Stray Bullets (22 page)

“Come on, come on,” St. Clair said. “Get to the shooting.”

“Okay, Mr. Sensitive, okay.” She flipped over to the next page. “‘It had just turned very cold, and we were both wearing sneakers. I remember Kyle slipped on the sidewalk before we even got there. We were walking up through the parking lot when it started to snow. Kyle had never seen snow before. He’d been waiting for it. Asking every day: “Daddy, when’s it going to snow?”’”

She looked up from the notes. St. Clair hadn’t budged. His eyes were laserlike on the same spot. His face had softened somehow, and he looked genuinely upset.

“‘Then I heard this loud sound. Again and again. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a real gunshot before. I looked over, and Kyle was on the ground. Not moving. I saw the hole in the side of his head from the light from the window, and I started screaming.’”

She heard a sniffling sound in the concrete room, looked up again, and saw St. Clair’s eyes tearing up. His shoulders began to tremble.

“‘I’d given him a toy cell phone to play with, and he hadn’t even had time to take off the wrapper.’”

The sniffing got louder.

She kept reading. “‘The rest is a blur. I remember holding him. Screaming for help. Then an officer arrived. The ambulance.’ Then after this part of the statement, Detective Greene asks him a few questions:

“Question: ‘Any idea how many shots were fired?’

“Answer: ‘None.’

“Question: ‘Where they came from?’

“Answer: ‘No idea.’

“Question: ‘Did you see anyone else?’

“Answer: ‘It was already dark. I was focused on my son.’

“Question: ‘Just before the shooting, one witness heard someone say “Take that,” or “Here, take this,” something like that. Did you hear those words spoken?’

“Answer: ‘I might have. It’s all a blur.’”

She looked at St. Clair again. “‘Take this.’ You guys talk as if you’re in some old-fashioned gangster movie.”

He was still focused on the wall, like an actor who didn’t want to get out of character. “Keep reading,” he said,

“Another question by Greene. ‘What happened next?’ Answer: ‘I remember hearing a car driving off. People yelling. On their cell phones. I didn’t even think to call 911. Then a young officer ran up, the ambulance. I still can’t sleep.’”

She put the book down. A flood of tears was streaming down St. Clair’s cheeks. His eyes had never left the mythical witness box. Damn, it was moving.

He put one hand out, palm up, on the table. “At this point I’ll tap you on the elbow. You fumble around in that little vest all you lawyers wear and find a fucking Kleenex,” he said. “Only a single scrunched-up tissue. Pass it over to me. Here, do it now.”

“Larkin, really—”

“It’ll work, you’ll see. Try it.”

She pantomimed looking for a tissue, acted as if she pulled one out of her vest pocket, and pretend-passed it over.

His eyes still on the supposed witness, St. Clair nodded at her and rolled the fake tissue up in his hand.

She could imagine the jury being enthralled by his little performance.

He smacked the table, making a hollow sound. Broke off eye contact with the fictional witness, leaned back in his chair, and let out a loud whistle. The stream of tears stopped cold, like a faucet slammed shut. “Fucking good, don’t you think?” he said, grinning from ear to ear.

“Larkin.”

“What? It’s perfect. Make sure you act surprised about that Kleenex. If you have it all ready to go, the whole thing will look staged.”

“Really?” she said. “You think?”

She stood up.

St. Clair stood up with her. “What are you doing?”

“Leaving.”

“What?”

“I can’t do this case.”

“Why not?”

She was mad again. It always happened. They were like a dysfunctional couple who couldn’t live with or without each other. “I need to know what happened.”

“I told you I’m innocent.”

She shook her head. “I’ll agree not to call you as a witness. And I’ll play your charade with the Kleenex in court. But I need to know.”

He teetered on his feet and picked at his fingernails.

“If you won’t tell me, I’ll have your aunt come in and talk to you. Bring in her little son.”

“No!” he exploded. “Justin doesn’t come near this place.”

