SUDDEN BLOW
A JANE YEATS MYSTERY
A JANE YEATS MYSTERY
CANADIAN CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Brady, Elizabeth, date
Sudden blow
A Jane Yeats mystery.
ISBN 1-896764-05-3
I. Title.
PS8553.R24S921998 C813′.54 C98-930768-9
PR9199.3.B72S92 1998
Copyright © 1998 by Liz Brady
Printed and bound in Canada
Edited by Mary Adachi
Second Story Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the
Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council far the Arts
for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial
support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing
Industry Development program.
Published by
SECOND STORY PRESS
720 Bathurst Street, Suite 301
Toronto, Ontario
M5S 2R4
For my mother, Dorothy Patricia O’ConnellBrady, in memory
And for my daughters, Rachel and Lisa
“May the circle be unbroken ...”
I am grateful to Peter Robinson, who brought his wit and superb craft to bear upon an earlier version of the manuscript; to Medora Sale and Howard Engel, for their words of advice and encouragement; to Mary Adachi, my fastidious editor, whose more ascetic prose sense tempered my flamboyance; and to Second Story Press, my publisher, for their persistent generosity in bringing new voices into print.
And I am ever indebted to Bob Brandeis, who first believed.
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast
Being so caught up, So mastered by the brute blood of the air, Did she put on his knowledge with his power Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
— W. B.YEATS
“Leda and the Swan”
MAX INSTANTLY took to the uninvited woman standing at my IYI door, so I asked her in. My dog trusts strangers to the degree that they resemble his mistress. This predilection translates into a knee-jerk affiliation for women with a casual disregard for fashion. Guys in suits don’t stand a chance.
“I’m Simone Goldberg,” she said, offering her hand. I accepted it, forgetting to introduce myself. To understate the diagnosis, you could say I was hung over.
She stepped inside the door, gingerly bypassing a leaning tower of empty beer cases. Shakily, I gestured toward the sofa at the far end of my studio. Max, his unkempt rag of tail wagging so vigorously it made him swagger, followed the attractive stranger across the room. I prayed that he wouldn’t jump up on her and expose the startling extent of his welcome. Introductions are awkward enough, without canine erections getting in the way.
I followed in their wake, absorbing her details. She was short, by my standards compact, trim and tidy. Cropped black hair shot with grey curled naturally around an unembellished face. She wore an Irish tweed jacket over a Norwegian sweater, black wool slacks, well-bred leather boots. No jewellery — unless a thin gold wedding band counts. Understated, but conveying that impression of rustic elegance I rarely manage to contrive, in spite of my frequent perusals of L. L. Bean catalogues. I guess you have to actually buy the gear to gain the look.
My intruder lowered herself onto my distressed sofa, discreetly nudging aside a heap of newspapers, magazines, flyers and sundry research notes. Her green eyes were alarmingly keen. I half-hoped my notes imparted an aura of intellectual respectability to the rest of the print detritus, which included the National Enquirer, Spotlight on Crime, The Toronto Sun and the sheet music to “Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray.”
I swooped over to clear the coffee table of some empty beer cans and a noxiously full ashtray, then executed a quick two-step to conceal my loss of balance as I straightened up. By way of encore, I deposited the garbage into an oversize terracotta flowerpot, long bereft of living foliage.
When she shifted on the sofa, her sudden grimace told me she’d landed on one of the overtaxed springs. “Do you mind if I smoke?” she inquired, drawing a pack of Player’s from a woven bag as if she were accustomed to getting permission, or didn’t give a damn. “I know it’s incorrect.”
“Lady,” I replied, “this place is a temple to deviation. So smoke.”
Max plopped himself down at her feet and moaned. I could relate to that.
I refused her offer of a cigarette. Recently I’ve managed to confine my smoking to when I drink — which limits me to a pack a day and none before noon. Fitness is a bitch.
Her cigarette drew quick carcinogenic life from a silver lighter. She inhaled deeply and relaxed a bit. “I’m sorry to crash in on you like this, but I’m desperate. I need your help. You are Jane Yeats?”
That nod in the affirmative really did me in. My head retaliated with an exquisite frisson of pain that etched its way straight across the top of my skull. So I gave this Simone time to explain her presence, while I idly wondered if my vocal chords still worked.
I retained a fuzzy memory of straining them the previous night on the stage of my mother’s country juke joint, belting out Patsy Cline golden oldies. My mother must not have been there. I must have been pissed as a newt. I can’t even begin to nudge a tune off the ground, let alone carry one in any recognizable way. Still, four beers and I fall to pieces. Six and I’m k. d. lang. Eight and I’m reckless with talent, scanning the audience for Nashville scouts.
It must have been an eight-beer night. But I don’t remember having been discovered.
As she leaned over the coffee table to flick her cigarette ash into a souvenir ashtray, I furtively ran a few trembling fingers through my hair and attempted an encouraging smile. All I could think of was getting back to bed, making the world go away for a few more obliterated hours. Her next remark startled me like summer lightning.
“My brother was murdered Friday night. Susan Birney gave me your name. I want you to find out who killed Charles.” With that in-your-face declaration she butted out her cigarette with more energy than the task demanded.
