Barking Dogs - A Mitch Helwig Book Read online

  “Doesn’t look like it. He’s tough, though. Doctors say that he should be dead now.”

  “He ever regain consciousness?”

  “No.”

  Karoulis turned, still leaning on the file cabinet, and stared at Huziak. “What do you think we should do?”

  “What do you mean, Captain?”

  “It’s just a hypothetical question, Sergeant. I mean, what would you do if you were me?”

  “You mean about the dragnet?”

  “I mean, about everything. About Fedwick, about the laser heist, about ballistics being a dying science. About guys throwing their refrigerators out of apartment windows. About, simply, never catching the guys who do this stuff anymore, unless they’re so stupid they’re barely alive.” He continued to stare at his desk sergeant. “What would you do?”

  Huziak shuffled his feet and then met his superior’s steady gaze. “I guess, Captain, I’d do what you’re doing.”

  “And what’s that, Sergeant? What’s that?”

  “The best you can.”

  

  At 2:20 p.m. Karoulis glanced up to see who was rapping at his office door and saw Peter DeMarco standing there. Karoulis’s face twitched with a combination of fear and hope, wondering what news his Homicide detective had for him. He motioned DeMarco in with a wave of his hand.

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing to do with the Fedwick case, Captain.” He eased himself inside the door, obviously waiting to be asked more.

  “What is it then, Peter?”

  “Three more bodies, Captain.”

  “Christ. Where? When?”

  “They were found this morning. But in all the excitement of the Fedwick shooting, the dragnet and all, I decided to save it for later.”

  “Small mercies.” Karoulis looked grim.

  “Two of them are small-time punks—Eddie Stadnyk and Lionel Santos, a.k.a. the Loon. They were both found dead in a service alley north of the Danforth, in the exact same place where we found that guy gutted the other night—you know, Barros.”

  “Yeah. Yeah. The guy Helwig found. The exact same place, you say?”

  “Well, exact to within a few feet.”

  “What’s the connection? Can you figure it?”

  “We figure Stadnyk probably killed Barros the other night. He had a skinner in his fist when he died—the same type of thing that did the job on Barros. It’s being run through the lab right now to see if it’ll tell us anything. I’m betting it’s the murder weapon.”

  “How were these guys killed?”

  “Laser.”

  “Jesus. It’s getting so I don’t have to ask anymore.”

  “Stadnyk took his in the forehead. Looks like he was lunging at his assailant when he got it. Santos was burned through the heart—much more precise, I’d say.”

  “You said there were three.”

  “Yeah. There was another guy about ten meters away—near the street. He’d been cut down, too, by a laser that took him in the chest, near the heart. Name was Sten Doppleman. A known pusher, and a punk in several meanings of the word. You know, eyebrows plucked, blue hair, all spiked. Kind of kid you’d like your daughter to bring home—if it were Halloween. According to his dope sheet, he’s a vicious son of a bitch. Actually, they were three of a kind, that way.”

  “How do you read it all?”

  “Well, not sure, naturally. But there is a twist to it all that I wanted to mention to you, Captain.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Two photos are missing from my files. I think someone lifted them.”

  Karoulis’s eyebrows raised, but he said nothing.

  DeMarco continued. “One photo was of Barros. The other was of Mario Ciracella.”

  Karoulis’s eyes narrowed as his thoughts filled in gaps. Seven pieces slid uncomfortably into place—not giving him a complete picture; rather, just enough of a possible scenario to chill him slightly.

  “Mitch Helwig,” he muttered.

  “Can’t say for sure what it means, Captain. But there’s something there. Helwig found Barros. And we all know how he almost went over the deep end when he found Ciracella. He hasn’t come out of it yet, I don’t think.”

  “I don’t think so either.”

  “And, if we count that punk who was found lasered in the variety store a couple of weeks back, that’s a total of four bodies, all lasered—executed almost—on Helwig’s usual run.” He paused. “What do you think?”

