Читать книгу Keeper of the Flame - Jack Batten - Страница 11

The quarters for the Reverend Alton Douglas’s church were on the north side of St. Clair near Jane Street in a stretch of buildings that had seen better days. A scrappy-looking bingo hall, a shut-down McDonald’s, a discount gas station. The church was the exception. Was it proper to call Heaven’s Philosophers a church?

It was early afternoon as I coasted past it in my trusty 1983 four-door Mercedes. The building didn’t really have the air of a house of worship — not from the outside, at least. No steeple, no cross. In height, it stood three storeys, with the ground floor much larger in width and length than the two storeys above. Unlike the upper floors, glass enclosed the first level on all sides, giving it an airy look. On floors two and three, the exterior was all brick with just two tall narrow windows at the front. They weren’t stained-glass windows as best I could make out from down below.

I steered the Mercedes north on the street running along the west side of the church building, parked, and got out. I was dressed in casual but respectable looking duds. Two-hundred-dollar jeans from Rainbow on Yorkville, black Nikes, buttoned-down navy blue shirt, summer jacket in a shade Annie called wheat. Clothes fit for a religious experience if that turned out to be on offer. I walked back to the Heaven’s Philosophers front entrance.

Inside, the floor of the lobby was done in sleek grey marble. On either side, curved staircases, likewise marble, led to the second floor. Straight ahead, three shops ran in a line against the north wall. Left to right: a travel agency, a coffee bar, and a copy shop. Each was modest in dimensions; none of them was thrumming with commerce at the moment.

A fortyish guy in a suit and tie sat alone at a desk in the travel office, leafing through a brochure without much enthusiasm. The young guy in the copy shop was likewise on his own, sitting at a computer with a super-large screen and playing a game that involved blasting dragons to smithereens. The coffee bar was more my speed. It was the only place doing what might be called business. I ambled in its direction.

Behind the counter, a dark-haired kid in his late teens had two kinds of coffee on sale, espresso and an unidentified blend. The counter also sported a plate of glazed doughnuts in a round glass cage. The doughnuts gave signs of having been encased for more than a couple of days.

Three customers standing in a group were holding heavy, white china mugs of coffee, probably the unidentified blend. Everything about the physical appearance of two of these guys was thick. Thick bodies, thick voices, possibly thick heads. The third guy was just as tall as the other two but slimmer and less rackety. Grey haired and in his early seventies, he looked to have two or three decades on them.

What the first two guys reminded me of were people I saw in the hallways outside the criminal courts at Old City Hall waiting for their cases to be called. They looked like guys who could have been my clients. For a startled moment, I thought one of them was the real article, somebody I represented within living memory. Was that possible?

This particular guy was thick and meaty and loud. He wore jeans, a lightweight black sports jacket, and a tie with a design you couldn’t miss, something featuring large black balls against a deep maroon background. When the guy spoke, it was in a high-pitched voice that didn’t go with the rest of the package. I’d heard and seen the guy before, but not, I realized, as a client of mine. He was Fox’s client in a fraud case a couple of years back. I’d acted briefly for one of Mr. High-Pitched Voice’s co-accused. The representation was brief because the Crown severed the charges against my guy, and sent him to trial on his own. Before we got started on the new trial, the client fired me in favour of a lawyer his mother liked better.

I was pretty sure I’d nailed the identity of the guy with the voice, but to make it rock solid, I needed to check with Fox. If I was right, it’d be swift progress to get the identification thing squared away. Then I could put my mind to the reason why a possible bunch of heavies were hanging out in the halls of Heaven’s Philosophers.

I stepped up to the counter and asked the dark-haired kid what he was peddling besides espresso.

“Today, sir,” the kid said, “I’m featuring a blend from Paraguay.”

“You recommend it?”

“First day I’ve gone with the Paraguay, sir,” the kid said. He had the barista patter pretty much under control. “But my customers tell me they’re cool with its flavour.”

“Get many of them around here? Customers?”

The guy let his cheery barista manner slip a notch.

“Enough,” he said after a few seconds. “It, like, depends.”

“On what? Sundays better than week days?”

“I’m not open Sundays.”

“Aren’t you skipping a potential bonanza? Think of all those thirsty parishioners coming out of an uplifting sermon in the room at the top of those stairs.”

