The girl nodded. “So you’ll never see her again?”
“No.” Sometimes I wondered about heaven and about the things Queenie had told me that her people and also her church believed about the afterlife, but this was not the time or place to bring up that. “No.”
The girl was quiet. Aliana opened her mouth as though to speak, then thought better of it.
“I had a grandmother one time,” Kezia said. “She was real good, too. She could tell stories and make baking and everything. And a grandfather, too. He told me about slaves and how they got stolen from Africa.” She shook her curls again. “I really liked them. I liked when they came to visit. But they went back to Jamaica and I never saw them again. Like maybe they died, I don’t know. Anyway, one time my mother went to Jamaica, too. I was real scared that she wouldn’t come back either. But she did.”
As if this touching revelation had tired her out, the girl sank back on the couch and by her posture, seemed to indicate that she’d had enough talking.
Into the silence came the sounds of the community center: young people laughing and talking, in the distance rap music and the sound of a basketball being bounced against a wooden floor.
Aliana waited. I admired her skill as an interviewer, which, like everything else in the world, depended on a sense of timing. After what seemed a very long interval, she gently said, “Kezia, remember what you promised?”
The girl nodded.
“You promised Ellis that you would tell him about Mark—about the time you and your friends spent with him.”
The girl pouted. Then, her face softened and she smiled. “I like him. He’s cute and he’s cool. He’s not mean and ugly like some cops. He used to show us how to do them puzzles with the numbers—sudsoko—or something like that.”
“Sudoku?” Aliana offered.
“Yeah. That’s the one. He brought in a book with all them puzzles and other kinds of puzzles, too, and we took turns figuring them out. I was the best. I was better than all the other kids!”
“So he was smart and nice and you all liked him?” I asked.
“Not was, is. He’s not dead, is he? That’s not why you’re asking me all these questions, is it?”
“Oh, no!” Aliana hastened to reassure her. “We’re just talking to some people who know Mark to find out what he’s like and how he gets along with other people.”
“He gets along perfect.” She drew in a breath. “He told me a secret once. And he told me that I was the only one who knew the secret and never to tell anybody else.”
I froze at this remark, and I could feel Aliana stiffen, too. The idea of an adult male telling secrets to a pre-pubescent female sent off warning signals in both of us.
But, without consulting, we seemed to agree that this might be better handled on another day.
“Kezia,” Aliana said, “you’ve been very helpful today, and very interesting, too.”
The girl nodded and smiled at Aliana but not at me.
“I’m wondering if you would let us visit you again soon. Maybe you could tell us some more then. You could tell Ellis a little bit about your brothers and about your unusual hobby.”
I wasn’t sure about any of this, but I could tell that remaining silent was the best way to get the girl to agree to meet us again. I wasn’t sure what it would accomplish, but she had told us several things about this Mark Hopequist. If PIC was really involved in investigating the death of the Juicer, I’d have to rely on unusual sources like this young girl to gather whatever facts I could.
“Okay. I will. I’ll see you again.”
“I’ll give you my business card, Kezia,” I said. “That way you’ll know who you’re talking to.”
“Sure.”
I reached into the pocket of my jacket to get my wallet. It was gone.
Laughing, Kezia reached into her own pocket, pulled out my wallet and handed it to me.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “That’s just a trick. I heard what you said about following the law. I always do.”
She laughed again and without quite meaning to, I laughed too.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Let’s have a coffee!”
I agreed. Aliana had come by TTC, by transit. As she slid into the front seat of my car, it occurred to me that nobody else had sat there since Queenie. I felt that rush of sorrow that now seemed to be my constant companion, and I wondered whether I would have to go through every single mundane experience of my daily life before I got to the point where I could stop thinking The last time I did this I was with my beloved wife.
We choose Tim Hortons. Of course we did. The ubiquitous donut shop was a Toronto fixture. We sat by the window, which here in the suburban part of our massive city, looked out only on traffic, low-rise apartment buildings and other stores in the strip mall.
I suppose we chose to sit by the window out of habit. Downtown there was lots to observe. Well-dressed business people, students, even beggars offered opportunity for observation and reflection. Out here, there was no one on the sidewalks.
As we drank, Aliana asked, “How’s the detecting going?”
I thought she probably meant it as a joke because her tone was teasing, but, to tell the truth, I had nobody else to talk to about my so-called “case” and to my surprise, and I think to hers, too, I started to lay out all that I knew so far about the death of the homeless man. I glanced at her from time to time and she seemed to be paying rapt attention, so I just spilled it all out.
“The way it looks is this: Four cops are suspected of homicide because they took down a homeless man who was acting out on the street—brandishing two pieces of metal, one in each hand, that appeared at first to be knives but turned out to really be pieces of a metal towel rack.
