My Blackberry buzzed as I got back to the van. Our tech dude had cracked the computer. Good times. I picked up a yellow parking ticket from under the wipers and put the van in gear.
12
I spent two hours screwing around on Brucie’s bright red computer (which had a big glowing alien head on the back) before I called Dean.
“Good news,” I said. “Passwords in Facebook and Gmail were automatically saved. Once we got Windows up and running, everything was there.”
“Great,” Dean said. “Got anything for me?”
“Nothing on Facebook except for RIP messages. I left a post with my phone number, asking anyone who has information to call me or the police.”
“Okay,” Dean said. “Don’t mention my name. I don’t want people at the firm talking.”
“I didn’t. Anyway, Gmail was more interesting.”
“How so?”
“So Brucie gets an e-mail from Paradise Comics every weekend, usually on Saturday. It’s just a list of the comics that come out that week, Brucie e-mails back, says which ones he wants, and I guess they put them aside for him. So that explains the weekly charges on his credit card. But two weeks before Brucie bought the expensive Batman comic he got an e-mail from Paradise Comics. The e-mail says ‘Hey Brucie, I checked your list, looks like I can get two of them. Detective Comics #66 and Incredible Hulk #181. CQC numbers are below. Let me know which one you’d like.’ The e-mail also gives the CQC numbers. No e-mail back from Brucie. I looked but I can’t find the list that Brucie sent them.”
“All right,” Dean said.
“But it gets better. I went a little further back. The day after Brucie went to the Brass Rail in May, he sent an e-mail to someone at your firm. A guy named Rob Guilliam.”
“Rob?” Dean said.
“The e-mail says, quote: ‘Dude, you’ve got to send me the number for that girl’s agency. I’m going nuts here! Hook a brother up!’ Rob e-mails him back, five minutes later, but from his personal account. He says, quote: ‘Don’t e-mail me about this at my work account. Also: why don’t we hold off on this for a little while. Think it over a bit. She’s not going anywhere.’ Brucie then e-mails him back, but at his work account again. He says, quote, ‘Don’t give me that bullshit! You said you had the info, come on man! Give me the number!’ No more emails to or from Mr. Guilliam.”
“Huh,” Dean said. “Get down here and we’ll talk to him. Then we’ll head up to Paradise Comics.”
Dean met me in the lobby at Stewarts and escorted me down the hall. The door to Rob’s office was open and so Dean knocked and we entered.
“Boys!” Rob said. “Good to see you.”
“Hey Rob,” Dean said. “This is Terrell, the private investigator I told you about.”
“Take a seat,” Rob said. “Close the door behind you, though, would you?”
Rob was an example of a type you actually see quite frequently at law firms: the smart jock. A former football player at McGill, Rob was tall and very broad across the chest. The suit he wore was neat but not extravagant and his hair was cut very short. The kind of guy who was always talking about sports and calling you dude but read the Economist and could tell you what the housing crisis was all about.
A signed, framed Daniel Alfredsson jersey hung on the wall. The window had a lovely view of the 44th floor of the Scotia Plaza, directly across the street.
“So anyway,” Dean said, “Like I said on the phone …”
“Look,” Rob interrupted, “I know why you’re here. Okay? I’m actually pretty relieved. It was getting to me. I should have told someone about this stuff earlier. But who was I supposed to tell? This is killing Jay. I didn’t think it would make it any easier for him.”
“Right,” Dean said.
“How did you find out?”
“Well, we got into his e-mails.”
“That little shit,” Rob said, and shook his head. “Poor bastard. He was a great kid.”
“So what happened?” Dean said.
“The second Thursday in May,” Rob started, in a lower voice, “me and Gilles and a bunch of guys took some of the students out to the Duke after work. We ended up getting shittered and turned out it was one of their birthdays so we all went up to the Rail. And when I get out of my cab, who do I see walking up the street all by his lonesome? Brucie.”
