False Witness (22 page)

Good thing
,
too
, he thought with sudden gravity.
The last thing I need is a whole gang of new friends eager to hear The Story. Having a hard enough time remembering it as it is.

The Story. Always the Goddam Story. Alex hoisted himself off the bed and wandered toward the little fridge in the room’s kitchenette. He withdrew a bottle of water and downed half at a chug. Then he ambled to the bathroom for a couple of Advil. He felt a bit queasy as he urinated, but he didn’t know whether it was the beer or just the salmon-pink toilet that was putting him off.

Alex smiled again as he shuffled back into the room, stripping down to his boxers and settling into the surprisingly comfortable bed. The springs squeaked pleasantly under his weight. Angie had ended the night by grabbing him on the log veranda outside the bar and pushing him up against a support beam. She kissed him slow and deep, their boozy breath mingling in his nose with her perfume, and the faint hint of Deep Woods Off from his own tee-shirt. The two played grope-and-grind for about five minutes before Angie finally broke them apart.

“Hoo!” she gasped. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a while now.”

“Me, too,” Alex slurred. “Ever since you gave me that piece of cherry pie.”

She flashed a mischievous grin and grabbed him by the collar. “There’s more pie to come, buddy boy,” she breathed in his ear. Then she gave him one last smack on the lips. “But not tonight.” Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “Cuz I think we both might be just a little bit drunk.”

Alex feigned indignation. “Madam,” he said officiously. “I deeply resent your scandalous accusations!” He leaned in for one last kiss. She obliged greedily. “With that, I shall say good evening to you.”

As they turned to go their separate ways – Angie lived in an apartment over the grocery store a couple of blocks from the Loose Moose – she reached out and grabbed his hand, pulling him back toward her. “Sweet dreams,” she whispered, stroking his palm. Alex thrilled at her touch as if it was an electric current.

My God
, he thought blearily.
I feel like I’m thirteen again. You hang up first. No,
you
hang up first.

Finally, they had disengaged and Alex began his loping walk back to the Bluebird, just up the street. Now, as he lay in the soft, squeaky bed, savoring his memory of their goodnight, he felt one of the hardest erections he had ever experienced straining against the thin cotton of his boxers. Chuckling, he fell quickly asleep.

Later, as he lay in the hazy, quasi-sleep of drunkeness, he was plagued by dreams of being caught in a lie.

The pint glass had barely left the girl’s hand and Crowe had already downed half of it. The ice-cold lager felt like desert rain in his throat on this sun-baked afternoon, and he knew he could expect the beginning of a buzz soon; he had hardly eaten in the past forty-eight hours.

“My goodness!” said the wide-eyed blonde waitress, squinting into the sun. Her tee-shirt proclaimed that What’s Brewing was Calgary’s original brew pub. Crowe guessed that meant it was established sometime in the early 2000s. “Why don’t you take your shoes and socks off and get in?”

Half a dozen responses entered Crowe’s head, all with at least an eighty percent chance of getting the waitress into bed later tonight, but he kept them to himself. “It’s been a long day,” he said. “Thanks, darlin. By the way, there’ll be one more joining me shortly.”

The blonde’s mouth turned down in an exaggerated moue. “Girlfriend?”

“Business acquaintance.”

“Ah,” she said with a flirty grin. “Well, that’s all right, I guess.”

Crowe sighed as he watched the blonde’s bottom wiggle its way off the blazing patio and back into the darkness of the pub. He spared a moment to thank God for yoga pants before turning his focus back to the task at hand. It hadn’t been easy to set up this meeting, and it was absolutely crucial to his plans.

It had been two days hours since the news of Billy Trinh’s death had hit the media. Very little had been revealed publicly: there had been a brawl between Billy Trinh, Rufus Hodge and a member of the Aryan Guard, a man named Alvin Stagger. He had slit Trinh’s throat after beating him severely, then went after Hodge before a guard stepped in and subdued him. Stagger was now in a coma in a locked ward of Foothills Hospital. Like any good lie, there was just enough truth to make it plausible. Crowe was certain the story would drop from the regular news cycle by the next day; few people gave a flying fart what went on inside the walls of the nation’s prisons. Coverage of the deaths of Chuck Palliser and Richie Duff had been relegated to the inner pages, due mainly to the fact there was no new information. Plus a national scandal involving a member of parliament and his texts to an underage senate page had taken over front pages across the country.

