Blood Count, page 8
“What we’d like to know, Mr. Crang,” Polaski came in, smooth, easy-voiced, “did the victim live alone? There appears to us to be two sets of clothes in the closets and drawers, suits, shirts, two sizes.”
“There used to be somebody else,” I said. “Until last week, but he died, a man named Ian Argyll.”
“Died how?” Polaski asked. “Of natural causes?”
“Getting to be more natural every day,” I said. “Ian died of AIDS.”
“What’d I tell ya,” Mullen said. He was speaking to Polaski, and his voice had a ring that was harsh and triumphant.
“You guys want to let me in on this?” I asked. My question, like the others, was directed at Polaski.
“The victim,” Polaski said to me, “Mr. Corcoran I mean now, he was homosexual?”
“Yeah, but he didn’t have AIDS, if that’s a factor in where you’re taking this.”
“AIDS don’t matter,” Mullen said to Polaski. He jiggled his enormous right thigh as he talked. “It’s one of those queer deals. Has to be. The guy, Corcoran, he picks up somebody, a hustler, a kid maybe, chickenhawk. Let’s say it’s a kid. The victim brings him back here. Idea is, have some fun, some sex, get laid. But things get rougher’n the kid counts on, or maybe the kid’s on something, uppers, a little wild. Whichever, the situation’s out of control in general. It only takes a bit of backing and forthing for that to develop. So, upshot of it, the kid knifes the guy and takes off.”
“Alex wasn’t a picking-up sort of guy,” I said.
Mullen ignored me. “Add it up, Jesus, no sign of forced entry. The victim hadda of let the perpetrator inside the apartment himself.”
“Do you go along with this stuff?” I asked Polaski. I felt close to throwing up again.
Mullen still had the floor. “The victim’s lyin’ down there in his underwear, nothin’ else,” he said to Polaski. “You know what that tells me? He was gettin’ ready to get it on with the guy that put the knife in him.”
“No sign of a struggle,” Polaski said.
“So? The perpetrator was too fast, too good with the knife. Tough cheese for the victim. He was an old guy, anyway. Couldn’t handle the violent stuff.”
“There’s a lot of money still in the victim’s wallet,” Polaski said, reasoning. “Nothing of value missing I can see. You usually get some robbery in these cases.”
“The dog started in with the barkin’,” Mullen said. “Perpetrator’s got a dead guy on the floor, a dog won’t shut up. He yanks his knife out and he beats it out the door.”
“Is anybody going to listen to me?” I said. “Alex wouldn’t do that, he wouldn’t go cruising.”
Mullen looked at me. “Lemme lay it out for you, Crang. Rick and me been on these murders before, six, seven, eight of the buggers, and this here one’s got all the signs.”
Polaski was leaning against the bookshelves, hands in his pockets, saying nothing.
“Jerry, you up there?” a voice called from downstairs. “The ambulance guys want to take the body out soon as you guys give the word.”
Mullen stood up. “Tell them to hold it,” he shouted in the direction of the stairs. “Be right back,” he said to Polaski. “Something I needa ask Doc.” He left the room.
Polaski moved over to the sofa.
“Is this an act, what you two perform?” I said.
“How do you mean, an act?”
“Good cop, bad cop, you and Mullen, in that sequence,” I said. “If it is, it’s wasted on me.”
Polaski didn’t say anything.
“Or,” I said, “is Mullen just a natural at offending people?”
“You should make allowances, Mr. Crang.” Polaski’s tone was patient. “Before we got the call to come over here, Jerry and I, we’d been on another homicide until eleven thirty last night. A man slammed his eight-month-old baby against the wall. It’s hard to fall asleep, get any rest, after you’ve been on a case like that.”
“All right. I appreciate that you guys have it rough on the job.”
“Something else, Mr. Crang, Jerry’s run up a hell of a record on solved homicides.”
“That’s reassuring to us taxpayers.”
Polaski was unruffled. “We’ve been partners for four years and there are only two homicides still on open file. The rest we made arrests on.”
“What am I supposed to say?” I said. “I’m impressed.”
“I’d be impressed if I were you, Mr. Crang.”
Polaski crossed his legs and looked like a man right at home on my sofa, in my living room.
“What I’m coming to,” he said, “if you have other ideas about Mr. Corcoran’s murder, go right ahead and lay them out.”
“Other ideas?”
“You don’t seem enthusiastic about Jerry’s scenario.”
“Alex going cruising for a kid prostitute?”
“In a case like this, Mr. Crang, assuming Jerry’s theory is right, we have contacts, street kids. We’ll talk to them. If somebody out there has killed a man, word gets around fast. Street kids are like the rest of us, they love to gossip.”
“Sure, I follow you.”
“But if you want to suggest another avenue, I’d be glad to listen.”
“You would?”
“Any lead might be helpful at this stage.”
“But at the moment,” I said, “you lean to Mullen’s interpretation?”
“Well, as Jerry said, it has the merit that it matches a pattern we’ve seen more than once before.”
“Uh-huh.”
“That doesn’t close us off to different approaches.”
