by Ted Wood
Her friend answered, sounding as if she was about a quart of coffee short of being ready for the day's disasters. She brightened some when I said who I was. I figured Lou must have told her I was single. That brings out either the maternal or the mating instinct in a lot of women. Louise came on, bright as morning orange juice and asked how I was. I told her fine, no need to give her any worry, she had some client's cough medicine and somebody else's pantihose to worry about that day. Then I slid in the important question.
"Met a friend of yours, says she was in college with you, taking the same writing course."
"Writing course? I never took any writing course. I took straight English and history, with one Psych credit," she said, and my hackles began to tickle.
"Well, maybe I didn't listen carefully enough. Anyway, she's a lean-looking blond girl, around your age, got really blue blue eyes, like you hear about in Irish songs. Calls herself Phyllis Henderson."
Louise laughed. "Policeman of mine, you've been sold a bill of goods. I never knew a Phyllis anybody in college. I'd have remembered, I don't think I know anybody my age with that name."
"Then I guess I got her confused with somebody else. I met a few people last night."
"That's nice," she said brightly. "I hope you had a tremendous time and found yourself somebody worth knowing."
"I did," I assured her. "A couple of real sweethearts."
And that was the end of it. I promised to let her know when things had cooled out enough for her to come home, asked after the kids and hung up.
I didn't enjoy my breakfast. I was wondering about my visitor. On impulse I phoned the Sun and asked for Phyllis Henderson. The switchboard girl told me there was nobody of that name working there. I gave a sketchy description, said she was a reporter, the woman thought about it and said no again, there was no reporter of that description with the paper.
When I had finished eating and washed the dishes, I rang Bonded Security. Fullwell was in and he sounded eager. "Let me take this on my own phone," he said. "In fact, better than that, I'll go across the street and call from there."
It took three minutes. He was bursting with news. "I was just heading over here to call you," he began. "I managed to get through to the head office computer in New York and check Willis's file. He's a very interesting guy."
"In what way?"
"Well, he's older than he looks, must be in his fifties. He's Canadian, not American, as I thought. He was in Korea with the Princess Patricia's Light Infantry. His outfit was shot to hell somewhere and the whole company got an American Presidential Citation which is on his record."
"Yeah, so he's a hero."
"There's more than that." Fullwell was crammed with news and it poured out of him, almost too fast for me to take it in. "He came home in 1953 and stayed in the army for another two years, working as a military policeman. He was in the Provost, which was an unusual switch for an infantryman to make. Then in '55 he quit, with the rank of Sergeant, took his Veteran's grant and went to college."
"Come on Simon, you're holding out on me." I was anxious to hear the facts that focussed all this background.
"Well, he took law courses, criminology and, are you ready?"
"After last night I'm ready for just about anything," I promised him.
"Yeah, well he also took a language, something which wasn't done by a lot of people with that mix of subjects."
From his tone I knew what was coming. "Don't tell me. He majored in Chinese."
Fullwell's excited laugh filled the phone. "How in hell did you guess that?" He laughed again. "It was the last thing in the world I ever expected, he never told me that and I've worked with him for a year. I've never even heard him order egg rolls."
"And then what did he do? Take another course in leg-breaking?"
"No." Fullwell grew sober again. "No, then he went legit, he quit college without a degree and joined the police department in Hamilton."
"He wouldn't have needed his Chinese there," I said. "That's a steel town, they hardly speak English, most bars I've been in there."
"I know. It's a tough town." Fullwell said. "He put in a year and a half on the beat, walking tall and sorting out fights. And then, guess what?"
"He joined your company?" I didn't believe it but it speeds conversations along if you take an adversary position once in a while.
Fullwell played his ace. "No. What he did was volunteer for service as a policeman overseas."
I was about to ask where but he rode in almost at once, "In, of all places, Hong Kong."
I whistled. "And then suddenly we're investigating a bashing at a site controlled by Hong Kong money. We move out a little and find ourselves faced with hoods who kick holes in people with kung fu and talk Cantonese, which is the way Chinese is spoken in the colony."
"Right. Right, right on the money." Fullwell almost crowed. "We find ourselves in a situation where a man with a Hong Kong background might be considered a suspicious character. And then to top it off, some little rounder with nothing to gain accuses him of being crooked."
We were both silent for a moment, then I said. "I've got to talk to this guy, very, very soon."
Chapter 23
We discussed it a little longer. Fullwell was still surprised that the homicide guys hadn't taken Willis in. I wasn't. I knew better. The facts I had given them didn't make a case. All it gave them was hearsay of hearsay connecting Willis to a nonfatal beating, not a murder. So, unless he had come unglued and started confessing they wouldn't have had anything to lock him up for. It was normal and legal and expected, but it didn't change my mind that he was behind the whole chain of events.
"I think I should head up to his place and talk to him. He'll deny everything and raise hell, but maybe I can put a bit of pressure on where the police couldn't," I said. My wrists were hurting this morning and deep breaths still brought up memories of the smoke in that car the night before. I would be a while getting over this particular case and I wasn't as concerned with law as I was with finding out who was behind it all.
