Headhunter Page 6

The Sergeant threw back the covers and sat up on the bed. "Where?" he demanded, abandoning the whisper.

  "The Museum of Anthropology. Nailed to a totem pole."

  "Where are you, Mitchell?"

  "I'm right at the scene."

  "Well, you stay right where you are. I'm on the way. You guard that area with your bloody life. Nobody goes near it. Nobody, you hear. You report directly to me."

  "Yes, sir." Then Jack MacDougall hung up.

  The Sergeant was already off the bed and halfway into his clothes—same blue blazer and crest, same gray slacks—when there was the squeak of bedsprings and a sleepy voice from the sheets. "Is something the matter, Jack?"

  "We've got another body. This one's worse." "Oh God no. Want some coffee?" "I haven't got time, love. One quick phone call and then I'm out the door."

  "Will I see you later? Spend another night?" "I hope so," MacDougall said, glancing at the bed, taking in the gymnast's body outlined beneath the covers. Chances were good that body would perform in the next Olympics. "I hope so, too," Peter Brent said.

  Ottawa, Ontario

  6:11 a.m.

  When Commissioner Francois Chartrand put down the phone, he carried his cup of coffee through to his study overlooking the Ottawa River. There he lit a Gauloise and stood smoking in contemplation in front of the double-glazed window. Off to the east the first faint light of predawn was advancing slowly to engage in battle with the silver beams of the moon. A wind down from the Northern Tundra was whipping up the metallic waters that flowed before him, while waves of Canada geese flying in V formation slipped across the pale orange lunar surface above. Finished with the cigarette, Chartrand lit another.

  The Commissioner was a stout man who had struggled for most of his adult life with a recurring weight problem. At one time he had also tried to control his habit of chain-smoking, but quickly found that fighting a double front was beyond all human effort. Besides, he enjoyed cigarettes.

  Chartrand was the sort of man born to be Commissioner, for he was a natural leader. His face was nondescript—short hair cut high above the ears in military fashion and balding at the crown, sparse restrained eyebrows, an easy mouth, soft perceptive eyes—and not in the least threatening. Chartrand gave orders by advising you of his opinion and asking if you could help. He took you into his confidence—or at least seemed to—from the very first moment you met him. No one likes to be told what to do and Chartrand would no more think of doing that than asking you to help where your help wasn't needed. And yet no matter what happened, if he was involved he always assumed complete responsibility for the outcome. No sloughing off of blame, no sacrificing of those who gave him aid. He was the sort of man who commanded voluntary respect.

  As Chartrand stood now in front of the window contemplating the implications of what the Attorney General for British Columbia had told him, the telephone rang. He put down his coffee cup and caught it on the third ring.

  "Chartrand," he said quietly.

  "Francois, this is Walt Jessup. I'm calling from the coast. We've got a serious problem."

  "I've already heard, Walt. By a different chain of command."

  The Deputy Commissioner of "E" Division snorted. "I'm going to need muscle and machines, Framjois. This'll be worse than Olson. Even there we had vigilante squads and private police forces and phony ransom demands and God knows what else. I don't expect the feminists to be as restrained as parents."

  "You'll have them."

  "What else are we going to do? What shall I tell the

  press?"

  "Leave that with me, Walt. I'm thinking about it now. I'll call you back shortly once I've made a decision. I promise I'll give you something. You just give me time for a second cup of coffee."

  The Deputy Commissioner managed a shallow laugh. "All right. But no longer," he said. "Or I'm going to sneak out of town."

  After replacing the receiver, Chartrand walked through to his kitchen and poured himself another cup. He lit a third cigarette and went back to his study. And it was then, with the advancing light of dawn, that the idea struck him.

  He knew what had to be done.

  For when you are the head of an organization with both a sacred duty and a mythical legend in trust—

  You use the very best you've got.

  Even if you no longer have him.

  Vancouver, British Columbia

  8:15 a.m.

  Genevieve was dying.

