Crang Plays the Ace

by Jack Batten

  “Great,” I said. “Four for bridge.”

  Annie asked for a glass of white wine.

  “Are you a lawyer too, Miss Cooke?” Alice Brackley asked sweetly.

  “Annie,” Annie said. “No, I write about movies and review them on the radio.”

  “How fascinating,” Alice said. She checked in Grimaldi’s direction to see if he thought it was fascinating. He thought Annie was fascinating all by herself. Alice might have looked miffed at the attention Grimaldi was paying Annie. Or maybe I was reading her wrong.

  Alice said she adored Fred Astaire. She had a VCR at home, and almost every weekend she rented an Astaire film. Follow the Fleet was her favourite. Annie said Fred and Ginger made ten movies together. Alice said, Really? She counted nine. The ladies worked it out that the movie Alice was missing was Carefree. Annie and Alice carried on like sorority sisters. Annie told Alice to steer clear of Ghost Story. Fred didn’t sing or dance and it was a dud, even though Melvyn Douglas was in it too. Alice said Fred didn’t sing or dance in The Notorious Landlady either and it was a charmer, even though Kim Novak was in it too. Alice had loosened up. Her frequent glances at Grimaldi were the only sign she might be roping herself in.

  “How about you, Chuck?” I said. “What’s your choice in movies? Little Caesar?”

  Alice Brackley sucked in her breath.

  “You trying to aggravate me, Crang?” Grimaldi said.

  “Isn’t he a kidder?” Annie said to Grimaldi. She was laying her ambassadorial smile on him. “Terrible in polite company.”

  “Just a searching discussion among us film aficionados,” I said.

  Annie got her white wine and there was another Rob Roy for Alice. She steered the movie conversation back on track. Annie responded and Grimaldi chipped in. He liked Goldie Hawn. No telling people’s tastes. He waxed lyrical about Private Benjamin. Alice stayed relaxed as long as Grimaldi was talking and distracted. Annie was enough distraction for him. He directed most of his remarks to her. When he ran out of Goldie Hawn lore, he stood up and said he had an appointment. He beamed fondly on Annie and left. Alice trotted after him. Nobody said anything about the bill.

  “That’s one edgy lady, your friend Alice,” Annie said.

  “And I just thought she talked like Loretta Young.”

  “She’s nice,” Annie said. “Classy in the way that money helps. Pleasant woman. But she’s plenty, plenty nervous.”

  “She was steaming along in imperious form until the Man From Glad arrived.”

  “Dazzling he is.”

  “Wansborough thinks Grimaldi and Alice might have something going.”

  “Different types,” Annie said. “But, what the heck, opposites attract.”

  “That’s only in the physics laboratory.”

  “I detected tiny vibes between them,” Annie said. “Mainly from Alice’s side. Might be one of those crazy mixes, you know, fear and sex and fascination. I’ve seen it before.”

  “In movies.”

  “Real life too.”

  My martini glass was empty. I fiddled it between my fingers. It made a rich, tinkling sound on the top of the table.

  I said, “Uncanny how Grimaldi showed up at old Alice’s gabfest with me. La Serre is way off his territory if he lives out in the Kingsway.”

  “What are you telling me, Crang?” Annie asked.

  “Either Grimaldi wants to keep Alice on a short leash or he’s got his eagle eye on me,” I said. “Doesn’t really matter which. I’d say his main concern is to separate Alice and me.”

  Miriam arrived with another martini.

  “I ordered?” I said to her.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” she said. Her smile was in the Grimaldi league for candle power. “You tapped the table.”

  Girl didn’t miss a trick.

  “So I did, Miriam,” I said. I gave her my expansive look.

  Annie stood pat with her wine. She didn’t give Miriam any kind of look.

  Annie said, “I wouldn’t blame Ms. Brackley if she felt frightened of that Grimaldi man. Under the Mediterranean charm, he’s actually menacing.”

  “Notice how I stood right up to him?”

  Annie ignored the opportunity to compliment my dash and pluck.

  “Go back a bit, fella,” she said. “What was that part about him keeping an eagle eye on your good self?”

