High Chicago jg-1

by Howard Shrier

  EcoSys would take clients through every step they needed to get a clean Record of Site Condition that met all criteria under ministry guidelines and the federal Environmental Protection Act.

  Most of the time, according to the website, the ministry would review the RSC and audit the process to ensure all requirements had been met. "But when a trusted partner like EcoSys has done the work," the site boasted, "with all the necessary skills and judgment, clients can rest easy that the RSC process will be approved in a timely manner."

  Martin Glenn had been qualified. As a former employee of the ministry, he would certainly have been trusted. An RSC submitted by him would in all likelihood have been rubber-stamped.

  He had left the Harbourview job site in a fury earlier this afternoon and was now on the way to the morgue. I wondered what the hell he had gotten himself into. I also wondered who Eric was. Rob Cantor had told Glenn to think about Eric, and Glenn had been so angry he'd barely been able to respond.

  It was ten o'clock when I was done. I was tired and I was also ravenous. I looked in the fridge and found little of interest. So I got into my car and drove back to the entertainment district. The interior of Giulio's was warm and inviting: the walls a deep vermilion, the tables and chairs glossy black. A fire burned in a stone fireplace along one wall; along the opposite wall was a long bar, where sparkling glasses hung upside down from wooden slats. Dante Ryan was standing at a podium with a reservations book open. When he saw me, his eyebrows raised and he broke into a smile. He set down the red leather-bound menus he'd been holding, came up to me and offered me his hand. We shook, then he pulled me into an embrace, clapping my back twice. "Took you long enough to show your face," he said.

  "The place looks fantastic," I said. "Mazel tov."

  "You hungry? You here to eat?"

  "Yes and yes."

  "Have a seat at the bar. I'll have a table for you in five minutes. Gino," he said to the barman. "Whatever this man wants, it's on the house." Then he walked to the back of the room to speak to one of the waitresses.

  Gino was a slight, balding man with thin strands of dark hair pasted across his dome. I ordered Black Bush on the rocks. He poured a standard shot then topped it up with another ounce or so.

  A loud roar went up at a table behind us where four men in business dress were hoisting drinks and toasting one another. By the look of it, they'd been dining on steak and pasta, with plenty of wine to wash it down. One of them-big, beefy and red-faced-was crowing over a deal that had apparently been consummated that day. "We took no fucking prisoners," he bellowed. "We took fucking scalps."

  The patrons at the table next to them glared for a while then went back to their meals. I nursed my drink, wondering what Hollinger was doing now. Still at the crime scene, probably, combing the alley for evidence. Maybe directing a canvass of the neighbourhood. Almost certainly not thinking of me or what the evening could have been.

  "Hey!" came a shout from the noisy table. The big man had an empty wine bottle in his hand. "You, behind the bar. Angelo, or whatever your name is. Bring us another bottle of red."

  The bartender looked like he wanted to send the bottle airmail. Then Ryan appeared from the back of the restaurant, walking briskly toward the table.

  "Sir," he said to the big man. "If you want a bottle of wine, we're happy to serve it to you. But show a little respect for our staff and the other diners. All right?"

  The man broke out laughing, egging on his compatriots until they laughed with him. "Oh, sure!" he gasped. "We'll respect the little fucker, won't we?"

  Ryan shook his head. I eased off my stool. There were four of them, all drunk enough to mess with Ryan, something no sober man would do. If things got ugly, I'd have his back.

  Ryan leaned down, his hand on the table next to the man's dinner plate, and spoke very quietly into his ear. He had once boasted to me about his powers of persuasion, and whatever he said now prompted the man to settle right down, reach into his wallet and pull out a credit card.

  Ryan waved down a waitress. "Monica, these gentlemen have to leave," he said. "Bring their bill right away, please. And add a nice tip-twenty per cent okay with you?" he asked the big man, still leaning over him like they were pals. The man nodded quickly.