“How’d you know him?” Dean asked.
“He’s always at firm events, things like that,” Rob said. “He was on my curling team last year. Anyway, he had some bullshit, McLovin-style fake ID with him and I slipped the bouncer a twenty and I got him in. He was like a kid in a candy store, just staring at everything. I sat him down, got him a Corona, everyone was laughing fit to bust.”
Rob looked at us defensively.
“I mean, he was only seventeen, or whatever. But I was going to strip clubs in Montreal when I was eighteen. And he didn’t seem like the type to bug out.”
“Sure,” Dean said.
“Well, then this super hot chick comes out. I mean, all the strippers are pretty hot, but this one’s just absurd. Nuts. Like airbrushed, but in real life. Her name’s Tanya.”
At the sound of that name, I must have jerked in my chair a little. Right away I looked over at Dean, who had not reacted at all.
“You know her?” Rob asked.
“No, we don’t know her,” Dean said, giving me a look. “Go ahead.”
“Well, Brucie, he’s just such a big kid. When she’s on stage his jaw just hit his chest. He was blown away. We were all laughing at him. Now I actually know this stripper. I don’t want to give you the idea I’m in the strip club every day, but I was there for a bachelor’s party a couple months ago and I know that one of my buddies was so taken with her that he got contact info for her from somewhere. I think I said that when she was doing her dance. Brucie was staring so hard at that girl I wasn’t even sure he’d heard me. I mean seriously. It looked like he was doing damage to his eyeballs. That was how hard he was staring at this girl.”
“Right,” Dean said.
“So Brucie goes back for a private dance, until she finally kicks him out and he gets thrown out of the strip club entirely. I guess he was trying to get her to marry him back there and she finally just said, ‘you are just a boy,’ or whatever. Then the rest of us all got kicked out too. We were wasted.”
“Did you see Brucie again that night?”
“No, Rob said, “and even in my drunken state I was pretty worried about that. Bouncers are assholes and for all I knew they totally kicked the shit out of him. Or he could have got hit by a car, or whatever. I didn’t know what to do.”
“And the next morning?”
“The next morning I get this e-mail, at my fucking work account, asking me for the girl’s details. So I wrote him back from my Gmail through my Blackberry and just said, hey dude, let’s think about this. The little prick e-mails me back at work, again, and so I call him. He threatens me on the phone.”
“Explicitly?”
“No, not in so many words, but he just kept saying, we were there together, and he needs to get it from me. So finally I said, Brucie, do your worst. That’s what I said. I mean, this is my career, but if he’s going to play that card now, for all I know he’s going to play it tomorrow. I figured I had to put a stop to it. So I just said: no way. You want to tell your dad, go ahead.”
“And you didn’t hear anything more about it?”
“No. I figured he’d be in as much trouble as I would, so he kept it to himself.”
“When was the next time you saw him?”
“Never,” Rob replied. “I never saw him again before he died. Look man, I am so sorry. I want you to know that. The way he was asking for that girl. Something was off about it. He was obsessed, even though he’d only seen her for like two seconds. I should have gone straight to Jay. But I didn’t know what would happen.”
“And then after it happened,” Dean said, “what’s the point of telling him?
&nbs
p; “Yeah,” Rob said. “Like I said, I’m glad to tell you.”
“Thanks Rob,” Dean said. “If you’re sure that’s all you know, I think I can probably keep your name out of it.”
“Well, if you can, great. If you can’t, you can’t.” Rob said. “Do what you gotta do.”
He sighed.
“Fucked up man,” Rob said. “His only kid.”
“Yeah,” Dean said.
Rob shook his head, and then looked at me.
“So what’re you letting him do all the questioning for?” he said in a more boisterous voice. “You’re the investigator!”
“I’m supervising,” I said.
Rob laughed at that, and then turned back to his computer as we left his office.
13
We rode the subway up to Lawrence and then started walking up Yonge. Paradise Comics was about one third of the way to York Mills and so Dean lit a cigarette.