  Karoulis bit the inside of his lip and then slowly rubbed the prominent cheekbone under his tired right eye while he thought. His left eye felt just as tired, and his chest sagged visibly.

  I feel very old, he thought.

  He turned and sat down at his desk. It gave him a bit more time. Finally, he said, “Leave it with me, DeMarco. O.K.?”

  The detective nodded. “Whatever you say, Captain.” He felt a certain relief at having it handed over to Karoulis. It was certain to be a can of worms, and he didn’t really want any part of it. He liked Helwig. Everybody did. But it was more than a little coincidental—anyone could see that. I had to mention it, he rationalized. Anyway, that’s what police captains get all those big bucks for—making these shitty decisions.

  DeMarco knew then that he never really wanted to be a captain, no matter how much he occasionally fantasized about the position. Karoulis looks like hell, he thought. Like pure, bloody hell.

  “I’ll talk to him,” Karoulis said.

  tWO

  Now conscience wakes despair

  That slumber’d—wakes the bitter memory

  Of what he was, what is, and what must be.

  —John Milton, Paradise Lost (4.23)

  This is the night

  That either makes me or fordoes me quite

  —William Shakespeare, Othello (5.1.128)

  19

  Herrington Storage was the largest of several nondescript, gray metal warehouses on Commercial Road. The entire area was a remnant of a time long gone—a time when the area of Leaside had been a separate entity, a village in its own right. Now, like virtually every other locale of similar dimensions and proximity, it had been engulfed by metropolitan Toronto, swallowed voraciously into the belly of the whale, where it sat, like a stone, or perhaps a fur ball, resisting total assimilation. The eastern portion of the one-time village consisted of colorless factories, sprawling truck yards, anonymous warehouses—a legacy of the twentieth century, when the area was used as a base for, variously, a World War I vintage airfield; a World War II munitions plant area; and finally, nothing much at all.

  Its abandonment by the city’s developers and moguls was a curious irony in itself, since it was centrally located and occupied what could only be termed prime real estate. If the city fathers were somewhat myopic regarding its various potentials, the same could not be said of certain other groups. One group in particular had been meticulously acquiring property in the area for years, until now it owned sizable numbers of buildings and assorted types of businesses: from car-wrecking yards to electronic-parts factories, from toy warehouses to upholstery manufacturers. There were buildings—all low-rise—with such vague nomenclatures as Canfab Equipment Supplies, Formex Industrial Products, Jarwick Manufacturing Co., and Standard Simulations, a Division of Feltran International. What exactly they produced or traded in was not widely known; nor were many curious. Many of the businesses were completely legitimate—on the surface—and so many others surrounding them were truly legitimate that they managed to become suitably unobtrusive merely by geographical propinquity. And they did nothing on purpose to draw attention to themselves.

  One of the most unassuming was the largest: Herrington Storage. Overtly, its business consisted of storing products, supplies, and materials used or voided by kindred surrounding businesses. So enormous was it that it covered most of an extensive city block, fronting on two parallel streets. At any given time, there were usually a minimum of a half-dozen tractor-trailers docked at various bays, e
ither on the streets themselves or at the bays inside the link-wire fencing topped with barbed wire; they were, alternately, being loaded or unloaded. Seldom, to any alert eye, was there no activity at all. Similarly, the precise nature of the activities was never evident either. The building existed somewhat as a beehive exists—with everyone assuming that what goes on inside is what goes on in every beehive; namely, busy-busy activity of a humdrum sort. Perhaps the parallel could be extended further: eventually, people learn to leave beehives alone in order to avoid being stung, once they see or hear of the effects. People seek comfort and pleasure, not nuisance and pain. Live and let live. For the most part.

  Arcangelo Scopellini drove his executive silver Cadillac coupe, with the spiked wheel covers, up to the gatehouse, where the security guard was passing the time with a paperback novel. As he let the tinted automatic window slip slowly down so that he might be identified, he removed his dark glasses as he always did.

  “’Morning, John.”

  “Good morning, Mr. Scopellini. How are you today?”

