“Ryder set me up at the Road Scholar Institute near Belleville. I crammed sixteen weeks of material into six hours at the wheel.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I told the instructor I didn’t need to learn maintenance, freight handling, fuel economics, weight restrictions, first aid or the subtleties of the Motor Carrier Act. I just needed to know how to take a tractor-trailer on one haul and manoeuvre it backwards and forwards at a loading dock.”

  “Lucky he didn’t think you were a terrorist. Like the guy who wanted to fly the plane but not land it.”

  “He might have but Ryder vouched for me. I learned how to handle a ten-gear transmission, use air brakes and get through an obstacle course. My ability to back up left a little to be desired, but I was only going to have to do it twice. Everything was golden until the weekend before the incineration.”

  “What happened?”

  “What always happens?”

  Ryan took his eyes off the road-a rare thing for him to do-and looked at me, an impish spark in his dark eyes. “What was her name?” he asked.

  “Camilla Lauder. The lovely Camilla. I won’t go into our relationship, which at that point was dying faster than a fruit fly. We hadn’t been seeing each other much while I was undercover. I’d work in Belleville all week and go home weekends, usually to a frosty welcome. She didn’t care anymore whether I was around. With one exception. Saturday the 22nd, we were invited to her boss’s house for dinner.”

  “What’d she do?”

  “Financial analyst at a brokerage firm.”

  “And you expected warm and fuzzy?”

  “I’m not taking relationship advice from a guy living in the Aerosuites Hotel.”

  “Ow. Touche.”

  “Her boss lived out in Etobicoke. It was the first time he’d invited spouses and significant others and we had to be there six o’clock sharp for drinks. I told her no problem, because the incineration was scheduled for Monday. I would work a swing shift Friday and drive in first thing Saturday morning. Be home by noon at the latest. Be showered, shaved and on my best behaviour in time for dinner. It would have worked out perfectly, but you gaping assholes changed the date.”

  “We didn’t, actually,” Ryan said. “Monday was a smokescreen. It was always going to be Saturday, ’cause the incinerator only had one shift, eight a.m. to noon, and it was never that busy after eleven-thirty. The Ensign trucks were supposed to roll in at five to twelve when there was no one around but the intake guy, and we had him bought and paid for.”

  “Our wiretaps didn’t pick up the change until Friday night. Ryder called me at midnight. I should have called Camilla right then but she had chronic insomnia and if I woke her she’d never get back to sleep and blame me and be pissed off, as usual.”

  “Christ, did she sleep in a coffin?”

  “Maybe she should have tried. So I didn’t call. Read was arrested at dawn Saturday and by eight o’clock, Tice was banging on my door, asking if I wanted to make a quick thousand to drive a truck to Woodbridge.”

  “A thousand? The cheap fuck. Him and Read were splitting ten.”

  “I never collected anyway. By eleven o’clock, we were loaded up and on the road. We followed the other trucks to the incinerator. I managed to dock mine without maiming anyone. We had fifteen minutes to kill to make it look like we were unloading. Tice made a call on his cellphone-to you.”

  “I remember. We were pulled over on the highway just past the on-ramp, waiting to escort you to Marco’s.”

  “Tice finished the call and went for a smoke,” I said. “I took the plunge and called Camilla on his phone. Saturday mornings she usually went to Pilates, so I figured I’d get the voice mail and leave a quick message. I never dreamed she’d answer.”

  “How manly of you.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you knew her. Turns out she’d skipped Pilates because of a headache. She was in a pissy mood to begin with and when I told her I might be late, she flipped. Absolutely flipped. A longshoreman would blush at the names she called me. I was trying to calm her down when I saw Tice coming. So I hung up on her. Like throwing gas on the fire, right, but what could I do? Tice got in and told me to roll. When we were a half-mile from the 401 on-ramp, he called you with a heads-up. Being a lazy sonofabitch, he hit redial.”

  “Because his last call had been to me.”

  “Only now he gets Camilla. He’s not expecting a woman, so he says, ‘Who the fuck is this?’ And she gives it right back: ‘Who the fuck are you?’ I could hear it right through his other ear. She must have seen the 613 area code on her caller ID, because she asks, ‘Are you with Jonah?’ He goes, ‘Yeah.’ And she blows me out of the water. Like a killer whale. Like a depth charge. She says, ‘Are you undercover too? If you are, or even if you’re not, tell Jonah if he’s not home by five o’clock he can go fuck himself because he’ll never fuck me again as long as he lives.’”