  Only then did I notice the man's steak knife was no longer next to his plate. The food was outstanding. Ryan wouldn't let me see a menu, just kept sending out dishes for me to sample. First what he called poor man's caviar-herring roe in oil flavoured with hot peppers. Then chilled eggplant seasoned with garlic and oregano. Tuna marinated in a lemon and black olive sauce. And finally lamb chops, Calabrian style, carefully arranged on a plate with grilled red peppers, artichokes and mushrooms.

  "I spared you the octopus salad," he grinned. "It's an acquired taste for most people-and for a Jewish guy? I figured it might be over the top."

  Each course came with a glass of well-matched wine. The best was the Montepulciano he brought to go with the lamb. "Life's too short to drink cheap wine," he said.

  This from a guy who used to shorten lives professionally. Hollinger probably would have broken the bottle over his head.

  When dessert came-a tart that was both sweet and fiery-he brought two espressos and sat with me at the table.

  "That's made with orange marmalade and a chili jam," he said. "We call it Devil's Tart."

  "After the owner's heart," I grinned.

  "How was everything?" he asked, his dark eyes fixing on mine. "Honestly."

  I said, "Mmph," as I had just stuffed a forkful of tart into my mouth. When I could speak, I said, "You've outdone yourself."

  "Thanks. So how come you showed up out of the blue like this? No phone call, nothing."

  "It's a long story."

  "You and your long stories. I've sat through a few before."

  I inhaled the last bite of Devil's Tart and pushed the plate to the side. "Remember the Homicide sergeant who dropped in on me that night?" He'd remember which night: the two of us eating pizza, drinking wine and planning to murder his boss.

  "Sure," he said. "Kate? Katie?"

  "That's right. Katherine Hollinger."

  "Wait a sec. Hollinger. We had a no-show tonight. Seven o'clock for two."

  "And you're looking at one of them."

  "What happened?"

  "She didn't tell me which restaurant she picked. And I didn't ask. Once we got here, it was too late. I had to tell her about us."

  "About us what?"

  "Being friends."

  "And she had a prob-oh, yeah. I guess she would, being Homicide."

  "Yup."

  "Sorry, guy."

  "It's not your fault."

  "I can still be sorry. So listen," he said, leaning in. "There's no grief coming my way, is there? About what happened last summer?"

  "She told me they've closed the books," I said.

  "Because there's no going back for me."

  "I think you're clear. I think we both are."

  "All right."

  "How's Carlo?" I asked.

  "He's terrific, thanks. Cara too."

  "I'm happy for you," I said.

  "Thanks, Geller. And how's your new business, this repair shop of yours?"

  "We've got a case."

  "I hope it works out better than ours did."

  "We did all right."

  "Let me rephrase it then: I hope so many bodies don't pile up."

  CHAPTER 11

  I'm walking up a trail in a northern forest, a steep, narrow path lined with club pine and Labrador tea and the brilliant yellow petals of Arctic cinquefoil, opened wide to catch beads of morning dew. I walk carefully over moss-covered rocks that can turn an ankle, past trees scarred by bear claws, birches rubbed free of bark by moose antlers. Step around a nasty clump of wolf shit full of coarse white fur, probably from a meal of rabbit. I come to a fast-running stream and start across a path of stepping stones. I'm almost at the other side when the second-to-last stone gives way under my foot. I loo
k down and it's not a stone at all but the submerged face of a man dressed in a suit. "Watch where you're going!" he snarls and my foot slips off his face and I tip over into the freezing water. Fish bump against me. Something long and slick slides over me. I put my hand down to brace myself and it sinks into the mud and I can't pull it out. The harder I try, the deeper I sink. "You ruined my goddamn suit," says the underwater man. "I'm never going to get these stains out." And the water rises higher around me until I too am beneath the surface. I woke up with my stomach in a knot, my breath shallow. Seven in the morning and nowhere to go but into the shower, where I tried to wash away the memories of Stefano di Pietra and his miserable end in the Don River. Maybe seeing Ryan last night had brought them back.

