High Chicago

by Howard Shrier

  I made coffee and took a cup out onto my balcony to look out at the city, as I did every morning. Indian summer was finally ending. The sky was overcast, the morning light weak. A wind was blowing down out of the north through the valley, leaving poplars trembling, stripping them of their remaining leaves.

  I wolfed down a bagel and cheese, then grabbed my gym bag and drove a few blocks east to Carlaw Avenue and parked in back of a two-storey building with a sign that said Gym: By Appointment Only.

  I had been studying and teaching shotokan karate for years. That’s how I met Graham McClintock, the man who first recruited me as an investigator. But before karate, while serving in the Bar Kochba Infantry unit of the Israel Defense Forces, I had learned Krav Maga with my sergeant, Roni Galil. Krav Maga is a system of self-defence created by an Israeli army man. It is more elemental than karate, teaching you how to use your own strengths and instincts to fight off attackers. I had only recently gone back to it: it seemed more right for me now than the formal, scripted katas of shotokan. Krav Maga assumes that every situation is life-and-death, that your attacker has to be put down with maximum efficiency. It is not a sport; it will never be featured in the Olympics. The name itself means close combat: the only rule is there are no rules. Whether fighting one attacker or more, whether they are armed or not, you use everything you can, including objects at hand. You always run if you have the chance. If not, you counterattack at the earliest opening. You bite, gouge eyes, butt heads, rip testicles. You do as much damage as humanly—or inhumanly—possible.

  This anonymous gym on Carlaw was run by a man named Eidan Feingold, a former Israeli and world judo champion who’d embraced Krav Maga during his own army stint. I had seen him disarm a volunteer assailant with a knife while the assailant was still thinking about where to stab him. I had seen him slap away a gun pointed at his face before the trigger could be pulled, then take the gun away and pretend to pistol-whip the attacker. He had demonstrated defences against shotguns, garrottes, machetes, anything short of a rocket-propelled grenade, and somehow I think he could deal with that too.

  “Yoni,” he greeted me. “You’re too early for class. Nothing starts before nine.”

  “I know. I was hoping for a little one-on-one.”

  He looked at his watch and shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “I can give you half an hour.” He led me into a small locker room, where I changed into a T-shirt and sweatpants. I put on a helmet, mouth guard, protective cup and arm and shin pads. Eidan did the same. Then he strapped my left arm tight to my body with a belt. The last time I’d been in, we’d been working on a scenario where one arm had been wounded and I had to fight him off with the other.

  “Ready?” Eidan asked.

  “Ready.”

  Then he smiled and proceeded to try to kick the living shit out of me. He aimed kicks at my weak left side, punches at my head, keeping me on defence as long as he could. He tried to choke me from the front, which I broke up with a knee to the abdomen. He tried to choke me from behind: I stomped his foot, the way Brazilian jiu-jitsu teaches, then delivered a hammer strike to his head. With only my right arm free, I had to deal with my own mounting frustration as well as his relentless attacks. I finally dropped to one knee, as if exhausted. He moved in with a kick aimed at my head, and my opening came. I planted my right hand and used my legs to sweep his out from under him. As he fell onto his back, I dove on top of him, got my forearm across his neck and head-butted him across the bridge of his nose. Then I rolled away from him and looked for a weapon to use. There was a phone on the wall: in a real-life situation I’d have ripped it out of its base and either thrown it at him, hammered him with it or wrapped its cord around his neck. I sprinted to it and put my hand on it.

  “Stop!” Eidan yelled. “Rip it out and I charge you sixty bucks.”

  “I wasn’t going to. I just wanted you to know I’d found a weapon.”

  “Like hell,” Eidan laughed. He got up off the mat and freed my strapped-in arm and patted my shoulder. I was glad to see I’d made him raise a sweat—a light one, but still a sweat.

  “You did all right,” he said.

  “For a one-armed man.”

  “You put me down and you found a weapon. That’s good.”

  “But?”

