Blood Wine (11 page)

“It must be Sunday,” said Miranda, who had lost track of what day it was.

“It'll just be the four of us,” said Spivak.

“What do you mean?” Morgan responded, picking up on the declarative edge to Spivak's announcement.

“She's not here.”

“She's checked out?”

“She never checked in.”

“We dropped her off,” said Morgan.

“You dropped her off, you didn't check her in.”

“She had a room, she reserved it from Headquarters.”

“Yeah, she had a room, but she didn't show up, she didn't use it.”

“Spivak,” said Miranda, “we drove under the portico. There was a doorman, he opened the car door, the officer who drove us, he got out, she told him she'd be fine. She looked like hell, in a tousled Hollywood sort of way — like a make-up crew had spent hours making her look beautifully damaged —”

“Is this going somewhere?” said Spivak.

“Well, yes and no. A lesser establishment might have turned her away. This place would assume her eccentricity was a function of wealth and power. They would be gracious.”

“Yeah, well, she never made it through the revolving door.”

“Swing doors, Spivak. Uniformed doormen.”

“Yeah, and no one saw her come in. We've been here for a couple of hours —”

“And you didn't call us,” exclaimed Miranda.

“Didn't cross my mind,” said Spivak.

“What have you found?” said Morgan in his most collegial voice. “Did you talk to the doorman on duty?”

“Caught him going off shift. He remembered an unmarked police car dropping off a woman. He described her as a ravaged blond.”

“Nice turn of phrase,” said Miranda.

“He lost track of her,” said Stritch sadly. “She disappeared behind a pillar. She didn't come into the lobby.”

“Did the security cameras catch anything?” Morgan asked.

Spivak motioned for them to follow him and they walked behind the customer service desk into an office. Spivak gestured to the house security man to replay the tape.

Good quality footage from a high perspective showed their car wheeling into the brightly lit portico; two doors opened, the driver's and the back passenger-side door. Elke Sturmberg emerged and gazed around, then stared straight up into the camera before waving the doorman back and the driver away. She leaned down and made a gesture of goodbye through the car windows. As the car pulled away she stepped towards the door and out of the camera's scope.

“Okay,” said Morgan. “What about inside, is that on tape?”

The security man switched to a second screen that was keyed up to begin playing a few seconds before the exterior shot lost track of the blond.

“Nothing,” said Spivak. “She didn't make it through the door. There's a blind spot close to the building. The camera's trained on the cars, not the people coming in.”

They turned away and walked back into the sumptuous lobby.

“Did you interrogate the people on the desk?” Miranda asked.

“No,” said Spivak. “We thought we should leave that for you.”

“You didn't know we were —”

“Sarcasm, Miranda,” Morgan interjected. “Detective Spivak has of course interviewed everyone concerned. Detectives Spivak and Stritch are doing their jobs very well. We, if we're co
-
operative, will observe and pick up what we can, and contribute what we can, whenever possible.”

Spivak nodded benevolently, not quite sure whether Morgan was being deferential, defensive, or bitchy. It didn't seem to matter very much which it was.

Eeyore Stritch was leaning to look beyond his partner into the dining lounge, admiring the brunch buffet.

“What do you think?” said Miranda. “Dutch treat.”

“It's expensive,” said Morgan.

“Not for what you get,” said Spivak, folding his arms across his protuberant gut. “It's all-you-can-eat.”

“Yeah,” said Morgan. “Dutch treat.”

“Right on,” said Stritch, revealing beneath his usual gravitas a hint of the sensual enthusiast.

Eating here, this is a measure of our confusion
, Morgan thought as they waited for the maître d' to seat them.
We've gone through Dante's Inferno with a woman who turned up out of nowhere with a smoking gun and a severed hand and bonded with Miranda. An old woman died, a million-dollar wine conspiracy has been brought down, a winery has disappeared from the face of the earth. The stranger, a beautiful blond, has also disappeared, presumably only from Toronto. Why not have a good meal?
The words did not come to him with such clarity, but the sentiments did, the review of events scrolling by through his mind like a film on fast-forward.

Superintendent Alex Rufalo hovered over the four detectives, who were seated at two pairs of back-to-back desks just outside his office. He gave them a gloomy smile.

“Detective Quin, you're not here,” he said. “And you other three? I came in for some peace and quiet. You turn up after Sunday brunch at The Four Seasons, your star witness is missing.”

