Live Bait (19 page)

He was glad to see me, but he insisted on barking so I opened the back door and let him out, he scooted around the front and I followed, staying way back in case it was somebody who meant business.

I could tell from the way Sam grew more fierce that someone was out there. As I came around the corner of the house I heard a high, nervous voice saying "Good boy. Easy boy!" over and over like a prayer, to which Sam wasn't responding.

It was a woman, maybe thirty, lean and pretty in a businesslike way. She saw me and called out. "Mr. Bennett, will he bite?"

"What do you want?" I asked her. She was backing up to the edge of the lawn, trying to stand tall as far from Sam's teeth as she could reach. I told Sam "Easy" and he relaxed, falling silent but staying in place, ready to move again as ordered.

Now she grinned and stuck out her hand, unafraid of Sam. "How do you do. I'm Phyllis Henderson. I'm a friend of Lou's, we were in the same writing class at university."

I held up my bandaged wrists. "Excuse me if I don't shake. Louise is away for a few days. I'm not sure when she'll be back."

She grinned again. She had a nice, lean-faced grin. "I know, I spoke to her on the phone last night when I heard the news."

"What news?"

She cocked her head pertly. "About your adventures."

I groaned. "Was it on the radio, mentioning me by name?"

"It sure was. So I came right round here, as soon as it was light. I don't meet many celebrities."

"You still haven't," I told her. I stooped and rubbed Sam's head. "What I am is tired. So, excuse me, I'll tell Louise you were by. I guess she has your number."

I smiled and turned away but she persisted. "You're not going to send a girl out on the streets without a cup of coffee?"

There was something too bright about her for my mood that morning so I just shrugged and said "Sorry," and kept on walking. But she followed me. "Please. Can't you tell me what happened?"

"It's all under investigation," I said. "That's all there is to it." I waved goodbye over my shoulder but she kept talking.

"I need to know," she said seriously and when I didn't stop she shouted at me. "You're a hero, dammit. Can't you spare me one lousy minute of your time?"

That stopped me cold. I turned and asked "Are you with a newspaper?"

She did her grin again but it wasn't charming this time. "Right in one," she chirruped. "I'm with the Sun."

"Well tell them I appreciate their sunshine girls. Good morning." I matched her grin and went on to the back door but she didn't give up.

"You have to talk to me," she insisted, and then, as I reached the door, "The people have a right to know."

I waved and went in. She came behind me and opened the door and walked into the space at the head of the basement stairs. "Come on, please. I haven't had a chance at a real piece of news in months. Nothing but council meetings and school estimates. Can't you give me an exclusive, for Louise's sake."

I stood four steps above her, looking down into the bluest eyes I have seen in a while. "Look. There's nothing to tell. If you want to print something, tell people I sicked my dog on you and he chased you off the property, because I don't want to talk to you or anybody else about what happened. I have no comments of any kind. Now, would you like that cup of coffee?"

I thought it might soften her up so she didn't report anything at all but asking her in was a mistake. She wouldn't sit in the kitchen. She walked from room to room, exclaiming at the house, then she admired my coffee, and she pressed me for details until I was tempted to fling her out with her coffee still in the cup. But I didn't, and bit by bit she won me over. Not to talk to her about the case—I've been a copper too long to talk to anybody, especially press people, but I found out a bit about her. She had been a reporter for seven years, first in the sticks, then, because she was bright and chirpy and youthful, with the Sun, which is the Toronto tabloid, big on popular attitudes and pretty girls.

When I finally kicked her out, she still hadn't learned anything but I was wide awake again and ready for breakfast. She offered to stay and make it for me but I didn't feel like fencing any more so I said no and prepared my own bacon and eggs. I switched the radio on and listened to country music until news time. And that was when I got my first surprise of the morning; there was no mention of my name. The report was that a car had been burned up in the sticks but there was no mention of me or of anybody's having been threatened with burning to death. And that got me forgetting the eggs and reaching for the phone to call Louise, breaking the rule I had set myself earlier of staying separate from her.

