A very small smile flickered across Steve’s face. “Good question, Mr. Crang. Grace never carry identity. She want nobody find her from not going to court with you. Do that later, go to court for sentence in prison. Not get caught before then.”
“If she had nothing on her person, no name or address, how did the two police people get to this apartment?”
“Grace make mistake. Have ticket in her pocket. Dry cleaning. She forget ticket. Police find this morning. Go to dry-cleaning store. Get address for here.”
“Cops can be resourceful sometimes.”
I’d got the part right about Grace’s efforts at anonymity. Probably explained why she and Steve moved out of the Lombard condo, a matter of lying low. But there was plenty I still needed to pump out of poor Steve. For a guy so recently widowered, he was a remarkably frank answerer of questions. Must be the Buda influence. Or Pest.
“Steve,” I said, “you knew all along Grace’s work was in ceramics?”
“Of course.”
“She was getting well remunerated for the work?”
“Paid?”
“Sorry, yes, remuneration is pay.”
“Million dollars.”
“Jesus,” I said, “she was certain about the million?”
“Paid in advance part money. Quarter million.”
“Where’s the quarter million now?”
“Cash money in safety deposit boxes. Many boxes. Much bills. Hundred-dollar bills. Fifty.”
We had reached a crucial point in events. I needed to be clear with my next words to Steve.
“Very important, Steve,” I said. “Is your name on the safety deposit boxes as well as Grace’s? Do you have keys to the boxes?”
Steve nodded vigorously. “Grace and me. Both names. Grace said in case anything happen.”
“To her?”
“Of course her. Nothing happen me. Not ever. Only her it happen.”
“Listen to me carefully, Steve. Go to the bank this afternoon. Take all the money out of the safety deposit boxes. Don’t tell the bank Grace is no longer with us. You follow me?”
“Get money.”
“Right away.”
“Police come back in couple hour,” Steve said. “Need me to say dead person is Grace.”
“Identification, right,” I said. “That’s routine. The money isn’t routine. Get it all out before the bank learns Grace is dead. If they do, they’ll want her estate probated before they’ll release contents of the safety deposit boxes. You understand the problem? First, the bank holds up the release of the cash. Then the cops find out. They’ll want to know where the quarter million came from. Could mean a lot of grief for you.”
“Grief?”
“Financial grief I’m talking about. As opposed to death-in-the-family grief.”
“Take out money.”
“You got it,” I said. “Speaking of money, you have any idea about the other three-quarters of a million? The rest of the money Grace was earning for the ceramics?”
“From Levin.”
“You must be talking about the Levin Museum.”
Steve shrugged. Hungarians really knew how to shrug. Steve’s shrug conveyed complete and unquestionable cluelessness.
“A person from the Levin Museum,” I said, “that was who delivered the first quarter million? And will theoretically do the same for three-quarters of a million more?”
“Levin not person?”
“She once was but no longer.”
Steve nodded, thinking over his situation. Or so I assumed.
“Did Grace have a particular friend at the museum?” I asked.
Steve looked blank, an expression that seemed to come easily for him.
“Let me mention a name, Steve,” I said. “Elizabeth Janetta mean anything to you?”
Steve’s face brightened. “Good lady,” he said.
“You’ve met her?”
“Not meet,” Steve said. “Grace say she’s good lady.”
“Do you think it was Ms. Janetta gave Grace the money?”
“Could be so.”
“What makes you think it’s possible? Did Grace all of sudden have a quarter-million bucks one time after she got together with Elizabeth?”
“Maybe.”
“Just maybe?”
“Elizabeth rich.”
“I’ve noticed that, Steve.”
“Elizabeth generous.”
“That’s what Grace said?”
“Many time,” Steve said.
I had grown seriously tired of the increasingly monosyllabic nature of the conversation on Steve’s side. My fatigue seemed the signal to wrap it up with him for the time being.
“Steve, both of us have things to do, places to go,” I said. “Shall we agree to get on with our chores?”
“Get money from bank.”
