Blood Count, page 7
“He was dead.”
“Crang, honey, please, end the suspense.”
“I hate to admit it, but Rodgers was probably right.”
“Why are you begrudging him his lightness?”
“Because ‘for’ sounds ridiculous at the end of the line.”
“Then Mel Tormé’s right”
“Only grammatically. Artistically, I like it where —”
Annie broke in. “Hit the light.”
The large form of Bart the Bulge’s companion, Axe, had appeared at the Eroticarama’s back exit. I switched off the Volks’s overhead light and tossed the Mel Tormé paperback on the backseat. Axe, Bart, and the skinny kid strolled down the alley.
Annie looked at the man’s pocket watch she wears on a gold chain around her neck. “About time,” she said. It was almost two, Wednesday morning. The three men got into the brown Mercedes.
“Nice deducing, sweetie,” Annie said.
“It was there the other night.”
“You noticed a parked car? I was too busy fleeing.”
The Mercedes, Axe driving, backed out of the alley onto Charles Street. I had the Volks parked in a lot on the south side. Axe burned some rubber and headed over to Yonge and south. I fell in right behind, minus the burning rubber.
“This isn’t the most discreet car for a tail job,” Annie said.
“Gee, you’re getting the lingo down pat. Tail job.”
“Followed by break and enter, only it isn’t lingo, it’s a criminal offence.”
“Not immediately for the search operation, not tonight. We’ll find out where Bart lives, and some other night, later in the week, when Bart’s at his place of employment, go in and nose around.”
“I realize this is all in the interests of saving Alex from his own foolishness, but I don’t know, maybe we’re getting in too deep.”
“The ‘we’ in the search of Bart’s residence isn’t you and me.”
“God, I know. You’ve explained that.”
“Me and James Turkin.”
“A professional burglar.”
“Never been apprehended.”
“Crang, he’s only twenty-one,” Annie said. “He’s due for an apprehension.”
The Mercedes stuck to Yonge. Below Gerrard, the street action picked up. Guys in windbreakers banging out of bars. Hookers along the curb dressed in miniskirts and high white boots like they were caught in a time warp of Nancy Sinatra couture. The usual assortment of punks, new wavers, and skinheads slouching in armed camps outside the Eaton Centre. The motor traffic was thick enough for me to keep a couple of cars between the Volks and the Mercedes.
“If a break-in is called for,” Annie said, “you being the only one calling for it, why not practise on the baseball player or the guy who called on you today, the snake oil salesman?”
“Cleve Shumacher, stockbroker.”
“More heinous than a snake oil salesman.”
“Because Bart got mad. The other two, when Ian’s name came up, they tended to go to pieces. Bart, I mentioned Ian, he wanted to bust me in pieces.”
“Suspicious, I admit.”
“Well, yeah, if he’s got something to conceal, something about his connection to Ian, if he’s the guy with AIDS, the guy Alex is in pursuit of, an examination of his personal effects, his medical records maybe, might yield answers.”
In the stretch of Yonge south of Queen, traffic thinned out, and I lay further back of the Mercedes. It turned left at Front, went two blocks past the St. Lawrence Market and double-parked, the car’s lights still on.
“Now what?” Annie said.
I pulled into a parking spot and killed my headlights.
Bart climbed out of the Mercedes’ backseat. He smacked the car’s roof, and it pulled away. More rubber burning. Bart crossed Front to the north side.
“Must be that condo,” Annie said, leaning forward, looking out the front window.
The condominium was the kind that came with much greenery in the lobby and a twenty-four hour concierge. From where Annie and I were positioned, we had a mostly unobstructed view of a guy in a maroon cap and suit jacket standing behind a high, dark-wood counter at the lobby’s back wall. Bart was talking to the man in maroon.
“Taking a while,” Annie said, “longer than if Bart was a tenant saying ‘how ya doin’ tonight?’”
“May not be Bart’s address.”
“Late for a social call.”
“Probably not in Bart’s circles.”
The maroon doorman was speaking into a phone on the counter.
“Ringing a resident, seeing if it’s okay to send Bart up,” Annie said.
“Do we want to know who Bart would visit in the middle of the night?”
“Definitely.”
“To salvage something from what might otherwise be a wasted evening?”
“Feckless is the adjective springing to my mind.”
Bart stepped around the counter and waited in front of a floor-to-ceiling glass door. The maroon guy’s hand was under the counter.
