After I scraped the muck off the bottom of my Nikes, Maury and I got in the Mercedes and drove away.
“Put down the windows, if you wouldn’t mind,” Maury said. “All of them.”
I did as Maury asked.
“The house back there has a safe,” Maury said. “In a cupboard on the landing before you get to the back stairs.”
“Could you have opened it?” I asked.
“Not without a couple sticks of dynamite,” Maury said. “But I know a guy.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. “Might be helpful if I learned what’s in there.”
I put a Lester Young CD into the car’s player. The idea was to take Maury’s mind off the smell I’d brought into the car.
The first tune out of the speakers was “Lullaby of Birdland.”
“Ah, Prez,” Maury said. “I love the guy.”
We drove in silence except for the exquisite sound of Young’s tenor saxophone all the way back to Spadina. Maury had parked his car in a small lot next to the Spadina subway station just above Bloor.
After I dropped Maury off, I spent twenty minutes circling the blocks south of Bloor. If it was tough finding a parking space during the day, it was completely hopeless at night. The cars were parked bumper to bumper. I couldn’t spot a hint of room on any of the streets. I gnashed my teeth, cursed my luck and ended up back at the parking lot on Spadina, pulling into the space Maury had pulled out of almost half an hour earlier. Parking Armageddon had descended on the neighbourhood. In my frustrated car parker’s opinion, it was certifiably impossible to park a car on all streets south of the Annex. I would have explored the Annex’s own proud streets for a spot, but my permit only applied on our side of Bloor.
I reached into the back seat for my black jacket and headed home. As I walked, my Nikes made more squishing noises, and I trailed behind me the odour of horse excrement. Or was the manure from cows? Our house was dark except for the two lights on the porch. I unlocked the front door, reached in and switched off the porch lights. I planned on taking off my shoes, socks and jeans, but didn’t feel like performing the mini-striptease under lights.
Standing in the gloom of the porch, I unloaded all objects from the jeans pockets and transferred them to the jacket. Wallet, roll of bills, key chain, the beginnings of what looked like a clay figurine from 32 Highbury. I barely remembered confiscating the hunk of clay in the rush to flee the joint. The next thing I did on the porch, still standing there, was take off my smelly shoes, socks and jeans, roll them up in a bundle and crush the bundle into the outdoor mailbox.
My bare feet made no sound when I stepped into the hall on my way past the living room to the first-floor bathroom. I was going to wash off the stink before I joined Annie in bed. Halfway to the bathroom, me wearing nothing except underwear, shirt and jacket, a voice came from out of the dark of the living room.
The voice said something resembling “Eeek!”
My head snapped around, and my heart felt like it was doing a somersault. Now what? I’d had enough stress and strain for one night.
The voice was female, and it wasn’t Annie’s.
I turned the hall light on.
“No, no,” the voice said. “I don’t need the light.”
I didn’t need it either. Why the hell had I turned it on? Automatic reflex. I did what the voice said and turned the light off.
“It’s Rita,” the voice said. “Annie’s gardening friend.”
I switched the light back on. It seemed the courteous thing to do for a guest. Rita was sitting up on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, bare shoulders showing.
“Love your outfit,” she said.
“You appear to have no outfit at all,” I said.
From upstairs, I heard Annie’s feet patter across the master bedroom to the hall and start down the stairs.
“Where are your pants?” she asked me.
“In the mailbox,” I said.
“Of course,” Annie said. “I should’ve thought of that.”
“It’s a long story,” I said.
Annie gave me a light kiss on the lips.
“I seem to have sobered up,” Rita said from the couch.
Annie turned to her. “Crang sometimes has that impact on a girl.”
“With me,” Rita said, “it’s usually the reverse. The better men look, the drunker I get.”
Annie said to me, “After you left, Rita and I finished the bottle of wine, and we both thought she shouldn’t drive home.”
Rita said, “Either Crang’s wearing a strange new aftershave or my nostrils are stuffed up with the manure we were heaving around on today’s job.”
“You are kind of ripe, sweetie,” Annie said to me.
“I think I’ll have a shower,” I said. “Excuse me, ladies.”
I walked over to the stairs. Halfway up, I heard a whistle. I looked back. Both women were staring at me.
“His buns are pretty nice,” Rita said to Annie.
“I’m a fortunate girl,” Annie said. “But I don’t think I’m going to like whatever the story is about his pants and the manure.”
After a long, hot shower, fatigue hit me. When I came out of the bathroom, Rita had left for home, and Annie was waiting in bed. I gave her a rundown of events on Highbury.
“I was right,” Annie said. “I don’t much like what happened.” She let out a long sigh. “But at least you’re sort of narrowing things down. Aren’t you?”
I said, yes, I was, though I would have been hard-pressed at that moment to put my finger on what exactly was narrowed. I kissed Annie, she rolled over and fell back to sleep within seconds.