“It doesn’t?”
“Maybe you’ve seen something we’ve missed. Or know something.”
“Maybe I do.”
Mullen’s feet made a racket on the stairs. I sat, not speaking for the few seconds it took him to reach the living room. Polaski watched me, no change in his equable expression.
“Victim mighta had sex before he died is what I was thinkin’,” Mullen said to Polaski. “I asked Doc about it.”
“Did he?”
“Doc says no. But all it means, the perpetrator stuck his knife in the guy before they got it on.”
My stomach did some more roiling. I knew I wouldn’t throw up again. There was nothing left for my stomach to lose.
“Jerry,” Polaski said, “I was just asking Mr. Crang if he had anything that might be helpful.”
“Like what?”
“Anything about Mr. Corcoran.”
Mullen turned to me. “So?”
“No,” I said.
“Nothing at all?” Polaski asked.
“Nothing.”
Polaski paused a moment, still watching me, letting the silence in the room stretch.
“Rick, the guys downstairs got another one out at Jane and Finch,” Mullen said. “If we’re gonna speak to them, we have to do it now.”
“You bet.” Polaski stood up. “Our people’ll be in and out of the victim’s apartment most of the morning, Mr. Crang, and the TV guys outside may ask you for an interview. You don’t have to do it.”
“I’ll pass.”
“Your choice,” Polaski said. “And call us if you think of anything. You never know.”
“You never do.”
Polaski and I shook hands. Mullen was already on the stairs. Polaski followed him.
I went out to the kitchen and plugged in the electric kettle. Tea was all my stomach would welcome. I dropped a bag of Red Zinger in the teapot and poured boiling water over it. The front door downstairs opened and closed a dozen times, and voices drifted up from Alex’s apartment. I sat at the kitchen table and drank the Red Zinger. It worked on my stomach but it didn’t do much for the image in my head. When Polaski had rolled the sheet away from the head of the body on the floor, Alex’s eyes had been wide open, and the expression on his face was that of a man who was terrified in the last few seconds of his life.
Chapter Twelve
I sat at one of the Rivoli’s outside tables on the sidewalk in the Saturday sun. The Rivoli has qualities I admire in a restaurant: proximity to my house and office, Stan Getz tapes on the sound system, a menu that leans to Thai dishes. I ordered a half-litre of the house red and brooded.
James Turkin showed up fifteen minutes later.
“Watched you from across the street,” he said. “You don’t look your usual.”
“A funeral yesterday, James, another a week ago yesterday, both nice men, that’s taken the usual out of me.”
“Very, uh … debilitating?”
“Arranging to have a dog adopted, too, which doesn’t help my morale. So yeah, debilitating is close.”
James Turkin’s occupation is burglary. His obsession is vocabulary. In the three years I’ve known him, from the day I defended James in court on his first and only crime involving a degree of violence, an assault with intent to rob, he’s been building his word power. James has the appearance of a 1950s method actor — same blank face, same silent stare, and the nerves of what he is, a second-storey man.
“You’re looking spruce, James,” I said. “Any specific occasion for the suit and tie?”
“And the briefcase.”
“That, too.”
James’s navy blue suit looked like the sort that came with two pairs of pants. Cheap or not, he wore it with a certain stolid panache. His shirt was light blue; his rep tie had blue and green stripes. The briefcase was top of the line, black leather, slim, and had more locks than Conrad Black’s house.
“Projecting an image,” James said. “Like, as if I’m organized, which I am.”
“Impresses the hell out of me.”
“You don’t count.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s for clients who want a commission job, obtained to order, you know, a picture, item of jewellery, something they definitely got their mind on that they want procured. That variety of client, they’ll automatically think of me, the guy with the suit and the briefcase.”
“I don’t imagine there’re many burglars around like you.”
“We don’t say burglar.”
“We don’t?”
“Commission agent.”
“You should get a calling card printed with that on it. Something bold but tasteful, a no-frills typeface. ‘James Turkin. Commission Agent.’”
James thought about it. “Excellent idea,” he said.
“If I were you, I wouldn’t put a phone number on the card.”
“Clients leave the messages for me at my sister’s, anyway.”
“The phone number might run you afoul of the law, assuming a commission went wrong.”
James told the waiter he’d like a coffee.
I said, “I have a commission for you, James.”
“A minute ago I said that you don’t count. The jobs you ask me to do, this is what I was getting to, they mean trouble that is, uh, inexorable. And you shouldn’t be asking me, anyway, being a lawyer.”
“Is this just for the record?”
“You gonna tell me it’s for a good cause?”
“It’s for a good cause.”
“No way that justifies illegal entry.”
“Want me to fill in the background or will you take my word for it that the purpose is noble?”
“Three hundred dollars plus expenses.”
“What expenses?”
“I’m not in a position to apprise myself of them until you provide the minutiae of the commission.”
“Minutiae? Jeez, James, this is a condo with, I assume, the usual security.”