Her friend answered, sounding as if she was about a quart of coffee short of being ready for the day's disasters. She brightened some when I said who I was. I figured Lou must have told her I was single. That brings out either the maternal or the mating instinct in a lot of women. Louise came on, bright as morning orange juice and asked how I was. I told her fine, no need to give her any worry, she had some client's cough medicine and somebody else's pantihose to worry about that day. Then I slid in the important question.

"Met a friend of yours, says she was in college with you, taking the same writing course."

"Writing course? I never took any writing course. I took straight English and history, with one Psych credit," she said, and my hackles began to tickle.

"Well, maybe I didn't listen carefully enough. Anyway, she's a lean-looking blond girl, around your age, got really blue blue eyes, like you hear about in Irish songs. Calls herself Phyllis Henderson."

Louise laughed. "Policeman of mine, you've been sold a bill of goods. I never knew a Phyllis anybody in college. I'd have remembered, I don't think I know anybody my age with that name."

"Then I guess I got her confused with somebody else. I met a few people last night."

"That's nice," she said brightly. "I hope you had a tremendous time and found yourself somebody worth knowing."

"I did," I assured her. "A couple of real sweethearts."

And that was the end of it. I promised to let her know when things had cooled out enough for her to come home, asked after the kids and hung up.

I didn't enjoy my breakfast. I was wondering about my visitor. On impulse I phoned the Sun and asked for Phyllis Henderson. The switchboard girl told me there was nobody of that name working there. I gave a sketchy description, said she was a reporter, the woman thought about it and said no again, there was no reporter of that description with the paper.

When I had finished eating and washed the dishes, I rang Bonded Security. Fullwell was in and he sounded eager. "Let me take this on my own phone," he said. "In fact, better than that, I'll go across the street and call from there."

It took three minutes. He was bursting with news. "I was just heading over here to call you," he began. "I managed to get through to the head office computer in New York and check Willis's file. He's a very interesting guy."

"In what way?"

"Well, he's older than he looks, must be in his fifties. He's Canadian, not American, as I thought. He was in Korea with the Princess Patricia's Light Infantry. His outfit was shot to hell somewhere and the whole company got an American Presidential Citation which is on his record."

"Yeah, so he's a hero."

"There's more than that." Fullwell was crammed with news and it poured out of him, almost too fast for me to take it in. "He came home in 1953 and stayed in the army for another two years, working as a military policeman. He was in the Provost, which was an unusual switch for an infantryman to make. Then in '55 he quit, with the rank of Sergeant, took his Veteran's grant and went to college."

"Come on Simon, you're holding out on me." I was anxious to hear the facts that focussed all this background.

"Well, he took law courses, criminology and, are you ready?"

"After last night I'm ready for just about anything," I promised him.

"Yeah, well he also took a language, something which wasn't done by a lot of people with that mix of subjects."

From his tone I knew what was coming. "Don't tell me. He majored in Chinese."

Fullwell's excited laugh filled the phone. "How in hell did you guess that?" He laughed again. "It was the last thing in the world I ever expected, he never told me that and I've worked with him for a year. I've never even heard him order egg rolls."

"And then what did he do? Take another course in leg-breaking?"

"No." Fullwell grew sober again. "No, then he went legit, he quit college without a degree and joined the police department in Hamilton."

"He wouldn't have needed his Chinese there," I said. "That's a steel town, they hardly speak English, most bars I've been in there."

"I know. It's a tough town." Fullwell said. "He put in a year and a half on the beat, walking tall and sorting out fights. And then, guess what?"

"He joined your company?" I didn't believe it but it speeds conversations along if you take an adversary position once in a while.

Fullwell played his ace. "No. What he did was volunteer for service as a policeman overseas."

I was about to ask where but he rode in almost at once, "In, of all places, Hong Kong."

I whistled. "And then suddenly we're investigating a bashing at a site controlled by Hong Kong money. We move out a little and find ourselves faced with hoods who kick holes in people with kung fu and talk Cantonese, which is the way Chinese is spoken in the colony."

