Death in Cold Type

by C. C. Benison

  She could not steady her hand. The key, brought to the door, tapped impotently against the lock, nearly dropping from her fingers to doom in a crack between walkway and house. She forced herself to concentrate, to aim. Finally, the key found the slot and she plunged through the door, into the kitchen stairwell. Alvarez barked. She lunged for the dog and hugged it fiercely, burying her face in the fur along its neck. “Oh god, Alvy,” she moaned, looking up through the chaos of the unlit kitchen, toward the grey light of the dining room and living room beyond, steeling herself, her stomach beginning to roil with apprehension. She rose unsteadily, and on shaky feet propelled herself toward the house’s silent interior.

  19

  On Horizontal Hold

  Leo had spent a lousy twenty-four hours beginning with an abrupt transformation to life lived at a square angle.

  “Can’t you bend up a little bit?” Liz had asked.

  “Not really.” Leo clutched the handle of one of the higher file drawers for support, and butted his head against the cool metal. He released a string of expletives. Every once in a while, some small movement would put his back out: twisting to reach for the soap in the shower, for instance. Or, in this case, jerking an uncooperative bottom drawer out of a cabinet in the Zit’s library while bending his back, not his knees, as his last physiotherapist had told him to do. “I’m going to have to lie down. Or, if you’ve got a gun handy, you can put me out of my misery.”

  “There’s the couch in the back room.”

  “’Kay.” Leo groaned. “Just sort of hover nearby, would you?” He began to shuffle forth. “Ow, shit,” he addressed the floor (black and white linoleum squares).

  “Put his back out,” he heard Liz explain to a pair of shoes (women’s).

  The trek through the library and into the room that in days of yore had been the test kitchen for the food writer was horizontally Himalayan. The test-kitchen days were gone, however. Mellish did his own testing at home. The library staff was the room’s only tenant now. They claimed its ill-lit recesses as their own and only their cozy coffee-break chatter could make the room convivial. Otherwise, few ventured into the musty, hollow space except the occasional reporter in need of privacy to conduct an interview.

  Eventually, Leo’s eyes rested on the summit, the battered brown leather cover of the couch, upon which one late night shift he had memorably and stupidly had sex with Julie Olsen, the court reporter. He hadn’t been near it since. He groaned. “It’s too soft.”

  “And the options would be?” asked his sherpa.

  Leo shifted to a moan. “Let me lean on your arm while I try to manage this.”

  He turned slowly, then let himself tip over on his side onto the couch. The Lord’s name was taken in vain and he could feel sweat begin to break out in certain nooks and crannies. A series of select manoeuvres later he was installed on the couch, staring up at the stained ceiling. A pressure cooker had probably exploded circa 1956.

  “Damn, and I have some stories to write.” He regarded Liz, who was frowning at him. “Busy?”

  “Not terribly, why?”

  “How about if I dictate and you input them into the system? Like phoning a story into the desk.”

  “Sure.”

  While Liz went back to the newsroom to fetch both their notebooks, Leo tried composing a lede in his head.

  Winnipeg police are searching for clues to the killer of a 33-year-old man…

  Boring.

  A missing million-dollar violin may be the key to the slaying of Winnipeg photographer and philanthropist Michael Rossiter…

  Better.

  As it happened, violins were scarce as catgut at the news conference. The superintendent had given a long-winded bureaucratic version of a shrug when another reporter asked about possible motive. Leo, surprised that the Guarneri del Gesu received no mention, had been about to interject when a venerable journalism hall-of-fame word came to his head—scoop. He kept his cakehole clamped and trotted up to the homicide unit office to see if his brother-in-law was stinking up the joint with one of his cigars. He was. Frank’s mouth curled with joy at the sight of Leo.

  “Get the fuck out of here,” he growled through the blue haze.

  After trading several bons mots along this line, and before being given the bum’s rush, Leo gleaned that no violin had been found propping up the toilet or otherwise misplaced in Michael’s house. In other words, a violin appeared to be missing. Was it the Guarneri? Frank allowed that he was fucking trying to fucking figure that out, now get lost.

