“Lou,” Elizabeth said, “we’ve got to look after Hugette.”
I turned to Elizabeth. “You’d better look after her. Hugette’s your best hope.”
“Explain that part, Crang,” Lou said. “Before I get more fed up than I am already.”
“What you want to avoid,” I said to Lou, “is the Crown taking the case against Hugette to trial. If that happens, all the crazy stuff’ll come out in the testimony, Elizabeth’s shenanigans at the Levin and so on. But if Hugette makes a deal ahead of time, pleads guilty to the manslaughter, there’ll be no trial, no big revelations in court, nothing for the media to go nuts over. And, not the least, Hugette’ll get a much lighter sentence.”
Elizabeth moved over to the crimson-and-gold chair. She perched on the chair’s arm and put her own arm around Hugette. I crossed the room to a desk against the far wall. There was a holder full of pens on top. I picked up a pen and got a sheet of paper out of the top drawer.
“Here’s the lawyer’s name,” I said, writing on the sheet. I handed it to Lou.
“Phil Goldenberg,” I said. “Nickname’s Fox because that’s what he is in court, foxy. He’ll do a great job for Hugette. The other name on the paper, Wally Torgol, Fox’ll know what that’s about.”
“Who’s Torgol? Another lawyer?”
I shook my head. “Better than that. Wally’s a guy who says Grace’s death wasn’t murder, and his opinion counts for a lot. He’s the one I mentioned who did the autopsy.”
Lou seemed to have made a decision in a hurry. He stood up, and looking at me, he said, “I got to make phone calls, Crang. Check with my own people about this stuff you’re telling me.”
When Lou finished his little announcement, he didn’t leave the library right away, as I expected him to. Instead, he stood in place staring at me until his staring and his silence began to turn a little eerie.
“I get the impression I’m being dismissed,” I said.
“See, you can be a bright guy when you try,” Lou said.
“Not bright enough to have recognized early on what a mean son of a bitch you really are,” I said. “Even by crime-kingpin standards.”
“Crang, you want me to put a couple of my guys on you who won’t screw up like Rocky did?”
“Not particularly,” I said.
“Then don’t still be here when I get back.”
Lou walked out of the room, moving like a man on a mission. One of the three bodyguards, not Spike, went with him. I looked over at Elizabeth and Hugette. Elizabeth was still holding Hugette, and Hugette was still weeping.
I turned away. I could still hear the sound of the weeping behind me as I limped out of the library and down the hall to the front door. There was no sign of the caterers, nothing of Isabel. No Rocky either. I kept on limping toward the front door when Lou Janetta called my name.
“Crang, you interfering asshole,” he said. He was standing in the kitchen door, a cellphone in his hand. He seemed to be waiting for someone to come on the line.
“I don’t feel any warmth for you either, Lou.”
“If it was left to me,” Lou said, “I’d have pinned the whole thing on Hugette, no bullshitting around with Crown deals. Make her take a murder fall and another for screwing around with the ceramics.”
“That’s petty vicious talk, Lou,” I said. “Hugette’s the most vulnerable person in the whole pitiful story.”
“So?” Lou said.
“You know, Lou, you’re worse than what I said. Worse than mean, but I can’t think of the right adjective. Nasty is part of it.”
Lou laughed. “Yeah,” he said, spreading his arms as if he were embracing the entire house. “But take a look what it’s got me. All this and Elizabeth too. And nobody can do a fucking thing about it. Especially not you.”
He turned his back and began to talk into the cell.
I opened the front door and walked out to the driveway. There was no doubt in my mind that Lou was what I’d just called him, nasty. Not to mention arrogant and all-round loathsome. As far as I was concerned, the thing he said about throwing Hugette to the wolves tipped the scales forever against him. Sure, he was a crime kingpin, which was enough by itself to rank him high on the negative scale, but crime kingpins were part of everyday business if you were a criminal lawyer. What counted for more, Lou had no decency. I could feel myself working up a high boil in my feelings about Lou. The guy was a number one creep.
In front of me, as I walked through the driveway, were seven cars still left from the party. There was the black Navigator and Elizabeth’s sporty little number. The rest must have belonged to Lou’s muscle guys. But one of the cars looked out of place. It had no flash about it. It was a humble sort of vehicle, an innocuous-looking grey Volvo station wagon. This, no question, was Spike’s delivery car for the horse.
I stopped and inspected the Volvo, front and back, both sides. Such a plain car, a family car, a station wagon, for Pete’s sake. Perfect for people who liked anonymity in their mode of transportation. After a minute or two, I’d seen enough. I walked the long block to my own car and drove away.
At home, I made a martini and sat with it in the dining room, looking out at the backyard and all its fresh earth. When I finished the drink, I mixed another and took it into my little first-floor office. I dialed Dan Tommasino’s home number. Dan was the head of the Toronto drug squad, not a bad guy for a cop.
He sounded surprised I was calling him. I couldn’t blame him.
“You got the Three Amigos in your sights?” I said.