  “His heavies paid a visit to me,” I said, “and I can’t believe Grimaldi didn’t order it.”

  I described the meeting in my office with Sol Nash and wide Tony.

  “Crang,” Annie said, “the quicksand is at about the level of your upper thighs.”

  “Not too late for someone to haul me out.”

  “Never mind someone hauling you out. I mean there’s still time for you to pull out on your own.”

  Miriam set down another paper coaster and placed my martini on top of it. She took away the empty glasses.

  Annie said, “Personally, me, if I were standing beside the quicksand with a board in my hands, I’d use it to bop you over the head.”

  “Strong language,” I said.

  “So far,” Annie said, “you’ve been caught shadowing a truck the size of a house, come close to getting beat up by a man who apparently knows how to do it, and you’ve intentionally alienated the two top executives in the company you’re supposed to be checking out.”

  “You haven’t cottoned on to my modus operandi,” I said. “I’m needling the bad guys into submission.”

  Annie asked if we could eat. I let her choose the restaurant. That was my idea of living dangerously. Once, Annie led us to a vegetarian place run by devotees of an Indian mystic. I was starved before we made it back to the parking lot.

  “Great,” Annie said in La Serre. “We’re going to Brasil.”

  “Long way for dinner.”

  “This Brasil,” Annie said, “isn’t spelled with a zed. It’s that Portuguese restaurant in Kensington Market that we went to a few months ago.”

  I put my American Express card on the table and Miriam was instantly at my side. “The bill has been taken care of, sir,” she said. Her smile was beatific. Somebody had given her the large tip. My guess was Ms. Brackley.

  It pays to make friends in high places.

  15

  I WOKE UP Thursday morning with a headache and the beginnings of a plan. The sun shone through a space in the curtains and I lay watching motes dance in its beams. A cloud passed over and blocked the sun. I was gingerly getting out of bed. A cup of coffee eased back the headache. The plan remained in the starting gate.

  I sliced a banana over a bowl of Harvest Crunch and ate it while I read the Globe and Mail. Jay Scott had a long piece on the films of Ron Howard. Scott is a witty and perceptive movie writer, and that afternoon he and Annie were getting together over a Nagra tape recorder. Annie was preparing a twenty-minute item for a CBC radio arts program on whither film in the late 1980s. She had an interview laid on with Vincent Canby of the New York Times. She said she was nervous about interviewing Canby. Not about interviewing Scott. Annie said Jay’s a pussycat.

  Harry Hein was part of my nascent plan. I dialled his number from the phone in the kitchen. The line was busy. Harry Hein is a chartered accountant who practises by himself. Two years earlier, he was a chartered accountant who almost didn’t practise by himself or in anybody else’s company. A slick con man named Tony Holmes had unfolded a cockeyed scheme for Harry. Surefire moneymaker, Holmes told Harry. Couldn’t miss. Holmes said he had a shot at two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of municipal bonds that the Mafia in Buffalo had accepted in return for gambling debts and wanted to unload at forty cents on the dollar. According to the Holmes tale, he also had Arab purchasers who’d take the bonds off his hands at ninety cents on the same dollar. All he needed was a stake to make the buy from the mob in Buffalo. The suckers formed a line at Tony Holmes’ door. Harry Hein was one of them. He socked in twenty grand. Trouble was it was a client’s money. Harry knew he’d got hims
elf shafted when Tony Holmes told him and the other investors that, oops, sorry, the bonds he said he scooped up from the Mafia were lost when the Learjet carrying the bonds to the Arab purchasers in Cairo ran out of fuel and ditched in the Mediterranean. Holmes had a smooth way with words and all the suckers but one swallowed his explanation and took their losses. Harry was the exception. He brought the story to me and I told Holmes that I’d hit him with a civil suit and drop a word in the ear of a contact on the Metro Police fraud squad unless he chose to ante up Harry’s client’s twenty grand. It was ninety-nine per cent bluff, but Holmes came through in twelve hours. I accepted the money, covered Harry’s tracks, and phoned my fraud squad connection. Holmes got four years. Harry said if the Institute of Chartered Accountants had found out what he’d done, they would have hung him out to dry.

