Diamond Run Read online

  Diamond Run

  A Phil Mahood Novel, Volume 1

  Michael Croucher

  Published by Michael Croucher, 2017.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  DIAMOND RUN

  First edition. November 15, 2017.

  Copyright © 2017 Michael Croucher.

  ISBN: 978-1386663874

  Written by Michael Croucher.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  DIAMOND RUN | Michael Croucher | Chapter 1 – West 47th Street, New York City, 1979

  Chapter 2 – R.C.M.P. “O” Division HQ, Toronto

  CHAPTER 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6 - Village of Stoney Creek, Hamilton, Ontario

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Author Notes

  About the Author

  Also by Michael Croucher

  About the Author

  For Lynda

  DIAMOND RUN

  Michael Croucher

  Chapter 1 – West 47th Street, New York City, 1979

  JOSEPH ROSE HUNCHED over and dropped to his knees by the office safe, his eyes searching for intruders. It was well past closing time. Joseph had found the buzzer controlled outer door unlocked, and his father wasn’t waiting for him as promised. He’d said he’d be working late, and would wait to review the day’s transactions with Joseph. Something was wrong. Fingers shaking, he worked the safe’s combination, sensing that his strange day had now turned dangerous.

  The momentum he’d built early in the day was derailed by a disturbing meeting. The meeting started well. Joseph had been optimistic, anticipating ever-increasing sales to a Canadian retail chain, and a solid cash flow boost to Rodium Imports, the family business. When Joseph announced that the customer’s proposal required further scrutiny by his father, the negotiations took an abrupt turn. From that point on, the man became confrontational, and occasionally hostile.

  The Canadian was angry that Joseph couldn’t agree to a small deposit on the initial order of diamonds, or to a revolving credit option. Joseph said that his father must be the one to finalize the terms of the deal, and would not agree to such flexible terms without a sizeable down payment on the initial order, and never without a thorough review of the letters of credit. Furious, the Canadian slammed his clenched fist down onto the table. He shouted at Joseph, insisting that the terms he’d requested were a standard practice in the industry, and that with the number of retail establishments involved, the opportunity was too good for Joseph to pass up.

  When the buyer calmed down, he reluctantly agreed to let Joseph take the letters of credit, to his father. The Canadian scowled when they shook hands, but agreed to meet the next day. Joseph had felt uneasy for most of the afternoon and evening. He’d tried to pinpoint the reason he felt so anxious. Was it because he hadn’t handled the confrontation as well as he should have? Or, had he sensed something else?

  He realized that he’d messed up; should have seen through the man’s promises and bluster, and not given out so much information about the quality of the company’s inventory, or the fact that his father was staying late at the office and would be meeting him there. His father would never have made those dangerous mistakes. The diamond business was an attractive target for fraudsters and thugs. Moishe Rose had learned to read people and situations with an accuracy that his son had not yet developed.

  The look in the Canadian’s eyes when angered had shaken Joseph. They turned vicious; spiteful. Joseph pushed the incident out of his mind during the rest of his busy day. But now, in his alarmed state, the memory of the man’s anger seemed more ominous.

  Still on his knees, Joseph reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket for the letters of credit. They should be locked away until morning.

  Behind him, a floorboard creaked.

  “Father,” he said hopefully, not turning to the sound for fear that it might shatter any illusion that things were alright. He started to swing the safe door shut. “Sit, Father, and I’ll tell you about my day.”

  A gloved hand gripped his shoulder from behind and squeezed. Joseph gasped in pain and let go of the safe’s handle. A familiar voice hissed in his ear. “You dumb little prick. Do you know who you’ve been screwing with? Now, you’re going to know my terms.”

  Joseph whimpered and turned his head to the attacker. A vicious smirk, the glimmer of the gold-capped tooth. And those eyes. At times during the negotiations they’d been intense, yet convincing and reassuring. Now, they burned with rage. Cruel, savage eyes.

  “Francois, no. What are...?”

  “Screw you.”

  A ball-peen hammer smashed into Joseph’s skull three times.

  THE MAN JOSEPH ROSE knew as Francois Leduc leaned across the body and reached into the safe, being careful to avoid cranial debris and blood. He placed what he took from the safe into his wide briefcase. As expected, there was a good deal of cash, and almost four dozen packs of stones in a variety of cuts and sizes. He found the letters of credit, slipped them into his pocket, got to his feet, and went down a short hallway to the company washroom.

  Before Joseph’s return, he’d forced the father to open up the big safe in his office. Francois had loaded more stones and cash into his briefcase, and marched the old man to the washroom. He too, had been dispatched by the hammer.

  Francois knelt and completed the task he was doing when he’d heard Joseph come in. He searched Moishe Rose’s body, and removed cash and more glassine envelopes from his pockets. Everything he came for was now in the briefcase. He snapped the clasps shut.

