Yard Dog Read online

  I stood up and surveyed my handiwork. Not bad, Jack, not bad at all.

  Something was missing.

  I went downstairs, crossed the street, and bought a plant. Back upstairs, I put the plant on my desk and rotated the pot until the leaves lined up with the sun. There. Open for business.

  I creaked back in the wooden chair and stared at the water stains on the ceiling. Good times. No one called because I didn’t have a phone. If someone wanted to call me, they’d have to go through Eddie.

  The couch across the room was taunting me. Hey, Jack, the couch whispered. Remember that first night with Cassandra? The way her eyes crinkled when she laughed, the way her straight black hair smelled just like green apples. The way she moved as she got undressed, so fluid, her clothes just sliding down her long dancer’s limbs. The way you grabbed her and threw her onto the couch as she laughed, the two of you tumbling together, bourbon and aftershave and green apples.

  The walls were closing in. If I stayed inside I was going to chew off my own leg like a bear caught in a trap.

  On my way out the door, Eddie stopped me and held up his cellphone. I looked at him questioningly as I took it, but he just shrugged.

  “Hello?”

  “Jack!” Nasal, keyed up, frantic and lazy at the same time. It was Tommy. “How the hell are ya? Settling in okay?”

  “So far, so good.”

  “Listen, you got a place to stay tonight? I can put you up in one of our condos. You’ll love it. Big-screen TV, surround sound, right on the lake.”

  “I appreciate it, Tommy, but I’ve got a place.” Did my office have surround sound? It did if you counted the Cantonese conversations that came floating through the walls like ghosts.

  “Oh yeah?” Tommy sounded disappointed. “I was thinking we could grab a bite to eat, see what’s shaking at the club.”

  “I’ve got some things to take care of before tomorrow. Next time, okay?”

  “Yeah, but —”

  “I’ve got to go. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  On the other end I heard Tommy sigh. “Yeah, all right. Tomorrow.”

  Kee-rist. I handed the phone back to Eddie and rubbed my temples.

  “Serious business, Jack?”

  I managed a grin. “It’s always serious.”

  Outside I cut through the alleys, back among the garbage and the loops and swirls of gang graffiti. Overhead, the gulls were circling in the bright blue sky, diving down into the alley ahead of me. When I got closer I saw what all the screeching and strutting was about: a fast food restaurant had thrown out a giant bag of half-eaten fried chicken and the birds were scavenging. The bag was ripped open and chicken bones were strewn across the alley. Two gulls went for the same drumstick at the same time and the feathers flew. I turned away, nauseated. Gulls eating fried chicken. It didn’t seem right. Almost like cannibalism.

  Maybe it was a mistake blowing Tommy off like that. Tommy was the type of guy who didn’t forget a slight. I could’ve been nicer, maybe invented some kind of song and dance. “Love to hang out, Tommy, but see, my dog’s real sick, and …” And deep inside me there was a little voice saying, Come on, Jack. We could’ve been sleeping on a king-size mattress with fine Egyptian sheets tonight instead of curled up on that busted-ass second-hand yellow plaid couch of ours. But right there was the operative word. That couch was mine, not Tommy’s or his father’s. You gotta set limits. Let Tommy know you’re not forever at his beck and call. Sure, I was grateful, and yes, I owed him. But I was no one’s lapdog. Soon as I helped Tommy clear his books, I’d be free. In the meantime, I could use a drink.

  I walked down the street to what used to be my neighbourhood bar in what used to be my neighbourhood. In a few hours, hipsters with goatees and orange-tinted glasses would take over the space, but for now the bar belonged to the junkies and the bums and the rest of the down-and-outers, dressed in fashions from twenty years ago, preserved in alcohol like insects in amber. Florid faces mapped with busted veins. My kind of people.

  Behind the bar was a woman so beautiful I pulled a double-take and then looked for hidden cameras. What’s the gag? A woman like that in a place like this … it didn’t add up.

  She came closer, smiling, dark hair and a low-cut top, skin white as milk, small emeralds in her earlobes, and silver sparkles on her eyelids.

  “What’ll it be?”

