Live Bait (20 page)

The ground floor was deserted but there were no signs of trouble, the place was neat, there was food in the fridge, including a fresh quart of milk, so it looked as if he was still in residence, unless he'd skipped out this morning. If so, he must have had a real pile of cash on hand; he hadn't bothered to pick up the valuables. There was a set of silver in the dining room that had cost a year of my pay.

One thing was certain, I decided: the man wasn't living on what he earned at Bonded. A house like this needed an income well into six figures. But I didn't have much time to theorize. I had just come out of the kitchen and reached the stairwell when the front door was kicked open. I spun to face it, trying to compromise between a fighting crouch and a look of surprise. My right hand had gone into my jacket pocket to grip my only weapon and I was prepared to rush anybody who threatened me. But there was no need. The man in the doorway was Elmer Svensen, still wearing his hat, grinning now as if he'd won a doorprize.

"Police work a little slow, Bennett?" he jeered. "Taken to B and E, have you?"

I kept it casual. "Hi Elmer, what brings you here?"

He kept his grin on like a conventioneer's nametag. "You do, asshole," he said happily. "I've been wondering when you'd step over the line and today's the day. Breaking and entering."

I walked towards him, elaborately casual. "Get real, I'm just visiting my old workmate, Henry Willis. D'you ever meet him, he works for Bonded Security, I'm working with him."

"In a pig's eye," Svensen said. "They kicked you the hell off the payroll yesterday, don't try to tell me different."

I was beginning to sweat, he was mean enough to take me in unless I was very careful and I had worn out any credibility I brought into town with me as a small-town police chief.

"Where'd you hear a story like that?" I asked him. "I don't think it made the newspapers."

He chomped his chewing gum and grinned. "I hear things all over," he said happily.

"I've noticed. Every time I turn around on this investigation you're there. It gets a man wondering just who your friends are, Elmer."

He shrugged. "You know the score, a copper's only as good as his information. I get around. Now suppose you give me some information about what you're doing in Willis's house when he's not even home."

"We're good friends and this is a social call."

"Sure," Svensen said. "And I'm Miss Toronto." He reached around his waist for the handcuffs on his belt. "Hold your hands out."

"Are you kidding?" I stuck both hands in my pockets. "I'm here at his invitation. I called him earlier at the office but he'd left. He told me yesterday to come up and see him."

Svensen didn't believe me but his confidence was fading as my own grew. I put myself right into the part. And it worked. "Great house he's got, eh?" I wandered off, hands still in my pockets, staring around as if I'd paid a buck admission.

Svensen said, "Don't give me that crap. I got a phone call saying a man was breaking in here. I come right up and here you are, bold as brass."

"Of course." I laughed. "I told you, he invited me. He said if he was out the front door would be open. I tried it, it was, so I came in."

He was weakening. I sensed it and let my own thin shred of confidence tug me back into the dining room where I had noticed a decanter on the sideboard. "This guy really knows how to live. Come and have a look at this dining room. That table looks like it's older than Canada." I picked up the decanter and took the stopper out. "Wow. That's real gold braid booze, just sniff it."

I thrust it towards him and saw him swallow convulsively. It would have been easy to overplay it and offer him a drink but instead I put it down and stuck the stopper back into it. "If you want to wait for him, maybe I can find the coffee," I said. "I guess it's in the kitchen somewhere."

I walked through to the kitchen and started banging cupboard doors. I was getting more and more tense. If Willis came back and found me here with Svensen it would be easy for him to turn me in. I had to get out or get Svensen out right away.

I found a kettle and filled it and put it on the gas stove, then walked back through to the dining room. Svensen was standing by the window but I could tell he had taken a half inch of liquor out of the decanter. I decided to press in. I had to scare him away. "I guess you won't want coffee now," I said innocently.

He turned and stared at me through narrow, angry eyes. "You disgust me," he said in a low voice.