  At the sink, he rinsed the hammer and wiped it off with a paper towel. He tucked the tool into his belt. With another paper towel, he wiped away specks of debris from his clothes, and walked casually through the outside office doors to the elevator.

  During the slow decent in the elevator’s ancient cage, he slipped the hammer through the folding gate that served as it’s door, and let it drop. It fell to the bottom of the shaft. No one could ever distinguish the noise made by the hammer from the bumps and clangs of the elevator’s mechanism. Besides, the only two people left in the building, were long past hearing anything.

  He smirked as he left West 47th Street, confident that by the time the bodies were found,
Francois Leduc would be someone else, and back across the Canadian border.

  Chapter 2 – R.C.M.P. “O” Division HQ, Toronto

  A buzzer broke the silence in the Project Zephyr listening room. It was time to check the tapes. Corporal Nolan Styles put down the report he was reading and moved along the line of monitoring stations. Predictably for a Sunday evening, none of the telephone reels were recording. Three listeners chatted quietly while another checked the call logs and placed them onto the appropriate clipboards. Styles was the shift supervisor for the crew manning the room’s fifteen telephone monitoring stations. Each station produced a master tape and a work tape for an assigned phone, either residential or commercial. The master tapes were to be removed when they reached seventy-five percent of capacity. At that level, they were labeled, initialed and noted on the log, and then placed into numbered and sealed tape boxes. The corresponding work tapes were changed at the same time and assigned for any required transcription and filing. There had been very little activity that day. Most of the masters were well below fifty percent full.

  In addition, the project had two fixed audio monitors, or fams. A fam was a microphone hidden in a building, usually a business. One of Zephyr’s fams was hidden in the socket of a lamp in the offices of Sure Clean Systems, an industrial laundry company in the east end of the city, another was camouflaged in the frame of an interior window at the uptown office of Gus Greco, the president of Lustre Investments. Both were functioning businesses, but were also fronts for loan-sharking and other criminal operations. Gus often used the principals from Sure Clean to collect on delinquent loans, and to provide muscle wherever needed.

  The fam listening stations were in an adjacent room. Styles checked the room every ten minutes because no listeners were assigned to the fam room on a Sunday. He looked in and noticed a green light flashing on the shelf beside the sure clean recorder. The recorder was picking something up. He put on a headset to see if it was ambient noise or a conversation.

  Styles settled into a chair, picked up the notations clipboard and pen, and listened. He heard footsteps, the rustle of paper, and then voices. He noted the time on the clipboard and turned up the volume on the recorder. These were voices he knew well: Vince and Paulo, two of Arturo Mello’s enforcers. They were also big-ticket collectors and heavies for Lustre Investments. Corporal Styles listened closely.

  VINCE AND PAULO SAT in Arturo Mello’s office at Sure Clean Systems waiting for the boss to return from the washroom. Legs crossed at the ankles, Vince admired the shine on his shoes, bent forward, and flicked a speck of dust from a toecap. He turned towards Paulo in the next chair and watched him shake the remnants of a bag of chips into his mouth.

  “Hey Paulo, this guy down in New York. Marco, or whatever damned name he’s using. I’m worried. I’m not sure how long he’s going to stay out of shit. I want him back up here, on a tighter leash, so we can keep him focused.”

  Paulo shrugged. “That could be a mistake, Vince. He’s cleaning up down there. A great producer. Keeps our lines full.”

  “It’s not his production I’m worried about,” said Vince. “He’s a basket case. And when he loses it, he goes nuts. You never know what a guy like that’s going to do next. Always shooting off his mouth, or busting someone’s face. And when he’s really pissed off, he’s like a fox on a fucking chicken. And that chicken is gonna be history. He has a wicked temper.”

  Paulo stuck a finger into the chip bag, scratching for more crumbs. “I hear you, Vince. But let’s give him another run down there. There’s too much coin in this for us to call it off yet. Besides, he’ll be back soon, we can give him a little guidance session before he heads back down.”

  Vince shook his head. “New York’s risky as hell, especially if he hangs around too long. The guy attracts heat when he stays put, but he’s okay when he’s moving. I want him on the move. And I want him north of the border.”

  “He’s smart,” Vince. “Keeps his mouth shut. Could stay on the run for years.”

  “Oh yeah, he’s smart, and he’s greedy, the kind of jerk who’s capable of screwing us out of our cut. I’m telling you, him being down there is a problem. He needs a god-damned ringmaster.”

  “Then it’s good he’s coming up, but just for a bit. Those merchants have been turning over nice consignments of diamonds on nothing but bullshit and bogus letters of credit. We should get him back down there soon.

  “And, I’d be more worried about the street crews he’s got knocking down jewellery stores up here. Now that’s high-risk shit, and it’s usually smaller crap. I like it better when he’s down there and concentrating on bigger stones, he needs our sources overseas to off those. See Vince...for now, New York’s right up Marco’s alley. And you know what else?”