“Good man, Steve. But first maybe you can do something else.”
“What?”
“Help me out of this chair.”
Once more, a blank look crowded out everything else on Steve’s face. I divined he wasn’t going to be of assistance in my pickle with the chair. It was up to me all alone. I grasped both plush arms of the plush chair, and gave an almighty shove. It worked. I rose from the chair in a catapult action, just barely keeping my balance on landing.
“Steve,” I said, holding out my hand to shake his, “phone me if you need a word of guidance in any area.”
“Phone you?”
I got out one of my cards and handed it to him.
Steve looked at it. “Got same card from Grace,” he said, handing it back to me.
“Can’t have too many cards, Steve,” I said. I wrote my home address on the back of the card. “Keep it.”
I pushed the card into his hand and left the apartment.
Grilling Steve had been like the thing with hen’s teeth. But I felt confident I’d forged ahead in the information game.
Way ahead.
27
When I got back to Major Street late in the afternoon, a large, open trailer hooked to a pickup truck sat half on the road and half on the sidewalk across the street from my house. I walked down the side alley to the backyard. The first person I ran into was the goddess of the garden.
“Hey, Kathleen,” I said. “Got the slaves at their toil?”
The goddess was too busy waving her arms at four slaves to have time for an exchange with a non-gardening ninny like me. All four slaves were new faces to my eyes except for Rita, the woman of the encounter with my pants down. It probably wouldn’t go over well if I mentioned the episode in front of her boss.
A wiry young guy with an Errol Flynn moustache stopped in front of me.
“I’m Duncan,” he said. “We all loved the story about you in the manure without your trousers.”
I sneaked a look in Kathleen’s direction, me trying to appear devil-may-care. One glance, and I knew my cautious approach wasn’t needed. Kathleen was having a large laugh. So was the whole crew. This was a happy bunch of slaves, worth watching in gardening action for a bit. Kathleen took the time to identify everybody, telling me all of them had skills in and out of the backyard business. A slim blond young woman named Lee taught violin and played in a band called Rival Boys. Monique was gorgeous and a fiend at pruning. As best I could make out, the slaves were at the moment mostly digging earth out of the backyard, wheelbarrowing it down the alleyway, returning with a load of fresher-looking earth.
“You understand what we’re doing to your yard?” Kathleen asked me.
“Seem to be exchanging one batch of dirt for another.”
“You’re roughly correct. Earth in this old part of the city isn’t good enough to grow as much as a weed.”
“The trouble being?” I asked, not panting to find out, but interested.
“A big reason for having a backyard in the old days was for dumping stuff. Cinders from the coal furnace. Cat and dog corpses. Human waste.”
“Shit?”
“My w
ord exactly.”
“You and the slaves are doing a removal of the lousy old earth?”
“Nothing decent’ll grow till we replace the soil.”
“I’m learning gardening’s not always a glamorous pursuit.”
“Wait for the beauty when the plants come to growth. Doesn’t get more glamorous than that.”
I went inside the house. My plan for the evening was to troll through recent events and sort out my options. Do it with a drink in my hand and a meal on the stove. But there’d be no drink until the goddess and her slaves wound up the day’s slogging. This wasn’t a plantation of the Old South. The master didn’t sip his julep while the slaves sweated in the fields. Nosuh, boss.
Kathleen tapped on the dining room’s glass door.
“Mind if I give Annie’s new secateurs a testing?” she asked.
“The ferocious little weapon?”
“I’m the one who recommended she buy this brand,” Kathleen said. “Want to make sure she was given the real goods.”
I got the secateurs out of the big bureau that was otherwise home to dinner mats and other harmless dining implements. Kathleen took the secateurs and headed for a slumped-over bush at the back of the garden. I watched her make three or four swift passes at the bush’s branches. They dropped into a tidy pile at Kathleen’s feet. It was a performance not unlike a magician wielding his wand.
“Very theatrical,” I told Kathleen after she came in from the garden. She gave a small bow and handed me back the secateurs.
