That Sleep of Death

by Richard King

  I needn’t have worried. He stood out like a red velvet suit in a boardroom. He was sitting alone at one end of the bar. About my age, he had an elaborate Elvis pompadour, a black leather jacket, black stovepipes, and mod boots like the ones the Beatles used to wear, a white shirt and a thin Frank Sinatra tie from the fifties. The guy was a sartorial history of popular music. I pushed my way through the crowd and sat down beside him.

  I ordered a beer. Ronnie Pepper was holding a half glass of beer with both hands, his elbows propped on the padded bar.

  “You Ronnie Pepper?” I asked in an undertone. I was trying to act ultra cool but I had a slight fear that I just looked ridiculous.

  “Who wants to know?” he asked back. His voice was so low I could barely hear him and it took me a moment to understand what he had said.

  “Wiseman. Sam Wiseman.” I stuck out my hand to shake his.

  He just looked at me, waiting, ignoring my outstretched hand.

  “Well, I know a guy who bought a computer, and I need one. He said you might be able to help me out.”

  “So you’re a guy who knows a guy,” he said. “What makes you think I have a computer to sell you?” I don’t know how he managed to make his voice so quiet and yet so penetrating. He wasn’t whispering but he sure had the volume turned down. I guess in his line of work it was a security precaution.

  My usual way of dealing with strangers is to try to present myself as likeable and trustworthy. It’s almost an instinctive reaction of mine and I could feel myself trying get Pepper to like me now. What a waste of time. The look he was giving me made me abandon that plan in a second. I decided to give free rein to my nervousness; after all, I wanted to convince him I was just an innocent out to get a good deal on a computer.

  “I need a computer and I haven’t got much money and, like I told you, I met a guy who told me that you might be able to help me out.”

  “A guy,” he said. “This guy have a name?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me,” I confessed.

  “But he didn’t mind telling you my name, though, did he?”

  Ronnie Pepper turned his back to me and pulled a cell phone from an inside jacket pocket and called someone. I couldn’t hear a word of the conversation and I thought I had struck out. Dejected, I got up and was about to walk away when he turned back to me and said, “Hey, where are you going? Do you want a computer or not?”

  “Yeah, sure I do. I was just stretching my legs,” I said nervously.

  “Well, stretch ’em by walking out of here and down to the corner of Cypress. Turn right and you’ll find an alley. Another right into the alley until you get to a dark van. The guy in the van is expecting you. His name is Albert. What did you say your name is?”

  “Sam,” I said.

  He went back to his conversation. I waited politely for further instructions. When he closed up his phone and put it away, he turned back to the bar, and seemed surprised to see me still there. “Didn’t you understand me?” he asked.

  “Yeah, Cypress, the alley, Albert,” I told him.

  “Then …” he prompted.

  I understood that there were no more instructions, no code words or signals. “Thanks,” I said.

  “Yeah, right. Whatever,” said Ronnie Pepper, and turned back to his beer.

  I worked my way through the corporate crowd to the door, wondering how may of them bought their Yuppie toys from Ronnie. I realized that he and I had something in common: we were both retailers. He obviously understood the three important rules of retailing: location, location, location. He’d set up shop at this brasserie because it gave him access to a constant stream of rich young consumers — exactly the kind of people I wanted entice into Dickens & Company. It was an uncomfortable feeling, this insight that I was like Ronnie in at least that one way.

  I turned onto Cypress but when I got to the alley I stopped to review the situation. It was dark in there, shaded by the buildings on both sides. I wondered if I was walking into a set-up to be mugged. I almost walked past the alley to Stanley Street and safety, but after a moment of arguing with myself I went into the alley.

  About fifty yards ahead of me, in the darkest part of the alley, I spotted the van. I approached warily. As I got closer I could see that there was nobody inside. Where was Albert? I edged along the side of the van. A stream of cigarette smoke was coming from behind it.