“Buzzing Bart in,” Annie said.
Bart pushed through the glass door.
Annie and I got out of the Volks and trotted over to the condo. The doorman received us with a neutral look. Close-cut grey hair showed below his maroon cap and he had a grey military moustache.
“Yes, may I assist you?” His tone was as clipped as his looks.
“As a matter of fact,” I said, “we were passing by, and I was darned near positive the fellow who just came in …”
The doorman wasn’t hanging on my every word. His attention had fixed on Annie. He was raising one finger in her direction, and his mouth seemed to be working toward a significant statement.
“Hello?” I waved my hand in front of his face. “Anybody home there?”
The doorman ignored me.
“I know you.” The doorman was speaking to Annie, and the clip had gone from his tone. “Annie Cooke.”
“Why, yes,” Annie said, dragging out the yes.
“Annie B. Cooke, I should say. I watch every Tuesday. You and Siskel and Ebert, you’re the very best things on television. Except for the films themselves, of course.”
“How sweet of you to say so. You enjoy the movies?”
“Well, I have my particular tastes.”
“Don’t we all.”
“I might suggest, Miss Cooke …”
“Annie, please.”
“Well, Annie.” The guy was melting. “I might suggest you do a critical examination and appraisal of war films. Not the exploitation films, not the propaganda. True, quality war films. The Big Red One, All Quiet on the Western Front, Paths of Glory. I have my list. Platoon.”
“Isn’t this fascinating, I received a letter, oh, a month ago with the same suggestion exactly.”
The doorman blushed in all parts of his face that weren’t covered in grey hair. “I wrote it. That was my letter, Andy Elms.”
“Andy.” Annie reached over the counter and shook the doorman’s hand. “What a pleasure.”
“It’s all mine.”
“The idea of the war films, a survey, is definitely high priority around the office.”
“You have my list?”
“Almost committed to memory. Didn’t I send you a letter back?”
“I appreciated it immensely, Annie, particularly the part where you said my idea has merit.”
“Oh, it does.”
Annie hooked her hand through my arm. “Where are my manners? Andy, this is my friend Crang. Crang, Andy.”
Andy had a killer handshake.
“What I wondered —” I began.
“The young man who went up a moment ago?” Andy said, clipped again. “Not a particularly savoury person, though that’s really none of my business, of course. He calls himself, uh, Bulge. That’s how he asks to be announced. He visits every two weeks or so.”
“It’s only a thought, but would you —”
“Tell you who he’s visiting? Our tenants are entitled to their privacy, you know.”
“Oh, Andy, we understand.” Annie pressed her hand over the doorman’s. “We’ve taken so much of your time. But tomorrow, at the office, you can just bet I’ll insist we move your war movie idea to the top of the list for discussion. The very top.”
Andy almost swooned.
“Well, I suppose there’s really no harm.” He tilted his head closer to Annie’s and lowered his voice. “David Rowbottom.”
“Who Bar — who the young man went up to see?” I blurted.
Andy didn’t acknowledge me. “An MPP,” he said to Annie, a touch smug.
“Yes, and a cabinet minister,” Annie said.
“An honour to have him in the building, though I can’t say I voted for his party at the last election.”
“Thanks ever so much, Andy.” Annie patted his hand. “Now we must let you get back to your duties.”
Annie and I headed for the door.
“Ah, Annie,” Andy called after us. “Das Boot. I left it off my list and it should be on.”
“Consider the list amended, Andy.”
We crossed Front Street.
“And not just any old cabinet minister,” Annie said. “Know what department the Honourable David Rowbottom pulls the purse strings for?”
“I forget.”
“Culture and communications.”
“So.… Oh, I get it. You think he might be steering some of his ministry’s grant money Bart’s way?”
“The province funding porno movies, it’s a thought.”
We sat in the Volks, high on the lateness of the hour and the exhilaration of coming up with a possible scoop.
“Something else juicy,” I said.
“Tell me.”
“Photographs of Rowbottom in the papers, I seem to remember a tall, bony gent.”
“That’s him.”
“Okay, in description and in first name, David, he’s a match for the third guy Malcolm the bartender said used to hang out at the Purple Zinnia bar.”
Annie punched me lightly on the arm. “Are stakeouts always this much fun?”
Chapter Eleven
At nine fifteen the next morning, Wednesday, driving home, I felt guilty about Genet. Two nights in a row I’d slept at Annie’s. I’d fed Genet, but otherwise I’d left the mutt to his own entertainment.