"Right. Right, right on the money." Fullwell almost crowed. "We find ourselves in a situation where a man with a Hong Kong background might be considered a suspicious character. And then to top it off, some little rounder with nothing to gain accuses him of being crooked."

We were both silent for a moment, then I said. "I've got to talk to this guy, very, very soon."

 

 

 

Chapter 23

 

 

W
e discussed it a little longer. Fullwell was still surprised that the homicide guys hadn't taken Willis in. I wasn't. I knew better. The facts I had given them didn't make a case. All it gave them was hearsay of hearsay connecting Willis to a nonfatal beating, not a murder. So, unless he had come unglued and started confessing they wouldn't have had anything to lock him up for. It was normal and legal and expected, but it didn't change my mind that he was behind the whole chain of events.

"I think I should head up to his place and talk to him. He'll deny everything and raise hell, but maybe I can put a bit of pressure on where the police couldn't," I said. My wrists were hurting this morning and deep breaths still brought up memories of the smoke in that car the night before. I would be a while getting over this particular case and I wasn't as concerned with law as I was with finding out who was behind it all.

Fullwell grunted. "Good idea. I'll come with you."

"No. I don't want you booted out of your job for running interference," I told him. "This is kind of personal. I'll keep it that way."

I thanked him and hung up and set Sam on guard in the house. Then I took a taxi to where I'd left my car and spent a few minutes looking for devices that hadn't been put in place by General Motors. These people, whoever they were, played for keeps and I didn't want sticks of dynamite leaving souvenirs of me all over the scenery. But the precaution was unnecessary; there was nothing around the motor or under the car. I didn't even locate a bug of any kind, so after a second check I put the key in and started up.

By now it was eight thirty and the streets were full of commuters, headed down where the dollar bills grow.

I didn't envy any of them. It was good to be alive and moderately independent, out on a fishing trip with some hope of wrapping up this entire mystery within the next hour or so. I wasn't even sure what I was going to do when I found Willis, but investigations have a dynamic of their own, like stage plays. They usually start abruptly, then slacken while you race around looking for leads. And then things start to come together faster and faster, leading you to an arrest and the inevitable slowdown. I figured I was there now, just ahead of the arrest. If I had to lean on Willis a little to get cooperation, that was fine by me, I wasn't a policeman on this case, just an injured citizen. I had the same rights as everybody else, including the right to get exercised when people tried to set fire to me.

I found his house, in the south end of Forest Hill village. It's a primarily Jewish neighborhood, full of beautiful homes with Mercedeses in the double garages. This far down, close to St. Clair Avenue, it starts to shade off into more down-to-earth places but this house looked like three hundred grand's worth.

I pulled my Chev into the driveway, went to the door and rang a few times but nobody answered, so I knocked until my wrists started hurting again, but still got nothing.

As far as I could tell there was nobody looking out at me through the neighbors' lace curtains but I went into my fallback routine, walking back to the car and opening the trunk. I have a shovel in there, part of my emergency gear for winter driving in Murphy's Harbour. I didn't think anybody watching would know a shovel from a spade. They would never lay hands on one for themselves. Holding it made me some kind of workman, a nonperson as invisible as the postman in that Father Brown story.

I took it and walked back around the edge of the house onto a good stone patio in the shade of an oaktree that had been there before they dug the foundations for the house. It screened me from any of the houses behind and I spent a few seconds checking the back door and windows. I was in luck; one of the windows was open a touch. It was a casement style and there was no fly screen so I was able to hop over the sill and into the house inside ten seconds.

I found myself in a large room, decorated in the way that says "Money" loud and clear. It made me uneasy. I was ready for a confrontation with Willis, but I wanted it on my own terms. Right now, I had broken in, and that made me illegal. I slipped out to the front door, opened it and stood on the mat calling up the stairs, "Hello, Mr. Willis," in the kind of voice that Avon Ladies might use. Nobody answered but I stayed nervous; it was only two days since I'd walked in on Tony's corpse. I didn't want to find myself framed, or worse yet, ambushed, one more time. I kept calling as I made a quick spin through the downstairs.