Chapter Nineteen
A fter Belkov confirmed the scope of Truman’s involvement with the RCMP, Mathias had intended to travel to Hamilton to confront the Reapers’ head. Then two plainclothes cops had appeared in the Collections office parking lot, and he’d lost days to righting the mess.
Within the span of a week, Mathias had become better acquainted with the prospect of his chickens coming home to roost. It wasn’t as though he’d never considered the possibility. From early on, he’d put arrangements in place. It was an occupational necessity—money scattered in foreign exchange accounts, assets held abroad under different names. There had always been an escape plan, a rip cord to pull should he need to leave the country in a hurry. But Mathias refused to run at the first sight of trouble, so he would have to wade in deeper if he wanted to make it out the other side.
Mathias stared at the bleak winter landscape through the passenger window as Jacques drove them across the provincial border into Ontario. He struggled to reconcile his growing sense of apprehension with the confidence that had fueled his ambition. For as long as he could remember, Mathias had viewed the world as a simple dichotomy between what he had and what he wanted. How muddied it had all become.
His second pulled up outside the Hamilton office, and the two of them got out of the car. Mathias had contacted Truman before leaving Montreal and instructed the man to meet him here. He wouldn’t risk engaging with him on Reapers territory—not this time. Truman had been surprisingly accommodating. Either that was more of his signature nonchalance, or he was as stupid as Mathias had always believed.
Paulo Bilotti, the new regional head, met him at the door to the building. “Good to see you, Mathias,” he said, shaking Mathias’s hand as he ushered him inside.
They made their way up the stairs to the office, and Mathias received a series of nods from the assembly of men who dotted the room, most of whom he’d installed during his tenure.
“Let him in when he gets here,” Mathias instructed Jacques and followed Paulo into the corner office, leaving his second to wait with the rest of the Hamilton team. He turned to Paulo as the man shut the door. “Have the arrangements been made?” Mathias had called ahead to enlist Paulo’s help.
Paulo nodded. “We got our hands on the shipment this morning, and it’s now at the bottom of Lake Ontario. I’ve assembled the full team, some here, some stationed around the building as backup.”
“Good.”
Mathias glanced idly around the room. It brought up an unwanted nostalgia, a callback to a different time. Paulo hadn’t changed much in Mathias’s absence—the place was as pared back as he’d left it. He sat down behind the desk and pulled out his cigarettes. He’d barely lit one before the door opened and Truman strode in. Mathias indicated for Paulo to leave, and the regional head stepped out, closing the door behind him.
“Changing it up, are we?” Truman announced, hooking his thumbs through his belt loops. “I haven’t been here since Moretti. Sure spruced up the place.”
He’d done more than spruced it up. Mathias still remembered how his skin had crawled the day that old hack had led him and Rayan up to this dump. He exhaled a stream of smoke through his teeth. “I thought I made myself clear when we first met.”
The air in the room shifted. Since carving out their unconventional alliance in the lead-up to Russo’s death, they had remained on relatively amicable terms. That was no longer the case.
“Clear about what?”
“How I conduct my business.”
“Nothing’s changed there.”
It had always been a gamble, relying on such an erratic personality. On some level, he’d known that ever since he’d first asked Gurin for an introduction. Mathias had made it this far by being careful who he trusted, and Truman wouldn’t have made the cut if necessity and circumstance hadn’t drawn them together. Truman and the Reapers had been an asset at the time. The family wouldn’t have succeeded in taking down Piero without them, but his usefulness had clearly run its course.
“Hasn’t it?” Mathias brought his smoke to his lips.
Truman cocked one eye. “What’re you going to do—pull out your gun?”
“I’ve done it before.”
“I believed you that time.” Truman shook his head, his expression almost reflective. “Back then, I knew you were gutsy enough to do anything to get ahead. Now you’ve already got what you wanted. There’s nothing in it for you.”
