Take Five

by Batten, Jack;

  “You cut off my hand, you crazy fuck!” Rocky shouted. He was sitting on the table, bent over, cradling his hand in an awkward way that I couldn’t entirely make out in the darkness.

  I jumped off the table and snapped on the overhead light.

  “Oh, god, that’s gruesome, Rocky!” I said.

  It wasn’t Rocky’s whole hand I’d cut. Just his little finger. It dangled from the rest of his hand, not completely severed but close to it. Rocky looked at his pitiful dangling little finger and began to cry.

  “Man up there, Rocky,” I said. “You didn’t hear me sobbing when you were wringing my neck.”

  “Do something! I’ll die!”

  “Not likely,” I said. I took a closer look at his wound. “Hold the finger more or less in place till I get some ice.”

  Rocky’s tears ran down his face. He made a blubbering sound.

  I scrambled to the freezer, yanked out a tray of ice cubes, and dumped the cubes in a dishtowel. I came back to Rocky and wrapped his hand, including the helpless semi-severed little finger, in the towel of cubes. I tied the whole works in place with a piece of cord from the drawer that holds our kitchen bits and pieces.

  “Keep that firm as you can stand,” I told Rocky. He’d stopped blubbering, but the tears hadn’t dried on his cheeks. “Doctors at the hospital’ll sew the finger back on. Routine surgery. Probably do it twice a night. Very common.”

  Rocky resumed his blubbering. Maybe my bedside manner needed a little work. On the other hand, why should I care about this idiot who’d been in the act of obliterating me two minutes earlier?

  “You park your car close to the house, Rocky?” I asked.

  Through his sobs, Rocky seemed to be saying something about the Navigator out front.

  I put on a pair of loafers from the downstairs closet. Went into Rocky’s pants for his car keys. Then guided him to the Navigator. It occupied the same spot on Major where the gardening slaves had parked their truck and trailer the day before.

  I helped Rocky into the passenger seat and sat myself behind the wheel.

  “Whoa, this is high up,” I said. I felt momentarily exhilarated. “Makes a guy feel like the king of all he surveys.”

  I drove the SUV through the side streets to Harbord and steered east toward Queen’s Park. Rocky had quieted down.

  “What you tell the doctors in Emergency,” I said, “you were chopping onions with a very sharp knife, and your hand slipped.”

  Rocky grunted.

  “That a yes?” I asked.

  “Fucking yes.”

  “Ah, getting your spunk back. Good lad,” I said. “If you don’t have a believable story, the doctors might summon the coppers.”

  Rocky grunted again. I took it for agreement. I turned down Queen’s Park Crescent pointed south toward hospital row on University Avenue.

  “On further reflection,” I said, “the chopping-onions story isn’t going to work unless you tell them you’re left-handed, okay, Rocky old pal?”

  “I already am left-handed.”

  “Rocky, this heralds something good. It may be your lucky night.”

  An amazing number of cars for the late hour were speeding around Queen’s Park. Was half of Toronto headed for the emergency wards?

  “While you’re in one of your rare co-operative moods,” I said to Rocky, “let me ask you another question.”

  He grunted again.

  “What’s the big deal about the little clay figure?”

  “You think I fucking know?”

  “Let me rephrase. What’s in the figure for you?”

  “Two hundred thousand bucks. Would I be doing all this shit if there wasn’t a big payoff? The answer to that is fucking no.”

  “It’s Elizabeth who’s paying you this astronomical sum, am I right?”

  Rocky had the presence of mind to realize he might have gone too far in bringing up the subject of money. He looked like a man who had decided to clam up.

  “Here’s a tougher question, Rocky. Did you kill Grace?”

  Outrage took its turn in Rocky’s range of attitudes. “You’re the third person asked me that. No, no, no, I never put a finger on Grace.”

  I thought of commenting on Rocky’s unfortunate choice of “finger.” But resisted the obvious.

  “Somebody else suspects you in Grace’s death?” I said.

  “Goddamn Elizabeth asked me about it. So did her fuckin’ partner. After all I done for the two of them.”