  “Beer. No, wait — double vodka, rocks.”

  She laughed. “That kind of day, huh?”

  “That kind of decade.”

  She poured expertly and slid me my drink.

  “You’re new.”

  She smiled. “New? I’ve been working here for at least a year.”

  “I used to come in here all the time.”

  “I’ve never seen you before.”

  “I’ve been away.”

  “Travelling the world?”

  “Something like that. My name’s Jack.”

  The bartender smiled. “Suzanne.”

  I settled into a chair with my double vodka and a crumpled-up newspaper. The ambiance had changed, but not much. Before I went away, this place was wall-to-wall smoke; now smoking inside bars was illegal.

  Hours drifted by. I drank my drink, read the paper, had another drink. Time hung suspended, the outside world pushed away, the past and the future stopping their incessant drumbeats until there was only this, this moment, calm and perfect.

  Of course it couldn’t last.

  A drunk with long, straight dark hair and a face cratered like the surface of the moon reeled up to the bar, closed one eye, and brought Suzanne into focus. He must have liked what he saw. His pink swollen tongue licked his nightcrawler-thick lips. He leered and muttered some incoherent pickup line and Suzanne instinctively took two steps back.

  “I have a boyfriend.”

  The drunk leered and slurred and drooled. His hands, covered in the faded green-black ink of jailhouse tattoos, reached for her breasts.

  Suzanne slapped his hands away. “You need to back off.”

  The drunk’s face contorted into a horror show. Some people just can’t handle rejection.

  The drunk tried to climb over the bar.

  Time to stand up. “She said BACK OFF!”

  The drunk growled from somewhere way back in his throat. Alcohol overriding rational thought — primitive lizard brain kicking in. I knew what would come next and I wasn’t surprised. The drunk smashed his beer bottle against the bar rail and lunged at me with a fistful of broken glass.

  Remember that scene in the first Indiana Jones movie with the bad guy getting all fancy with a scimitar? The way the scene is set up you think Indy is going to out-fancy the dude with his whip, but he doesn’t. Instead, Indy just pulls out his gun and drops the guy with one shot. Apparently the script did call for some fancy whip work, but Harrison Ford, the actor who played Indiana Jones, was feeling sick that day. It’s a great scene. And it’s true: when it comes to fighting, you can either get fancy or you can just drop the guy.

  Suzanne pulled a baseball bat from beneath the bar and dropped the guy.

  She looked down at the drunk crumpled on the floor. Then she glared over at me. “I don’t need a white knight.”

  “Is that who you think I am?”

  Suzanne ran a bar rag along the baseball bat, wiping off blood. “I can take care of myself.”

  I nodded. “I can see that.” I pointed with my chin to the guy on the ground. “He still breathing?”

  Suzanne shrugged. “What am I, a doctor?”

  I tossed two twenties onto the bar. “Keep the change.”

  She watched me, considering. Then she pushed the twenties back. “It’s on me.” She grinned. “Your heart was in the right place.”

  I stepped toward the door. “I better go. I start a new job tomorrow.”

  “You sure you don’t want a refill? You can be a little late.”

  I smiled. “I don’t think so.”

  ________

  Back i
n my office I sat in my wooden chair, put my feet up on my desk, and waited for daybreak. It didn’t take long … three, four hours tops. As soon as the sunlight started to slide through the blinds I walked over to the brown and yellow plaid sofa, lay down, closed my eyes, and fell asleep.

  CHAPTER 4

  A pounding on the door woke me with a start and once again I fumbled for my non-existent knife. Cautiously, I slid from the couch like an alligator into the swamp and drifted silently toward the door. My heart was pounding. I hate this shit, I thought. One of these days I’m going to answer the door and BOOM, that’ll be it for me.

  I undid four of the locks but I left the chain on.

  Eddie shoved his cellphone through the crack. “You need to get your own goddamn phone.”

  “Morning to you, too, Sunshine.”

  I unlatched the door. Eddie rolled into the office and sat on the sofa, 1970s springs groaning beneath his weight.