The waiter brought the coffee. James loaded it up with cream and sugar and sipped it. It apparently met his approval. He put the cup down and devoted his attention to spinning the combination locks on his briefcase. The top flipped open, and James removed a spiral notebook and a ballpoint pen. He moistened the tip of the pen on his tongue.
“May I commence?” I asked.
“All details that are …” James hesitated.
“Pertinent?” I tried.
“Uh-uh.”
“Relevant?”
“Relevant, right.”
I described the lobby and the doorman’s counter at David Rowbottom’s condominium on Front Street. James made notes, asked questions, and made additional notes. I added stuff that was neither pertinent nor relevant just to give James more to write. He seemed to be relishing the note-taking. I told him the trip into Rowbottom’s apartment was more for the purposes of reconnaissance than plain theft.
“A daytime commission,” James said, holding the ballpoint pen suspended over the notebook.
“That much I reasoned for myself. The guy’s in the condo at night.”
“With a truck and uniforms.”
“These are the expenses?”
“Two people will be requisite, myself and an associate I highly recommend.”
“The associate is also three hundred?”
“One seventy-five.”
“Tell you what, James, I’ll be the associate.”
James got an exasperated look.
“I highly recommend me,” I said. “And I come cheaper by a hundred and seventy-five dollars.”
James tapped the pen against his notebook. “The thing you fail to comprehend, you have to go into the apartment, anyway. You’re the only one knows what we’re looking for. The other person, my associate, he waits outside in the truck.”
“Ah, a wheelman.”
“In a daytime commission such as you envision, it’s preferable to prepare for every …”
“Disaster?”
“Eventuality.”
“Like a quick getaway?”
“An unforeseen departure of the location.”
I refilled my wineglass.
“This associate,” I asked James, “you care to assure me that I’m getting bang for the buck?”
“He and I have collaborated previously, and he is under thirty-five years old.”
“What’s his age matter?”
James showed me an expression that was more blank than usual, flat and categorical. “All persons of my profession over thirty-five years of age are presently in two locations: jail or rehab. That’s my analysis of the statistics and from personal acquaintanceship. See, what I do for a living is stressful. The general public thinks it’s maybe colourful, like in certain movies. But they don’t comprehend the stress, working nights, having to be one hundred percent alert, keeping an eye out for cops, security, dogs, sometimes performing at high heights on the outside of buildings. This is stressful, which people over thirty-five are no longer of the temperament to compensate for. The people I refer to get careless in their work habits and are caught in the act of a commission. Or they resort to artificial means to stimulate their nerves, by which I mean alcohol or chemicals. You notice I, uh, disdain both of those.”
“Strictly coffee. I’ve always applauded your personal ethic, James.”
“So the older agents I speak of, they are serving sentences in Millhaven or they are attempting to terminate their alcohol or chemical dependency in rehabilitation centres, which is fruitless being as there is a high rate of remittance among them.”
“Recidivism, I think that’s the preferable word, James.”
James turned his notebook to a blank page. “Wanta spell that?”
I spelled recidivism.
“How about yourself, James?” I asked. “Where do you see life taking you at age thirty-five?”
“Naples, Florida, learning to play golf.”
“Nailed the future right down?”
“Already opened a bank account in Naples, Florida.”
James placed the notebook and pen in the briefcase and snicked it shut.
“In the interim,” he said, “my associate and I will be outside your house at ten o’clock Monday morning. Advance calculations will have been effected.”
James left without a goodbye or a nod. I asked the waiter for another half-litre of red. It was twelve thirty. I told the waiter to bring two glasses this time.
Chapter Thirteen
Annie came along the sunny Queen Street sidewalk, her head fixed straight ahead, neither window-shopping nor passing judgment on the street’s unceasing fashion parade. She had on a casual outfit — a buttoned cashmere sweater, top, loose skirt, and oversized sunglasses. Everything was in shades of brown that brought the word autumnal to mind, even in spring.
She picked her way through the Rivoli’s tables, and before she sat down, she reached for the second glass of wine and drank from it.
“You never hear me say I need a drink, do you?” she said. “Today I need a drink.”
She sat down.
“The kind of week it’s been,” I said, “help yourself to the whole carafe.”
“The part I can’t shake, what seems so damned sad,” Annie said, “is Alex was wrong.”
“About Ian?”
“Yes, about Ian. The poor man thought the companion of his life, or most of his life, had had one brief fling and contracted AIDS and died, and he was going to take his vengeance. And now it’s turning out it wasn’t that way at all with Ian.”
“Ian fooled around in a rather active way,” I said. “That seems to be the irresistible message I’m getting out there in the gay world.”
“Poor Alex. Poor sodding, pitiful, cuckolded, dead Alex.”
Annie drank more wine.
“There’s a list of possible guys Ian slept with,” I said.
“And some probables and some for damn sures,” Annie said. The wine hadn’t gone far in cooling her angry mood.
“Don’t overstate it,” I said. “Maybe he slept with Daryl the baseball player and Bart the Bulge and David Rowbottom, though I tend to rule out Daryl. A guy named Hubert could be another of Ian’s bedmates, and certainly, by admission of the second party, he had an affair with Cleve Shumacher.”
