40 Nickels

by R. Daniel Lester

  For once, I actually had no words. Not one.

  - Good afternoon.

  - Yes, hi, is this the Kingston Psychiatric Hospital?

  - Yes.

  - Fantastic. I’m calling about a possible former patient of yours. A “Copernicus Janssen” who may have been there a few years ago.

  - May?

  - Yes.

  - I can’t comment on any patients’ status.

  - But he was a patient there?

  - That’s not what I said.

  - Oh.

  - I can neither confirm nor deny any patient status over the phone. Are you a medical professional?

  - Not in the classic sense, but I did get a paper cut the other day and miraculously survive.

  - I’m sure your mother is very proud. Goodbye, sir.

  - Hello?

  - This Fitch?

  - Yeah, that’s me.

  - It’s Ronnie, from the Point Grey health club. You left a message for me saying you needed information and would make it worth my while.

  - I did, yeah. You worked on September 10th last year, morning shift?

  - You betcha. 5 a.m. to 1 p.m.

  - Beautiful. That’s the day a member, Rolly Stevens, slipped in the shower and ended up in the hospital.

  - Oh yeah, I remember.

  - Anything you can tell me about that day?

  - What’s in it for me?

  - Do you like chocolate bars, Ronnie?

  - You’re kiddin’, right?

  - It depends.

  - I like ‘em, sure. But not as much as I like dough.

  - Ah, a cookie man.

  - So, you’re a comedian, eh?

  - I try.

  - Try harder.

  - A ten-spot.

  - Make it a 20 and we’re golden.

  - You’re killin’ me, Ronnie.

  - We’re all dyin’, Fitch, some us just get our questions answered while we do so.

  - That’s deep. Okay, sure, 20. I’ll mail it.

  - Your jokes are gettin’ worse, Fitch.

  - You don’t trust me?

  - Not one bit. Grace my palm with the dough and I’ll call you back and spill the skinny. Until then, chow.

  - Mr. Fitch?

  - Yes.

  - Thanks for waiting.

  - Thanks for taking the time to look into this for me.

  - My pleasure. Slow news day here today in Kingston. So tell me about this book you’re writing.

  - Book?

  - The receptionist who transferred your call said you were working on a book.

  - Oh, right. “My” book.

  - About rogue dentists?

  - Yeah, that’s right. Big problem out west. Hordes of them roam the streets fillin’ cavities and handing out lollipops to little kids.

  - Really? Well, we did publish a story about a dentist offering some illegal services a few years ago. I pulled the edition from the archives.

  - Let me guess: Copernicus Janssen.

  - That’s right. He was caught operating without a license and was known to pull teeth that didn’t need to be pulled, particularly from the mouths of vagrants and alcoholics, to whom he offered his services for free. He ended up under psychiatric care.

  - No surprise there.

  - Can you imagine? The fear sittin’ in that guy’s dentist chair?

  - Yeah, imagine that.

  - Fitch, it’s Ronnie.

  - You got it?

  - I did. You always get teenage girls to do your payoffs?

  - Only when the eight-year-olds are in school.

  - Yeah, a comedian.

  - Okay, spill it.

  - What do you want to know?

  - Anything special about that day? Anything suspicious?

  - Suspicious?

  - Yeah. My theory is Rolly Stevens didn’t slip and bash himself into a coma. He had a little help.

  - That’s not what the cop said.

  - I’m an independent thinker, what can I say?

  - Nothing I can remember, though I did check the register for ya. There was a square here that morning on a guest pass and he’s never been back, not that I can find.

  - Oh yeah?

  - Yeah. Signed in as Robert Smith.

  - Million of those.

  - True. But I remember this guy. He may have a common name but he was anything but common.

  - How so?

  - He was built like a concrete mixer, all neck.

  - You don’t say.

  - Yeah, it started at his ears and went out from there.

  - Interesting. One more thing.

  - Better make it a two-dollar question, bud. The taximeter’s at 18 bucks and I ain’t in a generous mood.