  The second time I called, Harry’s line was free. He said he’d be in to me all morning. I left the house and walked up Beverley Street and cut through the university grounds. Harry Hein’s office is on the second floor over a sleek Italian furniture store on Bay Street north of Bloor. It was a sunny, benign day made for an aimless walk. I crossed the front campus toward University College. The University of Toronto doesn’t have much to boast about in the architecture line, but University College fits near the top of the short list. It goes back a century or so, with time out for one historic fire, and it’s a handsome hybrid of a bunch of European styles. Canadian architects used to go in for hybrid. A dash of Romanesque, a pinch of Byzantine, some Tudor, a sprinkling of Italian palazzo. Stir, and fill with people. I walked under the Hart House tower, up Philosopher’s Walk, and east along Bloor past the upscale shops.

  Harry Hein’s office occupies three rooms. He has a secretary, an accounting student, some leather furniture he got on sale downstairs, and a computer. The computer terminal stands beside Harry’s desk.

  “Long time no see, Crang,” Harry said.

  “Couple of years,” I said.

  “You think I don’t remember.”

  Harry shook his head and sucked in air with a faint whistling noise. The head was balding, and Harry’s face was a mix of jowls and bags and creases. He was in his shirt sleeves and had his tie loosened around the collar. He wore crimson suspenders. His desk was a clutter of printouts from the computer. Harry was in his early fifties and he’d never made much money. We sat in chairs in his office.

  He said, “What can I do you for?”

  “I want you to listen to a story, Harry,” I said. “It may be an accounting story.”

  “Shoot.”

  I told Harry about my investigations of the Ace Disposal operations. He listened very attentively. Practice was making me efficient at doing my Ace routine, and I had the story down to about ten minutes, start to finish.

  “One guess,” I said, winding to the end, “is that Ace is leaning on the weigh-masters. Shaking them down somehow.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Harry said. It was his first interruption since I began my recitation. His voice had authority.

  “Tell me why,” I said.

  “Leaning on someone,” Harry said, “means that the someone is paying out to people who are doing the leaning.”

  “That’s the usual definition.”

  “But from what you’ve told me about the way the dumps run,” Harry said, “the weigh-masters would have no reason to pay out to a company like Ace.”

  “Other way around maybe,” I said. “You mean Ace has no reason to make the weigh-masters pay.”

  “Right,” Harry said. He snaked his thumbs under the crimson suspenders. “ It would be much more probable if the two sides were working in concert, Ace and the weigh-masters.”

  “Harry,” I said, “I knew there was a reason for consulting you.”

  “The weigh-masters could be doing a favour for Ace,” Harry went on. “Supposing they’re giving Ace a break on the weight of the truckloads.”

  I said, “That’d account for the extra time it takes to weigh the Ace trucks going into the dumps. The weigh-masters need the time to rig the weights.”

  “If they weigh the trucks in light,” Harry said, “then Ace doesn’t have to pay as much to Metro for dropping their loads in the dumps. Lighter the loads, the smaller the fees.”

  “And in return for that piece of shiftiness,” I said, “Sol Nash drops around and makes a little payoff to the cheating weigh-masters.”

  Harry had a question. “Didn’t you say,” he asked, “it also takes longer to weigh the Ace trucks out of the dumps?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “So the weigh-masters weigh the trucks out heavy. Get it? The weigh-masters make sure the trucks are lighter going in and heavier coming out. That cuts down the dumping fee Ace has to pay Metro at both ends of the transaction.”

  “Neat,” I said. “I like it. Only thing is it’s all theory.”

  “Pretty damned tidy theory,” Harry said. He was running his thumbs up and down under the crimson suspenders.

  “I need to document it,” I said. “My client expects something in the way of hard numbers.”

  “Yeah,” Harry said. “I understand.”

  I kept quiet and let Harry figure it out.

  “You want me to document it,” he said after a moment of reflection. “You want me to look at this company’s books. Ace’s books.”

  I didn’t speak.

  “I owe you a favour,” Harry said.