  “Fine, thank you.”

  The guard pressed a button and the steel bars slid out of their berth in the opposite wall. The tinted window slid back up and Arcangelo Scopellini put his dark glasses back onto his tanned, sculptured face, eased his foot off the brake, and glided into the wide yard, heading for his personal parking space.

  Before opening the car door, he checked his maroon silk tie in the rear-view mirror, ran a finger along his tapered moustache, and adjusted his dark glasses on the Roman bridge of his nose. Satisfied, he stepped out, his leather briefcase in hand, and strode across the asphalted yard and through the closest gaping truck entranceway, nodding occasionally as he was intermittently recognized. Most of those whom he encountered had the good sense to affect disinterest in him, no matter how curious or awed they might in fact be; only a few less prudent found themselves openly turning and gazing in fascination as the Archangel melted by.

  Fifty some years ago, when he was born, to immigrant factory workers in Montreal, his mother could have had no inkling of how her chosen name would be transmuted so venerably. His two brothers had been Michael and Gabriel, but both perished mere hours after their premature births. When the third child was born—also a son, and also prematurely—she pulled out all the stops, not naming him Raphael as she had planned, but calling him, in a manner, after all three, as her part of a silent, desperate bargain with heaven, the Blessed Virgin, and the angels themselves. In her mind, it had worked, for this son had lived, and indeed prospered, for did he not send enough money home every month, even to this day, to more than fill her needs as an aging widow?

  God had indeed been kind, and in response she had sent the Archangel into the world.

  And the Archangel had spread his ominous wings and shadow over the land, bringing an almost preternatural gift to an ever-darkening vision of his place in the world. As the mouth of the warehouse that was Herrington Storage swallowed him into its maw, he felt at ease; this great, hulking artifice of a cavern was a suitable habitat for him, and unfailingly, he responded to the stale, dry air of its interior by feeling as though, somehow, he had glided back home. This was his lair. It suited him, as open air or brightly lit office buildings never could.

  His world.

  He strode up the metal stairs and along the see-through catwalk that rimmed the warehouse’s interior. For two more minutes he maintained the same, steady gait, arriving finally at the steel door that was his destination, comforted by the knowledge that he had been video- and motion-monitored for the last minute. He opened the combination lock on the door, inserted his key to turn the final tumblers, and went into his private office.

  It was as he had left it the previous evening. It was always as he left it the previous evening. No one else had access to this particular room in the warehouse; this was the Archangel’s sanctum. The room, about six meters by six meters, was sparsely but sensibly furnished: a desk, two chairs, a sofa, a wall of shelves, filled with rows of videotapes and software and irregular piles of paper, a wall of file cabinets; the top of the desk was cluttered with more paper and an array of electronic communication equipment. The ashtray on the desk was full and, as was his habit, the first thing he did was dump the contents into the wastebasket so that he could commence another day of filling it. A clean start, as it were.

  This done, he flipped the plastic lid from one of the consoles on his desktop and pressed a button. Opposite him, the metal plate covering the room’s lone window slid up, and he gazed down onto the acres of crates and forklifts and gray figures moving about below, and lit his first dark cheroot of the day. The smoke drifted in a luxuriant tendril, dissipating into the air circulation system grilles in the ceiling.

  It was, he thought, a fine thing to have such privacy and quiet and security in which to work.

  And such control.

  He let the start of the day flow slowly over him, and let the smoke flow sensuously from his nostrils in response. There was much to think about, as always. And there was his mother’s birthday next week. He wondered if he would be able to get away for it, and decided to double his efforts to try, having missed the last two. Something always came up; it was, he reflected, the nature of the business.

  Finally, he turned his attention to the small red light on the intercom, which had been glowing since he entered the room, and pressed yet another button in the plastic desk console. Immediately, the face of one of the secretaries in the office at the building’s front entrance blossomed onto his screen.

  “A message for me?”

  “Yes, Mr. Scopellini. Mr. Purdon, Mr. Otis, and Mr. Osika have been waiting for you to arrive. May they see you?”

