Mantelli was a slight man but his grip was like iron.
“Next is Arthur Locke. Banker and token WASP. We joke that he’s the ethnic one. Used to be the bankers wouldn’t lend a nickel to anyone they didn’t go to private school with. Boy, the city has changed.”
Locke was the only one in a suit and tie. His handshake was weak.
“Amresh Singh. I like to say he’s got me topped. I wear a kippah that barely covers half my bald spot. He wears a turban and says he’s got a full head of hair. Who knows? He’s Mr. Trucking. You want to build in this city, you have to have trucks.
“Next comes beauty before age. And brains and chutzpah, Jamaican style. Odessa Breaker, marathon runner, whiz-bang accountant turned low-income housing czar.”
Breaker wore bright red lipstick and stylish glasses, which she took off before reaching over to take his hand. He nodded instead of shaking hands.
“Pleasure,” she said, meeting his eyes.
“Finally, the empty seat. Foxie’s chair,” Lewis said. “We can’t believe it. Right, guys? Please, please, Detective, sit there. We gathered here today to remember our good friend. I can’t stand to see his seat empty.”
Kennicott sat down and began to question each of them about their involvement with the young developer, their whereabouts on Friday afternoon and any ideas they had about who might have had a bone to pick with Fox. The conversation was lively. A bowl of mushroom soup arrived and he ate a spoonful to be polite. It was delicious.
He tried to spend no more time talking to Breaker than to any of the others, but her chair was next to his.
“Where were you yesterday afternoon?” he asked her.
“Yesterday afternoon?” She looked him square in the eye, then broke out into a broad grin and laughed. “I was running down by the lake. You look fit. You a runner?”
“I used to be, when I had a job with more regular hours.”
“You think my job is easy? You just have to stop making excuses for yourself.”
Cell phone alarms started ringing all around the table. Lewis put his hand up.
“It’s our five-minute warning,” he said to Kennicott, as they all reached for their phones. “It was Foxie’s idea. We all turn our phones off at eleven and set our alarms for eleven fifty-five.”
Lewis balled his hands into fists and brought them down hard on the table. “Detective, everyone here will do absolutely everything in our power to help you find the bastard who did this to our friend.”
He stood and raised his phone. “Okay, group photo time.” He brought out a extendable selfie stick, put his phone on it, and pulled it out a long way. “These things are amazing. I could use this to spy on my neighbours if I wanted to, not that I’d want to, Detective.”
This provoked a round of laughter.
“This was Foxie’s idea. A group photo every week,” he said to Kennicott as he snapped away. “Now it’s a tradition.”
When he was done, Kennicott took out a pen and a small stack of his business cards. “I’m giving all of you my personal cell number,” he said, writing on the back of each card. “Don’t hesitate to contact me directly if anything else occurs to you.”
Everyone reached into their wallets and pulled out cards that they passed to him.
The last card Kennicott prepared was for Breaker and, along with his number, he wrote: We should talk.
He gave it to her. She looked at it and didn’t flinch. While the others were busy packing up, she quickly took out a second card, wrote something on the back, and passed it to him under the table.
Everyone stood. “My partner, Detective Kamil Darvesh, will contact each of you for individual interviews,” he said as he shook each of their hands. Breaker was the last to leave.
“Maybe I’ll see you later,” she said, keeping her voice low enough that only he could hear. She shook his hand, holding it longer than he expected.
“What did you think of my wife’s soup?” Lewis asked, when everyone was gone.
“You’re right, it’s very good,” Kennicott said, spotting a fresh soup stain on Lewis’s shirt. “You take a photo of the group every Friday. Can I see the one you took yesterday?”
“Of course. Foxie was wearing a cool linen suit from Italy, a real beauty. He was such a sharp dresser.”
Lewis started tapping on his phone. “Let’s see,” he said. “No, not that one, Foxie’s got his eyes closed. That one too. Here he woke up for this one.”