“Special, this pair,” Kathleen said, pointing at the secateurs. “They’re called by-pass. The trick to using them, you have to squeeze the handles twice to get any action. Squeeze once, pause, squeeze again, and they’ll cut through a redwood.”
“Impressive,” I said, twirling the secateurs like I had a pistol in my hand.
“Not literally a redwood,” Kathleen said.
“Strong and powerful,” I said. “I get the idea.”
Fifteen minutes later, Kathleen and the slaves having pulled up stakes, I made a martini, hoisting my glass for the first sip to Grace’s memory. Two more sips later, I phoned Annie in her suite at Columbia University and told her Grace had probably been murdered.
“I’m coming home,” Annie said.
“No need,” I said.
“A murderer’s loose, and all you can say is no need? Honey, consider your past record. Whenever a killer’s on the scene in a case even tangentially involving your good self, the killer sure as shooting finds his way to the Crang front door.”
“I’ve learned from past lessons,” I said. “Besides, look at it this way, I’m behind a different front door. No killer’ll ever locate the new address.”
“I’m still coming home.”
“Let me explain how I’m playing it safe.”
“Don’t expect me to swallow whatever it is you’re imagining.”
“How about I swear an oath on all that’s holy?”
“What could possibly be holy to you?”
I paused a beat or two. “My entire Bill Evans record collection.”
“Good heavens, you’re really serious.”
“Okay,” I said, “the gist of the oath, I promise I won’t initiate any encounter with a person that promises danger.”
There was quiet at Annie’s end. It stretched close to thirty seconds.
“You don’t suppose,” I said, “this is one of those phone calls that includes unlimited free time for reasons I never understand.”
“Cost of the phone is secondary right now to the decision-making process,” Annie said. After a little more quiet, she said, “Okay, I trust you. I’m staying on the job down here until my plane ticket says it’s time to come home.”
On that note of comity and after several telephonic kisses to one another, I freshened my martini and chopped up carrots, celery, an onion and a tomato. I opened a can of sodium-free kidney beans and dumped a quarter pound of extra-lean ground beef in a frying pan. I was on my way to making a pot of chili. The Dizzy Gillespie–Charlie Parker 1945 concert at Town Hall played on the sound system, and instead of whistling while I worked, I thought about Grace and death and ceramic figures. It also occurred that I should wonder whether Grace’s guarantee that she had set aside my seventy-five-thousand-dollar fee lasted beyond her demise.
By the time the chili was more than halfway to cooked, and Symphony Sid Torin doing MC work at Town Hall had introduced Sid Catlett on drums in place of Max Roach, I’d come to a conclusion about the next step in my own inquiry into Grace’s murder. Tomorrow I would get together with a guy I knew from law school, a classmate named Walter Torgol. Wally was a person of unique marvels. After he finished law school, he got a medical degree. Some of us thought Wally would keep going until he was head of the World Health Organization or some such lofty organization. But his career seemed to have plateaued in the Ontario coroner’s office on Grenville Street. Wally did autopsies. I wanted him to find out what he could about Grace’s death. What killed her? I was sure Wally would come through for me. What the heck, he’d delivered in the past.
I ate my chili, accompanying it with a third martini, which I didn’t finish. Fatigue was closing in early. I tidied the kitchen and went to bed with the new William Boyd novel. I read until eleven o’clock when I had the presence of mind to mark my place in the book and turn off the light. Then I dropped off into an immediate and deep sleep.
28
In my sleep, I thought I heard noises downstairs. I opened my eyes. It was as close to pitch-black as it gets in downtown Toronto. I blinked a couple of times and listened hard. For the moment, nothing more drifted up. I held my wristwatch close to my eyes. Almost two-thirty. Sounds returned from below. The first time, I’d supposed the noises came from Annie’s office at the front. The second time, they’d changed location to the dining room at the back.