Fullwell grunted. "Good idea. I'll come with you."
"No. I don't want you booted out of your job for running interference," I told him. "This is kind of personal. I'll keep it that way."
I thanked him and hung up and set Sam on guard in the house. Then I took a taxi to where I'd left my car and spent a few minutes looking for devices that hadn't been put in place by General Motors. These people, whoever they were, played for keeps and I didn't want sticks of dynamite leaving souvenirs of me all over the scenery. But the precaution was unnecessary; there was nothing around the motor or under the car. I didn't even locate a bug of any kind, so after a second check I put the key in and started up.
By now it was eight thirty and the streets were full of commuters, headed down where the dollar bills grow.
I didn't envy any of them. It was good to be alive and moderately independent, out on a fishing trip with some hope of wrapping up this entire mystery within the next hour or so. I wasn't even sure what I was going to do when I found Willis, but investigations have a dynamic of their own, like stage plays. They usually start abruptly, then slacken while you race around looking for leads. And then things start to come together faster and faster, leading you to an arrest and the inevitable slowdown. I figured I was there now, just ahead of the arrest. If I had to lean on Willis a little to get cooperation, that was fine by me, I wasn't a policeman on this case, just an injured citizen. I had the same rights as everybody else, including the right to get exercised when people tried to set fire to me.
I found his house, in the south end of Forest Hill village. It's a primarily Jewish neighborhood, full of beautiful homes with Mercedeses in the double garages. This far down, close to St. Clair Avenue, it starts to shade off into more down-to-earth places but this house looked like three hundred grand's worth.
I pulled my Chev into the driveway, went to the door and rang a few times but nobody answered, so I knocked until my wrists s
tarted hurting again, but still got nothing.
As far as I could tell there was nobody looking out at me through the neighbors' lace curtains but I went into my fallback routine, walking back to the car and opening the trunk. I have a shovel in there, part of my emergency gear for winter driving in Murphy's Harbour. I didn't think anybody watching would know a shovel from a spade. They would never lay hands on one for themselves. Holding it made me some kind of workman, a nonperson as invisible as the postman in that Father Brown story.
I took it and walked back around the edge of the house onto a good stone patio in the shade of an oaktree that had been there before they dug the foundations for the house. It screened me from any of the houses behind and I spent a few seconds checking the back door and windows. I was in luck; one of the windows was open a touch. It was a casement style and there was no fly screen so I was able to hop over the sill and into the house inside ten seconds.
I found myself in a large room, decorated in the way that says "Money" loud and clear. It made me uneasy. I was ready for a confrontation with Willis, but I wanted it on my own terms. Right now, I had broken in, and that made me illegal. I slipped out to the front door, opened it and stood on the mat calling up the stairs, "Hello, Mr. Willis," in the kind of voice that Avon Ladies might use. Nobody answered but I stayed nervous; it was only two days since I'd walked in on Tony's corpse. I didn't want to find myself framed, or worse yet, ambushed, one more time. I kept calling as I made a quick spin through the downstairs.
The ground floor was deserted but there were no signs of trouble, the place was neat, there was food in the fridge, including a fresh quart of milk, so it looked as if he was still in residence, unless he'd skipped out this morning. If so, he must have had a real pile of cash on hand; he hadn't bothered to pick up the valuables. There was a set of silver in the dining room that had cost a year of my pay.
One thing was certain, I decided: the man wasn't living on what he earned at Bonded. A house like this needed an income well into six figures. But I didn't have much time to theorize. I had just come out of the kitchen and reached the stairwell when the front door was kicked open. I spun to face it, trying to compromise between a fighting crouch and a look of surprise. My right hand had gone into my jacket pocket to grip my only weapon and I was prepared to rush anybody who threatened me. But there was no need. The man in the doorway was Elmer Svensen, still wearing his hat, grinning now as if he'd won a doorprize.
"Police work a little slow, Bennett?" he jeered. "Taken to B and E, have you?"
I kept it casual. "Hi Elmer, what brings you here?"
He kept his grin on like a conventioneer's nametag. "You do, asshole," he said happily. "I've been wondering when you'd step over the line and today's the day. Breaking and entering."
I walked towards him, elaborately casual. "Get real, I'm just visiting my old workmate, Henry Willis. D'you ever meet him, he works for Bonded Security, I'm working with him."
"In a pig's eye," Svensen said. "They kicked you the hell off the payroll yesterday, don't try to tell me different."
I was beginning to sweat, he was mean enough to take me in unless I was very careful and I had worn out any credibility I brought into town with me as a small-town police chief.
"Where'd you hear a story like that?" I asked him. "I don't think it made the newspapers."
He chomped his chewing gum and grinned. "I hear things all over," he said happily.
"I've noticed. Every time I turn around on this investigation you're there. It gets a man wondering just who your friends are, Elmer."
He shrugged. "You know the score, a copper's only as good as his information. I get around. Now suppose you give me some information about what you're doing in Willis's house when he's not even home."
"We're good friends and this is a social call."
"Sure," Svensen said. "And I'm Miss Toronto." He reached around his waist for the handcuffs on his belt. "Hold your hands out."