  The Archangel was pleased that they had acted so promptly. “Send them up.” Clicking off the transmission, he sat down and contented himself with arranging pens, papers, and his ashtray on his desk. Then, in preparation for the arrival of the three men, he extracted his Barking Dog from a desk drawer, spent a minute attaching it through the front of his shirt, and then let it hang openly from the chest pocket of his jacket, in full view; in a situation like this, it often simplified matters if everyone knew of its presence in advance. It saved much time.

  Rising from the swivel chair, he went to the window, spotted the trio on the warehouse floor in the distance, and followed their progress across the vast gray expanse, up the catwalk steps and along the metal walkway, noting how Osika was always positioned between Purdon and Otis.

  These things, he knew, had to be done. There could be no exceptions.

  He had liked Thomas Osika.

  Opening the door, he gestured for them to enter. With the proper degree of deference—or perhaps even fear—they obliged, standing in the center of the room while he closed the door and walked back to his swivel chair, where he seated himself with a sigh.

  The Barking Dog glittered against his navy blue suit, and he tapped it slowly and obviously. “You understand, gentlemen?”

  They nodded.

  “Good. It makes things so much simpler.”

  They remained standing. He let them stand for an unnecessary minute longer, orchestrating the effects, fine-tuning his estimable presence in their midst.

  “Daniel, Charles, be seated. Thomas, remain standing.” Otis and Purdon turned and sat on the sofa, while Osika maintained his place at the center of the exhibit. The Archangel eyed him thoughtfully. No expression, he thought. It’s true what they say about Orientals: they can be inscrutable. One does not read them the way one reads men like Otis and Purdon. Or the way one can read me, even.

  But the Dog, he knew, could read everything.

  Its huge eye stared unblinkingly.

  The Archangel sighed dramatically once again, shaking his head with a world-weariness that was both postured and sincere. “Stupid, Thomas. Very stupid.”

  Osika remained staunch. Neither of the other two dared to move.

  “I shall recount the events as I know them, Thomas. When
I have finished, you are free to correct them or to refute them, so that the truth can be aired. Is that all right?”

  Osika spoke his first words. “Yes, sir.” The Archangel thought he detected the beginnings of a perspiration moustache on the young Oriental’s upper lip.

  The Barking Dog absorbed everything.

  “On Monday, the twenty-second, you and three others used your access to the warehouse to borrow two items that you then used for your personal gain, without authorization or approval from me or anyone else. On or about midnight, you removed a truck with a mobile crane and one of our most recent acquisitions, a seventy-centimeter laser cannon, and went to the Rosedale home of Justice Gordon McKnight. Mr. McKnight, as I understand it, owns a Porsche XK9000, imported as a special bauble for his own private pleasure, at a cost of over one hundred thousand dollars. To ensure its safety, he parks it in a locked stone garage behind a three-meter-high wall on his property. It appears that you and your friends used the crane to lower yourselves over the wall and onto the garage roof, where you then proceeded to use the laser cannon to slice the roof into sections which you attached to the crane and lowered to the ground until the automobile was completely exposed. You then attached the crane to the vehicle itself and hoisted it out of the garage and lowered it onto the truck.” He paused. Neither Otis nor Purdon had so much as moved a muscle. “Am I correct so far?”

  The Asian’s eyes betrayed nothing. “Yes,” he said.

  It was the truth. Pleased at the smoothness of the potentially sticky situation, the Archangel continued.

  “Where is the vehicle now?”

  “It is gone.”

  The Archangel nodded. “I was afraid as much.” He let a moment of silence intervene as he thought, then he asked: “Gone where?”

  Osika licked his lips. “A wrecker. A chop-shop. For parts.”

  “How much did you get?”

  Osika let his glance fall onto the Barking Dog before deciding on the answer he would give. “Thirty thousand,” he said.

  “About thirty cents on the dollar,” the Archangel muttered, more to himself than to the others. “Are you sure it was chopped for parts?”