I shrugged. "I seem to annoy a lot of people but it comes with the job. I mean I go around being suspicious all the time. I ask myself questions like, why is a detective from 43 division answering phone calls about suspicious characters in Forest Hill, which is about eight miles out of his area?" I let that one dangle while I walked over to the decanter, picked it up and wiped it with my handkerchief. "And I wonder why a man from 43 division is over in the west end of Toronto in the apartment of a crummy little loan shark who's just been wasted?" I turned to stare at him. "What's on, Elmer, are you turning into a one-man Guardian Angels for the whole city?"

He didn't answer but his anger was building and I knew I would get a reaction very soon, perhaps even the truth. That would be pleasant for a change.

"On top of that, I wonder why a good copper gets a monkey on his back and starts sucking up the rye all day every day?"

"Who're you talking about?" he roared suddenly. He walked over towards me as if he was going to take a roundarm swipe at me but I didn't flinch. He was too slow for me the best day he ever saw, and this wasn't it.

"I'm talking about you, Elmer. You used to be able to take whatever crap the job threw at you. We've had a lot of laughs. And now suddenly you're turning into a snotty-tempered rummy who comes running whenever anybody with a bottle snaps his fingers."

He was ready to hit me but defeat was too deeply ingrained into his soul. "What makes you so goddamn smug?" he said. "Just because you've been trained better'n I ever was to tackle guys with guns, that don't make you special, it just makes you lucky."

His pace was slowing. I didn't answer him. I knew he was still living with that few seconds when those guys had gotten the drop on him. It was a play he sat through every time he closed his eyes. What would have happened if he had refused to hand over his gun? And if they had shot him, would it be any worse than this endless reliving of the moment, over and over? I wanted to comfort him but all he wanted from me was distance.

"I've had the same thing happen, more than once. It happens if you're a copper, some bastard gets the drop on you sometimes. Don't let it stick in your craw."

He swore at me, a dull, tired word. Then he pulled up his sleeve and checked the time. "I've got to be going," he said. "I'll tell Willis next time I see him that you were here. If he wants to press charges, you're going inside."

There was nothing to say so I waved one casual hand and walked back out to the kitchen while he clumped over the polished parquet and slammed the front door behind him.

I debated what to do next. Willis might be home at any moment, I had no time to waste if I was going to check the place out. But on the other hand, I had nothing special to look for. All I wanted was a conversation with him, an honest talk this time, a chance to find out what was going on, and remove myself from it so that Louise and her children were out of danger.

In the end I took a quick spin through the upstairs portion, finding one beautiful master bedroom with Oriental screens and silk sheets and an embroidered dressing gown laid out on the bed and a couple of other rooms, one made up as a spare bedroom, the other containing a pair of double bunks with blankets on them that smelled of sweat. It didn't jibe with the rest of the furnishings and I began to wish I could let the homicide guys share my information. It was starting to look to me as if Willis boarded out wetbacks, possibly Chinese illegals. That would have fit the evidence I'd found, anyway. If he was doing it from his own home, they must be very special people, possibly killers like Wing Lok, guys he didn't want out of his reach. It was all very suspicious and I wished I could find him.

I came down to the front again and prepared to leave. I would head out and search for him, starting at Bonded Security with an interview with his boss. And this evening, when the homicide guys came back on duty I would share my information with them and see what we could do from there.

I was at the door when the doorbell rang, a timid ring, just the faintest chink on the gong, then a pause, then a repeat, just as brief.

Moving as if I owned the place I went to the door and opened it, expecting to find the paper boy or some delivery man there. Instead I found myself looking down at the bent form of Cy Straight, the lawyer. I opened the door wide.

"Well, hello, counsellor, come on in," I told him.

 

 

 

Chapter 24

 

 

O
ne of the illusions you lose early as a policeman is the thought that people will collapse and confess when you bring out the evidence of their crime. Most don't. Either they're psychopaths who don't believe they've done anything wrong, or they're cool professionals who know how to keep a straight face. If Cy Straight was involved in this case, he didn't show it. He looked at me for a moment or two, as he might have done if we'd been introduced at a cocktail party and asked, "Is Mr. Willis in?"

"Fraid not," I told him. "I'm waiting for him now, if you wanna come in." I grinned at him as if all his secrets were known to me, a brothel-keeper's grin. He ignored it.