“Why don’t we talk about what’s in it for you? There must be something you’re getting by cutting a deal with the Feds.”
Truman gave a low chuckle. “Look, that’s something else. They’ve got me against the wall for some stuff Border Services caught us shifting for the West Coast chapter.”
“Stuff?” Mathias echoed. He knew exactly what Truman had been shifting.
“Guns, ammo,” Truman admitted grudgingly.
Mathias rested his cigarette on the edge of the ivory ashtray sitting on the desk and got to his feet, attempting to suppress the flash of fury at the man’s casual tone. Truman had no idea the risks he’d been taking—what he’d put in jeopardy—with his carelessness.
“Are you a fucking moron?” Mathias muttered. “Gunrunning’s far too conspicuous with what we have going on. It’s the basics in this business—compartmentalize, stagger activities, distance yourself.”
Truman shrugged. “What can I say? I’m greedy. I like a finger in a few pies. You know how it is—it’s not always about the money. Sometimes we do it for the hell of it, because we can.”
“No, I don’t know how it is,” Mathias said, astounded by Truman’s idiocy. He stepped away from the desk and moved to face the Reapers’ head.
Truman rocked back on his heels with a smirk. “Come on, Mathias. They’ve always been after us. One by one, eventually, we’ll fall. It’s just a matter of time. I’m not afraid to go down in a bloody mess. Better than slinking off to prison—”
Mathias smashed his fist into Truman’s face. A spurt of blood flew through the air, and Truman staggered back, stunned. Mathias cracked the knuckles of his right hand, surprised at the sting. It had been years since he’d done his own dirty work. Maybe he had grown soft, as Truman had said, now that there wasn’t anything left to want.
The Reapers’ head gave a gurgle of laughter and wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. “I probably deserved that. Heard you spent some time in the slammer.”
The second blow hurt less, Mathias’s body getting back into the swing of things—a violent sort of muscle memory. Truman doubled over and spat a hock of red onto the office floor.
“Okay, okay, enough,” he declared, squinting in anger as he straightened. “I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt, but I’m not dumb enough to come here alone. I’ve got ten guys outside with a pretty decent mob complex. They’d be happy to take you on. Even you, Beauvais, aren’t fucking invincible.”
“Let’s see you try,” Mathias snarled. “The men behind this door were trained by the Bratva. They’ll tear your hobby bikers to pieces.”
“Look, I didn’t give them anything,” Truman said. “The pigs put two and two together and caught on to our little arrangement.”
“An arrangement that is, as of this morning, dead in the water—along with your last shipment. You’re welcome to recover what you can from the bottom of the lake.”
Truman’s face flushed red. “That was half a mil worth of product!”
“So run and tell that bitch from the OCB you were chatting up. Like you have about everything else.”
“I didn’t sell you out,” Truman growled. “She came to me with this gunrunning charge, trying to twist my arm, all right? She wanted dirt on you, and I told her to fuck off.”
“And she just happened to know about the holding company, the agreement with port authority?”
“Shit, she’s got the whole RCMP at her disposal. If the shipments are getting seized, the Feds are going to start sniffing around to see what else they can find.” Truman gingerly brought his fingers to his split lip. “But in spite of all that, I came here, to your turf, to meet with you—someone I would consider a reasonable man—”
“Reasonable?” Mathias repeated, looking down at him with contempt. “You’re more deluded than I thought.”
“I’m helping you out here, trying to smooth things over,” Truman said, holding up his hands. “From what I’ve heard, this broad won’t let you out of her sights. I figure I can help with your little problem and solve one of my own in the process. Who knows? If we play our cards right, all of this might just disappear.”
Mathias felt a flicker of warning. “The fuck are you talking about, Truman?”
“Allen. She’s the one pushing hard for this,” Truman said, lowering his voice. “She’s also the one whipping Border Services into a frenzy and siccing them on my ass. She goes quiet, and what do they have? With no one to lead the investigation, they’re back to square one. The government’s fighting a war on multiple fronts. You think they wanna bleed resources on a little provincial spat?”
