Hazardous Goods (Arcane Transport) (2 page)

The two of us marched across a football field of marble just to get to the elevator banks, with me trailing behind. Clay was just a little guy, maybe five seven in new shoes and a buck fifty on the scale, but his pace was daunting. I’m a half inch over six feet, but I still had to do a quick hopstep every ten yards just to keep up with my new business partner. Probably didn’t help that I was carrying ten extra pounds of Molson muscle.

As we walked, I inspected the packing tube in my hands. Same size as a poster tube, but heavier. Maybe a big pewter candlestick holder. Or an enchanted blade used in sacrificial offerings. I weighed it in one hand. Nah. Candlestick holder.

The label said “Mr. Emory Quinn, Senior Analyst, Sun Consulting.” The box labelled “contents description” was empty.

“They didn’t fill in the contents description.”

“Not everyone does. No insurance if the contents aren’t specified, but a lot of our customers don’t care. Hard to put a value on some of this stuff.”

“You don’t run into customs issues?”

“Don’t deliver outside the country.”

“What about the cops? How do you know you’re not transporting drugs or stolen goods?”

Clay stopped dead in his tracks, causing a stern-looking lady carrying a stack of file folders to nearly run him over. She directed a nasty look his way as she passed, but Clay ignored her.

“Good question.” He shook his head, smiled, then resumed walking, but at a slower pace. “I have no interest in breaking the law. The delivery contracts are clear. We don’t transport stolen goods, drugs, any of that stuff. I sit down with every new customer and make them initial that clause. If I get a bad feeling, we decline the account. I can’t say for sure that it never happens. Never had any issues to date, but if I ever got to thinking a customer was working the system, I’d drop them real fast.”

“Never had any issues with the cops?”

“No, though I try to stay out of their way. Not sure what they’d think of our business.”

No kidding. I wasn’t even sure what
I
thought of the business.

“So, what do you think
this
is?” I curled the tube like a dumbbell, trying to judge its weight.

A sly grin crossed Clay’s face and he grabbed the tube from my hand.

“Let it go, kid. It’ll drive you nuts.”

Sun Consulting was on the forty-third floor, a longish elevator ride that caused my ears to pop. There was good news, though – the woman at the reception desk looked like she modeled swimsuits in her spare time. Long blond curls, perfect teeth and lots of curves. She smiled at me, and Sun Consulting moved onto my list of favorite customers.

Clay introduced me, and I turned on the charm. At least, I thought I did. I am definitely hit and miss with the ladies, a fact that my brother Ted reminds me of more-or-less daily.

After a brief chat, it was back to business. I passed over the packing tube along with my handheld, for the receipt signature.

“Kara said you also had a package for us?”

“That’s right. I’ll get one of the mail room guys to bring it down.”

While Clay waited with her, I wandered the office lobby. What appeared to be an original painting by Canaletto hung above a cream-colored leather sofa. I’d seen several paintings by the Venetian landscape master at the National Gallery in Ottawa, but was more than a little surprised to see one hanging in a downtown office. Considering Sun Consulting’s apparent link to the world of the occult, I might have expected a Picasso with skewed eyes and arms in the wrong places. Either way, it seemed to be an original. Muchos dineros in the consulting business, apparently.

Seated in a chair to one side was a fellow in an immaculate pinstripe suit that likely cost as much as my first car. He barely glanced in my direction, seemingly hypnotized by the screen of his cellphone. Addict.

When I circled back to the reception desk, Clay was comparing an entry on the handheld with the label on a package the size of a toaster. He smiled, and handed the box to me to carry.

“We’ll see you soon.”

“Thanks.” The blonde smiled in my direction. “Nice meeting you.”

“You too.”

In the lobby I winked at Clay.

“She likes me.”

Clay snorted.

“Nice try, kid.” For Clay, everyone was a kid. His wife, my mother... age appeared irrelevant. “She’s married and has a newborn daughter.”

“How the hell do you know that?”

They stepped into the elevator and Clay hit the button for the ground floor.

“I’ve seen her every week for the past few years. You get to know little things about people.”

“Hmph. Well, seems you don’t know her well enough to recognize when she’s fallen for someone.”

