Stray Bullets (40 page)

Ozera shrugged. “Dewey walked out a few steps toward where the Cadillac had been, didn’t even go into the light, and fired right over my
head. I saw him stomp on the shell casing and kick it across the lot to where Jet’s car had been.”

Armitage watched Greene nod, the way you nod when a mystery is solved for you. Like those Hardy Boy books he’d loved to read, back here in the woods. In his secret fort.

“Dewey set it all up to make it look like Jet was firing at him.”

Armitage heard the voice saying the words. It was flat. Lifeless. It sounded like someone else. Who was talking? But he knew it was his voice. Maybe this was who he really was, he thought. What he really sounded like.

Everyone stared at him. Were they surprised that he knew all this? Penny looked shocked, but Greene didn’t.

“Mr. Ozera here told me everything after I made the stupid deal with Cutter,” he heard himself saying. Still that same voice. This is what Ralph sounds like, not Ralphie. “I tried to shut him up. I pulled his charges.”

Penny lifted her hand from his arm. He couldn’t blame her. The woods around them were dark. Lovely, dark, and deep, he thought. He knew them better than anyone. He had grown up without any brothers to play with. Dad was always at work. He’d spent hours, days, summers, playing pretend Cowboys and Indians back there, acting like Davy Crockett. Hidden in his old bedroom, he still had that fake coon hat he got for his sixth birthday.

A new set of fireworks lit up the sky.

“Oooh! Wow!” the kids screamed.

He loved to hear the sound of happy children playing. He had so many secret forts and special hiding places. They’d never find him there. Never.

The light started to fade. Penny had let go. Nothing was holding him now. Quick, before there was another burst. He stepped back quietly. Stepped again. One more. Almost there.

It was getting dark. Real dark.

Another step. Okay, Ralphie, he told himself, last step and …

He heard the
click
sound before he felt the cold metal on his wrist.

A huge fireworks display exploded, and he saw that a Toronto police officer wearing a blue turban behind him. That was so Toronto. So multicultural. Where had the guy come from? Before he could react, the cop had his second hand behind his back and had bolted them together in the handcuffs.

Instinctively, he tried to pull them apart.

The hard steel dug into his wrists. He felt the pain, and he knew this was no dream. His real-life nightmare had begun.

“What kind of vodka do you have?” Nancy Parish asked the server.

He was cute. Not quite as cute as Brett from the Pravda Bar had been, but not unattractive. She laughed to herself for using a lawyer’s double negative. The guy had already told them that his name was Stuart, and he’d be their server for the night.

“Stoli, Grey Goose, Absolut, Blue Ice,” Stuart the almost-cute waiter said.

She grinned. “Grey Goose. Double shot, with a glass of water on the side.”

Stuart smiled back. Had a sweet little dimple in his cheek.

“And you, sir?” He turned to Larkin St. Clair.

They were sitting on the outdoor patio at Pappas Grill. All of St. Clair’s attention was focused on the seemingly endless parade of scantily dressed females promenading on the Danforth on this warm summer night.

“Sir?” Stuart asked again, his pen poised above his little waiter’s notepad.

“Ah, a Coke.” St. Clair peeled his eyes from the short skirts and long legs voyaging past on the other side of the wrought-iron railing. “No ice.”

Stuart scampered off to get their drinks, and St. Clair went back to staring.

“See,” Parish said, “there are advantages to not living your life in jail.”

St. Clair’s hair had grown about half a foot since his arrest. It was inching its way down his back and lovingly coiffed.

He turned his attention back to her. “Can you believe it? We are actually here at Pappas, having drinks on the patio. Did you ever think it would happen?”

“I’m going to remain silent, on the grounds it might incriminate me.” She didn’t want to break the moment for him—considering he’d just gotten out of jail this morning—by mentioning that St. Clair still had three more years of probation to get through before he was truly
a free man. Three more years of drug and alcohol testing. Three more years of “keeping the peace and being of good behavior.” “Being of good behavior” was stretching things a tad for Larkin, she thought, especially when it came to women.

Stuart came with the drinks.

Parish and St. Clair both sipped in silent appreciation of the moment. The sun was bright and the temperature perfect. The long winter she’d been through was a dark memory.

“Sorry I made you miss that trip to Mexico.” St. Clair was wearing a black T-shirt, his sleeves rolled up over his shoulders, exposing his prison-hard biceps.

“Guy wasn’t worth it,” she said.

“I keep telling you, guys are jerks,” he said.

“So I keep hearing.”

He took his eyes off the parade of exposed female flesh and looked at Parish. “You did an amazing job at my trial.”

“It helps that you weren’t guilty for a change.”

