Death of a Sunday Writer (20 page)

“Then pay Desk Lamp's owner, and take the rest as your fee.”

Lucy considered this. “Actually, that seems fair.”

“Don't spend it yet. Find it first.”

Lucy remembered an early piece of advice from Jack Brighton. “I ought to go to the police now,” she said.

“You're not going to, though, are you?”

“I'm going to have another look for the money first. And I think I'll just go and see that bookmaker again. Make sure he paid up. The diary isn't clear about that.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“What? Oh, I don't know.” As the subject finally came up, Lucy's eyes filled with tears. “I can't believe it, Nina. A crook? Johnny? But what else can I think?”

“I wish I'd met him. I would know.”

Lucy said suddenly, “I'm not going to accuse him before I'm sure, and even then I'll have to get used to the idea, if you see what I mean. There's no rush. Nobody knows what I've found. I have other work to finish, and then I'll come back to it, when I'm less upset.”

“That sounds right.”

She began at the bank. “I want to have a look at five hundred one-hundred dollar bills,” she said to the assistant manager. It was not the kind of thing you could say to a cashier.

“You want to know what five hundred hundred-dollar bills look like?”

“Yes.”

“Apart from the colour and the pictures, the same as five hundred one-dollar bills. Of course, the one-dollar bill is phased out now, but five hundred two-dollar bills would look the same, better, closer in colour to hundred-dollar bills. Why?”

“I'm researching a television show. We want to show the ransom money.”

“Yes?” The assistant manager, a Japanese boy of about twenty, looked pleased. He disappeared, reappearing with a woman in her fifties who looked as if she enjoyed having her leg pulled by the Japanese boy.

“You really want to see five hundred two-dollar bills?” she asked.

“Yes, please. New ones, I think.”

“For a television show,” the boy said. “They want to show the ransom money.”

“Who's being ransomed?” The manager asked, as pleased now as the boy. “You want to bring the cameras in here?” She looked at the boy. They both giggled slightly.

“I just want to see how big five hundred bills is.”

“About so big.” The woman lifted her hand an inch off the counter.

“Bit higher,” the boy said, raising the woman's hand.

“Now, Jim,” the woman said. “Go and see to my customer. Come in,” she said to Lucy. “I'll show you.”

She stopped Lucy at the door of the vault, disappeared and returned with five thin stacks of bills. “See?”

“Thank you.”

“If you give me a cheque, you can take them away.”

“That's all right. I just wanted to see them.”

“You want to measure them?”

Lucy let herself through the gate. “That's fine. Fine. Thanks.”

“When will it be on?”

“Next season,” Lucy said. “Sunday night. Movie of the week.”

Now that Lucy knew what she was looking for, she searched every hiding place in the office: the pictures again, the back of the mirror, the tiny closet, the desk. There was no money, but in the course of her search, she came across the envelope from the morgue and studied the contents of the wallet again. This time, she saw the significance of the tiny plastic reading lens, and the pair of bifocals.
Trimble was not wearing glasses in any of his pictures; there was another pair of half-glasses in the drawer which he wore for reading, apparently, and yet another pair in his apartment. The plastic lens propped up his vanity by enabling him to read telephone books and race cards without putting on glasses. Lucy slipped on the bifocals from the envelope. They were a good fit on her, but she could see nothing through them. She tried on the reading glasses she had found in the desk and they immediately fell off, an inch, at least, too wide, but by holding them on, she found she could read through them quite well. The bifocals, then, were not his. Now a new scenario formed in her head. The glasses had obviously been dropped near David's body by whoever stole the money. Probably, David had kept the money in his office, perhaps was even handling it, counting it, that morning, and was interrupted. There was a struggle, a scuffle, the intruder's glasses fell off, and David collapsed on them as the thief took the money and ran. All she had to do was identify the owner.

