Buffalo jump

CHAPTER 32

In a film canister in one of my kitchen cupboards was a tight bud of British Columbia’s finest pot, curled around its own stem like a serpent around a caduceus. Kenny Aber had left it the last time he’d visited, his way of trying to excavate me from my down mood. “When the going gets tough,” Kenny said, “the tough get ripped.” I toyed with the idea of rolling a little joint but abandoned it quickly. I needed a clear head to decide what to do about Marco-at least as clear as I could be on Percocet.

I sat in front of the TV a while. The heat wave was still the top story, because Torontonians love nothing better than complaining about our weather, which is generally too hot or too cold; it’s all too rarely just right. I watched footage of hardy swimmers cooling themselves in the foul waters of the eastern beaches; two men squabbling over the last upright fan in an appliance store; people crowded around a refrigerated truck in Kensington Market, relishing the cold air wafting out of it.

Then my mind stopped drifting. It stopped somewhere very specific. I switched off the TV and called Dante Ryan’s cell. When he answered, I asked if he had plans for dinner.

“You haven’t seen enough of me today?” I could hear loud cartoon voices in the background, and a boy’s high-pitched voice saying, Daddy, look what SpongeBob’s eyes just did.

“You’re at home?” I asked.

“Yup. All this shit going down with the Silvers, I needed to get rid of the creeps I feel. Spend a little time with my kid. After I dropped you off I phoned Cara, asked if I could help put him to bed.”

“I need to talk to you but not on the phone.”

“You don’t sound so good.”

“A not-so-good thing happened.”

“To you?”

“My neighbour. The photographer.”

“Fuck,” he sighed.

“We really need to talk,” I said.

“Just a minute, honey.”

“Don’t honey me, you rogue.”

“I was talking to my wife, wiseass. Hang on.” He covered his mouthpiece and spoke to someone else, then came back on the line: “We’re putting Carlo to bed in an hour. I’ll come by after that on one condition.”

“What?”

“There a decent pizzeria near your place?”

Ryan arrived with a Barolo-a 1999 Ornato, he said. “Didn’t want to take another chance on the plonk you keep in that closet.”

I had sworn off wine because of the Percocet but that was before a Barolo arrived. I swirled the garnet-coloured wine gently in the glass, inhaling its rich dark cherry aromas. It tasted even better than it smelled.

The pizza I’d ordered had hot Italian sausage, roasted red peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms and onions. “They call this combination Calabrese,” I said. “What do you think?”

“First of all, I’m only half Calabrese, on my mother’s side. Second, I’ve never been there. But from how my mother cooks, I’d say it’s authentic enough.” He dealt with a long string of cheese coming off his pizza and wiped his chin. “Where my mother was born was some rugged place, what I hear. The people too. No one you want to mess with. A lot like Sicilians. Calabria’s right across the straits from Sicily and the one thing they had in common? The government up in Rome was always screwing them both. Screwing them or ignoring them. That’s why the Mafia wound up running things in Sicily and the ’Ndrangheta in Calabria. Someone had to.”

Ryan finished his first slice and washed it down with wine. “If my dad had come from there too, we wouldn’t be having this discussion,” he said. “I’d be a made man, a lifer, and that would be that.”

“What discussion are we having?” I asked him.

“Hey, you asked me to dinner. Said you needed to talk. How about you tell me what the discussion is, then I’ll tell you if we’re having it.”

“Here goes,” I said. “I don’t care so much that Marco tried to cut me in the park. That he sent goons chasing me around East York. But beating up an old man who couldn’t defend himself… Ryan, they cracked his skull, his ribs, his jaw. At his age, he’ll never be the same. If he lives through the night.”

“So what do you want to do?” he asked.

“Go after him,” I said.

His dark eyes seemed to warm from the inside. “Really.”

“What else can I do? Hide the rest of my life? Hide all the people around me? Look over my shoulder because this freak has it in for me? No. I’m not going to stand around while I or people close to me get shot at or beaten or killed.”

“You’re going to kill Marco Di Pietra.”

I took a deep breath and listened to the words echo inside me. They rang absolutely true. It made me feel like I had lost my moral compass. Like I’d dropped it under my heel and ground it back into sand.