  Suddenly Albert emerged, a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. “Oui?” he said. He managed to look menacing and nondescript at the same time. His cloth cap cast a deep shadow over his eyes and he was both taller and wider than me; he had on dark slacks, a white shirt, a dirty paisley tie, and a windbreaker. His “oui” slipped from between lips that barely moved and were not smiling.

  “Je m’appelle Sam,” I mumbled nervously.

  “Bonjour, Sam,” he said. “Je m’appelle Albert. Plaisir.” He reached out and shook my hand warmly and a smile crossed his face. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Tu cherches un ordinateur?”

  “Oui,” I answered, feeling more confident.

  Albert opened the back of the van and stood aside so I could climb in. There was a lot of merchandise back there. Clothes on hangers, sound equipment, lots of CDs, and some computers. I checked out the computers, but there were very few laptops, none of which were Toshibas. Most of them were desktop models and they looked pretty ancient. While I was there I took a quick look to see if there were any books. I was glad I didn’t find any. I don’t know what I would have done if I had found some with a Dickens & Company price sticker.

  I stepped out of the van and told Albert that I was looking for a Toshiba laptop. I asked if he had seen any in the last day or so or if he was expecting one. He eyed me suspiciously and told me that he couldn’t remember seeing any Toshibas but that the laptops sold fast and he had no way of knowing what he would have in the future.

  I didn’t press the issue. I was about to leave when he put a heavily muscled arm around my shoulder and asked, “As-tu besoin d’un système de son? Un veston en cuir? J’ai des bonnes choses en cuir.”

  “Pas présentement.” I backed up a step to discreetly free myself from his arm. “Merci pour ton aide. Je reviendrai si j’ai besoin quelque chose.”

  “À la prochaine,” he said using the international merchant’s farewell phrase to a customer.

  I turned and hurried out of the alley.

  chapter eight

  It was quarter to seven by now, time to meet Gaston at Hilliard’s apartment building. I walked up Stanley to Sherbrooke and then on to Lefebvre. The place was about nine blocks from the store, straight up the mountain.

  Lefebvre is a quiet, tree-lined, gentrified street with brownstones and greystones which were originally the townhouses of the upper-middle class. In the fifties and sixties these houses became rooming houses for the poor, transients and students. In the eighties, yuppies eager to reject their parents’ suburban lifestyle reclaimed these houses and turned them into single-family townhouses and condominiums. Hilliard’s condo was on the top floor of a converted apartment building, just north of Milton. It had some lovely art deco touches on the archway over the front door, which had been carefully restored.

  I had the address in my pocket but I didn’t need it. There was a blue-and-white police car parked in front, and Lemieux and its driver were standing on the sidewalk talking. Lemieux saw me as I approached. He lifted a hand in greeting and said, “I’ll just be a minute.” I took this to mean that he didn’t want me to join his conversation. While I waited I gave the street a quick study. There were for sale signs in front of almost all of the condominiums, but none of the private houses. I really had no idea what this meant but I was so into the mode of sleuthing that I automatically made a mental note of whatever I observed. I figured it must mean something.

  Gaston came up to me, interrupting my speculations. “Let’s find the concierge.”

  As we entered the building, I started reporting my various d
iscoveries. “I checked the book order in our computer and it turns out that Hilliard’s book order wasn’t actually his. It was ordered for him by Professor Jane Miller-More. Maybe he meant to point an accusing finger at Miller-More. Maybe she at least knows something.”

  “Good work, Sam.” Gaston was looking around the small lobby for some sign of life. The area was small but there was room for a couple of chairs and a low table. There was a glass door to the building facing the front door and adjacent to it on the left was a smaller wood door. To the left of the wood door was the name board but there was nothing on it that indicated where the concierge was to be found.

  I thought he hadn’t really been listening to me, but now he glanced over, and said, “We’ll have to find out from Professor Miller-More what that’s all about when we interview her.” The guy was always thinking about at least two things at once. “Right now we have to find somebody to let us in.”