  “Her partner? Who’s that?”

  Once again, it dawned on Rocky he might be giving away too much.

  We got a green light at College. Mount Sinai Hospital was less than a minute away.

  “A more generalized question, Rocky,” I said. “What is it with Elizabeth and ceramics?” I asked.

  “None of your fuckin’ business.”

  “Why’s she panicking about the little piece of clay? Why send you to my place after the damn thing?”

  “Because you’re such an annoying asshole.” Rocky’s familiar rage was reasserting itself. “Elizabeth says you might get bright ideas from the fuckin’ clay thing.”

  “Not so far I haven’t.”

  I turned into the driveway to Mount Sinai’s emergency entrance. Rocky looked up at where we were headed. His eyes opened wider, his rage fled, and he began again with the whimpers.

  I stopped the Navigator outside the Emergency entrance, got out and guided Rocky to the hospital door.

  “Walk right up to the front counter, Rocky,” I said. “One look at your little pinky, and they’ll rush you to the front of the line. But I’d quit the whimpering if I were you. Might alienate the nurses, big guy like you carrying on like the Cowardly Lion.”

  I nudged Rocky’s back. He stumbled through the automatic door. I got back in the Navigator and found an empty parking space on the second level of the hospital’s garage. By the time I stowed the car and walked back to Emergency, Rocky had disappeared.

  “Gentleman just come in here with his hand in a towel?” I asked the nurse behind the counter.

  “The resident’s sewing him up now,” the nurse said. She was middle-aged, and looked like she’d seen it all. “Are you with him?”

  “Just happened to notice he dropped his keys and parking ticket,” I said, holding up the ticket and keys. “He seemed in a rush.”

  “He’ll be fine,” the nurse said. “Are you a relative?”

  “Just trying to help the man out.”

  The nurse raised her eyebrows. I had the notion she didn’t believe me, but was she going to challenge my story? I was betting she would figure it wasn’t worth the trouble.

  “Thank you,” she said after a small pause, reaching out to take the ticket and keys. “I’ll see he gets these.”

  I gave her my best smile and left Emergency with a spring in my step.

  It took me twenty minutes to walk home. My neck hurt a little, but otherwise, I felt pretty chipper for a guy who’d almost been strangled on his own dining room table.

  29

  When I got to the office late the next morning, about ten-thirty, still feeling A-OK with the world, a woman was waiting in the corridor. I didn’t know her name, but I recognized the dimples.

  Just as she said, “Good morning, Mr. Crang,” I trampled all over her line, saying, “You’re the housekeeper at the Janetta place.”

  A pause on both sides came next. Then I said, “You’ve got business with me? Or for me?” at the same time as the housekeeper said, “I’m Isabel MacDougall.”

  Both of us laughed. The laughs were companionable and kind of merry.

  I unlocked the door and ushered Isabel MacDougall inside.

  “Care for a coffee from my almost-new machine?” I said. This time, nobody talked over anybody else.

  “Love one,” she said with the faint accent. Scottish, not Irish, I gathered from her name. “And aren’t those Matisse reproductions well done,” she said, looking around the room.

  “L
ifts the mood of the working environment,” I said. I occupied myself with the coffee making. Isabel took hers the way I took mine, pure black and unsweetened. She did her dimpled smile when I handed her the cup. She had on navy blue slacks, a blouse in a lighter tone of blue and a loose scarf in shades of red and yellow. The clothes seemed exactly right for a sixty-year-old woman, though she made them and herself look a decade younger.

  “Those little bruises on your neck must hurt,” she said.

  “You should see the other guy.”

  “I believe I have,” Isabel said. “I thought of calling him three-fingered Rocky to his face. But he wouldn’t have appreciated the light approach. Never does. Besides, he’s still got four fingers on the right hand. It’s just that the little one’s under cover.”

  I drank some coffee, thinking about the way I could approach the new situation Isabel MacDougall represented. “Ms. MacDougall, are you an emissary from the Janetta family?”

