Buffalo jump

CHAPTER 7

T he first bottle was empty and we were making headway on a Cabernet from Australia’s Barossa Valley. The picture of the boy and his parents still lay in front of us on the coffee table.

The man’s name was Jay Silver, Ryan told me, a pharmacist who owned a large outlet called Med-E-Mart on Laird Street just south of Eglinton. He lived in Forest Hill, where even the most humble abodes cost at least a million dollars. The wife’s name was Laura; the boy was Lucas, aged five.

“Geller, I been in this life twenty years, which is like a hundred and forty in mob years. I got no illusions. I’ve done pretty much everything you can imagine and a few things you probably can’t. But one thing I can say is anyone I ever had to take care of, they had it coming one way or another. They brought it on themselves. I’ve done Asian gangsters, Jamaican gangsters, Italians from other crews. I’ve done bikers, plenty of bikers, big hairy motherfuckers that look like they’re one day out of the caves. I’ve done skimmers, snitches, deadbeats.” He looked at me with a wicked grin. “Witnesses.”

“Really? So if the Ensign case had gone to trial?”

“No way that piece-of-shit case was going anywhere.”

“But if it had.”

“You would never have testified, that much I can tell you. Nothing personal, of course.”

“Of course. What about women?”

“Killing them? It’s rare but not unheard of. A talkative mistress

… a wife with an inheritance… a stubborn witness… I’ve never done it myself, which you can believe or not, but it happens. But on my father’s grave, not once in all my years in the business have I ever harmed a child. It’s never even come up. Sometimes you know deep down there’s collateral damage when you off a guy who has kids. You know they’re going to suffer and whatnot. But to actually target a kid,” Ryan said, staring into the dark sediment at the bottom of his glass. “To put him in the sights. What kind of animal puts a contract on a kid?”

“What kind of animal takes one?”

He was up on his feet in a flash, vaulting the coffee table between us and throwing a fast right hand at my jaw. It missed as I tipped my chair backwards, hit the floor and rolled up in a defensive stance. His sunglasses clattered to the floor as he threw a left. I slapped it aside and used his forward momentum to push him up against the wall facefirst and pin him there.

“Marco, I meant!” I said. “Not you, Ryan! Marco!”

“Take your hands off me,” he hissed.

“You going to try to hit me again?”

“I said take your hands off me or I’ll kill you fucking dead.”

I took my hands off him and stepped back quickly. I kept my hands up and stayed on the balls of my feet. If he reached for a weapon I would unload with everything I had. He didn’t. He turned and glared hotly at me. Looking at his flushed face, I could see the man who beat people, broke their bones, killed them for his living. Then the rage seemed to go out of him as quickly as it had come. He pulled down the cuffs of his jacket and walked out the balcony door. I waited a moment, then followed. The sun was down now and the southern sky over the lake was a dark shade of indigo. But not as dark as the look I’d just seen on his face.

We stood together in silence. The towers of the financial district seemed to rise straight out of the blackness of the tree-lined valley, clustered together in a haze of light. To the north, the sky was a lighter shade of blue. The few stars I could see were bright, though not as bright as the backlit logos of the banks. The banks always win out in Toronto.

“Nice move there, Geller,” he said. “I want to hit someone, I don’t usually miss.”

“You had a few drinks.”

“So did you.”

I shrugged. “What’s his name?” I asked.

“I told you. Lucas.”

“Not him. Your son.”

He didn’t look at me. “Who says I have a son?”

“The way you tried to take my head off. This thing is personal with you.”

Ryan nodded. “His name is Carlo and he’s almost the same age as Lucas. Turned four this winter. Sweet little guy. Must take after his mother.” Behind the pride sounded a note of sorrow or loss. He lit a Player’s and inhaled deeply.

“You see him much?”

Smoke drifted out of his nostrils as he stared out at the skyline. “What makes you think I don’t live with him?”

I shrugged. “Reading people is what I’m supposed to be good at.”

