“The reason the figure is the same for the three companies,” he said, “is a system they got at Ace that's a variation on equal billing. Kind of thing Consumers' Gas does with your monthly bill.”
“That's what Grimaldi said?”
“Makes crazy sense when he's explaining it, but I don't swallow it,” Griffin said. “He asked me out to the office for a look at his accounting system. He said it's state of the art.”
“He didn't lie.”
“He got abusive when I brought up the invoices,” Griffin said. “Wanted to know who the guy was, my source. Made some noise about taking steps. That was his phrase. He said the person with the invoices would end up with his ass in a sling.”
“Another one of his phrases?”
“It's you he's talking about, correct?” Griffin said. “Whatever these invoices amount to, you've got them.”
I told Griffin he'd get the story complete to every detail as soon as the rest of the pieces had fallen into place. Griffin tried a few questions. I talked around them. He thrust. I parried. And after a while, Griffin said he had to leave for another appointment. I asked if it was with his clothes consultant.
“Sometimes I don't know what the hell you're talking about, Crang,” Griffin said.
He left and I put a Lester Young album on the stereo in the living room. It was from the 1950s when his sound had grown thicker and more sombre. I sat in the dark and looked out the window at the park across the street for a long time. Charles Grimaldi would know it was me who'd tipped off Ray Griffin. That was the point. I wanted Grimaldi to know. But he'd also recognize I'd given Griffin only a taste of what I had. Three names and a figure in dollars wasn't the basis for a solid investigation even by a persevering chap like Griffin. But the invoices, if Griffin got his hands on them and took note that the invoice numbers were the same on each of the three, would launch him in directions calculated to make Grimaldi nervous. Had I developed a scenario that might persuade Grimaldi to deal with me on Matthew Wansborough's three hundred thousand? It struck me as a good bet. Scenario? As words go, it was as moronic as interface and relationship. I was developing lazy etymological habits.
I got up and turned over the Lester Young album. He blew “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams” as if it were a dirge. Nothing was stirring in the park beyond the window. It was a fair trade-off, Wansborough's investment in return for the documents I'd purloined from Ace and a promise to clam up to Ray Griffin and everyone else on what the documents revealed. Grimaldi had too much to lose by not going along with the offer. Bringing Griffin into the picture showed him I meant business. Tough me. Grimaldi wouldn't want Ace's operations spread across several pages of copyright story in the
Star
. The longer I buzzed the idea around in my head, the more persuasive it shaped up. One hitch, I didn't intend to keep my promise to shield Ace. But Grimaldi didn't know that. Would he guess? Could be.
Lester Young moved on to “Skylark” and I kept watch over the darkness of the park. Scenario, interface, relationship. Impact was another, used as a verb. Pepsi commercials impact on the under-twenty market group. Canadian foreign policy doesn't impact on anyone. Charles Grimaldi might impact on my head. I had two more Lester Young albums from the 1950s. I listened to them until past midnight.
T
HE MESSENGER
wasn't a kid on a bike or an aging hippie in a Purolator jacket. He had on a black suit and tie, a white shirt, and a black cap like the kind limousine drivers wear. He was about sixty-five years old, and when I answered his knock on my office door, he removed the cap and handed me an envelope.
“My instructions are not to wait for an answer, sir,” he said. His accent was plummy, his manner haughty.
“Indeed?” I said. The messenger made me feel inadequate.
“But I am to confirm you are Mr. Crang,” he said in clipped English tones.
“Want to look at my driver's licence?” I asked. I wished I had some Earl Grey in the office. Invite him in for a cup. Talk cricket scores.
“Your word is sufficient, Mr. Crang,” the messenger said. “I was advised you would be the gentleman in the casual dress.”
I changed my mind about the Earl Grey. The messenger left and I opened the envelope. It and the piece of stationery inside were as thick and substantial as parchment. Publishers don't print books on stuff that good. The letterhead announced that it belonged to a man named Frederick A. Lewis who was a vice-president at the Bank of Commerce. His signature was indecipherable, but the letter's one-paragraph contents were crystal clear. They told me that a cashier's cheque payable to Matthew Wansborough had been issued by the bank that morning in the amount of $324,592.17.
