Presto Variations: A Ray Tate and Djuna Brown Mystery

By Lee Lamothe

2014 Arthur Ellis Award — Shortlisted

Following the money trail gets Tate and Brown into a lot of trouble.

Detectives Ray Tate and Djuna Brown are back from a vacation in Paris – fraudulently funded by a stolen State Police credit card. While waiting to find out if they’re going to be fired or jailed, the couple is assigned to the Green Squad, a dead-end job shuffling paper and counting contraband money. But while interrogating a money smuggler, Tate and Brown uncover a massive currency stash they hope will keep them out of jail. Their target is drug trafficker Laszlo "Marko" Markowitz, who has millions in cocaine profits to be laundered and shipped into Canada.

As Tate and Brown try to penetrate the Markowitz organization, they uncover an underworld choking on its own profits and find a homicidal madman who has created the perfect blend of criminality and anarchy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dundurn
• Release date: Dec 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9781459706736

Book preview

Sophocles

Prelude

It was perfect. It was cold. There was no moon. There were no lovers in parked cars rocking the shocks, no homeless camped along the river, no cops catching naps.

The rocks on the river’s edge were crusted with ice and pockets of snow. Football-sized chunks periodically broke away from the rocks and swirled away in the currents. There was a small beach of pebbles littered with tin cans, soda bottles, cigarette packages, and condoms.

America, on the other side, was close, maybe two hundred yards. The lights above a parking lot near a warehouse seemed to beckon.

It was wider, the river, at the pebble beach, but it was the preferred site because it was between two elbows of riverbank that blocked sightlines from the east and west. Upriver the span bridge was out of sight except for the very top of its suspension. Downriver, around the elbow, was a boats’ landing with a long jutting pier. Only the very tip of the pier was visible.

Between the bends of the river there were several currents of varying strengths and angles, foaming a little in laces of white where they clashed with each other and battled it out. One of the currents was a noticeably bright green, even without a moon; fluorescent effluent from the chemical mill up river on the American side.

The schizo wind was moody, stiff at times, placid at others.

You couldn’t do anything about the wind or currents or homeless folks or banging lovers but you could calculate the lack of moonlight and choose the hour.

The pig train huddled on the Canadian shoreline. It consisted of one older man who never spoke, two women of middle age, and a female child. The girl belonged to no one. She was on her way to meet an older brother who’d gone to America ten years earlier, crossing this river at this time of year. The girl had never seen her brother.

One of the women, who spoke with a harsh Fujianese accent, took care of the girl, making sure her cheap Canada Goose knockoff was zipped to her throat, that she kept her toque on and down over her ears. She had ensured that the girl got enough food on the boat trip from China to Vancouver and the truck trip from Vancouver to Toronto, and wasn’t molested by the transporters.

The pig train had been brought to the pebble beach in an unmarked, windowless van. They were accustomed to the lack of windows, of view, of context, of place. They’d been among hundreds in the ships’ holds for weeks, on one boat from eastern China to southern Thailand and another, the mothership, from southern Thailand across the open ocean to an island off Vancouver. Small fast boats met the mothership at sea and the migrants scrambled down webbing into the control of screaming boatmen who rode the heaving waves like deranged surfers. Speedboats took them to a rocky point where they were off-loaded, identified, counted, and divided into groups of fifteen. The telephone numbers of immigration lawyers were written indelibly on their forearms.

Each group was crammed into a cube truck and taken down on a long drive to Vancouver, where they were warehoused in a Chinatown hotel until several pig trains were merged and reorganized by destination, and then they were all loaded into transport trucks. Some trucks went south, crossing at Bellingham; others went east.

The pig train on the bank of the river had been driven non-stop across the country. They lived in the dark on donuts that constipated them and tea that made them urinate frequently.

They were nervous. Tales had been told of trucks being opened by the authorities and the occupants found dead, suffocated by neglect or indifference, their fingernails in the walls and doors. Tales of migrants mistaking their urine bottles for their water bottles. Tales of rape and murder.

But the lucky made it to this bank of this river at this time of night in this season. It took determination and hope. And hope alone won’t cook the rice.

Their jockey, the man who shepherded them from Toronto to the river, had silently held his palm up, Wait, and left them on the riverbank while he drove three athletic young men to the span bridge where they believed they could crawl across undetected on the struts under the roadway.

