All at once the crowd grew quiet as a black limo drifted along the street and parked in front of the church. A middle-aged man and two teenage boys got out. They looked awkward in their badly fitting suits. A few of the hospital workers went up to hug the boys and their father.
Alison looked around for Krevolin. He’d quietly slipped back from the crowd and was filming from a respectful distance.
The family climbed the steps to the church. The moment they were inside, Alison heard a loud noise behind her. She turned, and there coming around the corner was Burns out in front of a group of protesters, carrying a new set of signs: “Remember Nurse Deb” and “Nurse Deb Helped the Homeless,” and “Cops—Help Us Now!”
Burns led them as they chanted: “Toronto police, save the homeless,” over and over again.
Alison walked over to Krevolin. They both knew what had happened. Nothing like a TV camera to create a story.
He looked at his watch. “You’re going live in thirty seconds,” he said, hoisting his camera on his shoulder and stepping behind her so the protesters who were gathering on the sidewalk were squarely in the background of his shot.
Alison looked at Burns and caught his eye. He grinned at her. She didn’t smile back.
He’d set her up and they both knew it.
He shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “Come on, we all know this is how the game is played.”
Should she be angry with him? Or impressed with the depth of his commitment to get this story out? After all, rich people and big corporations and popular entertainers had publicists and handlers who knew how to play the media game and get maximum coverage. Why not a homeless advocate?
“Toronto police, save the homeless!” his little crowd was shouting louder and louder. “Toronto police, save the homeless!”
She rolled her eyes at him. With a hint of a smile.
“Five, four…,” Krevolin said.
She turned her back on Burns and the protesters and put on a serious face.
“Three, two, one.”
The green light went on.
“This is Alison Greene,” she said. “Reporting live for T.O. TV News.”
She finished her report and again, the protesters stopped their chanting.
“That’s enough,” she said to Krevolin. They walked back around the block and had just finished packing up the TV van when she heard the sound of a bicycle riding up.
She whirled around. Burns was standing there, his hands on the handlebars of his bike, his chain and lock dangling around his neck, that charming smile of his dancing across his face.
“I should be quite cross with you,” she said, arching an eyebrow at him. “Shouldn’t I?”
“Why?” he said. “For helping people exercise their right to protest?”
“Perhaps for talking me into doing a story so you could get more publicity.”
The grin disappeared from his face. “Drug companies spend millions on their high-priced publicists to get stories about their so-called new miracle drugs or breakthrough cures for cancer, and nobody says boo, do they?”
When he turned off the charm, he was much more convincing.
“You’re right,” she said. “I used the same argument to convince my producer to let me do this story.” She turned to Krevolin. “This is Randy, my cameraman. He’s working on his own time even though we’ve been up all night.”
Burns reached out and shook hands with Krevolin.
“Appreciate it,” Burns said.
“No worries,” Krevolin said, and walked around the van and got in the driver’s door.
Burns smiled at Alison.
“You free tonight?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“How about helping feed some hungry people?”
“That sounds like a hot date. Where?”
“There’s a church across town on the Danforth that runs a program on Monday nights. They’re always looking for volunteers.”
24
Among the many subtle lessons Greene had taught Kennicott over the years, there was one that would never be found in any training manual: Wherever you are in the city, find a decent spot to eat or at least to get a good cup of coffee.
It was not easy to do when he got stuck up here on a case at the North York Courthouse, stranded in the sprawling suburban wasteland that surrounded the wealthier, leafier downtown. They called it the donut effect: The rich live inside the donut in their protected neighbourhoods, while the poor were stranded in a world of crumbling high-rise buildings, too-wide-to-do-anything-but-drive-on streets, and scant public transportation, dooming those with cars to continual driving and those without to near impossibly long bus commutes to get to practically anywhere.
The upshot was that the choice of eateries in this barren landscape was limited to characterless chain restaurants, submarine sandwich shops, pizza parlours, fried chicken and hamburger joints. But Greene, ever resourceful, had shown Kennicott the Nino D’Aversa Bakery, a lively, sprawling Italian restaurant and café that he’d somehow found hidden away in the middle of an industrial park.
Kennicott had convinced Parish to let him take her out for a cup of coffee, and she’d followed him through a maze of side streets until they pulled in to the restaurant’s crowded parking lot. She got out of her car and gave him a curious look.
“Here?” she asked.
“You’ll see,” he said.
They walked in together. The bakery was huge, with floor-to-ceiling windows, hard tile floors, tables on one side, a buffet-style restaurant and café and gelato bar in the middle, and rows of baked goods and pasta for sale on the other side. It wasn’t even noon and the place was bustling with customers, all seemingly happily engaged in loud and animated discussions. The air was filled with the scent of fresh ground coffee.
“How in the world did you ever find this place?” she asked him, looking around in amazement.
“Cops. We have informants all over the city.”
She laughed. He directed her to a table in the corner by the window. The only people nearby were a pair of young women chattering away, clearly oblivious to everyone around them. Kennicott made sure Parish took the seat looking into the restaurant with the window at her back. He sat facing her.
