by Ted Wood
I waved one hand, wishing that I still smoked and had something to do with myself for a minute until the memories stopped chasing one another through my mind. Soon Li had been a bargirl, maybe the same as all the others but never to me. I had known her only weeks when I was nineteen and she maybe two years younger but she was a part of my life that would never leave me.
"The reason I asked is selfish," Su said. "I have met men who think that women like me are exotic. It seems demeaning."
It gave me a chance to change the subject. "Then allow me to apologize for the collective bad manners of all rednecks. Please excuse us for acting attracted. You're very attractive, and not just to us typical Kwailos."
"Kwailos?" She laughed, surprised, "You are not a typical foreign devil, not if you know the word."
"I try not to be. That's why I was sorry to have to act like one this afternoon. I didn't see how to cut the usual law office red tape any other way."
"Well, it worked," she said. "Mr. Straight never sees people without an appointment. I was surprised when he said he would make an exception for you."
"I thank you for that. I didn't really expect to get through to him."
She shrugged and smiled. "That's what I'm there for."
I was all out of things to say. She reminded me so strongly of that vanished portion of my life that I couldn't see the day, the golden quality of the light that poured through the low window of the pub, as mellow as English ale. Instead I was standing in the smoke and noise of that bar in the long seconds when I could have said, "Let's go some place else?" and we could have headed for the door, in time to move out of the path of that shard of brass. It was the thought that had filled my whole head for months afterwards, leading me into crazy risks as I did my best to join her. I guess I would have if the mortar shell had landed a meter closer to me. Instead I woke up in bed in a hospital, among round-eyed nurses and guys who had lost so much more than me that I slowly climbed back out of the crater Li had left in my life and rejoined the world.
All of this went through my mind in moments, but not quickly enough to be invisible to this strangely familiar woman. She had the same fragility I had loved in Li, overlaid with a Western assurance, in place of the artificial hardness Li had put on with her makeup. Now this one cocked her head, twisting her mouth in a wry grin that forgave me everything. "I seem to have touched a nerve."
I tried out a tight little smile of my own. "Sorry, ma'am, I was just woolgathering."
She twisted her wrist towards her so she could see the pretty little gold watch with no numerals. "The subway has to be empty now, except for me, and you, if you're heading north."
I had a car but this was not the time to offer her a ride; already I felt grubby, the redfaced recruit making googoo eyes at the pretty city girl. I could almost feel the straws in my hair.
"No, I have some things to do before I head home. I don't get into the city very often."
She stood up, picking up her purse, rehearsing the usual politenesses. I was anxious to hold on to her, somehow. I said, "I'm sorry this has been such a crazy first meeting, I'd like a rematch, so you can see that I'm not usually this much of a turkey." She said nothing, but she was smiling, so I asked, "Are you busy later this week?"
As I spoke I was aware that I had not yearned like this for any woman, including my wife, in fifteen hungry years. Maybe she was right, maybe there are some men who are intoxicated by Oriental women. If there are, I'm one of them, for life.
She did me the courtesy of looking at me, squarely as she thought about my words for perhaps ten seconds. Then she smiled and said, "I think I'm free on Thursday," in a serious tone that collapsed in helpless laughter. "Try me," she added.
"Thursday?" I echoed. We both laughed and she told me where and I suggested when and that was it. I walked her to the door and up to the corner. I don't know what I was thinking or expecting. I'd known a lot of women in those years, some of them important to me. Hell, I had even been married. But I was still breathless around this girl.
We parted at the corner. She walked through Simpsons to the subway and I went back to my car, paid five dollars ransom and drove off with Sam, baleful and mistrustful, in the back seat.
Louise was in the kitchen, tearing lettuce. She smiled at me and said "You look like you just won the sweep."
I waved one hand, elaborately casual. "Nothing so grand." She pulled the "Oh, yeah" face that kid sisters grow up with and then stopped her work and dried her hands on her apron.
"This package came for you, about ten minutes ago, in a cab."
