Heart of the City

by Robert Rotenberg

  She hadn’t seen Fox on Friday. But Ari said the other people who saw him had remarked that he’d been very tired.

  No wonder.

  She grabbed her phone and called her father.

  He picked it up before the first ring even ended. “Alison, you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. But I think,” she said, “I might have figured something out.”

  61

  “I’ve got an assignment for you,” Kennicott said to Officer Sheppard, as she whipped her squad car through the city at her usual nerve-racking speed. She had just zoomed past a streetcar.

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  “Great.”

  He told her what he needed her to do, and seconds later she deposited him in front of Fox’s office.

  Greene pulled up in his car and walked quickly over to him. A squad car arrived and Darvesh jumped out. Kennicott checked his watch. It was 11:55.

  Kennicott quickly explained the situation to them. That he’d told Gloria that they were closing in on the killer and Gloria had told him that Maxine was taking her away at noon.

  Greene pointed to the top floor. “They must be in her office. Daniel, you’re the only one who’s been up there.”

  Kennicott described the layout: the receptionist with the half-shaved head and how the door to Fox and Maxine’s offices was tucked away behind Fox’s private elevator.

  “How do you get inside?” Greene asked.

  “The receptionist waits ten seconds, then buzzes you in.”

  “Can she see you on a camera?”

  “No. Fox set it up this way. He was a privacy nut. He hated security cameras.”

  “So no one could see him come or go,” Greene said.

  “That’s how he planned it,” Kennicott said. “Ari, Maxine and Gloria have met me and Kamil before but they won’t know who you are. Go up the main elevator and ask for Maxine.”

  He turned to Darvesh. “Kamil, you cover the lobby in case they walk out that way before Ari gets up there. I’ll cover the staircase.”

  “If the receptionist needs to buzz me in, who should I say I am?” Greene asked.

  Kennicott hadn’t thought of that. “Why don’t you say you’re a real-estate agent?”

  Greene shook his head. “She might not let me in.” He turned toward the shops across the street. “Give me a minute.” Without saying another word, he took off, dodging through traffic to the other side of the road.

  “Where’s Detective Greene going?” Darvesh asked.

  Kennicott pointed. “To that flower shop. Not a bad idea.”

  62

  Greene charged into the flower shop and threw two fifty-dollar bills on the counter.

  “I need the biggest prepared bouquet you have,” he said, “right now.”

  “We have a plentiful selection for you to choose from, sir.” The man behind the counter pointed to his standing refrigerator. “They vary in price from—”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Greene yanked the fridge door open and snatched the nearest large bouquet.

  He whirled back at the stunned-looking man. “Thanks,” he said.

  Greene was almost at the door when he remembered something. He rushed back to the desk. “A card, quick. I need a condolence card.”

  The man gestured at a countertop rack of greeting cards. “We have a number of very lovely ones for you to choose—”

  “I’ll take that one.” Greene seized a card with a black border. “And give me a pen.”

  The man started scrounging around on the counter.

  Greene spotted a pen and reached for it. “I’ll keep the pen. You keep the change.”

  He ran back across the street, took the steps to Fox’s office building two at a time, yanked the glass door open, and rushed across the lobby. The elevator doors were closing. He jumped in and pushed number five. As soon as the elevator began to rise he pulled out the pen, wrote a few words on the card, and wove it into the bouquet.

  The elevator stopped at the third floor, and a well-dressed young woman got in, tapping on her phone. She pushed the already-lit number five.

  “Nice flowers,” she said.

  “They’re for Mr. Fox’s assistant.”

  “Poor Maxine. She’s amazing. The whole team is still in just, like, total shock about Livingston.”

  The door opened again on the fourth floor. Two more employees got in, both glued to their phones. One of them pushed the lit number five.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Greene said, cutting in front of all of them when the door opened on the fifth floor, “but this is a rush delivery.” He strode up to the woman with the half-shaved head at the reception desk.