I shuddered, remembering something I’d heard on the radio when Max woke me up this morning — something that really hadn’t registered at the time. Charles Durand, one of the wealthiest men in Canada, had been found dead in his pent-house office on Bay Street.
For all its infatuation with gigantism and world-class status, Toronto logs only about one murder a week. Vietnamese gang killings in Chinatown, sundry skirmishes over drug turf, a few Mob hits in the suburbs, a scattering of home invasions and some shoot-outs at booze cans nudge up the routine tally of domestic violence. People are still safe as houses — safer, in fact, if they remain on the streets and out of their own houses. Durand’s murder must be creating a media feeding frenzy. I had followed his mercurial climb to fortune with more than my usual academic interest. In this country, when wealth and power are not synonymous, there has to be a curious fault line in the system: race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, class. In Durand’s case it had been the latter — his lack of social acceptance, his nouveau lust for it.
“But surely the police can handle the investigation —.”
She can’t have failed to detect the insincerity in my voice. Lately I’ve been working on mendacity. I figure it simplifies relationships. But it takes real practice to pull off.
Simone Goldberg abruptly cut me off. “If this investigation is left in the hands of the police department, there’s not a chance in hell that whoever really killed Charles will be caught. Nobody knows that better than you do. That’s why I want you to find out who did it.”
More by chance than design, I’ve become an expert on corporate elites, especially those areas where their dealings shade into criminal activity. That covers a lot of ground. But hell, I wrote about true crime — I didn’t investigate it. Even licensed Pis rarely work a murder case and they’re only retained after the initial homicide investigation has dead-ended. Why was she hitting on me? She had mentioned earlier that Susan Birney, an old sorority pal of mine from university days, had referred her to my door. The last time Susan and I got together, some five years ago, was to celebrate her third marriage. I must have committed a social faux pas at the nuptials sufficiently grave to warrant this kind of retaliation.
Already the situation had grown far too complicated for a Yeats-style Sunday morning. “Can I get you something to drink?” I asked.
She looked mildly alarmed. If she protested with anything like “Oh no, it’s too early!,” I’d promptly give her the bum’s rush.
My escape hatch banged shut when she brightly replied, “I’d love a coffee, thank you.”
Simone followed me through my studio to the few square metres I’d blocked off as kitchen space, and perched on a bar stool at the counter. First I released a small avalanche of Science Diet into Max’s bowl. If labels are to be believed, my dog’s diet is far more balanced than mine. So is his head.
I opened the door of my pre-war Kelvinator just far enough to fit my arm in, hoping to conceal its sordid contents: some elderly dairy products, a romaine lettuce wilted as me and a neat row of beer cans. Next I toasted two waffles, dumped over them a few dollops of sour cream, topped off with some distinctly fuzzy blueberries, poured Simone a second cup of Continental Dark, grabbed some cutlery from a recycled pork and beans tin, and a can of warm Perrier. She declined my offer of food.
Throughout my culinary preparations she had remained silent, perhaps respectful of my need to concentrate all my frail resources — more likely, enraged at my evasiveness. I sat down on the stool facing hers. “Please go on,” I muttered, stuffing my face with the creatively salvaged leftovers and not giving much of a damn what she chose to go on about.
In the background, Max happily scrunched away. I envy dogs. Hey, I particularly envy my dog, upon whom all my co-dependent instincts have come to nest.
“Have you seen yesterdays paper?” she asked. “It would be easier for me if you read the article about his murder. It’s on the front page.”
From the recycled drywall compound bucket that served as my wastebasket I dug out yesterday’s Post, its fat roll still secured by an elastic band. Underneath a studio portrait of the victim ran the following article:
Durand found slain in office
by Sam Brewer
TORONTO POST
Charles Durand, 55, Chairman of Durand Corporation, was found dead in his penthouse office Friday evening.
The body was found in his 43rd-floor office in the Enterprise Tower, which he built 6years ago to house the central offices of the Corporation.
Metro Toronto Police said a cleaning lady discovered the body. She alerted a security guard who called police to the scene of the murder.
It was Metro’s 13th homicide this year.
“The victim was sitting slumped across his desk,” Sgt. Norm Cooke of Metro’s homicide squad said.
Cooke said Durand, clad in business attire, had suffered severe cranial injuries.
There was no sign of robbery and no weapon has been found, he said. Both the cleaning lady and the security guard underwent questioning by police last night, but could not provide much information to help detectives with the murder investigation.
There were no other people in nearby offices when the victim was attacked and police have not been able to find any other people in the building who heard any sounds of a com-motion.
The body was taken to the Toronto Forensic Laboratory for an autopsy to be held today. Police would not reveal if their preliminary investigation indicated the cause of death.
Durand Corp. employees and family members were not available for comment.
Over the past few months the real-estate and telecommunications tycoon had been struggling to save his $40-billion empire from bankruptcy.
As soon as I looked up, she began speaking. “This is odd. I don’t know where to begin ... given your line of work, you probably know more about Charles than I do. I haven’t seen him for at least seventeen years.” As if in search of a clue to their distance, she peered into her coffee mug.