He turned his phone for Kennicott to see. There was Livingston wearing a light grey suit with a blue shirt and a thin dark green tie. The photo was taken at noon yesterday. At four in the afternoon when his body was found, he was wearing shorts and a T-shirt.
Where had Fox changed out of his suit, and where had he left it before he went to the shed at Kensington Gate? And why?
30
Claudio Bassante stood at the elevator doors on the thirty-third floor of his downtown condo building, and for one of the few times since Greene had known him, he wasn’t smiling. He looked grim.
“Ari,” he said, extending his arm as Greene stepped out of the elevator. “I’m glad you called.”
Greene grasped his hand. “You sleep last night?”
“Not much. They had me at the station giving a statement for a few hours. You’re a cop. You’re used to this kind of thing. Not me.”
Greene put his free hand on Bassante’s shoulder. They walked down the hall to his front door and Bassante ushered him inside. Floor-to-ceiling windows gave on to a breathtaking view of a forest of new high-rise buildings and the blue harbour beyond. Everything was modern, from the grey hardwood floors, marble countertops, and an expansive kitchen island to the spanking-new high-end appliances and plush leather furniture.
It was not the kind of place Greene had expected Claudio to live in. Bassante grew up a suburban kid. When he was sixteen, he bought a used truck and spent most of his weekends fixing it up. He got married when he was twenty-one, bought a new truck and a bungalow three blocks north of his mother’s house. Every few years after that, he bought a bigger house and a bigger truck until he got divorced.
“Nice spot,” Greene said. “Where do you park your truck?”
Bassante laughed. “It’s long gone. My ex took the house, and I had nowhere to park it. You remember my parent’s little house. Every other place on the street got turned into a monster home. When Mom passed, I cashed in. I thought, the girls are gone, my wife is gone, what the hell, Claudio, live a little.”
“You like it downtown?”
“Love it. In the winter I can walk underground to the ACC to watch the Leafs or the Raptors. The gym is great, and half the people here are divorced. It’s not exactly lonely.”
Bassante went to his brushed-steel fridge and opened it. “You want a juice or smoothie or anything? I’ve got these hand-pressed juices they sell downstairs.”
“I’m fine.”
Bassante took out a small glass bottle of green liquid. “Livingston was a genius. He was always way ahead of the curve. Everyone thought he was out of his mind when he put up a condo tower down here. Prices in this city are nuts. My unit’s gone up twenty-five percent since I bought it a year ago. Same thing with his Fox Harbour development. He was taking that huge piece of scrap land by the water and building a whole frickin’ neighbourhood.”
Greene ran his hands along the marble countertop on the island. It was cool and smooth.
Bassante unscrewed the cap. “I’m seeing this Pilates instructor. She’s got me into these. Twelve bucks for this little bottle. Crazy, eh?” He drank half of the bottle, recapped it, and put it on the counter.
He was stalling.
Greene waited.
“Ari, I didn’t see you for a long time. When Sylvia left me, I was a mess. I couldn’t eat. I lost forty pounds. Me losing weight! I lost my job. I was sleeping all day, up all night.”
Ari could read between the lines. “Coke?” he asked.
“Coke. Meth. You name i
t. If I could pop it, shoot it, sniff it. Money went puff. Everyone knows everyone in this business and soon my name was mud. Then out of nowhere three years ago Maxine, Fox’s assistant, calls me. She recommended me to Fox, and he hired me to put up a three-storey condo in the West End. Wood-frame construction and no underground parking. Forty-five-million-dollar job. Easy. I got it finished six weeks early. Right on budget too.
“Let me guess.” Greene leaned on the island. “He gave you a cash bonus.”
“Fox? No way. Okay, everyone in this crazy business throws around cash like it was candy, but not Livingston. He was the exception to the rule. Everything with him was by the book. You don’t know how rare that is in this town.”
“And you, Claudio?”
“Shit, Ari. Look, it’s construction. Everyone hates the taxman. You don’t want to know how much cash is floating around. I had two girls to put through college. The alimony I was paying . . .”