"Are you kidding?" I stuck both hands in my pockets. "I'm here at his invitation. I called him earlier at the office but he'd left. He told me yesterday to come up and see him."
Svensen didn't believe me but his confidence was fading as my own grew. I put myself right into the part. And it worked. "Great house he's got, eh?" I wandered off, hands still in my pockets, staring around as if I'd paid a buck admission.
Svensen said, "Don't give me that crap. I got a phone call saying a man was breaking in here. I come right up and here you are, bold as brass."
"Of course." I laughed. "I told you, he invited me. He said if he was out the front door would be open. I tried it, it was, so I came in."
He was weakening. I sensed it and let my own thin shred of confidence tug me back into the dining room where I had noticed a decanter on the sideboard. "This guy really knows how to live. Come and have a look at this dining room. That table looks like it's older than Canada." I picked up the decanter and took the stopper out. "Wow. That's real gold braid booze, just sniff it."
I thrust it towards him and saw him swallow convulsively. It would have been easy to overplay it and offer him a drink but instead I put it down and stuck the stopper back into it. "If you want to wait for him, maybe I can find the coffee," I said. "I guess it's in the kitchen somewhere."
I walked through to the kitchen and started banging cupboard doors. I was getting more and more tense. If Willis came back and found me here with Svensen it would be easy for him to turn me in. I had to get out or get Svensen out right away.
I found a kettle and filled it and put it on the gas stove, then walked back through to the dining room. Svensen was standing by the window but I could tell he had taken a half inch of liquor out of the decanter. I decided to press in. I had to scare him away. "I guess you won't want coffee now," I said innocently.
He turned and stared at me through narrow, angry eyes. "You disgust me," he said in a low voice.
I shrugged. "I seem to annoy a lot of people but it comes with the job. I mean I go around being suspicious all the time. I ask myself questions like, why is a detective from 43 division answering phone calls about suspicious characters in Forest Hill, which is about eight miles out of his area?" I let that one dangle while I walked over to the decanter, picked it up and wiped it with my handkerchief. "And I wonder why a man from 43 division is over in the west end of Toronto in the apartment of a crummy little loan shark who's just been wasted?" I turned to stare at him. "What's on, Elmer, are you turning into a one-man Guardian Angels for the whole city?"
He didn't answer but his anger was building and I knew I would get a reaction very soon, perhaps even the truth. That would be pleasant for a change.
"On top of that, I wonder why a good copper gets a monkey on his back and starts sucking up the rye all day every day?"
"Who're you talking about?" he roared suddenly. He walked over towards me as if he was going to take a roundarm swipe at me but I didn't flinch. He was too slow for me the best day he ever saw, and this wasn't it.
"I'm talking about you, Elmer. You used to be able to take whatever crap the job threw at you. We've had a lot of laughs. And now suddenly you're turning into a snotty-tempered rummy who comes running whenever anybody with a bottle snaps his fingers."
He was ready to hit me but defeat was too deeply ingrained into his soul. "What makes you so goddamn smug?" he said. "Just because you've been trained better'n I ever was to tackle guys with guns, that don't make you special, it just makes you lucky."
His pace was slowing. I didn't answer him. I knew he was still living with that few seconds when those guys had gotten the drop on him. It was a play he sat through every time he closed his eyes. What would have happened if he had refused to hand over his gun? And if they had shot him, would it be any worse than this endless reliving of the moment, over and over? I wanted to comfort him but all he wanted from me was distance.
"I've had the same thing happen, more than once. It happens if you're a copper, some bastard gets the drop on
you sometimes. Don't let it stick in your craw."
He swore at me, a dull, tired word. Then he pulled up his sleeve and checked the time. "I've got to be going," he said. "I'll tell Willis next time I see him that you were here. If he wants to press charges, you're going inside."
There was nothing to say so I waved one casual hand and walked back out to the kitchen while he clumped over the polished parquet and slammed the front door behind him.
I debated what to do next. Willis might be home at any moment, I had no time to waste if I was going to check the place out. But on the other hand, I had nothing special to look for. All I wanted was a conversation with him, an honest talk this time, a chance to find out what was going on, and remove myself from it so that Louise and her children were out of danger.
In the end I took a quick spin through the upstairs portion, finding one beautiful master bedroom with Oriental screens and silk sheets and an embroidered dressing gown laid out on the bed and a couple of other rooms, one made up as a spare bedroom, the other containing a pair of double bunks with blankets on them that smelled of sweat. It didn't jibe with the rest of the furnishings and I began to wish I could let the homicide guys share my information. It was starting to look to me as if Willis boarded out wetbacks, possibly Chinese illegals. That would have fit the evidence I'd found, anyway. If he was doing it from his own home, they must be very special people, possibly killers like Wing Lok, guys he didn't want out of his reach. It was all very suspicious and I wished I could find him.
I came down to the front again and prepared to leave. I would head out and search for him, starting at Bonded Security with an interview with his boss. And this evening, when the homicide guys came back on duty I would share my information with them and see what we could do from there.
I was at the door when the doorbell rang, a timid ring, just the faintest chink on the gong, then a pause, then a repeat, just as brief.