“Don’t tell Tina,” he said.
“Does she think you quit?” I asked.
“I did quit,” he said.
I changed the subject.
“I just about had a heart attack when he said the girl’s name was Tanya,” I said.
Dean just grunted.
“Man,” I said.
We were quiet the rest of the walk.
Paradise Comics was a long, narrow store. The walls were lined with graphic novels, softcover trade paperbacks and hardcovers, and those expensive action figures they make for college students. At the back wall there was a smaller shelf with this week’s new releases, all the slim little comics each in its own plastic bag with a board, just like in Brucie’s boxes. The sales counter was on the left side of the room. It was made of glass, and inside there were some older comics in those hard plastic boxes with numbered grades in the top right. A red headed guy in his twenties was behind the counter. “Can I help you sir?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Dean said. “My name’s Dean Mann. This is Terrell Delacroix. We’ve been retained by Jay Goldstein to look into what happened to his son.”
“Uh,” the clerk said. “Hold on. Let me go get Peter.”
He went down the stairs behind him to the basement and we were left alone in the store a while. I tapped the glass counter.
“Check it out,” I said. “X-men from 1970.”
“You want to get one?”
“No thanks man,” I said. “I don’t know how much they are, but I’m pretty sure it’s too much for a book I don’t even get to read.”
The clerk came back up the stairs with a slightly older blond man with an earring in one ear.
“Hey, you guys are here about Brucie?” he said.
“Yeah,” Dean said. “My name is Dean and this is Terrell.”
“I thought it was suicide,” Peter said.
“Well, it’s not clear,” Dean said. “It’s still technically considered a suspicious death. We’re just looking into things a bit. Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?”
“Ask away,” Peter said. “I feel terrible about what happened. Jay’s been my customer for 20 years.”
“Really?” I said.
“Sure,” Peter said. “Jay Goldstein is a big Toronto collector. His collection’s insured at a million dollars I think. And Brucie was a member here.”
“What does that mean?” Dean asked.
“Just that he gets a discount and we set aside his books for him every week. He hadn’t been in for a few weeks in a row. I figured he’d just gone to school early. We were going to keep his books for him till he came back for American Thanksgiving. I heard about what happened from some of his old high school buddies. I couldn’t believe it. He was like my happiest customer.”
“Brucie was a great guy,” the red haired clerk chimed in.
“So you don’t know anything about something that could have been getting him down?” Dean asked.
“No, no.”
“He didn’t mention any women problems or anything?”
Peter assumed a somewhat ironic expression. “My clientele generally don’t run into a lot of women problems.”
I laughed.
“Right,” Dean said. “Well, back in July, did you sell Brucie a $9,000 comic?”
“Yeah,” Peter said. “Detective Comics #66. First appearance of Two-Face. Brucie said it was a present for Jay. I thought Jay already had that one, but I guess not. Also a pretty expensive present. It was weird, but whatever. For Jay’s kid, I would have taken it back, as long as it was still in the box.”
“Can you tell me how that went down?”
“He came in here with a list of books he was looking for, asked me to check what I had, and to send him the CQC numbers because he wanted to check the grading notes.”
“Do you still have the list he gave you?”
“No, sorry.”
“All right. Can you tell me what you mean by checking the grading notes?”
“Well,” Peter said, “when CQC grades a comic, three graders take notes on the condition of the comic. Slight tear on page four, water damage on page 18. That kind of thing. So you know what you’re getting. Then CQC averages the three scores, and that’s how you get the final score you see on the box. So if it says 8.5, could be that one grader gave it an 8.0, one 8.5 and one 9.0. But usually the scores are closer together than that.”
“And you can look up the grading notes online if you have the number?”
“Sure,” Peter said.
“Why does it matter whether it’s an 8.5 or a 9.0 if you don’t take it out of the box?” I asked.