  “Nice mouth.”

  “So Tice is on to me, right? He has to be. Just to make sure I ask him what the call was and he says, wrong number. Then he starts dialling you. Five digits in, I hit him with the best straight right I can manage while driving this beast of a truck. Catch him in the jaw, his head bangs against the window, he’s out. The tractor starts going one way and the trailer the other but I somehow get control and make it onto the 401.”

  “Blew right the fuck past us,” Ryan said. “Much to our surprise. You were supposed to come along nice and slow, let us fall in behind.”

  “Now I’m barrelling down the 401 with no backup and no way to contact anyone, because the phone fell under Tice’s seat. Then I see the Trenton exit, with the little sign saying there’s an OPP detachment.”

  “So that’s why you got off there.”

  “You remember that off-ramp?”

  “The cloverleaf. You were going round on nine wheels, not eighteen,” Ryan grinned. “We were freaking out, thinking you were gonna roll it over and we’d have to stuff ten million cigarettes into an Escalade.”

  “But I made the turn. Then the road finally straightened out, remember, and you guys came tearing up behind me trying to pass.”

  “With the back of the truck swinging like a hooker in pumps. Almost drove us off the goddamn road.”

  “Sorry. My six lessons didn’t include evasive action. And that’s when the OPP cruiser showed.”

  “We almost hit him head-on,” Ryan said. “We swerved out to pass you and boom, there he was. We ducked back in just in time and then we could see him in the rear-view, braking, turning around, coming after us with the siren, the lights, the whole package.”

  “And you had to leave empty-handed.”

  “Hey, you don’t know how much that hurt.”

  “Marco made it pretty clear the other night.”

  “Never mind. Get to the part about getting shot.”

  “You like that part? Okay. Now I have the cop behind me and it looks safe to pull over. Takes me a couple of football fields to slow the truck down but finally I stop and get out, start walking back to the cruiser with my hands in plain sight. The cop gets out with his holster unsnapped and his hand on his gun butt, asks me what the hell’s going on.”

  “What was his name again?”

  “Colin MacAdam. I tell him it was an attempted hijack and he should call for backup in case you guys come back. He’s about to call it in when Tice swings open the passenger door with a gun in his hand and opens fire. MacAdam goes down. I’d forgotten about Tice. I should have remembered he wouldn’t stay out that long-I’d only hit him with my fist, not my elbow-but in the heat of the moment, I just forgot.”

  “Did you know he had a gun?”

  “No. They weren’t standard issue for Ensign security. But I still should have been more aware.”

  “Strictly hindsight. So?”

  “So MacAdam went down. I scrambled over there, tried to get his gun out of the holster. I almost had it out when Tice shot me in the arm. Then he came walking over with the gun in his hand and a shit-eating grin on his face. He was going to kill us both, the mangy prick. When he was two feet away he pointed the gun at my head. I closed my eyes, kicking myself for calling Camilla. She didn’t care about me anymore. She only wanted me at the party so she wouldn’t be the only one alone. For that one mistake, calling her on his phone, I was going to die, a cop was going to die, and all you fuckers were going to walk. When the gun went off, I didn’t feel a thing. I figured it was the difference between the speeds of light and sound.”

  “Like when you see a batter hit the ball, then hear the crack of the bat.”

  “Right. I’m waiting for my head to blow apart. Bracing myself for darkness, stars, whatever you see in your last second alive. And nothing happened. I opened my eyes and Tice was down on the ground, spread-eagled on his back with a good-sized hole in his forehead. MacAdam had his gun out. Got it free while Tice was bearing down on me and shot him dead. And that was pretty much that.”

  “How’d he make out?” Ryan asked.

  “MacAdam? Paraplegic. The bullet hit his armpit where his body armour couldn’t stop it. Ripped his spinal cord on the way out. He’ll be in a chair the rest of his life.”

  “That bothers you?”

  I took a long look at the man beside me. “Of course it does. If you had been in my place, it wouldn’t bother you?”

  “No,” Ryan said.

  “Why the hell not?”

  “You didn’t shoot him,” Ryan said.