The pig train waited now for Mr. Presto.

The old man remained silent, grim, as if anticipating what was to come. He’d eaten from the bitter harvest all his life and why should now be different?

One of the middle-aged women muttered in a deranged fashion about devilish portents and vengeful gods and the bad weather of the soul. She repeatedly made intricate superstitious finger signs at the river, at the wind, at the invisible moon.

The other woman spoke chidingly but with affection to the child because she’d left her mittens behind in the Chinatown hotel in Toronto. The caring woman took off her plastic boots, removed one of her pairs of socks, and rolled them up the child’s hands and wrists to keep her warm.

The girl, with a bright yellow knapsack like a hunch on her back, sat with her socked hands under her armpits, her knees up so she could lean her chin on them, and she stared intently at the lights of the parking lot of America.

A van bumped over the hill from the bridge end of the river, curving down the unlit road, its headlights wonky and cross-eyed. Once the driver had the shape of the road ahead and had spotted the huddled migrants he turned off the headlights and continued down, stopping a dozen yards away.

A stocky young Asian man energetically disembarked from the driver’s seat, rounded the van, and opened the rear double doors. The passenger, a slim white man with swept-back blond hair and a goatee and moustache, joined him. Both wore dark blue parkas, construction boots, and toques. The Asian man dragged a black and dark blue uninflated inflatable dinghy from the van. The price tag was still dangling from a handle: fifty-nine-ninety-nine, SALE. The goateed man paused to vomit in the weeds, then set up a compressor and attached a long hose to the nozzle on the raft. There was a loud insect sound and the raft inflated as if inhaling.

While the goateed man tested the pressure of the dinghy, the Asian man crossed to the migrants. In halting Mandarin with a strong Vietnamese accent, he greeted them. Your journey is nearly finished, he said, talking softly to calm them. He pointed across the river to the lights of the parking lot. Two vehicles will be there. Taxis. You know taxis? Yellow and black, with checkerboards on the doors. You, two and two, in each taxi, and then you go. The drivers will not stop until you reach the city. If you require personal maintenance, use those bushes now. Remember, the drivers will not stop.

The migrants nodded but none of them went to the bushes.

The goateed man dragged the dinghy to the shoreline. He went to the van and took two paddles from the back. He brought the paddles to the dinghy and looked at the pig train, then he went back to the van, opened the passenger-side door, and rummaged through a bag in the footwell. He returned with four whistles on string and four Oh Henry! chocolate bars. With a friendly smile, he distributed the whistles and chocolate bars, one each to each.

The Asian man said, The Oh Henry is a very America delicacy. Welcome, welcome. The whistles, you put like this. He crouched and wrapped the string tightly around the right wrist of the man. They all looked from the whistles to the Asian man’s face and back again. He smiled, and affixed a whistle to each wrist. If you feel danger, or you fall out, blow mighty the whistle. We will come and find you. He glanced up at the goateed white man sadly, and then turned back to the migrants and lied: We have another boat nearby, so don’t worry. Just blow mighty the whistle.

The goateed man stared at his feet. He swayed.

I will position you in the boat, two strongest at back, the weightiest. He pointed to the silent man and the superstitious woman. You two. The child and the other woman in front. He straightened. The difficult part is done. If you weren’t to see the Gold Mountain, you would have perished before now, you see?

The goateed white man undid the neck of his parka and took off his scarf. Careful not to breathe into her face, he wrapped it around the girl’s neck, tucked it, and rezipped her coat. Her cheeks were greasy with spray from the river. He checked the straps of her yellow knapsack and smiled at the socks on her hands.

He positioned the forward third of the dinghy in the river and the migrants, clutching their chocolate bars, boarded as told. He passed the paddles to the two in the rear.

The Asian man tried to explain the currents, When the water comes from this … he pointed to the right, … only one will do this … and he mimed digging in on the left. From this … he pointed to the left, … then only one will do this. He dug in on the right. Watch the lights. You must land as close to the lights as you can. Push the craft into the water behind.

The young Asian man and the blond man bent and pushed the dinghy further into the water, careful of the sharp stones on the pebble beach.