I drove across Wellesley and down St. George, past the university buildings. The ones on the east side were ancient and grand, the ones on the west more recent and prosaic. Genet’s notion of entertainment on the nights I stayed home hadn’t been much, watching me read, padding downstairs to sleep in his basket by the back door. I crossed Dundas, and from a block away, I was certain the commotion further down was centred on my place.
Three black-and-white police cruisers were parked in front. A blue van marked “Crime Scene Unit” added to the jam. So did an ambulance and satellite trucks from Citytv and CFTO. I parked on Beverley past the crush and walked to the house.
A uniformed cop stood on the porch, his thumbs jammed into a belt that sagged under the heft of a nightstick, gun and holster, handcuffs, and a walkie-talkie.
“We got a situation here, sir,” he said to me. His thumbs stayed in the belt. “Nobody allowed to enter the premises.”
“What about the owner of the premises?”
“Far as I know, that’s who the situation happened to.”
“The only situation happening to the owner is he’s standing on the porch of his house and can’t get past the front door.”
It took the cop a few seconds to put it together.
“Wait here, sir.”
He rapped on the door and talked sotto voce to a second uniformed cop on the other side. I looked behind me. A camera operator from Citytv was shooting footage of my back and the cop’s ample rear end. I was beginning to feel antsy.
“Step in here, sir,” the first cop said. The door swung wide. “The other officer’s gone for the detectives in charge.”
He shut the door. I was alone in the entranceway, but down the hall of Alex’s apartment, there was movement and voices and muted action.
Two men in suits and ties came along the hall toward me. They introduced themselves as Rick Polaski and Jerry Mullen. Polaski had a relaxed style and a calm face, something almost priestly about him. He was built like an NBA guard, lean all over. Mullen was built like a bowling ball — bulging gut, a fat man’s waddle. His chubby face was hard to read. Polaski said the two of them were from the homicide squad.
“Oh, God,” I said, “who’s dead?”
“Gotta establish a couple things first,” Mullen said.
“We don’t want to upset you, sir,” Polaski said, “if it can be avoided.”
“Okay, my name’s Crang,” I said. “This the kind of thing you need? I live in the apartment upstairs and rent out the one down here.”
“This is your place of residence?” Mullen asked. “Where were you last night?”
“At a friend’s place.”
“The friend male or female?” Mullen asked, on the aggressive side.
“Female.” I gave them Annie’s name and address. “All right, now what’s going on?”
Polaski answered. His voice was almost too soft to hear. “There’s been a homicide, Mr. Crang. You probably guessed that. But we don’t have an identification on the victim in there, a man. Maybe you can help us with that, if you’re willing.”
“I’m willing, but I’m not going to feel good about it, not if it’s who I think it could be who’s been murdered.”
“Have you seen a homicide victim before, Mr. Crang?” Polaski asked.
“Yeah, as a matter of fact, but nobody who was a friend.”
“You ready?”
“Let’s do it.”
Mullen walked in front, me in the middle, Polaski behind me. We went as far as Alex’s living room. There were seven or eight men in the room. All of them seemed to have tasks — a fingerprint guy, a photographer. I didn’t spend much time recording their activities, not with what was on the floor. It was a white sheet. Silhouettes formed in the sheet where it covered a head, a torso, and feet. There were flecks of dried blood in the white where the chest of the person underneath would be.
“I’m just going to pull this down from the face, Mr. Crang,” Polaski said, almost soothingly. “You don’t need to take a long look. It’s enough if you can identify the man.”
Polaski lowered the sheet.
I felt my breakfast start to come up my throat. I swallowed hard to keep it down.
“The man was Alex Corcoran,” I said. I looked at Polaski. “Can we get out of here?”
We walked down the hall and up the stairs to my place. Polaski had his hand lightly on my back.
“Excuse me,” I said.
I detoured into the bathroom and threw up. My legs went wobbly. I waited a few minutes, brushed my teeth, ran water over my face, dried it off, and decided I was as close to dealing with the world as I’d get for a while.
Mullen was on the sofa in the living room, a notebook in his hand. Polaski stood by the bookshelves. He’d been looking at the American fiction titles. I sat in the wing chair.
“Do you feel like answering some questions, Mr. Crang?” Polaski said.
“How was Alex killed?”
“Thing Rick’s referring to, Crang,” Mullen said, “we ask the questions, you do the answering.”
