by Ted Wood
She hung up again and said "Mr. Straight's secretary will see you."
"Good." I nodded approvingly. "Now we're starting to get somewhere." I was expecting a clone of the receptionist. With just the same degree of pressure I was sure I could get by her and in to see Straight. Instead, the inner door opened and an elegant woman of about thirty walked out. She was Chinese, taller than average, dressed in a creamy silk blouse, tied at the throat, and a silk skirt. Her hair was bobbed in a cut that must have been intended to look practical but which was more strikingly feminine than waist-length curls. I looked at her and rose to my feet as if I'd been hooked. Any man would have found her beautiful. In my mind she brought out some echoes that made her irresistible.
She came over and held out her hand. "Good afternoon, my name is Yin Su. I work for Mr. Straight." Her English was unaccented but had the slightly metallic quality that let me know it was her second language.
Even a storm trooper would have taken her hand. I did it, working hard not to eat her up with my eyes. I stayed in character to say, "Yeah, well, a pleasure, Su, Tony sent me to talk to your boss."
She remained charming, the princess with the barbarian. "I keep Mr. Straight's calendar for him. If you'll give me your name, and perhaps an idea of what this is about, I'll arrange an appointment."
"Yeah, well, that'd take too long." I was growing disgusted with myself. I had checked her hands and they were free of rings. Had we met under any other circumstances I would have been concentrating on getting to know her, not the man she worked for.
"He's very busy," she explained patiently. "He's one of the senior partners here and I have to be very careful of his time." I said nothing and she pressed on, losing just a touch of her smoothness. "His time is very valuable."
I was melting under the gaze of those cool brown eyes but I did what I had to do. "Yeah. Tony told me that. But he gave me a message for him."
She tried again, still calm. "Perhaps it would help if you could tell me who Tony is."
"Cy knows."
She smiled again, a polite tightening of the corners of her mouth. "Well, we seem to have a problem. Mr. Straight can't take time away from his work to see you and you won't make an appointment."
"So I'll just sit here until he comes out. He'll see me then," I said. "Thank you for your trouble, but this is private."
"Very well." She nodded, smiling one last time, and left. I sat down again and reached for the magazines. All the others were law journals. I sighed. This could turn into a long afternoon.
The woman at the desk made a point of being busy, glancing at me slyly over the notes she was typing. I ignored her.
A lot of my life has been spent waiting. Sometimes beside a twelve-inch Cong trail in Viet Nam, in monsoon rain that beat you half senseless, sometimes in the back of unheated vehicles in laneways outside fur warehouses in a Toronto January. I can handle the kind of discomfort most civilians never understand. By comparison, this was heaven. The couch was soft, there was Muzak, bland wallpaper music from the early sixties. I could have sat there all night. All I needed was patience and a forgiving bladder.
The receptionist made a couple of calls out and I listened carefully. I hadn't seen any security people in the building when I arrived. Most Toronto offices don't bother with them, except for government buildings and the major corporations. A place like this wouldn't have anybody on the door during the day time. And I hadn't done anything that warranted sending for the police. It was all cool. All I had to do was sit tight.
Slowly, the afternoon drew on and the office emptied. Young men in blue suits and a few women, one of them pert and pretty, carrying a squash bag, came through the foyer and wished the receptionist goodnight. Some of them looked at me and back at her. She was embarrassed, as if I were something her dog had brought in, something she would be held accountable for. I just sat and looked at all the people, not smiling. I wasn't sure whether Straight was amongst the men who left but I was gambling that he would think I knew him and would not come marching through, past a potential source of trouble.
The receptionist made one last attempt to shake me loose. "I'm going home now, the office is closed," she said. She stood up, touching a switch that unsnapped a catch on her desk and let it tilt like a halo around her blameless head.
"I'll let myself out when I've seen Cy," I said.
She snorted something that could have been "Really!" and went away behind the closed door of the inner office. She came out a minute later with a string bag containing three library books and left without looking my way.
It was shortly after that the Chinese girl came back. She had the jacket that matched the skirt over her arm. "Mr. Straight says he can spare you two minutes," she said.
"I thank you, ma'am." I didn't make a mockery of the ma'am. It didn't have any bearing on the investigation but I really wanted this woman to like me.
She led me back through the rear doors and across an open area to a windowed office. The door was open but she rapped on it with her knuckles and said, "Mr. Straight, the gentleman from the lobby." He motioned to me to enter and I nodded at her and went by. She stepped away and closed the door. Straight was at the desk. I wasn't sure what I'd been expecting, but this wasn't it. He was a hunchback, a small man in a dark suit which had been beautifully cut to minimize the fact that he was folded, halfway between shoulders and waist, with one shoulder thrust high. He was about forty, darkhaired and had incongruously pale gray eyes.
There were books on his desk, a couple of them closed with place markers in them, another open and a foolscap pad of yellow paper with hentracks on it in green ink. He put down his pen and looked up when I came in. "Su said you won't give her your name." His voice had the rigid vibrato of a man with a bad heart condition. He looked stern but not angry.
"Yeah, well, you know how it is." I sat down opposite and looked into his eyes. He stared back, his intensity defying me to acknowledge his handicap.
