Buffalo Jump (13 page)

I snapped a few kicks at his knees, keeping my centre low, ready to lunge back if I had to. I made him move, kept him honest with the attacks I’d practised that morning.
Sanchin,
but with speed, torque and bad intent. Claudio wasn’t used to being attacked and he definitely wasn’t built for speed. Inside of a minute, sweat was pouring down his cheeks, his breath was coming hard, and his arms were slowing as they blocked my attacks.

“Stand still and take it,” he said, almost panting. “You make me work, I’ll fuck you up worse.”

“No you won’t,” I said, a little more cocky than I actually felt. “You might be big,
Clod,
but size is all you got.” Rather than continue the discussion, he threw a right my way. I blocked it, at considerable expense to my forearm, and kicked his left knee hard, then snapped his head back twice with short punches. He backed off, breathing hard, until he was leaning against one of the dock’s cinder-block walls.

“Give it up,” I said. “It’s too hot for this.”

He shook his big head, then reached over and picked up a box cutter off the floor. He thumbed the blade out and held it out in front of him. I grabbed a roll of packing tape off a shipping table behind me and flipped it in a high, slow arc from my right hand to my left, like a juggler. When I flipped it back, his eyes followed it. I flipped it a third time, back to my left, which few people expect to be your throwing hand. As soon as I caught it, I winged it at him from the hip like I was skipping a stone. It was still rising when it hit him in the mouth, drawing blood, a good deal of which he spat out on the dock. I moved in on him and faked a move to my right. When the box cutter moved that way, I kicked his arm with the arch of my foot and sent the box cutter skittering along the floor. Left with nothing but his three-hundred-plus pounds and too much testosterone, he charged at me with arms flailing. I waited until he was almost on me, then stepped quickly out of his way and kicked him in the small of the back, sending him crashing into a pile of empty pallets. When he turned to face me again, his eyes were hooded and there was more blood in his mouth to spit.

“I’m going to have to end this now,” I told Claudio. “I’m way too hot.”

“You haven’t hurt me,” he panted.

“I haven’t tried.”

No matter how big a man is, he can’t strengthen his eyelids. Claudio could be three hundred pounds of muscle; his eyelid was one fold of skin like everyone else’s. So I faked another kick at his knees and when he dropped his hands I jabbed two stiff fingers into his right eye. He yelped and clutched it with both hands, blinking furiously as sweat ran into the eye. I punched him hard and fast in the windpipe—another area you can’t develop. He gasped and tried to draw in breath like a man about to blow up a balloon.

I should have stopped there but I didn’t. I don’t like guys who hurt other guys for profit. I kicked him hard in the ribs with the ball of my left foot, and heard a cracking sound. So pleasing was it, I pivoted and kicked him in the same place on the other side. He fell to his knees, not knowing which part of himself to hold first.

I leaned down, twisted one of his big meaty ears and said into it, “Don’t threaten to fuck people up. It’s anti-social.”

Frank banged out through the shipping doors just then. I don’t think the tableau in front of him was quite what he expected to see: Claudio in tears and me looking distinctly unfucked up.

“I think he needs eye drops,” I said.

Frank turned quickly back into the store without a word. Maybe the eye drops were on sale.

D
anforth Avenue, known simply as the Danforth, is Riverdale’s main drag, a continuation of Bloor Street that begins on the east side of the Don Valley. Thirty years ago, Riverdale was a relatively quiet neighbourhood centred on Greektown and its many inexpensive restaurants, cheese shops and grocers and the odd dingy bar like the Black Swan. Then people started getting crowded out of downtown neighbourhoods like the Annex by high rents and discovered Riverdale homes were similar in style and size, the streets just as leafy, and it was only three subway stops from the geographic centre of town at Yonge and Bloor. Today rents and mortgages in Riverdale are as high as in the Annex and other central neighbourhoods. Small family restaurants have been replaced by huge, high-end eateries that cost a million or more to renovate, not including the cost of greasing the right city councillor.