“He was stabbed,” Polaski said to me.
“One jab clean to the heart,” Mullen said. He seemed to get a kick out of the detail. “Didn’t hit no ribs or nothin’. The guy must’ve known what he was doing or else it was dumb luck.”
“The knife was still in Alex?” I asked.
Polaski shook his head.
“Perpetrator took it with him,” Mullen said.
“The victim, Mr. Corcoran, he was a tenant here, Mr. Crang?” Polaski asked.
“For more than nine years, yeah.”
“What can you tell us about what he might’ve been doing last night? Did you see him or talk to him?”
“Alex was in Florida,” I said. “He probably flew back yesterday and got here after I left the house.… Hey, how’d you people get on to the murder?”
Mullen flipped open his notebook. “A lady phoned in, Susan Wu. Call came at five thirty-seven this morning.”
“Susan Wu?”
“Yeah, said a dog wouldn’t quit barkin’. Patrol car investigated.”
“The officer had to break the glass in the back door, Mr. Crang,” Polaski said. “There was no other way he could find out the cause of the disturbance.”
“Genet, jeez, where’s he?”
“Who’s Genet?” Mullen asked.
“The dog.”
“Him, he never stopped with the howlin’. We hadda send him with an officer over to the Humane Society there on River Street.”
“He can’t handle that,” I said. “I’ll have to bail him out, whatever the terminology is, and lodge him at the doggy home where Ian and Alex used to put him up when they went away. The pooch loves the place. He can stay there till somebody volunteers to rescue poor old Genet from his new orphanhood.”
“Where else did you expect us to stick him?” Mullen said. “The dog wasn’t about to tell us who knifed the guy on the floor downstairs.”
“And Susan Wu?” I looked to Polaski for the answer. “Who’s Susan Wu?”
“The lady next door, on the north side.”
“A little old woman, she wears black pants down to her shins?”
“She had on a dressing gown when we spoke to her.”
“All these years I’ve been nodding hello to her, smiling, I didn’t know her name till this minute.”
Polaski shrugged.
“Life in the big city,” I said. “And death.”
“Crang, for Chrissake,” Mullen said, “the old dame did what a good citizen’s supposed to. Can we move it with the facts here?”
“Crang, honey, please, end the suspense.”
“I hate to admit it, but Rodgers was probably right.”
“Why are you begrudging him his lightness?”
“Because ‘for’ sounds ridiculous at the end of the line.”
“Then Mel Tormé’s right”
“Only grammatically. Artistically, I like it where —”
Annie broke in. “Hit the light.”
The large form of Bart the Bulge’s companion, Axe, had appeared at the Eroticarama’s back exit. I switched off the Volks’s overhead light and tossed the Mel Tormé paperback on the backseat. Axe, Bart, and the skinny kid strolled down the alley.
Annie looked at the man’s pocket watch she wears on a gold chain around her neck. “About time,” she said. It was almost two, Wednesday morning. The three men got into the brown Mercedes.
“Nice deducing, sweetie,” Annie said.
“It was there the other night.”
“You noticed a parked car? I was too busy fleeing.”
The Mercedes, Axe driving, backed out of the alley onto Charles Street. I had the Volks parked in a lot on the south side. Axe burned some rubber and headed over to Yonge and south. I fell in right behind, minus the burning rubber.
“This isn’t the most discreet car for a tail job,” Annie said.
“Gee, you’re getting the lingo down pat. Tail job.”
“Followed by break and enter, only it isn’t lingo, it’s a criminal offence.”
“Not immediately for the search operation, not tonight. We’ll find out where Bart lives, and some other night, later in the week, when Bart’s at his place of employment, go in and nose around.”
“I realize this is all in the interests of saving Alex from his own foolishness, but I don’t know, maybe we’re getting in too deep.”
“The ‘we’ in the search of Bart’s residence isn’t you and me.”
“God, I know. You’ve explained that.”
“Me and James Turkin.”
“A professional burglar.”
“Never been apprehended.”
“Crang, he’s only twenty-one,” Annie said. “He’s due for an apprehension.”
The Mercedes stuck to Yonge. Below Gerrard, the street action picked up. Guys in windbreakers banging out of bars. Hookers along the curb dressed in miniskirts and high white boots like they were caught in a time warp of Nancy Sinatra couture. The usual assortment of punks, new wavers, and skinheads slouching in armed camps outside the Eaton Centre. The motor traffic was thick enough for me to keep a couple of cars between the Volks and the Mercedes.