I wasn’t so lucky. I still felt the fatigue, but my mind wouldn’t quit thinking about Grace and the Highbury house. She was the only logical person to be doing things with the clay. I couldn’t imagine Rocky as a man of artistic leanings. No one could imagine Rocky that way. Not even his loving mother, if he had a mother, and if she could manage to love him. And the third guy, he only showed up at the house now and again. If he was just a part-timer, it was unlikely he’d be working with the clay and the table and the kiln. Maybe he was a consultant of some kind. He came around to check on whatever Grace had fashioned. He might be a guy who gave her technical advice. Grace had to be the one with the creative touch. Nobody else I’d met in the general mess of recent events qualified.
But in all the years of acting as Grace’s lawyer, I hadn’t heard a word out of her about sculpting or clay or ceramics or firing up a kiln. If she was any good at that kind of art, it must have taken a big piece of her time. But she didn’t talk about it. Not to me. Grace and I rarely got beyond the subject of the grow op case. No personal stuff. But she must have discussed her ceramics work with somebody, some friend or some person in her family. The trouble was I couldn’t remember her ever mentioning anybody from either category, family or friends.
Maybe George Wu, her partner in crime, fit the role of friend. I got the idea they’d had an affair at the beginning of the grow op plan. I’d always kind of speculated the affair was part of Wu’s strategy to get Grace on side with the scheme. Wu was the one guy I knew of who got close to Grace. Maybe I ought to speak to him about her interest in ceramics. That sounded like something an intrepid investigator would do. I’d think about it some more after the sun came up, which was probably any minute now.
I reached over for the MP3 on the little table by my side of the bed. I fitted the earbuds into my ears. The MP3 was set to the live recording of Bill Evans and his trio at the Village Vanguard on June 25, 1961. Most gorgeous album ever. The first tune up was a waltz, “Alice in Wonderland.” Calm and peace began to settle over me, and somewhere near the end of another waltz, “Waltz for Debbie,” I began to drift off.
17
When I woke up next morning, I was surprised to find it wasn’t morning. It was two in the afternoon, and rain was falling outside. While I slept, Annie must have untangled me from the MP3 and put it back on the little table.
She’d done a neat job of it. I had a shower, got dressed and went downstairs to two more surprises, both courtesy of Annie.
She had pancakes on the go and a suggestion for the afternoon.
“Let’s play hooky,” she said. “The Bloor’s doing a bunch of Kristin Scott Thomas movies. One’s on at four.”
I gave Annie a hug.
“That’s an affirmative?” she said.
“As long as it isn’t The English Patient.”
“I’m with you on that one.”
“Remember the Seinfeld episode when Elaine went off on The English Patient? Great and classic.”
“According to you, all Seinfeld episodes are great and classic.”
“But Elaine was right about the movie.”
“Pretentious, long-winded, boring, whatever,” Annie said. “I agree.”
I poured maple syrup on my pancakes.
“Today’s movie,” Annie said, “is I’ve Loved You So Long. First time we saw it a couple of years ago, you got tears in your eyes the size of golf balls.”
“That’s what makes it worth a revisit?” I said. “Not that I’m against weeping in movies.”
“Know what I like about Kristin Scott Thomas?” Annie said.
“Her je ne sais quoi, her . . .”
Annie, shaking her head, said, “The way she speaks French, I can understand every word she’s saying.”
We strolled to the Bloor, using one umbrella for the two of us. It felt cozy underneath. The Bloor was our local rep theatre, running a lot of documentaries but making room for retrospectives like the Scott Thomas series. Even though the place had been fixed up a little, it still felt like the movie theatres of my childhood. Annie and I bought one large popcorn with imitation-butter topping. The movie started right after we sat down, without previews, commercials or thundering soundtrack.
The story was about Scott Thomas’s character coming out of a French prison after serving thirteen years. There was an explanation for why she did the time. It involved a child and death, and was all too overwhelmingly triste for words. I got weepy on cue.
When we left the theatre, the rain had stopped. The sky was clear, and the sun shone obliquely from halfway down in the west. We crossed Bloor and went into Green Beanery. It was a place I’d never figured out. Half of it was given over to elaborate displays of high-end coffee makers and related devices for the perfect kitchen. Too high end for me. The other half sold ice cream.
Annie made a beeline for an empty table while I went to the counter and ordered two dishes of vanilla. The vague young woman in charge said they were out of vanilla. How could an ice cream emporium be short of the world’s most basic flavour? It was against the laws of nature. We settled for chocolate, feeling a touch grumpy about it.
A few tastes of chocolate cured the grumpiness affliction, and in the good mood that followed, Annie asked, “Do you know what this is?”
She was holding the clay figure I’d removed from 32 Highbury.
“Stands to reason it’s a ceramic piece,” I said. “But I can’t do identification past that. It’s the beginnings of a toy figure?”
“A figure, I agree, but not a toy,” Annie said. “It’s intended to be a fairly serious kind of adult work.”
“You’ve been giving the thing some thought?”
“I saw it on your bedside table and got curious.”
“Your curiosity tell you anything?”
“From the figure’s waist up,” Annie said, “there’s nothing going on. All we got is a lumpy mass. But down below, the legs are almost fully developed.”
“Fat-looking legs, you ask me.”
“It isn’t the legs that are fat,” Annie said, running her index finger up and down the figure’s sides. “It’s the pants. These are a really early style in pants. Historically speaking.”
