Hair-Trigger (14 page)

20

A
fter leaving Rowe and his girlfriend at the Bull, Lofton decided to take the subway to Parkdale to catch up with Marva following her shift at the bar.

He was sitting on the edge of her bathtub while she wiped her face with a washcloth, admiring the integrity of those breasts which culminated in two dark, protuberant nipples. There was a red heart on the crotch of her panties. It occurred to him that without her make-up her face exuded the kind of neutrality that could have easily belonged to a church volunteer or hotel maid. It was certainly better that she was a stripper. Her lack of sophistication was becoming less important with each passing day.

“We ought to go to Montana's sometime,” she said.

“I hate line-ups. I won't go anywhere there's a line-up.”

“I don't mind waiting, because if you get there too early you look like the welcoming committee. I usually go around ten when it's just starting. It doesn't take very long.” Marva walked to the doorway, pausing as he got up, and said, “I don't think the bouncers at Montana's like me very much. I had a birthday party there last year and reserved one of the rooms, but they gave it away before I got there—even though I was only
fifteen
minutes late.”

They crossed the hall. Pushing aside the sheet, she said, “I asked them if they were prejudiced, and they didn't like that.”

“They can't keep a room reserved if nobody shows up.”

“I was going there all the time.
They knew I was a good customer.”

“Look,” he said, climbing onto the bed, “you're on the pill so we don't have to use rubbers anymore, right?
You know I can't really feel anything.”

“You've got to get tested. Go to the doctor.”

He sighed. “I won't come inside you.”

“No, you can still get AIDS that way.” Marva watched him pull his shirt over his head, then leaned back and raised her bum to wriggle out of her panties. “You're very gentlemanly when you have sex, aren't you? You look so big and bad, but like we hardly even break into a sweat or anything.”

He squinted at her. “You don't know how lucky you are. You wouldn't like my dark side,
believe
me.”

As she was looking back at him, the telephone rang. Lofton tensed. The chance he was taking by being there was ridiculously apparent. He sucked his teeth in elaborate disgust as he looked up at the ceiling. “Don't answer; it might be that asshole again.”

“Maybe it's important.” Marva turned over and picked up the receiver. “Hello?” There was an actual expression of surprise on her face.
“Oh . . . hi. That's okay . . . Yeah, he's here; just a minute.” She held out the phone. “It's for you. Your friend Derek.”

As Lofton took it, she ducked under the twisted cord and moved away while he rolled over. “Hello? Yeah, hi, what's going on?” He frowned, listening. “What? Are you kidding? Holy shit . . . Tell me exactly—oh, man, I don't fucking
believe
this.”

When he hung up, Lofton reached for his beer and wondered how much he could tell her. He took a pull and said, “I have to go out. It's an emergency. I can't go into the details, but there's been a shooting involving a friend of ours.”

“Who? How come you have to go? How did he have my number?”

“I gave it to him in case he needed to reach me for something important. He's picking me up. He couldn't go into too much about it over the phone, but we have to go see this guy because my expertise is needed.”

“Is he in the hospital?”

“I don't think so,” he said, getting off the bed, “but it's serious and it looks like they may need my assistance with an investigation. The police are going to be involved, and they'll want my input.” He gave her a significant look. “I'll check things out and tell them
only
what they need to know.”

He thought he caught her glancing at his grey T-shirt as he pulled it on, either at the half-dried sweat stains or at the faded writing that said
WITNESS RELOCATION PROGRAM
, and wondering if it was serious.

Marva reached for her panties and asked, “Well, are you coming back?”

“I don't know.” He straightened his bandanna as he looked around for his socks. “Probably.”

“Well, I'm going to sleep, so if you're coming back you should knock loud so I wake up. It's after two. I don't know how you're going to have time.” Marva got off the bed. She pulled out a dresser drawer and picked through some lingerie. Pulling out a pink nightie, she asked, “And what's with all these guns? You've got friends in shootings in the middle of the night. This is like living with Tyrone.”

Lofton didn't mind the analogy. Trying to remember what he'd told her as he lit a cigarette, he said, “I explained I do PI work. I'm licensed to carry a gun. The guy we're going to see is in security.”

As he pushed the sheet aside and went into the washroom, he tried to piece together the details Rowe had given him. The only thing that was clear was that the shit was hitting the fan.

Twenty minutes later, Lofton was climbing into the Firebird. “So, let me get this straight,” he said. “Robert actually killed those guys with one of our guns, and he's still got the bodies in his fucking
house
?”

Rowe put his cigarette in the ashtray. “Looks like it. Leave your beer outside the car.”

“Fuck, that's the last thing you've got to be worrying about.”

“Just leave it. We've got enough problems.”

He sighed as he upended the bottle for a final swallow. When he opened the door and put it on the sidewalk, it fell with a hollow clink, and rolled.
The night was quiet. Lofton could almost see the humour in the situation, but Rowe looked grim as he pulled away from the curb.

Lofton pushed in the lighter on the dashboard, and took out his Camels. “I told you he was a fucking moron. You know what we've got to do, don't you?”

“What?”

“We've got to shoot Robert with the Beretta.”

Rowe smiled tiredly as he put on his indicator and slowed down at King. He checked traffic but didn't come to a full stop before turning east.

“
Think
about it. You've got the murder weapons from the bank, plus what'll look like three dead bank robbers. Some of the money will be there too. Get their prints on everything. Case closed. Maybe there was some kind of Mexican standoff. But even if that doesn't add up, it doesn't fucking matter; the cops are still going to have the three guys they're looking for. Maybe there was a drug war or something. They're not really going to give a shit.”

