The River Killers (27 page)

“So, what?” Louise said anxiously. “We stash Danny somewhere, and then let our bad guy know where he is and that he's got Crowley's stuff with him. I don't really like this. We're making a target out of a civilian.”

“I'm not the target, Crowley's stuff is. How about this? I'll rent an apartment, get established, maybe invite a few people over for a party, and then pass the word that I have to go to Rupert for a few days. If we're subtle enough, the bad guy will take the bait and make a move while I'm gone.”

“We have to okay the apartment,” Tommy warned. “It would be better if it was a house, neighbors not too close. We don't want to expose the general public. But I like it. It could be our only shot.”

“Our bad guy knows we're gunning for him,” Louise said. “You really think he's going to come and knock on Danny's door?”

“It's our best shot, Louise,” I said, realizing with a start that I'd almost called her “sweetie.” “What is there to lose?”

Quite a lot, actually, as we were to become painfully aware. Some more painfully than others.

We kicked around different scenarios and discussed details. It was close to nine when Bette walked into the office. We looked at her expectantly.

“I made a little progress,” she said. “Those files won't open properly because the computer doesn't know the right program, or it probably knows but doesn't know it knows. It was fashionable for the lab guys in the eighties to use an in-house modification of the data-filing system. I think Alistair modified it even further, so only he could read the files. I'm going to have to get in there and examine the code, line by line. It'll take time, but I can do it.”

“I'd do it, Bette, but I've got to go house hunting in the morning.” She gave me a yeah-right look, waved to the others, and left.

I gave a thumbs-up to Tommy and Louise. “I knew Bette could penetrate Crowley's computer defenses. That's essentially his mind she's looking into.”

Tommy stood up and yawned. “You don't need a computer whiz to decipher my mind. Food. Sleep. Repeat as needed.” He shrugged on his jacket. “Get some rest, you guys,” he said as he left.

Louise and I just sat there for awhile. I put my foot on top of hers and tapped out a message. She replied verbally. “No, I'm not hungry. I'm tired.” There ensued a silence. “Your security detail isn't on until tomorrow. I'm a little worried about you tonight.”

I almost scoffed bravely but decided that neither valor nor discretion was in order. “You're right. I don't feel safe. Who can I turn to for protection?”

Louise gave me a you're-not-as-dumb-as-you-look look. “We are sworn to serve and protect.”

“Protection. Just what I need. And service?”

She gave me a don't-push-your-luck look. “Let's go.”

In Louise's hotel room, we noticed that one of the beds was not level. We were forced, therefore, to occupy the same bed, and it should be to the surprise of no one that the evening passed not without a certain degree of what some would refer to, should they be disinclined toward delicacy and prone to displaying the lack of couth which is the unfortunate condition of those disposed to consider such matters, a condition of what may necessarily be portrayed as, for lack of a better word, and one hopes with no fear of contradiction, intimacy.

In fact, we reveled in the warmth and the scent and the touch and the closeness of each other for quite some time. We fell asleep with our naked bodies still seeking each other, mindlessly establishing the maximum area of contact possible.

I woke the next morning and felt good and remembered why. Louise snuffled quietly on the pillow beside me and I kissed her bare shoulder. Carefully sliding out from under the covers, I tiptoed to the window and surveyed the wonders of a beautiful world.

“You know, I think you've got a really cute ass.”

I turned. “Gee, that gives us something in common.”

“Why, do you think I've got a cute ass?”

“No, I mean we both think I've got a cute ass.”

I dodged the pillow and headed for the shower where Louise soon joined me.

In the morning, we found
Tommy in his office along with four very young, very fit, very serious uniformed officers. “Hi, Danny. Meet your bodyguards.” They all squeezed my hand painfully as they introduced themselves, but because their stereotypical good looks were almost indistinguishable, they blended into an amalgamated character I could only remember as Jerome.

“One of them will accompany you at all times,” Tommy said, “except when you're in this building.”

“Won't they be a little conspicuous?”