  I said, “It crossed my mind.”

  “Okay, you weren’t going to mention it,” Harry said. His thumbs were moving more rapidly under the suspenders. “You didn’t need to. I know I’m indebted. So, what else, I’ll go over the books.”

  “Thanks, Harry,” I said. “But going over Ace’s books is the job. Something else is the favour.”

  “Crang, you’re going too fast for me.”

  I said, “Ace won’t be keen on you examining its financial records.”

  “The hell, I didn’t think they’d exactly invite me in.”

  I said, “Fact is, Ace isn’t going to know you’re examining the records.”

  “But I thought probably you had access to their papers . . .” Harry said. His voice trailed off and he stopped rubbing his suspenders.

  I said, “The favour is, Harry, that you trust me.”

  “So you’re bringing the documents to me?” Harry said. He was sitting very still in his chair.

  I said, “I’m going to take you to the documents.”

  “You are?”

  “Of necessity, Harry,” I said, “this will be a night job.”

  16

  I NEEDED THREE CALLS from the phone in Harry Hein’s office to locate James Turkin, the fledgling break-and-enter man. Calls number one and two were to his mother. She hung up the first time. I rang back and applied the old Crang persuasion.

  I said, “Mrs. Turkin, I’d hate to feel obliged to ask James’ probation officer to visit you and your husband.”

  She said she thought James was living with his married sister in Regent Park. She didn’t know the address. Did she know the married sister’s name? “My own daughter?” Mrs. Turkin said. Her voice squawked. “I should think I know,” she said. “We’re close-knit.” Yeah, like J. R. Ewing and clan. The married sister’s last name was Gruber.

  The phone book showed a Gruber on Sackville Street, and I dialled the number. The woman who answered said James would be back from work at five-thirty. The woman had a pleasant voice. Was I a friend of James? His lawyer, I told her. She thought that was wonderful and looked forward to meeting me. I didn’t ask what James was working at.

  Regent Park lies south of Gerrard and east of Parliament. It’s a housing development for low-income and welfare families that sprawls over several discouraging blocks. Not long after the end of the Second War, bulldozers went into the area and levelled the one-storey houses and shanties where Toronto’s poor Irish made their corner of the city. A planned community went in in its place. The plan produced brick
low-rises and fourplexes done in institutional squares and rectangles. Grassy patches define the areas between the buildings, and there’s a battered recreational centre for kids. Regent Park has never been a neighbourhood calculated to produce tomorrow’s stalwart citizens.

  At six o’clock I parked on Gerrard and walked down Sackville to a two-storey building that was split into four apartments. Two little boys were playing with a G.I. Joe on the scarred brown lawn in the front of the building. The G.I. Joe was short one arm. Both little boys were Vietnamese. A card with the Gruber name was inserted in a slot under the apartment mailbox on the lower left. I pushed the buzzer and James Turkin answered the door.

  “Am I in trouble?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “My sister told me you phoned.”

  James stood inside the door and held it open about a foot. The perfect host.

  “I’m here to talk business,” I said. “Your business.”

  James kept his deadpan expression in place.

  “Invite the gentleman in, James,” a woman said from behind Turkin. I recognized the pleasant voice from the phone.

  James opened the door and stepped back. He was wearing a short-sleeved red shirt with the words “Home Hardware” sewn in yellow across the breast pocket.

  The woman inside had a smile to match her voice.

  “You must be Mr. Crang,” she said. “I’m James’ sister, Emily Gruber.” We shook hands.

  “Would you care for some refreshment, Mr. Crang?” Emily Gruber asked.

  Odds were Emily didn’t run a Polish-vodka household.

  “I’ve two things cold in the fridge,” she said. “Beer or Diet Pepsi?”

  Best definition I’d heard of the space between a rock and a hard place.

  Emily weighed fifty pounds more than was healthy. The skirt of her white dress ballooned over her stomach and rode up at the hem to show an inch of beige slip. Her brown hair was held back from her face with bobby pins that glinted in the light. Her face was chubby and full of eager welcome. She appeared to have cornered the social graces in the Turkin family. Lucky her.