He snorted again.

The seconds ticked by as the elevator cab descended, until our smooth ride came to a stop at the eighteenth floor. No surprise there. I can’t remember ever having made it all the way to the ground floor in an elevator without some damned person interrupting my ride.

The doors opened, and we began shuffling to the back of the car to let a man in. It took a
lot
of shuffling. At first all I could see was a leather bomber jacket so big it must have required a whole cow hide to make. I just caught a glimpse of the floor behind the intruder – a jumble of plastic sheets and ladders. Maybe the big guy was in construction.

The fellow stared at us as he entered the elevator, and continued to do so as the elevator began its descent. Not a good sign, in my mind.
No one
does that, even if it means turning your back on a glamourous model in thigh-high boots and a low-cut top.

“Help you?” Clay was that kind of guy.

Big Ugly looked six five at least, maybe three hundred pounds. That gave him a four inch height advantage on me, and a
big
weight advantage. Clay must have felt like a Hobbit.

Nicotine-stained teeth, thin sneering lips, a nose broken more than once, and stringy black hair greased back from his forehead. He had a pseudo-beard, the unshaved look that seemed so popular in Hollywood twenty years ago, and wore a black shirt open most of the way to his navel – a considerable distance. But it was his eyes that caught my attention. Small, steel grey eyes.

“Who is this?” Big Ugly said. He had a definite accent, drawing out the
e
’s. It came out ‘
hoo eez dees
’. “I thought you worked alone?”

The question was directed at Clay, but Clay looked as mystified as I felt. What the hell was this guy talking about?

“Never mind.” Maybe Russian? Whatever the accent was, I was struggling to understand him. “As they say in your country, this is a stick up. Give me the package.”

I was ready to tell him where he could
shove
the package, but Clay’s calm voice cut in.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know who you are, but our client provided us with a destination, and we’re going to deliver it there. If you have any issues with that, take it up with the client.”

A nice, reasonable response by Clay. Unfortunately, the big guy wasn’t listening.

“You want to know who I am? My name is Niki Kuzmenko. The Bull.”

He said it in a way that suggested one of us should recognize the name, but I drew a blank. From the look on his face, it seemed Clay had too.

“Sorry. We have a contract with the client.”

“I don’t care about your client. Give me the package.” Big Ugly turned slightly and hammered his fist into the Stop button, bringing the elevator to a halt.

“No.” Clay was getting angry, his jaw jutting out slightly and his shoulders drawn back.

I took a deep breath, trying not to lose my temper. Most days, it was just a flickering pilot light. But this guy...

The big man stepped forward, clearly intimidating Clay by his sheer physical presence. My pilot light flared, and I stepped between the two men.

“Cool your jets, pal—.”

That’s when Big Ugly reached into his jacket and pulled out a gun.

A few things to point out. First, like most Canadians, I’ve never seen a handgun up close. Hunting rifles are one thing, but most Canadians have only seen handguns on American TV. They’ve also seen what handguns can do to Americans on TV. My presumption was that handguns have the same effect on Canadians.

“Okaaay.” I shifted a half step to my right, shielding Clay. Last thing I was going to do was let this goon threaten a man nearing sixty.

“You don`t listen.” The big man shuffled his feet, the gun now above me and pointing down at my skull from an awkward angle. “Give me the box.”

A ping sounded, and the elevator began descending again, the display counting off the floors.

“Man, what’re you doing? Armed robbery? Christ, there’s a bank downstairs—.”

“Shut the hell up.” Now the barrel of the gun was pressed against my forehead, and two bloodshot eyes were right in my face. The big man’s index finger twitched and I tensed, bracing for the bullet that would plow through my forehead and leave nasty bits all over the elevator.

Clay inched forward and offered the delivery carton to the man. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Clay’s face, red with anger. Big Ugly took the package in his meaty hand. Plain brown wrapping paper, destination marked on the label, one of Arcane’s standard overnight stickers in plain view.

Then a muscular arm lashed out and cracked me on the side of the head with the pistol. I fell to one knee, unable to distinguish up from down. There was an angry shout from Clay, and I tried to hold my position between the other two men. It didn’t help that I could feel my lunch working its way back up my throat, and the lights seemed to be flashing on and off in the elevator.