She put the glasses back and finished her search, her head humming with names. Had MacGovern come by to pick up his half? Nolan? The jockey? Johnny. Or one of Cowan's boys? Determined to do each step thoroughly, she put the office back together and drove out to David's apartment. At the door of his block she nearly turned back to do what she knew she should do, but she was reluctant to abandon Johnny to the police until she was quite sure. What troubled her most about Johnny was the possibility that he had been courting her to find out what she had discovered. If that was so, she would go back to Longborough.

Searching the apartment again was simple, for she had already looked in most of the available hiding places.
She took the cushions off the single armchair and prodded every inch. The cracks between the seat and the frame yielded only a paper-clip, some coins, and two peppermints. She took the mattress off the bed and marched up and down it in her stockinged feet; it was made of foam rubber and there were no lumps anywhere.

The next morning, she remembered to make a copy of the diary on a soft disc and seal it in an envelope, on which she wrote, “To be opened if necessary.” This she gave to Tse.

“What's this?”

“Keep it safe. In case.”

“In case of what?” He stared at her, then realising what she meant, he laughed, then quickly got angry. “What the hell are you up to? You think you've found out something, don't you? You think you're going to be killed or something? For Chrissake, stop it. Go to the police.” He reached for the phone. “I'll call them.”

“What are you going to say?”

He slammed the phone down. “What are you up to?” he shouted.

“I think David might have had a lot of money somewhere, and someone came looking for it and I'm going to find out where it is. That's all I want to say right now.”

“I'll tell you something. People do kill each other for money, the kind of people David Trimble knew. You're not going to take any chances like that.”

She stared at him, hearing Geoffrey. Geoffrey would have said, “I'm not having you take chances like that.” They all think they own you, she thought. And, immediately, seeing the worry on Tse's face, she relented. When
Geoffrey said it, he was concerned about himself, out of a fear that his wife would do something to embarrass him for which he would be held responsible. Peter Tse, on the other hand, was simply being protective. He said it because he liked her, wanted to look after her. Still.

“It's just a precaution,” she said, very quietly.

“It's a bloody silly precaution and you're a bloody silly woman.” His anger remained, the anger of a parent who has pulled back his child from the edge of a cliff. “What are you going to do? Run around and tell all the people who knew David that you're looking for his money? Accuse all these people, one by one?”

“I'm going to do a bit more work first. Make certain of what I think I've learned.”

Now Tse was furious. “What the hell are you talking about? What the hell do you think you've found out?”

But Lucy stayed stubborn. She was frightened, of course, but she wanted to be certain of Johnny's involvement. It was becoming another kind of test or trial. “I can't tell you,” she said. “I've got very good evidence that David had a large sum of money around and either it's still here or David was robbed.”

In the violence of his rage, Tse approached her as if to do her an injury. “Your cousin never had a thousand dollars at one time in the last ten years. He was a bookie's runner who fancied himself. A nothing, a nobody, a fool, an arsehole. He liked to rub elbows with the big boys — look at these pictures — but some of the big boys he knew were big-time scum. I want to know what all this is about.”

She had said too much. He wouldn't leave her alone now. “Don't bug me any more, Peter. I promise you, I'll let you know as soon as I can.”

Tse hissed explosively through his teeth and left, slamming the door behind him.

So much for inscrutable, Lucy thought.

The phone rang again, and again.

The discovery that she was surrounded by swindlers nearly drove the agoraphobic woman out of Lucy's mind, but the appearance of the husband reminded her that it was a very easy hundred and fifty dollars a week he provided. Once more, though, she tried to convince him to try to deal with his wife's problems, but when he cut her off she shrugged and put the money in a drawer. This time, she thought, with Nina; but, again, Nina was too busy and again begged her to postpone any intervention until she could be there. “It could be like waking a sleepwalker,” she said. “It'll certainly be a shock when she finds out she's been followed.”

That night Lucy followed the woman down to Bloor Street, where she turned west, driving slowly, obviously dawdling to look at the Bloor Street scene. They crawled along the curb between Spadina and Bathurst and then turned south, past Honest Ed's, to Queen Street, where they turned east again. Now they were passing Lucy's office and she was pleasantly surprised to see how lively the street was at night — if she ever decided to work late.
They made no effort to pass any street-cars until they reached City Hall, where the woman accelerated, scooting across several intersections before settling down to some steady driving.

