Читать книгу Crang Mysteries 4-Book Bundle - Jack Batten - Страница 19

I LEFT EARLY enough to drop in on Annie for an unannounced visit before my date with James. Annie’s apartment was five blocks due north of the Gruber homestead. The five blocks defined the distance from chic Cabbagetown to glum Regent Park. Something like the difference between the two Germanys. Without the Wall.

“Guess who’s come to dinner?” Annie said.

She was whispering in the hallway outside her apartment door. I’d knocked first. Always the gent.

I said, “Not Richard Gere.”

“If it was him,” Annie said, “it’d be for naked lunch.”

From where I was standing, I couldn’t see into the apartment. Blue air drifted out. Whoever was inside was a heavy smoker.

“The shade of Ed Murrow?” I said.

“Alice Brackley,” Annie whispered. “She phoned this afternoon. I asked her over.”

Alice was sitting behind a bottle of Cutty Sark at the table in the front window. Annie must have made a rush trip to the liquor store on Parliament Street. Scotch wasn’t a staple in her booze cabinet. Empty plates had been shoved to the end of the table. They’d eaten chicken breasts with some kind of tomato sauce. My stomach lurched in envy. Alice was using one of Annie’s cobalt-blue soup bowls for an ashtray.

“Am I trespassing on your time with Annie, Mr. Crang?” Alice asked me. She was wearing her gold and a smile that anybody would call winning.

“It’s me who’s making the surprise visit, Ms. Brackley,” I said. “Nice to see you.”

“Nice?”

“Honest.”

Alice looked at ease. Maybe the Scotch. Maybe the absence of Charles Grimaldi.

Annie said to me, “We’ve been talking more movies.”

Annie looked at ease too. With her, I knew it had nothing to do with Grimaldi or Scotch. She was drinking red wine sparingly.

“And talking about you, Mr. Crang,” Alice Brackley said.

“Alice was frank,” Annie said, again to me. “She wanted to know if she could trust you.”

“With what?” I asked.

I meant the question for Alice. She didn’t answer directly. She said, “The impression you made at La Serre, Mr. Crang, was mixed.”

“Smiling Charlie wouldn’t say so,” I said.

“I wasn’t speaking for Charles,” Alice said.

“He thought you were a smarty-pants,” Annie said. “I didn’t blame him.”

Annie’s tone was light, but she was letting me know there was a point to be made in the room.

“Whose side you on?” I said to her.

My tone matched Annie’s for lightness, but I was letting her know I wanted someone in the room to get on with the point.

“I hope I’m not presuming too much,” Annie said, turning from me to Alice and back to me, “but I think Alice might want to consult you, Crang.”

“Is that what the thing about trust is all about?” I said.

Annie had candles on the table. In their glow, Alice’s face looked soft and rosy. She reached into a bowl of ice, dropped three cubes in her glass, and poured Cutty Sark on top. Soft and rosy and tiddly. On her at that moment it wasn’t a bad combination.

“Do you know anything about the disposal business, Mr. Crang?” Alice asked.

“I’m picking up on it fast.”

“In disposal,” Alice said, “there’s no quarter given.”

“Especially tough for a woman, I’d imagine.”

“It’s sexist,” Alice said, “but so are many businesses.”

“Many businesses aren’t also crooked.”

“Crang,” Annie said, “you’re going too fast.”

Alice said, “One takes the edge where it’s offered. That’s what I’ve learned at Ace.”

It was Alice’s dance. I’d follow her lead. But as tangos went, it was mighty leisurely. I was sure to step on her toes before we got off the dance floor. Either that or I’d OD on my own metaphors.

“What else have you learned at Ace?” I asked Alice.

“The president’s office is the place where you find the only real satisfaction,” she said.

Where was the woman going with this line of palaver? I knew where I should be going. My watch said eight minutes to ten. Eight minutes until my assignation with James Turkin.

“What you just said,” I said, “sounds like something they teach at the Harvard Business School.”

“Mr. Crang, I’m in the business world,” Alice said. “I know where power resides.”