I wondered at the way he was dressed, blue jeans and a soft sports shirt that looked handmade to cover his hump. It was a weekday morning, I would have expected gray flannel, if he was heading for his office. The only professional touch was a briefcase, one of the old concertina leather variety that looked stuffed with papers. "I didn't know lawyers made housecalls," I said cheerfully. He turned away, not answering. It seemed to me that he was moving fast and I guessed he was angry.

I called after him. "You wanna leave a message?" He said nothing and I loped out of the door and confronted him. He stopped and faced me, calmly, the quiet strength of a man who recognizes his own frailty and ignores the evidence.

"You're in my way," he said quietly.

"I've got a feeling you're in mine, too," I told him. "Everywhere I go on this case, you turn up. Tony tells me about you and he's found dead. I find that Willis is up to no good and when I come to see him, there you are again."

"A lawyer has many clients," he said.

I nodded slowly, knowing for sure that he was involved. "But if this one wasn't a rounder of some stature, you wouldn't have bothered reminding me of that. would you, Cy?"

He looked into my eyes unblinkingly, then pursed his lips and stepped around me, down the drive to his DeLorean which was perched there with the door up like a gull with a broken wing. He ducked under the wing and pulled it closed. He was facing me now and I waved and grinned a big hammy grin. "See you later," I called. He ignored me, backing out without turning his head to glance over his shoulder.

There was nothing left to do at the house but wait for Willis to come home. Maybe that would have been the right thing to do, certainly the place should have been staked out by somebody, but I was too impatient to sit there myself. I had a hunch he was running scared, he might never come back here. And so I decided to go looking for him. Which left me the question—looking where?

I closed up the house, retrieved my shovel from the back patio and drove away, slowly, checking the driver of every car I passed until I was clear of the area completely. I didn't see Willis. And so I drove aimlessly, still churning the case over in my head. I knew that he had left work at Bonded, hours ago. There was no sense heading down there to look for him. So what else could I do? Maybe the best place to look was the address Hudson had given me for Kennie.

It wasn't brilliant, but it made sense. Most petty criminals don't think things through with any care. They don't leave their home turf easily, even when it's too hot to hold them. There was a chance Kennie was still there, and if he was maybe he could direct me to Willis.

But I dropped the thought. The police were looking for Kennie on a charge of attempting to murder me. There was no way he was sitting around his mother's apartment watching TV. The place had been shaken down already and was probably being staked out by some unobtrusive plainclothesmen. When they found him they would ask him all the questions I could think of and more. No, I needed a fresh connection to Willis.

And that was when I finally faced the truth that had been niggling at me since I heard Willis and Hong Kong mentioned in the same breath. Where, I wondered, did Yin Su fit into this puzzle?

I turned north and east to her apartment. I felt disloyal heading there. It bothers me that my work spoils every relationship it touches. Yesterday I had been intoxicated and delighted by her. The same thing would happen today, the moment she opened her door to me. Only today it wouldn't last, I was going there as a policeman. She would be happy to see me and I would have to watch her become first puzzled, then angry as I asked her what she knew about her boss's most important client, the man with the Hong Kong connection.

This time I did stop on my way over, picking up the little fourrose posy from the hippie girl at the corner of Eglinton and Yonge and phoning Cy Straight's office to check if Su was there. She wasn't. Miss Anorexia told me that she was away from the office for the balance of the week. I thanked her and drove to the apartment.

The lobby entrance was unlocked so I let myself in and rode up to the fourth floor, carrying my roses head down, out of the back of my hand so they wouldn't be too obvious. I tapped on her door and waited a moment and then there was a faint movement inside, slow and deliberate and a voice that seemed too low called out, "Who is there?"

"Reid Bennett." I tried to make myself sound loose, relaxed, but I backed off two paces and moved to the left, away from the door so nobody could launch himself out at me in a straight line. And I slid the roses further through my hand, butt first so the stems made a crude dagger. I was as ready as I could get. There was a little scraping sound and then the door was opened slowly. It was Su but she was moving like an old, old woman, and the silk sheath dress, the cheongsam she was wearing had been ripped completely up one side. There was blood on the front of it. She looked at me sightlessly.