Headhunter (23 page)

"I mean it," Spann said, dangling the bundle before his nose.

The Indian jerked his head away and looked her in the eye. "W-w-what do you want?" he asked, the withdrawal taking hold.

"Where do we find John Lincoln Hardy, that black dude that I saw you score from?"

"Go on!" the man said, trying to spit on the ground but his throat was just too dry.

"Tell us now or tell us later. We can wait it out."

"Lemme fix now, cunt, if you're so fuckin' honest."

Rick Scarlett lashed out to grab the man by the hair, but Spann was able to intercept and knock aside his hand. "No Mutt and Jeff," she said, scowling at her partner. Scarlett merely grunted. Then he dropped his arm.

"Look!" the woman said sharply, turning back to the Indian. "You don't have much choice here, so let's not screw around. You're wanted on three held warrants out of that undercover operation, all for trafficking. In addition we've now got you cold nuts on possession of junk for the purpose. And then to top it off, the state of your condition tells me that you need a fix. I think you just scored that bundle from Hardy and we got to you before you cranked yourself and farmed the rest of it out.

"Now, don't take me for stupid. If your idea of a good afternoon is writhing around on a jail cell floor while your guts try to squirm out your mouth, be my guest. I don't care. We'll get Hardy all the same. If you talk all it does is save us time.

"So here's the deal. I know Hardy's your pusher, and I know you know how to find him. I can't do anything about the warrants from the undercover trip. They're already in the courts. But I will forget this beef. And I will let you fix. So there's the choice. Take it or leave it. A fix for John Lincoln Hardy."

Out on the water a float plane droned across the harbor. The Indian winced as another contraction closed its violent fingers around the entrails in his belly. The drone died away as the seaplane banked and made for Vancouver Island.

"Take all the time you want," Spann said and she opened the knot in the plastic balloon and shook out a Number 5 gelatin capsule. She pulled the pink half from the white half and tapped each rounded end to release the powder within. It blew away in the wind before it hit the ground.

She shook out another cap and emptied it also. Then another, while the Indian watched in horror.

"Where's Hardy?" Spann asked. The powder blew away.

A fourth cap lay in her hand before the junkie broke.

"Ah, fuck, Blondie! Don't be such an a-a-asshole. I don't know where he is! Gimme a fuckin' fix!"

"What's your name?"

"J-j-joe Winalagilis."

"Where's your outfit, Joe?"

"In a pouch in my other b-b-boot."

"Take the cuff off one arm, Rick, and chain his other wrist to you."

Scarlett did not look happy but he did as she suggested. The woman pulled off the second boot as the Indian sat on the ground. She turned it over and an outfit with a burnt spoon fell into her hand.

"Come on," Spann said. "Let's find some place to try and strike a deal."

Single file, the three of them left the pier, Winalagilis stumbling and all three shivering. They made their way past the CPR Ferry dock, past the rows of container trucks down to where there was a tongue of rubble and rock and boom logs that stuck out into the sea. Alongside the mini-peninsula there was a small wooden dock. Moored to the dock with its prow pointing out at Stanley Park beyond the oil barges dotting the harbor was a sailboat swaying and rocking on purple-green water. From this dock they could just make out the Brockton Point totem poles half hidden within the Park's trees.

Winalagilis first, the three of them climbed onboard the boat.

Still soaking wet, they hunkered down in the stern where they were gone from the eyes of the city. Katherine Spann removed a cap from the balloon and emptied it into the spoon.

"I take two," Winalagilis said.

She opened another one. It was still raining, so the rain provided the water. The Indian had a lighter in his pocket which he took out. While Scarlett shielded the flame, the woman cooked up the mixture. The junk dissolved and she sucked it into the needle.

"Use my headband," Winalagilis said, so she tied it around his arm. Then she tapped his skin continuously trying to raise a vein. The task was almost impossible. They were cowering down near the bone.

"Okay," Spann said. "This is the deal. In return for this jab you tell me all you know about Hardy. Agreed?"

The Indian shivered and nodded. "Hit me, Blondie! Hit me!" he hissed with excitement in his breath.

Spann slid the needle in. Dark red blood spurted back into the outfit. "Let it go!" Winalagilis ordered. But Spann didn't press the plunger.

The Indian blinked. "What the fuck you doin'?"

The woman looked him in the eye. "Just so we're straight," she said. "You come clean on Hardy, and every one forgets this. You lie or fuck up, and we put out on the street that you were the rat. That should have you killed even before you're out of jail. Agreed?"

"Christ yes," Winalagilis choked.

Spann let the headband go and squirted in the mix.