The paragraph didn't say from whose account the cheque had been issued. But it had to be Charles Grimaldi. He'd swung into action in speedy time. It was ten o'clock, not much more than twelve hours since Ray Griffin had called Grimaldi from my kitchen.
The phone on the desk rang.
“I want this done clean and immediate, Crang,” the voice said on the line. “You got my bona fides.”
The voice was Grimaldi's. With a phrase like bona fides, he wasn't kidding around.
“The letter from the man at the bank looks like the real goods,” I said.
“It is,” Grimaldi said. “I'm holding the cheque. You get it when I get the invoices.”
“Last time we talked, you had no use for my little proposal,” I said. “I admire a man who keeps an open mind.”
“Don't stretch me, Crang,” Grimaldi said. “We meet at my office. You bring the invoices. I give you Wansborough's cheque.”
“At your office,” I said. “Oh, sure. Midnight suit you? I'll drive on out in the dark and Sol Nash can whack me. Make it easy for you.”
“Daylight, Crang,” Grimaldi said. “Come here in an hour. Eleven o'clock. I told you I wanted this ended simple and right away.”
“Eleven o'clock?”
“This morning.”
“Sounds okay.”
“What's your problem?” Grimaldi asked. “You haven't got the invoices?”
“In a secure place,” I said.
“Eleven,” Grimaldi said and hung up.
He'd thrown me off balance. I was hoping for a deal but I didn't expect it to come off so crisp and out front. The Ace Disposal offices wouldn't be my first choice for a meeting place, but mid-morning on a business day, the place full of employees, didn't appear to offer the potential for grief.
I phoned the head office of the Bank of Commerce, and after a ten-minute wait on the line, I spoke to an assistant to Vice-president Frederick A. Lewis who confirmed that a letter had gone out to my office from his boss that morning. Better still, he said a cashier's cheque payable to Matthew Wansborough had been sent by messenger to Ace Disposal. The cheque was for $324,592.17.
It was another day of sun and high blue sky, and again I left the top down on the Volks for the drive out the Queen Elizabeth. With any luck, this would be my last run to the west end and Ace's establishment. The landscape was beginning to pall. I drove past the Speedy Muffler outlet, the Rad Man's, and the body shops and came to the wire fence that surrounded Ace Disposal.
The scene did not look as it should. Rotund Wally wasn't on guard in the security man's hut. Nobody was. The truck gate into the property was shut. Beyond the fence, behind the office building, the slots for the Ace trucks were all occupied. Two hundred or more of the monsters sat silently in place. The garage was quiet, and no one moved on the grounds. The place seemed deserted except that the smaller gate that allowed office employees on to the premises, the gate that James Turkin had opened on the night of the great invoice heist, stood open. The door into the office building was also opened wide. Charles Grimaldi was standing in it.
I could have turned the car around and driven back to the city. I could have but I didn't. I was too close to a resolution of the case to shy away at what should be the penultimate moment. Following through seemed the natural thing to do. Or the brave thing. Or was it the foolhardy thing?
The Majestic's parking lot was empty. I turned the Volks across the road and parked at the front of the lot. By the time I opened the trunk, lifted out the documents, and walked back to the gate into Ace, Charles Grimaldi had vanished from the front door. He'd left it open, and I went down the path and into the building. It was silent inside. I held the pile of papers in both arms and headed in the direction of Grimaldi's office. I didn't pass a soul on the way. Grimaldi was sitting behind his desk waiting for me. He wore his customary grim face, but he'd eschewed the usual wardrobe. No whites today. He had on a dark blue suit, the same in a tie, and a light blue shirt.
I said, “The lovely lady who greets your visitors doesn't seem to be on call.”
“Not today,” Grimaldi said.
“Nor does anybody else.”
“I gave the staff the day off,” Grimaldi said. “Out of respect.”
“For whom?”
“Alice Brackley's funeral is at two o'clock this afternoon,” Grimaldi said. “I'll be there.”
The slippery devil. Grimaldi had got me out to Ace at an hour when he knew we'd be on our own. Mano a mano. Slick.
I said, “We deal alone.”
“Not quite.”