  “But you should have run, Yoni. A phone might be okay if there is no way out. But to hit me with it or strangle me—that’s what you were thinking?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you have to get close again. But maybe I’m faking, yes? Maybe I’m waiting for you to get close only to attack you again. And if I do, then maybe I end up with the phone and I am hitting you with it or strangling you. You see? We’re supposed to be tough guys, yes? But if Krav Maga teaches you anything, it’s that you run if the odds are against you. There is no shame in that, Yoni. There is only shame in getting killed when you can save yourself. We like to say Krav Maga is about life and death, yes? But first and most, it’s about life.”

  I was in the office by eight-forty, drinking coffee and wondering if it was too early to call Hollinger, when Eddie Solomon rapped on the door and stuck his head in.

  “I heard you come in,” he said. “You want to try a fabulous coffee I got? Comes from Indonesia. They only pick the beans after they’ve been eaten and shit out by some kind of monkey.”

  “That’s some recommendation, Eddie. I think I’ll stick with what I have.”

  “Why the downcast look, my white knight? No dragons to slay?”

  “There’s no shortage of dragons, Eddie. I’m just not sure I can slay them. You have our fee?”

  “Chelsea stood me up last night, but I’m meeting her for lunch so I’ll have it this afternoon. One thousand in cash for your labour.”

  “That’s great.”

  “Beats cleaning out stables, mighty Hercules.”

  I had to smile. You can’t not smile around Eddie Solomon.

  “That’s better,” he said. “I’ll drop by after lunch. Your lovely partner will be here, I trust?”

  “She’ll be here, Eddie. For all the good it’ll do you.”

  “You chase your cars,” he said, “and I’ll chase mine.”

  Jenn came in at nine on the dot. “I wanted to call you last night,” she said, “but I didn’t want to rain on your parade.”

  “Someone beat you to it,” I said, and filled her in first on the disaster that was my date with Hollinger, then on the death of Martin Glenn.

  “Jesus,” she said. “Between that and Maya’s email, there can’t be any doubt she was murdered too.”

  “What email?”

  “Karl Thomson came by just after you left.” Jenn opened a Mac notebook computer, waited for it to come off standby, then tapped in a password. “This is Maya’s sent log,” she said. “A lot of the usual things you’d expect from a student: gossip, chitchat, notes on class projects, scheduling meetings. And then there were a whole bunch to someone calling himself EcoMan.”

  “Will Sterling?”

  “None other. Look at this one, Jonah. Sent the morning of the day she died.”

  Will, having dinner with dad 2nite … will try to find what u need … try my cell after 12 … M.

  “After 12,” I said. “Could have meant that night or the next day. Either way, that clinches it. This was not someone who was planning to kill herself.”

  “She knew something about Harbourview.”

  “The land. The way it was cleaned.”

  “Or not.”

  I needed to get going if I was going to catch Will Sterling before his 9:30 class. “See if you can find out who approved the Record of Site Condition at the Ministry of the Environment,” I suggested.

  “Why do I get the bureaucrats?” she groaned. “And don’t give me any majority owner crap.”

  “Will flattery work?”

  “You can always try.”

  “You’re far more adept at getting people to open up.”

  “Bureaucrats are not people,” she said.
“They’re like the last mussel on your plate, the one you keep avoiding because there’s no place to stick your fork in.”

  If only I could send in Dante Ryan, maybe with a steak knife in his hand. “Martin Glenn was one of theirs,” I said. “Used to be, anyway. When they hear what happened to him, they’ll talk to you.”

  “I still don’t feel like I’ve been flattered much.”

  “Then consider the majority owner crap pulled.”

  CHAPTER 12

  A handful of young people stood outside the entrance of the University of Toronto’s Earth Sciences Building on Willcocks Street, engaging in the distinctly non-environmental practise of smoking.

  “Any of you guys know Will Sterling?” I asked.

  “Sure,” said one of them, an Indo-Canadian girl with blonde streaks in her jet-black hair. “We’re in the same chem lab.”