“Have had for a couple of years,” he said. “Not that it’s done us any good.”
“That’s about to change,” I said. “Got something to write on?”
Dan said he did, and I started. “Eleven o’clock tonight, a grey Volvo station wagon’s going to deliver two kilos of heroin to Three Amigos. Car’s got Ontario plates, number NAD460. The horse is under the matting in the back. Guy at the wheel, he’ll be alone in the vehicle, is one Percy Colombo, better known to his pals as Spike.”
There was a pause at Dan’s end, a thoughtful pause if one could characterize a sound over the phone.
“Colombo is one of Lou Janetta’s people,” Dan said. “But I bet you knew that already. You probably realize we haven’t touched Janetta since I don’t know when. Probably never. Now you’re handing us not just the Three Amigos but a small wedge into the Janetta mob. They may not be as untouchable as they were now that you’ve made this phone call.”
“And you’re wondering how come I phoned,” I said.
“You’re supposed to defend low-lifes like Janetta.”
“This time, a one-time-only deal,” I said, “it’s personal.”
“You want to expand on that?” Dan said. “Give me a little more substance?”
“That’s enough for tonight, Dan.”
Dan waited a few seconds, maybe hoping I’d offer him extra stuff, but when I added nothing, he said, “Okay, thanks, Crang. I gotta get my guys rolling.”
Dan hung up.
I took my martini into the kitchen and made a tuna salad sandwich. I ate and drank in the living room in front of the television set. I punched the remote looking for something to take my mind off the mess I’d left on the Bridle Path. I found it, baseball on Peachtree TV, Atlanta at home to the Mets. The announcers were the part I loved about Braves home games. They were good old boys, baseball lifers. They called the Braves players by their first names. Heyward was Jason, Freeman was Freddie. The broadcast was companionable and relaxing. The play-by-play guys were everybody’s friends. Everybody in Atlanta anyway. I wondered if they knew the lady on the phones at Ceramics Monthly. I wouldn’t have been surprised.
39
The phone woke me at seven-thirty next morning. I thought, groggily, it was Annie. I would be picking her up at the airport later in the morning. It wasn’t Annie. It was my pal Fox.
“Are all crime kingpins as changeable as Lou Janetta?” Fox said. “Laid-back one time
I meet the guy, hot-blooded the next.”
“He showed up at your place?”
“Last night,” Fox said. “With his wife. Beautiful as advertised.”
“What about Hugette Jennings?”
“She was along too,” Fox said. “I like Hugette’s chances. Crown’ll be stupid not to accept a manslaughter plea.”
“Wally can help you with that.”
“Just got off the phone to him.”
“Slick work.”
“Thanks for the referral,” Fox said. “And, get this, the Hugette thing isn’t all. Janetta was back to me at six this morning. Dan Tommasino busted one of Janetta’s guys delivering horse at the Three Amigos.”
“Lou was more hot and bothered this morning?” I said.
“That’s what I mean about changeable,” Fox said. “Last night, he’s Mr. Cool. This morning, he’s screaming on the phone. Literally screaming. Way up there in the sound register. Didn’t seem like the same guy as a few hours earlier.”
“Nothing you can do for him or his guy at the Three Amigos until later today.”
“Bail court for Janetta’s guy,” Fox said. “I’ll take it from there.”
“Going to be busy times around your office.”
“Listen,” Fox said, “about the lunch we were discussing the other day? At Splendido?”
“Still got it on my schedule.”
“Everything’s the same,” Fox said, “except now I’m paying.”
I thanked Fox and hung up.
Three hours later, I was on the walkway outside the Billy Bishop Airport’s exit doors. It was raining, and Annie and I were hugging. We hugged for a very long time.
“We going after the Guinness World Record in the hugging category?” Annie said into my ear.
“Passed that five minutes ago,” I said. “The rest has been padding.”
“I’d say we could double the record, except I’m worried about this rain on my new suitcase. It’s so cheap I think it’s made of cardboard.”
Annie had left on her trip to New York with two suitcases, but was returning with three. The new addition may have been made of cardboard, but when I picked it up, it felt like I was lugging a load of bricks. Thank god, my left leg seemed to have got on the mend overnight.
“Paper in the bag is what weighs so much,” Annie said. “Isn’t that old-fashioned? Paper? Most of the archival stuff about Edward Everett Horton is so ancient it still hasn’t reached digital. It was a case of making Canon copies or nothing.”
“In this case, I take it ‘nothing’ wasn’t an option.”
“Sweetie, the stuff in here is pure gold. Lot of personal things about Horton’s gayness. What effect it had on his work and career. This man was a true pioneer in the queer world. I’m loving the guy.”
I drove home and served Annie a cold lunch from dishes I’d bought at Summerhill, the world’s most expensive grocery store. But worth every penny. Summerhill wasn’t in the Annex. It was in Rosedale, Toronto’s toniest neighbourhood. No contest between it and the Annex.