  - You said the cop didn’t think there was any foul play.

  - That’s right.

  - You recall the cop’s name?

  - Hard case. Worked more with his fists than brains. Mon-something.

  - Montrose? Butch Montrose?

  - Yeah, I think so. He looked like a bulldog.

  Another afternoon—Tuesday, Sunday?—Ellie eyed the hotplate java I was pouring for her and said, “And here I thought you looked bad before. Boy, was I wrong.”

  I stopped pouring and pointed. “There’s the door, thanks for stopping by.”

  “Okay, okay, jeez.”

  I finished the pour and slid the cup over. “You’re the second person to tell me that lately.”

  Ellie gave a knowing smirk. “Where there’s smoke…”

  “There’s an ornery ostrich with his head in the sand wishing everyone would mind their own damn business?”

  Ellie ignored me, cracked open the small carton of milk I’d put on the table, scooped up a few spoons of sugar from the bowl beside the milk and took a sip. “Anyway, I know you’re bluffin’. I’m about the only friend you have right now.”

  Damn, just like her mom, a bullseye artist, a crack shot.

  Ellie sat down and sniffed. “But at least you aired the place out. Smells better in here.”

  “I had a change of heart. The Ghost of Fitch’s Future paid me a visit and I saw what awaited me if I didn’t change my ways. And it was truly terrifying.”

  Standing there, at the door, being hit on by Ms. Crawley, I’d realized I’d hit a low point. The social misfit, loner, and woman whose apartment reeked of, whose very essence was that of cooked cabbage, called me out on my strange behaviour and thought I’d finally become attractive. After I’d escaped the hungry loop of her flirt rope by shutting the door in her face without another word, I knew it was time to shape up.

  Now, watching Ellie, I sipped my coffee. Nothing like Glenda’s heavenly brew but it was a temporary solution, a plan B. Something to tide me over until I was fit to be out in the world again. Ellie stirred more sugar in. She fidgeted. She said that next week was March break so she had some time to kill if I needed her to snoop around. I thought about it and decided no, bad idea. Then I thought about it some more and gave her a rundown, a few bills of folding money and said to take a cab. And don’t get seen and don’t take any risks.

  Not the most responsible thing I’d ever done, asking a 14-year-old girl to be my eyes and ears on the outside. No, not even close. But less-than-comfortable times called for less-than-comfortable measures.

  13

  A week, maybe two, after my involuntary dentist appointment, the hallway phone rang at 2 a.m. The ring sliced through the eerie quiet like a hot knife through butter. I sat up. I sighed. I got ready. Though I set the scene differently this time than ever before. I turned on all the lights. There wasn’t an unlit bulb in the place. I got a pot of coffee going on the hotplate. Twenty minutes later, Adora opened the door. Her eyes glimmered: scotch and secrets, no doubt.

  “Oh,” said Adora, seeing me sitting in my chair, lit up like a deer in the headlights. “You’re usually giving me the bedroom eyes when I walk in.”<
br />
  “We need to talk.”

  “This is new.”

  “Wouldn’t you know but there’s actually blood in my brain tonight.”

  She eyed me south of the equator then slipped off her heels near the door and tippy-toed over. She knelt and cupped me to check. “Hmm. True. I was kind of counting on your one-track mind tonight. Baby’s got an itch.”

  I lifted her hand away. Adora was dainty but it took effort. My resolve to talk instead of rolling in the hay, once a concrete fortress, was now a small castle of sand and crumbling fast. “And I’d usually be happy to scratch.”

  “But…?”

  “But tonight I’m a man with a mission.”

  “Indeed. And with a beard. What’s with the Grizzly Adams look?” Of course, if she’d been talking with Ellie at all then she knew I’d been less than friendly with the outside these days and neglecting certain grooming habits. “Though it’s a bit patchy here. And here. And over here.” I brushed her hand away. She stood and pointed to the string of blinking red, yellow and green bulbs across the headboard. “Nice touch. But, Fitch, honey, Christmas ain’t for months.”