There were two used coffee cups and two plates still on the table. The waitress, a busy older woman with her hair up in a bun, arrived and efficiently cleared everything off. They both ordered cappuccinos.
“Smells so good,” Parish said. “I want to relive the last ten years of my professional life so I could come here every time I’m stuck up here in Nowheresville.”
“Wait until you try the coffee,” he said.
The waitress soon arrived with their order. The cappuccinos came with a hard biscotti and a glass of water. Parish sampled the coffee and gave him a thumbs-up. She bit into her biscotti. It made a hard, snap sound.
“About Melissa,” he said.
She swallowed, sipped her coffee. “I’m listening.”
“I know she’s one of your best friends.”
Parish snapped off another bite of her biscotti. She was trying to act nonchalant, but he could see he had her attention.
He looked around, to make sure no one could overhear them. He put one elbow on the table, cupped his face in his hand, and moved closer to her.
“It’s a good thing you’re sitting down. There’s something you need to know about Melissa.”
Parish looked over his shoulder. He could see she was confirming that no one was near. She looked back. Concerned. She was about to take another bite out of her biscotti.
“I’ll keep it simple,” he said. “Melissa’s a police informant.”
Parish bit down on the biscotti instinctively, almost like a child biting down on her thumb. He could see the surprise register in her eyes.
She swallowed then said, “Melissa?”
He nodded.
“For how long?”
“Soon after her first arrest.”
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“You’re kidding. That was years ago.”
He didn’t respond, giving her time to process this.
“Seven years, and Melissa never let on.” She blew out her cheeks. “Who’s running her?”
“This might surprise you too,” he said. “It’s Ari Greene.”
“Greene? Really?”
She’d first met Greene when he’d been the detective on a murder trial that she’d done a few years earlier. He was a close friend of her partner, Ted DiPaulo. Greene was an intriguing, sometimes slightly intimidating guy.
Her face broke out into a huge grin. She began to chuckle, and then burst into a loud laugh.
“What’s so funny?” he asked her. He was pretty sure he knew what she was going to say.
“You burst my bubble. All these years, all of Melissa’s cases, here I thought I was a brilliant lawyer keeping her out of jail.”
“I didn’t say you’re not a brilliant lawyer,” he said.
“That’s a good lawyer’s double negative,” she said. They both laughed.
“This means that Albert knew all along,” she said, still processing all this. “That’s why he kept Melissa’s files to himself.”
“Fernandez never let on?”
“Not for a second. I should nominate him for an Oscar.”
Parish dipped what was left of her biscotti in her cappuccino and swirled it around.
“I know it’s gauche to do this, but it tastes good.” She waved the biscotti in the air like a conductor’s wand before she ate it. “Mmm,” she said after she swallowed.
He dunked his still-untouched biscotti too. “It’s November. You can indulge.”
“And getting cold. I’m worried.”
“We need to find her,” he said after taking a bite. “Is there anything you can tell me? Solicitor-client only goes so far.”
She picked up a small metal spoon and used it to scoop up the last dregs of her cappuccino. She shook her head.
“Did you notice the two people with notebooks in the back of the court?”
“The students?”
“They weren’t students. They were armed undercovers.”
“Had me fooled.”
“Your friend Melissa knows how to disappear. Apparently she bolted so fast they couldn’t find her.”
“That’s Mel for you.”
“And those two women talking away at the table behind me,” Kennicott said, pointing his thumb over his shoulder.
She looked at them, then back at him. “Who are they?”
“Two more undercovers. They got here before us and made sure we got this table so we’d have a private place to talk. The dirty dishes were left here intentionally. Greene knows the owner.”
Parish put her hand to her forehead and rubbed it. “You guys are taking this seriously.”
“Very. Two homeless people killed in two days. I’m asking you straight out. Did Melissa tell you anything that might help us?”
Parish picked up her spoon and licked it clean.
“Understand, with Melissa everything is high drama. She sees conspiracies everywhere.”
“She’s paranoid but that doesn’t mean she might not be right sometimes,” he said. Pressing her. “If she was a witness to these murders she might be in danger.”
Parish reached into her briefcase and pulled out her cell phone.
“Melissa sends me hundreds of text messages. This morning I got a whole bunch.”
Kennicott watched her tap her phone and scroll through her messages, biting her lip. She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“I can’t force you to show them to me.”
She put her phone face-down on the table, reached into her briefcase again, and pulled out a pen and paper.
“Here,” she said. “I’ll show you one text Melissa sent me early this morning that had nothing to do with her case. Write this down but as soon as you don’t need it you’ll destroy this piece of paper. No texting or emailing about it. And no one knows where you got it from.”
“Agreed.”
She turned her phone so he could see it.
“I can tell by her jumbled spelling that Melissa was worked up when she wrote this,” Parish said.