  I was pleased that he was using the first person plural form in planning his next steps. That meant I was still included in the investigation. He was surveying the the names on the building mail directory as I began to fill him in on my adventures with Ronnie Pepper and Albert.

  Suddenly I had his full attention. He was looking at me as if I was out of my mind. “Listen, Sam,” he said sharply, “leave the police work to me. You are not to do things best left to my team. Understand?”

  “Understood,” I responded sheepishly, smarting a little from the rebuke.

  I guess he realized he had sounded like a superior officer, scolding me, and he relented. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate your help, but I have people who are trained to do that kind of work.”

  I was staring at the names on the board, and I forgot to be miffed when I noticed that one of the names, Grant, was followed by the letter A. “Look,” I said, “I’ll bet this guy is the super. He doesn’t seem to have a whole floor like the rest of them. It’s probably the basement apartment.”

  Gaston said, “You’re right,” and rang the bell. When after a few minutes there was no answering buzz he tried again. I turned aside and cupping my hands around my eyes, put my face to the glass front door to see if the super was in the hallway or something. He chose that moment to push open the side door, which hit me in the back.

  “Oui. Est-ce que je peux vous aider? Can I help you?” In typical Montreal fashion, he asked the same question twice, once in each language. He was an older man, about sixty, neatly dressed in khaki work clothes, and very clearly francophone despite the surname; there was probably an Irish Catholic grandfather or great grandfather somehere in his distant past. Gaston turned to him and showed his identification. “Bonjour. Monsieur Grant? Je suis avec la police et nous voudrions voir l’appartement du professeur Hilliard.”

  “Je regrette mais le professeur n’est pas là. Je ne l’ai pas vu depuis ce matin.”

  “Je sais. Malheureusement, il y a eu une tragédie. Le professeur Hilliard est mort.”

  The super put his hand over his heart and kind of stumbled backward so that he was leaning against the door he had just come through. “Non, non, ça ne peut être vrai,” he stammered. “Je l’ai vu ce matin.”

  Although the rest of the interview between the concierge and Lemieux took place in French I’ll spare you my bilingual rendering and translate their conversation.

  “When did you see him this morning?”

  The concierge quickly recovered his composure. “Early. He always left early. He and I, we both liked to get off to a good start to the day. I usually saw him in the morning as I was sweeping up.”

  “Yes,” Lemieux said, neutral politeness concealing what I guessed was impatience. “What time was it when you saw him this morning?”

  “As I told you, it was early. About seven. Maybe a bit later but certainly before seven-thirty.”

  “Do you know where he was going?”

  “To work I guess. He’s a professor over at the university.”

  “Why do you think he was going to work? Did he say something?”

  “Where else would you go at that time? Anyway, he was dressed for it and he was carrying his briefcases.”

  “He carried more than one briefcase?” Lemieux asked and I could see by the look in his eyes and the slight change in his tone of voice that he thought that this was significant.

  “He had his big brown one and his small black one.”

  “What was the size of his small black one?”

  “About like this.” Grant answered holding up his hands to show us a shape of about a foot and a half long and a foot high.

  “About computer size.” I said in English.

  Lemieux looked at me and nodded. To the concierge he said, “Has anyone been here this morning? Anyone ringing the buzzer, or just hanging around?”

  “No. Only your guy in the patrol car’s been parked outside since 9:45 this morning.”

  “I think it’s time we saw the apartment. Do you have a key?”

  “Of course I have the key.” As he said this he rattled a large ring of keys he removed from his front pants pocket. “Come.”

  Hilliard’s name was beside an apartment number given as Cinqième/Fifth, meaning the fifth floor, I assumed. Mr. Grant opened the lobby door with one of the keys on his ring, a Medico. We use Medicos at the store as a security precaution because they can’t be copied, so I recognize them when I see them.

