37



 



"When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home."

 

 - Tecumseh

Marty

It was January 29^th around three o’ clock when Marty and Richard went back to the house to check on things.  They had been out of the house for a full twenty-four hours, just the two of them.  Marty had asked Jimmy if he wanted to come along when they had left, told him that it was best to get out of the house, but he had insisted he stay, opting to sleep in the game room.  He told Marty he would likely leave in a day or two.  Richard had gathered up a few things in the duffel-bag that was once Ivan’s; some clothes, a tiny box of tea-bags, tea biscuits and some granola bars, placing everything on top of half of their money stash.

Their first destination had been the Coffee Time at the place where Dundas Street West split northward, ran under a bridge and became Dupont Street.  This was the Junction Triangle, the eastern-most part of the greater Junction area where more of the old industry stood.  There were open lots of gravel and cracked up cement, most likely the future site of condo development.  The street seemed to alternate between houses, abandoned houses, and stores with apartments on top.  Every few dozen feet there were also shelter homes and tire yards.  Dundas West Station was just a ten to fifteen minute walk eastward.

“So are we going back or not?” Marty asked once they were seated in front of two steamy cups of black coffee.  An all-nighter had been suggested on their quick walk through the Junction’s back alleys and Vine Avenue.

Richard scratched his chin and then blew on his cup. “Why go back?  We got everything we need here.”  He pointed his eyes first at the duffel bag on the chair to his right and then to Marty’s knapsack across from it.

“I left my laptop there,” Marty sighed in reply. “I just remembered, damn; at least they don’t have my desktop password so I guess they can’t get it, but still.  It could end up as evidence should the cops every get their hands on it.”

Richard quickly brought a finger to his lips, looking about the coffee shop apprehensively.  There was the small man behind the counter who was on the phone arguing in another language, and two other people at the far end of the shop at a different table.  The whole room was bathed in a golden glow that came from the sun that dipped behind the three story buildings west of them towards Keele and Dundas.

“Yeah, okay,” Marty said, dropping his tone. “But maybe we should go back; at least I can go back.”

“There is an alley beside the two houses behind us, the ones that face the other street, the one with the synagogue?  We can sneak in through the space between the last two houses and then hop their fence into their yard and then hop into ours.”

“Isn’t that illegal?”

Richard scoffed.  Marty got the message.

“Feels like shit though,” he added. “Running now after all this.  I guess I knew we couldn’t stay there forever.”

“Yeah,” agreed Richard. “It’s amazing though; no one came, no one suspected a thing except these two blokes.”

“Who do you think they are?” Marty asked, bringing down the volume of his voice. “What was Ivan’s deal anyway?  We found all these antiques in the house, plus lots of other useless stuff.  What is it, some business with material, or counter-fitting?”

Richard shrugged. “Could be anything; money-laundering, prostitution, drugs, or just general slum-lording.  It’s not really important though, is it?  They’re lump men, lumpenproletariat.”

“Possibly bourgeoisie elements, depending on how big their enterprises are,” Marty corrected. "Probably something connected to people back in Russia, could be international in scope."

“All we know is once they find out what’s happened they’ll be after us.”

“They already are,” Marty corrected, glancing out the window to the parking lot.  There were only two cars out there, none of them black.  Marty shielded his vision to take in the beginnings of rush hour traffic jams forming on Dundas Street.  Every red light at the place where the street split into two directions caused a caravan to form.  He kept expecting to see it, that black car coming in like a hearse making the whole jam look like a stalled funeral procession. “We should get going,” he said, downing the rest of his coffee quickly, shaking those thoughts from his head.

“Yeah,” Richard said.

Once they were outside they both started south on the small streets leading into the neighbourhood known as the West Bend.  This was a more affluent place, upper middle class to lower upper class, made up primarily of three to four story Victorian houses.  Many of the lawns were still decorated with Christmas ornaments even though it was nearly February.

