Striking Out (9 page)

There was still no sign of Maggie. After I parked behind the garage, I went down to her place behind Janet Sachs’s house. It seemed to me that there were fewer boxes than there had been before. Had she been back?

I knocked on Sally’s door to see what she and T.C. knew.

“Oh, great. We need to talk to you,” T.C. said. “Can you come in for a sec?”

“Why not?”

I followed him into the kitchen, where Sally was at the sink, peeling potatoes. Anthony was at the kitchen table.

“Me and Anthony went around the neighbourhood today.”

“Anthony and I, dear,” said his mother. “Hi, Kate.”

“Hi, Sally. What were you and Anthony doing?”

She laughed.

“Not her, me,” T.C. said. “Anthony and I went around the neighbourhood.”

Sally and I applauded. The boys rolled their eyes.

“Tea?” Sally asked. “I just made a pot.”

I went to the cupboard for a mug.

“So, what did you find out?”

“A lot of stuff,” T.C. said. “We talked to a lady who saw some guys talking to her.”

“Let me tell it,” Anthony said.

T.C. shut up, not looking pleased.

“Okay,” Anthony began, importantly. “Like, the first houses we went to, no one was home during the day. But the fourth house, like in the block behind here, I talked to a lady who was looking out her window on Tuesday morning. She says she saw a guy in a suit walking along the alley. He wasn’t anyone from around here, she said. That’s why she watched. Tell the truth, I think she’s probably just nosy.”

“She saw the guy yelling at Maggie,” T.C. said.

“Not at first,” Anthony said, taking his story back. “At first they were just talking. Then he showed her something and she began to yell at him. He grabbed her, and she was struggling and yelling.”

“What happened then?”

“Then the lady’s phone rang,” Anthony admitted. “By the time she got back to the window, there was no one there.”

“Maggie was gone?” Sally asked.

“Yeah,” Anthony said.

“What did she tell you about the guy in the suit?” I asked.

“She didn’t see him too well,” Anthony said. “Like, she’s kind of old and stuff.”

“Was he tall? Short? Young? Old?”

“She said he was kind of average size, and young. Not a kid, but not an old guy.”

“Did she say what kind of suit he was wearing?” Sally asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, that could be a clue. Did it look expensive or cheap? If it was cheap, it could have been a social worker or a cop or an inspector from the city or something. If it was expensive, it’s a different story.”

“I bet it was of those God’s Law people,” I said. “What else? You said she’d seen guys. Plural.”

“She said there’s also some rough-looking man been hanging around. She saw him talking to Maggie. Or trying to talk to her.”

“Any better description than rough-looking?” Sally asked.

“She said he was filthy, like a tramp,” Anthony said. “And he was wearing a black hat. Riding a bicycle. We think we know who he is.”

“I’ve seen him too,” I said. “He was bothering her on Monday when I was there.”

“We think it’s Mr. Bottle,” T.C. said. “He’s the guy who goes through the blue boxes every week. Don’t you ever hear him in the night?”

“No.”

“That’s because your bedroom’s at the back of the house. I see him every week. About five in the morning he comes by and goes through all the bottles and cans in the blue boxes when they’re out at the curb.”

“What’s he looking for?” Anthony asked.

“Maybe returnable bottles for the deposit,” I said.

“Or bottles with booze left in them,” T.C. snickered.

“We’ve seen him with Maggie before,” Anthony said. “Two or three times. Once when we were talking to her, he even came and asked me for money.”

“What did she do?”

“Told him to piss off,” T.C. said. “Said it was her turf.”

“And?”

“He did.”

“Sounds pretty harmless,” I said. “Anything else, Anthony?”

He started to speak. T.C. interrupted him. He looked a little embarrassed.

“We went through some of Maggie’s stuff,” he said.

“Do you think that was a good idea?” I asked.

“Well, we thought maybe we could find some clues. And we did. Look.”

He got up from the table and brought back a shoebox.

“This looked pretty important. I don’t think she would have left this behind.”

He opened the box and pulled out some photographs. One was of a couple standing on the steps of what looked to be a prairie farmhouse. Judging by their clothes, it was probably taken in the thirties. The couple stood stiffly, squinting at the camera, faces serious. Another photo showed the woman from the first picture with a round-faced baby in her arms, wearing a little smocked dress.

“This might be her parents, and even her as a baby,” I said.