  “What can I say, I’m in a festive mood.”

  Adora stood and sat on the edge of the bed, looking me straight in the eye, dead serious. “Or is it that you turned on every light you own because you think I’m dark as the night?”

  That remark, plus the gaze with which she delivered it chilled me to the bone. She was right: I’d once believed her to be the bad apple that fell close to the criminal tree her father, Roosevelt, planted and leader to a gang of criminal clowns whose list of misdeeds could fill a novel. What I never really understood was if she was rotten to the core. Now it was time to find out for sure. I said, “I had a little chat with Ellie. She told me an interesting story.”

  Adora played it cool as ice. She opened her cigarette case and lit a stick like she was on stage, performing for an audience. Controlled, with purpose. “She didn’t mention it.”

  “I got the Coles’ Notes version. Boy meets Girl. Girl gets pregnant. Girl leaves days-old daughter with Boy’s family because Girl didn’t want the responsibility.”

  “Every story has its angles. Left out of Ellie’s version is ‘girl menaced in the hospital by a scary clown sent by her father with a clear message: return to the circus alone or else.’”

  “You didn’t tell her?”

  “She won’t believe me. Ellie’s…stubborn.”

  “I said it before, I’ll say it again: like mother like daughter.”

  Adora’s perfect smoke rings were puffed out with enough patient, executioner-like expertise I feared they’d encircle my throat and tighten like the four floating nooses they were but instead they dissipated into the air. “You play poker, Fitch?”

  “I’ve played. Most times it plays me.”

  “Well, you don’t show all your cards until the end, right?”

  “So this. Us. It’s a game?”

  “Isn’t all of it?” she said, to which I shrugged, unwilling to commit. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Adora cocked her head to the side inquisitively, another move I’d seen Ellie making. “So you tell me everything?”

  She had me there.

  “Okay,” I said, “but wasn’t that important scoop, you know, that her father, your ex, was Rolly Stevens, who I may or may not have indirectly accused you of murdering.”

  “Oh, you definitely did. And I definitely indirectly said I didn’t.”

  “You said ‘maybe,’ as I recall.”

  “There were a lot of maybes being tossed around in that hospital room, including if you were going to lose that kidney.”

  “Because one of your clowns repeatedly punched the bejeesus out of it.”

  “Not mine. Daddy’s.”

  “You say potato, I say…”

  Another fury of smoke rings into the air. “Okay, then, so let’s call the whole thing off.”

  I swiped an imaginary point in the air. “Okay, you know your Cole Porter, congratulations. But yes or no, the clowns did work for you after took over the family, uh, business?”

  “Yes, true. And then I had to let them, uh, go.”

  “Oh, I remember. I still have those nightmares to contend with as well.” And it was true. She may have saved the day, but Adora riding in on a stampeding elephant had nearly turned me into human paste. “It was definitely a terminal decision, you know, from a human resources standpoint.”

  She did a good Cheshire cat grin. “Maybe it was.”

  “Right, Adora Carmichael, my ‘Maybe Baby.’”

  “It seemed easier to work in misdirection. Plus, your mind was made up. You had your theories and it didn’t matter what I said. I saw that.”

  “But you killed some clowns.”

  “The cops couldn’t prove it. And if I did it was to help you. And me. They were vicious fiends and sizing my ship up for a mutiny. Slit my throat ear-to-ear in the process.”

  “And Moyer?”

  “He decided to relocate after Ichabod and I had a serious chat with him about taking things that don’t belong to him.”

  Ichabod was an old “friend,” he of the small head and the pointy teeth, a former Dead Clown who survived Adora’s culling by stampeding elephant because he was loyal to the boss not his fellow clowns. Now he was her occasional driver/bodyguard. And management at the supper club, way I heard. The kind of management that might prefer to use violence and intimidation as a motivational technique.

  And Cleveland Moyer was the building manager that found the bag of money that Jim, the janitor, aka Buckles, the Dead Clown, had shot Adora’s father for once upon a time. Last year, after the dust the stampeding elephant kicked up had settled, I’d found his Cadillac, bought with the stolen money, left in his driveway with the door open and a trail of blood leading to the street, where it abruptly ended.