It was easy to toss a guess at why she’d separated herself from her brother for so long. By all public accounts, he was a pentathlon jerk. But I wasn’t sure why she thought I knew more about him than she did. If shrinks can be vaguely trusted (and that’s a stretch), being family sets you on the insider’s track, even when you’ve chosen a divergent path. After all, you were there right from the beginning through the malformative years. So what did she think I knew?
“I know only the basic facts about your brothers career — the business side of his life.” I did a passable imitation of Jack Webb. “Just the facts, ma’m.” Reacting to Durand’s murder like I cared was a performance I just couldn’t manage.
Her silence in the face of this witty nudge beamed me a message: the lady doesn’t do tricks on cue. I cleared my throat of a nicotine-related obstruction and donned my professorial face. “I’m only familiar with the kind of material that my research unearths — and that’s mostly all public record by now.”
Scarcely a day had gone by in the past five months when her brother’s stunning slide into bankruptcy hadn’t been documented by the media. Journalists cluster like black flies on reversals in the fortunes of the rich-and-famous.
“He was flamboyant and disingenuous, sure, but I always figured that was simply part of the game he played with the press. He managed to keep his private life pretty much out of the limelight.”
Simone lit another cigarette. “You’re right there. Charles had a mania for secrecy but, as far as I know, his personal life really wasn’t noteworthy. The closer you come to it, the further away you’ll be from understanding why he was such a privacy freak,” Simone said.
As she spoke, her eyes took on a furtive cast. Was she practising mendacity? Something didn’t compute. “How can you make assertions like that with such assurance — when you haven’t seen him for years?”
“I have my sources,” she replied humorously.
I persisted. “But I would need to know more about him, probably far more than I could ever ferret out, to connect the dots. “To compile a list of suspects^ I really meant, but I didn’t want to let on how intriguing her proposition was becoming. My baser instincts smelled a fat investigative fee, possibly another book.
Her control broke. “You mean to figure out who might have killed Charles ... who his enemies were.” She laughed bitterly. “I can give you the short list: anyone who ever met him.”
I wanted to ask including you?, but I couldn’t muster the energy it would take to get beyond her defences. Her abiding rancour and apparent absence of grief told me she was holding a long grudge. What had her brother done to merit it? Still, she wasn’t exaggerating his unpopularity. Charles Durand was globally reviled. Creating a suspects list would be limited to searching for means and opportunity. Motives for his murder were legion.
I finished my brunch. Max refused the remnant of soggy waffle I tossed his way.
I was puzzled. “You said that you haven’t seen him in seventeen years — and with good cause, I’m sure. Then why are you here? Why do you care who killed him? I mean, people usually want the perpetrator of a crime discovered so he can be punished for having victimized somebody. If Durand was such an S. O.B. that he alienated everyone he ever met, you might say his death was merely the happy outcome of an informal class action suit.”
“You actually consider what was done to Charles to be justice? Surely even the most summary form of justice in any civilized society demands a trial. Shit, I don’t even believe in capital punishment — let alone lynch mobs.”
Someone had uttered a profanity before I did, a conversational first. I scurried to make amends. “I’m sorry. You’re right, of course. I must have sounded totally unsympathetic and insensitive.” My apology came as close to authentic as I can get on a serious hangover.
“You probably think the plight of some Third World child is more important than what happened to Charles. Am I right?” This lady was persistent.
What the hell, I might as well come clean. In my experience with people — lovers excepted — honesty is the easiest policy, even though it allows so little scope for the imagination. “Yes, for the record, I do. Charles Durand created the conditions that led to his own downfall. The man had fabulous wealth, far more of it than any individual deserves. For all I know, maybe he even created the conditions that got him dead. Starving kids can’t be blamed for their empty bellies.”
“And I suppose you also think men like Charles are responsible for the oppression of those kids?” she demanded.
“They make generous donations to the problem. No question about that. And it’s obvious from your brother’s lifestyle that he was his own favourite charity.” My candour was about to cap the lid on this potential pot of gold, but I’d been here before. Putting my cards on the table at the outset usually saves future grief— or so go my post mortem consolations.
She fell back on the sofa and laughed. “Susan Birney promised me you could be trusted to speak from the gut! As it happens, I agree with you. I live by choice in a world light years away from the one Charles built for himself. Sure he was a bastard ... but I do feel that he was already getting the biggest punishment he deserved — bankruptcy and public humiliation.”
My candour had loosened up her restraint. “Now I know your politics are sound, I can tell you the much more compelling reason I want you to find out who killed him. You asked me earlier how I knew about my brother’s private life when I haven’t seen him for so long. The answer is simple: I’ve always maintained a close relationship with his son, William. I love my nephew as much as my own daughter. And I’m terrified that the police are going to arrest him for Charles’s murder. So will you help me?” Genuine pleading informed her voice, as well as passionate conviction — a tough combination to fluff off.
“I’m beginning to want to. But tell me why you think the cops might arrest William? Didn’t he lose a court battle to his father a few months ago?”