“Nope, she's not,” said Spivak, struggling to suppress a burp.

“Not?”

“She's missing, but she's not a witness. Well, she's a possible witness, maybe, but we're not sure of the crime.”

“Would you like to clarify that?” said the superintendent, turning to Morgan.

Morgan had eaten moderately from every food group represented, including shellfish, crêpes, salads, and pastries.

“That's pretty much it,” he said. “We've got a witness, but no crime; we've got a crime, but no witness. We've got crimes, witnesses, victims, but no suspects.”

“And no leads,” declared the superintendent. “Four of Toronto's finest, and we have chaos.”

“Three,” said Miranda. “I'm not here.”

“Well, I'll tell you what,” said the superintendent, pausing for emphasis, “you three get down to some serious brainstorming. Since you're not here, Detective Quin, you can referee. I'll be in my office.”

As he retreated through his door, the others relaxed.
There is something inherently Presbyterian about people like us
, thought Miranda.
We feel guilty for having a sumptuous meal, even though we paid for it ourselves, and it's Sunday, for goodness sake, we're not on company time.

But, of course, cops, like priests, work twenty-four seven, regardless of the hours they punch in on the clock. The superintendent, like a bishop, was a reminder of their commitment, as well as their fallibility.

“You were right,” she said, looking at Morgan.

“About what?” Spivak demanded, as if he were being left out of something important.

Morgan shrugged.

“The apron,” said Miranda. “An old plastic apron of my mother's. It's missing. And a pair of rubber gloves from under the sink.”

“So the killer dug it out of the guy's gut,” Spivak muttered, “while you were lying there. Nice.”

They talked, arranging known facts into a variety of scenarios. When a coherent pattern refused to emerge, they concluded there were not enough facts.

They drew a chart on a chalkboard and stared at it.

Morgan recalled the old woman, how she lived blithely in the midst of a wine conspiracy of epic, and, as it turned out, deadly proportions. People died over wine, and the old woman died when the scam closed down. And she understood nothing that was happening around her. “Maybe we've got it wrong,” he said.

“What?” said Miranda. “It's not about an international wine conspiracy?”

“Yeah. No, it is, but we've been caught up in our own perspective, like old Mrs. Oughtred. Mr. Savage is playing us
.
…”

“Who's Mr. Savage?” said Stritch.

“Sort of the generic bad guy,” said Miranda.

“Exactly,” said Morgan.

“What are you talking about?” asked Spivak. “Make sense.”

“There's a bad guy,” said Morgan, “who killed Philip Carter and assaulted Miranda. There's a bad guy who tortured and executed the ring-man, there's a bad guy who blew up the winery and old Mrs. Oughtred, and there's a bad guy who has been running the wine fraud, using the old lady's place in Niagara to blend fake Châteauneuf-du-Pape and smuggle it into the U.S. Maybe they're all the same guy, maybe not.”

“And?” said Spivak, feeling he was missing something or being left out.

Morgan stared at him then made a leap from one track to another. “We've been assuming the man who killed Philip Carter framed Miranda so he wouldn't be caught.”

“Yes,” Miranda said. “And?”

“But what if that was his purpose from the outset?”

“What?”

“To set you up for a fall. The man called Philip Carter, he was collateral damage, not you.”

“Why bother?” said Miranda. “I wasn't the one connected to Bonnydoon.”

“But maybe this wasn't about Bonnydoon.”

“What, then?” demanded Spivak impatiently. “Why go after Miranda? What about the semen?”

“This guy is meticulous and inevitably imperfect.”

“Imperfect?” Miranda queried.

“Yeah, too careful,” said Morgan. “Imagine you're him, you make mistakes, then you cover them — or you're so careful you don't see them happening. The semen? It never occurred to him you would be checked. Why should you be, you're in bed with your lover, you killed him. The rape kit's irrelevant. He knows about killing, he doesn't know forensic procedures.”

“Why go after her?” Spivak repeated. “What's the connection?”

“Ciccone,” said Morgan. “Why Miranda, why now? Vittorio Ciccone.”

“I doubt it,” Spivak proclaimed. “Ciccone needs her.”

“You testify next week?” Morgan asked.

“Tomorrow. I did the preliminary nearly two months ago, explaining how I knew him, how we ‘connected' through the Ferguson case.”