“Well,” Peter said. “Let me give you an extreme example. AF 15, okay?”
“What?” I said.
“Amazing Fantasy 15,” Peter said. “First appearance of Spiderman.”
“Right,” I said.
“A 9.4 will sell for around $250,000,” Peter said.
“That’s nuts,” I said.
“A 9.6, though, sold for $1,000,000.”
“What?” I shouted.
“Whoa, hold on,” Dean said. “So 0.2 is $750,000?”
“Sure, for that one comic.”
“Okay, back up,” Dean said. “Who is CQC?”
“Comic Quality Certification,” Peter said. “They validate and grade comics. So you send in your comic …”
“How?” Dean interrupted.
“You have to do it through someone with an account. So for example, I have an account. So if you dig around in your attic, and find a copy of AF 15, you bring it in to me and I send it to them.”
“Where are they?”
“Sarasota, Florida.”
“Okay. And I pay a flat fee?”
“How much you pay depends on the value of the comic. More expensive comics cost more but get graded faster. CQC doesn’t want them sitting around, for insurance purposes.”
“Okay. Then what? You’re saying three graders look at it?”
“Graders look at it, they make sure it’s authentic, they make sure it hasn’t been restored, they pick a number for its quality, they seal it up in a special box, and then they send it back to you. And now you’ve got your comic, and it’s preserved and so on, with an official grade from CQC.”
“So it’s easier to trade on the secondary market?”
“Exactly,” Peter said.
“But, I mean, this company,” Dean said, “I find AF 15 in my attic. Okay? It’s smushed between two encyclopedias so it’s in good condition. I send it down to Florida. Whether they give it a 9.4 or 9.6 is worth 750 large to me?”
“Yep,” Peter said.
“Are they accountable? Can you appeal?”
“Appeal what?” Peter said. “It’s just their opinion. Read the back of the box. You don’t like it, take it out of the box.”
“But then in practice you can’t sell it if it’s out of the box?”
“Depends how much you want for it.”
“How long has CQC been around?”
“Ten years. They did the same thing with co
ins for a long time, and they had a trading card business for a while too, I think.”
“And you’ve been in business for twenty?”
“Twenty years this year, yes.”
“Have they been good for the industry?”
“Yes, absolutely,” Peter said. “No doubt. Because it lets more people participate in the market. Let me tell you a story. I have another long term client. Richer than Jay. He bought a Detective Comics 27. First appearance of Batman, for $100,000. He sent it down to CQC, came back with the purple label of death. 9.4, but restored.”
“So if it’s restored it’s worth less?”
“I sold that comic for him for $8,000.”
“What the fuck,” I said. I couldn’t contain myself. “It’s the same fucking comic.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Peter said. “Anyway, that client said he’s never buying a comic over a thousand dollars without me again, because he can’t tell whether something’s been touched up, just a little. And CQC gives everyone access to having a guy like me. You can buy with confidence. You can buy a comic over the internet from a guy in California. He just puts up the grade, the CQC number, and you know what you’re getting.”
“And you trust them?” Dean said.
“Sure, because you see them around at all the conventions. One time, at the beginning, I went over to their table at Comic Con over because I wasn’t happy about a score I got on one of my books. So the guy said, oh, the president’s busy, he’ll be right over. Whatever, I thought. But sure enough, the president came over to my booth in fifteen minutes and talked to me about my score. They’re very open. They’ll tell you exactly why you got the score you did. It’s very easy to get the information.”
“Does CQC have any competitors?” Dean asked.
“No, not really. There’s this one other company, but you can’t trust them. One of my customers bought a book they graded at 9.2. If it had a grade from CQC, even if that grade was a little lower, it would have been worth more. So he sent it to CQC, and it came back restored. Value went down to nothing. The other company missed the restoration and my buddy relied on their ranking and he got screwed. In this business, trust is everything. CQC has it and right now, nobody else does.”
The Black Box: A novel Page 5