  “He’s probably inside,” another said. “He’s usually in early.”

  I had my hand on the door when the girl said, “Wait a sec. That’s him coming up behind you.”

  I turned to see a tall, lanky fellow in black cargo pants and a long black coat kicking his way through fallen leaves, head bobbing to music playing through an iPod. He wore a watch cap over long sandy hair and beat-up black Converse high-tops. The bottoms of his pant legs were stained white with what looked like paint or plaster.

  I walked down to meet him before he could get to the door. “Will?”

  He didn’t hear me and started to move around me. I put my hand on his arm. He flinched, a startled look in his eyes. I could see the question form in his mind—Do I know you?—as he pulled out his earbuds.

  “I need to talk to you a sec.”

  “What about?” He had a prominent Roman nose and a slight growth of beard on his chin.

  “About Maya Cantor.”

  He stepped back from me and folded his arms across his chest. “What about her, man?”

  “How she died.”

  “Who are you?”

  I told him.

  “An investigator?” he said. “For who, her father? I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

  He tried to brush past me but I planted myself in his way. “I’m not working for her father, Will.”

  “No? Then who?”

  “For her mother. Marilyn Cantor.”

  “What for?”

  “She wants to know why Maya killed herself. But to be honest, Will, I don’t think she did.”

  “No?”

  “No. And I doubt you do either.”

  “Why?”

  “You got her email that night.”

  “So?”

  “I think someone killed her.”

  “Like who?”

  “I don’t know yet. Why’d you ask if I was working for her father?”

  “Because of who he is and what he does.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Fucking lie, for one thing. Screw up the environment and lie about it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s what I do, man. Soil testing and analysis. Environmental policy. Land use. Everything we study here, that man contravenes. Taking land that could all be parks, marinas, wetlands and building fucking condos for the rich and famous.”

  “She said in her email to you that she was going to try to find something out at her dad’s the night she died. Do you know what?”

  “You know anything about PCBs?” he asked.

  “Will?” a voice behind me said.

  He looked past me and said, “Oh, hi, Professor Jenks.”

  A trim man in his fifties was standing at the entrance to the building. “I’m late for my own class,” he said. “And if you’re behind me, what does that make you?”

  “Even later,” Will said. “Look, man,” he said to me. “I gotta run.”

  “Can we talk later?”

  “Got a pen?”

  I took out a notebook and pen and he dictated his phone number, which we already had, and an address on Markham Street. “I have some lab work to do, but I should be home by four, five at the latest, and then I’ll be in all night. You come by, and I’ll give you a lesson in environmental degradation.”

  He followed his professor into the building. The last of the smokers followed them in.

  CHAPTER 13

  Forest Hill is one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in Toronto. The homes are large, the lots huge, the trees dominating, and yet most lawns had nary a leaf on them. They had all been raked, blown, swept and gathered into biodegradable paper bags lined up at the curb for pickup. The larger the lawn, the more bags there were, like rows of tackling dummies bracing for impact.

  Rob Cantor’s home wasn’t the biggest on his block of Dunvegan Road, but it still was in the $2-million to $3-million range. A grey stone château on a fifty-foot lot, with a Japanese maple still hanging onto scarlet leaves, its trunk circled by wilted hostas that had given it up for the year. A massive Infiniti SUV was parked in the driveway, handy in case the new Mrs. Cantor had to transport a cord of firewood or seed for the south forty.

  Nina Cantor was the only person left to talk to about the night Maya died, about the fight she’d had with her father. I walked up the flagstone path and used a wrought-iron knocker set in the mouth of a stone lion’s head.

  No one answered.

  I put my ear to the door and heard the loud thump of a bass track that seemed to be coming from the rear of the house. I walked around the back, where the lawn sloped at least a hundred feet to a cedar gazebo. The house was built on a grade: below ground level at the rear was a set of French doors that led to a finished basement. I knocked on the door. Nothing. The music was louder here, the repetitive techno track so loud the glass was vibrating.