“That hardly amounts to serious motivation to kill him. William had every right to take Charles to court. All he was trying to do was get permission to sell off his shares in the corporation before his father drove it into bankruptcy with his craziness.” She leaned forward. “Trust an aunt’s intuition — and an experienced social worker’s insight: my nephew is incapable of killing anyone.”
She must know more than she was revealing. “Then why are you worried about the police suspecting him?”
“I know that William was in his fathers office the night he died — he phoned me Saturday just after he learned about the murder.”
Tricky. I needed to back-track a bit. “Simone, what makes you think I can do the job? I’m a writer, not a private investigator.”
“You’re a writer who already has a sound — and appropriately cynical — knowledge of the business world. You know how to sniff out a story, dig for background, separate the inconsequential from the significant. I know that to be a fact: I’ve read many of your articles. And Susan said you’re fair, that you don’t let personal politics get in the way of your judgment, that you’re difficult to intimidate. She told me you’d lost a good job and had your life threatened as a result.”
“I didn’t have my life threatened. I merely had the shit beaten out of me.”
Simone continued, “That all adds up to pretty sound credentials, in my view. The fact that you’re not an investigator should be a distinct advantage.” She was doing a very effective job of selling me on myself. That’s hard work. Still, I resisted.
“Most corporate rulers are near-paranoid about having their privacy invaded — by the media as well as the law. Last year a friend of mine dared to write a piece about the Farrah family’s wheelings and dealings. Maybe you read it in City Lifestyles? She wound up in court, with all her manuscripts seized! Even though the Farrahs hired a New York private investigator to reinterview her sources, they still didn’t manage to undermine her credibility.” I didn’t bother to add that another fine business journalist had her book killed before she’d even delivered the completed manuscript: her publisher had received a warning letter from a high-profile lawyer. These days libel chill competes with exhaust fumes for the pollution prize.
She had another card up her sleeve. “Look, this may not be your typical murder investigation. My gut instinct tells me that Charles was probably killed by someone in the corporate world, possibly a very influential someone. A rival even more ruthless than he was. Someone so powerful, so well connected that the police will probably be instructed to pussyfoot around him. That’s why I think they’ll jump on William as the quickest route out of pushing their investigation into the upper ranks of the business establishment. Jane, you know damned well that how — even if — they knock on your door depends on your address. And the people you’ll need to check out at that level might be much more inclined to talk to a woman who’s researching a book about a man they loathe — not investigating his murder.”
My nerve endings resonated in sync with her disillusion. In recent years even the most gullible Canadians have lost their virgin faith in the criminal-justice system. Belated, very public inquiries into a number of wrongful murder convictions obliged many reluctant citizens to admit that there are different tiers of justice: where you land very much depends upon where you’re falling from. Ask any young black man. And the investigative route from crime scene to courtroom can be littered with fatal delays and incompetence.
Durand’s breed of tycoon is a class unto itself, able to operate beyond the law because it is governed by no code of ethics and accountable to no one. Even lawyers have a self-regulating body, although it seems to have forgotten its mandate.
I decided to muster one last effort at resistance. I hate being seduced. My inner therapist says this derives from my being the adult child of an alcoholic father: I always need to feel in command. This instance had much more to do with my plans to celebrate the recent publication of my last book with an extended vacation in Barbados. Nothing could get in the way of that — neither love, nor money, power nor revenge. None of the stock motivators.
What I omitted from my reckoning was curiosity, which in my case often is tantamount to revenge.
Simone asked if she could trouble me for a beer. I glanced at my Swatch, but its hands were too small to tell me anything significant about the sun’s location. Still, her request sunk my defences a notch lower. While I crossed the studio to fetch a can of Newcastle, she lit another cigarette. I reverently poured the mahogany suds down the side of a chilled glass mug and set it on the coffee table. Sipping it with obvious enjoyment, she thanked me. I was beginning to like this woman.
Max shifted on his favourite rag rug beside the sofa without breaking his snore.
Her final argument nudged me close to paranoia. Maybe she’d been talking to my inner shrink. “Look,” she began, her fine eyes piercing my psyche, “if the Durand family commissioned you to write Charles’s authorized biography, you’d have an instant passport to investigate.”
On the instant I knew she was right. My resolve rolled over like Max in his most seductive mode. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to say “yes.”
“I don’t know how much it matters,” she added, strategically pausing to sip her brew, “but I’ll pay you very well. Let’s say the equivalent of a year’s modest salary, even if it takes you only a few weeks to identify the murderer. Forty thousand? And I’ll give you a two-thousand-dollar advance to cover your first two weeks and your expenses.” She laughed, as if to discount the monetary significance of her offer. “Think of my offer as being like junk bonds — Charles’s preferred method of financing some of his crazier buy-outs — high risk, but more chance of a high return!”
“I wouldn’t push the analogy too far,” I retorted. “Junk bonds contributed to his downfall.”
“I can afford to pay you well,” she persisted. “Years ago Charles set up a trust fund in my name. Need I say, it was one of his tax dodges, not benevolence. I’ve never touched a cent of the damn thing. Your fee will be the first withdrawal.”
“Simone, forgive me for prying into an area that may have nothing to do with the case, but I’m curious about why you’ve kept the trust fund when you consider it tainted money.”