  “I have some flowers to deliver to, let me see now”—he squinted through the flower stems at the card—“someone named Maxine. Is she here?”

  “She is,” the receptionist said. “She’s in a meeting now. You can leave them with me.”

  “No, I can’t do that. The order specifically says they must be delivered by hand.” He looked at the card again. “They are from Kate and Karl.”

  She smiled. “Mr. Fox’s parents. Okay. Go to the door around the back of the elevators and wait ten seconds. I’ll buzz you in.”

  Greene walked around the elevator bank and waited. Kennicott had told him that Maxine’s office was inside to the left. The moment he heard the buzzer, Greene whipped the door open and dashed in.

  Maxine’s door was partway open. He tossed the flowers on the floor and flung it open the rest of the way.

  63

  Kennicott was on the third-floor landing. Pacing. The phone in his hand rang. It was Greene.

  “They’re in the private elevator, going down.”

  “What?” Kennicott started running down the stairs. “Darvesh is covering the elevator on the ground floor. Call him.”

  “Won’t help. I’m looking at the elevator lights. It just passed the ground floor and landed at B1. What’s down there?”

  “The Rolls-Royce.” Kennicott was taking the steps down two at a time. “I’m headed to my car.”

  On the ground floor, he hit the bar on the exit door and raced out onto the street. Sheppard was parked exactly where he’d asked her to with both front windows open.

  “Did you see anything?” he yelled, as he ran up to the car.

  “A Rolls convertible. Older woman driver, younger woman passenger. They flew out of the parking garage.”

  “Which way did they go?”

  “East on Front.”

  Kennicott jumped in beside her.

  “Seat belt,” she said.

  He laughed and buckled up fast. The car rocketed forward, throwing him back against his seat. He called Greene. “They’re in the Rolls, heading east on Front.”

  Sheppard was zipping through traffic. Kennicott heard a police siren behind them.

  “There she is!” Sheppard cried.

  Up ahead, Kennicott saw the car driving erratically. At Parliament Street, it took a sharp right turn, almost skidding out of control. “What the hell?” Sheppard said. “She’s headed south.” Sheppard took the corner at a perfect angle and accelerated with force at just the right moment.

  The Rolls was about a block ahead. Sheppard grabbed the mic for the roof-mounted speaker. “Police, stop! Police, stop!” she shouted.

  The Rolls wasn’t slowing down. It passed under the elevated Gardiner Expressway and followed the road along the lake.

  “I know where she’s going,” Kennicott said as Sheppard ran a yellow light at top speed. “On your left, Fox Harbour!”

  He saw a group of joggers rounding a curve and heading right into the Rolls-Royce’s path.

  “Hit the siren!”

  The siren roared.

  The joggers, half of whom were wearing earbuds, looked up and grabbed each other as the Rolls shot past, missing the leaders by inches. Sheppard flew in behind it.

  “
Oh no,” he said. “I see where she’s headed.”

  “Where?”

  “The water.”

  “Is she crazy?”

  The Rolls raced through a small parking space and headed down a long wharf. The water was straight ahead of them, shimmering in the midday sun.

  “Not on my watch,” Sheppard said. She jammed her foot on the gas and Kennicott was momentarily pinned to his seat by the force. Sheppard’s siren was wailing. Her lights were flashing. She was gaining on the Rolls and had almost drawn up beside it. “Stop, police! Stop, police!” her voice boomed over the roof-mounted speaker.

  Rat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat. Gravel was battering the undercarriage like gunfire.

  Sheppard pulled even with the Rolls. Maxine was in the driver’s seat staring straight ahead. Unwavering. Beside her, Gloria was screaming. She had something in her hand. It was the urn she’d had at the midnight ceremony.

  “Hold on tight,” Sheppard shouted to Kennicott.

  She was pulling ahead of the Rolls now. They were seconds away from the water.