  I made coffee and took a cup out onto my balcony to look out at the city, as I did every morning. Indian summer was finally ending. The sky was overcast, the morning light weak. A wind was blowing down out of the north through the valley, leaving poplars trembling, stripping them of their remaining leaves.

  I wolfed down a bagel and cheese, then grabbed my gym bag and drove a few blocks east to Carlaw Avenue and parked in back of a two-storey building with a sign that said Gym: By Appointment Only.

  I had been studying and teaching shotokan karate for years. That's how I met Graham McClintock, the man who first recruited me as an investigator. But before karate, while serving in the Bar Kochba Infantry unit of the Israel Defense Forces, I had learned Krav Maga with my sergeant, Roni Galil. Krav Maga is a system of self-defence created by an Israeli army man. It is more elemental than karate, teaching you how to use your own strengths and instincts to fight off attackers. I had only recently gone back to it: it seemed more right for me now than the formal, scripted katas of shotokan. Krav Maga assumes that every situation is life-and-death, that your attacker has to be put down with maximum efficiency. It is not a sport; it will never be featured in the Olympics. The name itself means close combat: the only rule is there are no rules. Whether fighting one attacker or more, whether they are armed or not, you use everything you can, including objects at hand. You always run if you have the chance. If not, you counterattack at the earliest opening. You bite, gouge eyes, butt heads, rip testicles. You do as much damage as humanly-or inhumanly-possible.

  This anonymous gym on Carlaw was run by a man named Eidan Feingold, a former Israeli and world judo champion who'd embraced Krav Maga during his own army stint. I had seen him disarm a volunteer assailant with a knife while the assailant was still thinking about where to stab him. I had seen him slap away a gun pointed at his face before the trigger could be pulled, then take the gun away and pretend to pistol-whip the attacker. He had demonstrated defences against shotguns, garrottes, machetes, anything short of a rocket-propelled grenade, and somehow I think he could deal with that too.

  "Yoni," he greeted me. "You're too early for class. Nothing starts before nine."

  "I know. I was hoping for a little one-on-one."

  He looked at his watch and shrugged. "Sure," he said. "I can give you half an hour." He led me into a small locker room, where I changed into a T-shirt and sweatpants. I put on a helmet, mouth guard, protective cup and arm and shin pads. Eidan did the same. Then he strapped my left arm tight to my body with a belt. The last time I'd been in, we'd been working on a scenario where one arm had been wounded and I had to fight him off with the other.

  "Ready?" Eidan asked.

  "Ready."

  Then he smiled and proceeded to try to kick the living shit out of me. He aimed kicks at my weak left side, punches at my head, keeping me on defence as long as he could. He tried to choke me from the front, which I broke up with a knee to the abdomen. He tried to choke me from behind: I stomped his foot, the way Brazilian jiu-jitsu teaches, then delivered a hammer strike to his head. With only my right arm free, I had to deal with my own mounting frustration as well as his relentless attacks. I finally dropped to one knee, as if exhausted. He moved in with a kick aimed at my head, and my opening came. I planted my right hand and used my legs to sweep his out from under him. As he fell onto his back, I dove on top of him, got my forearm across his neck and head-butted him across the bridge of his nose. Then I rolled away from him and looked for a weapon to use. There was a phone on the wall: in a real-life situation I'd have ripped it out of its base and either thrown it at him, hammered him with it or wrapped its cord around his neck. I sprinted to it and put my hand on it.

  "Stop!" Eidan yelled. "Rip it out and I charge you sixty bucks."

  "I wasn't going to. I just wanted you to know I'd found a weapon."

  "Like hell," Eidan laughed. He got up off the mat and freed my strapped-in arm and patted my shoulder. I was glad to see I'd made him raise a sweat-a light one, but still a sweat.

  "You did all right," he said.

  "For a one-armed man."

  "You put me down and you found a weapon. That's good."