“Yes,” I said. “If it’s me or him, it might as well be him.”

“You’re going to do this alone?”

“Not too many people I can ask for help.”

He put his pizza down and wiped his hands on a paper towel. “Cara made something very clear to me tonight. The only way to get back with my family is to find another line of work. But my thing isn’t something you just walk away from. The kind of exit program we have, you don’t wanna know.”

“No one leaves?”

“Made guys, never. They take an oath that their thing will always come first: before family, before the law, before their own lives. Some old guys are allowed to step down when they get sick-like Vinnie Nickels if he’d hurry the fuck up-as long as they’re not under indictment or active investigation. You know they’re not going to flip.”

“But you’re not made.”

“No, I’m what they call an associate. Like I’m some fucking greeter at Wal-Mart. But even though I never took the oath, I might as well have. I know where bodies are buried. Literally. Any that weren’t burned or dumped, I fucking buried.”

“And if Marco was gone?”

“His brother Vito would take over for sure. I’ve only ever worked for Marco, no one else, so I might be able to work things out with Vito. I got no beefs with him. No loyalties to anyone else. No legal problems hanging over me. Nothing he’d have to worry about. Maybe he’d let me retire.” He pulled out his cigarettes. “Mind?” he asked.

I had eaten enough for the moment. I went and got the ashtray.

“So are you throwing in with me?” I asked.

“Answer one question first. Where’s the gun I gave you?”

“Um…”

“Don’t tell me.”

“Sorry. It’s still in the trunk of the car.”

“Man, what are you gonna do if someone shows up with a gun? Excuse yourself while you run down eighteen floors?”

“I forgot.”

“You know your kung fu shit won’t stop a bullet, right? You’re not delusional on that point?”

“Not on that one, no.”

“It’s a hell of a piece, Geller. Costs like a grand on the street.”

“I’ll tuck it in my underwear tonight.”

“Get serious. How are you going to kill a depraved fucker like Marco if you won’t even handle a gun?”

Since I had no logical answer, I was relieved to hear someone knock three times on my door. Ryan had his Glock out before the third knock. He put his finger to his lips and pointed to the door. We both got up and moved toward it. He motioned me to the left side, where the handle was, and braced himself against the wall on the right, gun up beside him. I peered out through the peephole and saw no one.

“Who is it?” I called.

“Katherine Hollinger.”

Oh, God. The good detective sergeant at my door. I was giddy enough around her with just Percocet in my system. Now there was half a bottle of Barolo in me too, not to mention the wild-card stool softeners. “Just a minute,” I said.

Ryan looked at me inquisitively. I nodded at the balcony door. He put his gun away and padded quietly to the door and slipped outside. I opened the front door and there Hollinger was, in jeans and a T-shirt under a coral linen jacket. Her black hair was out of its clip and framed her face like a pair of loving hands.

“Hello, Jonah.”

“Hi.”

She looked at me as though expecting to be invited in, but I stayed parked in the threshold.

“Got a minute?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“You going to ask me in?”

“Uh-uh.”

She looked past me at the coffee table and saw the pizza, the wine, the two glasses. “Oh,” she said. “Company?”

“You’re good,” I said.

“You still have no idea.”

She was starting to acquire a tan. By midsummer there’d be dusky skin to go with her jet-black hair and lioness eyes. Eyes I couldn’t stop looking at. I hadn’t come up with the right colour yet, having pondered hazel, honey and caramel. I was determined to keep trying.

“What’s up, Detective?” was the best I could say.

“That’s Detective Sergeant to you. Just wondering if you’d given any more thought to who tried to kill you.”

“I’m not convinced that’s what happened.”

“I am,” she said.

I was feeling giddier as we spoke. It was either the Percocet and Barolo or the eyes. Whatever their true colour was, looking into them was still painless. “Kate,” I said. “Katie. Were you worried about me?”

“Geller, please.”

“I think you were, a little.”

“I’m a police officer. It’s my job to worry about persons who might be the target of a violent offence.”

“Thank you,” I said.