It was a manilla envelope, eight by fourteen, legal size. There was no monogram on it, just the plain white type-written label addressed to "Mr. R. Bennett" and the address of Louise's house.
I took it and looked it over, wondering automatically who could have sent it to me. If it had come from Fullwell it would have carried the Bonded Security crest and I couldn't think of anyone else who knew where I was staying. I hadn't even left the information with George at the police station in Murphy's Harbour.
I must have looked mystified enough to prompt Louise to say, "Why not open it, then you'll know who it's from."
I tore it open and tipped it out. It held a sheet of paper, folded around a bundle of other papers. I opened it and whistled with surprise. I was holding a solid wad of twenty dollar bills.
I counted them, while Louise watched. They added up to one thousand and eighty dollars and I frowned. People who send unmarked envelopes full of cash usually have a good reason. You don't expect them to make mistakes in arithmetic. The figure must have some significance, but not for me. There was another paper enclosed. I pulled it out and looked it over. There were four words on it, typed in some sans serif electric typewriter face. They were: Wait for our call.
"Curiouser and curiouser," Louise said. She was looking at me over the bowl of salad, wondering perhaps if I was going to go bright red and confess that I was on the take from a bunch of hard cases.
"Makes no sense to me," I told her. I didn't let her read the message. I was worried by it. My benefactor, whoever he was, knew where I was staying. The knowledge made me uncomfortable. I've had my share of adventures, in and out of the service, but they were always one-on-one affairs that affected me alone—not my sister and her kids.
We ate supper and I kibitzed with the kids, and worried. They were young and fragile and precious, like all kids, and it seemed I had turned over a stone that hid some ugly kind of creature. I decided I would wait in for the call, no matter who or where it came from.
It happened at seven-thirty. I had just piggybacked Katie up to bed and was heading downstairs for a last game of snap with Jack when the phone rang. Louise picked it up, in the kitchen, then called me, her voice yodelling up cheerfully, "It's for you."
"Thanks." I took it in her bedroom. She hung up down below when I picked up the receiver and for a long moment there was nothing on the line but the faint electronic sighing as if this were an overseas call. Then a voice said. "Yeah, Reid. Some friends of mine asked me to give you a call."
"About what?" There was nothing distinctive about the voice, no accent or tone that would have helped me pick it out again. It was just a plain, businesslike telephone voice, a little slow but not loaded with menace or anything that might have made a normal person suspicious. But then, not many normal people get care packages containing over a grand in unmarked bills.
"Le's jus' say about the way you been spending your nights lately."
"Man's gotta work." I tried to make myself sound petulant, not intrigued. I wanted him to volunteer more information.
"'Preciate that." The voice was toneless, like a tired grade schoolteacher in the last period. "Question is what he's gotta work at. I mean, there's people would say you're pushing kind of hard on something that don't matter a hill of beans to you."
"I'm just helping out a friend."
Now the voice took on an edge, exasperation at my stupidity. "Bullshit. You're j
us' playing a game o' cops'n'robbers. Hell, if you wanna do that, why come down here? You wanna kick ass an' take names, you can do that up in Murphy's Harbour."
"Why's it upsetting your friends?" I knew why. The money alone would have told me, the call was spelling it out. I had gotten too close to somebody. Automatically I thought of Cy Straight with his unstraight back and his law office, where a man would be able to stretch out his hand and pick up a legal-sized envelope without any trouble at all.
"I don' have to draw you no pictures, 'kay?" The voice was showing signs of stress. I had obviously had my quota of kind words, now it was time to wrap up, to take the money and run.
"Why'd you send me the cash?"
"Token of good will. A man shouldn't have to work two jobs to make a living."
"I appreciate the thought. What if I tell you I like working two jobs?"
There was a heavy rasping, like a man rubbing a file over a spade. "Yeah, well, my friends think you should retire."
"And if I don't."
Again the rasp and then the words I had dreaded but expected, "Yeah, 's up to you. But, in case you forgot a'ready, we know where you live." There was a short pause, as if a man with a long arm were reaching out slowly to the cradle, and then the phone clattered down.