He put the bottle back in the fridge and slammed the door. “You see this? It’s a fancy French fridge. Retail it’s five thousand. And that Italian stove? You don’t want to know what people pay for one of them retail. I get things. I do people favours. They do me favours.”
“But not Fox?”
“I’m telling you no, never. Never.”
Greene pulled up a stool and sat down.
“Ari, what do you want to talk to me about? I thought you weren’t a cop anymore.”
“I’ve been hired to help the lawyer of one of the suspects, and I think his client is innocent. If I can’t find out who killed Fox, I’m afraid the client will be arrested.”
“You know what that feels like.”
Greene nodded. “How was Fox’s business doing?” he asked. “Really.”
“Being a developer is like being a shark. You can’t ever sleep. It takes forever to get a project up and paying, at least seven years. The banks are up our asses all the time. Insurance. Unions. Condo boards. City inspectors. Politicians. Planners. That crane at Kensington Gate is costing us thirty thousand a month to rent. We get a windy day, there’s the two crane operators who we have to pay while they twiddle their thumbs, the formers can’t work without the crane and the interest keeps ticking on the bank line. Banks get paid no matter what, even if the site is idle. That’s about five G’s a day. This winter, with the cold and the high winds, we got shut down for seventeen workdays. Cost us a fortune.”
Greene walked over to the window. A plane was leaving from the Island Airport. Beyond the harbour, Lake Ontario stretched out to the horizon, a huge pool of blue.
“The Rolls-Royce, the chauffeur, the ultra-modern office. All just image?”
“Smoke and mirrors. It was as if Fox was stuck in that role. Maxine was always telling him to cut expenses. It drove her crazy how he’d keep on spending.” Bassante came up beside Greene and pointed to a piece of vacant land on the waterfront. “See the hoarding around that big empty lot? He was taking on an insane amount of debt. He couldn’t stop.”
“You think this had to do with someone he owed money?”
“All I know is that this business is a fucking fistfight. Every hour of every day someone’s in your pocket. If you’re not tough, you’ll get squashed like a bug.”
“Or murdered. You notice anything different about him lately?”
“The last month or so, I could tell something was up. He was being more secretive than ever. Then boom, two weeks ago he’s engaged. He changed.”
“How?”
“Calmer. Happier. But more guarded. He told me a few weeks ago he thought someone was trying to steal some new idea he was working on but he couldn’t figure out who it was. Fox was obsessed with his privacy.”
Greene started counting building cranes. It took him a few seconds to get to fifteen. “You ever see Fox with Cassandra Amberlight?”
“The protest lady? She your client?”
Greene shrugged.
“Fox and Amberlight together? You must be joking.”
“He ever mention her to you?”
“All the time. She drove him berserk.”
Bassante joined Greene at the window and waved his arm across the sky. “The city’s out of control. Look. Condos are going up faster than the interest on my Visa card. Most people have no idea what’s really going on. Prices are so crazy, how will my daughters be able to live here? Everyone is getting pushed out of town and the politicians? Useless. They can’t stop it. You know thirty percent of new units are empty. Iranians, Russians, Chinese investors, they’re all dumping their cash here. Third World dictators, human traffickers, and drug dealers. Some of them buy a condo so they can deal indoors instead of out on the street. It’s a fucking cash-flow laundromat out there.”
“What did you know about Fox’s plans for the K2 condos in Kensington Market?”
This made Bassante pause. “Nothing. I kept asking him about it, and he kept putting me off. I couldn’t figure it out. But he was up to something, and I’m sure it pissed somebody off.”
Greene took a close look at his old friend. Bassante always put on a jolly face, but he looked frazzled.
“What about the back gate on your building site? I didn’t see any video cameras.”
“Fox wouldn’t allow it.”
“Did you know he was meeting people there?”
“No, just that for the last four weeks he told me to be sure nobody went back there on Fridays after two-thirty.”
