Howard Shrier - Buffalo jump

“All right,” I said. “You have me over a barrel. But there’s something I want in return.”

“In addition to being able to leave a free man?”

“What’s going to happen to the Aikens?”

“What’s it to you?”

It was a good question and not one I could readily answer. “They just don’t strike me as people who should be jailed for what they’re doing.”

“What makes them different from other drug dealers?”

“Come on, Staples. The only reason they got into this was the pharmaceutical industry’s gouge-fest.”

“I will not debate the issue of affordable health care with a Canadian. You just charge it all to the taxpayers and run up debt every year. That is not the American way.”

“No, you run up your debt on cluster bombs. Look, the only reason the Aikens are still in this, from what I saw, is coercion. They’re afraid they’ll be killed if they quit.”

“By whom?”

“They wouldn’t say. Not to me, anyway.”

“All right. If they cooperate, but I mean really cooperate, I’ll do my best to see they do no jail time. And I’ll take care of any threats against them.”

“And you and I say our goodbyes?”

“With no regrets,” she said with a smile. The first she had shown all that time.

“You know your organized crime figures in Ontario?” I asked.

“I pick up things around the building.”

“The name Di Pietra ring a bell?”

She sipped her coffee. “A father and two sons, if I recall.”

“Three sons,” I said. “But the father is more or less out of the picture now. He’s old and had a stroke. I’m pretty sure the brothers own Vista Mar.”

“Their names?”

“Vito, Marco and Stefano. The CEO of Vista Mar is a man named Steven Stone. I believe he and Stefano Di Pietra are the same man. His brothers have been providing the muscle.”

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s visit the Aikens. Hear what they have to say in their own words.”

We drove back in silence, past listless flags waiting for a breeze to lift them. Then something that had been bothering me before, something Staples said about Bader, fluttered into my consciousness, tapped me on the shoulder and whispered in my ear.

“Did you actually meet Dr. Bader?”

“Yes.”

“At Meadowvale?”

“Yes.”

Meadowvale. I hadn’t mentioned the name. How had Staples known it?

Christine Staples was about to ring Barry Aiken’s doorbell when I said, “Wait.”

She turned impatiently, tightly gripping a brown leather briefcase she had retrieved from the trunk of her Crown Victoria. “What now?”

“Have you ever spoken to Dr. Bader?” I asked.

“Your Dr. Bader? Of course not.”

“You knew he worked at Meadowvale.”

“You told me that.”

“I said he worked for Vista Mar but I never mentioned Meadowvale. Have you been there?”

“Don’t cross-examine me, mister. I can have your can in a detention centre in one minute.”

“So you keep saying.”

“You don’t think I’d do it?”

“I’m not sure you want to.”

“Push me far enough, I’ll do it, even if the paperwork takes all night.”

“Have you ever been to Meadowvale?”

“No.”

“Then how did you know the name?”

A man out washing his car in the driveway across the street looked over at the sound of my raised voice. Staples’s eyes moved from me to him and back to me, their colour more violet than blue. “All right, Geller. But I tell you this in strict confidence and you better respect it.”

“Fine.”

“I may be more familiar with the case than I allowed. We’ve been working with our Canadian counterparts for months.”

“Why play dumb then?”

“I wanted to see if you were being frank with me.”

“And?”

“I’m satisfied you are. Now can we please get on with it?”

I rang the doorbell. Silence. Rang again. More silence. I put my ear to the door. From within the house I heard a faint sound of music. “Around back,” I said.

Staples and I went down the driveway to the rear of the house. The broken windowpane on the back door had been covered with a freshly cut piece of plywood. Through the other panes I could see Amy on a kitchen chair. She wasn’t moving. Classical music was playing: a string quartet, a minor key, the first violin threading a mournful melody line high over the other instruments. For some reason, it evoked an image of the three dead men I had seen this morning. Of what the heat would have done to them if they hadn’t yet been found.

Staples rapped on a glass pane and Amy jumped in her chair. When she saw me there she glared balefully at me. Then she saw Staples beside me with her identification pressed against the glass. She sighed deeply and opened the back door.

“You again,” she said. “And look, you brought company. You sold us out, you shit.”

“Take it easy, Ms. Farber,” Staples said. “Mr. Geller has actually been advocating rather forcefully on your behalf.”

“What?”

“That’s right. Even though he might be in deep trouble himself, he’s been quite insistent that we find a way to deal with this without you going to jail.”

“Oh.” Amy seemed slightly embarrassed by this. “Well.”

“Shall we?” Staples asked.

Amy stood aside and let us in.

“Are we alone?” Staples asked.

“Yes. I sent Barry to the movies. That’s what he likes to do when he-when there’s trouble.”

“Then let’s see if we can’t sort this out.”

“Do I need a lawyer?” Amy asked.

“Only if you want to be treated as a suspect rather than a cooperating witness. Like I told Mr. Geller, I’m not interested in sending you or your customers to jail. I want to know who’s behind it and stop it at the source.”

Amy Farber looked at me with no warmth in her eyes. There was too much fear to leave room for anything else.

“If I tell you…” she said to Staples.

“Yes? Come on. Tell me what?”

Amy stood looking down at the floor, her arms crossed, one hand reaching up to knead the muscles near the base of her neck.

“If you’re afraid you’ll get in trouble, please consider that you are already in trouble,” Staples said. “Very deep trouble. And I am your only way out.” She sat down at the table, from which all pill boxes and vials had been cleared. Amy sat down across from her. I sat next to Amy. Staples snapped open her briefcase and took out her notebook and pen. She closed the briefcase and said, “From the top. Please.”

Amy started her story with her diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis in her late thirties. “I’ve needed anti-inflammatories and other medication for years. Plus I’m going through the… um, the change now. And Barry, God bless him, he’s a delicate soul and he needs drugs for anxiety, for sleeping, for his back, you name it. But the prices are so high for everything, even with insurance. So a few years back, we all started using Canadian pharmacies that advertised on the Internet.”

“‘We all’?”

“People from the New Fifty.”

“The what?” I asked.

“It’s an association for people fifty or older who like staying active.”

“How did you go from that to this distribution racket?” Staples asked.

“It’s hardly a racket,” Amy huffed. “I was vice-president of our New Fifty chapter and I knew so many people in the same boat. We got together so we could order in bulk and get better prices. We even organized bus trips to Toronto where you could fill your prescriptions and see a show. ‘Pills and Pops,’ we called it.”

“Just stick to the story,” Staples said.

“Everything was fine until they changed the law in Canada and pharmacies couldn’t sell to us anymore. Luckily for us, Mr. Silver said he could keep sending us medications, only on the sly. We took a vote and decided to keep going. I would take people’s orders and email them to Mr. Silver, and a week or so later a van would bring them down.”