I managed to stand up without drawing any creaks from the bedroom floor. I had on my Dirk Nowitzki T-shirt and black underwear. I did a silent job of pulling on a pair of jeans. Wouldn’t do to appear pantless in front of a burglar. I tiptoed down the stairs, masterful at not stepping in any spots I knew to have a propensity for groans. The burglar wasn’t as fastidious. He was opening drawers as if he were alone in the house. Didn’t he give a damn about the burglary victim’s sensibilities? I made it all the way to the kitchen without making a peep.
The intruder was bending over a shelf in the tall antique bureau against the north wall. I recognized him right away, even from behind, even in the gloom.
“Rocky,” I said in a normal speaking voice, “all you had to do was phone for an invitation.”
Rocky turned toward me.
“Crang, you fuck!” he said. “Where’s the little clay thing?”
I still couldn’t make out Rocky’s face or the expression on it, but his voice told me all I needed to know. Rocky was in a fury.
I came down the four steps from the kitchen to the dining room level. That put me not more than a couple of yards from Rocky. I felt vibes that told me I was too close to the guy.
“Let me just turn some lights on, Rocky,” I said. “We’ll have a drink and work this out.”
“Don’t jerk me around, you asshole! Give me the fucking piece of clay!”
“Not even vodka? Polish potato? You’ll love it.”
“The clay, asshole!”
“You don’t mind my asking how’d you get in here?”
Rocky’s hands shot out, grabbing me around the neck. I felt myself being slammed down on the dining room table. At least I had the reflex smarts to hold my head high enough to avoid a smack on the tabletop. That would have meant concussion for sure, undoubtedly followed by unconsciousness.
“Get off me, Rocky!” My voice came in a gurgle. Rocky would never have heard what I was begging. Rocky wouldn’t care. Rocky had once again gone more than a little psycho. Probably out-of-control psycho. He was trying to get a firm enough grip on my neck to throttle me. He wasn’t sa
ying anything, but he was making scary huffing and puffing sounds. All his energies seemed to be concentrated on tightening both hands around my windpipe.
I writhed and squirmed and thumped his skull with my right fist. The fist bounced off his noggin without slowing things down by a hair. Rocky’s hands were squeezing my neck. The guy had taken departure of his common sense. Maybe he was born without any. He seemed to have nothing on his mind at the moment except wiping me out.
With my left hand, I tore at Rocky’s wrists. If I expected that to make him lay off, I was way out of luck. My right hand scrabbled around the table searching for a stray knife or fork. Anything that would stand in as a weapon. There was no weapon. No knife or fork.
Then my right hand landed on something far more potent than a knife or fork. My right hand touched the secateurs. Hope filled the parts of my brain that were still operative.
Rocky tightened on my throat. Despite the boost in morale I’d drawn from locating the secateurs, I was fading toward the stage just before the stage of unconsciousness. This was authentic peril. My right hand got the SOS message. The hand seized the secateurs by the grips. Hand and grips meshed just the way they were supposed to, just the way they would if I could actually see what I was doing. I was riding a tiny piece of good luck.
I aimed the secateurs’ blades at Rocky’s right hand, the hand that was digging most lethally into my throat. I felt the blades engage with a piece of Rocky’s flesh. It was a part of his hand, but I wasn’t sure whether it was a digit, a bit of wrist or what. The secateurs had a piece of Rocky in their mean little blades. I squeezed the handles for all I was worth. Nothing happened except Rocky kept pressing my neck. Jesus, I was done for. An instant came and went when I felt sure I was on the verge of giving up the ghost.
Until I remembered these were special secateurs. By-pass secateurs. They needed two squeezes. I squeezed a second time. I felt the blades drive through a piece of what I took to be bone or flesh.
Rocky screamed.
It was a very loud scream, the sound of primal pain, and it was directed full blast at my right ear. For a fraction of time, I went to black. It wasn’t the scream that generated the blackness. It was the relief of Rocky’s hands falling away from my throat. I could breathe again. What was it about damn Rocky? This was the second time in a week he’d robbed me of wind and breath and most of my consciousness.
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