Cape Diamond Page 3

  “Your best guess on time of death?”

  “Around midnight, I would suspect,” said the inspector. “Full rigor hasn’t set in. He was probably put up on the fence around three or four in the morning. Who’s going to tell Sean?”

  “I am.”

  “You think that’s a good idea? At the sight of you, he’ll probably lose it.”

  “My case. My notification.”

  “You can delegate a thing like that.”

  “Don’t want to.” Yakabuski looked one more time at Augustus Morrissey lying on the gurney. His heft was so great, the gurney had been ratcheted down to its lowest setting, but even then it was stretching the fabric and seemed at risk of collapsing.

  “You want to see how he’s going to react, don’t you?”

  “Might be worth seeing.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t want to be in the middle of that little experiment.” Newton stood up and motioned for one of his Ident cops to come over and start the official examination of the body. “Is it true no one called it in?”

  “It’s true.”

  “A man hanging from a fence in a kid’s sports field and no one calls it in. These projects are fucked.” He spat on the ground and walked away.

  Chapter Six

  It was the second week of December, but the city of Springfield was still waiting for winter to arrive. Most years, it would have blown into town weeks ago, come by way of a single storm. The snow would stay and that was that. For days afterwards, city plows would be turning over chunks of snow with bright red sumac frozen inside. But every so often there was a year when the snows were late to come, when the wind laid on the other side of some ridge it couldn’t climb out of, and you had this false season.

  Like everyone else in the city, Yakabuski had begun to look for signs of the seasons about to change. On his way to Cork’s Town, he slowed at the apex of the North Shore Bridge to look upriver and down. No cloud on either horizon. The sky the same faded-denim blue it had been for weeks. Another sunny, windless day, temperature twenty degrees above the seasonal average. The Springfield Sun seemed to be running out of ways to remind people how odd it all was. They had already run front-page photos of children swimming at a beach and people windsurfing on Buckham’s Bay. One of the television stations had run a video that was shot at an O’Hearn sawmill, showing workers swatting away a mid-morning invasion of gnats. But it had been several days since the last weather story, and Yakabuski suspected the reporters were running out of things to say. Like everyone else in Springfield, they were now in a holding pattern, waiting for the anomaly to go away, for the natural world to come back.

  . . .

  The Shiners had owned a tavern at the corner of Belfast Street and Cork’s Town Road since 1837. It was burned down by the newly formed Springfield Regional Police in 1847. Burned again during the Conscription Riots of 1917. When it first opened, it was called Mother McGuire’s, the Shamrock Hotel after that, and since 1944 the Silver Dollar, a nightclub that to many in Springfield was as much of an institution as the Grainger Opera House or the Georgian-designed city hall.

  The Springfield River was directly behind the Silver Dollar and to the right of it was an empty lot a developer in Toronto bought many years ago, thinking he would build riverside condominiums, until Augustus Morrissey visited one day and explained if such a building were ever erected, the developer would be dropped from the top floor on the day it opened.

  To the right of the nightclub was the Blue Bird, a diner frequented mostly by residents of a nursing home run by the diocese of St. Bridget’s. The diner closed every day at 4 p.m., and Augustus had made a deal with the owner years ago to not have his dancers begin their sets before that time, to avoid overlap between customers. The owner of the Blue Bird was appreciative and never complained about anything he saw or heard at the Silver Dollar. Morrissey didn’t mind helping the diocese, and figured girls willing to dance in the daytime weren’t worth the money anyway.

  It was a fifteen-minute drive from the North Shore projects to Cork’s Town, and Belfast Street was crowded when Yakabuski arrived — people entering and exiting the taverns, standing on street corners talking and waving their arms, cutting across the street as though it were closed to traffic. Saturday-evening foot traffic on a Monday afternoon. The news was already out. Augustus Morrissey had been found murdered on the North Shore. Yakabuski turned down the alley that ran between the Silver Dollar and the Blue Bird, parked his Jeep, and headed to the front door.

