Stranglehold (12 page)

“Allie, tell your mom her old friend Ari called from Canada,” he managed to say in one breath. A slight improvement, perhaps, over his first unrecorded message.

What else to say? Allie’s mother had been a professor at the University of Toronto a number of years earlier. Her husband then, also a professor, had been stabbed to death by a deranged student from his linguistics class. It had been Greene’s case. A year after it was over, he’d hooked up with her and they’d lived together for a while, until she returned home, got married, and had her daughter, Alison. He’d seen the child grow up in the photos she sent him every December, but they hadn’t spoken in years.

He closed his eyes. His living room was starting to spin. Quit while you’re ahead, he thought, and hung up. He looked at the half-smoked joint on the plate in front of him. When he’d showed up at the bakery this afternoon, before
Kennicott arrived, Brian Silver had taken one look at him and said, “I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but you look like total shit.”

Silver had never gotten entirely beyond their last year or two of high school, when they’d spend most afternoons getting stoned in Greene’s basement. “Be careful, this is really strong stuff,” he had warned Greene, giving him a couple of joints. “Not like when we were kids.”

He was right. It was powerful as hell. Especially on top of the half bottle of Polish vodka his father had given him, which Greene had already almost finished.

Pulling himself up, he stumbled to the washroom and braced himself, holding the sink. He ran the cold water and put his head under it. Boy, he’d love to vomit.

He lifted his head, dripping water all over the floor. He didn’t care. He cupped his hands under the tap and drank cold water from them. Then he grabbed a towel, dried off his hair, and wrapped the towel around his neck.

Wait. He thought of another woman he knew. She lived in New York. It’s Monday night, which was her deadline. She’s probably long gone, but what the hell, leave another message. Just keep calling women and leaving messages. Shit.

Back in the living room he found his cell phone. Let’s see. There it is. Cell, home, work.

He lay on the floor and tapped the work number.

“Kwon,” she said a second later. The phone had hardly rung.

“Oh, Margaret, hi.” Greene heard typing and the clatter of busy office in the background. He thought about hanging up.

“Ari, is that you?”

He swallowed hard but couldn’t speak.

“Ari? Your name came up on my call display.”

“Yeah. I didn’t think you’d be there. I was going to leave message.” Had he just said “leave message” instead of “leave a message”?

“Hang on,” she said.

Her voice was muffled by her hand over the phone receiver. He picked up a few words. “Amazing . . . We need a picture . . . Fuck that, no way we’re using a stock shot.”

Kwon lived and worked in New York, where she was a story editor at
Faces
, a weekly celebrity gossip magazine. Last year she’d been in Toronto covering a
high-profile case of his. They’d become friendly, but nothing more. She loved poking fun at him, and right now he just needed to hear a woman’s voice.

“Ari Greene, Mr. Nice Guy,” Kwon said, her voice now clear. “Amazing to hear from you. Any more good crime in Toronto?” She laughed.

“I remembered that Monday night is your deadline night, so, you know, I thought I’d give a quick call.” His voice was higher than usual. And it felt like he was talking very slowly.

“You never forget a word,” she said. “We’re having a crazy night. How are you?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Perfectly great.”

“Ari, you don’t sound right.”

He breathed. Why did I do this? he thought. “Long day. I’ll let you get back to your celebs.”

“Wait,” she said. “Don’t hang up. I’ve got some great news to tell you.”

She put her hand over the phone again. He was too tired to listen to the scraps of her conversation.

“No one knows this here yet,” she whispered, coming back on the line. “I’m engaged.”

“Wow,” Greene said. “Wonderful.”

“He’s even a nice guy, can you believe it. All your fault, you know.”

“Oh, why’s that.”

She laughed her big hearty laugh, which always seemed too loud for her slight body. “Fill in the blanks. I got to go. Keep in touch.”

“Of course,” he said, but she’d already hung up.

You’re being pathetic, he thought, rolling over on the floor. He reached for the joint, lit it, and inhaled as deeply as he could. Held the smoke down. One, two three, four.

His lungs were searing. He blew it out and started to cough. Violently. He grabbed the bottle and swigged it back.

There was a sound. His phone was ringing.

“Ari Greene,” he said very slowly. Who the hell would be calling so late?

“It’s me,” Margaret Kwon said.

“Oh,” he said.