  “He wouldn’t have got shot if-”

  “If what? If you hadn’t called your girlfriend? If you had hit Tice harder, knocked him out longer? If you’d known he had a gun? If MacAdam had slept in or caught a cold or had a flat or was on the night shift? Had his body armour on right? The man knew the risks when he took the job.”

  “I can’t just-”

  “It’s behind you, Jonah. Walk away. That’s what I do. And I keep walking.”

  “Well, I can’t. Not if I want to stay human.”

  “Human, my hard hairy ass. What if someone comes bearing down on you with a piece? Or on me? You gonna have the jam to shoot your way out? Or you gonna be weighed down by all this what if shit? ‘Gee, if I pull the trigger it might do this, it might do that, it might ricochet off Ricky the Clit’s bowling ball head and hit some old lady on the sidewalk.’”

  “So if you were in my place, you wouldn’t feel guilty about MacAdam?”

  “I didn’t say that. Jews don’t own the market on guilt. I’m Catholic, man, I was guilty before I was born. Sure, I’d help the guy out if I was in a position to. Lay out for a nurse or a wheelchair or whatnot. But I wouldn’t carry it around my neck the rest of my life. Because staying human, as you put it, isn’t my priority.”

  “What is?”

  “Staying alive.”

  When my phone rang again, I was relieved to see it wasn’t Clint calling back. Then not so relieved when I remembered that the 808 exchange in Toronto is reserved for its police service. I answered anyway.

  “Hey, Geller,” Katherine Hollinger said.

  “Morning, sarge,” I said. Ryan shot me a look. I shrugged.

  “I thought maybe you’d like to have coffee.”

  “I would,” I said. “Sometime next week?”

  “I was thinking more like now. In my office.”

  “Is this a social coffee or a business coffee?”

  “We’ll discuss that over the coffee. Fifteen minutes?”

  “Can’t,” I said. “I’m on the road.”

  “All roads lead back to Homicide,” she said.

  “Not this one.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m taking a drive.”

  “Turn around.”

  “Okay, Kate,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “Ballistics, Jonah,” she said.

  She had my full attention.

  “The gun that killed your friend Franny?”

  “Yes?”

  “Same one killed Kenneth Page. The very man you were asking about. So why don’t you stop whatever you’re doing and get down here. Coffee’s on me this time.”

  “As soon as I get back.”

  “From where?”

  I heard a loud, abrasive voice say “Gimme that phone,” and then McDonough was on the line. “We’re not asking, Geller,” he snarled. “We’re telling you to get your useless butt down here now.”

  “What do you need a useless butt for? Or should I say another one?”

  “Come on, cupcake. Come put your bullshit story on the record.”

  “Lighten up, McDonough. We’re on the same side.”

  “Same side? We’re not even on the same field,” he rasped. “You’re a waterboy, Geller, a hanger-on. You couldn’t make the real grade, so you grab on to coats like mine. Don’t give me crap about being on my side. You’re more like something stuck to my shoe.”

  “And yet you request the pleasure of my company.”

  “I’m not requesting shit. I’m telling you to get down here.”

  I sighed, then fiddled with the radio again and brought the static back up. “What’s that, McDonough? I couldn’t hear that last part.”

  “Get down here now!” I heard him bellow.

  “Are you still there?” I called. “What’s that you said? Damn this connection. I’m afraid we’re breaking up.”

  The Niagara Peninsula lay ahead of us, a dark outline in the haze over the water. We were in wine country now, passing vineyards where bright strands of wire were intertwined with vines to keep them in neat rows. I told Ryan what Hollinger had said about the same gun killing Page and Franny.

  “You know what I’d like to know?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Where Ricky Messina was when they were getting killed.”

  “Why him?”

  “Because people are dying and it isn’t me killing them. And because there’s a Buffalo connection.”

  “Maybe we’ll get a chance to ask him.”

  “Fine with me,” he said. “Once I get my guns out of the trunk.”

  We went through Grimsby, Beamsville and Jordan, bypassed Niagara-on-the-Lake, and headed southeast toward Fort Erie. Traffic thinned out once we were past the exit to the Niagara Parkway and the Falls, so Ryan stayed farther back from the truck than before. Away from the escarpment, the land was entirely flat. We drove past copses of poplars trembling in the warm wind.

  I said, “You said something about your stepfather before.”

  “Yeah?”

