Headhunter

The Commissioner had arrived.

1984

3:02 p.m.

Though cops themselves, even Spann and Scarlett were surprised by the size of the room. Who would have suspected that the Force had this many ears?

Just before three they had parked their patrol car in the lot behind 1200 West 73rd and had walked to the entrance door of Vancouver RCMP Headquarters. With identification tags pinned to their chests they had taken the elevator up to Commercial Crime where Tipple was waiting for them. As the door slid open both cops saw a smile on the Corporal's face. 'Tail's back on the donkey,' Tipple said.

The three of them walked down a long corridor, the Commercial Crime member in the lead, and stopped outside a door. On the door some wag had pinned up a hand-printed sign that read: 'Don't be too astonished, ye who enter here. Just beyond this point is 1984.' Tipple turned the knob and ushered both of them inside.

There were more than 500 tape recorders stored inside the room. Spann and Scarlett were astonished.

About a quarter of the machines had take-up reels that were turning, while every few seconds a few would stop and others would begin to revolve. It took them a moment to realize that what they were looking at was only half the recorders present, for each master machine had a slave machine positioned on the shelf behind it.

'Listen to this,' Tipple said, as he walked over to one of the Uhers and placed his finger on play. 'Rackstraw flew in a while ago and went straight to his studio. He started phoning in a rush.'

The Corporal indicated two sets of headphones hooked up to the recorder and the Constables put them on. As with most bugging devices used by the RCMP, the Uhers work on voltage. The machine sits dormant and shut off when the tapped phone is not in use. If the receiver is lifted there is a change in the electrical current running through the line. This change sets off the recorder and its reels begin to spin. Each recording set has a master machine to make an original tape plus a secondary slave machine that produces a working copy. Tipple punched the play button on one of the slave machines.

Spann and Scarlett both listened as the connection went through.

'Your number please,' an operator asked.

A voice that they knew was Rackstraw's responded to the question.

'Where's he calling?' Katherine Spann asked, removing one of the headphones from her ear.

'New Orleans,' Tipple said.

'Hey, what's happenin'?' New Orleans asked. It sounded like the zobop from the ritual, otherwise known as The Wolf.

'It's me.'

'Yes, you?'

'They're not where they're s'posed to be.'

For several moments there was a long pregnant pause on the line. Then Rackstraw added: 'Either it's a ripoff or Weasel's bin scooped.'

'Keep cool,' New Orleans said.

'Same mountain. Same lake. I mean you can see the friggin' border just to the north. I tell ya I checked the cache and they just ain't there.'

'Easy. Things can happen. He may not be the coldest man but he does know how to survive. Give the Weasel time and he'll come through.'

'Man. I got people waitin'!'

'Give him one more day.'

'I can't wait no one more…'

'You'll wait!' New Orleans said sharply. 'The man is family!'

And then the line went dead. Scarlett and Spann could still hear Rackstraw's heavy breathing. Once he hung up too, they removed the headphones from their ears.

Spann said to Tipple: 'Well, you found your half, and even he can't find ours.'

'How come he talks so freely?' Rick Scarlett asked. 'I mean, we rousted the man once, so he must know something's afoot.'

' 'Cause he thinks he's smart,' the Corporal replied. 'He's got phones at home and at his recording studio. Those phones he knows might be tapped. Next door to his music place is a small nondescript building that houses an Austrian import house. The buildings look separate, but they share the same basement. The phone in the storeroom of the import house is the one he uses.'

'How'd you find that out?'

'Easy,' Tipple said. 'We got bugs in the walls as well. It was my idea to put a listening device in the basement too. Crooks always seem to think it safer when they talk underground. In this case there's no cellar talk, but what there is is all these sounds of a door being opened and closed. Actually two doors: one of 'em squeaks. We went in there one night and invisibly tossed the place. We found a passage hidden secret-like behind a movable shelf of stereo speakers. It was the hinge on the shelf that squeaked.'

'Not bad,' Scarlett said.

'Nah, just dumb.' Tipple turned from the two of them and pointed across the room. 'See those twenty Uhers there? Now that's what I call a system. That's a crook with class, though he's a dumb one too.'

'Who's he? Chinese tong? Black Hand? Something like that?'

'Nope,' Tipple said. 'Just a smart-ass lawyer.'

It was at that moment that the master recorder hooked onto Rackstraw's phone clicked and began, to revolve. Then abruptly it stopped.

'Change his mind?' Spann asked.

'No, that's an incoming call. They got this system, see. The procedure is that someone phoning in lets it ring twice and then hangs up. The initial call sets off a warning light in the mixing-board panel of Rackstraw's studio. It tells our friend the Fox that there's a call coming in and to get his ass next door. The guy on the other end of the line knows to try once more in five minutes or so. By that time Rackstraw's in the basement next door and ready to pick up the receiver.'

Tipple flipped a toggle switch that activated two speakers overhead, and then they waited. Sure enough, five minutes later the Uher began to revolve again. They could hear the trill of the phone as it rang and then Rackstraw picking it up.

'I'm here,' the Fox said, his voice trapped in one of the speakers.

'It's me,' a second voice stated. John Lincoln Hardy.

'You're hot!'

'Don't I fuckin' know it! The guy who picked the package up in Spokane was followed,man! I just grabbed it an' ran like hell an' lost em in the mountains. I tell you, man, I fear them dudes was the FBI!'

So that's it, Spann thought. Wentworth tried to screw us.

Obviously Hardy had left Calgary on his return from New Orleans and immediately crossed the border back into the States. He was supposed to connect with the mule who picked the masks up in Spokane. Hardy would then take the package and hide it in a cache near a lake in the mountains just south of the borderline. His job done the Weasel would cross legitimately back into Canada, leaving Rackstraw to fly in the pontoon plane and pick the package up. All this trouble was Wentworth's fault because he wanted an exporting bust.

Play it by the rules,Spann thought, and this is what you get.

'Don't you dare come roun' here,' Rackstraw said with conviction.

'I know. I know. I know.'

'I tell you, man, if this came down 'cause of the mask that pussy stole, if it was that bitch Charlotte put the