  Sources close to the investigation say the violin, purchased at auction at Sotheby’s earlier this month… Leo continued ruminating. Well, Frank was a source close to the investigation. Besides, many a good story was ruined by over-verification.

  “Do you have a phone number for Sotheby’s in London?” he asked Liz, who returned, pads in hand, trailing a stacking chair behind her. “What am I saying? I can’t get to a phone.”

  “Doesn’t matter, it’s after 7:00 in London anyway. Is this about the Guarneri?”

  “Yeah.”

  Liz slumped into the chair and handed over his notepad. Leo noted her expression. “Don’t blame yourself.”

  “I do.”

  “It actually might not be the Guarneri,” he said.

  “That just means some idiot who doesn’t know treasure from trash killed Michael. There’s still a violin missing, right?”

  “Apparently.”

  Leo ran his eyes over his notes and revised the lede in his head. “Missing” was purged. The result was fudgy, but what the hell. It was good enough for now.

  “Pencil poised?”

  “Shoot.”

  Leo began dictating. After four paragraphs, he paused. “But someone’s got to know if he actually brought the thing with him from London to Winnipeg. If it was a gift to the symphony, maybe Richter knows.”

  “Doubt it.”

  “Why?”

  Liz hesitated. “Just a feeling.”

  Leo frowned at her, then shrugged. “Anyway, where was I?”

  “‘… which was purchased at auction in London in early September,’” Liz read back to him.

  “Okay.” Leo continued dictating. Flipping through his notebook, he moved on to a couple of the usual break-ins and aggravated assaults for the police blotter column, then a few paragraphs about the North End murder that would later be incorporated into another reporter’s backgrounder.

  “And no byline,” he concluded.

  Liz looked up from her pad. “Why not?”

  “Technically, I’m no longer the police reporter. Ray moved me to general assignment—on Martin’s orders.” He regarded Liz. “Is there something going on I don’t know about? Are we on the verge of another beat shuffle?”

  Liz frowned. “I wonder. Guy was muttering something to that effect at dinner last night, though it sounded more like shift higher up.”

  “Nice touch with those smoke rings this morning, by the way.”

  “Thanks. Earned a badge for it in Girl Guides.”

  “What was all that about anyway?”

  “Oh, I made a sort of bad joke about his being the uninvited guest at dinner.”

  “Overreaction?”

  “That would be an understatement.”

  Leo glanced at her sharply. “There’s more?”

  Liz’s face shuttered. “Not really.”

  • • •

  Finally, there was nothing to do but take a cab home, fetch some ice packs from the freezer, some drugs from the medicine cabinet, find a supine position, get the weight off his glass back, and tough it out for about the next thirty-six hours. Wednesday evening had been largely spent on the living room floor, half-dozing between a Blue Jays game on one channel and Olympic coverage on another. “Do not operate heavy machinery,” the pill box had warned. “Do not do anything,” it might better have said.

  And he hadn’t.

  He hadn’t even called Stevie.

  The next mor
ning, after about ten hours’ solid bed rest with legs elevated on pillows, he could shuffle through the world at about a hundred-and-thirty-five-degree angle. Letting Alvy out for a piss, he managed to pick the Thursday edition of the Zit off his front steps with his toes—no mean feat—and noted that his byline-less story had not been too screwed up by copy editors. After some breakfast and a few more painkillers, he replanted himself on the floor with the phone, called the city desk and told Ray he was sick and to expect him back Friday—if anyone asked or cared.

  “We don’t,” Ray had yawned.

  “I can work on the violin angle from home and phone it in later. A sidebar, maybe?”

  “Whatever.”

  “Thanks for the enthusiasm.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Fuck you, too, Leo thought, and briefly considered taking a PR job at Canada Post.