"No, I don't think I do. How is it?" He was unafraid. I guess a lifetime of weakness had made him strong. He knew I could have reached out and snapped his neck with one hand, any healthy man could have, but he acted as if I were the frog and he the magician.
"Look, I was talkin'a Tony. He said he knew a guy who knew a guy who needed some bones broke. I need a job."
Straight looked at me flat-eyed for about fifteen seconds and then laughed, without humor, opening his mouth and letting out the sounds as if they were vomit. I said nothing. He was acting, the way a D. I. will act with a bunch of raw recruits he wants to intimidate. He was bloody good at it, but he was acting. This was where the original call had come from.
I allowed the corners of my mouth to lift as if I were amused but sniffed loudly instead of laughing. He stopped and wiped his eyes with a handkerchief, although they didn't need it.
"When did you get out?" He was reaching for his back pocket with his right hand, canting his already raised shoulder painfully higher. I let him get the wallet out and open it. He took out a fin. "When did you get out?" he repeated, making a Clark Gable grin and holding out the five bucks. I said nothing and he waved the five at me. "Out of prison, the joint, the slammer, the bucket?"
"Yesterday," I said, eying the money the way he expected.
"And I'll bet you haven't had a drink since, have you. Here. Go have a beer on me. Or will you go and tell the same story at the next lawyer's office you pass. Let me see, five dollars an hour, that's better than you'd make working."
I reached out for the bill. "Thanks, does this mean I'm hired?"
He tugged the bill a fraction of an inch from my outstretched fingers, his voice as scratchy as fingernails on a blackboard as he hissed, "There is no job. There is no Tony, none I've ever heard of, anyway. And there is no point in your remaining here. If you want a drink, take the five dollars but don't come here again, you frighten my help."
I flipped the bill out of his fingers. "But I don't frighten you, right?"
"Go," he sa
id savagely. "This is the sum and total of my charity towards unemployed hoodlums. Understood?"
"Yeah. Thanks again." I winked and waved the bill at him and stood up. He was furious at me and at his own restrictive body that prevented his coming around the desk and throwing me out with his own hands. I might have felt sorry for him but too many of my own buddies had ended up in worse physical shape than his. Men I had served with had wound up in wheelchairs, in life-support systems. They had lost hands, feet, sexuality, life itself. He was whole—twisted, but whole—and I had an instinctive policeman's feeling that he was into something ugly, headfirst.
I touched the five to my forehead in a salute that was only a shade too slow to be formal. "Thanks for the fin, sorry'a take up so mucha your time." I nodded and backed out of the door.
The bullpen area outside was deserted. There were four desks and a number of typing stations and filing cabinets and one computer terminal. Earlier it had been a beehive. Now it was empty except for me. I folded the bill up tight between my fingers as I glanced around. On top of one of the cabinets there was a glass jar with no top. It had coins in it. I stepped out of my way towards the door and stuffed the five dollars into it. Behind me I heard Yin Su say, "Just a minute. What are you doing?"
She came over and looked into the jar. It was courageous, I thought. She was alone except for her handicapped boss. If I'd turned ugly she would have been helpless. She looked up, pulling out my five dollars. "You really put money in here?"
"Surplus to requirements," I told her and she grinned at me as if we were old workmates.
"That's the office swearbox," she said, "a nickel a word. You have a hundred curses owing to you now."
"I guess I'm already over budget in your books."
"No." She shook her head firmly. "You never said anything bad. If you want your money back, I will understand." She was still acting out her role as employee, office faithful. The link between us was as fragile as the first line of a new spiderweb, a breath might break it.
"I want to apologize for acting like a slob. I had a job to do." Maybe Cy Straight was listening, I didn't care. I already had enough of a feeling to know I would be following him later. The anger he had shown was a whiff of fear.
"You must have an unusual job," she said. She had the ability to talk straight but disarm me with a smile that wasn't even a smile at all.
"It's done now. I was wondering if I could ask you to share a cup of coffee, something, and give me a chance to explain what I do normally."
She straightened up, suddenly formal. "Really, I understand. You don't have to explain," she said.
"I'd like to. My name is Reid Bennett and I usually behave much better, I'd like the chance to demonstrate for you."
She laughed, one quick pure note. Behind her the door of Cy Straight's office clicked shut. He had been listening. I wondered why, running the possibilities through my mind. Did he really need privacy to work or had he closed the door now that he knew my name? Was he going to make a phone call to Tony? I watched the telephone console on the nearest desk and sure enough a light came on. I read the number next to the button, 4301. It must be Straight, nobody else seemed to be in.
The girl said, "I think I must go straight home, I have a lot to do tonight."
"That would be understandable but not charitable," I said. "I already hate myself for being surly to you and the lady in the flying saucer. I'd like to make amends, carry your books, lay my cape in a puddle, something."
She laughed with genuine amusement. "I'll walk out with you," she said. She slipped into her jacket and picked up a purse from beside one of the chairs. Then she tapped on Straight's door and leaned in. "Goodnight, Mr. Straight. Have a nice trip to Montreal. I'll expect you back late tomorrow."