As they drove past the string of bars and closed restaurants at Dufferin, Lofton looked at the people in the vicinity of the intersection. There was the odd homeless person, what looked like a hooker, and a few brothers in touques and hoods. A police cruiser was parked in the McDonald's lot.

“The Beretta's still in the ravine,” Rowe said. “There's no way I could find it in the dark.”

Lofton didn't think he'd been paying attention. He smoked as he looked down the dark streets of warehouses and factories to the south, before they drove under the railway trestle. There was a stadium, a Chrysler Dodge Jeep dealership, open land, boarded-up buildings. He tapped his cigarette on the ashtray, trying to think it through. “So we go and pretend to clean up a bit, get hold of the Glock or Ruger . . . It'd be better if the Beretta was there, too; maybe we can find it when the sun comes up. You said that chick of his doesn't live there, so he'll be alone.”

“Aside from the fact that I don't want to be shooting Robert,” Rowe said, “there are too many loose ends.
Times of death might be close enough, but neighbours will start coming out of the woodwork, saying how they heard what they later realized were shots, but at different times. Or if they didn't hear the first ones, maybe they'll hear the next one, and we'll still have cops at the door. It'd be too risky to go back to the house in the daylight even if I found the gun. Also, we don't know if he's spoken to those friends of his, who'll probably say that we were involved with him. I told him not talk to anyone, but he's flipping out. Or those people will just go over there anyway, looking for coke or whatever.”

“Just think about it,” Lofton said. “We'll see how it looks when we get there.”

“Forensics will check powder burns, angles of entry, anything inconsistent with . . .” Rowe seemed to be talking to himself as he lowered his window.

Lofton considered it. There was a good plan in there somewhere, one that might give them Robert's share of the take, whatever coke was lying around, and clear them of the robbery at the same time.

They passed an old hotel, lofts and townhouses under construction, a donut shop, market, lighting and electrical supply company, old buildings. Rowe turned left at Niagara, north to Queen, and headed east another two blocks. As they drove up Euclid, everything was silent and deserted. Leaves were blowing across the street. There didn't appear to be any police cars around, marked or unmarked, when they slowly passed a semidetached house with ivy, trees, bushes, and a small porch with a wrought iron railing. It was dark except for a light over the front door.

“Sure you got the right address?”

“He's around the back. Nobody else is home.”

“I think it's parking-by-permit at now,” Lofton said. “We don't want to get placed at the scene by a ticket.”

Rowe put the car in reverse and began backing into a space. “That's a chance we're going to have to take.”

Lofton glanced around as they got out. He took a last drag, and stepped on his butt before following Rowe along the sidewalk and down a pathway at the side of the house. Around the corner, a light was burning by the screen door at the bottom of some cement steps.

When O'Hara opened the door, he looked like he'd gone through a windshield. His hair was drenched with blood from what seemed the crown of his head, and had soaked through bandages on either side of his face. He might have been crying. His face looked puffy, out of alignment.

“Christ,” Rowe said.

Holding some stained toilet paper to his nose, O'Hara took a drink of beer as they walked past him, and closed the door. “I've gotta go to a hospital.”

“What'd they want?” Lofton asked.

“Money, coke, to kill me—I don't know. They were fucking nuts.”

The three men walked through a hallway to a tiny living room with white plaster walls, shabby furniture, and a ghetto blaster with detachable speakers on a side table. A lamp had been knocked over, and there was blood on the rumpled rug.

“You didn't call anybody else, right?” Lofton said.

“No.”

He surveyed the surroundings. Rowe was too close to the situation to make an intelligent assessment. Lofton squeezed past him in a doorway to see a man lying twisted in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor, with a knife in his back.

Rowe followed him in as he stepped over the body. The black and white tile was smeared red, and the place smelled like puke. Chairs were overturned, and there was a big motherfucker on the floor who looked gut-shot and had a hole in his head. The wall and floor behind him were as sprayed and clotted as an abstract painting. Lofton hadn't expected this from O'Hara, and was reluctantly impressed. It cancelled the standoff scenario, however. “You got another beer there, Capone?”

“Give me one too,” Rowe said, crouching by the heavy one.

O'Hara's face looked bad, and his tangled hair was stuck together. He pulled out a bottle and passed it back. “So, what do you think?”

“Well, they seem pretty dead,” Lofton said, twisting off the cap.

Rowe took a beer and walked over to crouch beside the guy close to the doorway. “First, you're going to have to tell your old man that two of his guns were stolen. And you've got to—” His fingers were pressed to the man's neck. “Fuck, this one's still alive.”

“
What
?” O'Hara's mouth was open. “I don't believe—”

Lofton put his bottle on the counter and lit another smoke. Snapping his lighter shut, he said, “All right. Give me your gun.”

Rowe didn't move.

“This dick's a witness to everything: Murder Two during some kind of drug thing, with a gun that was also used to kill someone during the commission of a felony that ties you and me into it. You want to go to prison for twenty years?”

“I didn't kill anyone,” Rowe said.

“Oh, is that how it is? I had to
save
you. And you're still an accessory to murder, and an armed bank robber.”

“I know what the fuck I am. Don't be giving orders.”

Lofton picked up his bottle and took a drink. “Well, you know what we've got to do.” He sensed Rowe had blinked, and he was now in charge. “Robert, where's the gun? You got a pillow or anything?”