They stood in silence looking out at the water. Greene and Bassante had known each other for so long they didn’t have to speak all the time.
“I’m thinking of getting a boat,” Bassante said at last. “I’d get the girls to come down here. See them more.”
“Claudio,” Greene said, “if you were me, where would you look for the killer?”
“Fox had a lot of enemies. We were throwing up buildings faster, and for less money, than most of the old farts who ran this town for years. Our places were better. Look how beautiful this condo is. No one could compete with us.”
“You think one of his competitors wanted him out of the way?”
“A builder, a banker, a candlestick maker. It’s construction, Ari. Follow the money.”
Bassante leaned against the window. He looked as if he was about to collapse.
“You okay, Claudio?”
“No. They killed Fox. Whoever did this probably thinks I know something. I could be next.”
“I understand.”
“No, Ari,” Bassante said, “I don’t think you do.”
31
Sherani was waiting for Kennicott on the street outside Omni Jewelcrafters, standing beside the Rolls-Royce. She saw him approach and swung open the passenger door and closed it once he was seated.
Imagine living like this all the time, he thought, as he watched her walk around the car and get into the driver’s seat.
“You try the mushroom soup?” she asked.
“It was excellent.”
“Told you.”
He reached into his pocket and peeked at the card Breaker had slipped him. The front read “Odessa Breaker, Planning Consultant.” On the back, her handwriting was precise: “7:00 tonight at the Fox Harbour bldg. site. Bring running shoes. Tell no one.”
He slid the card back in his pocket. Yesterday Fox had lunched with his father at Fresh. That was their next stop. While Sherani drove, Kennicott called and asked to speak to the owner.
“Etai here, how can I help you?”
“My name is Daniel Kennicott. I’m a homicide detective. I understand that Mr. Livingston Fox ate lunch there yesterday.”
“We’re all very sad about what happened to Mr. Fox,” Etai said.
“I’d like to talk to the person who served him.”
“Adrianna. She’s working today.”
“We are on our way there now. No need to tell her I’m coming.”
When they arrived, the restaurant’s west-facing patio was packed with diners soaking up the sun. Inside, Kenni
cott introduced himself to Etai, who seated him at a table by the back wall. Adrianna came in a minute later. She was a slight young woman with a red-and-black tattoo snaking down her right arm.
“Etai said you wanted to speak to me?”
“I’m Detective Daniel Kennicott, Toronto Police. Have a seat.”
She looked around to check that there was no one nearby.
He showed her a picture of Fox. “Did you serve this man yesterday at lunch?”
She put her hands behind her back, as if she were afraid to touch the photo, and nodded. “I heard what happened. I can’t believe Livingston is dead.”
She called him Livingston, Kennicott thought.
“How well did you know him?”
Kennicott saw a flash of fear in her eyes.
“He ate lunch here on Fridays.”
“Do you remember who he was with yesterday?”
“His father. As usual. Table eight. Twelve-thirty. They were fighting like they do all the time.”
“Did you hear what they were arguing about?”
“Not really, but I know what the problem was.”
Kennicott sat still. Fox’s father had complained about his son flirting with the waitress.
“He’s engaged, you know,” she said. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
Kennicott leaned forward and lowered his voice. “I understand. How often did you see each other?”
“Tuesday mornings. We’d do a hot yoga class before my lunch shift. I live around the corner from the studio. He’d come back to my place for an hour. A month ago, he stopped. He said he was afraid his fiancée would find out, that for once in his life he was going to try to be loyal. Please, don’t tell her.”
“What did Livingston tell you about his family?”
“He loved his sister and hated his parents, especially his mother. He kept giving them money for their dumb wellness centre and they kept losing it. He called them hippie losers. After he got engaged, he told them that he was going to stop funding them and cut them out of his will.” She started to tear up. “That’s all I know.”
He passed her a napkin, and she thanked him before rushing off.
Heart of the City Page 12