  “What?”

  “He knows the consequences if he plays games.”

  Vince didn’t answer. He looked at Paulo and rolled his eyes.

  Paulo spread his hands. “Aw come on. There’s nothing to stew about, here.”

  “Yeah? What about that idiot he used as a fence in Hamilton, and the jeweler down in Niagara? Both went down for possession on Marco’s deals.”

  “Yeah,” said Paulo. “But they’re both on Lustre’s books. Big numbers, lots of vig. And, we have people inside, watching them like hawks. Everybody’s ass is covered. Gus and Artie have nothing to worry about.”

  “For Christ’s sake. Paulo, think about it. You know how some guys flap their gums when the pressure’s on, especially soft pieces of crap like that jeweler. The cops keep on guys like that.”

  “The jeweler doesn’t know much, Vince. Just that Marco kept him supplied with decent stones at a great price. He’s not sure how the rest of the game is played.”

  “He knows he owes Lustre a boatload of cash on business loans, Paulo. Let’s hope he doesn’t connect all the dots between Lustre and Marco... If he does, he’d better know enough to stay quiet. You can’t fuck with these guys like they’re a corner bank.”

  “That’s true, but don’t forget, there’s a whole bunch of merchandise the jeweler got from Marco that still hasn’t been found. That, right there, is reason enough for him to keep his trap shut.”

  Vince worked his fingers around his jaw, searching for stubble. “Maybe your right. But it bugs me how that jeweler copped a plea. He’s might walk in three years. To me, Paulo, he made a deal, gave someone, or something up. If the cops go balls to the wall on him, and get a few breaks, they could be kicking down our doors in a few months. I want that prick Marco to stay out of New York, get his ass up here and find that jeweler’s stashes. Then we can keep the goods flowing while we cover the tracks... and our asses.”

  “Ok then, run it by Artie. But just to make you feel a bit better, that jeweler is scared shitless of Marco.”

  Vince leaned back in the chair. “Whatever.... But, there’s something else I heard from the pen about the jeweler. Could be useful. That broad he lived with, a university prof or something. They were common-law for a long time. He took a shit kicking in the split. And get this, now the bitch is banging one of the cops who took her boyfriend down. A guy named Mahood.”

  “No shit. That... I didn’t know, Vince.”

  “Oh yeah. You can bet the jeweler’s more than a little pissed about that. Word is, that before he got busted, she opened some safety deposit boxes for him around Stoney Creek and Hamilton. Anyway, Marco knows the scoop on this chick. It’s one of the reasons he’s coming up.”

  Paulo scratched at the back of his hand. “Okay, if we keep Marco in line, there’s one hell of an upside. We get enough to cover both of their loans, and pick up a huge pile of inventory, gratis. We’ll have to give Marco his cut. But screw the jeweler.”

  “Let’s think this through, Paulo. Maybe we should ...”

  The door bounced open. Arturo walked in and sat at his desk. “What are you two idiots yacking about?”

  Despite a warning nudge from Vince, Paulo spoke up. “We’re kicking around
that thing down south, and some possible complications.”

  Arturo slammed both of his palms onto his desk. His face flushed. “Well, shut the fuck up about stuff like that.”

  Vince looked straight ahead to the window and the deserted street.

  Paulo held up both of his hands. “Come on, Artie. We weren’t on the damned phone here. We were just shooting the shit, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, well if you want to keep your asses covered and stay on the outside, you’d better learn when and where to wag your tongues. And it’s not here. It’s never fucking here. This place hasn’t been swept for months.”

  Arturo stood and waved his arms, a nasty scowl on his face. “Let’s get out of here.”

  CORPORAL STYLES LISTENED until he heard the sound of a door closing. He waited five minutes to make sure there was no more conversation, then removed the master, boxed it, initialed it, sealed the box, and took the work tape from the bottom machine. He installed fresh tapes and walked into a small room that was equipped with a Uher tape player.

  Styles phoned Staff Sergeant Dick Petzold, who was in an office on the same floor. “Staff, could you come over here and listen to something. I’ve got a fam hit from Sure Clean. A gem, real heavy. There’s also crap on it about Phil Mahood and his girl. You’d better have a listen.”

  “Ok, Styles, I’ll be there in ten. I’ll bring some coffees. And get the transcribers on that tape right away. Make sure there’s a copy and a transcript on my desk by morning.”

  CHAPTER 3

  An empty Greyhound bus waited to take on passengers. I leaned against a wall by a row of payphones in the concourse, watching the driver. He stood outside the bus door, sucking on a roll-your-own that appeared soggy even though he’d just lit it. He scratched his big belly through the button gaps on his shirt, looking like he couldn’t stay awake for a crosstown trip, let alone a six-hour run to Montreal.