“And how it’s wielded?”

“Sometimes a line is crossed,” Alice said.

Alice may have expected me to understand. Rosy in the candlelight, safe in Annie’s company, comfortable in the Scotch. I couldn’t be sure whether she wanted to spill some beans or was merely high and loose on the ambience and the liquor. It might take another hour to find out. I made a swift weighing of priorities. My meeting with James won out.

“Let’s get together, Ms. Brackley,” I said. “Take lunch. Have your machine call my machine. Pencil in a date. All those other things you guys do in the executive suite.”

“Don’t pay attention to the flip stuff, Alice,” Annie said to Ms. Brackley. “You can rely on Crang.”

“I’ll be in contact,” Alice said to me.

“But will we touch base?”

Annie went to the door with me.

“You shouldn’t tease the woman,” she said in the hall. She was whispering again. “I think Alice might be on the verge of saying something important.”

“She’s treating it like the Geneva arms talks,” I said. “We don’t have the space for prolonged negotiations and other tap dances.”

“Well,” Annie said, looking back into the apartment, “she’s welcome to stay here and talk for as long as she wants.”

“Keep her mainlining the Cutty.”

“Crang, I’m not going to pump the woman. Just lend an ear to someone who’s got problems.”

“Come up with deep-throat material,” I said, “and I’ll stick the bottle of Scotch on my expense account.”

“That’s my guy. All heart.”

I kissed Annie on both cheeks, went down to the Volks, and drove around the corner to Sackville and Gerrard. James was waiting in front of a variety store. He had on a long-sleeved black shirt and black jeans.

I said, “I like a man who dresses for the occasion. Except, James, tonight isn’t the occasion.”

“I know what I’m doing,” James said.

He was carrying a cloth whisky bag. I hesitated to ask what was in it. It wouldn’t be whisky.

I went out the Queen Elizabeth Way with the top down on the Volks, cut north at Kipling Avenue, and drove past the muffler outlets and body shops to Ace Disposal’s quarters. A bright spotlight illuminated the sign at the front, and all the lights inside the one-storey office building had been left on. There wasn’t an indication of human activity on the premises. I pulled into the parking lot on the south side of the bar and restaurant across the street. The lot was three-quarters full, and sounds of happy revelry came from inside the club. The exotic dancers who were its advertised feature must have been in full terpsichorean flight. Or maybe the food was just awfully good.

“That the place over there?” James said. He was twisting around in the front seat looking at the Ace building. “Can’t see much from here.”

Two cars came up the street and parked in the lot. Three young guys in T-shirts that read “University of Toronto Engineering” piled out of one car and a man in a business suit got out of the other. They went into the club. It was called the Majestic. “No G-Strings,” a hand-painted sign over the door proclaimed.

“We’ll get a table inside that looks out on the street,” I said. “Less conspicuous than the parking lot.”

We entered the Majestic. It was crowded and smoky and dark. Loud rock music came from two speakers mounted on the stage that ran along most of the back wall. There were stand-up bars on either side of the stage, and tables with customers at them spread across the floor in front of it. Pink lights were directed at the stage. A young woman danced in the lights. She wasn’t wearing a G-string or anything else.

Two or three of the tables at the back of the room were empty, and James and I sat at one that was up against a window. A waitress asked what it’d be. She was wearing high heels and a shortie jacket that proper girls put on only at bedtime. James asked for a Coke and I ordered vodka. When the waitress turned away, she flounced her jacket and offered a flash of pale buttock.

James reached into the whisky bag in his lap and took out a pair of small binoculars. He turned the focusing dial and raised the binoculars to his eyes. They were pointed through the louvred window blinds at the Ace building. The kid was all business.

There was a break in the thump of the music, and the young woman on the stage gathered up a small pile of discarded clothes she’d left at one corner of the stage. She held them in front of her as she descended the stage’s stairs. She managed to look decorous.

“Alarm box’s over the door,” James said. He was leaning forward and pressing the binoculars against the window.