Chapter 12
I replaced the phone at my end and stood looking at it and worrying. I'd seen these people at work. If someone ordered a guy like Kennie to come over here and play handball with the kids' heads, he would do it, no questions asked. And he would enjoy doing it, picking a time when I wasn't there and counting every blow a direct pain to me. There was no question. I had to change my way of working, or give it up altogether. I couldn't put them at risk.
I went downstairs and played a game of cards with Jack, then put him to bed and went back to the living room where Louise was sitting listening to background music and fiddling with a note pad on her lap, working on some problem she had brought home from the office. She looked up when I came in. "Hi, who called?"
"A guy from Bonded. They want me to go out tonight and check on their properties again." Lying doesn't hurt a bit, compared with the real thing.
"When will you be going?" she yawned as she glanced around at the clock. It was close to eight, dark outside.
"I think soon, then I'll head back early, I'm not going to put in any more nights than I absolutely have to." As I spoke I was making a plan for my night's work.
With Straight out of town, I would go and find Tony and see what sparks flew when I told him some cock and bull story about Straight. In the meantime, I would give Louise and the kids the best protection they could have.
"I'd like to leave Sam behind tonight. He's fed up with driving all over Toronto in that crummy car. I'll give him a night off." I was fiddling in my pocket for car keys, not meeting her eyes.
"Is something the matter?" She wasn't scared, her question was for my safety, not hers, she couldn't guess at a world where women and children were in danger because of the things their menfolk did for a living. That happened only on television, not in North Toronto among the wisteria and divorces.
"Not really, but there are some real creeps mixed up in this thing and I'd feel happier if Sam were sleeping on the rug down here than if he were off with me somewhere."
She snorted a quick little laugh. "You don't expect someone to come here?"
"No, but Sam's staying here would make me happier as I toddle on my weary way. What do you say?"
She laughed, "As Dad always used to say, anything for a quiet life."
I leaned over and gave her a quick kiss on the forehead, then I walked Sam out into the garden to get him comfortable for the night and brought him back in. I showed him through all the rooms, one after the other. "Guard!" I told him, and raised my left index finger to let him know I was serious. It was my own signal for the ultimate defense against prowlers; it kept him silent, charged with knocking an intruder down and standing over his throat until I called him off. He settled down on the hall rug with a thump and I patted his head and went back to Louise.
After that there was nothing to stop me going out. I asked her to come out to the stoop and wave to me as I left, and I carried an empty suitcase with me to the car. Anybody who was thinking about my lifestyle would have known that Sam would have been with me if I were leaving, but it was dark by now and I figured it might fool a casual observer. Maybe they would think I had taken the hint and gone home. And maybe they wouldn't, but at least Sam was on duty for me.
I had left too late to catch Tony at his circuit so I drove right to the racetrack, bought a ticket and went looking for him.
The usual crowd was there. Most of them are the mugs—working stiffs who work at lousy jobs because they think of nothing but the track and the modest little wins they make that pay for steaks and bottles of cheap rye once in a while. One time you found nothing but Cabbagetown natives there, guys born and bred in Toronto's only real slum. Tonight it was different. I guess the world has changed in the last ten years. Many of the horseplayers were black, West Indians by the sound of their singsong voices, and from the strong whiff of marijuana that hung over the area. And there was a good smattering of Chinese, gambling the Caucasian way for a change instead of sticking with their endless games of fantan in Chinatown.
The real regulars were still there, the guys who work at nothing but racing. You see the prosperous ones in the clubhouse, sipping Scotch on the rocks and eating lobster while the girls come to their tables to take the hundred-dollar bets. But most of them are down at the two-dollar windows, scraping change to get a bet together. They wear shiny suits and threadbare shirts and usually a raincoat, summer and winter, and they hustle for cash like pelicans diving for fish off the Florida Keys. Nothing's too murky to draw them if the money is there.