When the dinghy was fully on the river and five yards out, the goateed man called, Zai jian. Again see, but also, Goodbye.

The superstitious woman twisted around and looked at him in alarm at the language from the white devil, her mouth open. This must be a portent, a yellow-haired devil speaking the language. Surely a trap; she was being sent into the maw.

She dropped her paddle over the side and tried to scramble to get out of the dinghy, back to land. She got one leg into the water, overbalanced, fell in, and was gone. And then the river had the dinghy and the rest of them, spinning, the girl and the kind woman screaming, the silent man silent, his portent confirmed.

Only the yellow knapsack in the dark was visible from the Canadian side when the whistles began blowing.

The goateed man went for the river’s edge. He ran in the water to his knees before the Asian man grabbed him from behind. Bobby, no.

Downriver yellow knapsack hung in sight for a moment, then it was gone.

Bobby Preston struggled and went again for the river and dragged the Asian man further into the water before he was overpowered by a chokehold and muscled back, onto the bank. They lay collapsed side by side. Preston, the fabled Mr. Presto, wept inside a stranglehold.

Bobby, it is as it is.

The whistles stopped their mighty blowing and there was only the indifferent sound of the river running, doing what rivers do, making its own finality of silence.

PART ONE

Chapter 1

It was perfect. It was hot. The sun bore down on the access to the span bridge. Traffic into Canada was heavy, people with cottages or friends on the other side, people heading to Canadian casinos.

At noon a mint-condition, black 1984 Cadillac Seville headed out of the city toward the span bridge. The fat driver kept the seat racked fully back and drove with his short arms almost straight and his tiny hands at ten-and-two as he mounted the access to the bridge, the tires of the Caddy thrumming over the iron grating. On the river below sailboats hung in the irons; there was no breeze but they rocked severely as power boats pulling foam ran up into the lake.

The man in the Seville, Abner Hussey, thought about the river a lot. There was a summer-end regatta coming up and he thought about that too. Hundreds of boats, all kinds of boats, on the water, running from the Canadian side over to the city and back. One more boat in there wouldn’t be noticed. It could be carrying anything, and a lot of it.

He could see the cluster of flags, the Canadian red leaf and the stars-and-bars, an eighth of a mile ahead at the border crossing. He slowed as he tried to figure which groove of cones to enter. Once in he was committed, he was in federal territory where the jail time was crushing.

The sun was glaring and he squinted, but he left his sunglasses on the dash. He believed he had innocent blue eyes and that sunglasses might make him look sinister.

In his mind he grabbed up his nuts and decided to go for it, the far right aisle.

Just short of committing himself, his rear-view mirror lit up with strobing lights. There was a shot of siren, roof music the cops called it. He pulled to the right and waited for it to pass. But it stopped behind him. It was a black Chrysler with a crash bar on the front bumper. A rotating red-and-blue light was mounted on the dash and smaller ones winked through the grill and on the side-view mirrors.

In the rear-view Hussey could see a bearded white man in sunglasses behind the wheel and a black woman with spiked hair on the passenger side. He knew what they were, and he began to sweat.

He felt very unhappy. Aloud, he said, Ah fuck, ah fuck, ah fuck.

In the black Chrysler the detectives sat in the air conditioning for a few minutes.

Let him wait, Ray Tate said. In spite of the heat he wore a short hacked-out brown leather jacket over a bright untucked Hawaiian shirt of avian motif that covered his handcuffs. His gun was in his right ankle boot under his jeans’ cuff. A bead chain hung around his neck, dragged to the left side where his city badge was in his shirt pocket. He had a short satanic grey-shot beard; the tip of his left ear was gone. He must be one soaking unit by now, old Abbie.

But we’ve got to make him ours before he hits federal land, Djuna Brown said, running her hands through her spiked hair. "He gets up there and he’s a federale prize. We don’t get dick, dig it? She wore a red T-shirt from the Pompidou in Paris and khaki hiking shorts. Her legs were slim and brown. Her gun, a little silver automatic, was in plain view in an open holster on her right hip; her handcuffs were at her spine; the outline of her State Police sergeant’s badge, hanging on a necklace, was visible between her breasts under the shirt. On her feet were bright red slippers, threaded with little silver spangles and bangles. Let’s do this guy quick and have the rest of the day to ourselves. She made sloe eyes at him and started humming an upbeat Edith Piaf La Vie en Rose."

