The OSC said that they are still gathering information, and that the final decision to commence a proceeding has not yet been made. Goldstein and SBP did not comment for this story.
The general consensus in the legal world seems to be that Goldstein did nothing wrong.
“It looks terrible,” said Gayle Penny, a senior partner with Waxman LLP. “But if you look at the definition of ‘material fact’, it probably doesn’t include the opinion of a board member on the value of the stock, as long as all the information upon which that opinion is based was properly disclosed.”
“Huh,” I said.
I started getting to work on the tasks Dean had assigned me. A little bit before lunch I was disturbed by the sound of a woman crying and shouting. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, but I didn’t need to. It was Diana Burke, and she had already gone through two guys at our firm. By the sounds of things she was about to make it three for three.
After a little while the crying stopped and then there was a knock at my door. I only had a moment to process this before my door opened and Alan came in with Diana.
“Here he is,” Alan was saying. “He’s my best man. He just busted an insurance fraud case wide open. If he can’t do it, no one can.”
“Well,” Diana said, “if that’s the case I don’t know why we didn’t just use him to start with.”
Oh man, oh man, I was thinking.
If you saw Diana Burke, you’d know her type: north of forty-five, lives in Rosedale or Forest Hill, dyes her hair, goes to the gym every day, knows how to spend money on clothes and make up, maybe she’s even had a little work done. But in spite of that (or even maybe because of it) she looks old. Kind of dried out, or something.
Also, it didn’t help that her makeup was smeared across her face by her tears and her eyes were blurry and unfocused.
“I’ll leave you two to it,” Alan said, and winked at me as he left, shutting the door behind him.
My office was not designed to receive visitors. I stood up and took my jacket off the one chair and motioned for her to sit down, which she did.
Her eyes roamed around, judging everything she saw, I imagined, till they fell on the framed quote hanging on the wall across from my desk. It said:
Men, you're the first Negro tankers to ever fight in the American Army. I would never have asked for you if you weren't good. I have nothing but the best in my Army. I don't care what color you are as long as you go up there and kill those Kraut sons of bitches. Everyone has their eyes on you and is expecting great things from you. Most of all your race is looking forward to you. Don't let them down and damn you, don't let me down!
If you need to find me I’ll be in the lead tank.
George S. Patton
“That’s an unusual quote,” she said.
“My grandfather fought in that unit,” I said. “He was a tank driver, and he admired Patton very much.”
“You know Patton was a dreadful racist,” she said.
I just smiled at this. Yeah, I did know that. Still, my grandpa had always liked him. He said you always knew where you stood with The Old Man. Since then I’ve always thought: fuck pretending to be someone else. People like you the most when they know who you are.
“Well,” I asked, “how can I help you?”
“You know what I want,” she said. “I need to you to catch my husband with whatever whore he’s seeing.”
“You’re sure he’s cheating on you?” I said.
“Yes,” she replied. “Of course I’m sure.”
“How do you know?” I said.
“A woman always knows,” she said. “I just can’t prove it yet.”
I could hear Dean saying in my mind: If we couldn’t prove it, by definition we didn’t know.
I wanted to say: this is nutty, and so are you. Go away and get yourself together. Do some yoga and then drink a five dollar tea or something.
But she was a payer. If she wanted to keep burning through detectives, that was her prerogative.
“Well okay,” I said. “I’ll get the details from the file and call you if I have any questions?”
“All right,” she said.
“Unless you have anything more to add?”
“Read the file first,” she said.
“Okay. Well, I’ll be in touch soon, Mrs. Burke.”
“Thank you,” she said.
I showed her out and spent about an hour reviewing her file. It was pretty detailed. The husband’s first name was Anthony. The pictures showed he was a big, fleshy dude. Olive-skinned, with dark, curly hair, and a cruel face. Looked kind of like the Emperor Nero.
He and his wife had both been born into money. Business had been good and now they were richer than ever. First they’d done some Internet thing, then she’d started a restaurant in Yorkville (which had failed) and he’d started a private art gallery at Church and Front (which had apparently prospered).
Surveillance logs for went on for weeks and weeks. The Burkes lived the typical Toronto high life. House in Forest Hill? Check. Cottage on Lake Muskoka? But of course. Trips abroad? You know it. None of us had ever caught him doing anything. Apparently he was pretty good at knowing when he was being watched. My buddy D.J. had faithfully recorded how Burke had come up to him in his car while he was on surveillance, knocked on his window, and given him a box of cinnamon buns.
I didn’t get too worried about that. I get paid by the hour whether I get made or not. And I love cinnamon buns.
I spent the afternoon working on the stuff for Dean, and when my Blackberry buzzed, I headed over to visit him.
10
Unusually for a junior lawyer (still less a student) Dean’s office was scrupulously tidy, and photos hung on the walls. Tina, his kids, some older pictures of what I assumed was his family, and, holy shit! A great shot of Dean and I in the badlands of Arizona.
“Did you just put that up now?” I asked.
“No man,” Dean said. “I’ve had that up a while.”