“Ferguson?” Stritch asked in a quiet and sombre voice, not wanting to intrude on the strange thought processes going on around him, yet needing at least minimal information to keep up with the exchange.

“A little girl, raped and murdered by her stepfather —”

“Okay,” said Stritch. “So, why would Vittorio Ciccone want to get rid of his best chance for acquittal?”

“Maybe somebody else did,” said Morgan. “An enemy in the wine trade.”

“Then why kill Philip, why not me? Why not keep it simple?”

“I don't know.”

“Why would Ciccone have any interest in wine?”

“I just think he does.”

“Come on, Morgan,” said Miranda. “Compared to the millions in drugs, a few bottles of fake wine are small-time.”

“Maybe,” said Morgan. “Although Elke Sturmberg figured there was big money in a quality wine scam.” He paused. No one else said anything. “It's like we've got a contour map with no names on it. There's no key, and we're just assuming north's at the top of the page.”

“I think I've found your key,” said the superintendent, emerging from his office. “Not exactly found, since she's disappeared, apparently without a trace —”

“Elke Sturmberg?” said Miranda.

“There's a report on my desk. I just got to it. A John Doe was fished out of the Humber late Friday night, riddled with bullets.”

“Wiseguy,” Spivak suggested. “Biker?”

“Connected with our missing blond,” said Morgan.

“Seems the slugs they dug out of the cadaver were from the gun we found in her purse.”

Tim Hortons

W
hen
Miranda walked along Isabella Street on her way home after the fallout from Elke Sturmberg's status shifting from missing to wanted, she was distracted. She did not notice the warm evening air, the trees rustling softly overhead, the occasional passerby, nor did she notice the black limousine parked in front of her building until she was beside it, and then she paid it only passing attention.

She had studied language in university, linguistics and semiotics, and she often amused herself among words while on another level engaging in subliminal deductive analysis, working her way toward the resolution of a criminal conundrum. When Vittorio Ciccone's voice called to her quietly through the open window in the back of the limousine, she was wondering about the directionality of prepositions. Why do Torontonians walk “along” a street like Isabella that runs east-west, but “down” a north-south street like Yonge or Avenue Road? Do New Yorkers walk up and down the avenues, but along, no across, the grid of numbered streets in Manhattan? Are some prepositions longitudinal and others latitudinal?

“Miss,” the voice hissed. “Miss Quin.” She did not hear the summons with the falling sound of her own name.

The driver got out of the car and called her. “Hey you, Miss Quin.”

She wheeled around and, responding to what seemed a sinister situation, her hand swung back to where her semi-automatic would be if she were carrying it, which she was not.

“You're on suspension,” said the voice she recognized as Vittorio Ciccone's. He knew she had been reaching for her gun, even though she never in actuality had drawn on anyone who was not in the midst of a criminal act.

“Mr. Ciccone.” She leaned down and looked through the window, where he was sitting in shadow. “We shouldn't be talking.”

“It's legal,” he responded. “I asked my lawyers. They said it was legal. I'm a free man, still innocent, on bail. You're a temporary civilian, a witness on my side.”

“Not on your side,” Miranda countered. “I'm not doing you any favours.”

“Oh, but you are,” he said. “And there are people who do not like what you are doing.”

“Cops? Some don't like it, they want to see you go down.”

“Get in, we need to talk.”

“Thank you, but no. We're not friends. I don't like what you do. If the jury overrides my testimony, that's fine with me.”

“You would see an innocent man go to jail,” he laughed.

“You have a strange way of defining innocence.”

“And you have a strange way of determining guilt, Detective. Okay, you stay there. But listen to me.”

“I'm listening.”

“There are people who want me put away.”

“Many,” Miranda responded. “Are you surprised?”

“Besides cops, besides the righteous. There are very bad people, they want me out of the way.”

“Why not kill you, it couldn't be that hard.”

The man in the shadows laughed again. “Because then there would be much bloodshed, it would not be pleasant. You know about vengeance. It is a tradition. Many would die. And worse, there would be publicity. It is bad for business. It is easier to have it done legally — well, not so legally. Those two cops trying to take me down, they will be looked after, I am sure, one way or another. It is easier to have the state do the dirty work.”

“So, what are you telling me, Mr. Ciccone?”

“Call me Vittorio, Miss Quin.”

