made another mistake coming in here with Tony’s fists. Your play right now is to stay calm and let me and my client reach a decision.”
Nash kept his ray-gun stare on me, and Tony hovered at my desk. His arms were at his sides and he was clenching and unclenching his fists. He made heavy-breathing noises with his mouth, the kind a fighter makes before he steps into the ring. The breathing noises were the only sound in the room. Except for my heartbeat. Tony and Nash couldn’t hear it, but I could. It was up around one hundred.
Nash stared and Tony heavy-breathed for thirty seconds. It felt like thirty hours. Nash broke the tension with another nod of the head at Tony. Tony gave his fists one more clench and turned back to the door. He opened it, and Nash stood up abruptly and walked toward the open door.
“Besides,” I said as Nash walked through it, “I’d bet me on a TKO over Tony, name the odds.”
Tony slammed the door behind him and Nash, and my framed Matisse poster rattled against the wall. I watched Nash and Tony through the window. Tony pushed aside a skinny kid in American army fatigues who was leaning against the pink Cadillac’s front fender. The kid stopped whatever he was going to say when he saw Tony’s face. The two men got in the Cadillac and drove away.
As soon as the car had passed out of sight, I went down the stairs and along Queen past the Rivoli to the Horseshoe Tavern. I ordered a double vodka on the rocks at the stand-up bar. What the bartender poured didn’t have the hit of Wyborowa and it tasted like perfume. It was made in Alberta, but there was alcohol in there somewhere.
I wouldn’t have bet on me against Tony. I hadn’t the nerve to fight him. I just had the nerve to bait him. Two different things. I asked the bartender for another double and waited for my heart rate to drop below eighty.
13
AFTER FIVE-THIRTY in the afternoon, parts of downtown Toronto turn dulcet. The buildings empty, the bankers, brokers, and their minions head down to the subways and over to the expressways, and the streets are left to the strays. I walked south between the office towers on York Street and watched the setting sun bounce off the glass of the Stock Exchange Building. A good singer named Tommy Ambrose once wrote a song about Toronto. He called it “People City.” Sometimes I like it better without the people.
At King Street, I went east. McIntosh, Brown’s offices are in the black and daunting Toronto-Dominion complex, the only Mies van der Rohe buildings in the city, maybe in the country. I signed in with a security guard who sat behind a bank of buttons and TV monitors in the lobby and rode an elevator almost to the top. McIntosh, Brown occupies three floors. Tom Catalano works out of the floor in the middle and he was waiting for me under a Tom Thomson painting in the reception area. On the opposite wall there was a David Milne and a Christopher Pratt. If all the law firms on Bay Street got together and opened a gallery, they’d put my neighbour the Art Gallery of Ontario out of business. Catalano led me down a silent corridor to a small conference room. It had four Harold Town prints.
“Am I supposed to be overwhelmed by the display of good taste?” I said. “Is that why all you big-ticket law firms go crazy for art?”
Catalano shrugged. “I suppose it makes our rich clients feel like they’re sitting in their own living rooms.”
Tom Catalano has tight curly black hair and a long melancholy face. He plays squash. Plenty of lawyers in firms like McIntosh, Brown play squash. They can fit it in at seven o’clock in the morning at the Cambridge Club. Back in law school, Catalano was known as a cagey guy around the poker table; now he just works too hard.
“Fix yourself a drink,” he said. “The booze’s in the cabinet. Ice too. I’ll go and greet our client.”
“I thought juniors attended to the night doorman’s duties.”
“I dispatched my juniors to the library,” Catalano said. “If they got a look at you in those jeans, they might be tempted to defect.”
The Scotch in the cabinet was Johnnie Walker Black, the gin was Tanqueray, the vodka was domestic. Some kind of anti-communist conspiracy seemed in operation. I poured two ounces of the vodka into a tall glass, added ice and soda water, and sat down at the conference table. It was polished oak, and at each place there was a small white pad and a sharpened yellow pencil. I sketched two stick men boxing. If the vodka didn’t soothe my unease, maybe doodling would.
My drink was a third of the way down the glass when Catalano returned with Wansborough. He had on another three-piece suit, chocolate brown this time. It was without a crease and his cordovans had a high shine. I’d be willing to wager his undershorts were pressed.
“You know Crang of course, Matthew,” Catalano said.
Wansborough tilted his head in my direction but didn’t offer his hand.
“I’m keen to have your report, Mr. Crang,” he said.
Catalano said, “Something from the bar before we start, Matthew?”
Wansborough asked for a Scotch and soda. His eyes didn’t leave my face as he spoke. It was my day for being stared at.
“Something’s not right at Ace,” I said, “but I can’t tell you what it is.”
I described Charles Grimaldi’s bloodlines, my discoveries at the Metro dump sites, and the recent visit from Sol Nash. I added the punch-up on Bathurst Street for flavour.
“I didn’t expect violence,” Wansborough said. The remark was addressed to Catalano. He put Wansborough’s drink in front of him.
Catalano said, “I’m sure Crang knows what he’s doing. He usually does.”
“To hit a man as Mr. Crang did,” Wansborough said to Catalano, “I don’t wish the family to be associated with such behaviour.”
“Let’s call it self-defence in this case, Matthew,” Catalano said.
“Yoo-hoo, fellas,” I said. “Why not discuss my talents after I’ve left. There are a couple of other points I have for the agenda.”
Wansborough turned his attention back to me. His face was a mix of worry and distaste.
He said, “I would like a guarantee there won’t be any further hooliganism.”
“Mr. Wansborough,” I said, “my scuffle with the driver ranks near the bottom of your concerned list.”
Wansborough did an elaborate throat-clearing.
“You say Charles Grimaldi is connected to the, ah, underworld,” he said.
“Intimately,” I said. “Through his dad.”
Wansborough said, “Well, simply because Charles’ antecedents are involved in criminal pursuits doesn’t establish that Charles himself is party to anything improper. Not as it relates to Ace Disposal at any rate.”
Wansborough didn’t sound as though he were convinced of his own logic.
“Let’s go with what we’re reasonably certain of, Mr. Wansborough,” I said. “There’s something at Ace that Sol Nash and by extension his boss Grimaldi are wary about me uncovering.”
“Which