“This area is nice,” noted Marty as they passed by a deflated Santa Claus and started heading slightly downhill. “I wish I'd moved here instead.  Put me in one of these basement apartments and I’m happy.”

“This is a very nice area,” Richard agreed. “We could move in somewhere here if it weren’t so close to the other place.”

Marty turned to him. “So is that what we’re doing then?  Finding another place in Toronto and renting?”  It felt bad in some ways, putting themselves back into the situation they were in in the first place. “And what, get another Ivan in the process?”

“This time we have a bit under a million dollars though.  What else do you propose?  At least they won’t find us if we’re out in Scarborough or Pickering.  What, are we going to fight these guys?  Yeah,” he laughed. “Good luck, you take the big guy, I’ll take Vladmir Putin.”

Marty thought about Spades and imagined a pistol in his own coat pocket.  He would feel safer going back to the house if he had it.  Spades had told him he would call him as soon as he had it ready.  After Marty had asked him Spades had pulled out a wad of cash (two hundred dollars), placing it in Marty's hands quickly and clasping his fingers around it. “I took a few extra hundreds when we were at Franco’s, consider the rest of what I took payment.  I’ll be back in a day or two.  I’ll call you as soon as I get it and we’ll work it out,” Spades said.  Marty shoved the money in his pockets and then reached forward to grab Spades in a bear hug.

It had been a day already since then.  The phone rang earlier in the day, but it was Tony.  He was already in Niagara Falls and had won a few hundred, giving half to his bodyguard.  Tony told him that he was renting a hotel but might be in the market for an apartment soon if his luck held up.  Marty saved his number after saying good-bye, asking Tony to call him again soon to update him.

But there had been no call or text message from Spades all day.  Marty called his number a few times, but got no answer.  He was starting to reconsider if he wanted a gun, especially if he and Richard were going to just jump town or move into a different neighbourhood.

“I think we should go back just once to the house,” he told Richard when they had reached College Street. To their left they could go to the gates of High Park, to their far right was Roncesvalles.  Richard nodded his head towards the direction of the park. 

 

“We’re not sleeping in there,” Marty said once they made it to the edge of the park on Keele Street. 

“Then where are we going to sleep?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s not there,” Marty replied, starting to feel the cold in his knees.  He imagined huddling in the bushes at night when the temperature would reach minus twenty degrees. “There has to be a shelter that’ll take us in for one night.”

“Yeah, then we’ll be fighting bums all night!” the other laughed, air-boxing as they turned around and started walking back up Keele. "I was thinking we could stay in the park overnight, but not in this cold now that I’m out here.  We might have to go to a shelter.  Okay, we get a room together and it should be okay; maybe we sleep in turns?”

Although he hated the idea too, there was no way Marty would sleep outside in this weather.  Another painful gust of arctic wind flew in their faces, sending a stinging sensation over Marty’s exposed skin.  Richard started talking again, but Marty’s ears had plugged up from numbness.  He just nodded stiffly, unable to even move his head fully.

They turned northward at the next street and then westward at the intersection after that, keeping up a good pace until they reached Dundas again.  There were plenty of shelters here at the Junction Triangle.  They chose the nearest one, a two-story white bricked building with some people crouching at the sides of the doors, smoking and drinking.  Marty made eye contact with none of them nor asked around for weed like he might have before, pressing forward to get out of the hellish winter cold.

Inside was warm, soothing to his throbbing face and ungloved hands.  Richard approached the middle-aged man at the counter while Marty tried moving his fingers and stretching.  The guy behind the counter was bald and big, looking like he could have been a bouncer or a security guard of some kind.  His soft voice made Marty rethink that.

They were in luck.  A two-bed room was available.  It was only six in the evening, but already dark.  Once they were in the upstairs room they placed their bags under the twin beds and sat up.  Marty’s body felt less numb, although his face still hurt.  His nose had regained its sense of smell though.  He wished that it hadn’t.

“This place stinks,” Richard muttered, shuddering in the light of a single bulb hanging loosely from the ceiling.  There were brown stains on the wall and ceiling, more than a few of them shaped like little handprints. 

