Headhunter (30 page)

"Child, that one's just to make sure."

"Oh, please, please, please, it hurts too much. Don't do that again."

"Then come, child, come. Let's hear your footsteps on the stairs.

"I'm coming. I'm coming. I'm coming."

"Oh, Sparky. Please. What are those tears? Come downstairs and stroke my hair and let's feel good together. Tell me you love me, child."

"I do. I mean it. I love you. Mommy. Mommy, you fucking cunt!"

No, Sir, that thing in the Mask was never Dr. Jekyll

5:43 a.m.

By the time the sun came up that morning Natasha Wilkes was ready and waiting. With a cup of coffee in her hand, she watched from the cabin window as the orange rim of the solar crescent broke through the horizon. Then she buttoned up her parka, picked up her gloves, and walked outside into the mountain air.

Her cross-country skis were still leaning against the north wall of the log chalet where she had placed them the night before, but now they were coated with frost. For several minutes she worked at cleaning them off, then she stood up straight and stretched, her eyes scanning far down Seymour Mountain to the waking city below.
Poor schmucks,
Natasha thought,
just another working day.
Then she recalled that it was Remembrance Day and that no one would be at labor. The thought pissed her off. That meant people on the slopes.

At twenty-seven Natasha Wilkes was already established as the city's foremost movie critic. She held Fine Arts degrees from both London and New York. She went to work on an average day at four o'clock, sat in a theater for a couple of hours watching films, then went home to write her column and pack it in by ten. And if landing that job wasn't good enough, yesterday she had sold her first romantic novel.

Natasha Wilkes felt elated. Life was going well for her.

After using blue Swix wax on her Silva skis, she snapped the skis on to her feet. Though it was only November, already the mountain was covered with snow and was building up a good base—and that meant a super ski year. She pulled her toque down over her ears, fluffed her black hair on her shoulders, then gripping a bamboo pole in each gloved hand set off down the trail.
At least for a while,
she thought,
I should have the mountain to myself.

By 6:25 that morning she had worked up a very good
sweat. Natasha Wilkes was now standing on a small precipice about fifteen feet upslope from the Seymour River. The water below was rushing with run-off, crystal-clear and cold. Unhooking her pack and removing a thermos, the woman poured herself some hot chocolate.

At first she did not see the skier who had just come around a bend in the trail ahead. The steam was rising thick from her cup and the sight of Vancouver stretched out below was commanding her attention. When she did see the figure approaching her it was with a tinge of resentment. For when Natasha Wilkes skied in the mountains, she liked to be alone. Now there was a crowd.

The skier had first come into view thirty feet from Natasha. At fifteen feet Natasha noticed that the figure was all bundled up and wearing a full face mask. That seemed a little strange to her, for the season was not midwinter. And besides this was cross-country, not downhill. All she could see was a break for the mouth and two small holes for the eyes.

When the skier was seven yards away, Wilkes drained her cup.

At five yards distance she screwed the lid on the thermos.

At three she stashed the container back in her pack and went to zip it up.

Then she noticed that the tips of both pairs of skis were finger-locked together, yet still this person didn't make the slightest move to stop.

Asshole,
Natasha Wilkes thought as they were face to face. Then she went to open her mouth and say, "Why don't you watch what you're doing?" But before she could get the words from her throat, the karate chop cut her down.

By the time that the woman stopped tumbling she was just three feet from the river.

Still dazed, her mind didn't register the knife cutting away the front of her pants.

11:10 a.m.

"Full dress parade!" Rick Scarlett exclaimed. "What the hell is that for?"

"Maybe 'cause it's Remembrance Day and the Force lost men in the wars. Or maybe it's 'cause the Commissioner is flying in this morning," William Tipple said.

"Just great," Spann said. "As if we've nothing else to do."

They were now sitting in the White Spot with a second cup of coffee. Finally they had connected, for yesterday when Scarlett and Spann had tried to find Tipple they had once again been told the man was out of town. He had been up in Kelowna giving evidence at a trial. "We've lost Hardy," Scarlett said abruptly. "Join the club," the Corporal said. "We've lost track of Rackstraw."