“Pantaloons?”
“Not them, they were nineteenth century,” Annie said. “Besides, pantaloons fit tight, not loose like these. The pants on this figure predate the nineteenth century. Renaissance pants these are, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Where’d you learn all this stuff?”
“Fashion history was one of the courses I took for my master of fine arts.”
Annie turned the figure over in her hands a few more times, giving it a concentrated inspection from different angles.
“These things below the pants could be the beginnings of feet,” she said.
“Actual appendages you think? Or shoes?”
“Too crude to tell.”
Annie put the figure on the table.
“Where in the Highbury house did you pilfer it from?” she asked.
“Technically it may not qualify as a pilfer,” I said. “I got it out of the garbage pail.”
“A reject, huh? Whoever made it wasn’t satisfied with what they were making,” Annie said. “Maybe the pants are all wrong.”
“Why did you ask me what location in the house I found it in?”
“I was wondering if it was among other figures of a similar type.”
“Not that I saw,” I said. “The work table was more or less tidied up. Equipment right out there for anyone to see, but no ceramic pieces in sight. Just the spoiled one in the trash.”
“It’s usual that figures come in multiple groupings. That’s how collectors gather them. Not just one, but a whole bunch of related figures.”
“One with the pants is no doubt a reject, like you said. But Maury told me the place had a safe. Maybe the completed figures, the unrejected ones, are kept under security.”
“Surprising your friend Maury didn’t blow the safe.”
“At the time,” I said, “we had more pressing concerns.”
Annie scooped up the rest of her ice cream, then leaned over and took a spoonful of what was left of mine.
“One guy I gather knows his way around ceramics is our neighbour Charles,” she said. “He’s got a studio in his backyard. Or maybe he had a studio at one time. Very aware of the field anyway, so I hear.”
“If I need help, I’ll knock on his door.”
“You ever heard of the Monkey Orchestra?” Annie asked me. “My question’s relevant to your little piece.”
“Is this a derogative term?” I said. “As in, ‘an orchestra of monkeys would sound better than Guy Lombardo’s band’?”
“I’m talking ceramics,” Annie said. “A famous group of figures is what the Monkey Orchestra is. It features all the instrumentalists in an orchestra except they’re monkeys, not people. Collectively the figures are worth a lot of money. Millions maybe. I don’t really know. Everything I’m telling you now is getting to the far edge of my limited knowledge.”
“Big bucks in ceramics, that’s your message?”
“Huge, oh yeah,” Annie said. “There was a time in Europe, seventeenth century, in around then, ceramics replaced gold as the monetary standard. I’ve probably got the terminology wrong. But you get the idea.”
“If the people on Highbury are messing around in the ceramics business, then they could be looking to score a major profit?”
“An illegal profit, given the people involved,” Annie said. “I mean, come on, the Janetta family? The mob and all that? I just bet they play rough.”
“You’ll note it’s Ms. Janetta who might be the person connected to the ceramics business. Not Mr. Janetta, mob kingpin. But you’re right, people of the Janetta calibre usually come with violence attached.”
“So do ceramics,” Annie said.
“What’s violent about ceramics?”
“Seventeenth century I’m talking about,” Annie said, leaning forward and lowering her voice as if she were revealing a great confidence. “Nations fought wars over ceramics.”
“Wars?”
“That’s the kind of passions ceramics can raise,” Annie said. She pointed her spoon at me. “Watch yourself, big boy.”
18
I arranged on the phone to meet my friend Fox for lunch at Harold’s, a restaurant
on a side street a couple of blocks north of Osgoode Hall. Fox’s real name was Phil Goldenberg, but everybody called him Fox. When he was fresh out of law school, and took nothing except drug cases, which was what beginner criminal lawyers started with in those days, he won a slew of acquittals. His trick was to put original twists on his cross-examinations of Crown witnesses. Somebody said he was smart as a fox, and we all got into the habit of pinning the name on him. When his hair turned prematurely grey, the name stretched to Grey Fox. He dyed it black, and the name switched back to Fox. It stayed that way even after he quit the dye jobs.
He and I acted in some drug cases together where we were co-counsel, each of us acting for a jointly charged client. We weren’t partners exactly but we shared information and ideas when it saved one or both of us time and inconvenience. R v. Wu and Nguyen
was one of those cases. He represented George Wu, and when I asked him on the phone to bring Wu to lunch, he said, sure, no problem, George was just sitting around waiting to go to prison anyway.
“Locate your own client yet?” Fox asked, still on the phone.
“I’m hoping Wu can help me,” I said.
“So the answer’s no, you haven’t found her.”
“She’s floating out there somewhere,” I said. “Maybe she’s getting herself in some different kind of legal jam. That’s part of what I’m going to ask Wu if he knows about.”
“And how will it play out if my guy happens to incriminate his own self?” Fox said.
“If anything of that danger appears on the conversational horizon, you can excuse yourself from the table.”
“Naturally you don’t expect that to happen.”
“Naturally.”
“Then I can just sit there, keep my mouth shut and eat the lunch you’re going to pay for.”
“That sounds like a scenario,” I said.
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