Montreal? I was pleased to hear it. It meant he wouldn't be around to be followed. That would leave me time to follow this woman instead. I liked that idea a lot better.
"He's going out of town?" I asked innocently.
She said yes before catching herself and cocking her head to look at me quizzically. "Why do you ask?"
"It probably means you don't have to work late," I said. I opened the door and she went ahead of me, through the lobby and out to the elevators. She pressed the down button and stood looking at it, ignoring me. I was feeling drained, as if I had been in a fight. When the elevator came she got in and pressed the lobby button. I stood opposite but she didn't look my way, just glanced up at the lights indicating the floors we were passing. Other people got in at the thirty-second and she relaxed a fraction until we reached the ground.
I stood back to let the others get off and caught up with her as she walked away, briskly, only half checking that I was behind her. We went out through the revolving doors on to Bay Street. The sidewalks were crowded with hurrying people and the rush hour traffic sat all along the block, congealing in exhaust fumes and noise. She headed north, towards Queen Street. I crossed to the outside of the curb and walked beside her. I felt as awkward as a schoolboy. Maybe I should have ignored her, walked off to my car without looking back. Other men might have, but other men had not spent the last year up in cottage country, alone most of the time, or seeing women only casually. And other men had not been affected as deeply by a woman so much like this one that I was almost in a trance of memory.
"If you're heading for the subway, you're walking into a mob scene," I told her.
She turned to glance at me but kept walking. "It's the same every night. I am used to it."
"It would be lighter in another twenty minutes or so," I suggested. We had reached the corner, the light was against us and she waited, turning to look me square in the face.
"You are very persistent," she said.
"If I'm annoying you, I'll leave," I promised. She said nothing and when the light changed, started across the street. I added, "If I'm not, maybe you could spare fifteen minutes for a coffee or a Perrier."
She walked another four or five steps then grinned at me in a way so un-Chinese that I was startled. "Why not?" she said.
Chapter 11
We went to one of the transplanted English pubs that have sprung up in Toronto. This one sits close enough to the stock exchange to be able to get away with charging four bucks for a pint of Worthington E.
She had a Perrier with a twist; I took a pint. It was the only English thing my father missed in all his years in Canada. That marvellous first swallow always reminds me why. She watched as I enjoyed it.
"You look as if you've done that before."
So I explained about my father, the ex-commando from Lancashire who had come here in 1946 and found work in the nickel mine at Coppercliff, Ontario. He met my mother, a French girl from Callander, the town where the Dionne quints were born, and they married and lived happily ever after. It's not the most exciting story in the world, but because she asked the right questions I found myself telling it to her, and of the ending, for them, six months apart, during my last year in high school. My father's death, in a preventable cave-in at the mine, had soured me on my home town. I'd sent my kid sister to stay with our mother's sister, later on sending money for her to go to university, and I had dropped my own plans for more education. I joined the U.S. Marines instead and did my sociology and political science studies firsthand with an M16 in my fists, while I boiled the anger out of my system.
It wasn't a monologue on my part. I'm old enough to know that war stories are the origin of that old line, "I guess you had to be there." Nobody cares how close you came to not being wherever you are now, bending their ear with yet another retelling of your adventures. They may even get to wish you hadn't been quite so lucky. Fortunately, in a way, for us Viet Nam vets, the whole social structure was slanted against us from day one. Talking about Nam is like discussing the state of your psoriasis. Personally, I'm proud of the fact that I was there and came under fire without flinching and fired back and did the job I'd been trained to do, even though the politics of the war still confuse me and
I wouldn't want to defend its principles. So when I mentioned Viet Nam, without drawing any pictures, and Su took a careful sip of her drink and said nothing for a moment, I figured she was another of the anti's I've met. But the war was not her prime concern. She lifted her eyes to me, over her drink and asked, "Did you know many women there?"
The question startled me. It's what men ask, with a smile and a nudge if they're young, a wistful look if they're older. But Su was straight-faced.
"One in particular." As I spoke I could remember Li's face.
She had been more delicate than this woman, slimmer even, almost translucent in her beauty. And I remembered that last night. We were in a bar in Saigon. The terrible band was playing something they thought the Beatles had written, requested by some homesick grunt who was wearing a Dear John letter like a purple heart. "Yesterday," just slightly off key. And then the shoe-shine boy's cleaning box blew up. It killed him of course but they, perhaps even he, had known it would. It also killed seven Americans, wounded eleven others, and punched a piece of the brass footrail from the bar cleanly through Li's chest. I carried her out to the ambulance when it came, adding my shouts to all the others clamoring for aid but the big black medic just looked at me. "She dead, man. Git, there's PEOPLE inside an' they need me." And when I tried to stop him he had pushed me over and shouted, "F' crissakes. She dead, man. 'Many times you gotta be told?" He ran back into the bar and I was left, sitting there on the ground holding her until the young guy she had called her brother came for her, as angry at me as if I had personally set the bomb. I suppose he had to work for a living after that.
"She was killed by a bomb," I told Su, and reached for my beer but noticed that my hand was unsteady and changed my mind.
Yin Su was looking at me, closely. "I'm sorry. I did not mean to remind you of something hurtful."