  . . .

  The doorman in front of the Silver Dollar stood six-foot-three and weighed close to three hundred pounds. His name was Eddie O’Malley, and he was wearing a checkered suit that pinched his shoulders and rode three inches too high on the sleeves. His tie was green, with a knot so tight it looked like a cat’s-eye marble. On his feet were polished black shoes that looked like wake boards and on his head a fedora hat perched so high it resembled a boy’s beanie, or a smoke stack on the roof of a Cork’s Town triplex. O’Malley had been tending door at the Silver Dollar for more than a decade.

  “Evening, Eddie,” said Yakabuski when he reached the front of the nightclub.

  “Evening, Mr. Yakabuski.”

  “Is Sean in?”

  “He expecting you?”

  “I reckon he is.”

  “All right. I’ll take you back.”

  The inside of the Silver Dollar had the smells of any nightclub in Cork’s Town: beer, melted cheese, tobacco, Aqua Velva, hairspray, and Charlie perfume. It had the same noises too: clinking pool balls and chiming video-lottery terminals, the clicking of change-belts, the laughter of men who rarely laughed, the laughter of women who laughed too much. What made the Silver Dollar different were its provenance and its size, easily the largest tavern in Cork’s Town. Yakabuski followed the bouncer’s massive back as it weaved between the tavern tables. Although the entertainment wouldn’t start until later that afternoon, the room was already full, and most of the patrons took a moment to watch them pass. Some leaned over their tables to whisper something. A few in the farthest corners of the room stood up to point.

  O’Malley looked over his shoulder and said: “How did Augustus end up on the North Shore, Mr. Yakabuski? That doesn’t make any sense to me.”

  “Me either, Eddie. You seen anyone from the North Shore in here recently?”

  The bouncer gave a chuckling snort but didn’t bother answering. It was the sort of question you could do that with. They walked to the end of the bar and then took a left, down a hallway that had another doorman standing in front of a velvet rope. Eddie waved at the man, and he stood aside. They went down the hallway, which had a half-dozen office doors, and stopped at the last door on the right. Just before knocking, a quizzical look came over O’Malley’s face. He put down his raised fist and said, “When was the last time you saw Sean, Mr. Yakabuski?”

  “It’s been a while.”

  “Since what happened to Tommy?”

  “Why? What happened to Tommy?”

  The bouncer looked confused. “You killed him, Mr. Yakabuski. You don’t remember that?”

  The look on O’Malley’s face was sad to see: a pained contortion, all the man’s mental prowess turned to the problem of figuring out how Frank Yakabuski could forget he was the one to kill Sean Morrissey’s cousin and best friend, Tommy Bangles, up at Ragged Lake.

  Yakabuski regretted the joke immediately. He felt small and cruel, as though he had just bullied a child or made a lewd joke about a woman who had briefly left the table.

  “Of course I remember what happened to Tommy, Eddie. I was just trying to . . . forget it. I’m sorry. I haven’t seen Sean since then, no.”

  “Shit. I should have thought about that. I should really tell him you’re here before we walk in.”

  “He was annoyed?”

  “Annoyed? Mr. Yakabuski, I never seen him anything like i
t. He trashed his office. It had to be completely redone.”

  “Well, we’re standing in front of his door right now, Eddie. Why don’t we just knock and walk in. See what happens.”

  “Oh man, I should have thought about that. Why don’t I think about these things?”

  The doorman was hitting himself on the head. How could he forget something like that? Thump. Thump. When are you going to remember the important stuff? Thump. Thump. The fedora was hanging on O’Malley’s head by some invisible thread. In between blows, Yakabuski pushed open the door.

  Chapter Seven

  Sean Morrissey was sitting behind a large metal and chrome desk, his head turned to some papers, and when the door opened, he raised his head slowly, no surprise registering on his face when he saw Yakabuski standing there. After a few seconds he said: “I was wondering if it would be you.”