The next picture showed the father, if that’s who it was, dressed in an army uniform. Then there were much later pictures, these in colour. One showed an extremely overweight older woman sitting on a porch with four children of various ages sitting on the steps next to her. It was the porch from the first picture, and the fat woman was maybe the young wife years later with her grandchildren.

Finally, there was a studio portrait with part of it torn out. It showed a prosperous-looking woman sitting on a couch surrounded by the same four children, a few years older. The girl had a cat on her lap. The part that had been torn out had obviously been the father’s place in this happy family scene.

“Don’t you see?” Anthony asked, excited. “It’s Maggie. Don’t you recognize her?”

Barely. The face was without lines, the hair, blonde, was carefully coiffed, and the smile was broad and untroubled. I looked at the back of the picture. It was from the Anderson Photo Studio in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

“That’s amazing,” I said.

“We thought it too important to leave out where someone could steal it,” T.C. said. “And we’ve got another bag of her stuff on the porch. It was inside one of her boxes. Do you want to see?”

Sally shook her head at me from behind his back and touched her nose. I got the message.

“Tomorrow, maybe,” I said. “I’ve got some things I’ve got to do before I go back to see Andy.”

“Should we tell the police about the man in the suit?” T.C. asked.

“We should probably find out a bit more,” I said.

“We could go now and talk to the lady again,” T.C. said.

“Tomorrow will do,” Sally said. “Anthony’s mother wants him home by four-thirty.”

“I’ve got to go over to my aunt’s for a barbecue,” he said. “Besides, some of the people who weren’t in today might be there tomorrow.”

“That sounds like a good project,” I said. “Count me in.”

I put the photos back into the shoebox and handed it to T.C.

“And keep these safe for her.”

Andy’s feast wasn’t a success. When I got back to the hospital with the goodies, he was exhausted from Jim’s visit. He made an effort, tried to be appreciative, but could only manage three ribs and half of the Martini I’d brought him in a thermos, which, he complained, made it taste like tea.

After about an hour, I left him to enjoy his misery alone and went home to Elwy. I heated up the remains of Andy’s dinner and ate it in front of the television watching an old black and white weepy I’d taped on TV Ontario. I love sad movies, figuring that the tears shed on make-believe won’t fall in real life. I fell asleep on the couch, woke up at three in the morning for long enough to crawl into my lonely bed, and again, for good, at seven. I made a pot of tea and checked the papers.

The police-CARP controversy, which had been pushed off the front pages by other events, had taken a new twist. A former Liberal member of the provincial legislature, who has long been a voice of reason in black-white relations in the city, had said, on a phone-in show, that the police department is seen as an “occupying army” within the black community, explaining why people don’t co-operate with police in their investigations.

The explanation made sense to me, but not to the chief of police, who called a press conference to condemn the remarks the minute they were reported to him.

I tossed the
Planet
without going any further into it and picked up the other morning paper and went right to the cryptic crossword. I finished it in a respectable seventeen minutes, and since it was still too early to call anybody, I went for a walk.

Outside, it was already hot. The hazy air made my eyes water. I turned up the laneway, Elwy waddling along at my heels.

Perhaps I hoped that Maggie had returned, but I wasn’t surprised to see her old green chair empty. I sat down in it, trying to conjure her presence.

I thought about the mysterious man in the suit. Was he someone who was looking for her, specifically? I liked God’s Law as a possibility. Or maybe it had just been someone from the neighbourhood who happened along and was offended or threatened by her.

People like Maggie can have that effect. “Don’t be too smug,” they seem to say, just sitting there, minding their own business. “As long as I exist, can you truly rest easy? Are you my keeper, too? Aren’t we all each other’s?”

The nagging leads to guilt, which leads, in some, to anger. Maybe that’s all the outburst was.

I sat for a while, trying to imagine Maggie’s world, circumscribed by this alley, by shelters like Moira’s, by fear and pride in equal measure. I imagined her here in the middle of the night when a car’s headlights came down the lane. I imagined her holding herself as still as a deer, trying not to be noticed, trying not to anger anyone.

I would never have that kind of courage.

A blue jay called in a maple tree. A white-throated sparrow sang “Oh Canada, Canada, Canada!” in another. It was nice in the laneway. Peaceful. Someone came out of a house down the laneway and opened his garage door, looking at me curiously. Elwy stood in front of me and meowed. I got up.

“You’re right,” I said. “It’s breakfast time.”