“Call me Detective, Mr. Ciccone.”

“These bad guys, they have already tried to, shall we say, remove you from the process, destroy your credibility.”

She was not surprised he knew about Philip. People like him have a way of knowing what happens whenever it concerns them, whether leaked in the courthouse or the confessional. But the same question she asked Morgan came to mind.

“Why not kill me, why kill my …” she paused, “my friend?”

“In spite of what you might think, I do not know everything.”

Miranda squelched her response and edged away from the car.

“Miss Quin,” he called, trying to restrain her with sincerity. “Detective Quin, we each have our codes of honour, and I, like you, in my own world I am an honourable man.”

She wanted to ask him how many addicts had died for his honour, how many prostitutes, how many derelicts, what human detritus crawled the streets for his honour? But she said nothing.

“I am here to thank you,” he said. “I am here to warn you. This is not a threat. I am on your side, even if you are not on mine. There are people who will try to get at me through you. They have tried already. They will try again. I have a bodyguard posted.” He leaned forward into the light and nodded toward a car parked on the other side of the street.

Miranda looked across, incredulous. “You are having me guarded?”

“Just until my trial is over. Then you're on your own.”

“No, Mr. Ciccone. That isn't how it works. Gangsters don't cover cops. I am on my own right now. The guard detail goes!”

“You hurt my feelings, Miss Quin.”

“Sorry.”

“You put me in danger.”

“No, Mr. Ciccone, you put yourself in danger.”

“I do not expect to die in prison. It is you who will keep me out.”

“No one expects to die in prison, that's what crooks have in common, the smartest, the dumbest, you're all going to beat the system. But you know, Mr. Ciccone, the prisons are full of people like you.”

“Goodnight, Miss Quin. I will call off my guard. I am sure you do not have a death wish, and you will be careful; forewarned is forearmed. You will be wary, for my sake.”

“For my own, Mr. Ciccone. Good night.”

Miranda buzzed herself in and walked slowly up to her apartment on the third floor. When she got there she walked through to her bedroom without turning on the lights and looked surreptitiously out her window. A man got out of the car in the shadows across the street. He walked over to the limousine and bent down to converse with Ciccone in the back seat. She saw the flash of a cigarette lighter, then the driver of the limousine got out and, without turning to address the guard at the rear window, walked along Isabella toward the glaring lights of Yonge Street.

It all seemed strange to Miranda, some kind of an impenetrable play being enacted three storeys below.

The guard returned to his own car across the street, climbed in, and drove away. The limousine sat there, stolidly filling the loading zone in front of her building. She turned and got ready for bed, using only table lamps, as if she did not want to draw too much attention to herself from the vantage of an observer on the street.

Before she crawled onto her bed, sliding the top sheet to the side because it was too warm to be covered, she glanced out the window again. The limousine was still there. Vittorio Ciccone was not taking any chances; he would stand guard himself. The trial was set to resume in the morning. He wanted her there.

Miranda woke just before dawn, as she often did when she had a lot on her mind. There was a flashing red light pulsing through her room. At first she thought she was dreaming and closed her eyes tight, trying to make the light disappear. She rolled over slowly onto her back, then opened her eyes again and tried to assimilate the significance of the light coming through her window from outside.

Must be a cruiser on the street
, she thought.
It's June, no snowplows, wrong colour light.

She got up and looked out the window. The police car was parked behind the black limousine. The flashing lights filled the street with surreal activity as buildings wrenched into waves of garish red struggled vainly to retreat into the shadows.

The scene was exactly the same five minutes later when Miranda emerged from her building, dressed but dishevelled.

One of two uniformed officers got out of the cruiser as she walked around the limousine, but when Miranda flashed him her ID he recognized her and said nothing. The window on the far side was open. She bent down and could see Vittorio Ciccone sitting in the shadows. She took a flashlight from the officer and shone it into the car interior.

Ciccone stared straight through her. He had a single bullet hole in the centre of his forehead. It was like a third eye weeping a small strand of blood.

The other officer got out of the cruiser and walked over to them. “I've got a make on the limo,” she said.

“It's Vittorio Ciccone,” said Miranda.

“Yes,” the officer said, doing a double take, then recognizing Miranda. “Detective Quin. You live here? It is Ciccone. At least, it's his car.”