She said, “You’re welcome. And on that note, I’ll leave you to your date.” She looked out at the balcony again. “I’m surprised.”

“What?”

“That he’s a smoker.”

“Who?”

“Your… companion?”

“What makes you think it’s a he?”

Hollinger nodded at the picture window behind me. Broken rings of smoke were drifting into the night. “I’ve seen a thousand women smoke in my life. I’ve never seen one blow smoke rings like that.”

“You are good.”

“I told you. Enjoy the rest of your evening, Geller.”

“You too, Kate. Or can I call you Katie?”

“Not when I’m working,” she said.

“Please tell me, please, you’re not fucking her.”

“Not that it’s your business, but why not?”

“She’s a cop, isn’t she?”

“You could tell that from the balcony?”

His shrug was both immodest and condescending. “From across the street, I could. I got an extremely developed nose for the law.”

“Well, just to make you feel better, she’s not just a cop. She’s a sergeant in Homicide.”

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “Or what is it you people say? Oy?”

“If I was sleeping with Katherine Hollinger,” I said, “oy wouldn’t even begin to cover it.”

“So why else was she here at this hour? Last I heard, they were clamping down on overtime.”

“She’s worried about me,” I said.

“You should consider wiping that idiot grin off your face.”

“You grin like that when you talk about Carlo.”

“As I should. He’s so quick, so smart. He’s at that age where they learn something new every second of every day. You should see him do a puzzle. I know he’s done them before, but he finishes them so fast, his little brain whirring along, so proud ’cause Daddy’s watching. I tell you, this kid… I was watching cartoons with him when you called, me on the couch and him lying on my chest. I could feel him breathe, smell his hair. He’d had his bath and he was all clean in his PJs, this sweet little package. And I couldn’t help wondering, how do people get so fucked up? How does someone like Marco start out smelling like shampoo and toothpaste and turn into a rabid fucking wolf?”

Rabid. The perfect word for Marco. And you can’t let rabid animals live among you. They have to be killed. Shot down as they cross the town line.

“So Cara would take you back if you could quit.”

“She still loves me. I could tell today, the way we sat and talked. For the first time in a long time, we stopped talking at each other and both listened a bit. We actually communicated, like she was Oprah and I was fucking Dr. Phil.”

I almost made a crack about him fucking Dr. Phil but decided to go on living instead. “What did you decide?”

“That I need to get out. Retire undefeated. Do whatever it takes to keep my little unit together. I never had that with my mother. I want Carlo to have it with us.”

“Anything else you can do to make a living?”

“I don’t know. Run a restaurant maybe. Hey, don’t you smirk,” he said. “My day job, you want to call it that, I run the restaurant in the plaza we went to today.”

“Where you sent the guy?”

“It’s mostly a paper arrangement. I need a legitimate-looking income on my tax return. A manager runs it day-to-day but I hang around. I pick up things. Tell you something else might surprise you.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m not a half-bad cook. My mother was fantastic and I learned a lot from her.”

“Doesn’t surprise me at all,” I said.

“No?”

“Nope. The OPP warned me you were good with a knife.”

“You’re not as cute as you think, Geller.”

“Katie Hollinger thinks I’m cute.”

“Katie? Oh, Christ, the sergeant.”

“She does, I can tell.”

“Great. My partner wants to dick a homicide dick.”

“We’re partners?”

“On this particular venture.”

“The killing of Marco Di Pietra.”

“It’s either that or wait to see if Vito tries,” Ryan said.

“You think he will?”

“If Vinnie Nickels doesn’t get off the fence soon and make a pronouncement, there’s a war coming for sure. Vito associates me with Marco so he might decide I’m worth killing once it starts.”

“Or before.”

“True. If, on the other hand, we get rid of Marco, Vito would have less incentive to mess with me. He might let me go. He fucking has to.” He tried and failed to keep his emotion out of his voice. “This life I made for myself… ever since this thing with the Silver boy… fuck, getting out is all I can think of. I can’t keep waking up in a cruddy hotel, living out of my car. Not that I blame Cara for kicking me out. Who wants to live with me and my ghosts?”

I’d been asking myself the same thing since the day I flew home from Israel.