Woman Chased by Crows (27 page)

“Next move?” Stacy asked.

“I'm open to suggestions.”

“How be we park around the corner for a while? Check out the sightseers.”

“Better than my plan.”

“Which was?”

“Feeding my face.”

“You still hungry?”

“I get like that when I go mental.”

“Pizza joint over there. I'll get us a couple of slices, two birds with one stone.”

“Deal. No anchovies. Coke.”

“You got it.”

Adele whooped her siren twice and did a one-eighty across the crawling traffic to park outside a Pizza Pizza. Stacy headed inside. Adele turned off the engine, looked back down the street. They were half a block from the cruisers. The meat wagon was departing. Spectators were being kept to the far side of the avenue.

Stacy came out of the pizza joint. She didn't get in the car, walked around to Adele's window. “The pepperoni just came out of the oven.”

“All ri-ight.”

“Doing good business in there.”

“Street theater. Better than reality
TV
.”

Stacy put her box on the hood of the car, wrapped her slice neatly in a paper napkin, stopped, halfway to her mouth. “That's
her
,” she said. She pointed the pizza across the street.

“What? Where?”

“Bag lady. By the phone booth. Brown hair, brown coat.”

“You kidding me?” Adele took a big bite of warm pizza. “The little hunchback?”

“She's hunching on purpose.”

“How do you know it's her?”

“The way she's smoking.” She handed Adele a cold Coke. “The way she holds her smoke. Like she's hiding it.”

Adele popped open the can, took a gulp. “Looks like a . . .” she burped delicately, “ditzy old broad to me.”

“It's an act. Watch her for a while. Everybody else is gawking at the store, waiting for something to happen, hoping somebody'll take their picture. She's checking faces. She's looking for somebody.”

“I thought she'd be pretty.”

“She's wearing a wig. Lipstick's on crooked. It's her.”

“We grab her?”

“We could. But . . .”

“But?” They were both talking with their mouths full.

“Technically she hasn't done anything.”

“Well, technically, maybe not, except she's definitely connected, except you came here looking for her, except she shows up at a murder scene.” She laughed, shook her head. “Sounds bustable to me.”

“Except.”

“Except.”

“Wouldn't you like to know . . .” Stacy wiped her lips, “who she's looking for?”

“I say fuckit, bust her and sweat her.”

“Bust her you'll have to turn her over to Lacsamana.”

“Eventually.”

They thought about the situation for a long moment, different priorities, compatible objectives.

“She knows what I look like,” Stacy said. “If she starts moving.”

The two women finished eating, sipped their drinks, both watching the woman across the wide avenue.

Ugly is the best disguise. People look away from ugly. In the movies when a pretty woman wants to disguise her appearance she changes her hair colour. But still she is pretty. Give yourself a strawberry mark across one side of your face, people will not look at you. It is a lesson Sergei should have learned, but he was a dandy and would never let himself be less than presentable. There he was, trying to be one of the crowd, trying to blend in, and wearing a foulard and a waistcoat. I see you, Sergei. My my, but you have let yourself go. Look at you. You must weigh ninety kilos. You have a belly. What have you done to yourself? Who has been feeding you all this time? Who has been paying the bills to keep you here? Someone has to pay for all the steaks and wine. Pastries, too, by the look of it. You always were a greedy little shit. Who do you report to these days? Do you check in regularly? Do not tell me you work for somebody official. After so many years. And so many pounds. I think somewhere along the way you took a bite of the forbidden apple, did you not?

Standing beside Sergei was her assailant of last night, the clumsy ox with the torn pants. He was wearing a bandage on one hand. The two fools were lurking, no other word for it,
lurking
in a doorway down the block from Grova's pawnshop. Police all around. They might as well be wearing signs. When the body was carried out of the building, they got into a heated discussion and Sergei punched the big man on the shoulder, twice. The big man looked hurt, but not from the punches.

And poor Louie, look at you, carted away like a dirty carpet, leaving all your precious things behind. They could not let you take even one? What would it have been, Louie? Of all your things, what would you have chosen to carry to the other side? An impossible choice, I know, especially since the only thing you ever wanted, you could never have.

And look, there is that clever detective from Dockerty. She moves like a dancer and watchful as a cat. That's very convenient. And who is that with her? A tall woman, all elbows and big hands, bullying her way through knots of people and telling the uniforms what to do. The clever detective from Dockerty has a comrade. Good. Let us see just how clever they are.

When Sergei and his friend began to walk oh so casually from the scene, heading west, on foot, bypassing the Woodbine subway station, Anya followed from the other side of the street. Now we are making progress, she thought. Things were going rather well. Too bad about Louie, but it was inevitable really. And probably necessary. He had pulled the real evil out of the shadows. She had seen his face.