“If a break-in is called for,” Annie said, “you being the only one calling for it, why not practise on the baseball player or the guy who called on you today, the snake oil salesman?”
“Cleve Shumacher, stockbroker.”
“More heinous than a snake oil salesman.”
“Because Bart got mad. The other two, when Ian’s name came up, they tended to go to pieces. Bart, I mentioned Ian, he wanted to bust me in pieces.”
“Suspicious, I admit.”
“Well, yeah, if he’s got something to conceal, something about his connection to Ian, if he’s the guy with AIDS, the guy Alex is in pursuit of, an examination of his personal effects, his medical records maybe, might yield answers.”
In the stretch of Yonge south of Queen, traffic thinned out, and I lay further back of the Mercedes. It turned left at Front, went two blocks past the St. Lawrence Market and double-parked, the car’s lights still on.
“Now what?” Annie said.
I pulled into a parking spot and killed my headlights.
Bart climbed out of the Mercedes’ backseat. He smacked the car’s roof, and it pulled away. More rubber burning. Bart crossed Front to the north side.
“Must be that condo,” Annie said, leaning forward, looking out the front window.
The condominium was the kind that came with much greenery in the lobby and a twenty-four hour concierge. From where Annie and I were positioned, we had a mostly unobstructed view of a guy in a maroon cap and suit jacket standing behind a high, dark-wood counter at the lobby’s back wall. Bart was talking to the man in maroon.
“Taking a while,” Annie said, “longer than if Bart was a tenant saying ‘how ya doin’ tonight?’”
“May not be Bart’s address.”
“Late for a social call.”
“Probably not in Bart’s circles.”
The maroon doorman was speaking into a phone on the counter.
“Ringing a resident, seeing if it’s okay to send Bart up,” Annie said.
“Do we want to know who Bart would visit in the middle of the night?”
“Definitely.”
“To salvage something from what might otherwise be a wasted evening?”
“Feckless is the adjective springing to my mind.”
Bart stepped around the counter and waited in front of a floor-to-ceiling glass door. The maroon guy’s hand was under the counter.
“Buzzing Bart in,” Annie said.
Bart pushed through the glass door.
Annie and I got out of the Volks and trotted over to the condo. The doorman received us with a neutral look. Close-cut grey hair showed below his maroon cap and he had a grey military moustache.
“Yes, may I assist you?” His tone was as clipped as his looks.
“As a matter of fact,” I said, “we were passing by, and I was darned near positive the fellow who just came in …”
The doorman wasn’t hanging on my every word. His attention had fixed on Annie. He was raising one finger in her direction, and his mouth seemed to be working toward a significant statement.
“Hello?” I waved my hand in front of his face. “Anybody home there?”
The doorman ignored me.
“I know you.” The doorman was speaking to Annie, and the clip had gone from his tone. “Annie Cooke.”
“Why, yes,” Annie said, dragging out the yes.
“Annie B. Cooke, I should say. I watch every Tuesday. You and Siskel and Ebert, you’re the very best things on television. Except for the films themselves, of course.”
“How sweet of you to say so. You enjoy the movies?”
“Well, I have my particular tastes.”
“Don’t we all.”
“I might suggest, Miss Cooke …”
“Annie, please.”
“Well, Annie.” The guy was melting. “I might suggest you do a critical examination and appraisal of war films. Not the exploitation films, not the propaganda. True, quality war films. The Big Red One, All Quiet on the Western Front, Paths of Glory. I have my list. Platoon.”
“Isn’t this fascinating, I received a letter, oh, a month ago with the same suggestion exactly.”
The doorman blushed in all parts of his face that weren’t covered in grey hair. “I wrote it. That was my letter, Andy Elms.”
“Andy.” Annie reached over the counter and shook the doorman’s hand. “What a pleasure.”
“It’s all mine.”
“The idea of the war films, a survey, is definitely high priority around the office.”
“You have my list?”
“Almost committed to memory. Didn’t I send you a letter back?”
“I appreciated it immensely, Annie, particularly the part where you said my idea has merit.”
“Oh, it does.”
Annie hooked her hand through my arm. “Where are my manners? Andy, this is my friend Crang. Crang, Andy.”
Andy had a killer handshake.
“What I wondered —” I began.
