Buffalo Jump (33 page)

The truck was slowing down.

Ryan had been keeping half a block back. At the first flash of the truck’s brake lights, he pulled over immediately. Frank got out and walked down a driveway beside one of the larger colonial houses. Claudio pulled away from the curb and began backing down the drive, Frank guiding him. I noticed the truck
didn’t beep when in reverse. They’d probably disconnected the fuse that controlled it, a smart move given that the truck was generally put to nefarious use.

“Closer,” I said.

We cruised slowly toward the house. The truck was backed up to a brick garage at the end of the driveway. A tall grey-haired man in his fifties was offloading cartons by hand. Claudio and Frank stayed on the sidelines as usual. There was no forklift or hand truck in sight.

“It’s going to take that guy forever to unload if he has to do it himself,” I said. “Let’s park down the street.”

Ryan drove to the end of the block, made a U-turn, and parked on the other side of the boulevard so we could watch the house. He turned off the engine and lowered the windows. He lit a cigarette and hung his arm out the window so the smoke wouldn’t blow my way. The car felt quiet after the constant hum of the engine and the road.

“I wonder if there’s a coffee shop in walking distance,” I said. “I need a bathroom and a coffee, in that order.”

His answer was, “What the fuck!”

The truck was coming back out the driveway.

“He couldn’t have unloaded it all,” I said.

“There’s more than one drop-off,” Ryan said. “Stay or follow?”

“Follow,” I said. “The house isn’t going anywhere.”

Traffic was heavy as we tailed the truck south and west. Five o’clock on a hot afternoon, people were busting out of work, desperate to make it home to the yard, the porch, the air-conditioned den, anywhere they could peel off their work clothes and crack open something cold. American flags hung everywhere, limp in the heat. Some were probably out specifically for the Fourth of July, but many homes had permanent flagpoles fixed to their fronts, a lot more than you’d see in Canada. Some houses sported yellow ribbons and signs saying
they were proud to be American. Lawn signs and bumper stickers, some in the form of furled ribbons, proclaimed support for soldiers in Iraq; some for the war itself. One car ahead of us, a big old Impala, had four bumper stickers: Proud to be a Vietnam Vet. Support Veterans of the Vietnam War. Support our Troops in Iraq. Insured by Smith & Wesson.

No, Geller, you are not in Toronto anymore, where most bumper stickers proclaim support for ecological and social causes and lawn signs warn government against privatizing health care and cutting school budgets.

“You want to see the real Buffalo? Check that out,” Ryan said, pointing to a billboard that showed a smiling man in a blue uniform steam-cleaning a carpet. “Crime Scene Incorporated,” the tagline read. “Cleaning and Restoring Buffalo Homes Since 1984.”

“Ever seen one of those at home?” he asked.

“Never.”

“I should apply for a franchise,” he said. “I could present a hell of a business case, don’t you think? I got experience, contacts and I’m motivated as hell to launch a new career.”

The truck rumbled around a traffic circle and veered west onto Lafayette. The farther west we drove, the smaller the houses were. There were no public monuments, green spaces or architectural gems in this part of town. No colonials on generous lots. Just frame houses with stained siding and cars looking worse for the wear of Buffalo winters. Yards showed more brown grass than green, and were piled with old appliances, broken bicycles, discarded lumber and mud-spattered toys. Sidewalks were breaking where weeds pushed up from the ground. Windows were boarded up. Men sat against a fence outside a dirty bodega, drinking from big cans of malt liquor. At least half the businesses on the street had newspaper taped over the windows. Graffiti covered the sides of most buildings.

“Osama bin Laden lives,” someone had written in white paint on a red-brick wall.

“Upstairs,” someone had added in black.

A few minutes later, the truck pulled into the parking lot of a three-storey warehouse surrounded by a fence topped with rusting razor wire. Most of the windows at the rear were broken despite being shielded by metal grilles. We parked on a side street where we could see the back of the warehouse through the fence. Behind the building were tall cottonwood trees. Fluffy white clumps drifted down like large snowflakes only to be snagged by barbed wire or trapped by wind currents against the fence. Frank and Claudio perfected their idle routine while two hired hands unloaded the cases: first the loose ones, which they wheeled inside on a dolly, then the skids, which they removed using the same kind of forklift we’d seen at Silver’s.