  The concierge set off at a quick march and we had to almost jog to keep up with him. In fact, I almost got hit by the door again as I rushed to get through it before it closed. Grant walked to the rear of the building and waited for us in front of a small elevator. He used another key from the ring, a very small one, to buzz for the elevator. There were no call buttons, which I thought was a bit odd. How would an unexpected guest get up to the apartment? Then I realized that was the point. You would have to be let in and the person you were there to see would have to send the elevator down for you. Pretty clever security.

  Gaston Lemieux must have had the same thought. He asked the concierge, “Doesn’t this building have stairs?”

  “Of course it does. Every building does.” I think the concierge was beginning to think we were quite stupid; imagine not knowing that buildings have stairs. “They’re behind that door.” He was pointing to a fire door at the end of the ground floor hall. “It can only be opened from the inside on this floor. For security. You understand?”

  The elevator arrived and we got in. There was just enough room for the three of us and I wondered how the tenants moved furniture in on this thing but I didn’t ask for fear of appearing really, really thick. I assumed that there was some sort of freight elevator and left it at that.

  The elevator doors opened onto a small vestibule on the fifth floor. This area, accessible only to invited guests, was in effect Hilliard’s front yard.

  The walls were covered with black wallpaper with an abstract design. To the left of the door there was a wooden chair, also black. There was an empty black boot rack to the left of the chair. To the right of the door was a large black vase with a purple abstract design painted on it. The design was floral in nature and there were large green palm fronds in the vase reaching almost to the ceiling. The effect was about 200 percent too stylish for me. In spite of the black walls and accessories there was a lot of natural light coming from a skylight just above the right wall. The place must have been a cave at night when there was no natural light. I only knew Hilliard from the books he read and I had formed the impression that he was an affable conservative sort of a person. The decor of the vestibule was cold and showy and if I were to form an impression of him based on his sense of design I would probably imagine him to be cold and showy as well. I guess he was like the rest of us, made up of various characteristics, some of them contradictory.

  Opposite the elevator was the door to Hilliard’s flat. The concierge was turning over keys on his enormous, jingling key ring. How he kept them all straight I could not imagine. The guy must have q
uite a memory. Maybe the keys were marked in a way that I could not perceive. Some of them had coloured plastic rings around their heads but all the keys seemed to be placed randomly on the large key ring.

  Thinking about this made me think about the keys that fell out of Hilliard’s pocket. As I visualized the keys I remembered that Gaston had said that if the victim’s keys were found it meant that the murderer didn’t steal them. Suddenly, I realized that he was wrong. I remembered that there were no Medico keys, nor was there a little elevator key for that matter, on Hilliard’s key ring. I was absolutely certain of it.

  I pulled Gaston aside and said a word in his ear.

  “Well done, Sam,” he told me. “That’s very observant of you. That means we can expect a visitor. If he or she hasn’t been here already. I’ll make sure the cop parked in front is extra vigilant.”

  At last the concierge selected a key, another Medico, and opened the front door. Inside Hilliard’s condo, the decoration was, if anything, less warm and less inviting than its vestibule. It was all shades of white, and after the blackness of the vestibule I was almost blinded by sunlight reflecting off the various snow and cream and parchment colours. As my eyes focused I realized that the room we walked into was the living room. There was a white six-foot-long sofa against the wall to the left of the door. Across from the sofa were two easy chairs covered in the same fabric, with a blond wood table in the centre of the room. The wall behind the sofa, and the two walls adjacent to it, were painted eggshell white. There were white pine end tables at each end of the sofa holding ceramic lamps which were the colour of white chocolate with white-gold fissures decorating them. The lamp shades were the colour of old-fashioned linen bedsheets. The floor was covered with a sand white carpet. The ceiling was titanium white, which made the room look big and bright. The wall across from the sofa was probably painted the same eggshell white but I couldn’t tell because it was covered from floor to ceiling with bookshelves that ran the length of the wall, about ten feet. To the right of the door was the other half of the skylight I had noticed in the vestibule. The effect of all the light and white made me think of an operating room. It was was nice to look at for about ten seconds but you would need sunglasses to live there. I couldn’t wait to get a look at the rest of the place.