Straight No Chaser (19 page)

“Big Bam's waiting for someone to make compensation,” the man said in his civilized tones. “Three days now.”

“Three days?” I said. “Not good at all.”

“No.”

The two guys were still broadcasting into the walkie-talkies. Make what compensation? And who was Big Bam? A pseudonym for one of the four men on Trevor Dalgleish's list? Probably not. Probably someone else altogether. One fact was sure—my new pals in the restaurant knew Trevor. The two walkie-talkie fanatics wound up their broadcasts.

“Ten-four,” the guy in the Hawaiian shirt said.

“Ten-four,” the muscular waiter said.

“Some language is universal,” I said to the man at my table.

He wasn't paying attention to me. He was busy talking to the other three. The language wasn't universal. It was Vietnamese, and it sounded like a set of orders. I sipped the last of the cold tea in my cup and sat by for further developments.

The man at the table got out of his seat and smiled. I did the same with a lot of emphasis on the smiling part.

“Big Bam is going to be at the park,” the man said.

“Great,” I said.

“He wants us to take you there with us.”

“Even better.”

The other three guys assembled to my right. The man in the shirt and tie nodded, and the three guys were on me as fast as a Road Runner cartoon. The one with the muscles held my wrists tight at my sides. The other two patted me down. Hawaiian Shirt took the upper half, Warm-up Suit took the waist down. It was over in a few seconds, and the three guys stepped away from me. They left everything behind, my money, wallet, keys, and a tingling in my wrists.

“The brass knuckles and the blackjack, they're at home,” I said to the man in the shirt and tie. “I could've told you. Saved the bother.”

“Good business is built on precaution,” he said.

The four of them started for the door.

“Just a sec,” I said. “Two beers, imperial roll, chicken dish, tea. I haven't paid the waitress.”

“Big Bam's treat,” the man in the shirt and tie said.

I told him I was mad about treats.

22

T
WO CARS WERE PARKED
in front of the restaurant, half on the sidewalk and half in Oxford Street, and of the two, I would have chosen to ride in the Datsun coupe. It had a sporty look I liked. But I didn't get to choose. The man in the shirt and tie, definitely the leader of the pack of four even if he was the least prepossessing, pointed me into the other car. It was a white Cadillac Seville. The Datsun was dark brown. Both were new models and had all the optionals. These guys shared something with Cam Charles. First cabin all the way.

Hawaiian Shirt and Warm-up Suit drove away in the Datsun. Mr. Muscles got behind the wheel of the Seville. Shirt and Tie and I sat in back, and we followed the Datsun.

“One thing I'm kind of a stickler about,” I said to Shirt and Tie, “is names. For instance, I'm Crang.”

“Mr. Crang?”

“That'll do.”

“Very good. I'm Truong.”

“Nho Truong?”

“Exactly. Your pronunciation is excellent.”

“Been practising,” I said. “And who's that up front?”

“Our driver is Tran.”

“Nghiep Tran?”

“Ah,”Truong said. “Not so accurate this time, your pronunciation.”

“I guess it's back to the mirror.”

“Pardon?”

“Just a little Occidental habit,” I said. “How about the fellas in the Datsun? Dan Nguyen and My Do Thai?”

“You know us all, Mr. Crang.” Truong shook his head. “But you make one error in the pronunciation.”

“Where the ‘N' and the ‘g' come together?”

“Exactly.”

Truong spoke the two names, Nghiep and Nguyen, four times each, rapidly. I repeated the names after him. He shook his head again.

“Back to the mirror? ”Truong said.

“I promise.”

Truong smiled sympathetically. He and I were getting on famously. I decided to go for the whole enchilada.

“That leaves one more,” I said. “Big Bam.”

“He earned the name,” Truong said.

“I didn't think it was Vietnamese.”

“No mirror for it,” Truong said. He was making a joke. I laughed.

“How'd he earn it?” I asked. “Big Bam?”

“Perhaps when the matter is rectified,” Truong said, “he will tell you himself.”

“The matter he's been waiting three days for someone to make compensation on?”

“Not just someone,” Truong said. “Trevor Dalgleish. And now you.”

“Count on it.”