  He held the rose bush gently in his left hand and carefully examined it for signs of blight or disease. But all he could find were two minuscule white dots where the flower joined the stalk. Whatever they were, he had never seen this symptom before.That's the problem with exotic plants,he thought. They contract exotic diseases.Outside the greenhouse lay a world of dazzling snow. The maple trees, and the city far beyond were blanketed with white and the sun now blazed down, bouncing off the snow crystals and the prisms in the greenhouse's glass walls. Rainbows were everywhere.

  Except for the weather, it was a bad day all the way around.

  As usual, he had begun his work this morning at five-thirty. But the moment he sat down in the white wicker chair and placed the clipboard on his knee was the moment that he knew the block had settled in for good. He merely sighed with resignation. To be honest with himself, there had been a lethargy about the project from its very beginning. Did the world really need another history of the First World War? Hadn't Fay and Albertini, Tuchman and Falls and Liddell Hart said what had to be said?

  He put the plant down gently and in the doing knew that the book had died.

  Now Genevieve was dying too.

  While lost in thought he had not heard his wife open the door of the greenhouse that led to their home. She touched his arm as she always did and spoke to him in French.

  "Robert, on tu demande au telephone."

  He looked at her for a moment—the auburn hair now piled on top of her head, here and there a wayward strand tumbling down to her shoulders, then he nodded and went quietly out of the greenhouse and into the living room, across the pegged wood floor with its Persian carpet, and into the entrance hall where he picked up the telephone.

  He felt a little depressed. The day was shot. What else could go wrong?

  "Hello," he said in English. "This is Robert DeClercq."

  4:55 p.m.

  He was smiling as he stopped just inside the door to the pub, his eyes skipping from table to table, checking to see who was strung out and twitching and looking for some smack. He knew that for a moment all eyes in the Moonlight Arms were furtively sizing him up to see if he was holding. Especially the blond jerking and jumping in the corner. She was always here, waiting—-but then she was a big girl and a fix wouldn't hold her long.

  The Indian moved among the tables, closing in on her.

  Not ten minutes ago he had been fronted two bundles of junk. The Man had said it was the best around since the last time the Horsemen had done a sweep of the street. "But move it fast," the Pusher said. "Harness bulls get a whiff of this an' they'll kick in the door ablastin'." "Why the front?" the Indian asked. "That's not usual practice?" "I trust you, my man," the Pusher said. "Now where would a motherfucker like me be without a little trust? Just move it fast,my man."

  The way the Indian figured it, he'd push forty-five caps and save five for the fix. Mixed with a little bouncing powder, the speedball would have him in space by eight. It had been at least a month since he had done a borderline fix and his heart was beating fast.

  Tonight would be the night. As soon as he moved the bundles.

  "My man," the blond whispered as soon as the Indian came within earshot. "Am I glad to see you."

  Her face was twitching like dead matter coming alive.

  "Sorry to disappoint you, blondie, but I couldn't score."

  But it was just the old pusher joke, getting off on the interplay of hope and anxiety on a junkie's face, tasting the feel of power, the power to give or withhold, then opening his mouth a l
ittle bit to reveal the balloon behind rotting teeth, reveling in her sigh of relief as he said, "Oops, my mistake. I had some all the time. You got a place?"

  The blond shook her head. "Not near here. Fix me, my man, fix me. Then just let me split."

  "You want one or two, lady? It's seventy-five a hit. This is de-e-e-lux goods."

  There was a slight flicker in the blond's eyes, but that didn't matter. She was in no position to balk.

  The blond nodded twice.

  "Meet me out back in five," he said. Then the Indian turned away.

  It was at that moment that they both saw the black man who had just walked in through the door. His shoulders were thick, usurping the space where his neck should have been, and his chest strained the material of his blue denim shirt. He wore wide bell-bottom blue trousers without a belt which looked as though any second they'd be down around his ankles. Under the edge of his white toque peeked a receding hairline. His face was round and he sported a pencil-thin moustache on his upper lip. The man was weighed down with jewelry: several gold chains in the hair of his chest, eight small rings on his manicured hands, a single stud in his left ear. Judging from his look, however, there was little chance that even in this part of town anyone would try to take them off him.