  “Call me Isabel,” she said. “And, heavens, no, I’m far from an emissary.”

  “Going behind someone’s back, are you?”

  “Lou’s principally. Neither Janetta has the faintest suspicion I’m here, not him and not my darling Elizabeth.”

  “That puts you all the way off the plantation.”

  “Let me start at the very beginning, Mr. Crang.”

  “Always a helpful approach in a narrative.”

  Isabel crossed her legs becomingly. She had an attractive precision in everything. Clothes, gestures, speech. “I worked for Elizabeth’s family beginning when I was twenty, fresh off the boat from Dundee. In my case, it was fresh off the plane.”

  “Those were the Baldwins?”

  “They were, on Elizabeth’s mother’s side. Very historic family, the Baldwins, though I imagine you know all of that.”

  “Father of Responsible Government.”

  “It was explained to me a hundred times what the phrase means, but I’ve never kept it in my head.”

  “You’re not alone in that,” I said.

  “Anyway, I started as a maid,” Isabel said. “I was live-in with the Kierans, Elizabeth’s mother and father. Elizabeth was an only child. So I’ve known her since the day she was born. Had Elizabeth all to myself for much of the time. We were very close, sisters almost, me the much older one. It continued in the same general way after she married Janetta, and I moved with her.”

  “You live in at the Bridle Path house?”

  “Only when they’re having functions they need me to supervise. There’s one of those this Sunday, which is what I want to talk to you about. Elizabeth keeps a small suite I stay in for occasions like this. The rest of the time, I have a nice bungalow in Don Mills. My own home, the mortgage damn near paid off, Mr. Crang.”

  “You’re single?”

  “I have my gentleman callers. But that’s got nothing to do with today’s topic, the reason why I’m here in your office.”

  Isabel held up her empty cup. “Half again?” she said. There was enough for one full cup still hot in the coffee maker. I split it between the two of us, and asked Isabel, “You want to talk about Elizabeth’s scam in the area of ceramics?”

  “Now, now, Mr. Crang, scam is rather harsh.”

  “But you’re concerned?”

  Isabel took the time to get her thoughts in order.

  “You have to understand the relationship between Elizabeth and her husband,” she said. “The man is very possessive.”

  “Isn’t that just the way with gangsters?”

  “I wouldn’t know. Lou’s the only gangster I’ve met except for his friends and underlings.’”

  “Rocky among the latter,” I said.

  “Thick as a plank, that one. He came to the house this morning, his right hand bundled like a mummy’s. Said you’d tried to kill him.”

  “Self-defence,” I said. “Not worth getting into.”

  Isabel smiled. “So who’s asking?”

  I smiled back.

  “You were saying,” I said, “Mr. Janetta wants Elizabeth close and clingy?”

  “I didn’t put it like that, but your version’s not too bad a description of their relationship. What Elizabeth wants from Lou is his respect for more than just her good looks.”

  “Which are considerable.”

  Isabel gave me a reproving stare. “That’s exactly the attitude that drives Elizabeth batty. Men can’t see past her beauty. You, Lou, every man she meets, they’re all the same. It’s only about her face and her figure. She’s got a mind too, you know, a good one.”

  “So she’s on a mission to show Lou her deep-thinking side?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But you’re not sure what the vehicle is for this display of brainpower?”

  Isabel sagged a little in her chair. “No, but I’m afraid it might be something a little fishy. It may even have been a factor in one person’s death.”

  “Grace Nguyen you’re referring to?”

  “Your client.”

  “That’s why you’ve come to me? Because of my relationship with the late Grace?”

  “Not just that,” Isabel said. “I liked the cut of you when you walked into the Janetta house the other week with that load of malarkey about building something just like theirs.”

  “Malarkey? That’s what you call it in Scotland?”

  “Bullshit is what we’d call it back there.”

  Isabel and I laughed. Isabel’s laugh stopped first. Her expression went back to the look of worry she’d been wearing through much of our conversation.