The waitress brought James’ Coke and my vodka. I gave her a ten-dollar bill and got back a handful of change. The waitress paid no attention to James and the binoculars.

“Take me maybe five minutes on that box,” James said.

The rock music thudded back to life, and a well-built woman climbed up the stairs to the stage. She was dressed in a nurse’s uniform: white dress, white cap, white shoes with laces and low heels.

“You want to see what I mean?” James said.

He handed me the binoculars. Above the metal and glass door in the brick wall of the Ace building, beside an overhead light, there was a square box with wires leading from both sides. The wires ran down the edges of the door and disappeared into the brick.

“That’s your burglar alarm,” James said. His voice had the sound of expertise. “What I’m gonna do is rig in another wire that bypasses the box. That way, it won’t ring when I go through the lock on the door.”

“If it rang,” I said, “where would that be? Police station?”

“Ring like hell in the building over there,” James said. “And in two other places. Police station is one, security company’s the other. Cars from both’d be here in five, ten minutes.”

“The security company installed the alarm?” I said. “That’s what you mean?”

“Put the binoculars on the door,” James said. “Little sticker on the corner, see it? That’s the security guys. Alarm rings in their office and at the police station.”

I moved the binoculars over the glass pane in the door and found a sticker in the lower right-hand corner.

“Not worth shit,” James said. He took back the binoculars.

The nurse onstage had divested herself of the white cap and dress. She was wearing high-cut gym shorts and a formidable white brassiere. Not for long. She danced to the heavy thump of the rock and took off the shorts and brassiere. Directly in front of the stage, eight or nine men seated at two tables that had been pushed together were pointing their fingers to one side of the stage and shouting something at the dancer. The shouting solidified into a chant. “Shower,” the men pleaded. There was a shower stall at the rear of the stage closest to the stand-up bar on the right side. It had clear glass walls and an intricate arrangement of nozzles and tubes. The woman stepped into the stall. A cheer went up from the front tables.

“That padlock on the gate, I saw ones like that a hundred times before,” James said. He had the binoculars back on the Ace property.

“Add up the time for me,” I said. “How long will it take you to open the gate and get through the door into the building?”

“The padlock, that’s a wire job, twenty seconds,” James said. He was looking through the glasses as he talked. “I go across the path they got there and work on the box over the door. Three, four minutes for it, putting in the bypass wire. So that’s only the lock on the door that’s left. I don’t know, couple more minutes. I can’t tell what kind of lock it is.”

Water sprayed over the woman in the shower stall onstage. She held a nozzle in her hand and aimed the shooting water at her breasts. Her face was raised to the ceiling and her expressions let the fans at the front tables know she’d achieved a higher form of ecstasy. Her breasts shone in the water. I estimated her brassiere size at 38C.

“What’d you think?” James asked.

I said, “I think if she performs that shower routine four or five times a night, she keeps squeaky clean.”

“About the job,” James said. He had an annoyed edge to his voice.

“You’re talking seven minutes,” I said. “Is that too long to be exposed out there?”

“Won’t be exposed to anybody after this joint’s closed down and everybody’s gone home,” James said. “No reason for traffic at night around here.”

“True,” I said. “What about night patrol cars? Do the security people who put in the burglar alarm check up on their customers’ property?”

“How ’bout we stay here and watch?”

“How ’bout we do?”

The woman stepped from her shower and dried herself off with a small blue towel that didn’t seem adequate to the task. She retrieved her nurse’s whites and left the stage. Her place was taken by a woman in a long diaphanous gown and a panty girdle.

James and I had two more rounds of Coke and vodka, and in the forty-five minutes we sat at the table, no patrol cars cruised past Ace’s property. Traffic in and out of the Majestic’s parking lot remained brisk. So did the parade of young women on and off the club’s stage.

“Nothing’s happening,” James said at eleven-thirty. We finished our drinks and walked out the front door.