  The Indian blinked at the man who nodded toward the back door. Then the black turned on his heels and left by the front. The Indian slipped among the tables and went out through the rear.

  When they were gone, the blond stood up and quickly made her way to the back of the pub. As she entered the hall leading to the washrooms a man of about fifty with running pimples all over his face slipped a hand between her thighs. She pushed him away and entered the women's room.

  The room stank.

  There was the smell of urine everywhere and three separate puddles where people had puked on the floor. A soiled Kotex floated in one of the puddles. The only window was open to the alley as if the smell of garbage would somehow freshen the air.

  The blond entered the toilet cubicle that was directly beneath the window. The seat was missing from the toilet. She stood up on the edge of the porcelain bowl and peeked out through the window.

  For less than a minute the woman watched the black man and the Indian talking. They exchanged something. Then they turned away from each other and walked in opposite directions.

  Once they were gone from sight, the blond climbed down, took out a pen and a matchbook, and began to make some notes.

  5:40 p.m.

  From somewhere out there came the squeal of wheels on rails and the smash of train cars being shunted. From somewhere else came the sound of a foghorn lost on the edge of the harbor. For now the fog had come rolling in from the sea, swallowing up the physical world and disembodying its sounds. For the month of October, the weather was back to normal.

  The railroad hut sat on the edge of the National Harbors' Board property, twenty feet from the Pacific Ocean and several thousand yards from the western terminal of the Canadian Pacific Railway. It was here in a synapse now shrouded with vapor that four thousand miles of rail linked up with the shipping routes of the Pacific Rim. Here was the reflex ganglia of the country's nervous system.

  The man who sat at the single window of the railroad hut was smoking yet another cigarette. It was an Export A, no filter. He was one of those men who are politely described as being corpulent. His beer belly pushed out the front of his suit, permanently stretching the leather of his belt out of shape. The butt of a Smith and Wesson .38 stuck out from the top of his pants.

  He turned at the sound of the door behind him being opened.

  It was the blond from the beer parlor.

  "I think I'm onto something," she said. There was excitement in her voice.

  "Yeah?" the man replied with no emotion in his tone.

  "Problem is I might just blow my cover getting to it."

  As she spoke, the woman removed two No. 5 gelatin capsules from the pocket of her jeans. She walked over to a shelf on one side of the hut and picked up an envelope, then she sealed the caps inside it and marked the exhibit with her name, her Regimental Number, the date and the designation 56 C. In an RCMP undercover drug operation each person the operative scores from is given a number. Their picture then comes down from the target board and goes up as a hit. The letter "C" in this case indicated that this was the blond's third buy off this particular hit.

  "Outrageous price," the woman said, handing the envelope over to her cover man. He put it in an "E" exhibit pouch. Then the blond sat down by the heater near the door and began making notes in a large black court book.

  "You said you were onto something," the man reminded her. Again without emotion.

  She looked up. "Before the buy, 56 made connection with this black dude in the alley. He had that swagger of the nouveau riche,you know what I mean? Flaunted jewelry. Arrogant air. That sort of shit. I think he's one step up and probably a link. I'd like to go after him and forget single cap sales."

  "Well you can't," the man said, bitterly. "Spann, you've been pulled."

  "What do you mean 'pulled'?" the woman asked, frowning.

  The man grunted and lit another cigarette. His fingers were dark orange from nicotine stains.

  "What do you mean 'pulled'?" the woman asked again.

  "Clean up. Fuck off. Report to Heather Street. They just sent word down you made the Headhunter Squad."

  The woman tensed, involuntarily. Now her heart was pounding fast.

  "It should have been me-, lady. It should have been me." Then he turned back to the window to stare out at the fog. "Write out notes on this big connection before you go. Give me something to do."

  "Yeah, sure," the woman said, almost in a daze. Then she added very quietly, "Who do I report to?"

  Snorting, the Corporal turned slowly from the window. On his face there was a faint sardonic smile.