At the ground floor the elevator lurched to a stop, making the spinning worse. I heard the doors slide open and tried to get back up, but my hands and feet weren’t following commands. Clay was hunched over behind me, but only I could see our assailant as the man turned and looked right at us.

“I’m thinking you guys are in the wrong business.” Even stunned, I could hear the word “business” come out as “
beeznus
”. I tried to reach out, but just stumbled forward into the panel of the elevator, everything spinning.

Big Ugly smiled and set off across the lobby while I slid to the floor.

“Jesus. Are you alright?”

I was flat on my ass, the head-spins still out of control. Somehow I’d stuck a leg out to stop the doors from closing, probably the only reason the security guard from the front desk even came over.

“Some guy mugged us. Check on my boss.” My double vision was brutal, and blood was dripping freely from a cut on my forehead. Clay was slumped over in the corner of the elevator car.

“Clay, are you okay?”

The guard knelt before Clay, and I could hear him whispering. Clay gasping out a response, and the guard’s face paled. He turned and mouthed to me: “I think he’s having a heart attack.”

I wanted to call for an ambulance. Call the cops. But despite the pain, Clay was stubborn. He asked me to flag a cab, and minutes later we were in the Emergency Ward at Toronto General. After they heard his symptoms, Clay went to the front of the line.

The waiting area in Emergency was quiet by inner-city standards. Amongst the wailing kids and drunk university students, a kid wearing a crop top and low cut denim shorts was slumped in a chair, the tracks on the inside of her arm visible from across the hall. Opposite her sat a businessman, a guy in his fifties wearing a rumpled suit with his tie tugged loose. He was cradling his left hand, a large pair of scissors buried to the handles into his palm.

I thought about asking what had happened, but reconsidered. Not sure I wanted to know, quite frankly. Instead I rubbed the palm of my own hand and tried not to think about why someone would do that.

Besides, I was in no mood for talking. My head was throbbing, but the pain paled in comparison to the agonizing frustration I felt at not having done something.

I’d always wondered how I would react if faced with a gun. Bat it aside, or wrestle it from the gunman’s grasp. But when faced with the real thing, I’d just stood there. Like a coward.

My ruminations were interrupted by someone calling my name.

It was Harper Jarvis, Clay’s wife. Silver grey feathered hair, slim and straight-backed. Her light blue eyes, normally bright and lively, wore the stress of the evening. She’d been in with Clay and his doctor for the last half hour.

I joined her in the hallway.

“How’s he doing?”

“He’ll be all right. But he has to calm down. I’ve never seen him so angry.”

“Can’t say I blame him.”

“No. But he’s not a young man anymore.”

I smiled, but I suspect it came out more grimace than grin. The doctors had given me a couple of Tylenol 3s after cleaning the cut on my forehead and stitching it up, but the medication hadn’t made much of a dent in my headache. The bright lights of the ER weren’t helping, either.

Harper grabbed a chair from the waiting area and signaled for me to sit down. I snorted in disgust at myself, having an old lady offer me a chair.

Harper must have picked up on my mood, because she leaned over and spoke in a tone just above a whisper.

“Stop being so hard on yourself, Donnie Elder. Why, if something happened to you, I don’t know what I would say to your mother.”

Clay and Harper have known my mother for as long as I can remember – old friends of her and my long-departed father. My memories of them are like a slide show made up of annual glimpses into their life. The two of them dropping by for a barbeque one hot summer, Harper adding a pasta salad to the buffet table. Celebrating Thanksgiving at their old bungalow, with Clay delighted to have two young boys around to join him in watching football.

I didn’t know them well, but what I did know was that they were good people.

“What did the doctor say?”

“Well, they’re still doing tests. But it looks like a mild heart attack. They’re going to keep him for a few nights. Thank goodness you were there.”

“Has he had one before?”

“No.” Her voice cracked, and she pulled a stark white tissue from her purse to dab at the corner of her eye. “He’s had to watch his blood pressure, but nothing like this.”