“Given what I suffered being his sister, I could regard it as compensation.” For a moment she looked as if she were going to elaborate on that theme. She paused, then spoke less bitterly. “I decided to turn it to good use. I’ve been keeping it in trust for my daughter, Rebecca. Robert, my husband, and I both have modest incomes, so she won’t inherit much from us. And I plan to donate a portion of it to a women’s shelter. Charles would sooner have burned his money than see it go to such a place.”
I was ready to yield. Forty thousand dollars plus expenses. With that kind of money I could read and write whatever I wanted for a whole year without worrying about the rent and Max’s Science Diet. I could go to Barbados for a month — and trade in my geriatric Harley on a new bike. Last weekend I’d gone to the annual Motorcycle Show in the Automotive Building at Exhibition Place. Love at first sight: gleaming on a pedestal like a northern lake at sunrise was a stunning red Ducati 851 Sport, apdy nicknamed the “Ferrari” of motorcycles. The last hand-built bike in the world, crafted in a limited edition, with a computerized fuel injection system. “Ravish me,” I prayed. I’d keep it next to my bed. Hell, I’d keep it in my bed.
She rose from the sofa and pulled on her jacket. “I can see you need some time to think this through. There’s no need to commit yourself today. But I do have to leave now. I’ll call you tomorrow morning, shortly after nine.”
“Yes,” I said, with no less passion than Molly Bloom. Yes, I said, yes. I wanted to do this weird thing. Like the proverbial hounds hot on the fox’s trail, my wits were off and running.
She made for the door. “If you decide to accept, it might be a good idea for you to attend the funeral. I can give you the details in the morning, after I hear from Charles’s widow.”
“Thank you. And Simone, if it means anything at all, I’m sorry for what you’re going through.”
She turned back to me, eyes soft with gratitude. “Thank you. It does mean something. He was my brother. I guess we always hope that family relations will work themselves out in the long run — before death intervenes.” She paused, then flashed a leavening grin. “And on a lighter note, let me say that I’m impressed that you didn’t apologize for your housekeeping transgressions. Most women would,” she ventured.
“Most women use vacuum cleaners. I rent a fork-lift.”
She laughed and walked down the hall to the freight elevator. I closed the door. Max sniffed at his empty bowl, chased his tail for a few rounds, then flopped down in a defeated heap beside the sofa. He was depressed.
I made a bee-line for my research files.
ON MY PLANET there are two categories of hangover: those I get from too much beer and the unavoidables that derive from information overload. The latter are usually more productive.
After Simone’s departure I immersed myself, first in a hot bath, then in the contents of my file cabinet, which her visit had transformed from a research depository into a potential gold mine. A sensible librarian would catalogue most of my curious information-hoard under the rubric “business.” I designated it “corporations, cash, class, crime and sundry other corruptions.” The upper two locked drawers contained every bit of paper relevant to my published books and articles: newspaper/magazine clippings, research notes, interview tapes, my manuscripts and backup copies on floppy disks, notebooks full of hunches, guesses, suspicions, allegations, hints, rumours — all the undocumented minutiae that really fuelled my lunatic occupation. The stuff that kept me at my solitary computer when normal people are genially circulating in climate-controlled offices, sharing tales of lovers, therapies, new diets and interior decorators over mugs of decaf, revelling in their dental benefits and pension plans (or so I imagine).
By early evening I had over-dosed on the Canadian power elite in general, Charles Durand and his corporation in particular. Before I hit my duvet, I took Max for a long run through High Park to work out his cardio-vascular and rest my cerebral. He ran, I walked. I’m depressed, not suicidal.
A bitter wind hammered our tails as we entered the park from the northwestern corner and followed a winding wood-chip trail down the slope toward Grenadier Pond. Clouds overcast the anorexic face of the crescent moon. I couldn’t see far ahead. The thick bush on either side of the hilly clearing enclosed me like dark parentheses. Suddenly I got scared. I whistled for Max. He didn’t return to my side, which only confirmed what I already knew: my early efforts at doggy dominance hadn’t worked.
I got my mounting panic under control by switching my memory track from the terrifying murder-in-the-park scene that opens Antonioni’s Blowup to a snapshot of my “career” — always good for a relaxing laugh. Maybe I’d find something more morally uplifting than money to rationalize my decision to take up Simone’s offer of employment.
Twelve years ago I began grown-up life, which coincided with my graduation from journalism school, as managing editor of the progressive magazine Up Yours! For “progressive” read: non-profit, circulation of two thousand politically disaffected souls, monitored by the RCMP for left-leaning bias, and as threatening to the system as a toothless Chihuahua.
My nine-month upsurge from an entry-level position as administrative assistant to managing editor had been facilitated by certain unfortunate ruptures in the group due to a serendipitous pregnancy and a drug bust. When I complained to a journalist friend about the tax-bite the Feds munched out of my meagre pay cheque, he advised me to claim self-employed status. To qualify I merely had to scribble a few book reviews a year. He obligingly tossed me some new murder mysteries. I greeted his throwaways like I’d died and gone to that corner of heaven where Nancy Drew always makes her dad proud.