Abner Hussey wasn’t in the files as violent, but he was rolling dirty and had a lot to lose. Ray Tate pushed his sunglasses up into his long straggly hair, flipped his badge from his shirt pocket, and slid his gun from his ankle holster. He checked traffic and got out of the driver’s seat, holding the gun down his leg. Djuna Brown stepped out in her little slippers and didn’t pull her gun, just kept her hand on it.

"Misssss-tah Hussey, Ray Tate said, as he eased up to the door of the Seville, staying just on the edge of Abner Hussey’s eye line. He remembered a TV advertisement for hominy grits and created an accent. I will need yew to shut off the vee-hick-ull. Good man. Now I will need yew to toss the keys on the passenger seat of the vee-hick-ull. Good. Now I will need yew to disembark the vee-hick-ull, but for your safety and that of passing motorists, Misssss-tah Hussey, I need yew first to put both your hands out the win-der. You don’t want to move sudden, suh. My partner there, behind you, she’s got the deadeye on."

He used his left hand to secure Abner Hussey’s left wrist and tugged a little. Okay, Djun’, mine.

Djuna Brown opened the passenger door and leaned in to pick up the keys. She drew her gun and held it down her leg. Okay, Ray, mine.

Ray Tate put his gun into his boot holster and secured Hussey’s wrists with handcuffs.

Fuck’s this?

"Abner, Abner, Abner. Don’t give us a hard time, okay, mon ami? Just relax and enjoy it."

Ray Tate let go the chain and stepped back out of Hussey’s periphery. Pull your hands back in, Ab’. He opened the door and eased Hussey out by the arm, tugging just enough to keep him off balance. He remembered a late-night Jimmy Cagney movie. You heeled, pal? You packin’ a roscoe?

Me? A gun? Hussey sounded insulted. Fuck, no.

Okay, we’re going back to our car. He gave Hussey a quick pat-down, then looked at the gleaming Seville. Wow, this is a boss ride. You had it original, Ab’?

Yeah. Hussey cracked a reluctant proud smile. Dealership serviced, GM all the way. Indoors, all winter. He stared with pride and his smile became sad. I got this car new the day I got married, took it on my honeymoon. All the way to New Orleans. It’s cherry.

Well, maybe. Right now it’s proceeds of crime, Djuna Brown said. You want to say goodbye to it?

Hussey was short and his body was huge, inflated, but he had noticeably small skull with a fringe of dyed red hair, grey sideburns, and a skinny neck and tiny feet. He wore a lightweight Haspel suit that had seen better days, and an open-collared white shirt showing a fringe of grey chest hair. His feet were miniature in slip-on loafers. Taking him by his elbow, Ray Tate led him to the Chrysler and ushered him into the back seat. Unlocking one handcuff, he secured it to a long chrome bar across the back of the front seat and fastened Hussey’s seatbelt.

Djuna Brown got into the passenger seat, took the freddy from its rack, and said, Project office, Asset Four with our target in custody at span bridge.

Ten-four, Four.

Individual is known mutt Abner Hussey, white male, approximately fifty years, five-five, brown and balding dyed red, seven hundred pounds. She paused. Pinhead.

Ray Tate laughed.

Seven hundred pound ginger pinhead, the radio operator said. That’s a ten-four, Four. You need backup?

Negatories. Can we get a departmental wrecker to hook up a 1984 Cadillac Seville, black in colour, to the span bridge, just before the cones about an eighth mile from the booths? Impound relocate to the office.

Ten-four on the tow truck, Four.

She put the freddy in the rack and spoke over the backseat to Hussey. Talk to us, Abbie. You know we’re not like all the others.

What’s this about? I gotta get someplace. Who you guys? What? I didn’t signal a lane change? What?

Ray Tate looked at him in the rear view and shook his head. "Ohhhh-kay. We’re with the criminal asset recovery project. We have reason to believe you’re carrying contraband in the form of the proceeds of crime. Either that or you’re legally a pinhead. We will now proceed to our laboratory where our trained phrenologists will calibrate your skull."