“No way!” I laughed. I was super happy about that. “Look at us. Oh, man. Look how skinny I was back then.”
“Pull up a chair,” Dean said. “This cop leaves work at four, I hope we catch him.”
We did. He picked up after a couple of rings.
“Detective Aston,” he said
“Hi Detective,” Dean said. “This is Dean Mann, I’m an attorney, and I’m here with Terrell Delacroix, a private detective.”
“You’re not a lawyer,” Aston said. “You’re a student.”
Dean laughed.
“You’re right.”
“That can get you in trouble with the law society, you know.”
“Thanks for the heads up,” Dean said. “So, as I said, my boss, Jay Goldstein, has hired Mr. Delacroix to look into his son’s death.”
“Right.”
“So we’re hoping to talk about your investigation.”
“You want to know about my investigation?” Aston said. “Here’s what happened. I got the call when the joggers found this poor kid’s body. I was on the scene fifteen minutes after he was found. The constables had already isolated the area. Now right away, it was obvious this was a straight jumper case. We get them all the time. There’s one jumper a week in the city, even after they put up the Luminous Veil on the Prince Edward Viaduct. But, you’ll be happy to hear, we did everything by the book. Right from the beginning Goldstein was on my case, and so I didn’t miss a trick. We had forensics go over the path, and the bridge above, with a fine tuned comb. We even dusted the bridge for finger prints. I know you watch CSI, so you think we do that all the time. Let me tell you: we do not.”
“Right,” Dean said, as he jotted quick, almost illegible notes on a green pad of paper.
“So what do I do? Well, I start by talking to the parents. They tell me: no way Brucie killed himself! He’s such a happy boy and he had so much to live for! Oh, but, by the way, he’d been very troubled recently, and over the past few days he’d barel
y come out of his room.”
“Right,” Dean said.
“So I talk to everyone on the street. No one saw anything. I talk to all this kid’s friends. Does he have any enemies? Has he been in trouble? No, everyone likes him, he’d never kill himself! But no one’s seen him in a while. He’s been keeping to himself and he’s been upset the past few days. Not answering his phone.”
“Right,” Dean says.
“I search his room. No note, but nothing suspicious either. We look at his Facebook. Nothing. We look at his phone. A bunch of weird calls from disposable phones, but otherwise nothing. I go up and down the street and ask if anyone saw anything. Nothing. Then the fingerprint report comes back. We found a complete set of Brucie’s prints on the inside of the rail of the bridge. But get this: they were upside-down. So either he walked up, turned his arms around and pressed his fingers there, or …”
“Or he was hanging from the other side,” Dean said.
“Right. And then the coroner’s report comes back. No signs of a struggle. Cause of death, the fall. That’s that. I tried to tell that to your boss, and he hit the roof. Made noises about suing me. For what? I don’t know. You’re the lawyer, you tell me. We had every right to close that case as a suicide. But we left it open. For a while Mr. Goldstein called me, said I should keep investigating. I’m like: investigate what? We have no more leads. You have a lead, then give it to me. That was the last I heard from him.”
“Right,” Dean said. “Did you hear anything about debt? Money problems? When you spoke to Brucie’s friends?”
“No,” Aston said. “Did he have money problems?”
“Well, maybe,” Dean said.
“What makes you think that?”
“It’s just an angle we’re looking into.”
“Well, there’s your motive for suicide,” Aston said. “Money problems? Credit card debt? Man. I guess he just couldn’t tell his dad. Kids. Everything’s so serious to them. Permanent solution to a temporary problem. Kid kills himself over money with a dad that rich? You think he wouldn’t clear those cards to get his kid back?”
“No kidding,” Dean said. “Can we get a copy of your file?”
“Sure,” Aston said. “But you’ve got to do a freedom of information request. I don’t just give that stuff out.”
“Right.”
“Look, Mr. Mann,” Aston said. “I work hard at my job. I’m passionate about it. Okay? This is a suicide. If your boss can’t accept it, sucks for him, and sucks for you.”
“Thanks,” Dean said.
“We left this a suspicious death and not a suicide, despite that we have officially exhausted all avenues of investigation. You find anything you think we should be aware of, then send it over. I’m not opposed to working on this more. I just don’t see anything more to do. You get stuff on this debt angle, let me know.”
“Hey, thanks,” Dean said. “Will do. You’ve been really candid with me and I appreciate it.”
“All right. Talk to you later, Mr. Mann. You too Mr. Delacroix.”
“Bye,” Dean said, and pushed the disconnect button.
“Do you think we should take him some of this stuff about the debt?” I asked.
“Why? What have you got for me?”
“Lots,” I said.
I got out my file with all my notes.
“For starters, I did the recon of the credit card statements and the bank statements,” I said. “There are eight $2,000 charges to the same Moneris machine.”
“What for?”
“That’s the thing, I don’t know. I guess we’ll know more once Jay hears back from the credit card company.”
“Okay,” Dean said. “Anything else?”