Two years later, when the Post’s Saturday Supplement crime-books columnist succumbed to a terminal liver problem of known origins, the editor of the newspaper proposed me as his successor. I couldn’t afford to refuse the job: Up Yours! had recently succumbed to terminal circulation problems.
Near the end of my first year into that impersonation, I was elevated to crime reporter — on condition that my first assignment be an investigative series on corruption in the Toronto police force. Evidently all the experienced staff reporters, who valued their careers, had declined the challenge. I couldn’t afford to refuse the job: I’d just mortgaged my life for a reconditioned vintage Harley-Davidson FLST Heritage.
Survive the assignment I did, long enough to get a series of nine investigative articles into print. For my Herculean efforts, I won a national newspaper award — and lost my job. Apparently I’d done my research too thoroughly. A spate of upper-echelon resignations from the police force testified to that. And it became clear from my subsequent dismissal that ours is not a free press. No big surprise to me: Canadian illusions fall hard on their despoilers. Because I hadn’t been able to marshal enough hard facts to point a censuring finger at the Chief of Police, the Police Commission and the Mayor’s Office, I merely gestured extravagantly in their direction, letting my readers draw their own sordid conclusions about where the buck stopped. The publisher of the paper, who regularly lunched with prominent local politicians at a posh private steak house, concluded that my continuing services in his employ would constitute more than an embarrassment. I forgave him. Covering your ass has become an executive lifestyle. And hey, a journalism prize trophy graced the top of my toilet tank.
Truly self-employed, I set to work on a book about the recent murder of Diana Bancroft, a prominent judge’s wife. Right from the day the story first broke I’d smelled a rat and had suspected that the rodent had a law degree from a good university and was the violently deceased lady’s main squeeze. Research, between and beneath the covers, confirmed my instinct. By the time the police had nailed their conviction, I was ready to hit the bookstands with the dirt that braced their investigation. I had a best-seller on my hands, filth under my fingernails, sawdust on the floor of my heart — and an attempt on my life to add to my toilet-tank embellishment.
Too perverse to be intimidated, over the next four years I followed up with several non-fiction crime articles; a book on stock-exchange fraud and insider trading; and a third book on the history and operations of the Toronto Police Department Homicide Squad. I won more enemies in high places, a couple of friends on the police force and another toilet ornament. Most important, my Harley was paid for. A tough agent negotiated American and British advances on my next book.
About my next book: I shamelessly fabricated the proposal out of air thin enough to make a canary croak. To my credit, I refused my publisher’s offer of an advance sufficient to maintain my poverty-line lifestyle for six months. In my writerly guts, I knew I’d never deliver the damn book. The concept was too complex to schedule, I told my agent, inviting her to imagine Plato being given a deadline to produce The Republic. Backed into existential corners, I become a very tacky woman.
The truth of it was, I was tired of writing and tempted to call my fatigue “writer’s block.” Or maybe almost ready to shuck the more-or-less protective cocoon of words in which I’d encased myself. As good a reason as any to pursue a fresh career path.
Max returned to my side well after my inner shrink whispered that my sudden panic about goblins in the park came from my fear of making any changes to my stagnant life.
Monday morning I called Ernie Sivcoski, a detective on the Metro homicide squad. I was surprised to find him at his desk. Although he always accepts my calls, I had expected him to be caught up in the Durand investigation.
Ernie got right to his point. “You called to ask me for a date, right, Jane?”
“Wrong, Ernie. You know I don’t do dates.” Before I met Pete, Ernie and I had gone out together a few times, mostly to jazz clubs, but our relationship had never taken flight. Maybe cops and writers don’t make a good mix. Ernie has a fine heart and he is a damn good homicide detective. But he spends too many of his working hours dealing with women who are messed up with prostitution and cocaine to know how to adjust in his off-hours to women who aren’t. In his universe, every broad is on the make.
We’d first crossed paths when I was researching my book on the Bancroft murder. From the start, Ernie had choreographed his investigation as intricately as a ballet. His prime suspect was one of the best-connected lawyers in the city. Ernie knew that if he made one false step his career was toast. He played it like Balanchine. And he got his conviction.
Afterwards he readily consented to my request for an inter-view. He provided me with much of the inside detail that made my book an authoritative, riveting read. And he did that after I told him I wouldn’t sleep with him. But back then it had been safe for him to confide in me: the Bancroft case was closed. I wondered how he would react to my questions about an investigation very much in progress.
I entered the conversation en pointe. “I’m surprised to get hold of you so easily, Ernie.”
“You have a hunch that I’ve been assigned to the Durand murder.”
“Thanks for confirming it. So how’s it going?”
He drew a deep breath and pushed it out like a weight-lifter. “Well, as a matter of fact, I’m sitting here at this very moment because the coroner’s report landed on my desk about twenty minutes ago,” he said, sounding like he’d sooner be sailing.
He’d given me permission to take another step. “Let me guess, Charles Durand died because he stopped breathing.”
“Why would you want to guess? Why are you even interested?” he snapped.
“Okay, Ernie, I’ll level with you. For the past few months I’ve been working on Durand’s official biography.” I didn’t tell him that the project began yesterday, that I hadn’t written a single word and never intended to. “So I have a special interest in the circumstances surrounding his death.”