Djuna Brown snickered and checked to make sure everybody was strapped in, then fastened her belt. Sit back, Abster. You don’t want to obscure the rear-view mirror, okay?

Yeah. Hussey seemed resigned to a day of shit. Whatever.

You know, Abbie, that drives me nuts. ‘Whatever.’ And the shrug. That means the same thing: ‘Go fuck yourself.’ My nephew does it and I go mental. You don’t want to say that to me, okay, Absteroni? Because really soon you and me are going to be in a private situation. I don’t want to reveal who’ll be doing what to who, but one of us is going to be naked and I’m going to be taking pictures of him.

Hussey was silent.

Ray Tate laughed.

Let’s take the expressway, Ray, okay? Abbie wants to get home.

Ray Tate yawned and shrugged. "Whaaaaatevs."

In an office at the Asset Recovery Project, after emptying Abner Hussey’s pockets, Ray Tate removed the handcuffs and said, You want us to strike up the house music, Abbo, or you just want to give us a bump and grind?

I see … Djuna Brown intoned, closing her eyes and humming an eerie wooing graveyard tune, … I see … Wait a minute, Abbinsky, I’m having a vision. I see … Red gauchies and a whole lot of dough.

The office was cramped, windowless, and furnished with a desk and two chairs. A tiny closed circuit recorder with a winking light was mounted in the corner of the ceiling.

Abner Hussey sighed and took off his suit coat, then his shirt. Bulging white business envelopes were duct-taped to his pasty chest, ribcage, stomach, and lower back. He dropped his pants. Envelopes were affixed to the insides of his thighs and on his shins. He wore droopy black socks and bright red bikini underwear.

Told you, Ray, red gauchies. She fussed with a digital camera. Smile pretty, Abbomatic. She aimed the camera at Hussey and took a full-length picture. Turn around, bud. She took another picture of the envelopes on his back, and then a head-and-shoulders portrait. She took a laptop from a desk drawer, powered it up, attached the camera into it, and started keying.

Hussey began peeling away the duct tape, sucking air as his body hair came off with it, looping it with the envelopes attached and coiling it onto the desk. That’s it. He looked disgusted.

Abbie, Abbie, Abbie, Ray Tate said. Man, we could have been pricks. We could have called the feds, let you hit the booths to Canada with all this undeclared cash, and that’s all she wrote. That’s federal shit —

Heavy, heavy fed action, that, Djuna Brown said mournfully. Yikes.

But we said, ‘No, the Ab-Man is our pal. No way do the greedy fuckers get our buddy, take the money, and waste it on bureaucrats. We’ll stop him before he goes into their territory, keep him here, let him hook up with his pals.’

Them’s us, them pals. Djuna Brown said happily. You know, Ab, if you wanted to chat with us about the source of these funds, we could arrange that some of this money comes back to you, a reward. She got no response.

Ray Tate began unpeeling the envelopes from the tape. I have to open one of them, make sure you’re not carrying something else, something nasty. He slit one envelope and took out a thick wad of bills and ruffled it, making sure the camera picked up his hands. Whoever you’re working for is desperate, man. He didn’t even boil it all down into decent hundreds. Look at this shit. Tens, twenties.

I’m having a moment, here, Ray, like another hot flash, Djuna Brown said, closing her eyes and humming. "I see, ah, I see a two, and I see a zero, and I see another two. She gave Hussey a sweet smile. Two oh two, Ab. My guess? There’s two hundred and two grand there."

Hussey said nothing.

Keeping his hands in view of the surveillance camera, Ray Tate took a clear plastic bag from a desk drawer and put the envelopes inside. He ripped a strip of self-adhesive from the opening of the bag, sealed it shut, and wrote his name and badge number across it in grease pencil. Estimated two-hundred-and-two thousand, variegated U.S. currency, pending audit. He pushed a claim form across the desk. Take it home and fill ’er out, Abbo, and you can apply to get your money back. No law against Abbie having cash, right?

Absolutely, Ray. This ain’t communist Canada or nothing.

Well, not yet, anyway, Ray Tate said. He started his spiel, first making sure the video camera didn’t record his mouth. So, Abbo, here’s how it plays. We didn’t have any probable cause to stop you, so this is probably an illegal arrest and seizure. Our bad. So we’ve seen the error in our ways and we’re cutting you loose. But we’re keeping the dough. You can fight for it in court. Nobody’s tried that yet, though, I got to tell you. Mostly because they don’t want to get in the box with their hand on the black book and tell the judge where they got the dough they were packing.