St. Clair had once told her that his first memory of seeing his father was visiting him in Kingston Penitentiary. “I said I’d bring him a spoon next time so he could dig his way out,” he’d told her one tearful afternoon. Judging from his reaction today to the prospect of his five-year-old cousin coming to see him in prison, she thought that maybe, just maybe, those tears had been real.

She closed the binder. “Tell me or I walk.”

Larkin shook his head. “What’s it matter if I’m not going to testify?”

“It matters because I’ve put my whole life on hold to defend you. Because I fucked up my last relationship for this. Because everyone in the world, even my mother, thinks I’m some kind of monster for defending you. Because I get about twenty calls a day from reporters across the country desperate for an angle on the biggest and most horrifying shooting in the city’s history.” She could feel her cheeks flush. “Because I don’t need this.”

She grabbed the thick binder off the table.

He bent his head forward. “Why don’t you hit me with it?”

“You have no idea how much I’d love to,” she said.

St. Clair had once told a probation officer that his mother used to beat him on the back of the head. She’d thought this was another one of his stories, a typical Larkin play for sympathy. But then his mother showed up in court and said it was true. He showed Parish where part of one of his ears was torn off. This was the real reason for his long hair. And, now that she thought of it, why he hadn’t shaved it all off.

She dropped the binder on the table.

He sat, his head still bent over. “Give me a pen and paper.”

She sat and reached into her briefcase, gave him the pen and paper, and watched as he, at last, sketched out the truth.

For Ari Greene, there were many disadvantages to being a homicide detective. The shifts weren’t regular and the hours were unpredictable. The first few days and nights on a murder investigation, when he’d go full-out with almost no sleep, didn’t net him an extra penny in overtime pay. Beat detectives in the local divisions who worked on house break-ins and small-time domestic cases made a lot more money than the cops investigating murders. And the division guys didn’t dress like Homicide, so they spent a lot less on clothes.

Still, everyone on the force wanted to make Homicide. It was the best job. And Greene liked working on his own, not susceptible to the whims of the division staff sergeant or tied to the police radio.

Yes, free to work a hundred hours a week, was the common joke, but it gave Greene time to do things for his father. It was the first Sunday in January and time for their annual pilgrimage to the German consulate. As a condition for reparations the German government paid for their years of slave labor in the Nazi camps, survivors were required to visit the consulate in person once a year. This was the only place where Greene had ever seen his father look afraid.

“You sure you have all the papers, Dad?” Greene asked as he opened the coat closet in his father’s front hall and reached for a plastic folder neatly stacked at the back of the top shelf. “We don’t want to have a problem like last year.”

“The only problem was the death certificate,” his father said. “The Germans were upset because your mother died on her own and they didn’t get to kill her.”

Greene opened the folder and began leafing through the papers. A certified copy of his father’s birth certificate written in Polish, a three-page document headed “Declaration of Claimant,” a copy of his original Canadian passport issued in 1948, a page entitled “Certificate of Reparations.”

He pulled out a letter from the German consulate in Toronto. The letterhead featured dark, heavy type. It was dated January 5.

“Dad, when did you get this letter?”

His father looked over his shoulder. “Last January. A week after your mother died. Typical German efficiency. The moment they found out she was dead they couldn’t wait to produce more paperwork.”

Greene began to read the letter.

The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, Inc.

(Claims Conference)

Dear Mr. Greene:

Ms. Hanna Greene, date of birth 07/10/22, was entitled to get monthly payments from the Article 2 Fund of the Claims Conference. We were informed she has passed away
.

We are working under the rules of the German government. According to these regulations, the payments of Article 2 Fund are not inheritable. Therefore we are obliged to ask you to remit overpaid funds
.

Please, upon your next annual attendance at the consulate for the purpose of reparations verification, present the following:

1. Notarized copy of the death certificate of the claimant;

2. Affidavit as to:

a. your present marital status;

b. complete listing of all your offspring and all surviving dependants
.