When the truck was empty, Claudio closed the back door and locked it, and all of them went inside. Half an hour later they were still there.

“If all they left at the house was a dozen or so cases, where do you think the rest is going?” Ryan asked.

“Once they’re over the border, they can go anywhere: Rochester, Syracuse, Detroit, Cleveland.”

Hundreds of thousands of vials, millions of pills, bound for hungry markets where aging boomers wanted—needed—to remain virile and healthy; where their parents were trying to cope with the onslaught of symptoms that storm the body in its eighth and ninth decades; where people of all ages with rare illnesses needed medications in amounts too small for the pharmaceutical industry to profit by unless the drugs were sold at exorbitant prices, which, of course, is what the industry did.

“Let’s go back to the house,” I said. “Try our luck on whoever is there.”

“Are we down to banking on luck now?” he asked.

P
arking was suddenly at a premium near the house on Lincoln Parkway. Every available spot was taken for a full block in either direction. As we passed the house, an older man, extremely heavy and sweating through his shirt, was pushing an empty wheeled cart up the walk. He was at the bottom of the steps when the door opened and a man and a woman came out. The man was the one we’d seen unloading the van. He wore black jeans and a yellow T-shirt with a swirling portrait of Jerry Garcia in a cloud of smoke. The woman looked like a yachter in a Ralph Lauren ad. She carried a cardboard carton in her arms; the man had two. He had to use his backside to hold the door open for the older man as he backed up the stairs pulling his cart. They exchanged greetings as if well acquainted. I turned and watched through the rear window as the man and woman carried their cartons to a gold Infiniti sedan. He loaded the cases in for her, then kissed her on the cheek before trotting back to the house.

The nearest parking spot we could find was around the next corner, on Bedford Avenue. “Hope we don’t need to make a fast exit,” I said.

Ryan got out and opened the trunk of his car. He said, “First rule of a fast exit? Make sure there’s no one left to chase
you.” He opened his metal gun case and slipped his Glock 20 into his waistband. He also took out a yellow hard hat and a clipboard.

He said, “I don’t want to be seen walking with you, so I’ll go first and walk down around the back. See if there’s a way in.” He put on the hard hat and held the clipboard smartly under his arm. “Anyone sees me, I’m Mr. City Inspector, looking at the wires and going
uh-huh
a lot.”

“It would look better if you had a pen, Mr. C.I.”

“I don’t carry one. You saw what happens to guys who write shit down.”

I gave him my pen.

He said, “See if you can get in the front. I’ll hang out back. You need me in there, whistle sharp.” He walked slowly toward the house, stopping occasionally to look up at telephone wires and make notations on his clipboard. I waited until he was out of sight down the driveway, then began walking toward the front entrance. As I approached the house, a dark-coloured SUV pulled up alongside me. My sphincter pursed momentarily, but the driver in no way resembled an assassin, unless they’re hiring clean-cut young women who look like they’re off to the library. I scanned the street. No other cars coming in either direction. No one on foot.

I was walking up the stairs, pondering entry strategies, when the front door opened and a sporty-looking fellow in his sixties emerged. He wore slacks and a blazer and a pressed golf shirt, with white hair swept back from his tanned face. He had a large canvas shopping bag in each hand, which he set down to pull the door shut behind him.

“Let me get that for you,” I called and bounded up the last steps.

“Thanks,” said the man. “Hope you’re in no rush, though. They’re quite a bit behind schedule today. I’ve never seen it this busy.”

Great. A peanut gallery full of witnesses.

I stepped into the house and locked the door behind me. I was in a small foyer made smaller by a huge fern growing out of a brass umbrella stand. I brushed past it into a wider hallway that had a hardwood floor scuffed grey down the middle by years of traffic. On my right was a wide staircase going up to the second storey. On my left an empty den, lit only by a desk lamp. I could hear music and voices coming from the back half of the house, though. A lot of voices, men and women both, an ongoing din punctuated occasionally by laughter and friendly shouts.

Spare me,
I thought. They’re having a goddamn party.

“Hey,” a man’s voice called to me.