Crowe knew the real story, of course; he got it straight from Eddie Spanbauer. The person he was waiting on also knew it, though not as much as Crowe. He ran his sweating pint glass across his forehead before draining the remains of his beer in a single long swig. It was another hot afternoon, especially dressed as he was in his usual jeans, tee-shirt and short boots, and there was very little in the way of shade here in the open-air mall of Eau Claire market, even from the towering buildings surrounding it. A tank shirt with surfer shorts and flip-flops would have been infinitely more comfortable, but alas, he was working.

Crowe leaned back in the patio chair – a strap-and-cushion job, which wasn’t overly comfortable, but perfect for his needs – and stretched his legs. The blonde brought him another beer without being asked; Crowe thanked her and took a drink, sipping this time.

“I’ll have one of those, please,” said a thickly accented voice from behind him.

The girl glanced up. “Looks like your business associate is here.” She sashayed back inside the pub.

Joe Trinh sat down across from Crowe and crossed his legs without waiting for acknowledgement. He was all business: an off-white seersucker suit over a pink guyabera shirt, deck shoes, and a pair of sunglasses that Crow estimated had cost at least fifteen hundred dollars. He was thinner than his prison-honed brother, and probably fifteen years older.

“Mr. Trinh.” Crowe extended his hand. “Thanks for coming.”

Trinh ignored the offer. “What do you want?”

“I need to talk to you about what happened to your brother.”

“We both know what happened,” Trinh said sourly. “You won. My brother is dead and your boss is alive — for now. Congratulations. Is that all?”

Crowe crossed his outstretched legs under the table and laced his hands behind his head, exposing the sweat-soaked underarms of his black tee-shirt. Trinh wrinkled his nose at the obvious slight and glowered at him.

“I think we both know that’s not all,” said Crowe. “Not by a long shot.”

The waitress arrived with Trinh’s beer. He flashed a winning smile and thanked her profusely, prompting a giggle from the blonde. As soon as she was out of earshot, the old Trinh was back.

“We’re not willing to start a war over this,” he said. “I doubt you are, either. We had to try. Mr. Hodge responded in a reasonable way. That’s all.”

Crowe gave him a flinty grin. “First of all, Mr. Trinh, I’m all about going to war. My organization has a tendency to blow up our enemies with plastic explosives, or haven’t you been watching the news these last couple weeks?”

“Oh, I have, Mr. Crowe. I also know you have been under police surveillance ever since. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was someone watching us right now.”

There is
, Crowe thought,
but it’s not who you think
.

“Your brother talked before he died,” he said mildly.

Trinh flinched noticeably at that. “I don’t – ”

“Yeah, you do. We both know there was a bounty on my employer’s head, and we both know it wasn’t you who put it there.”

Trinh was silent for several moments, sizing up the man with the pit stains across from him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said finally.

Crowe scoffed and waved a dismissive hand. “There’s no cops here, Trinh, and I’m not wired.” He gestured around the table. “This is the circle of truth, all right?”

“What do you want?”

“I have some questions about the woman who put up the money.”

Crowe let that sink in. Trinh stared at him silently again.
He doesn’t know
how
, but he knows I know
, Crowe thought.
That’s all that matters
.

After several long moments, Trinh raised his glass and poured the entire pint down his throat in a single draught, his narrow Adam’s apple bobbing with each swallow. He returned the glass to the table with a clunk.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

Crowe frowned. “I don’t have time for this shit.”

“Ah, but these gentlemen do.”

Crowe felt a thick hand land on his left shoulder. He looked up to see a large white man with spiky brown hair and a unibrow standing over him. Next to him stood a balding East Indian gent with extremely hairy arms below the rolled-up sleeves of his shiny purple dress shirt. Both looked about as jovial as their boss.

As if reading Crowe’s mind, Trinh smiled. “You yourself said there are no police around, Mr. Crowe. So if there is nothing more, I believe I will be on my way.”