  "But?"

  "But you should have run, Yoni. A phone might be okay if there is no way out. But to hit me with it or strangle me-that's what you were thinking?"

  "Yes."

  "Then you have to get close again. But maybe I'm faking, yes? Maybe I'm waiting for you to get close only to attack you again. And if I do, then maybe I end up with the phone and I am hitting you with it or strangling you. You see? We're supposed to be tough guys, yes? But if Krav Maga teaches you anything, it's that you run if the odds are against you. There is no shame in that, Yoni. There is only shame in getting killed when you can save yourself. We like to say Krav Maga is about life and death, yes? But first and most, it's about life." I was in the office by eight-forty, drinking coffee and wondering if it was too early to call Hollinger, when Eddie Solomon rapped on the door and stuck his head in.

  "I heard you come in," he said. "You want to try a fabulous coffee I got? Comes from Indonesia. They only pick the beans after they've been eaten and shit out by some kind of monkey."

  "That's some recommendation, Eddie. I think I'll stick with what I have."

  "Why the downcast look, my white knight? No dragons to slay?"

  "There's no shortage of dragons, Eddie. I'm just not sure I can slay them. You have our fee?"

  "Chelsea stood me up last night, but I'm meeting her for lunch so I'll have it this afternoon. One thousand in cash for your labour."

  "That's great."

  "Beats cleaning out stables, mighty Hercules."

  I had to smile. You can't not smile around Eddie Solomon.

  "That's better," he said. "I'll drop by after lunch. Your lovely partner will be here, I trust?"

  "She'll be here, Eddie. For all the good it'll do you."

  "You chase your cars," he said, "and I'll chase mine." Jenn came in at nine on the dot. "I wanted to call you last night," she said, "but I didn't want to rain on your parade."

  "Someone beat you to it," I said, and filled her in first on the disaster that was my date with Hollinger, then on the death of Martin Glenn.

  "Jesus," she said. "Between that and Maya's email, there can't be any doubt she was murdered too."

  "What email?"

  "Karl Thomson came by just after you left." Jenn opened a Mac notebook computer, waited for it to come off standby, then tapped in a password. "This is Maya's sent log," she said. "A lot of the usual things you'd expect from a student: gossip, chitchat, notes on class projects, scheduling meetings. And then there were a whole bunch to someone calling himself EcoMan."

  "Will Sterling?"

  "None other. Look at this one, Jonah. Sent the morning of the day she died."

  Will, having dinner with dad 2nite… will try to find what u need… try my cell after 12… M.

  "After 12," I said. "Could have meant that night or the next day. Either way, that clinches it. This was not someone who was planning to kill herself."

  "She knew something about Harbourview."

  "The land. The way it was cleaned."

  "Or not."

  I needed to get going if I was going to ca
tch Will Sterling before his 9:30 class. "See if you can find out who approved the Record of Site Condition at the Ministry of the Environment," I suggested.

  "Why do I get the bureaucrats?" she groaned. "And don't give me any majority owner crap."

  "Will flattery work?"

  "You can always try."

  "You're far more adept at getting people to open up."

  "Bureaucrats are not people," she said. "They're like the last mussel on your plate, the one you keep avoiding because there's no place to stick your fork in."

  If only I could send in Dante Ryan, maybe with a steak knife in his hand. "Martin Glenn was one of theirs," I said. "Used to be, anyway. When they hear what happened to him, they'll talk to you."

  "I still don't feel like I've been flattered much."

  "Then consider the majority owner crap pulled."

  CHAPTER 12

  A handful of young people stood outside the entrance of the University of Toronto's Earth Sciences Building on Willcocks Street, engaging in the distinctly non-environmental practise of smoking.

  "Any of you guys know Will Sterling?" I asked.

  "Sure," said one of them, an Indo-Canadian girl with blonde streaks in her jet-black hair. "We're in the same chem lab."

  "He's probably inside," another said. "He's usually in early."