  “Senior detective. It’s my case.”

  Morrissey was dressed in a charcoal grey suit with a gleam to it that let you know it was expensive, even if you knew nothing at all about suits. A white shirt but no tie. Cufflinks with a blue gemstone that looked like a summer sky after a good, hard rain. His hair curled around his collar, and there was just a tinge of grey around his temples. He kept staring at Yakabuski but didn’t speak.

  O’Malley had stopped hitting himself in the head and was standing with the fedora in his hands. “I’m sorry, Mr. Morrissey. He said you were expecting him. I figured with what happened to your dad and everything, I figured that it was . . . you know . . . true?”

  Morrissey held up his hand and the doorman stopped talking. Then he curled his fingers over and flicked them upwards. Did that twice, and the bouncer left the room, closing the door behind him. After flicking his hands, Morrissey went back to doing nothing at all. Yakabuski knew Sean Morrissey well, had questioned him in the holding cells at the police station during at least half-a-dozen criminal investigations, and after he thought enough time had passed, he said, “You dishonour your cousin, Sean.”

  Morrissey’s body twitched, and his eyes flashed with an anger so malevolent there seemed to be millennia worth of antipathy staring across the desk at Yakabuski.

  He continued, “You dishonour Tommy by pretending his death was something it was not. Tommy Bangles died on his feet, in battle, the way he would have wanted and the way you always imagined he would go. He died a soldier’s death. It was not unfair. It was not an insult to his memory. It is your desire for revenge that does that.”

  Yakabuski strode into the room until he was standing directly in front of Morrissey’s desk and said, “We need to talk about your father.”

  Morrissey continued staring a few more seconds before saying, “This soldier’s death you talk about, we must take your word for it, right, Yak? Everyone else in Ragged Lake is dead. You were last man standing? Do I have the story right?”

  “If you wanted people still standing, maybe you shouldn’t have sent Tommy.”

  For the first time there was motion on Morrissey’s face that wasn’t a flash of anger. A thin smile. After that, a bending of the head. The gestures of a man enjoying a good memory. Before long, he stretched out his right hand and said, “Take a seat, Yak. Tell me what you know about my father’s murder.”

  He was taking control. Yakabuski didn’t mind. The questions were going to be the same.

  “I don’t have cause of death,” he said, sitting down in a chair in front of the desk. “He was stabbed and beaten. Sometime last night. Can you think of any reason your father would be over on the North Shore?”

  “No. I can’t remember my father ever going up there. Why would he?”

  “Are the Shiners doing any business up there?”

  “You expect me to answer that?”

  “It would be nice if you did.”

  “The North Shore is a cesspool. You know that. Why the fuck would I have business up there? I’d have to burn my suit every time I came home.”

  “When was the last time you saw your father?”

  “Day before yesterday. We played euchre at St. Bridget’s.”

  “Can you think of anyone who would want your father dead?”

  “No sane person.”

  “That’s a no?”

  “That’s a search Google. You can come up with your own list.”

  “Any trouble recently?”

  “No. My dad was retired.”

  “That’s right, you’ve been running the Shiners for, how many years is it now, Sean? Four?”

  “Never heard of anything called the Shiners. I’ve been in charge of my family’s business holdings for about four years. You’re right on the date.”

  Yakabuski wrote something in his steno pad. Flipped back a few pages. “I have a couple different birth dates for your father.”

  “I’m not surprised. He came over from Belfast. Probably made his documents in the hull of the ship.”

  “I have his age as either seventy-six or eighty-one. Do you have a preference?”

  “He’d probably like to be younger.”

  Yakabuski wrote it down. After that he rubbed his neck, trying to work out a kink. He looked around Morrissey’s office. There were no photos anywhere. No wood, a lot of chrome and white paint and two Japanese prints of plants that looked like they would die if you ever tried to grow them on the Northern Divide.