“And now that he’s splashed all over the media you’re hatching another best-seller,” he commented sourly.
That vexed me. “You know me well enough to trust that I won’t wrap up the book before I’m satisfied with it — whatever pressure my publisher puts on me.” In my limited experience of my own character, mendacity invariably breeds self-righteousness.
“Yeah, I do know that. So I’m sorry. Look, this case has got me really frazzled. There’s a lot of heat coming from upstairs to make a quick arrest.”
“So you’ve got a suspect?”
“A suspect? They’re coming out of my ears! But are we ready to make an arrest? Not quite.”
“How much can you tell me, Ernie?”
“I can trust you to keep your mouth shut, right?” I was pleased that he didn’t wait for an answer. He knew from experience that I’d go to jail before I’d reveal a source. “Well, I’m going to disappoint you. Basically the preliminary coroner’s report adds up to saying that Durand didn’t kill himself — which wouldn’t have been a surprise, given the flak he’s been dodging for months, eh?”
“Three high fliers associated with the Vancouver Stock Exchange have committed suicide recently, so the phenomenon is not unknown. Guys facing personal ruin, lawsuits, wives walking out. But Charles Durand wasn’t the suicidal type, Ernie. He wasn’t a victim, he was a prizefighter. He’s been knocked down before, and every time he got up before the count.”
“You’re right about that. Anyways, it says here the victim died as a result of massive cerebral damage caused by repeated blows sufficient to smash through the skull and decimate a major part of the brain. Hey, I was on the crime scene. We didn’t need the experts to tell us why he croaked: the left side of his head was caved in like a rotten pumpkin. Half his head was pulp. Not a pretty sight. I mean, his desk blotter was totally soaked in blood and there were clumps of brain tissue and pieces of fractured skull all over the desk.”
As my breakfast began to resist gravity, I was tempted to tell him to spare me the information. But I knew that if God wasn’t in the details, the perp was.
Ernie droned on like he was doing a play-by-play for a hockey game. Maybe the gory mantra helped him block out the scenario. “His attacker must have been totally over the top — I mean, he must have kept hitting and hitting him after he was dead already. Report says at least sixteen blows” Coroner speculates that the first blow hit him from the front as he was getting up from his chair, knocked him unconscious and caused him to slump over the desk. All kinds of fracture lines radiating out from the first penetration. The remainder of the blows were delivered after his head was resting on the desk. You could say it was overkill.”
“Any idea yet what the weapon was?”
“Nah, apart from it being a not-so-blunt object. Coroner couldn’t match up the skull perforations and fractures with any tool he’s familiar with. Just says that it had at least one flat surface, irregular sides and top, several sharp points. That was all he could determine. Whatever the hell it was, the killer must have taken it with him — or at least removed it from the office. We’ll be checking the rest of the building until we’re sure it wasn’t dumped on site. You can imagine what a job that is. Fucking tower’s got forty-three floors.”
“I gather from the press report that you’ve already done some interviewing.”
He nodded. “Yeah. First, a cleaning lady who discovered the body. Given the time lines — Durand passed on to the Great Stock Exchange some time between four, when he was last seen alive, and eight, when she found him — she could have been on the same floor when it happened. But she didn’t see or hear a thing. Poor old broad’s a basket case. Portuguese. I had to call in a translator for her interview. She found the body as she was making her usual rounds. She did say, though, that Durand wasn’t in the habit of using his office on Friday nights.”
“And the security guard?”
“I got nothing from him. Dumb bugger with a serious history of assaults. Used to be a bouncer at the El Mocambo ‘til he got sacked for causing more fights than he cured. The night Durand got killed he was working his way through a six-pack and watching a hockey game instead of the surveillance monitors in his cubby-hole on the main floor. Security at the Tower is token after normal business hours anyways.”
“That surprises me, Ernie. You know, the security industry thrives on paranoia — and Durand regarded even dust mites as personal enemies. I’d have guessed he had the building protected by state-of-the-art equipment monitored by guys who’d die for him.”
“Yeah, and the media’s got some people so scared about violent crime we find old ladies who’ve been sold enough gear to make the prime minister envious. But I guess Durand figured there was nothing to steal in there, unless you’re into tropical plants or high-tech office furniture. All the important computer systems were safe-guarded. He had a few cameras placed at the entrances and exits, enough fire alarms to meet the code. But nothing else — didn’t even have any cameras in the underground parking lot. In any case, even the best system’s only as good as the guy monitoring it. And the security industry isn’t properly regulated — a lot of their personnel are the kind of people their customers are paying through the nose to keep out! The guard’s main job at the Tower was to let the night-time cleaning staff in and out, and eyeball the monitors. He couldn’t even get it up to do that much responsibly. We found a rear service door open. The jerk hadn’t checked it out when he came on his shift. Anybody could enter and leave that building after hours easier than the Metro Library.”
“And Forensic? Have they got anything to analyze ... hairs, fibres? Particles in the wound? Assailant’s skin under his fingernails? Fluff in his navel?”