We ate, and Annie asked me how the investigation of Grace Nguyen’s murder was proceeding. I said a suspect ought to be announced very soon. That seemed to satisfy her for the time being. But before long, I’d tell her the whole story. I was waiting for a signal. From whom or what, I wasn’t sure.
I poured us each a cup of coffee, Sumatra blend. And the doorbell rang. Annie answered it.
She came back into the dining room, saying, “A gentleman to see you, sweetie.”
A tall, lean man was right behind Annie. He was my old pal, Mr. Lachrymose. Except he was smiling. Steve Lazslo had come calling.
I introduced Steve to Annie. “Grace Nguyen’s widower,” I explained.
Steve was carrying a large suitcase with a lot of straps. It looked like something from an Eric Ambler novel, a bag that had made many journeys through the Balkans. Steve hoisted it on to the dining room table.
I felt pretty sure I knew what was inside, but I wanted to delay the opening of the bag just to stretch out the pleasure. I offered Steve a cup of coffee. He accepted, no milk or sugar. I filled Steve’s order, and the three of us sat around the table, me trying not to stare at the suitcase.
“I do duty Grace ask me,” Steve said. “Here now at your house for duty.”
“That’s nice, Steve,” I said.
Annie gave me a look that asked, what gives anyway?
“Something in the suitcase, Steve?” I said.
“Grace say I pay fee if bad things happen her.”
“The fee you’re talking about is for my legal services?” I said.
Steve nodded his head with vigour. “The bad things she talk about have happen her. So I am here.”
“Police told you how their investigation is proceeding? Into Grace’s killing?”
Annie was trying to keep the smile off her face. She had realized what was in the suitcase, but she didn’t want to start celebrating while the conversation was still on the subject of Grace’s death. Celebration wouldn’t be in good taste.
“I know nothing from investigation,” Steve said. “Maybe police know nothing too. Me, okay, not my job to know. Police, not okay, their job is solve Grace’s murder.”
“Succinctly put, Steve,” I said.
“Sink?”
“Just means clear, Steve. Very clear. Good English.”
Steve did another of his world-class Hungarian shrugs.
“Now I pay fee,” Steve said.
His hands flew over the suitcase, unbuckling its straps speedily and expertly. The suitcase fell open. All of us stared at the contents. Steve’s expression made him look like a Slavic Santa Claus. Minus the beard but with the same jolly expansiveness as a real Santy.
Annie and I just stared. Her jaw had dropped. I’d kept mine in its normal position. Neither of us had ever before seen seventy-five thousand dollars in cash all in one place, but there seemed no doubt the bag must be holding that much in bills. Bills of many denominations. I could see hundreds and fifties and twenties, bundles in rows and rows, each bundle held by an elastic band. It must have taken someone hours to put all the bills together.
“Steve,” I said, “I’m grateful.”
“Not me,” Steve said. “Grace, you should be thanking her.”
Steve and I shook hands, and not long afterwards, he left. He said I could return the suitcase when I’d unloaded its contents.
“There must be a moral to this,” Annie said. “Getting a fee after the client’s been killed.”
“‘Virtue is rewarded’?”
“Something better than that, honeybun,” Annie said. “Maybe something along the lines of ‘Honest work deserves an honest reward.’”
“Not quite honest, considering where the seventy-five grand may have originated.”
“Let’s forget about the moralizing.”
I thought that might be the moment to fill in Annie on the parts she didn’t know about in the saga of Grace, the Janettas, Rocky, the Levin, poor Hugette, Spike and the Three Amigos. But I let the moment pass.
Annie went looking around the house for all the equipment she might need when the garden goddess and her crew arrived at our place next day. I drank another cup of coffee and listened to the sounds of Annie opening and closing doors and drawers.
A few minutes later, she arrived back in the dining room carrying her new secateurs.
“Look at this,” she said, holding the lethal-looking blades out to me. “Those brown spots. You know what they look like?”
“Dried blood,” I said.
“That’s what I think too,” Annie said. “How do you think blood would get on there?”
The moment for telling Annie the whole story had just announced its arrival. For the next half hour, I described in detail everything that had gone on. Annie listened with total concentration, and when I finished, she said there were only two parts that bothered her. One bothered her a lot, the other not too much. The lesser of the two was the m
atter of Elizabeth avoiding punishment.
“Yesterday,” I said, “in the Janetta library, I was concentrating on helping the Levin keep its Company of Fools and its good name and on getting Hugette the best deal possible on the killing. Hugette deserved it, and if Elizabeth got a free ride in the process, that was just going to be too bad. There was nothing I could do about it.”
Annie seemed to accept my explanation as part of doing business, especially since I’d told her about my phone call to Dan Tommasino and the possibility that loathsome Lou Janetta now had a chink in his armour. But the thing that bothered Annie a lot was me forgetting to lock the back door on the night Rocky tried to throttle me. I said I’d remember about the lock next time.
“What next time?” Annie said.
I shrugged, not as good as a Hungarian shrug but not bad.
“One never knows,” I said.
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