“Only me,” he said. “I try to save someone’s life and almost end up going to jail for twenty-five years. Would have without you.”

Parish hadn’t exactly won the trial. But getting a hung jury had turned out to be the key. When Greene found Ozera, the baker from the Tim Hortons, he told the police the exact same story St. Clair had told Parish months before in jail. With this new evidence, Dewey Booth had been charged with perjury at the first trial and first-degree murder.

Parish and Albert Fernandez, the new Crown on the case, quickly worked out the obvious deal. St. Clair, who’d already been in jail for half a year, pled guilty to accessory after the fact for hiding the gun and got three years’ probation. The maximum amount, and maybe, just maybe, enough time for his aunt Arlene to keep him on the straight and narrow. Especially with Dewey now looking at twenty-five years in jail for the murder of Kyle Wilkinson..

Ralph “Just call me Ralphie” Armitage was still in jail because no one would bail him out. His wife had left him and his family wanted nothing to do with the son who had soiled the family name. Ralph Armitage Senior let it be known in the press that he had cut Ralph Junior out of his will “one hundred percent. He’ll get one dollar and not a penny more.” There wasn’t a lawyer in the whole province who wanted to touch the case. Jennifer Raglan, the former head Crown, had been brought back in to clean up the mess and run the office again.

Behind her Parish heard a child’s voice screaming above the hustle and bustle on the street. “Uncle Larkin, Uncle Larkin!”

St. Clair’s always-animated face lit up another notch. His aunt Arlene and her son were steps away.

“Holy cow, Justin, is that you?” He stood and hopped over the wrought-iron fence, his long hair flowing behind him, every strand in place.

“Who’s that?” Justin asked, pointing to Parish. He had an incredibly loud voice, just like his uncle. “She another girlfriend?”

St. Clair gave a loud chuckle. “No, silly. Her name’s Nancy, and she’s my lawyer,” he said.

“The good one or the bad one?” the little boy asked.

“The good one. Real good. Just like you’re going to be one day.”

There was a little vodka left in her glass. Parish downed it and stood up as the three of them came around to the table.

Arlene gave her a hug, and Justin held out his hand for a formal handshake. She shook it and couldn’t resist patting him on the top of his head. “Have a great meal,” she said.

“What do you mean?” St. Clair asked. “Where you going?”

“We always dreamed of a summer night, having our drink together on the patio at Pappas. No charges outstanding against you. And we did it. You have dinner with your family.”

“But …”

She put her hand on his shoulder. “It’s time for me to go home.”

They stared at each other.

“Do they have chicken fingers here?” Justin shouted.

Larkin wrapped his arms around her in a powerful embrace. “Love you, Nancy,” he whispered into her ear.

She smiled as she let go of him. Smiled as she walked down the crowded avenue. People, dogs, strollers, all crisscrossing in front of her. The wind was still fresh and warm, and the sun hovered high in the sky, as if it were in no hurry at all to go down.

Walk downtown in most Canadian cities, and you’ll find aging stone bank buildings on the street corners of major intersections. Decades ago these tall-columned and high-ceilinged structures projected financial power and confidence. Today, all too many have been turned into money marts and hamburger joints.

But some have been lovingly restored. At this moment I’m sitting in the magnificent yet comfortable law library at the office of Edward L. Greenspan, Q.C., in what was once an impressive branch of the Dominion Bank of Canada. Eddie, as he’s known to everyone, is one of North America’s leading criminal lawyers, and for the last few years he’s been my landlord.

After two decades of practicing law in the high-rise towers of Toronto’s downtown core, it’s been a great relief for me to hang my shingle, and park my laptop, in a building where there are no parking garages, packed elevators, or a downstairs food court. And where the windows actually open.

Finding the right office to continue my dual career of defending people and writing these novels has been important, especially since I am now taping out a book a year.

Thanks, then, go to a long list of people for their assistance this time around. They are, in no particular order: Kevin Hanson; Alison Clarke; Amy Cormier; Amy Jacobson; Anneliese Grosfield; Victoria Skurnick; Elizabeth Fisher; Angela Hughes; Patricia Bandeira; Susan Petersen; Michael Lacy; Joe Wilkinson; Andras Schreck; Donald Schmidtt; Dr. Jan Ahuja; Douglas Preston; David Flacks; Ron Davis; Julie Lacey; Christine Jenkins; Tom Klatt; Kate Parkin; Stan Klich; Travis West; and, of course, Eddie.

And a special thanks to my daughter, Helen, and her junior high school friends (bffs) Elizabeth, Claire, and Amelia for translating my English words into … OMG! … proper texting language.

Toronto

January 13, 2012