The Beach, thought Lucy, this is where they say the Beach is. She had heard the name from several people, of whom she had enquired about things to do and see in Toronto, and she had promised herself a visit to the area the next time she had Sunday free. Because on Sundays, they said, Queen Street beyond the race track was the favourite boulevard of all the Torontonians who did not live in the area, attracting thousands of people who sauntered up one side and back down the other, eating, drinking, crowd-watching, and window-shopping the dozens of small stores that had sprung up to serve this new public.

This wasn't Sunday, but something was going on. Much of the traffic turned into a big parking lot near the race track, and the people walked back to Queen Street to what was obviously some kind of street music festival. She could hear the music from the parking lot, and as soon as she joined the crowds she saw them, musicians, singly and in pairs, in small groups and large bands, with and without amplification, banging, plucking, blowing, shaking, in every idiom from folk to rock, and with every sound from New Orleans to tin-whistle paddywhackery.

The crowd was so thick it was impossible to see the woman, and Lucy immediately decided not to care. “I'm enjoying this,” she thought. “Besides, it must be paradise for an agoraphobic, if that's what she is.”

They shuffled from block to block, each occupied by a different musical group. A streetcar came along, trying to
carve a path through the crowd that filled the street; many of the passengers had the worried look of people who find themselves on the wrong tour, but an extraordinary number were hanging out the windows, taking pictures. After a mile or so, she came up to four Peruvians in pot hats, playing pipes of different kinds. One of them began to sing, and by way of chorus, jumped up and down, joined, at first, by the other three, still playing, then by some of the crowd, then by some more of the crowd including Lucy. This is what I came to Toronto for, she thought, waiting for the cue to start jumping again. Who cares about a bunch of crooks?

After the Peruvian jump-up music, she slipped into a doorway to look at her feet, which had been stepped on several times, then decided to go the rest of the way by streetcar. She bought an ice-cream cone and fought her way on to the next car. A small Chinese girl gave up her seat, and Lucy rode happily along for the twenty minutes it took to get back to the parking lot.

Her only dilemma, as she turned the car west on Bloor again, was how much to charge her client. Probably nothing, because losing the woman must invalidate the agreement. And then she saw her car again, fifty yards behind, and Lucy dawdled in the curb lane until the woman passed her and she got back on her tail. A hundred and fifty. Who could tell her nay?

The next day, since nothing could happen about the diary until she made it happen, Lucy decided to clean up the Longborough identification before she did any more. She was very much aware that she was postponing the inevitable by keeping busy, but she couldn't face the immediate
destruction of the dream she had taken away with her from Johnny's farm. She wanted to postpone that decision for as long as possible.

She also wanted to know if her house was still standing. Although the answering machine was programmed to offer her Toronto number, she had not yet heard from The Trog, which had provided a further space to test her feelings about him. She had not missed him at all, but that might only be because life in Toronto had been so full. And she wanted to find out how she felt about Longborough itself, now that she might have to return. Then, too, Jack Brighton had been very relaxed about the assignment, but he would surely require a response soon. She was still in business; she had to forget about Johnny Comstock and finish her other assignments.

As she drove into Longborough that morning, she felt immediately the distance she had travelled in the last few weeks. Downtown Longborough is charmless: a few decaying department stores survive at the main intersections, but most of the life has been sucked out of the centre and spewed up onto a strip of development near the main highway, a strip consisting mainly of outlets of every fast food chain in North America, plus a few motels. There is no refurbished nineteenth century main street with the original (restored) hotel, and the first (1812) grain and feed store now converted into an organic foods store. Longborough's downtown consists of several blocks of utilitarian buildings interspersed with vacant lots. It supplies the day-to-day needs of its citizens, but offers nothing in the way of a piazza in which to meet and stroll and restore the spirit. For the new Lucy, compared to the corner of Queen and Spadina, it was nowhere.