I recognized one of them when I walked through. He's a thin guy in his fifties, five-nine around one thirty. He's deep enough inside himself to disguise his endless poverty and bad luck by improvising a little dance with every few steps he takes. Some copper called him Bojangles once and the name stuck although he's white, or would be if he took a bath. He'd finked for me a few times when I was a detective in Toronto and he recognized me at once as the source of a possible fin, maybe a sawbuck if the world was looking after him. He bobbed over to me and stood, ducking his shoulders, smiling his toothless smile. "Hey, Mr. Bennett, waddya say?"
"Hi, Bo. What's new?"
He sketched a few steps. "Aw, hell, shoulda had the six horse in the third race. He paid thirty-seven-eighty."
He was set to give me a summary of all the horses he had bet in the last three years if I hadn't cut him off. "Listen, feel like doing me a favor? I wanna see Tony. You know, Tony with the loans, he's generally here by now."
He glanced around in surprise, "Hey, yeah, gen'ally." Then he turned back and peered at me, shielding his eyes with his hand, as if I were hot. "You mean you're flat, Mr. Bennett?" He lowered his voice conspiratorially. "Hell, I wouldn't go to Tony for a bet on the only horse in the race. He's ugly, y'know? That guy as works for him broke my buddy's thumb one time."
I shook my head patiently and took out my wallet. I still had my vacation pay from Murphy's Harbour. It looked like Eldorado to him. "No, I just got paid. I wanna see him about something personal." I tugged on the corner of a ten, pulling it as gently as a good stripper working on her first glove. Bojangles cleared his throat, his voice cracked like a teenager's.
"I could ask around for you, if you wan'ed."
I gave the bill a decisive tug and handed it to him. "Do that, eh, I'll be over by the rail."
He grinned and vanished the bill into his dirty pocket. "Fer sure, fer sure, Mr. Bennett. Be right back."
He didn't come back until after the next race, shaking his head angrily. "Sonofabitch broke," he started, but I waved him down. "It's about Tony…"
"Oh, yeah." He cleared his throat again. "Well, I met a guy, see…" He paused, waiting for me to bring out my wallet agai
n but I looked at him calmly and his nerve gave out and he rushed ahead with his message. "Yeah, well, I was talkin' to a guy, said Tony's stayin' home tonight. Said if a feller wanted to see him, he'd have to go over his place." He stood looking at me, licking his dry lips. I took pity on him and pulled out another ten. Before he could grab it I said, "There's a horse called Baby Lou running in the next race. Put me a deuce down and spend the change."
His emotions were split right down the middle. Gratitude for the extra cash was almost outweighed by the certainty that my horse would end down the track. How could anyone as rich as I was be so dumb, he wondered. But he bobbed a nervous thanks again and took off. I watched him go, then reached in my pocket and pulled out the note I had made when Fullwell mentioned Tony's address. Good. It was in the West End, I could cut across the Gardner Expressway instead of ploughing through the traffic lights and stop signs to head north or east.
I went back out to my car and drove away, down the Woodbine extension that swings around the bay, south of the race track, and then climbed on to the Expressway. It was pleasant, driving past the lights of the downtown area, chest-high to the big office buildings. I cut off at Jameson and headed north through the Italian area. It was a warm enough night that a few people were out on their porches, drinking homemade wine and spraying their neat front gardens with casual hoses. It made me feel a little homesick for somewhere I've never been, a place where there was company and conversation about things I'd never had a chance to talk to anybody about. And I wondered about Yin Su. What would she be doing now? Laundry for the next day, perhaps, maybe just listening to music. Whatever it was, she was most likely not brooding on me, I decided, and I shouldn't waste any time day-dreaming about her.
Tony's apartment block stuck up out of a row of good two storey houses in a way that let you know the builder had a lot of clout with the local zoning authorities. I wondered if Tony, or his family members, owned the place.
Calabria Enterprises had a penthouse. I pressed the bell and immediately it buzzed in response, without anybody's asking who was there. That surprised me. Guys like Tony don't casually admit strangers. Even if he were lying around in a dressing gown, waiting for a call girl to arrive, he would have checked. When you employ men to break limbs for you, you have to be careful.