  I put my ear to the glass and heard a woman scream, “No!”

  “Come on!” a man’s voice called gruffly.

  “No,” she cried. “Don’t make me!”

  “Do it!” he said. “Just do it, you spoiled bitch!”

  I slammed my elbow against a glass pane in the French door and reached in through the broken glass to turn the lock. The doors opened onto a sunken family room, with leather couches and recliners grouped around a floor-to-ceiling entertainment centre. The screams had come from somewhere behind this room. I stood and listened and then heard her cry out again, “I can’t! I can’t do it!”

  I raced across the room and through an open archway into a large bedroom set up as a home gym. A treadmill, a stair-climber, a heavy bag and a man straddling a woman who lay on her back on a weight bench, red-faced, struggling to press free weights up in her gloved hands while the man urged her on. “Come on,” he said. “Two more!”

  “Get off me, you big shithead,” she cursed.

  She saw me then and dropped the weights so fast the man had to hop away to avoid getting a toe mashed.

  “Who the fuck are you?” she said.

  Jonah Geller to the rescue.

  The man turned too. About my height but a lot heavier. Built-up pecs and delts that gave him the classic V-shape. Bulging biceps and triceps. Fists curled at his sides.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to the woman. “I heard you scream and I thought …”

  “You thought what?” she smirked, getting up off the bench. “That Perry was having his way with me? Not too likely, I’m afraid. Anyway, you didn’t answer my question.”

  “My name is Jonah Geller.”

  “And you were lurking outside why?”

  “I wanted to speak to you about your stepdaughter.”

  “My step—oh, Maya, you mean? Sorry, I never exactly thought of her that way. What about her?”

  “Could we talk privately?”

  “Maya’s not really my favourite subject,” she said.

  “Why don’t you take off?” Perry said. “The lady still has work to do.”

  I ignored him. “I just need a few minutes, Ms. Cantor.”

  “What are you, her lover? I didn’t think she had time for men.”


  “I’m an investigator.”

  “Working for who?”

  “Maya’s mother.”

  “Marilyn? Another not-so-favourite person. So do I bill her for the broken window or you?”

  “Tell him to split, Nina,” Perry said. “You don’t want your muscles to stiffen up.”

  “Maybe I want to see his stiffen up,” she said. “He’s kind of cute, you have to admit.”

  She was a wearing a form-fitting, canary-yellow tank top over spandex pants. She put her hands on her hips, cocked one hip and thrust her chest out. Her figure was nothing short of magnificent, possibly even natural. But she did nothing for me. If eyes are the window of the soul, hers would have been papered over with signs saying Room for Rent.

  “Come on. On your way,” Perry said. As he came toward me, he slammed his fist into the heavy bag, sending it into a wide circle. Maybe I should have cringed with terror or wet myself. But hitting a bag is a lot easier than hitting a trained fighter who is getting more annoyed by the minute.

  “Call him off, Nina,” I said.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” she grinned.

  I sighed and waited for Perry to throw a punch. I didn’t want to disable the guy for doing what he thought he ought to be doing, if indeed a thought had flitted through his head. He put up his hands and tried a left jab, which I blocked easily, then a right cross, which I slipped. While he was thinking about his next move, I slapped him across the face.

  “Back off,” I told him. “No reason for you to get hurt.”

  “You bitch,” he said. “I’m gonna tear you ap—”

  I slapped him again. Both his cheeks were flaming red. He came after me again. I blocked everything he threw and kept slapping him.

  “Don’t you ever close a fist?” Nina complained.

  “Call him off,” I said again.

  “Why? Maybe you’ll train me from now on.”

  Someone should have trained her a long time ago, in the art of human decency. Or at least keeping her yap shut.

  Perry tried to kick me in the groin. This I took personally. I shifted to sidekick position and stomped his shin as it rose toward me. He howled in pain and dropped to the floor, clutching his leg.