  “What I need to tell you, Mr. Crang,” Isabel said, “is I was on the Highbury property Monday night at about the time the young woman was killed. Probably an hour or so after that, if I understand the order of events from what the police are saying in the newspapers and on television.”

  “You were there for what reason?”

  “To pick Grace up and drive her home. It wasn’t the first time Elizabeth asked me to do it. Four or five nights in the last months, Rocky hasn’t been available for one reason or another. The night of the killing, he was off with Mr. Janetta. Some business thing where Lou needed what they call muscle. So like the other times, Elizabeth phoned me at an ungodly hour, well past midnight, asking would I take my car and give Grace a lift? I did what she wanted. But this time, the poor woman, Grace, never showed up. I didn’t understand the reason why until I saw it on the news last night.”

  “Did you know why Grace was at the Highbury house this time and all the other times you were asked to fetch her?”

  “Elizabeth just said it was a matter of some discretion. That was her exact phrase every time. ‘Some discretion.’ I wasn’t to inquire any further, and I didn’t.”

  “What about Grace? She tell you anything about her activities?”

  “When it came to conversation, Grace was a sphinx. Never a civil word. Never an uncivil word, for that matter. Not even a thank you when I’d let her off at her apartment.”

  “What did you see last night at 32 Highbury?”

  “Not a bloody thing, that’s the point. I waited, I knocked on the front door to the house, I hung about for fifteen or twenty minutes. The poor girl must’ve been lying in the woods, and I had no idea. I just grew irritated, and then I got out of there. Drove home in a funk.”

  Isabel looked down at the mouth as if everything she contemplated was dark and hopeless.

  “Listen, Isabel, there’s no way you could’ve known what’d happened to Grace,” I said. It was a statement, not a question. “It’s ridiculous you should blame yourself for something that was beyond your control.”

  “Doesn’t keep me from feeling guilty, wondering whether Grace was already dead or still in the process of dying. Could I have helped her? I just don’t know.”

  Isabel and I sat unspeaking for a minute or two, both of us thinking about her predicament. Neither she nor I could imagine a way out of her feelings of blame, no matter how unreasonable the feelings were.


  I changed topics, slightly. “Have we already established that you don’t know anything about Elizabeth and whatever she may be planning that involves ceramics?”

  “All I know,” Isabel began, then stopped. “Change that. All I suspect is that things are intended to come to a head late Sunday afternoon.”

  “Is this the function you mentioned?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “And you’re going to tell me about it?”

  “It’s very different from the usual Janetta bun bash. This one’s strictly Elizabeth’s affair. Always it’s been Lou throwing the parties, Elizabeth playing her role as the decoration on his arm. This time, she’s managing the whole works, and Lou’s nose is out of joint.”

  “What’s the guest list look like?”

  “Far from what’s the custom. Much smaller list. And heavy on Chinese content, if you can imagine. The featured guest is a man named Wang. He and his wife and their entourage of half a dozen or so. A few of Lou’s pals are invited plus somebody from the Levin. This Levin person’s your ceramics representative at the party if you want to make something of that, Mr. Crang, and I’m sure you do.”

  “What’s the name of the woman from the Levin?”

  “Ah, Mr. Smarty-pants, you know it’s a female because that’s all the Levin hires.”

  “So who is she?”

  “Tell you what, I’ll email you the whole guest list. I’ve just had one quick scan of the names myself. Can’t rhyme them all off right now.”

  “Can you fill out the details a touch more? Time of the gathering, focus, feature attraction if there is one.”

  Isabel said guests were invited for four-thirty Sunday afternoon. Everybody would gather for drinks on the back patio. Then they’d be ushered into the library around six. Elizabeth would make a little speech. There’d be a presentation. Isabel didn’t know of what or to whom, but she thought likely the recipient was one of the Wangs, husband or wife. The affair would be catered by an unpretentious outfit Isabel regularly hired, a bunch of young culinary and serving whizzes. Isabel herself was in overall charge of party logistics, though she expected Lou to interfere with what he would call suggestions but which Isabel knew to be orders.