Outside, away from the pounding music and the thick cigarette smoke, the night was still and sweet. We turned the corner of the club and stepped into the parking lot. One row of cars over, two men were standing beside the white Volks. A tall guy in a jean jacket had his hands in his pockets and was listening to the other man, who was talking and waving his arms. The talker had a thick beard and a bulky build. It was the Ace driver I’d defeated by a TKO on Bathurst Street. I took James’ arm and stepped behind a maroon Volvo.

“Those two guys by my car,” I said, “go over and tell them the car’s owner is inside on the pay phone.”

James looked across the lot.

“Sure,” he said.

“Tell them something’s spooked the guy on the phone and he’s calling a cab and wants it fast.”

“What if they ask how come I’m telling them this stuff?”

“Say you’ve got a beef with the guy,” I said. “And tell the bearded guy you know it’s him the guy on the phone’s trying to steer clear of.”

James walked across the parking lot to the two men by the Volks. My former adversary stared at James. He heard James out, and as he listened, his jaws began to work. Froth at the mouth and drool in his beard ought to follow any minute. The guy was aching for a return bout with me. He turned away from James and took a step in the direction of the club. The guy in the jean jacket grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back. Jean-jacket did the talking. He held the floor and the bearded guy listened. Jean-jacket switched his line of patter to James. He was firing questions. James answered. He looked assured. Nothing moved except his lips. No fidgets, no nervous body language. James stood his ground. The tall guy in the jean jacket and the fat man with the beard looked at one another and walked away from James. They broke into a run and cut behind the back of the Majestic.

“Nice,” I said to James when I reached the Volks. “Lot of finesse, James.”

“The tall guy didn’t go for it at the first,” James said.

“He went for it at the last,” I said.

I turned the key in the ignition, switched on the headlights, and backed the car out of the parking slot.

James said, “Those guys are pissed off at you.”

I drove down the row of cars to the front of the lot and stopped to let two cars go by on the street.

“Not both guys,” I said. “The guy with the beard.”

I turned right. The front door of the Majestic banged open. I had the Volks in low gear. Someone was running from the Majestic toward the street. I pressed the accelerator.

“Here comes the tall guy,” James said.

I said, “Didn’t fool him long enough.”

The tall man in the jean jacket was going full tilt. At the rate he was covering the ground, he’d reach the road before I was past the Majestic. I had two options, stop or step on the accelerator and risk smacking into the tall guy. He slid into the street and threw up his arms in front of the Volks. There went option number two. I stopped.

“You see the other guy?” I said to James. “The fat one with the beard?”

“Just coming out the front door,” James said.

The tall man stood in the lights of the car and looked back toward the Majestic. He was waiting for his friend. I couldn’t wait. One guy I might have a chance of handling if James pitched in. Not two.

The top was still down on the car and I shouted at the tall man over the windshield.

“Hey you, stringbean,” I said, “you want some of what I gave your fat pal the other day?”

With my left hand I turned the handle on the door and opened it a crack.

“You’re asking for a broken head, asshole,” the tall man said. He walked out of the headlights toward my side of the car.

I said to James, “Where’s fatso now?”

“Halfway to us.”

The tall man reached my door. His hands were set to grab me. I swung the door open fast. It caught the tall man in the right kneecap and just below his ribs. He fell on the road. I slammed the door shut.

“Fat guy’s coming quick,” James said.

The tall man rolled over on the pavement. He didn’t know whether to grab his kneecap or his stomach. He was moaning.

I pushed the accelerator and the rear tires squealed.

“Fat guy’s gone crazy,” James said. His voice was louder.

I glanced to my right and saw the guy with the beard launch himself at the car. His arms were stretched in front of him as if he were diving, and his feet had left the ground. I pulled the steering wheel hard to the left. The man with the beard thudded into the door on James’ side. I straightened the steering wheel and the car kept moving.

“Bet he left a dent,” James said.

I looked back. The bearded man was on his knees watching the Volks drive away down the street. He had his hands on his hips. The tall man was still rolling on the pavement.

“Now,” I said to James, “both guys are pissed off at me.”