  He called Frank for developments. Frank was unavailable. He left a message anyway and imagined a piece of paper being crumpled into a little ball. On the theory that someone in town must know whether Michael had schlepped the Guarneri del Gesu back from London himself, he rolled himself off the carpet, found pad, pencil, and phone book and then, as an afterthought, an old orchestra program he’d stuffed into a drawer when Ishbel had lived with him. He crawled back down on the floor. He thought: start with Richter—despite Liz’s doubts—and then hit up a few other orchestra members. Richter was unlisted. What a surprise. He tried the concert master—mistress, whatever. His call seemed to piss her off enormously. She had already been questioned by the police, and, no, she didn’t know a damn thing. A couple of other members of the violin section were equally adamant, though more polite. Clearly, Frank had already trod this path. Leo considered calling the symphony’s flack, but flacks were often the last to know. Board members? Liz’s husband, even? How about that blonde woman hovering around Michael at his party in May—Caitlin Clark? Formerly of some symphony or another in the Maritimes. Friend, lover, confidante? Directory assistance had a new number for a C. Clark on Roslyn Road. He got a recorded message.

  Hell.

  He had better luck with backgrounder material. Heinrich’s, a violin maker he located in Toronto, told him Michael’s Guarneri was probably undervalued at a million dollars. The investment climate for art objects was so superheated, with Picassos and Van Goghs going for such monstrous sums, that money went looking elsewhere, for more affordable things, if you considered a million bucks to be affordable. The art theft experts at the RCMP told him there was a trend toward stealing smaller objects, which made a violin very nearly ideal—it was light, portable, could fit in a briefcase or a suitcase, a shopping bag or a knapsack. “Normally,” he told Leo, “these sorts of things are stolen by smart thieves, people with the right connections. They end up spirited into people’s collections after going through several hands. The recovery rate is pretty small, I’m sorry to say.”

  Smart thief. Whoever stole Michael Rossiter’s Guarneri—presuming it was the Guarneri—hadn’t been very smart. A smart thief would have purloined the violin while its owner was elsewhere. Killing the owner to get to the violin had zero finesse.

  Unless the owner caught the thief in the act.

  But, as Frank had pointed out Tuesday, and Leo had seen for himself, a struggle hadn’t been much in evidence.

  By one o’clock, his stomach was growling. He struggled off the carpet, delighted to find his stance had ratcheted up to something closer to normal, and opened a can of beans in the kitchen. He decided he deserved a beer, and since a good afternoon nap would probably speed his recovery, he swallowed a couple more Robaxacet. He briefly considered a joint, but didn’t have the energy to roll it. He settled back into his nest, adjusted the pillows and glazedly watched Another World, spooning the beans from the can, chasing them with the beer. Before long, he began to feel exceptionally mellow. He switched off the television, remembered to switch off the phone, and, after a few moments, had fallen into the sort of bliss that afternoon naps are made of.

  He dreamed he was in a race, pacing furiously alongside Ben Johnson. Unaccountably, Alvy was running with them, too, barking and leaping joyously. It was the three of them in the lead. Leo pulled ahead of Ben. Then ahead of Alvy. And then he was on the podium, caressing, oddly enough, his National Newspaper Award, being serenaded by Oh, Canada, only to have the certificate ripped from his hands. Suddenly, he was in a room full of savage rodents that he realized, in dream logic, were all reporters. It was like the end of Alice in Wonderland: a whole pack of cards rises in the air and comes flying down at Alice and she tries to fend them off. Leo braced himself for the attack, then, in the aching torpor of dream time, became dimly aware that he was no longer in shadow land. Actual blows were raining down upon his head.

  20

  Wooden Nickel

  “You scared the hell out of me!”

  Foggily, through his upraised hands, he recognized his attacker. Stevie, her face red with fury, her eyes blazing, was on her knees beside him, thrashing his head with a folded copy of the Citizen. He stared at her, confused and sleep-befuddled for a moment, but also darkly conscious of a deeper emotion. His hand shot out. He tore the newspaper from Stevie’s grasp, gripped her by the back of the neck, and pulled her toward him. She didn’t immediately resist. And then she did, pulling back abruptly, her face now white, stricken.

  “God, I’m sorry.” Leo’s words were dutiful. He wasn’t sorry. He savoured the kiss. “You just looked so b…” The cliché died on his lips. She was staring at him, her chest heaving, then her face sagged, as if she were about to cry. His heart contracted.

  “I thought you were…dead,” she spoke raggedly.