“The young man who went up a moment ago?” Andy said, clipped again. “Not a particularly savoury person, though that’s really none of my business, of course. He calls himself, uh, Bulge. That’s how he asks to be announced. He visits every two weeks or so.”
“It’s only a thought, but would you —”
“Tell you who he’s visiting? Our tenants are entitled to their privacy, you know.”
“Oh, Andy, we understand.” Annie pressed her hand over the doorman’s. “We’ve taken so much of your time. But tomorrow, at the office, you can just bet I’ll insist we move your war movie idea to the top of the list for discussion. The very top.”
Andy almost swooned.
“Well, I suppose there’s really no harm.” He tilted his head closer to Annie’s and lowered his voice. “David Rowbottom.”
“Who Bar — who the young man went up to see?” I blurted.
Andy didn’t acknowledge me. “An MPP,” he said to Annie, a touch smug.
“Yes, and a cabinet minister,” Annie said.
“An honour to have him in the building, though I can’t say I voted for his party at the last election.”
“Thanks ever so much, Andy.” Annie patted his hand. “Now we must let you get back to your duties.”
Annie and I headed for the door.
“Ah, Annie,” Andy called after us. “Das Boot. I left it off my list and it should be on.”
“Consider the list amended, Andy.”
We crossed Front Street.
“And not just any old cabinet minister,” Annie said. “Know what department the Honourable David Rowbottom pulls the purse strings for?”
“I forget.”
“Culture and communications.”
“So.… Oh, I get it. You think he might be steering some of his ministry’s grant money Bart’s way?”
“The province funding porno movies, it’s a thought.”
We sat in the Volks, high on the lateness of the hour and the exhilaration of coming up with a possible scoop.
“Something else juicy,” I said.
“Tell me.”
“Photographs of Rowbottom in the papers, I seem to remember a tall, bony gent.”
“That’s him.”
“Okay, in description and in first name, David, he’s a match for the third guy Malcolm the bartender said used to hang out at the Purple Zinnia bar.”
Annie punched me lightly on the arm. “Are stakeouts always this much fun?”
Chapter Eleven
At nine fifteen the next morning, Wednesday, driving home, I felt guilty about Genet. Two nights in a row I’d slept at Annie’s. I’d fed Genet, but otherwise I’d left the mutt to his own entertainment.
I drove across Wellesley and down St. George, past the university buildings. The ones on the east side were ancient and grand, the ones on the west more recent and prosaic. Genet’s notion of entertainment on the nights I stayed home hadn’t been much, watching me read, padding downstairs to sleep in his basket by the back door. I crossed Dundas, and from a block away, I was certain the commotion further down was centred on my place.
Three black-and-white police cruisers were parked in front. A blue van marked “Crime Scene Unit” added to the jam. So did an ambulance and satellite trucks from Citytv and CFTO. I parked on Beverley past the crush and walked to the house.
A uniformed cop stood on the porch, his thumbs jammed into a belt that sagged under the heft of a nightstick, gun and holster, handcuffs, and a walkie-talkie.
“We got a situation here, sir,” he said to me. His thumbs stayed in the belt. “Nobody allowed to enter the premises.”
“What about the owner of the premises?”
“Far as I know, that’s who the situation happened to.”
“The only situation happening to the owner is he’s standing on the porch of his house and can’t get past the front door.”
It took the cop a few seconds to put it together.
“Wait here, sir.”
He rapped on the door and talked sotto voce to a second uniformed cop on the other side. I looked behind me. A camera operator from Citytv was shooting footage of my back and the cop’s ample rear end. I was beginning to feel antsy.
“Step in here, sir,” the first cop said. The door swung wide. “The other officer’s gone for the detectives in charge.”
He shut the door. I was alone in the entranceway, but down the hall of Alex’s apartment, there was movement and voices and muted action.
Two men in suits and ties came along the hall toward me. They introduced themselves as Rick Polaski and Jerry Mullen. Polaski had a relaxed style and a calm face, something almost priestly about him. He was built like an NBA guard, lean all over. Mullen was built like a bowling ball — bulging gut, a fat man’s waddle. His chubby face was hard to read. Polaski said the two of them were from the homicide squad.
“Oh, God,” I said, “who’s dead?”
“Gotta establish a couple things first,” Mullen said.
“We don’t want to upset you, sir,” Polaski said, “if it can be avoided.”
“Okay, my name’s Crang,” I said. “This the kind of thing you need? I live in the apartment upstairs and rent out the one down here.”