  The phone was cold against my ear. “Jack! I got a hangover like you wouldn’t believe. You should’ve been there last night. There was this broad, she had these ping-pong balls … hold on a minute.” Tommy put his hand over the phone and I heard muffled thumps and either a sick cat or someone screaming his guts out.

  Tommy came back on the line. “Jack, I gotta let you go.”

  “Everything okay over there?”

  “Oh sure, sure. No problem. We’re just working something out with one of the fellas. Look, be at the corner of Queen and Spadina at two thirty, all right? I’ll send a car. Remember, keep your eyes open.”

  “I always do.”

  I hung up and checked my watch. Two thirty was half an hour away. That’s one good thing about working for gangsters. Gangsters like to sleep in.

  Eddie stood up and snatched his phone away.

  “Eddie.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can you get me a knife?”

  Eddie smiled. “Check your desk drawer.”

  Inside the top drawer, laid out on a black velvet cloth, was a glittering galaxy of knives. Long ones. Short ones. Skinny ones. Even a fat jewelled dagger that looked like Eddie might have swiped it from the British Museum. I pulled out a knife with a twelve-inch serrated blade and wrapped my hand around the handle. Perfectly weighted.

  “Eddie, what would I do without you?”

  Eddie snorted.

  One brisk walk through Chinatown later and I was standing on the southwest corner of Queen and Spadina, right across from the McDonald’s, watching the squeegee kids ply their trade. Soon as the lights turned red they’d be out there loping across the intersection, tossing water from plastic bottles onto windshields and then scraping it off, leaving dirty streaks. Hustling a buck here, a buck there.

  An unmarked white van screeched up, and from the passenger side a weightlifter with sunglasses and slicked-back hair gave me the once-over.

  “You Jack?”

  What would happen if I said no? If I just shook my head and walked away?

  I’ve never walked away from anything in my life.

  “Yeah. You want me to do your windows?”

  “What?”

  “Forget it. Let’s go.”

  The inside of the van smelled like spearmint gum and stale cigarettes. I sat in the back seat next to a toolbox and a rolled-up tarp.

  The driver was another weightlifter, a massive man with no neck, just a solid trunk of muscle. The man in the passenger seat opened up the glove compartment, pulled out a photo, and held it up to my face.

  “Yep. You’re you, all right.”

  “Good to know. Here, let me hang onto that.”

  The passenger passed me the photo. “I’m Sully and that’s Vince. You’re a friend of Tommy’s?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What kind of piece you got?”

  “I don’t carry a piece.”

  “What?” Sully was totally incredulous. “You gotta carry a piece. This is dangerous work, man — serious business.”

  “I can handle it.” I grinned as Sully furrowed his brow. “My secret is, I love people. I’m a people person.”

  The white van cut straight along Queen Street, heading east.

  Sully turned back toward me and peered over the top of his sunglasses. “Tommy tell you the ground rules?”

  “Sure. But why don’t you refresh my memory.”

  “Vince and me, this is our show. You’re just here to watch. No heavy lifting. You just hang back and let us do our thing.”

  I didn’t say yes and I didn’t say no. I turned and stared out the window. The van slowed down and I realized where we were headed. There’s a whole cluster of pawn shops running along the east side of Church and the north side of Queen. I thought the Russians owned most of them, but it figured that Tommy’s dad had a piece of the action.

  Vince bumped the van into the curb and cut the engine. Sully turned back to me. “Wait here.”

  “That wasn’t part of the deal.”

  “Look, man, Vince and I, we’re professionals. Understand? If things go south, we won’t be there to hold your hand.”

  “I’ll manage.”

  Grumbling, Sully walked to the rear of the van, opened it up, and pulled out a baseball bat.

  Suzanne, I thought. I wonder if she’s working tonight.

  I walked toward Sully, keeping my eye on the bat. “Hey, is that really necessary?”

  “Relax. It’s an intimidation thing.”

  “You don’t think you and Schwarzenegger over there are intimidating enough?”

  Vince laughed at that, short angry barks like a pissed-off terrier. We headed toward a pawn shop, the baseball bat resting lazily on Sully’s shoulder. Warning bells, flashing lights, and sirens were going off in my head. These guys didn’t have the people skills necessary for a job like this. An operation like this called for some finesse.