  I looked her dead in the eyes. “For real?”

  She looked right back. “For real. He may have vamoosed with a bloody nose and an arm that didn’t hang right but vamoosed he did. My parting gift was a bus ticket out of town, with one condition: it had to be used then. Get outta Dodge quick before I change my mind. He decided to take me up on my offer.”

  “Smart guy.”

  Adora laughed. “First time anyone called Cleveland Moyer smart, I bet. Cunning, maybe. But I’m smart.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. And what I know, Fitch, is that you’re rotting in this room like a piece of fruit that looks fine until you pick it up and see the mushy part where it touched the bowl.”

  I poked my side. “I’m mushy?”

  She pointed to her head. “No, in here.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. So let’s do something about it. I know a place we can go and relax a little bit. Take the edge off.”

  “What, you’re gonna whisk me away to a secret destination and ply me with booze?”

  “Maybe. That a problem?”

  I thought about it. “Nah, was only makin’ sure.”

  So, like an egg cracked into a mixing bowl, not knowing if it’d end up scrambled or baked in a cake, I let myself be whisked. First, into the bathroom down the hall for a shower and a shave. Second, into a suit. Third, into the back of Adora’s limo, with its tinted windows and seats that, if they could talk, would probably spin one hell of a yarn.

  Ichabod, of course, was at the wheel. He nodded to me in the rearview and then raised the divider splitting the limo into two different worlds. The limo headed out of Gastown on Hastings Street, turned left on Cambie and made a right on Georgia. Destination: uptown.

  As we went, my mind raced with theories and schemes. Last year several prominent businessmen with criminal ties to the Vancouver underworld had met with some outrageous bad luck. The get-dead-quick-and-in-the-shadows kind of bad luck. First, Rolly Stevens, then Salvatore Puccio, nightclub owner with a side business in sin, got hit
by a laundry truck on Granville Street while out walking his beloved standard poodle in the early A.M. hours. Again, no witnesses except a stunned driver who said, according to newspaper reports, “I tell ya, that guy, he came out of nowhere.” Back then I was in Private Eye mode and apt to tie everything up in a pretty bow, claiming it as Adora’s ruthless power grab, a hostile takeover by her and the Dead Clowns, moving in on the local criminal brands to establish her own. Now I was beginning to wonder whose move it may have been, or if it was a move at all. Accidents did happen. Though I sensed a new player in the game and it wasn’t Adora. It was my old “friend,” Copernicus Janssen.

  Ichabod turned the limo right off Georgia, onto Howe Street, then made a quick left into the alley behind the Georgia Hotel, steering us into a loading dock parking spot.

  “We’re here,” said Adora, opening the door.

  “Of course we are,” I said. “You don’t like front doors much, do you?”

  Adora only smiled and made a motion like “you coming or what?” and then led us to a set of wide loading doors that were immediately opened by a large man in a tux who more resembled a concrete slab with arms and legs.

  “Mrs. Carmichael,” he said, nodding.

  “Good evening, Charlie.”

  Unescorted, I followed Adora down a hallway to the service elevator, which we took to the top floor. The elevator opened into another hallway and after a series of rights and lefts, we were greeted by yet another concrete slab in fancy dress standing guard in front of yet another door, one with the muffled din of a bar in full swing behind it. I was near lost from all the twists and turns and half wished I’d put down some breadcrumbs in case I needed to find my way out.

  “Your table awaits, Mrs. Carmichael.”

  “Excellent. Thank you, Anthony.”

  Anthony opened the door. I was right: the bar was hoppin’, packed with cool cats and dashing dames. As soon as we stepped into the bar, a host spotted us and led us to a cozy little nook in the corner.

  “Thank you, Pierre,” said Adora.

  “Of course, Mrs. Carmichael. The usual?”

  “Make it two this time.” Adora nodded to me. “And okay, one for him, too.”