“This is your place of residence?” Mullen asked. “Where were you last night?”
“At a friend’s place.”
“The friend male or female?” Mullen asked, on the aggressive side.
“Female.” I gave them Annie’s name and address. “All right, now what’s going on?”
Polaski answered. His voice was almost too soft to hear. “There’s been a homicide, Mr. Crang. You probably guessed that. But we don’t have an identification on the victim in there, a man. Maybe you can help us with that, if you’re willing.”
“I’m willing, but I’m not going to feel good about it, not if it’s who I think it could be who’s been murdered.”
“Have you seen a homicide victim before, Mr. Crang?” Polaski asked.
“Yeah, as a matter of fact, but nobody who was a friend.”
“You ready?”
“Let’s do it.”
Mullen walked in front, me in the middle, Polaski behind me. We went as far as Alex’s living room. There were seven or eight men in the room. All of them seemed to have tasks — a fingerprint guy, a photographer. I didn’t spend much time recording their activities, not with what was on the floor. It was a white sheet. Silhouettes formed in the sheet where it covered a head, a torso, and feet. There were flecks of dried blood in the white where the chest of the person underneath would be.
“I’m just going to pull this down from the face, Mr. Crang,” Polaski said, almost soothingly. “You don’t need to take a long look. It’s enough if you can identify the man.”
Polaski lowered the sheet.
I felt my breakfast start to come up my throat. I swallowed hard to keep it down.
“The man was Alex Corcoran,” I said. I looked at Polaski. “Can we get out of here?”
We walked down the hall and up the stairs to my place. Polaski had his hand lightly on my back.
“Excuse me,” I said.
I detoured into the bathroom and threw up. My legs went wobbly. I waited a few minutes, brushed my teeth, ran water over my face, dried it off, and decided I was as close to dealing with the world as I’d get for a while.
Mullen was on the sofa in the living room, a notebook in his hand. Polaski stood by the bookshelves. He’d been looking at the American fiction titles. I sat in the wing chair.
“Do you feel like answering some questions, Mr. Crang?” Polaski said.
“How was Alex killed?”
“Thing Rick’s referring to, Crang,” Mullen said, “we ask the questions, you do the answering.”
“He was stabbed,” Polaski said to me.
“One jab clean to the heart,” Mullen said. He seemed to get a kick out of the detail. “Didn’t hit no ribs or nothin’. The guy must’ve known what he was doing or else it was dumb luck.”
“The knife was still in Alex?” I asked.
Polaski shook his head.
“Perpetrator took it with him,” Mullen said.
“The victim, Mr. Corcoran, he was a tenant here, Mr. Crang?” Polaski asked.
“For more than nine years, yeah.”
“What can you tell us about what he might’ve been doing last night? Did you see him or talk to him?”
“Alex was in Florida,” I said. “He probably flew back yesterday and got here after I left the house.… Hey, how’d you people get on to the murder?”
Mullen flipped open his notebook. “A lady phoned in, Susan Wu. Call came at five thirty-seven this morning.”
“Susan Wu?”
“Yeah, said a dog wouldn’t quit barkin’. Patrol car investigated.”
“The officer had to break the glass in the back door, Mr. Crang,” Polaski said. “There was no other way he could find out the cause of the disturbance.”
“Genet, jeez, where’s he?”
“Who’s Genet?” Mullen asked.
“The dog.”
“Him, he never stopped with the howlin’. We hadda send him with an officer over to the Humane Society there on River Street.”
“He can’t handle that,” I said. “I’ll have to bail him out, whatever the terminology is, and lodge him at the doggy home where Ian and Alex used to put him up when they went away. The pooch loves the place. He can stay there till somebody volunteers to rescue poor old Genet from his new orphanhood.”
“Where else did you expect us to stick him?” Mullen said. “The dog wasn’t about to tell us who knifed the guy on the floor downstairs.”
“And Susan Wu?” I looked to Polaski for the answer. “Who’s Susan Wu?”
“The lady next door, on the north side.”
“A little old woman, she wears black pants down to her shins?”
“She had on a dressing gown when we spoke to her.”
“All these years I’ve been nodding hello to her, smiling, I didn’t know her name till this minute.”
Polaski shrugged.
“Life in the big city,” I said. “And death.”
“Crang, for Chrissake,” Mullen said, “the old dame did what a good citizen’s supposed to. Can we move it with the facts here?”