The Seville turned on to College Street, then west to Bathurst and north. I could see the Datsun up ahead on the same route. Whatever Trevor Dalgleish had going with these guys, principally with Big Bam, he must have screwed up. That was interesting. Even more interesting, the time frame for the apparent screw-up, going back three days, took in Fenk's arrival in town and his murder at the Silverdore. The Seville hung a left at Harbord. How long could I keep Big Bam and his guys thinking I was connected to Trevor? That'd be delicate. It had to be long enough for me to weasel out a few more facts, but not long enough for them to figure me for a fake. The car wound north of Bloor and on to Christie Street. I knew what park Big Bam must be waiting at: Christie Pits.

The Seville parked on the street that overlooked the Pits from the north side. The Datsun was at the curb about a block further west on the same street. Three or four other cars were parked in between the two. One car stood out, a red Porsche convertible. No one was in it.

Truong got out of the back of the Seville, walked around to the front, and climbed in the passenger seat beside Tran. Truong opened the large glove compartment and slid something out. I leaned over the seat. Truong had a money tray in his lap. Each compartment was at least partly filled. Twenties, fifties, hundreds. The hundreds compartment was close to overflowing.

I sat back and looked out the side window into the park. It took up ten or twelve acres, and it dropped about thirty feet below street level, which is where the name came from. The Pits. Christie Pits. There was a swimming pool on the far western edge of the park, a wading pool, a fenced-in baseball diamond, and three or four softball diamonds. At the south end, old men played bocce, and spread around the acres there were benches, drinking fountains, other amenities. So what brought Big Bam, whoever he was, and his activities, whatever they were, to this haven of rest and recreation?

Tran, the muscular guy at the Seville's wheel, got on his walkietalkie. As best I could make out, he seemed to be in touch with two or three good buddies. The guy who had the walkie-talkie under his Hawaiian shirt had to be one, broadcasting from the Datsun. Who were the others? Tran gave me a clue. As he talked, he kept glancing into the park. I followed his glances. A guy sitting on a bench beyond the baseball diamond's right outfield looked like he was talking into his sleeve. He must be another of the communicators. And a man in a green windbreaker squatting on the slope that ran up the Christie Street side of the hill had his head hunched over a small object, probably a walkie-talkie.

Tran lowered his own walkie-talkie.

“Set,” he said to Truong.

Truong looked at his watch and nodded. I looked at my watch. Two o'clock on the button. Truong and Tran were focussing on the part of the park immediately below us. I did likewise. They knew what they were watching for. I'd have to learn.

It was a slow day in the Pits. Two o'clock on a Monday afternoon. The kids were in school, and it was too early for the office softball teams to hit the diamonds. A couple of mothers were guiding toddlers through the wading pool, and two or three dog-walkers, paper bags in hand, were airing their mutts. That was it, apart from the man sitting on the bench at the bottom of the hill on our side of the park, the north side.

The man had his back to us, and he was reading a newspaper. Looked like the
Globe
. He had on a light-grey suit, no hat, and his hair was black. I guessed—his hair, build, all-round persona—that he was Vietnamese.

Another guy was scrambling down the hill behind the bench that the Vietnamese with the
Globe
was sitting on. The scrambler, on the portly side, was wearing a suit, tie, and summer fedora, and didn't give the impression he was used to coping with steep hills on foot. He stumbled to the bottom and sat on the bench beside the Vietnamese. They chatted, and in the course of the conversation, not long, the guy in the fedora looked back, first at the Seville, then, craning around, at the Datsun down the block. He was making a lot of motions that seemed to say, yeah, sure, he understood, he agreed. The Vietnamese wrote something on the top sheet of a pad of paper, ripped off the sheet, and handed it to the other guy. The two shook hands, and the man in the fedora started back up the slope. His progress was slow, and he was aimed at the Seville.

“That Big Bam down there on the bench?” I asked Truong.

“Of course.”

“How about the sluggish chap?”

Truong twisted in the front seat and gave me his version of an impatient look.

“Oh,” I said. “Customer?”

“Of course.”