Adele was on foot, staying on the opposite side of the street, a block behind Anya. For a crookback little bag lady, the woman could motor when she had to. Nothing the matter with her legs. You're hard to keep track of, sweetie, tiny frame, dull clothes, disappear in a blink. Watchful, too. You've done this before, haven't you? Spot me twice it's game over. I can't vanish the way you can. But you're not checking behind you very much are you? Whatever you're after is up ahead. Where are you going, sweetheart? Who are you chasing? Who's out of place on this fine Saturday morning? Families heading out on shopping expeditions, home for lunch, off to Chinatown for dim sum, moo shu pork. I ate too fast. That damn pizza's repeating on me.

Those two men up ahead. She's matching their pace exactly. Oh yeah, got you now, boys. Mutt and Jeff. Hey, if she's tailing you two, she's got some stones. Or a weapon. Makes my job easier; the big one sticks out worse than I do. Square head, sideburns, iron grey hair, wavy, way too long. Not army, not official, some sort of muscle. And the guy he's yakking to — short, pudgy, nice jacket, fedora, silk scarf, trying to be dapper. Is that you, Serge baby? Yeah, I like you two jokers a lot. I can track you easy enough. So can she. Hasn't once looked in your direction but she's following every move, aren't you, dearie? All those reflections, yeah, you've done this before. Every time one of them turns his head you start poking around in your bag like you're looking for something real important.

At Coxwell the two men entered a parking lot. Well now, here's where it could get tricky.

“She's trailing two men. Roly-poly little guy in a fancy jacket, and a big dude, looks like a gorilla in a bad suit. Where are you?”

“A block behind you, heading west.”

“The men are getting into a red Beemer, B-B-X-G, Bravo, Bravo, X-Ray, George, 227, two-two-seven.”

“Got it. What's
she
doing?”

“Heading for the subway.”

“Okay, I'm seeing the Beemer. How do you want to do this?”

“You stick with the car. I'm taking the subway.”

“Which way is she heading?”

“West . . .”

Sound was cut off as Adele went underground.
West
. Okay by me, Stacy thought, same direction as the
BMW
.

Anya knew where they were headed. When the car pulled out of the lot, she watched its reflection make a right turn and head west down the Danforth, she knew. She ran into the subway, threw a handful of change into the box, more than enough she was certain, ran down the stairs to the westbound platform. They were going back to the old place. If it is still there, she thought, it has been twenty years at least since she had been inside, fifteen since she had been in the neighbourhood. But that is where they were headed. She was sure of it. Greektown. And not one Greek in the bunch.

Sergei's distant cousin — or the brother of his cousin's step-uncle, or perhaps a former lover, Sergei was never clear on the relationship, a man named Groszvili, a Georgian, son of a Stalinist, grandson of an anarchist, great-grandson of the Revolution — had a three-storey building on the Danforth with four apartments on the top two floors and a bar at street level. Bakunin was the name of the bar, a dark and sullen place as she remembered it. Groszvili liked to foster the impression that his bar was a hangout for Russian mafia and international men of mystery, but any real crooks who might have dropped by did so by accident and doubtless departed shortly. Instead it had by default become the hangout for a bunch of disaffected Bulgarians and resentful Macedonians, the inculcated offspring of unsaved Bolsheviks, Trotskyites, even a few diehard Stalinists, endlessly repeating their fathers' and grandfathers' arguments about political niceties they had never been forced to enjoy. The little band of gypsy smugglers had fetched up there when they first defected, when there were five of them, still deciding what to do, even before Sergei went home to claim his reward for being a good little boy. She had only stayed two weeks; it wasn't big enough for them all, and by then there was nothing but fighting and bad feelings. But the place itself was not bad, if it was still the same, if it was still there at all. By Moscow standards, it was a palace. The refrigerator and stove worked, there was plenty of hot water. Two bedrooms, Vassi and Ludi insisted on having one to themselves, Viktor and Sergei in the other one, arguing all night, and she in the living room, on that ugly red sofa with the coffee stains and the tape on the arms, hearing desperate love-making sounds from the end of the hall, and whining and snarling through the other wall. There was no need for her to suffer with the robber band. She deserved better. Toronto was, after all, where Baryshnikov had found rescuers and harbourers when he made his dash for artistic freedom in the West. And there were people in the city who knew of her, ballet lovers who had seen her with the Kirov. They were lining up to ease her into freedom. She was at the apartment or the bar below only as much as loyalty and shared liability demanded, but it was often enough to watch the train wreck unfold, the bickering and blaming.