"You're joking?"

"We tailed him out to Airport South where it seems he had rented a plane. The guy's got a private license and he took off into the sky. It was an aircraft with pontoons." "Where do you think he was going?" "I have no idea."

"So what do we do now?" Katherine Spann asked. Tipple shrugged his shoulders. "Keep our stakeout warm I guess and wait till they show up. Nothing else we can do."

"Sure there is," Scarlett said. "We can all go twiddle our thumbs at a full dress fucking parade. You know, sometimes I wonder. Really, I do."

11:15 a.m.

Robert DeClercq was frightened. For the dream had come
again.

Last night he had lain on his back for hours and marveled at the bursts of color exploding upon the ceiling which he knew in reality were not there. It was just the amphetamines. At 2:00 a.m. he told himself that he was through with the
drugs.

At 3:00 a.m. he had risen to take an Atavin in the hope that it would bring him sleep. At 3:45 a.m. at last he had started to slip away. And that was when he had begun to dream about that house in the woods.

Instantly he had woken up and had broken out in a sweat. The rest of the night was spent staring up at the ceiling. At one point just before dawn he had thought he heard a voice from over on Genevieve's side of the bed. "You've lost it," the voice had whispered. But when he looked over all he could see was his wife sleeping peacefully.
Just let it pass,
he had told himself.
You're hallucinating.

At 5:00 a.m. he had sat up and had spent half an
hour just
watching Genevieve at rest. Her hair was spread out across her pillow like willow-wisps in a breeze. "Do you know how much I love you?" he had whispered in her ear. And then he had climbed out of bed.

At 5:55 a.m. he had left the house to start another day.

Now he stood on the airport ramp and viewed the flight come in.

The Commissioner had arrived.

1984

3:02 p.m.

Though cops themselves, even Spann and Scarlett were surprised by the size of the room. Who would have suspected that the Force had this many ears?

Just before three they had parked their patrol car in the lot behind 1200 West 73rd and had walked to the entrance door of Vancouver RCMP Headquarters. With identification tags pinned to their chests they had taken the elevator up to Commercial Crime where Tipple was waiting for them. As the door slid open both cops saw a smile on the Corporal's face. "Tail's back on the donkey," Tipple said.

The three of them walked down a long corridor, the Commercial Crime member in the lead, and stopped outside a door. On the door some wag had pinned up a hand-printed sign that read: "Don't be too astonished, ye who enter here. Just beyond this point is 1984." Tipple turned the knob and ushered both of them inside.

There were more than 500 tape recorders stored inside the room. Spann and Scarlett were astonished.

About a quarter of the machines had take-up reels that were turning, while every few seconds a few would stop and others would begin to revolve. It took them a moment to realize that what they were looking at was only
half
the recorders present, for each master machine had a slave machine positioned on the shelf behind it.

"Listen to this," Tipple said, as he walked over to one of the Uhers and placed his finger on play. "Rackstraw flew in a while ago and went straight to his studio. He started phoning in a rush."

The Corporal indicated two sets of headphones hooked up to the recorder and the Constables put them on. As with most bugging devices used by the RCMP, the Uhers work on voltage. The machine sits dormant and shut off when the
tapped phone is not in use. If the receiver is lifted there is a change in the electrical current running through the line. This change sets off the recorder and its reels begin to spin. Each recording set has a master machine to make an original tape plus a secondary slave machine that produces a working copy. Tipple punched the play button on one of the slave machines.

Spann and Scarlett both listened as the connection went through.

"Your number please," an operator asked.

A voice that they knew was Rackstraw's responded to the question.

"Where's he calling?" Katherine Spann asked, removing one of the headphones from her ear.

"New Orleans," Tipple said.

"Hey, what's happenin'?" New Orleans asked. It sounded like the
zobop
from the ritual, otherwise known as The Wolf.

"It's me."

"Yes, you?"

"They're not where they're s'posed to be."

For several moments there was a long pregnant pause on the line. Then Rackstraw added: "Either it's a ripoff or Weasel's bin scooped."