As the morphine blast hit him in waves, Joe Winalagilis relaxed. A long exhalation escaped from his lips, contentment lighting his face. He closed his eyes and kept them closed for 
several exhilarating minutes. When he finally opened them once again they were covered with glass.

"Okay," Spann said. "Where's John Lincoln Hardy?"

"Huh?"

"Hardy? Your pusher? Where is he?"

"I don't know," Winalagilis said, his head going into a nod as he smiled from far, far away.

Scarlett looked at Spann and his eyes said,
You blew it.
What puzzled the woman was the feeling she got that this was what he secretly wanted.

"Where do you meet him to score the stuff?" Spann's voice was screwed up tighter.

"Huh? Oh . . . him." A pause. "He comes to me."

"Where?" the woman demanded.

"Wherever he finds me . . . Blondie."

"Look Joe, I'm warning you. I won't be played for a fool. You've got to have some meeting place where you score junk from him. Where is it?"

"You don't understand."

"I understand that a deal is a deal."

"You're making a mistake."

"Cough up, my man, if you know what's good for you."

"Your mistake is, Blondie, thinkin' he's pushin' to me."

Spann glanced at Scarlett as the fact sunk in.

"Truth is, it's
me
pushin' to
him,"
the Kwakiutl said.

3:10 p.m.

The Japanese steam bath was Scarlett's idea.

By the time the two RCMP constables had returned Joe Winalagilis to the abandoned patrol car and transported him the two blocks to the Vancouver City Jail, all three of them were freezing cold and shivering out of control. The guard at the booking desk on the third floor took one look at them with a gambler's eye then turned to his partner and said: "Five bucks says at least two of these three come down with pneumonia." His partner checked them over and refused to take the bet.

A few minutes later while riding down in the elevator that would take them to the alley out back of 312 Main, Scarlett nudged Spann and said: "How 'bout a steam?"

"What do you mean?"

"Look, by the time we get you to your place and me to mine, we could both be freezer material. Just a block from

here there's an old Japanese steam bath with separate and private rooms. If you're not hung up on modesty, we can get warm and send our clothes out for a dry. If you are hung up, then drop me off and you go down with the ship."

Katherine Spann shivered once more and said: "Let's go."

Fifteen minutes later Rick Scarlett was sitting alone in a small, very old, pipe-lined room. With a towel wrapped around his waist, he slouched listening to the hiss of water vapor as he waited with anticipation for Spann to come in-through the door.

On checking in they had paid a young Japanese to take their soggy uniforms to a local one-hour laundry, and then Spann had disappeared into the bathroom. Scarlett now occupied himself by imagining Katherine taking off her clothes.

His mind had her down to her panties when the door swung open. Scarlett nonchalantly counted the number of tiles on the floor.

He did not look up as the woman took two steps into the steam room and then stopped in order to adjust her lungs to the vapor. She had tied a towel around her waist in a Polynesian style. She stood near the door breathing in shallow breaths, her chest slowly rising and falling as she stretched her spine and her muscles. When she finally climbed onto the wooden bench and sat back against the wall, Scarlett looked up for no more than three seconds and muttered, "Not bad, eh?"

"Not bad," she said as he looked back down at the floor.

The next time Scarlett turned back, Spann had closed her eyes and was reveling in the warmth. Slowly he looked her over from head to toe. Then he stopped at her breasts.

That's the nicest pair of headlights I've ever seen,
he thought.

Spann didn't open her eyes. She was lost somewhere in a world of warmth and relaxation. The man turned his attention to the towel around her waist. The steam and the sweat from her pores were making it stick to and outline her body. He stifled an almost irresistible urge to reach out and rip off the towel, and instead he bent forward to lean his arms on his thighs to hide his growing erection.

Yessiree,
Rick Scarlett thought.
Do I want a piece of that.

Now all he had to do was bide his time.

Soon the moment would come.

The Birthday Present

4:45 p.m.

It was a quarter to five by the time that Scarlett and Spann returned to Headquarters. The place was alive with activity as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police prepared for next day's roundup. There were computer printouts everywhere, sweep sheets being distributed, each with a mug-shot photo attached for each suspect and a key word to open the software circuits printed at the side. Bulletin boards around the parade room were pinned with lists of assignments. As Scarlett went to check on the role that the two of them would be playing, Spann found the nearest free telephone and dialed Corporal Tipple at Commercial Crime. This time she made contact.

"You're a hard man to get hold of, sir. My name's Katherine Spann."

"Good," Tipple said. "I've been waiting for your call. You working the Hardy angle?"

"Yes."

"And you want to see the transcripts?"

"Very much so."