The Danforth would normally have been jammed at this time, people strolling everywhere, stopping to talk to friends seated at crowded restaurant patios. This evening’s withering heat had most people dining inside, leaving the patios exclusively to diehard smokers. A few young men were cruising in muscle cars, but there was precious little to whistle at on the sidewalks, unless you were drawn to the sunburned panhandler
outside the liquor store or the two Native men dozing on the steps of the Baptist church. The only busy place was the ice cream shop in Carrot Common, where families gathered on benches in a shaded courtyard, licking cones and ducking wasps drawn by the smell of sweets.

A few doors down from the ice cream place was my favourite restaurant, Silk Thai, owned by a middle-aged couple named Constance and Peter. I’d been a regular there since I started teaching at the dojo. The place had half a dozen tables and did a thriving takeout business too. Constance greeted me warmly from behind the counter. “Jonah! Haven’t seen you in so long a time.”

It hadn’t seemed long to me, but the truth was I hadn’t been going out much since getting shot. I asked, “What’s my best bet tonight?”

“You ask Peter, he tell you satay chicken with peanut. You ask me, I tell you basil beef.”

“Basil beef it is, with house special noodles.”

“To stay? Table for you ready five minutes. Air conditioning is good, eh? Brand new. Peter get last one at Canadian Tire.”

The air conditioning was fine but all the tables were filled with couples and families. If I was going to eat alone, it might as well be at home.

I had just finished supper when someone knocked on my door. I had the feeling it might be Dante Ryan but it was Ed Johnston, a retired teacher who lived on my floor. Ed was the unofficial mayor of the building, always trying to organize the residents against the property managers on matters related to rent, parking, repairs and recycling. He was slightly built, with a grey ponytail trailing out of a fishing cap. A large camera bag was slung over his shoulder and a tripod rested against the wall next to my door.

“Do me a favour?” he said.

“Sure, Ed.”

“I want to get this sunset on film and I was wondering if you could walk down with me and help me set up. This heat has me breathing too hard.”

I turned and looked out my windows. I’d been so caught up in thoughts of the Silvers, I hadn’t even noticed the huge orange ball hovering in a northwest sky streaked with pink and purple bands. “Wow.”

“Wow is right,” Ed said.

I hoisted his camera bag onto my shoulder and picked up his tripod. “That’s the spirit,” Ed grinned, showing snaggly teeth that overlapped at the front of his mouth like demurely crossed legs. “If I get a good shot, there’s a print in it for you.”

We rode the elevator down to ground level, crossed Broadview Avenue and walked along the eastern slope of Riverdale Park. People sat along the grassy verge on blankets or lawn chairs, waiting for the sun to begin its dramatic descent. Down the slope near the north end was the main ball diamond, where a co-ed softball game was going on, men and women alike chasing listlessly after balls in the heat.

We walked about two hundred yards south until Ed said, “Here is good.” I set the bag down and let the beauty of the sunset catch and hold me. The sun seemed big as a grapefruit moon in the polluted sky.

Ed coughed a few times and voided something into the grass. “Damn smog kills your lungs,” he said. “But it brings out the best in a sunset.”

“Doesn’t make it too hazy?”

“Not with Kodachrome, my friend. The way the reds and oranges and pinks diffuse will absolutely blow you away.”

As I watched the sun move north and west, a black-clad figure came into my peripheral vision. Dante Ryan was walking down Broadview toward us. He and I made eye contact and he indicated with a sweep of his head that I should join him. I waited until he was down near Dr. Sun’s statue, then told Ed
I was going to stretch my legs a little. Ed was glued to his viewfinder and grunted something like “yup.” I followed Ryan down the same path I had bladed down yesterday, past great weeping willows whose fronds hung limply in the heavy air. Ryan walked all the way to the west end of the park where a fence separated it from a brushy slope that led down to the Don Valley Parkway. Dozens of picnic tables had been stacked in large piles for Saturday’s Canada Day festivities. I found him behind a stack that shielded us from the view of anyone on the park slope or the ball field. Pear-shaped swarms of bugs hovered in the humid air around us.

“How’d you know I was here?” I asked.

“I was on my way to see you when you and the photographer came out.” He lit a cigarette and exhaled heavily, as if blowing out more tension than smoke.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Not exactly.”

“What happened?”

“Fucking Marco happened. Made me come in and see him today.”

“Why?”