The implication slid like ice down the back of Mathias’s neck.
“All I’m saying is, I ain’t no stranger to spilling a bit of blue blood to get the job done. As far as I’m concerned, if someone’s in my way, I take them down, badge or no badge. She’s been at me to meet again, so I figured it’s about time I took another trip to Montreal.” Truman chuckled. “You know how I like the women in Quebec.”
This was an unexpected development. Mathias brushed the blood from his knuckles on the leg of his pants. He reached for his still-smoking cigarette, brought it to his mouth, and took a slow drag.
Mathias knew that he shouldn’t, but upon returning to Montreal, he’d forgone his own apartment in favor of the safe house. With his world closing in around him, it was the only place he felt calm enough to think, and after his meeting with Truman that afternoon, there was a good deal to think about.
By the time he arrived, it was late in the evening. Mathias sat at the dining table while Rayan made coffee in the kitchen. Spread out before him was the series of photos tracking Inspector Allen’s movements. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for—justification? Mathias had mulled over Truman’s proposal the entire drive back to the city, unsure why it had hit a nerve, like a splinter lodged beneath the skin.
Rayan appeared at his side, placing a steaming mug down on the table. His hand reached out to pluck a photo partially obscured by another in the pile. It was Allen at the playground, pushing a little girl with pigtails on the swing. “She has a kid?”
“Her sister’s.”
Rayan put the photo down and pushed several of the images around on the table with his fingertips. “What are you going to do about her?” he asked cautiously.
Mathias hesitated, recalling how flippantly Truman had thrown down his gambit—a simple solution. “There are things that can be done,” he said, and Rayan’s gaze flicked to his, a look of warning in his eyes. Mathias sat back, thrumming his fingers against the table. “Truman’s under the impression it would be a relatively easy problem to solve.”
“She’s not some dealer who’s stepped out of line,” Rayan said sharply. “She’s a police officer. This is her job.”
“And this is mine.”
Mathias didn’t say that he, too, had found himself unsettled by Truman’s proposition. Rayan was right about one thing—Frances Allen hadn’t ventured into their world for a share of the promised bounty. She was there because of a sense of duty, as cheap and misguided as that was.
“You’re better than that,” Rayan muttered.
First philosophy, now charity—as though the man had emerged from a state of stasis and was only now determining where he stood. Mathias felt the fury rise like a wave. It was new, this power Rayan had over him and the way his words pierced Mathias to his very core.
“Am I?” Mathias sneered. “You think a couple of college papers make you an expert on right and wrong? You don’t have a fucking clue.” He stood and reached for his jacket where it hung on the back of the chair. “And I don’t recall this righteous sense of justice before.”
Rayan couldn’t hide the shadow of a grimace. “You know that was different.”
“Was it? Or maybe you don’t remember how fallible you are.”
“I remember,” Rayan said, looking away.
Of course he remembers , Mathias admonished himself, thinking of all the times he’d awoken in the night to find Rayan gone from bed, sleep eluding him.
“I told you I couldn’t give you what you wanted,” Mathias said in a low voice. “You know what I am. Your newly adopted moral code doesn’t apply where I’m concerned.” He pulled on his jacket and strode toward the door.
“People change,” Rayan said to his retreating back.
“Spare me the shrink talk—”
“You have.”
Mathias stopped.
“I used to marvel at your ability to walk headfirst into any situation, no matter the stakes,” Rayan said. “I thought it was superhuman, wished I could be the same. But nothing ever scared you because you didn’t care what happened either way.”
Mathias clenched his jaw.
“Now you do.”
Mathias reached for the door handle and gripped it in his palm. He thought of the pale-green linoleum in the holding cell, smelling of piss and bleach. Then he yanked open the door, stepped out into the cold night air, and slammed it closed behind him.