“Mister,” the kid said, a touch exasperated, “I do what I’m told, okay?”

“I’m assuming there is Sunday church, sermon included?”

“Yeah, Sunday afternoons, but the coffee bar is closed then, like I said,” the kid answered. “You want to order something or not?”

I asked for a Paraguay, paid three bucks, and carried my heavy, white-china mug to another counter where milk and sugar were available. It wasn’t because I wanted either milk or sugar but because I needed to take up position where I could surreptitiously snap a photo on my cell of the guy with the high-pitched voice.

I took a sip of the Paraguay and savoured it for a moment. This was good stuff. From Paraguay? That made it a first for me.

I put my mug down on the counter with the milk and sugar. I was standing in a position that placed me at an angle facing three-quarters away from the trio of gents. The guy I wanted the photo of was in the middle of the three. He was turned my way, though his head was slightly inclined allowing him to pay attention to the older guy on his right who was speaking. The third guy in the trio, the one on the left of the guy I was interested in, was notable for his aggressively jutting jaw.

I got the iPhone out of my jacket pocket, gripping it in my right hand as if I was raising it to my ear. When the phone reached waist level, aimed past me in the general direction of the three guys, I pressed the shoot button of the camera function. It went off without any flashing lights or any sound beyond a subdued click.

I have minimal skills at photography. Generally, I steer clear of taking photos of loved ones, never mind strangers. I’d used the iPhone as a camera just once. My subject was Annie. She said the picture added ten years to her age. It made her look like she was wearing a bad wig. She told me to delete the photo. I did as I was told.

Putting the phone to my ear in the Heaven’s Philosophers lobby, I pretended I was listening to a message. There was no message, and I wasn’t listening to anything except the three guys behind me. If they stopped talking, it might mean they’d caught me snapping the picture. If they shouted, “Hey, asshole!” it would mean for sure they’d caught me.

I relaxed when they carried on with their loud chat as before.

I carried my mug with the nice brew to one of the benches along the lobby wall. I flicked the screen on the iPhone to the photo I’d just snapped. The picture was half okay. The not-okay half showed nothing except the left sleeve of my wheat jacket. The close-up of the jacket eliminated from the photograph the guy with the jutting jaw. In the other half, I had a profile of the older guy and a pretty clear full-face view of the guy I figured for Fox’s former client.

I pressed a bunch of buttons to send the photo and a short note to Fox winging their way to Fox’s office. While I was winding up my communications, someone beside me cleared his throat. I jerked my head up in automatic surprise.

“Pardon me, friend, I didn’t intend to sneak up on you.” It was the older guy of the trio, the one with the grey hair. He had his hand stuck out. “Willie Sizemore, investment advisor.”

I stood up, still a little shaky from the guy’s stealth arrival. “Crang’s my name.”

“Just thought I’d introduce myself,” Sizemore said. He had a salesman’s manner, the kind of guy whose big smile and unctuous tone came as part of the package. “You’re new to Heaven’s Philosophers if I’m not mistaken. And I rarely am about new visitors.”

“First time I’ve dropped by.”

“May I ask what attracted you to us?”

Sizemore was nosy, though so far not offensive about it. He was pretty good-looking for an older guy except for the deep gouge on the right side of his head running from the temple down to a spot behind the ear. The gouge looked as permanent as the Grand Canyon.

“I might be keen on exploring ecclesiastical issues,” I said. “Maybe your Reverend Alton Douglas has something to offer in that line.”

“Indeed he does,” Sizemore said, apparently thrilled with my explanation. “But keep in mind there are members of our group who offer advice and services of many sorts.”

“In your case, it’s financial investments, I take it.”

“Fifty years in stocks and bonds,” Sizemore said. “Haven’t lost a client yet.”

He gave a little chuckle, and handed me a card from a small leather case.

“If you ever feel dissatisfied with your present investment strategy,” Sizemore said, “all you need to do is give me a ring.”

We shook hands again, and Sizemore returned to his meaty buddies.

The three of them got refills and carried the cups of coffee up the curving staircase on the left side of the lobby. Their heels on the marble made storm-trooper clicks in the lobby’s emptiness. When they reached the top, I heard the opening and closing of a door. Then all went quiet.

In the silent lobby, I got off my bench and walked over to the coffee shop.