“All four claimed the man died from a heart attack and that they didn’t have anything to do with killing him. They claimed it was a tragic accident and that they were in the vicinity because of another emergency call. They insisted that they were summoned to the front of the hospital where the man had been a patient for a couple of days and that all they had done was to calm the man down before he was returned to his room.
“This much was in the news,” I continued. “But almost immediately it was announced that PIC had been called in to investigate. I don’t need to tell you that this means that anyone involved in the case has been rendered incommunicado until the PIC has completed its investigation.”
Aliana nodded. “It’s a real problem,” she began. “As a reporter I’ve had to…”
Before she could complete her thought, the glass in the window beside us shattered, spraying us with fragments.
Too shocked to think, I instinctively grabbed Aliana and pulled her under the table. She was bleeding and so was I, but I could tell at once that we weren’t seriously hurt.
“My God, Ellis, what the hell…?
“Shots. We’ve been shot at!”
“Us?”
“Somebody.”
Behind and above us we heard wild screaming, swearing, crying. And the sound of people fleeing the scene.
Within minutes, there was dead silence. I took Aliana’s hand. Her fingers were wet with blood but she kept her hand in mine as we carefully crawled out from our hiding place.
The shop was totally empty. Everyone was gone. There flashed through my mind all the news reports in which witnesses were called on to provide the police with information about a shooting. Witnesses that never came forward. Shooters that were never apprehended. Cases that were never solved…
Aliana pulled out her phone and dialed 911.
***
First the medics attended to our “wounds”, which, by some miracle turned out to be minor.
Then the police got a hold of us. I had to leave my car in the parking lot of what was now a crime scene, and Aliana and I had to climb into a cruiser for a nice little ride locked in the back seat until we got to 41 division station where we finally convinced the officers that we knew nothing.
I regret to say that drive-by shootings are common now in our city. So we could have been simply been caught in the crossfire between two rival gang members, or have been the mistaken target of someone who took us for somebody else, or we might even have been a miscalculated target of someone who’d just gotten a gun and wasn’t used to using it yet.
Or maybe someone knew I was questioning the police and didn’t think I should proceed…
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
As I made my way home through the congested rush-hour streets, I was still shaky but I calmed down, though I wasn’t sure why. I couldn’t help but think about the increasing danger in the city, the careless—and sometimes intentional—use of firearms that had taken the lives of so many teenagers, the fatal fights at bars and parties, the increased domestic violence, especially in times of tough economic downturns, and the violence related to the activities of gangs in so many neighborhoods like some of the ones I was driving through to get home. For a moment I wondered whether little Kezia’s interest in my time inside might be connected to the gang violence where she lived.
On my way to my apartment, I decided to go down to the Village. Here in a sheltered bend of the Don, the trees were alive with color and the persistent wind abated.
The slope down to the site was slick from autumn rain. And darkness had begun to fall early.
I made it down without too much trouble, reaching out to steady myself on the branches of bushes and low-growing trees.
“Dad! What are you doing down here at this time of night?”
“Son…” I reached out and touched his shoulder. Jeffrey was not what you would call a physical person, but I couldn’t help that small sign of affection. “It’s not night.”
“Come into the lounge.” He gestured toward the one-story building, a modest structure made of chipboard and looking as if it had been constructed by amateurs, perhaps with the volunteer guidance of helpful professional builders.
It was warm and bright inside with shelves of books and tables with games and a computer for the valley residents. I took one of the worn wooden chairs that surrounded the tables—donations, no doubt—and Jeffrey sat on another. Over his shoulder, I could see that there was a desk in the corner, which probably served as his office. And on the desk was his computer opened to the screensaver that showed his wife Tootie and his children, two of my four grandchildren.
“How are you doing?” he asked with genuine concern. “Tootie and I want you to come over, but you’re hard to get on the phone and you don’t answer your emails….”
I shrugged. There were about two hundred emails lined up on my inbox list. I just couldn’t bring myself to read any more after I’d read the first few. They were all about people’s memories of Queenie. All about how wonderful she’d been.
“I’m fine, Son. I’m okay.”
Jeffrey was a tall, strong-looking man. I remembered the day he was born, the day my Italian mother cried with joy over the fact that the baby was a boy. Ellen had been born first, and her grandparents had always been wonderful to her. But a son! A son was different.
He was different from me for sure, fair, muscular. And steady in his thoughts, his speech and his actions.
“What’s going on down here?” I asked. “You’ve got some new huts, I see.”
Jeffrey looked down, his long blond hair shading his face. “I would have told you about them, Dad. But I didn’t want to bother you when I knew you…”
“You have to ‘bother’ me Jeffrey. We’re in this together, remember?”
I wanted to reach out and touch his shoulder again, but he was sitting too far away.
He looked up. “There’s something else,” he said. “Something that happened just today.” He hesitated. “Two City Councilors were down here.”
“Down here?”