"Okay. How about tomorrow morning before you go out on the sweep? I've been reassigned to your squad and right now I'm in the process of putting the Damballah ones together. I'll have 'em for tomorrow."

"Damballah?" Spann asked, knowing the word had a voodoo connection.

"Damballah Enterprises. That's Rackstraw's holding company. You'll see what I mean tomorrow."

"When and where shall we meet?"

"Roll call's set for seven a.m. So how 'bout six-fifteen? In the parade room?"

"We'll be there."

"Right. Bring your reading glasses. These guys are very busy dudes."

11:56 p.m.

"Is it lonely up at the top, Robert?" Avacomovitch asked.

"Oh hello, Joseph," DeClercq said, turning from the window. "I was just turning tomorrow over in my mind."

"Okay if I interrupt?"

"Of course. I'd like the company."

It was closing on midnight and the room was filled with shadows cast off by the desk lamp. The surface of the desk was piled high with computer sheets and projections, police files and copious notes in DeClercq's even hand. On the edge of the desk closest to Avacomovitch a space had been reserved for a picture in a silver frame. It had not been there the last time that the scientist was in here. The Russian picked it up and looked at the woman in the photo.

"She has very intelligent eyes," he said, "set in a beautiful face."

"Yes, doesn't she," the Superintendent replied. "I'm a lucky man."

There was something in his voice that arrested Avacomovitch's attention. For more than half a minute he took a long close look at the man. DeClercq did not look well. There were now heavy bags under his eyes and lines of tension radiating out to the edge of his face. Though he tried hard to mask it there was also a nervous tic to his mouth. It appeared as though he had been robbed of sleep and left utterly exhausted. He looked as if the weight of the investigation upon his shoulders might buckle his legs at any moment. But strangely, more than anything else, it was a sense of irony that the Russian picked up from this man.

His heart went out to DeClercq.

Carefully, Avacomovitch replaced the photograph on the edge of the desk. He turned it so that the woman could watch DeClercq when he sat in his chair. He thought:
In the currency of friendship there is only a single test. Will your friend be at your side if you should ever need hint?

"May I be blunt?"

"By all means do."

"You're too hard on yourself."

"Funny. That's the same thing Genevieve said this morning."

"I think you're taking too much on your shoulders. I want this guy as much as you, you know?"

"I believe you do."

"So share the burden. Spread the load around. The Head-hunter is taunting you because you're the figurehead among his adversaries. It builds him up by having a rival equal to himself. It could be anyone, sitting in your chair.

"The trouble is, I think, you take it personally. Don't you see that lets him get to you? And that's just what he wants. If this were chess, he's making you play the defensive game."

"Perhaps."

"Robert, please understand. When the Headhunter throws barbs at you, he spikes me too. I'm a policeman also, albeit the civilian kind. This Force means a lot to me, just as it does to you.
You
mean a lot to me, you're one of my few friends. Remember all those years ago when I was totally adrift? I burned every bridge by defecting and there I was alone. Isolated. Well, you helped me though, helped me assimilate. Robert, I owe you a debt. Hell, I owe myself a debt. And I want to pay it off. So let me work this with you. And I mean really work it. I want half the load."

For several minutes the Superintendent said nothing. It was obvious he was moved. Finally he walked over and put his hand on the other man's shoulder and pointed at the cork-board. The operations visual now covered every bit of wall-space with many overlaps.

"Okay, Joseph. You're on. What do you suggest we do?"

Avacomovitch smiled.

"First, two things," he said, "to help us tighten the net. One: let's request every distributor of Polaroid film in this city and the outskirts get the name from identification of customers making a purchase. If anyone balks, they take
a
description and call the Headhunter Squad."

"Good idea. And the second."

"I give you a birthday present, and you tell me what you think."

DeClercq's brow rose. He looked at his watch and saw it was after twelve.
What a memory,
he thought.

"Come on," Avacomovitch said. "I've got it down in the lab."

The Superintendent followed him down the stairs to the makeshift laboratory. Except for a light on the Russian's desk, the room was now in darkness. The light was shining on a large bifocal microscope and a note-covered pad beside it.

"Take a look," the scientist said. "Happy birthday."

When DeClercq looked down the barrel of the instrument and adjusted it into focus, what was magnified before his eyes was a dull black sliver. Behind him Avacomovitch said, "When I examined the bones of Liese Greiner kicked up by that little girl, I found that lodged in a hairline fracture in her front pubic bone. It could have been debris from the area and of no forensic value. But it's not. It's foreign to the scene and has some sort of significance, though what I have no idea. It took me quite a while to get it identified."

"What is it?" DeClercq asked.

"A splinter of ebony."