And, Ray, how come they got it taped on their bodies?

"Yep. Then, Ab, there’s those pesky IRS folks come sniffing around wondering how an out-of-work landscaper like you claiming fifteen grand income last year accumulated this little nest egg. And they do a net worth, look at his assets, his house, his car, and go, ‘Whoa, where’d all the money for this shit come from? Where’s our end, taxes paid? What’s up with that?’"

Djuna Brown gaily piled on. "And we do residue and fingerprints on the bills to see who’s been handling them, if there might have been, oh, I don’t know, cocaine? Cocaine in the vicinity? She frowned. You think, Ab, this might be dope money?"

What money? Hussey dressed quickly, his suit hanging from his thin body, his sleeves obscuring his hands, his belt twisted into a knot. He stared at a calendar on the wall showing a Parisian street scene, a happy young couple sitting at a bistro table under a Pernod umbrella. Where’s my keys?

Well, Ray Tate said, thinking about Hussey’s pride of ownership, that he got married in the Cadillac, that the dealer serviced it for almost thirty years. The car. I dunno how we’re gonna play that, yet. Sometimes the ride gets seized as an instrument used in the commission of, sometimes not. This new state’s attorney is moody. One day this, one day that. Let me go check, okay? And I gotta make sure we have updated bio data in the files. He picked up Hussey’s wallet, took out a wad of bills, counted them, and handed them back. Eighty-six bucks back to you.

Okay, Ray, go, Djuna Brown said. Me and Ab are going to chat a little.

As Ray Tate went out the door he heard Djuna Brown cheerfully ask Abner Hussey if he’d ever been to Paris.

He went down the corridor to the Green Squad bullpen and gave a thumbs-up to a grey-haired man sitting in a glass office with his feet on his desk reading a motorcycle magazine. The man waved him in. Lettering on the door said Commander James Cash; on the desk was an engraved sign that said The Cashman, the S a dollar sign.

How much did he have, Ray?

Looks like two oh two, pending, boss. As advertised.

Nice, very nice. The Cashman stretched luxuriously and glanced at a schematic of a deconstructed Vincent Black Shadow on the wall. They should all be this easy. He laughed. Actually, they are.

Whoever’s tipping us off knows a lot, boss, right down to the time, the route, the red bikini underwear, the amount. Three times so far he’s been right on the money. It would be nice to find out who this tipster is, focus him a little. He probably knows a lot we’d like to know. Especially about the source of funds.

Any chance Hussey might want to help us out with that?

You’d think so. We as much as told him someone ratted him out, right down to the amount of dough and the red banana hammock he’s wearing. He didn’t bite. Djuna’s in there now, talking to him about Paris.

Don’t start with fucking Paris, okay? Forget Paris. Paris is why you’re working here. Anyway, move him if you can. There’s more dough where that came from.

Ray Tate went to his desk and turned on his computer and waited for it to come up. A printout of Hussey’s rap sheet was beside the keyboard. Fraud, fraud, and fraud. Possession of fraudulent monetary instruments, possession of counterfeit U.S. currency, impersonation. A paper crook.

In Hussey’s wallet was a black-and-white photograph of a younger Abner with a full head of red hair in a baby-blue tuxedo with a tall thin woman with a blond bouffant, wearing a tight white miniskirt, holding a clutch of posy. The couple were arm-in-arm, laughing at the camera, leaning on the Cadillac. A wedding bouquet was mounted on the hood. Ray Tate stared at the photograph for a few minutes, wondering if the woman might be a pressure point. He computed her rough age and loaded her, last-name-only, into the database. A moment later she came back. Jane Hussey, traffic drunk, traffic drunk, traffic drunk. A year-old failure to remain at scene, without resolution. He picked up the telephone and called Traffic Services.

Hey. Any smash-and-dash guys do a Jane Hussey, about a year ago? Undisposed-without?

"Yeah, I know it. Fail-to-remain Jane. Great lady, everybody liked her, even the people she crashed into. She couldn’t keep off the bottle. Married to a mutt,