  Instantly he understood. “Oh, Stevie, I’m sorry.” This time it was genuine. “Look, I put my back out. Lying on a hard surface helps.” He watched her eyeing the detritus around him—the tin of beans with dirty spoon, the crumpled beer can, the crusty cereal bowl with the film of drying milk, the television remote—the light of understanding dawning in her eyes. It was not a pretty site. Nor was he a pretty sight: He passed his hand over his unshaven face, had a momentary regret for what his breath must be like, then realized he was wearing only a T-shirt and underwear, and, worse, he was straining his Stanfields. He sternly thought of the most boring story he’d ever written—a three-part exegesis on traffic-crosswalk technology.

  “And then when you didn’t answer the door, and Alvy was barking, and I looked through the window, and there you were on the floor, and I thought—”

  “I know what you thought, and I’m sorry.”

  Stevie shifted off her knees. “I tried you on the phone. I kept getting Jed Clampett.”

  “I turned the phone off, sorry.” Leo pushed himself onto his elbows.

  “Don’t get up if you feel better on the floor.”

  “Then maybe you should hand me that bathrobe.”

  Leo watched her expression as she silently draped the bathrobe over him. “I meant to phone you yesterday. But I got caught up at work, and then my back—”

  “I thought it might have had something to do with your conversation with Merritt.”

  “What conversation?”

  “Tuesday. When we were at her house.” Stevie sat down on a chair beside him and began to stroke the dog’s neck. “You talked about me.”

  “Oh, that.” Leo squirmed under the bathrobe. “Merritt blabbed, then.”

  “‘Manipulative’ is her middle name.”

  “‘Impulsive’ is mine. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “Well, you did.”

  Leo was silent a moment. He shrugged, inasmuch as one can shrug horizontally. “Past is past.”

  He looked over to see her studying him. “I’ve been a little nuts since moving back here,” she began. “Maybe you noticed. The divorce, leaving Toronto, staying in Winnipeg, living with my parents. Michael sort of fit into that old world, I guess. Nostalgia has a strange force.” She faltered. “Our lives had completely diverged. He ha
d no interest in me, I could tell. He was just being kind.”

  “He is the father of your child.”

  “Yes, there is that.” Stevie ran her finger under Alvy’s collar. “You know, when I talked to him on the phone on Monday, he said he had something important he wanted to tell me. It sounded so ominous that I thought—uh-oh—he’s found out and he’s furious this has been kept from him for all these years. Paranoid, I know. But then, when those luggage tags said he’d been to Washington—”

  “Why is that important?”

  “When I learned I was pregnant, I was in Baltimore, at a summer placement, staying with my aunt and uncle. So instead of going to Rhode Island, to design school as I’d planned, I stayed in Baltimore and had the child there. Washington and Baltimore are as close to each other as Toronto and Hamilton.”

  “Why didn’t you tell him back then?”

  “He was going off to the Curtis. I was already in Baltimore. We’d broken it off. I had ambitions. I didn’t want to force him to marry me, or anything like that. I was too young—”

  “Then why have the kid at all? If that’s not too blunt.”

  Stevie shrugged. “God knows. I think part of it was something Michael said. He was pretty Catholic at the core, and I was dumb enough to be influenced by it. And—” she rolled her eyes “—Merritt alluded to this yesterday, but it’s probably true: having the child was a way to drive my mother crazy. That was the kind of teenager I was, I’m sorry to say.”

  “She thought you should have—?”

  “It was the mid-70s. Kathleen was in the vanguard of everything progressive in those days. She thought, in the situation, yes, I should have an abortion. She was really pissed off that I wanted to do anything as old-fashioned as stay away in some sort of shame and have a baby out of wedlock, like it was the 1950s or something. The shame for her was that I wasn’t loud and proud about it. Who needs men!? Come home, have the baby, live here! Okay, then, have an abortion! Anyway, I made up my mind and no one could move me. What can I say? I was young, stubborn, and stupid. But I wasn’t ashamed. I just didn’t want Michael to know, and the only way to do that was to keep away. Well, stay where I was. In Baltimore.”