I heard voices behind Sally’s door when we got home, so I knocked. She and T.C. were having breakfast. I toasted a bagel and joined them, while Elwy prowled underfoot, looking for scraps of bacon.

“Are the Hardy Boys ready to get back on the case?” I asked.

T.C. made a face.

“The Hardy Boys? That’s kid stuff.”

“Begging your most humble pardon,” I said. “I didn’t mean to demean your talents in any way. The Hardy Boys were crack investigators, as I remember.”

“Crack,” agreed Sally. “Even crackerjack. And top-notch. Not to mention ripping.”

T.C. got up from the table and grabbed his rollerblades.

“You’re both nuts. I’m going to Anthony’s.”

“What time do you want to go out?” I asked. “This afternoon? There’ll be more people around.”

“Cool,” he said, heading out the door. “Catch you at four. See ya, Mum.”

“‘Cool’?” I asked Sally. “What ever happened to ‘awesome’?”

She shrugged.

“Beats me. I thought ‘cool’ went out of fashion in 1972.”

“We’re living in a retro-chic world,” I said. “Post-modern slang. Tomorrow, ‘groovy’ will be back.”

“Far out,” Sally said.

“That too.”

Sally and I did a quick tidy, and she left for work I took Elwy up the stairs.

Andy, when I phoned him, was a changed man.

“They’re letting me out,” he said. “They’re unplugging my drain this afternoon and letting me go tomorrow morning.”

“Hallelujah,” I said.

“I tried to make them do it today, but it was no go. But they said I could eat whatever I wanted. Can you bring me lunch?”

“Sure, as long as you do better than you did last night. What do you want?”

“A barbecue pork bun from the Chinese bakery on Baldwin Street. Or maybe a falafel from Aida. Or both. Bring me both.”

“An intriguing combination,” I said.

“I can’t make up my mind, is why. And a beer. Smuggle me in a beer.”

“You got it,” I said. “I’m going to do a few things around here first, so I’ll get there around noon, twelve-thirty, okay?”

“I’ll be panting with anticipation,” he said.

“Give me strength.”

“And it will be nice to see you, too,” he added.

“Yeah, sure, fine, ’bye,” I said, and hung up the phone.

Remembering what Moira had told me, I decided to poke around on the Danforth in case people in some of the shops knew Maggie. I got lucky on the third try. The waitress at a greasy spoon at the corner of Broadview, a buxom woman on the young side of middle age, with hair blonder than that God had provided, knew Maggie.

“I haven’t seen her for two, three days,” she said, then turned her head to call down to the man at the grill, a small, trim, steely-haired man with his white shirtsleeves rolled up and a spotless apron over his sharply creased grey pants.

“Spiro, you know the woman who comes in? The one with the shopping bags. You see her yesterday when I was off?”

Spiro muttered something back in Greek They had a brief conversation, then she turned back to me.

“No, he didn’t see her neither,” she said. “Why you ask?”

“I just wondered. Did she come in here often?”

“Every two, three days. Had a coffee, read the papers the customers leave behind, used the toilet.”

The counter man muttered something and she let loose another volley I was glad I couldn’t understand.

“So, sometimes I give her something to eat,” she said to me. “It’s my right. What am I going to do? Throw her out because she’s poor? She treat me good, I treat her good. Why not? She’s a human being like you and me. She’s not garbage because she’s poor. I’ve seen worse trash than her who got jobs and places to live.”

This last was spoken loudly and pointedly in the direction of the cook, who walked to the other end of the counter, lit a cigarette, and picked up the
Mirror
to study the page three pin-up.

“Had she been coming here long?” I asked.

“Few months. One day she shows up, then she comes regular.”

The waitress sighed.

“But you haven’t seen her this week?”

“Maybe Monday. Maybe Tuesday. One afternoon. She came in, had a coffee, read the paper. You know, that free paper with those filthy ads in the back they have some freaks deliver it. Boys and girls, all with shaved hair and earrings in their nose. Punks.”

“You mean
NOW
magazine?”

“That’s the one. Nice woman like that, she’s going to be shock when she sees that filth in the back. But maybe she knows about that, what do you think? Living on the streets and all. Probably.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me. Do you know any other places she goes around here?”

She shrugged and looked at the door. Customers were coming in and she’d lost interest.

“If she comes in, can you tell her that Kate is looking for her?”

“If I see her, why not?” she said.

I thanked her and headed out. On the way, I grabbed a copy of
NOW
from the stand next to the door and stuck it in my purse.