“They'll be in plain clothes, and they've been trained to blend in. They never talk into their armpits.”

“Ah.”

Jerome left, and Louise, Tommy, and I planned the day's activities. I wanted to spend a little more time trying to decode the May 6 and 7 entries in Alistair's logbook. Then Jerome and I would go house hunting.

Louise had copied the two relevant entries from the log and we spread them out on her desk and sat and looked at them. Louise had already noticed that the times given were to the minute rather than in fifteen-minute increments like all the other entries. As we pondered them anew, I noticed something else.

“Look, the times are given in twenty-four-hour format where the first two digits designate the hour and the second two digits designate the minutes
after
the hour. So 2317 designates seventeen minutes after 11:00
PM
. The May 6 entry gives times for seven different activities, the May 7 entry notes ten different times. Of the seventeen times, none of the minute designations is higher than twenty-six.”

Louise twigged immediately. “That's because they refer to letters of the alphabet?”

“You're as smart as I am.”

Converting the seventeen numbers to letters gave us this:

GLRINUQWKSHVCIRKX

“Case solved. I'll tell Tommy,” Louis commented with a hint of sarcasm.

I scrambled to recover. “It's obviously incorrect to convert based on the standard alphabet sequence. There's a key somewhere. All we have to do is find it.”

“If you say so.”

“I'm positive,” I said with as much certainty as I could muster. “Have your cipher guys looked at this?”

“You were right. All our cipher guys did get assigned to
CSIS
. They're decoding the prime minister's last speech.”

I sighed. “I'll look through Crowley's stuff again. Somewhere there's a key sequence that will unlock this.”

“Either that or our bad guy's parents couldn't afford too many vowels.”

I switched to action mode. “Okay, I'm going house hunting. How many Jeromes do I need to take?”

“What?”

“The bodyguards. They're all Jeromes to me.”

“Interesting. They refer to you as ‘Meat.'” She gave her head a slight shake. “You need two. They'll follow you in an unmarked car. You can continue to use taxis so you're not changing your behavior.”

She left and came back a minute later with two Jeromes. They had changed out of their uniforms, sort of. They were now dressed in jeans and T-shirts, with almost identical bomber jackets. But they had differentiated themselves through footwear. One wore low-cut runners endorsed by someone much taller than me, and the other wore Converse All-Star high-tops in the standard black.

We discussed a game plan. There were five rental houses I wanted to look at. The nearest was not far from Commercial Drive, so that was destination number one, followed by four others in an agreed upon sequence. We exchanged cell numbers and set them to speed dial. I was warned that cell communications could be monitored if the bad guys were technologically savvy. I was sure they were, so messages would have to be cryptic.

This was no big deal to me. Cryptic messages were standard operating procedure in the fishing industry.
VHF
radio conversations had to convey detailed information over open channels in such a way that only the intended recipient would understand.

“How's it lookin'? Do you see any fish?”

“Remember last year behind the house?” Fish abundance is roughly equivalent to this time last year on the north shore of Malcolm Island.

“You got that new chart yet?” Are you where you said you were going to be in the bar?

“No, we're lost in the Heart of Darkness.” No, we're at Uganda Point in Fitz Hugh Sound.

So, confident that my obfuscation skills were equal to undercover standards, we set out. I inspected all the possibilities. The rentals were all nice, featuring several rooms that had floors and ceilings and an assortment of walls. I completed my house-inspection agenda, only occasionally spotting High-Top Jerome and Low-Top Jerome hovering protectively, and was back at the police building by four. Tommy, Louise, Jerome, and I debriefed. Jerome preferred the house on West Sixth Avenue. It was not a busy area, primarily residential, and parking was difficult. Intruders would be easy to spot. And it was furnished. The other pros concurred, so I phoned the real estate agent and offered to sign a three-month lease, the minimum I could get away with. I could pick up a key and move in tomorrow. My friends Jerome offered to help me with my stuff, but I said I could carry my duffle bag all by myself.