“Yes. Even with this lousy weather. I don’t think they hiked all the way down. One of the residents who was on his way up to the street said he saw a limo parked in the parking lot of your building right at the entrance to the path.”
“How would they have found access to the site?”
“I have no idea.”
I couldn’t help it. This answer filled me with anger. “Jeffrey, what have I said about security? We’ve discussed this. I…”
I fought to control myself. “What did they want?”
“They said they were on a ‘fact-finding mission’, that the city is looking to save taxpayer dollars by cutting funding to unnecessary and/or improperly approved projects.”
I began to feel my temper rising toward the danger level. In the old days, before my downfall, before age mellowed me, I was famous for spurts of anger that put fear into the hearts of my opponents on the bench and on the skids.
“This is private property! Did you tell them they were trespassing? Did you demand that they leave at once?”
“No. I…”
“How in heaven’s name do they figure that the tiny grants we get from the city to shelter the homeless are a waste of the taxpayers’ money? Did you tell them that our major expenses are completely covered by the investments in the foundation that we set up at the beginning? ”
“No, Dad. I couldn’t do that.”
“And just why not?” I was shouting now.
“Because,” Jeffrey said calmly. “It isn’t true.”
“What? What do you mean it isn’t true? What isn’t true?’
“It’s not true that we have no other public funding. For the past two years, we’ve accepted an additional grant from the city, a grant that was a proportion of our overall expenses. We’ve used the money to improve housing.”
He hesitated. “And we’ve also accepted a grant from the province.”
“We? What do you mean, we? You mean you.” I was so mad I had begun to pace.
“Dad, sit down. Calm down. It’s a very small grant. All I had to do was fill out a simple form to apply. You weren’t available. It was right around the time that Queenie started to get sick. I remember that I tried to reach you, but I had no luck. The deadline was approaching, so I just submitted the application.”
“Without my knowledge? Without my signature?”
“My signature was all they needed.”
“So you signed! Without even telling me! Well that’s just fine! Maybe you’d like to cut me out of this operation all together!”
“Dad, please…”
“Maybe I’m of no use to you. Maybe your pals on City Council know more about what goes on down here, than I do. Maybe you told them how to park in my parking lot and get down by our private path.”
“Dad, don’t be ridiculous. I never saw those two before in my life.”
“Well you’re going to see them again. You can count on that. You’re going to have them down here on a regular basis. Just watch…”
I strode toward the door. I tried to slam it, but the flimsy board just swung in the breeze of my departure.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
By the time I got out of the valley and into my apartment, I was a total wreck. Not only had I had a fight with the person I realized I now loved most in the world, my clothes and shoes were covered with mud.
My first thought was that Queenie would kill me when she saw the mess I was tracking into the apartment. My second, piercing, thought was that I could track anything into the place at any time without anybody caring at all.
I was so distraught that I actually thought of having a drink, the first time that had occurred to me in so many years that I couldn’t even remember the last time. But that was a weakness I knew I would never give into again.
As I cleaned up, the burden of guilt and embarrassment over how I had acted with my son began to ease. It had by no means been the first time we had argued. I knew I would apologize to Jeffrey and that he would apologize to me and that together we’d work out the problem with the city, whate
ver it really was.
But I had no such confidence when it came to the fact that I had not yet talked to even one of the four suspects in the murder of the Juicer.
What was I supposed to do? What or who came next? What if none of the cops ever agreed to talk to me? It was all very well that some kid had talked to Mark Hopequist, but where did that leave me?
As the hot water of my shower washed away the cold of the day’s rain, instead of feeling relaxed I started to feel angry again. I remembered the last time I’d gotten mad enough to embarrass myself. It was the day several years before when I had come to fisticuffs with John Stoughton-Melville. The last day of the court battle that he had coerced me into as his defense. The day I had saved him. The last day I had ever seen him.
And suddenly I realized what my anger had always really been about. It had been about people who put me in situations that threatened my sense of self-worth. People who made me feel unable to do what they so clearly required me to do. It had once been about Stoughton-Melville. But now it was about somebody else. It was about Queenie. Queenie who deserted me, who left me alone, who gave me this stupid puzzle to solve. This case without a clue.
I decided to go back to the one place that had never failed to give me information, never failed to show me something I needed to be shown: the street.
First I went to the place where the Juicer was supposed to move before he ended up in the hospital.
It was a dilapidated rooming house in a neighborhood that had had its ups and downs but was now headed on the road toward gentrification. As a matter of fact, there were wooden fences surrounding this house on Howard Street not far from the center of the city, and at first I thought they might be police barricades marking off the scene of a crime. But I soon realized that the fences are were only slightly less dilapidated than the house, sliding down toward the cracked sidewalk beneath signs that bore the name of a real estate developer who perhaps had once had high hopes for this project but who had now clearly abandoned all hope of turning a profit from it.
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