Crowe’s upper body remained still as he lifted his right leg several inches and dropped it back to the concrete patio floor. As he did, an audible metallic click rose from under the glass table. He felt the East Indian’s hand clutch reflexively at his shoulder as the man saw what was going on.

“Uh, Mr. Trinh,” he breathed.

Trinh scowled. “What?”

“That sound you just heard,” said Crowe, “was a two-inch spring-loaded carbon steel blade popping out of the toe of my right boot. It’s pointed directly at the underside of that flimsy little cushion you’re sitting on. All I have to do is straighten my leg and your testicles will file for divorce from the rest of your body. Foothills Hospital is about thirty-five minutes from here when traffic is good, which should be more than enough time for you to bleed out. Even in the best case scenario, you’d come away from the experience as a soprano.”

The color drained from Trinh’s face. “You wouldn’t,” he said without conviction. Then, more forcefully: “You’re not that stupid. My friends here would kill you where you sit. Neither one of us would make it out of this market alive.”

Crowe smiled. “Actually, I think my odds are pretty good. Look at the fellow over my left shoulder.”

It took a moment for Unibrow to realize that Crowe was talking about him. He looked first at Trinh, then at the surrounding public square. Dozens of people milled about in the midday sun, talking, laughing, texting. He didn’t see the bright red dot floating in the center of his white golf shirt, but his boss did. Trinh looked back over his own shoulder, as if he could somehow trace the laser sight back to its source. It could have come from any one of a dozen downtown buildings within a five-hundred-yard range. As it happened, it originated from the living room of Crowe’s own penthouse, courtesy of Digger Lewis and a Remington M24 rifle. Digger had been a sniper in Afghanistan, where he picked up his annoying habit of tuning out everything around him except the task at hand, along with any number of other neuroses.

Trinh looked down at the glass table – and, presumably, the situation beneath it – and muttered something in Vietnamese. Finally, he spoke. “It seems I underestimated you, Mr. Crowe, as my brother did with Mr. Hodge. I can assure you it won’t happen again.”

“Shut up,” Crowe said testily. “You’ve wasted enough time already. Now: Who was the woman?”

Trinh was stone-faced. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? How could you not know?”

“We only spoke on the phone. She offered one hundred thousand cash for Hodge’s life. Twenty thousand as a down payment, the remaining eighty after the deed was done.”

Crowe stroked his stubble.
On the phone. Fuck
. He had allowed himself to get his hopes up that Trinh would be able to hand over a name, or at least a description. “And you believed her?”

“She said the down payment would be in a certain place at a certain time. I sent one of my men to retrieve the package; he returned with a box wrapped in packing tape. Inside were one thousand twenty-dollar bills. Quite grubby, as I recall.”

The waitress sidled up to the table with a quizzical look at the two men behind Crowe. “Uh, do you fellas need some chairs?”

The men looked uncomfortable. Trinh put on his theatrical smile again. “They just stopped by to say hello. They’re not staying.”

“But
you
are,” Crowe interjected. “Another pint for both of us.”

“No, really,” said Trinh.

“I insist,” said Crowe. He smiled at the blonde. “And bring the tab to him.”

Trinh laughed heartily as the girl left with their order, then stopped abruptly as soon as she was inside. “So I told my brother about it. I said it was a chance for him to make some money for his bastard.”

“Which you would administer, of course.”

Trinh’s smile was genuine this time. “Call it a management fee.”

“And it never occurred to you that this was out of the ordinary? A woman phoning you up out of the blue to offer you a hundred grand to have a prison inmate killed? The
day after
that inmate’s associate murdered Chuck Palliser and Richie Duff in an extremely ugly fashion?”

“She said you – you personally, Mr. Crowe, not the Wild Roses – had made a huge mistake. That the police would be watching you so closely from that moment on that it would be child’s play to swoop in and take over your distribution network. Not your cooks, of course, because they were in the wind as soon as Hodge was arrested. But eventually they will surface, looking for work. And your dealers have been scrounging for nine months now. They are desperate for product.”

“And all you needed to do was take out Hodge.”

“Again, Mr. Crowe, business. The idea was sound. If it worked, the Dragons would become unstoppable. If it didn’t, I still had twenty thousand in cash. There is no way to lose in that scenario.”