I braced myself and looked up to see a stocky fellow in his early fifties, his close-cropped dark hair and beard showing traces of white near the temples and around the mouth. He carried two cardboard cartons over which he could hardly see. A petite woman of about eighty walked beside him, gripping his arm tightly as she took small delicate steps.

“Mind getting the door?” he asked me.

“Not at all.” I unlocked the front door and flattened myself against the wall so they could pass.

“Thanks, Ted,” the woman said. “If you get me as far as the sidewalk, I’ll be fine.”

“You’re still driving?” he asked.

“Don’t be silly,” she giggled. “I haven’t driven since the first President Bush was in office. Amy was kind enough to call a taxi.”

“You have someone on the other end to help you unload?”

“My grandson lives in the basement,” she said. “He’ll look after me.”

I closed the door behind them, locked it and ventured farther down the hall. An archway on the left opened into a large living room with a marble fireplace and mantel. About a dozen people were standing by the fireplace or sitting on sofas that
faced each other across a glass coffee table. A few looked me over and went back to their conversation.

A second, wider archway led from the living room to the dining room, where another fifteen or twenty people stood around a table that had wine, light beer, soda and other drinks. There were platters of fruit and cheese and a basket of bagels, surrounded by bowls of cream cheese and a plate of thinly sliced smoked salmon, garnished with onion, capers and lemon slices.

Most of the people ranged in age from late-forties to mid-sixties, the split between men and women about equal. Most were dressed casually yet expensively. The snatches of conversation I could hear revolved around the heat, plans for the long weekend, the exhibition of Chuck Close portraits at the Albright-Knox and the fickle nature of real estate.

I didn’t see the long-haired guy who’d been unloading the truck. I was trying to figure out who Amy might be when a woman’s voice said, “You’re new.”

I turned to see a trim fortyish woman in a mauve linen jacket and faded jeans. Long Navajo-style earrings dangled amid her feathered hair, a shade of red that wasn’t her own but suited her blue eyes. As she held out her hand, a bracelet in the same style as her earrings slid down her forearm. “Cassandra Lawson. But everyone calls me Cass.”

I took her hand. “Joel,” I said. When lying about my name, I always choose something that sounds like my own.

“What’s taking so long?” said the older man I had seen pushing his cart up the walk. He was reclining in a maroon leather Queen Anne knock-off. He was grossly overweight, his ankles puffy and purple above his socks. “It’s nice they put out a spread and everything, but there’s not a damn thing here I can eat.”

“So have a drink, Harv,” Cass said.

“The only thing I can drink is water, hon, and if I have one more glass I’ll have to pee ten times tonight instead of the usual five. Did Barry say why everything’s upside down today?
Normally I come when they tell me, I’m in, I’m out, goodbye, go home.”

“The delivery was much bigger than usual,” Cass said. “And it didn’t come packed the way it normally does. It was just bulk cases. Amy has to open them up to fill the orders, unless you’re willing to take a whole case of something.”

“I already got a case of something!” Harv roared. “Why the hell else would I be here!”

“Can you tell me where Amy is?” I asked Cass. “Or Barry? I need to talk to them a minute.”

“You’re not from here,” said Harv. “I can hear it in your voice. Canadian,
eh?”

“I’m from Toronto,” I said.

“Then why the hell are you buying medications here?” Harv asked. “The whole point is to get them cheaper from Canada.”

“That would be illegal,” I said, with all the innocence I could manage on short notice.

“Illegal! We can’t have that, could we?” Harv laughed until the laugh turned into a rolling cough that ended with him clearing his throat and hawking something into a napkin. He took a couple of deep breaths and tucked the napkin into his jacket pocket. “Listen, kid,” he wheezed, “I don’t know what you’re doing here. You look healthy enough to me. But I take ten medications a day—
ten
—between my heart condition and diabetes and cholesterol. Even with insurance, you know what the co-pay is?”

“Come on, Harv,” a man cut in. He was dressed casually enough in jeans and a black silk shirt, but the watch on his wrist probably cost more than my Camry. He looked very fit for his age, which was early fifties. “I bet Medicare covers most of what you need.”

“What do you know about Medicare, Marty? You got more money than the rest of us combined. I don’t know why you even come here.”