The customer arrived at the Seville, at Truong's side. Truong pressed the button that lowered his window, and the customer beamed at him. His face was pink, and his upper lip was lined in small beads of sweat. Apart from that, in his nice linen suit and rep tie and new fedora, he seemed the model of respectability. He was holding out his sheet of paper to Truong.

“Hell of a climb, heh, heh, the hill, heh, heh,” he said. He was breathing hard.

“Twenty-eight hundred,” Truong said to him. Truong was reading the figure on the sheet of paper.

The portly man had money in his hand, six five-hundred-dollar bills. Truong accepted the bills. He took two one-hundreds out of the appropriate compartment in the money tray and handed them to the man. To the customer. Truong wrote something in the corner of the sheet of paper. It seemed to be his initials. He gave it to the man and raised the car window. The portly guy headed down the street in the direction of the Datsun. He wasn't wasting any tune.

“So far,” I said to Truong, “it looks all take and no give.”

“Wait,” Truong said.

“Always been a failing of mine. Waiting.”

I waited, and didn't get much wiser. The portly guy hurried up to the window on the Datsun's passenger side and handed his sheet of paper to the guy in the blue warm-up suit. Was he Dan Nguyen or My Do Thai? Whoever he was, he handed the portly guy a second piece of paper in exchange for the first, the one with the twenty-eight hundred and Truong's initials on it. The portly man pocketed the second piece of paper and disappeared out of sight beyond the Datsun.

Somebody else was on the bench with Big Bam, a younger guy in jeans and a terrific black sport jacket. Had to be a Giorgio Armani jacket. He followed the same drill as the portly man, except he wasn't breathing hard when he got to Truong's window. He was in for an even five thousand. He paid, took back his initialled paper, and trotted on to the Datsun. He looked smooth.

It kept up that way, people moving from Big Bam on the bench to Truong in the Seville to the guys in the Datsun. Money changing hands and sheets of paper getting traded. I lost track of the customers. There were two kids who were about seventeen and had on Upper Canada College blazers. There were numerous guys who looked like they sold life insurance. There was one matron in a flowered dress. One black guy about the size of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and with the same amount of hair. One tough little guy who had a lip on him and complained about the price. Truong ignored him. Truong had other matters on his mind. Mostly money. The money tray overflowed. Truong counted five-hundred-dollar bills into stacks of twenty, bound them with large rubber bands, and pushed them into the back of the glove compartment. He did the same with the hundred-dollar bills. Bound them in stacks of fifty. There was a fortune in money in the glove compartment. I lost track of it too.

Close to four o'clock, a tall guy with the beginnings of a gut took his place on the bench beside Big Bam. They talked. The talk lasted longer than the conversations with other customers, and it was accompanied by much arm-waving from the tall guy. He left the bench, but he didn't have a piece of paper in his hand, and he didn't climb the hill to the Seville. He crossed the park and sat next to the guy with the walkie-talkie on the Christie Street slope.

Two more customers went through the usual drill: a chat with Big Bam, up the hill, pay at the Seville, collect paper at the Datsun. When they were done, Big Bam waved the tall guy with the incipient gut back to the bench. This time, he gave the tall guy a slip of paper. The tall guy started up the hill. Big Bam stuck out his right hand and pointed first at the guy on the Christie Street slope and then at the guy on the bench beyond right field. Those two, it stood to reason, had to be lookouts, watching for cops or other transgressors. When Big Bam signalled them, both got on their walkie-talkies. Voices came over the walkie-talkie in the Seville. Tran took the messages without answering back. It was all Vietnamese to me.

The tall guy arrived at Truong's window and handed in his piece of paper. It was, on the basis of the amounts that had been established by the other customers, for comparative peanuts. Six hundred and twenty-five dollars. The tall guy was in his early thirties, and besides the swelling stomach, he had a face scarred by ancient acne. The six-twenty-five he passed to Truong came in a fat wad of crinkled fives, tens, and twenties. Tran gave the bills a look of disgust. Truong, the old pro, treated the money as business as usual. He initialled the paper and gave it back with a polite nod.

Big Bam and the two lookouts had come up the hill and settled inside the Porsche. They sat there. Nothing else. No revving of engine or other indicators of imminent activity. But something was up. I could feel a tightening of the mood inside the Seville.