“There was a $9,000 charge to Paradise Comics on the Visa on July 18,” I said. “That could be when he bought the comic. There’s also small charges to Paradise Comics most weeks before that, either on the credit card, or the bank statements. Usually around $20 every Wednesday.”
“Okay,” Dean said, leaning back, pressing his finger tips together in front of his mouth. “So what do you spend $2,000 on eight times? My guess: drugs, gambling, blackmail. Or sex.”
“Speaking of sex,” I continued, “the first $2,000 charge is in early June. But when I cross-referenced that with his bank records, I saw that he made a withdrawal at the ATM at the Brass Rail on May 20. Two hundred dollars.”
“Uh oh,” Dean said. “He shouldn’t be in there at seventeen years old.”
“In terms of the phone,” I continued, going through my notes. “There was lot of activity the day he died, and the day before. He got six calls from one number, five of which were missed, one which was received. I tried calling it. It’s disconnected. If Aston says it’s from a disposable phone, I believe him. Then Brucie got a call from another number, which he picked up, around midnight on August 30.”
“Right before he died,” Dean said.
“Yep,” I replied. “There’s also a few outgoing calls to the maid. I called her and confirmed what Jay said. Brucie phoned her and asked about a black box. She said he was frantic, almost accusing her. She said it was really unlike him.”
Dean leaned way back in his chair and looked at the ceiling.
“So, with all due respect to Detective Aston, something weird was going on,” Dean said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“But,” Dean said, “nothing that really points to anything but suicide.”
“No,” I said. “Especially with all the forensic work they did.”
“Well, here’s the thing,” Dean said. “It’s very difficult to spot signs of a struggle on someone who has fallen to their death. When you hit the ground from that height, everything’s a mess. And when you only find the body six, eight hours later? Blood and bruising everywhere, lots of swelling. Very tough. That’s why Soviet agents in Europe used to assassinate people by throwing them out windows. Defenestration, they called it.”
“You really think someone killed Brucie?”
“I don’t
know,” Dean said. “I don’t have enough information to think anything. But even if we could shed some light on why Brucie committed suicide, it might make Jay feel better.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I’d like to talk to these comic guys,” Dean said. “I mean, Brucie is in the middle of all these other money problems, and then he drops $9,000 on one comic? I don’t get it.”
“Me neither,” I said.
“Well,” Dean said, “let me know if you get anything off that computer. I better get back to this due diligence.”
“Good luck,” I said. “I’m going to catch some football.”
11
Tuesday morning started with a little surveillance. I sat in the windowless dark of the back of a white panel van, looking at a glowing computer screen. That crazy Burke lady had let us bug their phones and put cameras in certain rooms of their house, so I was able to watch our friend Anthony doing up his shoes in the mudroom of their fancy Forest Hill home. When he jogged outside the front door, I flipped to the external camera and watched him start his run. Every morning, the logs said, he went for a jog down into Sir Winston Churchill Park.
While I waited for him to come back, I reviewed the logs. He didn’t have much of a fixed schedule. Every day he roamed around the city, visiting clients and artists, going to shows, attending functions. His gallery was right downtown. Not only that, he also went to New York and London every month, and if he wanted to sleep with women in those places, it would be tough for me to catch him.
When he left for the day I followed him, pretty far back. I was more worried about getting made than losing him. Diana said he was going to his gallery at Church and Front and if he didn’t show up there that told me something in and of itself. Surveillance is all about taking what they give you, letting the whole situation speak to you. Dean taught me that.
Anyway, I did manage to keep up with him almost all the way downtown. His car ducked down into a
n underground lot, so I parked illegally to stay on the street and then walked into the Second Cup on the southeast corner of Church and Front.
The day was warm and the big windows were open, so I sat with a peanut butter and chocolate ice drink and waited for Anthony. The intersection was y-shaped, where two one-way streets going different directions merged together. Canada’s own Flatiron Building stood on the west side of Church, a building that sharpened to a point where the two streets joined. The St. Lawrence Market, a big brick warehouse filled with yuppie grocery stores, was just to the east. Further east you got to the Distillery District, one of the biggest collections of nineteenth century buildings in North America. Overall, it was a nice neighborhood for a gallery, with all the brick and beam stuff.
Anthony appeared at the far street corner. I liked his suit. It was shiny and colourful, but not tacky. It looked like money. In person, Anthony gave off a slightly imperious air, but when an Asian kid trying to take a picture of the Flatiron Building backed into him, he just smiled at the apology, and when a bum stopped him for changed he not only gave him a buck but spoke with him easily for a moment.
Lord of the castle, are you? I thought. I get it.
He walked past me, further south down Church. Anthony’s gallery was actually below ground level. Windows you had to crouch down to look through. There was no way to watch what he was doing. If I go in there, a big black dude that knows nothing about art, what’s he going to think?
I got up and walked south on Church, casually heading to my car on the Esplanade. A sandwich board stood next to the door of the gallery. There was a show for an artist named Anna Herowicz coming up. Refreshments would be served, which was quite a happy coincidence, because I love refreshments. Maybe I would take that opportunity to poke around.
The Black Box: A novel Page 4