference any and every location he mentions, no matter what the circumstances, and note what company owns it. See if you can find any link at all to the crime scene.”

“I’m on it,” I said.

“I’ll be working late,” he said. “In case a sudden urge to tell the truth comes over you.”

Heading home that evening, I was reasonably certain no one followed. There were plenty of dark SUVs on the road, but none seemed to contain gunmen of any size or shape. The greatest threat they posed was the drifting attention spans of drivers trying to juggle cellphones, cigarettes, lattes, CDs, makeup, road maps and, every once in a while, a function actually related to staying in one lane.

I parked in my garage and sat with the windows down, my mind numbed by arcane details of real estate transactions. I knew a lot more about how companies could make money by flipping properties but was no closer to knowing why the Erie Storage warehouse had been chosen as the place to kill Franny-or me, as it were.

I listened for the scrape of a sole on concrete, the intake of breath through an oft-broken nose. Nothing. I knew I should take the Beretta upstairs-load it, rack it, keep it handy-but I wasn’t ready to admit it to my home. The garage seemed empty, but there were alcoves and doorways on the way to the elevators, places a gunman could hide with a pistol held down along his leg. The curse of Jewish imagination, where enemies lurk behind every pillar and post. I left the gun in the trunk, waited until a van was exiting the garage, and walked out beside it, looking around as I made my way up and around to the front lobby. There was an ambulance pulling out of the circular drive: not an unusual sight in a heat wave, with so many older tenants afflicted by heart trouble and other ailments.

I was walking down the hall to my apartment when I saw Ed Johnston’s door was open. I could hear a man’s voice and it wasn’t Ed. I slowed down and stayed close to the wall. I stopped outside his door and listened. Heard the man’s voice again. One of Marco’s men? The voice was neither angry nor threatening. Then I heard a woman’s voice, soft and low, and knew Ed was okay. He just had company.

Then I heard the woman begin to cry. I reached the threshold and looked in. Two men and a woman: Ed’s daughter, Elizabeth, whom I recognized from photos in the apartment, and two men in sport jackets. There was blood on the parquet floor and bloody footprints leading out the door. The prints hadn’t shown up in the dirty grey hallway carpet. The men looked like plainclothes cops.

“Can I help you?” one of them asked me. He was heavy-set, with the mournful face of a basset hound.

“I’m a neighbour,” I said quietly. An ugly thought hit me then: it had been Ed in the ambulance leaving the building. “What happened? Is your father okay?” I asked Elizabeth. She was older than me with dry blonde hair cut in an unflattering bob and pale blue eyes that were red-rimmed from crying. She looked like she wanted to say something but couldn’t.

“Someone beat him up,” the basset said.

“How bad?” I asked.

“To a pulp.” Ed’s daughter sobbed as she heard this. “Sorry,” the cop muttered. “He has head injuries, possibly a fractured skull. Broken fingers. Broken ribs. Broken jaw.”

The daughter fished a tissue out of her purse.

“Can we get your name, sir?” the cop asked.

“Geller,” I said. “Jonah Geller.”

Elizabeth stopped wiping her eyes and looked at me coldly. “You’re the investigator.”

“Yes.”

“Dad talks about you all the time,” she said sourly. “He said you made life around here more exciting. So what was this? Some excitement you brought home with you.”

“What kind of investigator are you?” the basset asked.

“The licensed kind.”

“Got it on you?”

I got my ID out of my wallet and handed it to him.

“Beacon Security, eh? That’s Graham McClintock’s outfit, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“They’re legit,” he told his partner, who looked East Indian but not Sikh: no turban or beard. “Clint was on the job thirty years, all of them good. You know who would want to hurt Mr. Johnston?” he asked me.

“No.”

“The only thing they stole was his camera. Plenty of other stuff around. A laptop right there on the dining room table. His wallet, his watch. Even the tripod, I’m told, is worth money. But one camera’s all they took. Know why that would be?”

Sooner or later, someone would tell him about the fight in the park and how Ed had taken photos of it. His hound dog ears would pick up my name soon after that. Between the ballplayers, sunset watchers and other onlookers, there had been dozens of witnesses. More than enough would know me, if not by name, as that guy who lives in that building-Ed’s building.

For now, I said nothing. Giving up Marco’s name wouldn’t help Ed. The goons who beat him wouldn’t have left anything behind to incriminate the bastard.

I was also starting to hatch a plan of my own to deal with Marco Di Pietra and the police would have no part to play.