Читать книгу Birds of a Feather - Don Easton - Страница 16

It was Thursday afternoon when Corporal Connie Crane called Jack to say she had met with a Crown prosecutor.

“Here it is in a nutshell,” said Connie. “If a judge thinks you have used too much intimidation, then whatever Slater may tell you would be inadmissible against him at any criminal proceedings. However, if what you are told assists us in investigating other players, then you might be able to go after them. Of course, if that happened, we still couldn’t enter any of Slater’s admissions.”

“What about calling him as a witness if he knows something? Threaten him with perjury if he doesn’t tell the truth.”

“You wouldn’t be able to enter evidence to prove he was lying. If you tried, a judge might say it puts justice into disrepute and toss the whole case.”

“So we can use Slater as a stepping stone, but even if he incriminates himself we still have to send him on his way with a get out of jail free card.”

“I think you got it.”

“Want me to go for it?”

“Yeah, we’ve got nothing else. Wilson’s in agree-ment. Both of us think he knows something about her disappearance, but we don’t think he is a hands-on kind of guy. If you think you can pull off some tough-guy scenario to get him to talk, go for it.”

“I’ll let you know how it goes. It may take a couple of days.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“Why?”

“Because if you were using pliers it wouldn’t take that long.”

An hour after talking with Connie, Jack visited The Racquet Club. After a quick tour, he accepted an offer of a free pass used as a promotion to entice people to buy a membership. He was glad to see the customers used padlocks to secure their storage lockers. His ability to pick locks would make that step of his undercover plan easy.

The hardest job would be finding a remote spot and digging a grave that wouldn’t be discovered. For that, he found a construction site where the workers got weekends off.

On Friday afternoon, Jack called Sammy in Drug Section. “Hey, are you still hiding that ugly face of yours with a beard?” asked Jack.

“I only have a goatee now. What’s up, Jack?”

“A goatee is good. Need a small favour for a quick UC.”

“Yeah? How quick? Last time I agreed to do something for you, I ended up sitting in a bar so you could burn me to get the bad guys to trust you.”

“That worked well.”

“For you, yeah. Me, I could have been shot.”

“Never took you for a whiner.”

“A whiner? Up yours!” Sammy chuckled. “What do you need?”

“I need you to stand on a sidewalk and phone me when some guy arrives and asks for me. I’ll know when he’s arriving so you’ll only have to be there for a few minutes.”

“Sounds easy enough. Beats being in a doper bar like last time. When do you want to do it?”

“Tomorrow around supper time.”

“Tomorrow’s Saturday … yeah, okay. Where at?”

“Do you know where the west-side chapter clubhouse for Satans Wrath is?”

“Oh, fuck …”