“You sounded so bad on the phone I checked the newswires for Toronto. I can’t believe Jennifer Raglan was murdered.”

“Tell me about it.” He was definitely slurring his words now.

She sighed. “Ari, I know about you and Jennifer,” she said.

“What?” he practically shouted. “What do you know?”

“Please,” she said. “I’m a woman. I saw the way you two looked at each other in court.”

“Shit,” he said. “I shouldn’t have called.”

“Ari, I’ve never heard you sound like this.”

“What’s your fiancé’s name?” He needed to change the subject.

“Anton. He’s a Greek dentist. Couldn’t be less like me if you tried. Thirty-eight, never married, and normal. My friends say in Manhattan that’s an endangered species.”

He lay back on the floor. He’d never see Jennifer again. How could this have happened? He felt the tears running down the sides of his cheeks. “You deserve him,” he managed to say.

She must have sensed he was crying, because neither of them spoke for a long time.

“I know you loved her,” she said at last.

“It’s impossible to believe,” he said.

Again they were silent.

“Ari, that night you drove me to Niagara Falls, and we sat together at your spot, where the water goes over the edge,” she said.

He nodded. It was the only time they’d been out of the city together. A quiet, special moment between them.

“You knew, didn’t you?” she asked.

He closed his eyes. “Yes but –”

“I know, bad timing. Now Jennifer’s gone, and I’m getting married.”

He was starting to fade out. “Be well, Margaret,” he whispered. “Be happy.”

He hung up, and a wave of exhaustion hit him so hard he knew he had no chance of getting off the carpet before he fell asleep.

“HELLO, HELLO, HELLO. COME IN, COME IN,” BARCLAY CHURCH SAID TO AWOTWE AMANKWAH,
swinging around in his chair and popping up out of it, an oversize arm extending a huge hand in greeting.

Amankwah had not been in the editor-in-chief’s office for a few years. The first thing he noticed was that Church had completely rearranged the furniture from the way his predecessor had it. He’d pushed the desk against a wall, so when he swivelled his chair he was right in front of whoever had come to see him. That meant employees no longer had to talk to their boss over the barrier of an imposing desk.

Amankwah had been warned by his colleagues that their meetings with Church had been unusual, to say the least. The guy was eccentric as hell. But everyone seemed to like him.

In just a few weeks he’d radically transformed the newspaper. Especially the front page. Church wanted the most sensational stories and he played them up big-time above the fold. This morning there was a photo of Oprah Winfrey and Tiger Woods, who were in town for the film festival and, along with other big-name celebrities, had attended some charity event at a local golf club yesterday morning. Beside it was the Jennifer Raglan murder story Amankwah had thrown together, complete with a smaller picture of the entrance to the ultratacky Maple Leaf Motel. The headline read:
STRANGLEHOLD: CROWN ATTORNEY MOTEL MURDER MYSTERY.
And to top it all off, below the fold, Amankwah had a second byline with an equally lurid headline:
DEIRDRE, THE HOCKEY PLAYERS’ AFTER DATE, IN THE PENALTY BOX
.

Could there be a better moment to have his personal meeting with the paper’s new editor?

“Let’s get this straight, right from the ruddy beginning,” Church said, a goofy grin on his face as they shook hands. “How the fuck am I supposed to pronounce your first name?”

Amankwah laughed. He’d been explaining this for a lifetime. “Start with
a
as in a reporter.
Wat
as in lightbulb and
way
as in that’s the right way to pronounce my name. A lot of people simply call me Double A.”

Church motioned Amankwah to a seat, sat down himself, wheeled his chair up close, took off his glasses, and cleaned them with his shirt. “I’ve got it. Start with
a
as in my editor’s an arsehole,
wat
as in wot the hell does he want me to write about?, and
way
as in which way is the exit so I don’t have to work for this twit? How’m I doing?”

“Not bad.” Amankwah smiled.

Church slapped his hand hard across his knee, grabbed a thick file from his desk, and waved it at Amankwah. “We’ll be on a first-name basis for sure. Awotwe,” he said, pronouncing the name perfectly. “There isn’t any room in my pea-size brain for your last name.”

“No problem,” Amankwah said.