“Okay, Kreskin. His mother threw me out a few months ago. She’s not supposed to know precisely what I do for a living but she knows. She knows. Maybe she can see it in my eyes. Smell it on me. I can only see Carlo at the house when she’s there. And that’s as much as you need to know about my fucking life.”

When he finished his smoke, we went back inside. More Aussie Cab was poured.

“So what happens if I actually find out who took out this contract?”

“I change the motherfucker’s mind. Get him to take the kid off the table.”

“So he can wind up an orphan?”

“That’s out of my hands.”

“Nothing is ever out of our hands, Ryan.”

“Spare me,” he said.

“Why should the woman die? She didn’t do anything either.”

“I never said she did, but I have to provide a level of service.”

I looked at her picture again, this slim dark-haired woman with a son who was five. I didn’t want her to die. Too many people like her were dead already.

“Aim higher,” I said.

“What I’m doing is dangerous enough already.”

“There’s an old Jewish saying,” I said.

“Oh Christ.”

“No, that’s not it. It goes, ‘Where there is no one else to be a man, be a man.’”

“What, like some gunfighter riding in to save the town? Some crazy samurai?”

“Those are my terms.”

“You’re dictating to me now?”

To move forward, sometimes, you have to appear to take a step back. “I’m asking you.”

Ryan stood, swirled the wine in his glass, then drained it in one swallow. “Look, the truth is, in my heart, I agree with you. If the real beef is with Jay Silver, if this is something he brought on himself, he should pay. But all I can promise as regards the woman is I’ll try. The main thing for me is to keep the kid out of it.”

“What if the guy won’t change his mind?”

Ryan smiled, but only just. “One time,” he said, “a guy named JoJo Santini, a bit player in Hamilton, runs a few hookers and street-level dealers, he orders a hit on a friend of Marco’s ’cause the guy’s doing JoJo’s wife. I go see JoJo, tell him this friend has Marco’s protection and he has to call it off. He says, ‘All due respect, Dante, I can’t do that, else people are gonna laugh in my face.’ I tell him, if you’re giving me all due respect, shut the fuck up and do what I say. He starts hemming and hawing and in between a hem and a haw I grab him by the hair and stick a gun in his mouth. Not just any gun. A monster stainless-steel Classic Smith with an eight-and-three-eighths barrel. You cock the hammer on that thing, you give a man religion. Long story short, what do you think happened?”

“He changed his mind.”

“And then his pants. There’s nobody’s mind I can’t change, Geller. Nobody. So find him. Soon.”

“How? If I can’t tell anyone at work, I can’t get any help. I’ll be strictly on my own.”

“Figure it out. It’s not like you were my natural first choice. Normally we got all kinds of ways to find people- investigators, cops, bondsmen-I could find a guy in witness protection faster than you can find clean underwear. But on this thing you’re my first, last and only choice. The only one I trust not to play it back to Marco.”

“You trust me?”

“I fucking well have to.”

“Why not just warn the Silvers?” I asked. “Tell them to get out of town.”

“Because far as I know, the only people who know about this job are me, Marco and the guy who ordered it. If Silver takes off, Marco will know who tipped him. Look, this is a delicate time. Marco wants to be boss when Vinnie goes. He’ll kill his own brother if he has to. I can’t be seen moving against him in any way.”

“What’s my time frame?”

“None. The client wants it done like yesterday.”

“And you come to me now?”

“I’ve never done anything like this in my life,” he snapped. “Taken business outside the walls. If Marco knew I was here he’d kill me with a big fucking grin on his face.”

He pulled a slim prepaid cellphone out of yet another jacket pocket. “You need me, push 1 on the speed dial. It’s a brand new phone, never been used. All the same, for my peace of mind, don’t mention names on the air: mine, yours, Marco’s. If he gets wind, we’re both compost.”

“Don’t worry. As much as I support the environment, I have no desire to be part of it.”

“All right. Keep me posted. And thanks.”

“Don’t thank me, Ryan. It’s the right thing to do.”

“I meant for the wine and cheese. You did a nice little thing on short notice.”