“Why. So he could fucking check up on me, like I’m some new recruit. Made me go over every dollar coming in. Every fucking dime. The more money he needs, the more he thinks everyone’s holding out on him. Then he starts up my ass about the Silver contract. Where am I at with it? What’s taking so long? The client is calling. He wants it done.” He stopped to draw on his cigarette. “But the good thing about Marco? The madder he gets, the dumber he gets. He talks more than he listens.”

“And?”

“He let something slip.”

“What?”

“I think the hit originated in Buffalo.”

“Go on.”

“Marco’s chewing me out about the call he got from the client. He’s doing his aggrieved thing, saying, ‘Do I need this? Do I need heat from over the river ’cause you have to scout your location?’ In our business, ‘over the river’ means one place and that’s Buffalo. Home of the Bills, the Sabres and what’s left of the Magaddinos.”

“As in Stefano Magaddino?”

“The late, great Don. Since he passed on, I tell you, things have gone downhill there.”

“Why?”

“A, none of your business, B, it’s too long a story, and C, it’s none of your business.” He tried to blow a smoke ring but it came apart in the currents created by the rushing stream of cars racing one another up the Parkway. “So what about you? Find anything on Silver?”

“He’s definitely up to something, starting with the company he keeps,” I said, and told Ryan what happened on the loading dock.

“This Claudio can only be one guy,” Ryan said. “Claudio Ricci. Not many guys look like him. They ever stop making track suits, he’d have to walk around naked. You bounced him around like you say you did, I tip my hat to you.”

“He connected to anyone in particular?”

“He’s in the life, but he’s not attached to any one crew.”

“A Buffalo connection?”

“Nah. Strictly local talent.”

“And Frank?”

“I know at least three Franks who match that description, right down to the cheap suit. There’s Frankie Tools, Frank the Tank ….” Ryan was about to rhyme off a third name when his expression changed. I had seen anger in his eyes the night before. I had seen contempt and humour and sadness. Now there was fear. Dante Ryan had just seen something behind me that scared the shit out of him.

I looked over my shoulder and saw two men walking along the fence toward us, both wearing dark glasses. I knew one of them on sight: wiry, with long black hair in ring curls that reached past his shoulders. I was about to ask Ryan what the fuck Marco Di Pietra was doing in Riverdale Park when Ryan’s right fist crashed into my jaw and knocked me to the ground.

The bastard had set me up after all. All the talk about saving a child, saving his soul, the line he couldn’t cross—all bullshit. Dante Ryan had gift-wrapped and delivered me straight into the hands of a man who wished me nothing but an untimely death.

I
lay on my back, trying to think. Could I take Ryan out and outrun them to the bike path? Or get over the barbed-wire fence separating us from the Parkway without tearing myself up or rolling down the slope into oncoming traffic?

Then Ryan yelled, “You stay the fuck away from her, you got that?”

Her? Her who?

“Dipshit motherfucker!” He kicked me in the stomach, pulling it just enough that it looked more vicious than it felt. “You go near her again I’ll fucking kill you!” He squared up over me and delivered a kick to my groin that would have crushed my testicles had he hit them. Instead the impact came just to their left, bless him, on the inside of my thigh. It was painful enough, but didn’t extinguish the possibility of fatherhood. I curled into a fetal position and took one more kick in the midsection. His shoe hit my folded forearms, rather than my stomach; still, I was glad his choice in footwear ran to leather loafers, not steel-toed boots.

He stood over me, panting, jabbing the finger down at me. “Get the message, motherfucker?”

Was he selling me out to Marco, out of his mind or running another game entirely? I had no choice but to let it play
out. I lay in a tight curl as Marco Di Pietra and the other man came up to Ryan. I tried to keep my face hidden, like when I was a kid, terrified of the witch in
The Wizard of Oz,
trying to fall asleep with a sheet over my head.
If I can’t see her, she can’t see me.

“What the fuck is this?” Marco said.

“Hey, boss,” Ryan said. “Hey, Phil. What’s going on?”

“Hey,” Phil said. His voice was low and raspy, a heavy smoker’s bass. I’d caught only a glimpse of him before Ryan knocked me down: bigger than Marco by a few inches and a good many pounds, with thick dark hair slicked back from a widow’s peak. Despite the heat, he wore a Detroit Tigers warm-up jacket, which likely meant he was concealing a weapon.