Church bounded out of his chair and tossed his hands in the air like wings. “Awotwe, why don’t you just take my seat? Do my job? Bloody hell, except for Queen Oprah and the Tiger, you own the front page. Fantastic, fantastic, fantastic stuff.”

“It’s been a good twenty-four hours,” Amankwah said.

“Oh no. None of this boring Canadian modesty, please.” He grabbed Amankwah by the shoulders. “Please, please, please. I mean it. Sit in my chair.”

He pulled Amankwah over and sat him down.

“I bow down before talent,” Church said.

Amankwah couldn’t believe his eyes. The editor of the
Toronto Star
, the biggest newspaper in Canada, was down on his knees, throwing his arms up and down, like a devout Muslim at prayer.

He couldn’t help himself, he started to laugh.

Church sat back on his haunches and clutched his hands to his heart. “Yes, at last” – he beamed – “we are having fun.” He duckwalked on his knees over to his desk, reached up for the thick file, pulled it down, and waved it at Amankwah.

“I’ve read every article you’ve written for the paper since you joined. Shit, man, you were red-hot for the first six or seven years. Brilliant stuff. Then you went right in the crapper.” At last he got up and sat down in the visitors’ chair. “I looked at your personnel file. Bingo. No fucking wonder. Your wife left you for a boring white guy and suddenly your copy is as wet as a baby’s nappy. Nobody’s having any fun. That about right?”

“I – I guess so.” Maybe this guy really was an asshole, Amankwah thought.

Church tossed the file on the floor and looked straight at him. “Mine left me for a Chinese chappie. Hong Kong money. Yachts. Country houses, horses and dogs, and all that hang-around-and-do-nothing rubbish. Creep was about five foot four and she’s almost six foot. I went quite dotty. Even did a bit of a slasher.”

Without ceremony, he rolled up his sleeve and showed Amankwah a number of deep scars on his left arm. “They do the counselling thing with you? Depression. Lithium. All that touchy-feely, voodoo, boo-hoo stuff? Must have, because the last two years you’re filing ace stories again.”

“Thanks,” Amankwah said, breathless. “Part of the deal when I almost got fired was the counselling. But I didn’t do the drugs.”

“Good move. I tossed them after a month. Pills make you as boring as a roomful of newspaper executives. What’s this nonsense about you doing night shifts in the radio room? That’s no bloody fun.”

Amankwah shrugged. “Support payments. I want to see my kids.”

“Well, screw that. I told the publisher we’re bumping you up to feature writer, that’s a fifteen percent raise. Should have been done two years ago, so today you’re getting a catch-up cheque for twenty thousand. That enough? I can’t have my top talent doing the job of an intern at three in the morning.”

Amankwah tried to stay calm. He wasn’t even sure whether he nodded.

“Done.” Church grabbed the front page of the paper from his desk. “Bloody good story, isn’t it? Brilliant. Former head Crown attorney strangled to death in a sleazy motel.” His eyes grew wide with excitement.

“Raglan was a very good lawyer.”

“Even better. Front-page stuff for weeks.”

“She has three teenage kids,” Amankwah said.

“Yes, very tragic, absolutely horrific, our hearts go out blah, blah, blah. Anyone know who she was doing the horizontal dance with?”

Church’s counselling clearly didn’t include sensitivity training, Amankwah thought. “No clue.”

“Well, mate, this is your story. Gold mine if I ever saw one.” He flipped the paper over and stabbed a long finger at Amankwah’s second story. “I love this ‘Deirdre, the After Date’ piece. Love, love, love it. What the hell is going on with the cops and the call girls?”

“Exactly what I want to find out,” Amankwah said.

Church threw the paper on his desk and jumped up. He grabbed a phantom shovel and made exaggerated digging motions, flinging imaginary dirt everywhere. “Dig, Mr. Amankwah,” he shouted. “Dig, dig, dig.”

Mr. Amankwah
. Church had pronounced his last name perfectly.
A
as in I’m
a
reporter.
Man
as in the Isle of Man.
Kwah
like the French word
quoi
. A . . . man . . . kwah.

Yes, he thought, watching Church flail away like a child at the beach with a new toy shovel. This was going to be fun.

EXCEPT FOR THE TWO HOURS OF SLEEP HE’D GRABBED ON ONE OF THE BEDS IN THE NAP
room in the basement of police headquarters, Daniel Kennicott had spent every moment working on the case.