"Keep cool," New Orleans said.

"Same mountain. Same lake. I mean you can see the friggin' border just to the north. I tell ya I checked the cache and they just ain't there."

"Easy. Things can happen. He may not be the coldest man but he does know how to survive. Give the Weasel time and he'll come through."

"Man. I got people waitin'!"

"Give him one more day."

"I can't wait no one more . . ."

"You'll wait!" New Orleans said sharply. "The man is
family!"

And then the line went dead. Scarlett and Spann could still hear Rackstraw's heavy breathing. Once he hung up too, they removed the headphones from their ears.

Spann said to Tipple: "Well, you found your half, and even
he
can't find ours."

"How come he talks so freely?" Rick Scarlett asked. "I mean, we rousted the man once, so he must know something's afoot."

" 'Cause he thinks he's smart," the Corporal replied. "He's
got phones at home and at his recording studio. Those phones he knows might be tapped. Next door to his music place is a small nondescript building that houses an Austrian import house. The buildings look separate, but they share the same basement. The phone in the storeroom of the import house is the one he uses."

"How'd you find that out?"

"Easy," Tipple said. "We got bugs in the walls as well. It was my idea to put a listening device in the basement too. Crooks always seem to think it safer when they talk underground. In this case there's no cellar talk, but what there is is all these sounds of a door being opened and closed. Actually two doors: one of 'em squeaks. We went in there one night and invisibly tossed the place. We found a passage hidden secret-like behind a movable shelf of stereo speakers. It was the hinge on the shelf that squeaked."

"Not bad," Scarlett said.

"Nah, just dumb." Tipple turned from the two of them and pointed across the room. "See those twenty Uhers there? Now that's what I call a system. That's a crook with class, though he's a dumb one too."

"Who's he? Chinese tong? Black Hand? Something like that?"

"Nope," Tipple said. "Just a smart-ass lawyer."

It was at that moment that the master recorder hooked onto Rackstraw's phone clicked and began, to revolve. Then abruptly it stopped.

"Change his mind?" Spann asked.

"No, that's an incoming call. They got this system, see. The procedure is that someone phoning in lets it ring twice and then hangs up. The initial call sets off a warning light in the mixing-board panel of Rackstraw's studio. It tells our friend the Fox that there's a call coming in and to get his ass next door. The guy on the other end of the line knows to try once more in five minutes or so. By that time Rackstraw's in the basement next door and ready to pick up the receiver."

Tipple flipped a toggle switch that activated two speakers overhead, and then they waited. Sure enough, five minutes later the Uher began to revolve again. They could hear the trill of the phone as it rang and then Rackstraw picking it up.

"I'm here," the Fox said, his voice trapped in one of the speakers.

"It's me," a second voice stated. John Lincoln Hardy.

"You're hot!"

"Don't I fuckin' know it! The guy who picked the package up in Spokane was
followed,
man! I just grabbed it an' ran like hell an' lost em in the mountains. I tell you, man, I fear them dudes was the FBI!"

So that's it,
Spann thought.
Wentworth tried to screw us.

Obviously Hardy had left Calgary on his return from New Orleans and immediately crossed the border back into the States. He was supposed to connect with the mule who picked the masks up in Spokane. Hardy would then take the package and hide it in a cache near a lake in the mountains just south of the borderline. His job done the Weasel would cross legitimately back into Canada, leaving Rackstraw to fly in the pontoon plane and pick the package up. All this trouble was Wentworth's fault because he wanted an exporting bust.

Play it by the rules,
Spann thought,
and this is what you get.

"Don't you dare come roun' here," Rackstraw said with conviction.

"I know. I know. I know."

"I tell you, man, if this came down 'cause of the mask that pussy stole, if it was that bitch Charlotte put the steam on us, you ain't gonna live to see the moon tonight. Now you got that? Where the fuck's the mask?"

"She don't know. She sold it for some junk. Even with the blade on her that's all she could say."

"Now I mean it, man. No matter what, don't you come roun' here. You know where to go."

"Huh, huh," John Lincoln Hardy said, and the Uher once more shut down.