Howard Shrier - Buffalo jump

No, Geller, you are not in Toronto anymore, where most bumper stickers proclaim support for ecological and social causes and lawn signs warn government against privatizing health care and cutting school budgets.

“You want to see the real Buffalo? Check that out,” Ryan said, pointing to a billboard that showed a smiling man in a blue uniform steam-cleaning a carpet. “Crime Scene Incorporated,” the tagline read. “Cleaning and Restoring Buffalo Homes Since 1984.”

“Ever seen one of those at home?” he asked.

“Never.”

“I should apply for a franchise,” he said. “I could present a hell of a business case, don’t you think? I got experience, contacts and I’m motivated as hell to launch a new career.”

The truck rumbled around a traffic circle and veered west onto Lafayette. The farther west we drove, the smaller the houses were. There were no public monuments, green spaces or architectural gems in this part of town. No colonials on generous lots. Just frame houses with stained siding and cars looking worse for the wear of Buffalo winters. Yards showed more brown grass than green, and were piled with old appliances, broken bicycles, discarded lumber and mud-spattered toys. Sidewalks were breaking where weeds pushed up from the ground. Windows were boarded up. Men sat against a fence outside a dirty bodega, drinking from big cans of malt liquor. At least half the businesses on the street had newspaper taped over the windows. Graffiti covered the sides of most buildings.

“Osama bin Laden lives,” someone had written in white paint on a red-brick wall.

“Upstairs,” someone had added in black.

A few minutes later, the truck pulled into the parking lot of a three-storey warehouse surrounded by a fence topped with rusting razor wire. Most of the windows at the rear were broken despite being shielded by metal grilles. We parked on a side street where we could see the back of the warehouse through the fence. Behind the building were tall cottonwood trees. Fluffy white clumps drifted down like large snowflakes only to be snagged by barbed wire or trapped by wind currents against the fence. Frank and Claudio perfected their idle routine while two hired hands unloaded the cases: first the loose ones, which they wheeled inside on a dolly, then the skids, which they removed using the same kind of forklift we’d seen at Silver’s.

When the truck was empty, Claudio closed the back door and locked it, and all of them went inside. Half an hour later they were still there.

“If all they left at the house was a dozen or so cases, where do you think the rest is going?” Ryan asked.

“Once they’re over the border, they can go anywhere: Rochester, Syracuse, Detroit, Cleveland.”

Hundreds of thousands of vials, millions of pills, bound for hungry markets where aging boomers wanted-needed-to remain virile and healthy; where their parents were trying to cope with the onslaught of symptoms that storm the body in its eighth and ninth decades; where people of all ages with rare illnesses needed medications in amounts too small for the pharmaceutical industry to profit by unless the drugs were sold at exorbitant prices, which, of course, is what the industry did.

“Let’s go back to the house,” I said. “Try our luck on whoever is there.”

“Are we down to banking on luck now?” he asked.

Parking was suddenly at a premium near the house on Lincoln Parkway. Every available spot was taken for a full block in either direction. As we passed the house, an older man, extremely heavy and sweating through his shirt, was pushing an empty wheeled cart up the walk. He was at the bottom of the steps when the door opened and a man and a woman came out. The man was the one we’d seen unloading the van. He wore black jeans and a yellow T-shirt with a swirling portrait of Jerry Garcia in a cloud of smoke. The woman looked like a yachter in a Ralph Lauren ad. She carried a cardboard carton in her arms; the man had two. He had to use his backside to hold the door open for the older man as he backed up the stairs pulling his cart. They exchanged greetings as if well acquainted. I turned and watched through the rear window as the man and woman carried their cartons to a gold Infiniti sedan. He loaded the cases in for her, then kissed her on the cheek before trotting back to the house.

The nearest parking spot we could find was around the next corner, on Bedford Avenue. “Hope we don’t need to make a fast exit,” I said.

Ryan got out and opened the trunk of his car. He said, “First rule of a fast exit? Make sure there’s no one left to chase you.” He opened his metal gun case and slipped his Glock 20 into his waistband. He also took out a yellow hard hat and a clipboard.

He said, “I don’t want to be seen walking with you, so I’ll go first and walk down around the back. See if there’s a way in.” He put on the hard hat and held the clipboard smartly under his arm. “Anyone sees me, I’m Mr. City Inspector, looking at the wires and going uh-huh a lot.”

“It would look better if you had a pen, Mr. C.I.”

“I don’t carry one. You saw what happens to guys who write shit down.”

I gave him my pen.

He said, “See if you can get in the front. I’ll hang out back. You need me in there, whistle sharp.” He walked slowly toward the house, stopping occasionally to look up at telephone wires and make notations on his clipboard. I waited until he was out of sight down the driveway, then began walking toward the front entrance. As I approached the house, a dark-coloured SUV pulled up alongside me. My sphincter pursed momentarily, but the driver in no way resembled an assassin, unless they’re hiring clean-cut young women who look like they’re off to the library. I scanned the street. No other cars coming in either direction. No one on foot.

I was walking up the stairs, pondering entry strategies, when the front door opened and a sporty-looking fellow in his sixties emerged. He wore slacks and a blazer and a pressed golf shirt, with white hair swept back from his tanned face. He had a large canvas shopping bag in each hand, which he set down to pull the door shut behind him.

“Let me get that for you,” I called and bounded up the last steps.

“Thanks,” said the man. “Hope you’re in no rush, though. They’re quite a bit behind schedule today. I’ve never seen it this busy.”

Great. A peanut gallery full of witnesses.

I stepped into the house and locked the door behind me. I was in a small foyer made smaller by a huge fern growing out of a brass umbrella stand. I brushed past it into a wider hallway that had a hardwood floor scuffed grey down the middle by years of traffic. On my right was a wide staircase going up to the second storey. On my left an empty den, lit only by a desk lamp. I could hear music and voices coming from the back half of the house, though. A lot of voices, men and women both, an ongoing din punctuated occasionally by laughter and friendly shouts.

Spare me, I thought. They’re having a goddamn party.

“Hey,” a man’s voice called to me.

I braced myself and looked up to see a stocky fellow in his early fifties, his close-cropped dark hair and beard showing traces of white near the temples and around the mouth. He carried two cardboard cartons over which he could hardly see. A petite woman of about eighty walked beside him, gripping his arm tightly as she took small delicate steps.

“Mind getting the door?” he asked me.

“Not at all.” I unlocked the front door and flattened myself against the wall so they could pass.

“Thanks, Ted,” the woman said. “If you get me as far as the sidewalk, I’ll be fine.”

“You’re still driving?” he asked.

“Don’t be silly,” she giggled. “I haven’t driven since the first President Bush was in office. Amy was kind enough to call a taxi.”