run off Avenue Road north of the Four Seasons,” I said. “Must be her. Only seven Brackleys in the listings.”
Annie said, “Is the means by which you put your hands on the Ace documents likely to get you in trouble?”
“How accurately you remember my circumspect phrasing.”
“Must be practice.”
“Not now it isn’t going to get me in trouble.”
Annie reached for a paper napkin and wiped the preserve off her hands. She put a clean hand on the back of mine and squeezed gently. I turned my hand over and squeezed hers.
“Phone Alice,” Annie said.
I dialled the number from the phone book and let it ring ten times. No one picked up the phone on the other end.
Annie said, “You thought she’d been drinking.”
I put the receiver down.
“She’d packed away enough to make her lose the tremor in her voice,” I said.
“She’s probably sleeping it off,” Annie said.
“Maybe.”
“That sounds like a dubious maybe.”
“Another thing she said on the phone this morning,” I said, “was life or death.”
“Was she being dramatic?”
“Possible.”
“That’s one dubious maybe and a very shaky possible.”
I said, “I’ll go by her house.”
Annie went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. When she came out, she was wearing a towel. It was wrapped around her wet hair.
“Don’t think I’m slow,” she said, “but is there a connection between your possession of those Ace documents you were talking about and Alice Brackley’s case of nerves?”
“I was pondering that one.”
“How’d the pondering come out?”
“The connection’s too remote,” I said.
“But not utterly beyond question?” Annie said.
“First place,” I said, “it’d take luck and some fast figuring by a very clever person for anyone at Ace to realize I have some of their documents. Copies of documents, to get specific.”
Annie was rubbing her hair with the towel.
“Second place,” I said, “it hasn’t been established yet, not in black and white, that the documents prove anything crooked on Ace’s part.”
“That’s Harry Hein’s role?”
“Right.”
“So how come Alice got herself tanked and phoned you out of business hours?”
“Alice is the weak link maybe,” I said. I’d almost finished a third cup of coffee. “The rest of the gang at Ace, Grimaldi and the guy with the nose and the others, dirty stuff is old hat to them. But if the company is cheating at the Metro dumps and Alice knows it, she’s more likely to run scared when someone comes poking into the operation.”
“Namely you.”
“Yeah,” I said. I put my empty cup on the table. “Me namely.”
Annie shook her hair. It was damp and sleek, and she was standing naked in the kitchen.
“Love your outfit,” I said.
“Really?” she said. She vamped like Marilyn Monroe. “This old thing?”
I showered and shaved, then got dressed in the bedroom, where Annie had settled on the bed. She had on my terry cloth bathrobe and was surrounded by the Nagra, her interview tapes, and a notebook. She said she was going to play the tapes and make notes on passages that could be edited out when she got to the CBC.
“Tell Alice hello from me,” Annie said.
I said I would.
21
SOMEBODY HAD ORGANIZED an anti-nuke demonstration outside the provincial legislature. I drove up University Avenue straight toward the legislative building and swung the Volks around Queen’s Park Crescent. The demonstration had drawn a small turnout, not more than a couple of hundred people. A young man carried a sign that read “Arms Are For Hugging,” and a folk trio sang a ragged version of “Blowing in the Wind” from the steps of the legislative building. A sunny Sunday in July didn’t strike me as prime time for a rally against nuclear disarmament. Schedule the same event for a brisk Saturday in October and two or three thousand concerned Torontonians would show up. They might even find some politicians on the premises.
I crossed Bloor and began watching for Alice Brackley’s street on the left. Her neighbourhood was in the eastern Annex, where the battle against encroaching developers was being waged in the front lines. A handful of condominiums and some tacky reno jobs had insinuated themselves among the Annex’s dignified old homes, but the residents were showing stubborn resistance. The streets remained green and the houses had a proud, cared-for look. Alice Brackley’s street ran one-way into Avenue Road. I went a block north and parked under a chestnut tree. It appeared to be in sturdy health.
I walked around the corner to the Brackley house. It was on the north side of the street, a narrow and elegant two-storey townhouse built of red brick that had been recently sandblasted. Two brass lamps were mounted on either side of the front door, and the bricked-over yard had four large wooden tubs overflowing with deep red impatiens. Except for two kids six or seven houses down from the Brackley place leaning on their bikes and absorbed in their talk, the street was deserted.
No one responded to my first ring of the bell at Alice’s front door. Two more rings and a rap of the knuckles didn’t rouse any action. I looked through the small window in the middle of the door. The window had leaded panes, and I couldn’t see much past the entrance hall. It had a floor tiled in black and white and no sign of life.
There was a walkway between the Brackley house and the house on the west that went to the back. I followed the walk and opened a high gate to a bricked-in backyard. Lady had something against green grass. There were more wooden tubs of flowers, geraniums this time, and a set-up of white lawn chairs and tables. A sliding glass door led from the yard into the house. The door was open, and someone had punched a hole in the glass next to the latch. The hole was big enough to reach a hand through, and the glass was sprinkled on the brick outside the door. I stepped over the glass and through the door into the living room.
Alice Brackley was in the living room. She was lying on the broadloom, face up, with her neck twisted at a very uncomfortable angle. In my limited experience, only dead people assumed Alice Brackley’s posture.
I stood where I was and listened for noises in the house. A couple of minutes went by, and the strain of listening produced a small pain in my forehead. The only sound was of