  “When I say duck, duck!”

  Kennicott felt the car in full flight.

  “Duck!” Sheppard screamed.

  She slammed on the brakes and whipped the wheel around, swinging the squad car into a sharp turn. The rear of the car skidded out behind him. Kennicott buried his head between his knees.

  The Rolls smashed into the squad car inches behind his seat. The car rocked up, and for a moment he was sure it was going to flip over.

  “No you don’t!” Sheppard shouted. “No way, no way.”

  The car stopped. Kennicott looked up. The right front of the Rolls had hit the rear door of the cruiser. It was stuck there.

  He unlocked his seat belt and threw open his door. Sheppard had timed the collision perfectly, leaving his door intact.

  Gloria was in the passenger seat, hysterical. But there was no sign of Maxine. Kennicott motioned to Sheppard to take care of Gloria, then rushed behind the squad car. He spotted Maxine running down the wharf toward the water. She had a long tube in one hand and it was churning up and down with her arm, like an oversized baton carried by a sprinter. She had a good lead on him.

  He took off. Don’t start too fast, he told himself. He didn’t want to slip on the gravel again. He kept his legs high, his arms rotating fast. He was gaining on her but she was determined.

  The poor, deranged lady. What she’d said at the end of their first meeting came back to him: “Please leave the door open on your way out. I like the fresh air. It comes from growing up by the sea.” She hadn’t closed the back gate after she’d murdered Fox and Bassante. She hadn’t locked the door to the house she’d bought on Augusta Avenue. Old habits die hard.

  He was running full out now. Gaining on her, but the water was so close. Seagulls at the end of the wharf flew up. Screeching.

  “Maxine! Stop! There’s no point,” he yelled.

  He saw her shake her head. She didn’t look back. Two, three, four more big strides. It was now or never. He flung himself in the air and reached for her legs. Her feet. But he felt nothing but air.

  Then his fingers touched something. It was round. The tube. He grabbed on to it as he slammed into the ground. The loose stones dug into his chin and his elbows but he held on to the tube. Maxine wouldn’t let go and he felt her weight tumble beside him.

  He scrambled to his feet. She lay on the ground, curled up in the fetal position, clutching the tube to her breast, steps away from the edge of the wharf. He rushed around to place himself between her and the steep drop to the water, which this time of year would still be very cold.

  He crouched down to be at her eye level and placed his hand on her shoulder, expecting her to recoil.

  She didn’t flinch.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked her. “Can you sit up?”

  She nodded. “Why did you stop me? Why? Why? Why?” she moaned.

  He took her arm and raised her until she was sitting.

  Her face twisted in anger.

  “Livingston was my boy. My baby boy. That woman. Kate.” She spat the name out, as if saying it would infect her with a fatal disease. “She was no mother, no stepmother, no nothing. And Gloria. Poor Gloria was a prisoner there. I had to get her away. I had to save her. She loved Livingston almost as much as I did.”

  Her voice deepened.

  “I changed his diapers. I ran his business. I hid all his girlfriends.”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “But then she came along. That Japanese one.”

  “His fiancée?”

  “I showed you his calendar for the month. Didn’t you see? He was in love with her. It was clear as day. Every week, more and more of his damned private time. She had it all planned out, to steal my boy from me. Livingston was going to leave me all alone.”

  Kennicott heard the sound of tires on gravel. He looked back down the wharf. A squad car pulled up and Greene got out. More cruisers were piling in behind it.

  He held up his free hand to signal Greene to stay back.

  Greene gave him a thumbs-up.

  He looked back at Maxine. Her eyes were closed. She was shaking her head as if she were in a trance. He put his hand on her shoulder and her whole body crumbled in defeat. She wasn’t going anywhere.

  64

  “Dad!”

  Greene whirled around. Another police cruiser had pulled up and Alison bolted out of it. She ran straight to him.

  “How did you . . . ?”