I called Bette and asked her to put a notice on the bulletin board at the lab that I was having a housewarming party on Friday. I arranged for the same notice to be displayed on the bulletin board at
DFO
HQ
. And just to be sure it was a fun party, I phoned Mark, Christine, and Fergie.

That night, I spent a pleasant evening with Rugby Pants Jerome in my room at the Ritz. His trouser-type apparel had never been worn on a rugby field, in a rugby clubhouse, or by, as far as I knew although I'd have to check with Tommy, an actual rugby player. But I didn't hold that against him.

I excused myself for a quick phone consultation with Staff Sergeant Karavchuk, which was not as amiable as I'd hoped. In fact, the meeting fell well short of our previous standard of amiability. When I returned to the room, Rugby Pants Jerome was flicking through the channels. It was that awkward time of year, post-hockey but pre-football. Baseball had started but games in May were like men in drag, occasionally spectacular but lacking the fundamentals. The
NBA
play-offs were in session, but I wasn't comfortable with any game where two digits weren't adequate for scoring. This eliminated cricket as well. He settled on something called the Palm Springs Chevy Invitational Open.

“No sports on?”

“You don't like golf?”

“It's not a sport. It's a fashion opportunity for repressed white guys.”

“It takes a lot of skill.”

“So does origami. Look, you've got guys standing around with clubs in their hands, there are other people well within reach, but what do they do? They hit a defenseless little ball. It's un-Canadian.”

He looked at me oddly. I plopped myself onto the couch and started going through Crowley's journals.
RPJ
, probably ashamed of himself, flicked past the golf and managed to find
CSI: Peoria
. With a grunt of approval, he settled in to watch, and I settled in to ignore him.

The next morning, we moved into the rental house and the three following days were a fun-filled blur of Jerome-mediated activity. I adjusted to being more the center of attention than I really cared for, and they adjusted to my unconventional nomenclature. I hadn't felt this oppressed since my teenage years, and then I'd been burdened with only two parents. Friday night couldn't come too soon.

I'd moved my bag and briefcase into one bedroom of the house and Jerome, newly designated as my friend from New Brunswick, had appropriated the other.

I'd gone shopping for some essential items: a stereo with hundred-watt speakers, and two extra speakers for the deck.

Friday afternoon was warm so three o'clock found Jerome Number Four and me relaxing with a beer on said deck. I found out later that Jerome was cheating, drinking near-beer out of bottles with phony labels.

The small backyard was heavily hedged, which, I hoped, would muffle enough of the party sounds that I wouldn't have to meet my new neighbors prematurely. Pete Johnson and Albert Ammons were boogying the hell out of “St. Louis Woman” and Jerome Number Four was twitching in a syncopated fashion. I felt validated by my decision to go with Pete and Albert rather than Glen Gould and the Goldberg Variations: better party music.

The front door was unlocked so Christine appeared unannounced with a grin on her face and a case of beer under her arm. I pointed at the plastic laundry tub full of ice, and she added the former to the latter. She removed an already cold one from the tub and sashayed over to us. “Jerome, this is an old friend of mine, Christine. Christine, meet Jerome. You wouldn't know it but he's with the Surveillance Squad, assigned to my ass, the protection thereof.”

Christine raised her bottle to him. “You must be a rookie, Jerome. Starting at the bottom, Danny's.”

Jerome Number Four blushed and I intervened mercifully. “Christine, Jerome is not a rookie. He served four months as the replacement for the Inuit carving at 24 Sussex Drive.”

“And his present client is almost as important.” Fergie had joined us. “As the sculpture, that is.”

I performed further introductions and then went into the kitchen to set out some snacks. Pretzels in one bowl, salt and vinegar chips in another, and cheese and crackers arranged randomly on a plate. I admired my inbred sense of style. I was sure that Martha Stewart was referred to by many as the Danny Swanson of America. While I was contemplating whether I had time to do a
TV
show, High-Top Jerome came in and informed me the front door was unlocked.