“It's him,” said Miranda. “I do live here, yes. Third floor. And yes, he was visiting me.”

“Visiting you!” said the first officer incredulously. “Aren't you involved, you know, in the big murder trial?”

“Yes, I do know. Yes, I am. Was. The trial's over. The jury, it seems, is redundant.”

“Yeah,” said the second officer. “It's more efficient this way.”

Another cruiser pulled up, then an ambulance, which immediately called for the coroner's black maria. A third cruiser arrived. The superintendent got out and walked over to Miranda, who was sitting on the cement step of the walkway leading into her building. The uniformed officers had been deferential, but wary. They knew she was connected to Ciccone; they knew she and her partner were clean.

“Superintendent,” she said, looking up.

“Detective Quin.”

“Glad you could make it.”

“I was still in my office.”

“Sorry about that,” she said. There were rumours he and his wife were having problems. He had been working odd hours, sometimes not going home at all.

“Ciccone was here to see you, was he?” he asked, ignoring her sympathy.

“Yeah.” She rose to her feet. “I mean, why else would a gangster be parked in front of my place in this part of Toronto, dead or alive.”

“What'd he want?”

“You look like hell, Alex. You should go home.”

“What did he want?”

“He wanted to look after me.”

“Look after you?”

“I was a valuable commodity. He had a guard posted to keep an eye on me. I think it was the guard who killed him.”

“What makes you think that? Where's the driver?”

“You'll never see the driver again. The shooter let him walk.”

“You actually saw this happen. The guy's been dead six or seven hours.”

“At least. More. We talked. It was late evening. Just getting dark. It was dark by the time I got upstairs. Say, nine thirty. I looked out the window.”

“And you saw him get shot.”

“I saw the so-called guard walk over, and they conferred. There was a flash, I thought it was a lighter.”

“Vittorio Ciccone didn't smoke.”

“Yeah, I know that. Clean living. No drugs, only the best wines, a gourmand. I didn't think of that at the time.”

“This was nine thirty. And you were going to bed?”

“Yeah, Superintendent, like you I keep odd hours.”

He did not respond, so she clarified. “Alone, to read, watch a bit of TV, whatever. I didn't keep looking out the window. I saw the shooter's car drive away. The limo stayed. The driver walked. I slept.”

“And he was worried about your safety.”

“He was worried about going to prison. He didn't like the irony, doing life for something he didn't do.”

“Well, you're off the hook. Someone's done you a favour.”

“That's what he said, that I was doing
him
a favour.”

“Were you?”

Miranda felt herself rise in fury, then she relaxed. Alex Rufalo knew her better than that. He was being rhetorical, trying simply to make a connection.

“Yeah,” she said. “Check my Swiss bank account.”

He grinned at her, which surprised him. Since being promoted to superintendent he tried not to smile in public.

Morgan took a while to assimilate what she was saying. He was just getting up when she called, before going back to bed. He was groggy; he had stayed up reading but he couldn't sleep in. There was too much on his mind, a mixture of arcane information about the world distribution of rare wines and facts about the mysteries exploding around them without a coherent pattern of demolition.

“This does not make life easier,” was his initial response after a series of barely audible groans.

“It does for me,” Miranda responded.

“No trial.”

“No more bodies in my bed. Ciccone confirmed your suspicion that I was, in fact, the target, not Philip.”

“To keep you from testifying?”

“Yeah, or at least to destroy my credibility. Killer-cop love-nest, cop exonerates crime boss, a simple equation — bad cop, crime boss goes down.”

“There's still the wine connection,” said Morgan.

“Not if Ciccone was the ultimate target.”

“Especially if Ciccone was the target.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your man Carter, he and his friends at the Ninth Chateau —”

“The what?”

“Château
N
euf-du-Pape.”

“That would be the pope's new palace.”

“Or his ninth. Anyway, he's the link.”

“The pope?”

“No, Carter.”

“How do you figure?”

“Carter didn't seduce you for nothing.”

“No, he didn't. Seduce me. For nothing.”

“There's too much coincidence, Miranda, to be a coincidence.”

“Go on.”

“Carter was after something. You were a project. Sorry, but you were. It was all too elaborate for a sordid seduction scenario. He was after something big.”

“You're the last of the Romantics, Morgan.”

“And what did you have worth the effort? Sorry, this isn't personal.”

“Well, of course it's personal.”