Ernie laughed. “You’ve been watching Quincy reruns, Jane. Sure, some prints — but mostly Durand’s. The rest probably won’t match up with anything we’ve got in the computer. Lots of blood — but so far all of it’s Durand’s. The suspects clothing must be covered in his blood — but we haven’t apprehended a suspect, who’s no doubt ditched or destroyed his tell-tale threads by now. You know the routine: whatever you got, you gotta have a match for.”
I persisted. “Have you got any other evidence?”
Silence on the line.
“Ernie, how in hell are you going to be able to make that speedy arrest the Chief is screaming for?”
He spoke reluctantly. “Apparently there were some funny-looking chips and particles embedded in his head that haven’t been identified yet. And there’s something else, not as tricky as bits of whatever. An empty book of matches left beside an ash-tray on the coffee table in Durand’s office. The man didn’t smoke.”
“But he must have had a lot of visitors who did.”
“No, not many visitors got into the inner sanctum. His secretary, Ruth Porter, made sure of that. She protected Durand like a mother bear — and she looks like one, too.” Men like Ernie made depilatories an essential feminine product, that is if you want to bag a man like Ernie.
“So what can you tell me about this book of matches? Do you know where it came from?”
Pregnant pause at the other end. “You didn’t hear me say this, right? How about from a gay bar?”
I held my breath. “Which gay bar, Ernie? The city’s got dozens of them.” I tried not to sound too eager.
“I can’t tell you another goddamn thing, Jane. I’ve already told you too much.” Ernie’s voice closed down. No point in pushing him any further.
Then he added an afterthought. “When someone as big as Charles Durand gets killed, it causes a lot of ripples.”
“It causes tidal waves, Ernie. Keep your head above the water, eh? And thanks. I owe you.”
“Sure you don’t want a date?”
“I’m sure. My dog is a possessive beast. Bye, Ernie.”
I opened a can of beer and flopped down on my armchair. For five minutes I stared through the uncurtained windows that ran the full length of the east-facing wall. Bright winter sun-light illuminated to sordid intensity my sins of housecleaning omission. So I swept into action, reverting to an old female survival routine: when the head is cluttered, organize your space. I tossed back the remains of my beer and began to pilot my shop vac over the disaster zone.
I rent fifteen hundred square feet of a converted coughlozenge factory that now houses indigent artists, writers, aspiring rock musicians and sundry other unappreciateds — like me. This is the site where I’ve incarcerated myself since Pete’s death. So I put a lot of work into making it agreeable. The view only a land mine could alter. My window wall overlooked the garbage-bedecked roofs of other factories, a huge rear parking lot resembling a museum of transportation discards (cars, pick-ups, motorcycles, bikes, wagons and a lone sailboat), interspersed with derelict stoves and fridges, littered with spark plugs, Coke cans, Chinese cooking wine and bitters bottles, car-ashtray contents and spent condoms. A ravine bounded the east side, terminated by a Berlin Wall of old tires and over-passed by a bridge deafeningly crossed by the Dundas West street car and the VIA Rail train.
The window view onto my studio, accessible to anyone who scaled the fire escape to the third floor, afforded a different picture.
Shortly after Pete died, I rechannelled my dumb grief into patching and painting walls, sanding and varnishing the old oak-strip floors, slapping fire-engine red enamel over all the industrial steel beams and pipes, refinishing some old furniture Pete and I had bought at country auctions. I was left with a huge, well-lit open space, sub-divided into different functional areas, brightly accented with prints, posters, exceptionally hardy tropical plants, silk-screened fabrics collected on three trips to the Caribbean. Cheery — yet empty as a cathedral on a midnight that wasn’t Christmas Eve. All my restorative work hadn’t brought him back.
I retaliated against fate by turning myself into a reclusive writer who scribbled obsessively, read three or four books a week, socialized rarely, and hung out on weekends at her mother’s bar. There I camouflaged myself by drinking too much, singing the occasional country tune, and pretending to manage the place whenever Etta took off on one of her weekend jaunts to Nashville on a bus tour package that included two nights’ accommodation in a tacky hotel, reserved seats at the Grand Ole Opry, a tour of the town, transportation, baggage and taxes. All for $292 Canadian funds. Etta always bought the twin package because she always had a boyfriend in tow.
As I tugged my studio into a semblance of order, I tried to marshal some stray anxieties. When I thought about it, it still seemed odd that a woman estranged from her brother for most of her adult life would want to invest serious money into having his murder investigated. Had Simone Goldberg been telling the truth when she said that her real motivation was to protect her nephew William — who probably had even less reason to mourn Durand’s passing than she? Or did she really want to enlist my aid in flushing him out as the prime suspect? What had she been withholding?
I popped open another can of beer and flopped onto the sofa. My housecleaning seizure hadn’t dispersed my depression. Why not take up Simone’s offer and use the investigation to keep my inability to deal with Pete’s death on the back burner a bit longer? No reason, I thought, unless I cared about my own life enough to want to avoid any possible encounter with Durand’s killer.
At least sixteen blows, the first few delivered with enough force to render the remaining baker’s dozen redundant. Rage purer than that you couldn’t find. A presumably unarmed person