  “I talked the officer outside the house into driving me down here.”

  Dad. She’d never called him Dad before.

  She threw her arms around him. He held her. They’d never hugged before either.

  “It’s awful about Claudio,” she said.

  “I know,” he said, holding her tight. “I should have figured this out sooner.”

  “I wish I had too. Did Detective Kennicott catch Maxine?”

  “Just in time.”

  They untangled, and Greene pointed to the end of the wharf.

  “Maxine was trying to drive into the lake, and she had Livingston’s sister, Gloria, with her. It’s a long drop. If they’d gone in, she would have killed them both.”

  Alison shook her head. “Oh my God. Where’s Gloria?”

  “She’s okay.”

  “Thank goodness. Why are the police standing here?”

  “Kennicott signalled me to hold everyone back.”

  “Is he arresting her?”

  “He will. But right now he’s letting her talk. Often the best time is the moment you apprehend a suspect. The urge to confess is very strong, and it’s best done in private.”

  Alison tilted her head. “I bet you taught him that, didn’t you?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe he picked up a few pointers from me along the way.”

  “Maybe?” she said with a smile, then gave him one of her playful punches on the arm. “What’s going to happen now?”

  “We wait until Daniel gives me the signal. You should be proud of yourself for figuring out that one of Livingston’s bottles was missing, and that the puddle by the gate was water from the missing bottle, not dog pee.”

  She shrugged. “I never realized how easy it was to be a detective. All you have to do is count.”

  They both laughed.

  She seemed relaxed standing beside him.

  “Why did Maxine do it?”

  “The two oldest motives in the world. Jealousy and greed. She was jealous because she was losing her baby boy to Fox’s new wife. And greed. She was buying up properties beside Livingston’s new condo developments, extracting huge fees for the shadows the cranes cast over them, then making a fortune selling the homes once the neighbourhood’s property values went up.”

  “Such a horrible waste,” Alison said. “But why was she trying to drive Gloria into the lake?”

  “I think the only logical explanation is that she’s crazy.”

  Alison took his hand. Another first.r />
  “Claudio has children, doesn’t he?” she asked him.

  “Two daughters. I’m going to get Ted DiPaulo to make sure they are taken care of. Same for Livingston’s child.”

  “Livingston? I didn’t know he had children.”

  “He doesn’t. Kennicott told me this morning that his fiancée is pregnant.”

  “Oh my.” She rested her head on his shoulder.

  Greene didn’t move.

  “I want you to know,” Alison said, as she wrapped her arms around his waist, “that I’m working up to say I love you.”

  He put his arm around her shoulder. “There’s no hurry,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  65

  Maxine stopped shaking her head and opened her eyes. She looked dazed.

  “The tube,” Kennicott asked her gently, “are those Livingston’s plans for K2?”

  “I needed to destroy them. Livingston was always spending, spending, spending out of control. Can you imagine now he was going to build low-income housing? It was that fiancée of his. She infected his mind.”

  “Why was that such a bad idea?” he asked, putting his hand on the tube in case she tried to hurl it into the water.

  “Low-income housing?” she scoffed. “The profit margins are much too low! Fox Harbour, this place was his dream. But he owed his creditors millions. And the banks? If they’d heard about this K2 plan of his, they would have pulled the plug in a minute. Livingston would have been ruined. Ruined. How could I let that happen to my child?”

  She reached in under her sleeve and fished out a crumpled tissue.

  “You bought houses next to his new construction sites so you could spy on him.”

  She jolted back, as if she’d been slapped in the face. “I had to watch over my boy. I needed to protect him.”

  “The money you got for your building crane fees and from selling the houses at a profit. What did you do with it?”

  “For goodness’ sake. You yourself gave a twenty-dollar donation. Someone has to take care of the children.”

  “The Daley Youth Shelter,” he said, remembering the painting in her office and the donation box on her desk. And how she’d referred to youth then as children.