  “That he beat you. For sport, you said.”

  “So?”

  “What was his problem?”

  “His problem? I was his problem. Me, Dante Ryan, only son of Sid and the former Mrs. Ryan. My mother was still young and good-looking when she married Dominic. Everyone figured there’d be more kids, but nothing happened. Usually they blame the woman, call her barren, but my mother already had a baby so everyone knew the problem was him, not her. I was living proof he didn’t have the goods. So every chance he got he made me pay. Christ, if I was breathing too loud I got smacked.”

  The highway narrowed from three lanes down to two. Ryan moved to the right and slowed slightly, letting a few more cars fall in between us and the truck but always keeping it in sight.

  “I tried to kill him once,” Ryan said. “I was maybe seventeen and he had given me a royal beating because he thought I was stealing cigarettes from him. Which I was but fuck him anyway. The next night I go out on a B and E with my friends and I find a gun in the house, in the guy’s bedside table in one of those purple Crown Royal bags. A. 38 snubbie. The next time Dom tried to lay a beating on me, I put the gun on him. Told him what a useless lazy ugly fucker he was and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. The ammo was so old it wouldn’t fire. Just my luck, I break into a house where the guy keeps a limp-dick gun in a bag. He really gave it to me that time, Dom, I mean with all the trimmings. I couldn’t walk right for a month. That’s when I started teaching myself about guns. Never bought or stole another cheapie. To this day I arm myself only with the best.”

  “Is he still with your mother?”

  “Dom? Nope.”

  “Still alive?”

  “Definite nope.”

  “What happened?”

  “I left home soon as I could. Once I was established and could support my mother, she had no more use for him. I’m pretty sure he was beating her too. So she kicked the bum out.”

  “And?”

  “He must have been overcome with grief. Maybe burdened with remorse over the way he treated her. Fuck, the way he treated me. Either way, a few weeks later, sadly, he took his own life.”

  “How?”

  “Shot himself in the head.”

  “How many times?” I asked.

  CHAPTER 42

  Buffalo: Friday, June 30

  Rich Leckie watched through a gap in the curtains as his wife and daughter left the house. He flinched when the front door slammed, even though he knew it meant someone going out, not coming in. He watched as they got into the car, watched Leora back out of the driveway onto the street, not paying attention as usual, forcing an eastbound driver to swerve around her back end, flashing a finger and blasting his horn.

  And finally they were gone. He was alone, thank God. He was on his way back to bed when a dark thought crept into his mind: Leora hadn’t locked up behind her. The new deadbolt hadn’t turned. It made a distinctive click and he hadn’t heard it. Panic rose up in him. He felt like rats were crawling over his bare feet. He could hardly swallow his own spit. He had to go down and lock up but what if it was too late?

  What if Ricky was already in?

  No. It couldn’t be. Rich would have heard something. Footsteps. Old floorboards creaking. A high girlish laugh. The sound of a gun barrel slashing through the air. Of cartilage breaking.

  He had to go downstairs now, before it was too late, and lock up. Stupid fat fucking Leora, putting him in a spot like this. Okay, she didn’t know about Ricky-he told her he had gotten mugged that night-but she knew better than to leave the door unlocked. This was still Buffalo, and hardly the best part. He tried to breathe through the panic but the best he could manage were shallow gasps. He looked around for something he could use as a weapon, settling for an African fertility statue Leora had bought four years before Leigh-Anne was conceived. Eighteen inches high and made of acacia, as good a club as he would find. Clutching the statue in his right hand, holding onto the banister with his left, he moved silently down the stairs. Halfway down, his bathrobe fell open and he cursed but couldn’t close it, afraid to let go of the banister or his club. As he neared the bottom of the stairs he paused-exposed, vulnerable, ridiculous with his shrivelled little turtle-head dick hanging there in a nest of grey hair-and listened with every ounce of concentration he could muster. He could hear the air conditioning unit humming away in the front room. The fridge rumbling in the kitchen. Water dripping-why couldn’t Leigh-Anne ever close the faucet all the way? But no footsteps, no laughter. No sound of a round being chambered. And then he could see the front door, saw that the deadbolt handle was horizontal, not vertical-locked, thank God-and he took the last step down, missed it and landed jarringly hard on his left heel. His knee hyperextended and slid forward, sending him hard onto his back, fertility statue still in hand.