  “So, you have no idea what your father was doing on the North Shore,” he said. “No idea why anyone would want him dead. No theories, speculations, or possible explanations for the murder. How am I doing so far?”

  “Pretty good. You should be a detective.” Morrissey leaned back in his chair and cradled his hands behind his head. A full smile was now on his face.

  “Well, let me ask you a question that you will be able to answer, Sean. What are you going to do about this?”

  “I’m going to have a funeral for my father.”

  “After that?”

  “Bury him, I suppose.”

  Yakabuski closed his steno pad. “You don’t want to answer, Sean, that’s fine. But I would caution you against taking matters into your own hands.”

  “You’re cautioning me?”

  “That’s right. The smart move here would be to stay away and let us catch whoever it was that killed your father. I’ll keep you updated on the investigation.”

  “Let you avenge the death of my father?”

  “You should consider it.”

  “Let the man who killed my cousin avenge the death of my father? I’m considering whether you’re drunk.”

  “I don’t blame you for being angry, Sean. But if you start any trouble in those projects, if you send any sort of crew up there, you will be making life difficult for a whole lot of people, and you will be shut down.”

  “Did you come here just to give me that warning, Yak?”

  Yakabuski rose from his seat, gave his back a stretch, and said, “Why would I ever give a man a warning? I thought you were from around here.”

  Both men smiled. Yakabuski turned to leave but before he reached the door Morrissey said, “A question from me, Yak. That seems fair, doesn’t it?”

  Yakabuski turned to look at him. “What would you like to know?”

  “Is it true, what I’ve heard about my father’s eyes?”

  “It’s probably true.”

  “You know what that means, don’t you?”

  “I know what it could mean. Or what it used to mean. It might not mean much of anything anymore.”

  “A coincidence? That’s what you’re telling me?”

  Yakabuski saw the anger returning to his face. He gripped the pen in his hand with so much force the knuckles were pinch-white.

  “Maybe I will give you that warning, Sean. Stay away from the North Shore. You and any crew you might be thinking about sending up there. Get in the middle of th
is investigation, and I promise you’ll regret it.”

  O’Malley was still standing on the other side of the door when Yakabuski opened it. The doorman walked him back through the tavern, two women unfurling a white rug on the stage and a DJ in the booth beside the bar testing a hand-held microphone.

  Chapter Eight

  Dusk came quickly in Springfield. Came each day when the sun slipped behind the western haunch of the escarpment on the North Shore, a process that took — from when the sun first pressed down on the roofs of the apartment buildings to when the world went dark — about forty-five minutes. Give or take. Depending on the time of year.

  It could be witnessed just about anywhere in Springfield, and it was a sort of unofficial clock for the city. When the sun hung above the escarpment and started sliding down the backside of the projects, people knew they had less than an hour before twilight. Mothers would call their children in from backyards. Girls needing to walk through the back streets of Cork’s Town or one of the city parks would start heading home. Night-shift cabbies would finish their suppers and walk out to their driveways, their backs already hurting.

  A dozen times a day, most people in Springfield would look up at the cliffs on the North Shore and calculate the distance of the sun to the top of the apartment buildings, judging what was left of the day. From the corner of Belfast and Derry there was an unobstructed view of the North Shore, the apartment buildings across the river looking like the turrets of some castle tucked high on the Scottish coastline. The sun had just started its descent when Yakabuski reached the intersection, and he stopped his Jeep to watch.

  Sean Morrissey was Augustus’s only child but looked nothing like his father. Although he had bulked up, as a young man you would have called him slight. He had fine features and curly black hair he wore long. More than one person had said he looked like Jim Morrison, an effect Morrissey encouraged by wearing leather pants, white shirts, and alligator boots for most of his twenties, until he switched to expensive suits, at the demand of his father some said, although Morrissey seemed as comfortable in the new suits as he had in the jeans and the leather.