“Worse than Ivan’s,” Marty replied. “I’ll be sleeping in my clothes on top of the bed-sheets.”

“Same.”

It was quiet in the dim room, save the sounds of strong winds pounding against the window and the occasional yell from somewhere down the hall.  Hours passed by yet no one knocked on the door to rouse them.  At one point they had both fallen asleep at once, waking only when the morning was already over. 

They thanked the man at the front and stepped out into a chilly afternoon.  It had snowed heavily again, the early thaw being nothing but a weather tease.  They returned to Coffee Time, trudging through deeper snow to get inside again.  As Richard went to the washroom, having refused to use the shelter’s shit-stained toilet, Marty called Spades.  There was still no answer.  He called Jimmy next.

“I think you better get over here,” his friend told him at once.  There was something about Jimmy’s tone, more serious than he had heard it ever before.

“Yeah?  Shit.  Why?”

“Spades, I can’t get a hold of him.  Do you think the five-o got him?”

“I can’t reach him either,” Marty answered.  Richard came back to the table.  “Jimmy, do you want to leave?”

 “Soon, yes, but get back here first.”

They had argued about going back once Marty ended the call.  Richard insisted they were ready to go and could leave Jimmy behind.  Marty was sick of his willingness to leave people who got entrapped in the problem that the two of them had created behind.

“Tony was blind, okay; fine it was good you got him out, but Jimmy?  Come on, you can’t trust this guy to come with us.”

“You hated him since the start, before you even knew him, didn’t you?  He wasn’t the one who took money and hid out getting stoned.  Fuck it, I’m going back.  You can wait here.”

Richard stood up, insisted he go wherever Marty went.  Marty patted his soldier comradely and nodded, already regretting bringing up Richard's drug binge. “Thanks,” he said.  As they left the door he assured Richard that they would slip in quickly and talk to Jimmy and then leave.  If Jimmy refused then they would just go together.

When they reached their street again they saw no sign of the black car.  There were some vehicles parked on the street, but they were all covered completely in snow.

“Jimmy!  What’s up?” Marty asked as he and Richard entered the kitchen on the main floor.

His friend sat at the table with both hands on the edges. “Hi,” he said quietly, glancing up once and then darting both eyes down at his lap.

“He knows something,” Marty thought, noting that he was shaking as he sat. 

“One thing I got to get,” Richard said to Marty, turning to go to his room. “You left it in my room.”

Marty fake-laughed as he turned to the door of his own room.  He had to get his laptop. "Leaving once I get it," he thought, not wanting to even try to talk to Jimmy about it. "He must have found the body." 

“You never told me this, Marty!” Jimmy called in after him.

“Huh?” Marty asked, feeling a rush of adrenaline as he came to his laptop on his desk.  It was still on.  He flipped it open frantically and waited for the screen to materialize.  It was online too.  His e-mail was open.  There were two new messages.  The first one was from Richard.  It had a file inserted, a word document.  The heading of the message read: My novel.  The other one just above it was sent minutes ago and was sent from Jimmy.  Marty’s breath went short as he opened it, reading:

Marty,

You knew I would do things.  But you never, ever told me we would do anything that involved killing someone.  I would risk going to jail, but never to Hell.

He gasped, closing the laptop shut and shoving it into his knapsack.  Then he heard the door to the kitchen from outside swing open.  Marty stormed back into the kitchen.  Jimmy looked up at him, face pale and sickly.

“Why?” Marty asked meekly.  Richard arrived at the door seconds later, he too becoming pale as he noticed the two big men had entered, the larger of them sporting a pistol.

“Stay where you are!” he bellowed, raising the gun and pointing it at Marty. “Now you will answer; what did you do to Ivan?”

“Shit!  Shit!  Shit!  SHIT!  SHIT!  SHIT!” he screamed in his head, dropping his knapsack as his hands flung up.

“We shouldn’t have come back,” Richard mumbled, raising his own.