Footsteps sounded in the hall outside Grimaldi's office. They were footsteps that went with people who walked hard. Probably walked tall too. Grimaldi didn't move in his chair, hands crossed in front of him on the desk. I looked around, and into the room stepped two guys who hadn't learned to love me. First came the fat Ace driver with the beard and behind him was his pal, the long drink of water I'd smacked with the car door a few nights earlier. Both wore smiles. I noted that the tall guy was limping but took little satisfaction from the observation.
“What's this?” I said. “Reunion of the halt and the lame?”
“Dump that stuff on the desk,” Grimaldi said, pointing at the stacks of paper that were still in my arms.
“What about the cheque?” I said.
Mutt and Jeff had stationed themselves between me and the door. They kept silent but they were looking awfully pleased with themselves.
Grimaldi pushed an envelope across the desk toward me. It was of the same formidable stock as the letter I'd received from the snooty messenger an hour earlier. I deposited my papers on the desk, opened the envelope, and beheld a cheque payable to Matthew Wansborough in the amount I'd now committed to memory, $324,592.17.
“Great,” I said. “Well, that'll make it time for me to run along. I expect you gentlemen have chores to do.”
In the deepest place in my heart, I didn't believe I'd get off that easy. But it was worth a try.
Grimaldi said, “Put the cheque back on the desk.”
“Of course,” I said. “You'll want to review my documentation first.”
I returned the cheque and took two steps in the direction of the leather sofa under the LeRoy Neiman art work.
“Not there,” Grimaldi said. “Downstairs.”
Grimaldi hadn't raised his voice from the moment I arrived in the Ace building. He conveyed authority with his tone. Low, husky, hard like nails. I was beginning to think Annie's adjective didn't come close to describing Grimaldi in his present state. He was more terrifying than menacing.
“I need ten, fifteen minutes alone with this stuff, Jerry,” Grimaldi said. He was talking to the bearded guy. “You and Nicky take Crang downstairs.”
Jerry and Nicky? What happened to Spike and Butch? As bad guys' names went, Jerry and Nicky didn't pack much punch. The thought didn't make me any less apprehensive.
Jerry led the way out of Grimaldi's office, I was in the middle, and Nicky brought up the rear. We walked along the hall and down the stairs past the time cards and the door to the outside and into the drivers' clubroom in the basement. Jerry was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt. This one had “Van Halen” printed across the front. Another puzzle. Was Van Halen the guy or the band? Or perhaps both? Nicky had on a lumberjack's outfit. Checkered shirt, thick brown pants, heavy boots. His face was gaunt and pockmarked. He was about as tall, though not as husky, as the average NBA point guard, about six three or six four. There was nothing about Nicky or Jerry that gave me comfort. The three of us sat at one of the basement tables.
“Well, fellas,” I said, “what say we let bygones be bygones?”
Jerry laughed. Not a pretty sound.
“We're gonna bygone you, asshole,” Nicky said to me. He had a high-pitched voice.
Jerry laughed again.
“That's good,” he said to Nicky. “Bygone him. Bye, bye.”
“Gone, gone,” Nicky said.
I had Abbott and Costello for babysitters.
Ten minutes went by. Slowly for me. Jerry and Nicky tried more plays on words at my expense. None rose to the heights of the bygone routine. Nicky shuffled the deck of cards on the table. He had a nimble touch. He kept on shuffling until the action became mesmerizing and tedious.
Jerry got up and took two paper bags out of a locker. The larger bag had two submarine sandwiches. Power lunch. Jerry sat at the table and chewed on one of the subs. The second bag, much smaller, made a clunking sound when Jerry dropped it on the tabletop. Something heavy in there. Nicky ended his shuffling game and, almost idly, picked up the second and smaller bag and let the contents slide out.
I'd seen most of the contents twice before.
On the table, out of the paper bag, rested a gold chain made of thick links, a gold bracelet, gold earrings shaped like little seashells, a gold Hermès lighter. There was more jewellery, all of it gold and valuable. It was the late Alice Brackley's collection.
“Nice stuff, eh?” Nicky said to me. “Worth plenty.”
“Yeah,” I said. My voice was a croak. “Very nice, Nicky.”