Sincerely
,

Ernst Schlüter

Claims Conference

Greene sighed. “Dad, we’re going to have a hassle again. You need to get a lawyer to notarize Mom’s death certificate and an affidavit that says you didn’t run off and get married in the last twelve months and have another kid. The Germans are unbelievable.”

“Here, give me that.” Greene’s father reached for the file. He fished out a sealed white envelope from the back. “I went to a lawyer and got it all done.”

“You did? Where?”

“At the plaza. There’s a law office above the jewelry store. Nice young man. Cost me a hundred bucks. He didn’t want to charge me,
but I made him. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘I’ll give the bill to the Nazis and let them pay it.’”

“Good work, Dad.” Greene reached for the sealed envelope.

His father pulled it back. “Don’t worry, it’s all there. You get the car warmed up.”

Half an hour later, Greene was looking for a parking spot along Admiral Road, a tree-lined downtown street that featured some of the city’s most beautiful old mansions. Tucked away, down a long driveway, was the German consulate, protected by a tall, dark iron gate. Greene cruised past. The gates were open. A black metal railing arched above the entrance, and the line of old people snaked its way out under it and partway down the sidewalk.

“Fewer people every year,” his father said.

Greene had thought the same thing. As a young boy, when he came here with his dad each January, the line used to stretch all the way around the block. He remembered holding his father’s hand, standing in the cold, amazed that all these people lived in Toronto and none of them spoke English, just Yiddish.

Holding his father’s hand. Like Kyle Wilkinson. But there were no sugar doughnuts in the German consulate. Only heavy-looking bread rolls that Greene’s father told him not to eat because they were made with something called lard. By the time Greene was a gangly teenager, the line only went to the end of the street, and he towered over the row of short, old people. Most carried shopping bags filled with documents. Like his father, these people were working-class.

The street was packed with cars.

“Use your pass and park close,” his father said.

Greene pulled into a no-parking zone and tossed his Police Homicide card into the windshield. In years past, there were many couples, but now many of the old people were alone, accompanied by children whose faces were younger, healthier reflections of their parents.

“What is new with your case?” his father asked as they got out of the car.

The wind was strong, and they had to bend into it as they walked up the sidewalk. Greene went half a step ahead to provide his dad with a little shelter. “We’re still looking for that baker who ran away. I figure he’s illegal and that’s why he hasn’t come forward.”

“After the war, I couldn’t get a passport for two years,” his father said.

They got to the end of the line. The old people seemed to get
shorter every year, Greene thought. “Dad, why won’t you let me see the affidavit?” he asked, laughing.

“There’s Herschel.” His father pointed to a short man up ahead in the line. Changing the subject was his way of saying no. “He’s gotten pretty fancy.”

Greene noticed a man with a fur-lined coat holding a black leather briefcase.

“Herschel,” Greene said. “Isn’t he the one who made a fortune in furniture?”

“Kitchens,” his father said.

Greene looked at the folder in his father’s hand. As independent and crusty as his dad was, it wasn’t like him to go to a lawyer on his own. Why would he do that? What’s going on? he wondered as the line moved forward and they approached the gate. His father looked up at the iron railing overhead, and Greene saw a shiver go through him.

Ah, stop being such a cop, he told himself. He laughed again. A nervous laugh. “Dad, I’m starting to feel as if I’m at work. Every time I ask you about those lawyer’s papers, you change the subject.”

“This cook. He said he was from Portugal?”

“That’s what he told his employer. I don’t believe it. He seems to speak four or five languages.”

“So?” His father was unimpressed. After he’d escaped from Treblinka, the Nazi death camp where he’d been forced to work for six months, he’d spent two years living in the woods, picking up odd jobs and languages as he went.

“All we have to go on is a composite drawing done after the artist talked to his fellow employees.”

“It’s easy for a man to change what he looks like.” Greene’s father had gone through countless disguises before he was finally caught and thrown in Auschwitz six months before the liberation. “If he wants to hide, you’re not going to find him unless he wants to be found. What kind of man is he?”