  "The news is big, Spann. About as big as it comes. Chartrand, our bloody Commissioner, is bringing back Robert DeClercq."

  Eyes

  New Orleans, Louisiana, 1957

  Jazz was in the streets, and it wafted up on the warm night air, a musical mix of ragtime and bop and boogie-woogie and swing, drifting up over the heads of the Mardi Gras revelers snaking through the French Quarter, up over the mingle and jumble of rich and poor, of black and white, of priest and libertine, up, still up over the surging crowd of people lined eight deep, some on scaffolds, some on stepladders, some on the tips of their toes. The music rose over the parents who sipped pink liquid from hurricane glasses as they pushed and shoved their children to the front of the line, children munching on peanuts and popcorn and hot dogs and apples-on-a-stick, everyone shuffling through a carpet of confetti and broken bottles. The jazz rose up over the sea of costumed masked revelers infiltrating the crowd, the "He-Shebas" dressed in drag as butterflies and snails, a King Kong here, a Zigaboo there, the Queen of Hearts and a fig-leafed Adam and Eve. Away from "the Big Shot of Africa" and the Zulu King's retinue, away from a one-eyed cyclops, away from the white leather cowboy garbed in front and bare-ass naked behind, up and away from Royal Street with its banners and its streamers, up until the jazz slid softly through the wrought-iron balcony where the black girl stood at the window.

  The black girl was naked.

  Crystal stood with her back to the room, swaying, her breath quietly hissing through white, even teeth. A trickle of sweat ran down between her shoulder blades toward the small of her back. As her body was still tingling with the aftershock of orgasm, the fireworks that exploded over the city seemed to explode in her head. She felt good. Secure. For just a moment she wondered if her father would turn his sexual advances on her younger sister now that she was gone. Then she managed to push the thought aside since it spoiled her mood. From fifteen feet away, Elvis begged her,"Don't be cruel."Crystal smiled and slowly rocking, began to sing along.

  "You want some of this?" a voice asked, louder than the radio. "It'll ice the top of your head."

 
Crystal turned from the window and walked over to where Suzannah sat at a glass table chopping up cocaine. The razor blade cut through the powder and tapped on the glass to the music. Finished, the white woman put the blade down and picked up a crisp $100 bill, rolling it into a tube and handing it to the girl.

  Crystal plugged one nostril and put the tube to the other. Leaning over the table, she inhaled the drug. Then she switched hands and sniffed cocaine into her other nostril. During the process, she felt a hand cup one of her breasts. The nipple puckered.

  "That ought to cool you, honey," Suzannah huskily whispered into her ear. The woman's other hand slipped up between the girl's thighs.

  Crystal shuddered, uncertain whether it was Suzannah's touch or the spreading effect of the snow. But she didn't care, for all that mattered was the warm shiver tingling through her body. After a while she closed her eyes and abandoned herself to the woman.

  Suzannah laughed and said, "Better watch that. Crystal dear. Pussy is addicting."

  Then the woman turned her back on the girl and herself bent over the table. She ran the bill around the glass and sucked up most of the powder. Finished, she wet her index finger and washed it across the surface, completing the ritual by rubbing its tip around her gums.

  Suzannah was a woman who dripped sexuality. Twenty-eight years old, she stood five-foot-ten in her bare feet and had a luscious figure. Her head was shaved bald, and she too was naked. As Suzannah bent over the table, from behind her Crystal could see six small gold rings piercing the labia and glittering among the hairs of the woman's crotch.

  Suzannah straightened up. Pinching her nostrils several times as she sniffed in deep breaths of air, she glanced up at the. Gustav Becker clock ticking on the wall. The time was 11:33. She turned to Crystal and said: "We haven't much time, dear, until our guest arrives. He'll be here in an hour."

  Frowning, Crystal walked over to the window. At the end of the side street, where it intersected with Royal, she could see the parade of floats and, for a moment, even the figure of Comus holding his goblet high. The crowd cheered as he went by, swept away as if caught up in a surging tide. Crystal sighed.