Kennicott started to write, reading the words out loud softly as he went. “Nance I warnd you, but no one wd listn. The kilingz contnue. No one is imune. There is no justice.”
“I got it this morning,” she said. “I assumed it was another one of her rants. I had no idea she had reported a murder.”
“Melissa calls you Nance?”
She frowned. “It’s an inside joke. Melissa and Lydia were childhood friends and they had nicknames for each other. Mel and Lyd. When I became friends with them, they thought I was too small-town cautious, so I became Nance Take a Chance.”
“The three of you really cared about each other, didn’t you?”
“Sisters in arms.”
He folded the paper carefully and put it in his pocket. “We have to find her. Do you have any ideas where she would go?”
“No idea.”
“Fernandez told me about the party for her daughter tonight at the golf club. Will you be there?”
“It’s not my kind of thing, but yes, I’m going.”
“Do you think she’ll show up?”
“I hope not. It would cause a scene and be painful for Britt. But…”
“She’s obsessive and this could be her chance to see her daughter,” Kennicott said, picking up on Parish’s thought.
“This is between you and me. I’m going to work there tonight, undercover. Just in case, here’s my cell number.”
He passed her his business card.
She photographed the card with her phone and passed it back to him.
“If you see me,” he said, “don’t wave.”
25
Greene had to find Fraser Dent. Once a top bond trader who spoke fluent Japanese, Mandarin, French, and Spanish, in his early forties Dent became a fall-down drunk and had lived on the street for more than a decade. “Just following the family tradition,” he liked to say, referring to his father and grandfather, drunkards who’d both ended up dying of liver failure.
Over the years Greene had kept him going, “lending” him fifty dollars each time they met, getting him into rehab when Dent was willing. In return, Dent funnelled Greene information from the street. When Greene was charged with murder, Dent helped him out, big-time, behind the scenes.
It had been months since they’d talked, and it could often take Greene a few days to find Dent, who didn’t have a cell phone. Greene didn’t have time to waste. He went downtown and started hunting for his old friend.
His first stop was Seaton House, the biggest men’s shelter in Canada, which housed more than eight hundred men. It was located in an area of the city that for years had had both the largest concentration of street people and new condo developments at the same time, and local politicians had often talked about renovating the shelter and moving most of the residents out to smaller suburban locations. But Greene had his doubts that the downtown clientele, some of whom had lived in the area for decades, would leave the neighbourhood, even though a flood of new money was moving in and gentrifying everything in sight.
He checked the logbook at the front desk. In spite of the chaos of these men’s lives, the one thing that they were rigorous about at Seaton House was record-keeping. No one got in without proper ID. The last time Dent had checked in was twelve days ago, and no one had seen him since.
Greene’s next stop was the Law Society of Ontario Feed the Homeless lineup. Every day at about four thirty a line of homeless men and women formed in the City Hall square. When the doors opened, they’d walk into one of the city’s most beautiful buildings that dated back to the early eighteen hundreds. There, they’d be served dinner by some of the city’s best and most high-priced lawyers.
Greene walked up and down the line, nodding to familiar faces. Chatting with some. No one had seen Dent
for days. Once the hall opened, Greene walked in with the crowd and checked the sign-in sheets. Dent had last been there a week earlier.
His third stop was the Canterbury Clinic, a drug and alcohol rehab clinic that worked with street people. For years, it had scraped by on donations and bake sales, until, as the drug problem in the city escalated, the government came through with just enough funding to keep the doors open. Dent had been a client there and, when he was straight, volunteered as a counsellor.
As Greene walked out of the elevator and into the barebones waiting room, Trish, the clinic’s veteran receptionist, greeted him.
“Detective Greene, where’ve you been?”
“Keeping Toronto the Good safe, one day at a time. Is Michael here?” he asked, referring to the clinic’s dynamic, sometimes mercurial director, who had somehow kept the place afloat for years. Like his clients, he had his own paranoid peculiarities, one of which was that he never spoke on the phone. If Greene wanted to talk to him, he had to come over. Greene suspected it really wasn’t a paranoia but a ploy to make Greene show up from time to time. He didn’t mind.
Michael had spent years working with Dent, and the two had a strong, if troubled bond. Probably because they were both bright and because Michael, like many good counsellors, was himself a recovered addict.
As Dent once told Greene, “The trouble with Mike is that I just can’t bullshit him.”
“Too bad,” Greene said.
“Rough,” Dent agreed.
Trish smiled at Greene. “You know how Mike is. An hour ago one of his clients came in high as a kite. He was furious. He’d made a deal with her dealers that they weren’t going to sell her anymore stuff so the CAS wouldn’t grab her two-year-old. Mikey stormed out to go hunt them down. Who knows when he’ll come back. Can I help?”
“I’m looking for Dent.”
“It’s your lucky day. He dropped by a week ago looking clean as a whistle and Mike put him to work. Right now, he’s interviewing a Vietnamese kid hooked on heroin. Has about ten more minutes to go. You in a rush, want me to buzz him?”
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