  Vince opened the door and Sully ran inside, swinging the baseball bat and smashing the owner’s glass countertop. “WHERE’S THE FUCKING MONEY? GIVE ME THE FUCKING MONEY!”

  Oh Jesus.

  The owner, who looked like an older, balder version of Rasputin, dove behind his shattered countertop and came up snarling with a shotgun. In the narrow confines of the pawnshop the sound was deafening. Sully grunted as he got hit and went flying back, but I didn’t see it — all I saw was the gun as I yanked it from the owner’s hands.

  Rasputin fell to his knees, blubbering and crying in a language I didn’t understand. Turned out I was pointing the shotgun right in his bearded face. I lowered the gun. The poor old guy had pissed himself.

  Behind me Vince stood up, his hands red with Sully’s blood. “You killed him. You fucking killed him. I’LL KILL YOU!”

  Vince charged toward Rasputin, bellowing like a wounded bull. I cracked him in the face with the butt of the shotgun and he went down. I hit him again just to be sure: the butt of the shotgun got sticky with Vince’s matted hair and blood.

  The old man was praying, praying and blubbering, down on his knees in the broken glass.

  “Shh. Shh. I’m not going to hurt you. Where’s the security tape?”

  The old man’s mouth opened and closed. His eyes flickered to the left.

  I popped out the tape and stuck it down my pants. “You got a back way out of here?”

  Soundlessly the old man jerked his head toward a beaded curtain. I ran through a maze of dusty shelves and boxes before exploding out into the sunshine. I quickly scrubbed my prints off the shotgun with my shirt, chucked the gun into a Dumpster, and emerged onto Church Street in a casual saunter, willing myself to breathe slow. In the distance I heard the sirens. I walked for two blocks, then I whistled for a cab and got the fuck out of there.

  In the cab I looked down and saw blood on my shirt. Fuck. It was just a little bit. The cabbie didn’t seem to notice. I got him to turn right and head east. He dropped me off at Gerrard and Parliament and I walked a few blocks to a thrift store, where I bought a plain black T-shirt. I wrapped the bloody s
hirt in the plastic thrift store bag. I hoped Eddie still had the fireplace up on the roof. Toss in the bag, the shirt, and the pawnshop security tape, break out the beer and marshmallows and the ol’ acoustic guitar.

  Fuck.

  On the streetcar back west I kept my breathing under control and my anger in check. Did I forget anything? Security tape, check. Prints off gun, check. Photo of me from the van, check. Prints off the van? Shit.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  Then there was Rasputin. He wouldn’t talk. Or would he? One thing I’ve learned over the years: the Human Factor is the random X Factor that cannot be planned for. He could make up some song and dance, put the shotgun in my hands, not his. Robbery gone wrong. In Rasputin’s scenario, it’d go like this: Vince and Sully and I come in to rip him off. I pull a double-cross, shoot Sully and bash Vince. Then I take the security tape, the money, and whatever valuables the old man’s claimed on his insurance, and split out the back. Old man gets off scot-free with a pocketful of insurance money. Not a bad scam, but damned if I was going back to jail so an old man could buy himself another fistful of Viagra and some discount hookers.

  I got off the streetcar at College and Spadina and walked south. Payphones were an endangered species in the Age of Cellphones, but I spotted one and dialed Tommy’s number.

  “Don’t say my name. We need to meet.”

  “So soon? Sure, come on down to the club.”

  In the background I could hear house music throbbing. I had a headache already. “The club’s no good. They could be watching the club.”

  Tommy laughed. “You’re crazy, you know that? No one’s watching the club.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “All right, all right. Meet me in the kitchen. Half an hour.”

  ________

  The kitchen was an actual kitchen in the back of one of Tommy’s dad’s restaurants. The maître d’ arched his eyebrows when he saw me coming. I didn’t look like one of the impeccably dressed suckers slurping down overpriced pasta in the main dining room.

  “Table for one?”

  “I’m meeting Tommy.”