“It’s nice the way you brew the Paraguay,” I said to the barista. “Very tasty.”

“Yeah, thanks,” the kid said, looking modest about it.

“The Reverend Douglas in this afternoon?” I asked. “You happen to notice?”

The kid gave me a blank look.

“Alton Douglas?” I said. “The minister who runs Heaven’s Philosophers?”

The kid brightened up. “Oh, you’re talking about Al?”

“I guess I am if that’s how you address him.”

“He’s, like, relaxed as far as religion,” the kid said, a big smile on his face.

Geez, that irritated me, the verbal construction where the speaker didn’t complete the phrase. Should I correct the kid’s grammar? Or just let it go? I opted for straightening out one possible casualty to improper verbal constructions.

“You mean,” I said, “‘as far as religion is concerned.’ Or ‘as far as religion goes.’”

“Yeah, that’s what I said,” the kid said, looking like he was addressing a person of limited comprehension. “Al is relaxed about that.”

I abandoned my educational efforts. “Al’s in, is he?”

“In his office upstairs,” the kid said, “but, like, most afternoons, meetings go on up there.”

“Meetings with the three gentlemen who just went up?”

“Them and probably others, but what happens and who meets I don’t know anything about,” the kid said. He was growing cautious. “What’s it to you exactly?”

“Maybe I’m thinking about discussing ecclesiastical issues with the Reverend,” I said. If the explanation worked with Willie Sizemore, it ought to go over with the kid.

He shrugged, but otherwise had nothing more to offer. I put my empty mug down on his counter, nodded, and walked out to my car.

According to my just conceived plan, I figured to wait in the Mercedes until the population in the church building had thinned, then I could carry out some creative snooping. I sat behind the wheel, noticing something I’d missed earlier. The church had a fairly large parking lot behind a row of thick trees separating the lot from the building. No attendant was on duty in the lot, and no machines for payment were visible. Four cars occupied slots. That could be one for Reverend Al and one each for the three guys who were having coffee in the lobby. But that was only a guess.

While I was pondering vehicles and parking, an American-built car, big but not an SUV, pulled into the lot. Two guys got out, one extra-large in size, but neither of them running to the type of the two big lobby guys. The extra-large specimen was shaped like John Candy, and wore a white summer suit. The other much less hefty and had on an unbuttoned cardigan in an unappealing maroon shade. Both passed my car, presumably on their way to the meeting in the church. I snapped photos of the two. I was getting good at the surreptitious paparazzi thing.

In the next ten minutes, two more cars and six more guys of different variations of extra-large arrived. Counting the three guys who were on the premises when I arrived, that made a total of eleven people meeting upstairs in the Reverend Al’s quarters.

That seemed to be the end, and then things got quiet in the parking lot.

I clicked open my iPhone. A text from Fox had arrived.

You poaching my clients now, Crang? The one you’re asking about you’re welcome to take. You might remember him from the case you were briefly involved in. The guy’s mouthy. Thinks he knows more law than his counsel. Good riddance if you want him. Name’s Robert Fallis, known to one and all as Squeaky. He’s the guy on the left in your picture. The older guy is unknown to me though I suppose he could be Squeaky’s type.

Fox

P.S. I walked Squeaky on the fraud charge. Your guy in the case got convicted under other counsel, if memory serves.

Fraud? Could something of that nature be the subject of the meeting in the Reverend Al’s office? Was it what Squeaky Fallis and his colleagues practised under religious cover provided by Heaven’s Philosophers? Was it all that simple? Fraud had a close relationship to extortion. Was the Reverend blackmailing Flame as the front man for the heavies he could be closeted with at that very minute?

I texted my thanks to Fox, got out of the car, and walked down to a variety store on St. Clair. I bought the Toronto Star, the National Post, and a Mars bar. Back in the car, I ate the Mars bar and read the Star’s four sections, skipping nothing except the woman columnist on the op-ed page. She was a scold. Scolding is not a good attitude in a columnist. I looked at my watch. An hour had gone by.

I got into the Post, all the way to their own op-ed woman scold, when the guys from Heaven’s Philosophers began strolling down the street from their meeting. I counted all eleven of them. They cleared out the parking lot, and I opened my car door.

It was time to do something sneaky.