paragraph didn’t say from whose account the cheque had been issued. But it had to be Charles Grimaldi. He’d swung into action in speedy time. It was ten o’clock, not much more than twelve hours since Ray Griffin had called Grimaldi from my kitchen.
The phone on the desk rang.
“I want this done clean and immediate, Crang,” the voice said on the line. “You got my bona fides.”
The voice was Grimaldi’s. With a phrase like bona fides, he wasn’t kidding around.
“The letter from the man at the bank looks like the real goods,” I said.
“It is,” Grimaldi said. “I’m holding the cheque. You get it when I get the invoices.”
“Last time we talked, you had no use for my little proposal,” I said. “I admire a man who keeps an open mind.”
“Don’t stretch me, Crang,” Grimaldi said. “We meet at my office. You bring the invoices. I give you Wansborough’s cheque.”
“At your office,” I said. “Oh, sure. Midnight suit you? I’ll drive on out in the dark and Sol Nash can whack me. Make it easy for you.”
“Daylight, Crang,” Grimaldi said. “Come here in an hour. Eleven o’clock. I told you I wanted this ended simple and right away.”
“Eleven o’clock?”
“This morning.”
“Sounds okay.”
“What’s your problem?” Grimaldi asked. “You haven’t got the invoices?”
“In a secure place,” I said.
“Eleven,” Grimaldi said and hung up.
He’d thrown me off balance. I was hoping for a deal but I didn’t expect it to come off so crisp and out front. The Ace Disposal offices wouldn’t be my first choice for a meeting place, but mid-morning on a business day, the place full of employees, didn’t appear to offer the potential for grief.
I phoned the head office of the Bank of Commerce, and after a ten-minute wait on the line, I spoke to an assistant to Vice-president Frederick A. Lewis who confirmed that a letter had gone out to my office from his boss that morning. Better still, he said a cashier’s cheque payable to Matthew Wansborough had been sent by messenger to Ace Disposal. The cheque was for $324,592.17.
It was another day of sun and high blue sky, and again I left the top down on the Volks for the drive out the Queen Elizabeth. With any luck, this would be my last run to the west end and Ace’s establishment. The landscape was beginning to pall. I drove past the Speedy Muffler outlet, the Rad Man’s, and the body shops and came to the wire fence that surrounded Ace Disposal.
The scene did not look as it should. Rotund Wally wasn’t on guard in the security man’s hut. Nobody was. The truck gate into the property was shut. Beyond the fence, behind the office building, the slots for the Ace trucks were all occupied. Two hundred or more of the monsters sat silently in place. The garage was quiet, and no one moved on the grounds. The place seemed deserted except that the smaller gate that allowed office employees on to the premises, the gate that James Turkin had opened on the night of the great invoice heist, stood open. The door into the office building was also opened wide. Charles Grimaldi was standing in it.
I could have turned the car around and driven back to the city. I could have but I didn’t. I was too close to a resolution of the case to shy away at what should be the penultimate moment. Following through seemed the natural thing to do. Or the brave thing. Or was it the foolhardy thing?
The Majestic’s parking lot was empty. I turned the Volks across the road and parked at the front of the lot. By the time I opened the trunk, lifted out the documents, and walked back to the gate into Ace, Charles Grimaldi had vanished from the front door. He’d left it open, and I went down the path and into the building. It was silent inside. I held the pile of papers in both arms and headed in the direction of Grimaldi’s office. I didn’t pass a soul on the way. Grimaldi was sitting behind his desk waiting for me. He wore his customary grim face, but he’d eschewed the usual wardrobe. No whites today. He had on a dark blue suit, the same in a tie, and a light blue shirt.
I said, “The lovely lady who greets your visitors doesn’t seem to be on call.”
“Not today,” Grimaldi said.
“Nor does anybody else.”
“I gave the staff the day off,” Grimaldi said. “Out of respect.”
“For whom?”
“Alice Brackley’s funeral is at two o’clock this afternoon,” Grimaldi said. “I’ll be there.”
The slippery devil. Grimaldi had got me out to Ace at an hour when he knew we’d be on our own. Mano a mano. Slick.
I said, “We deal alone.”
“Not quite.”
Footsteps sounded in the hall outside Grimaldi’s office. They were footsteps that went with people who walked hard. Probably walked tall too. Grimaldi didn’t move in his chair, hands crossed in front of him on the desk. I looked around, and into the room stepped two guys who hadn’t learned to love me. First came the fat Ace driver with the beard and behind him was his pal, the long drink of water I’d smacked with the car door a few nights earlier. Both wore smiles. I noted that the tall guy was limping but took little satisfaction from the observation.
“What’s this?” I said. “Reunion of the halt and the lame?”
“Dump that stuff on the desk,” Grimaldi said, pointing at the stacks of paper that were still in my arms.
“What about the cheque?” I said.
Mutt and Jeff had stationed themselves between me and the door. They kept silent but they were looking awfully pleased with themselves.
Grimaldi pushed an envelope across the desk toward me. It was of the same formidable stock as the letter I’d received from the snooty messenger an hour earlier. I deposited my papers on the desk, opened the envelope, and beheld a cheque payable to Matthew Wansborough in the amount I’d now committed to memory, $324,592.17.
“Great,” I said. “Well, that’ll make it time for me to run along. I expect you gentlemen have chores to do.”
In the deepest place in my heart, I didn’t believe I’d get off that easy. But it was worth a try.
Grimaldi said, “Put the cheque back on the desk.”
“Of course,” I said. “You’ll want to review my documentation first.”
I returned the cheque and took two steps in the direction of the leather sofa under the LeRoy Neiman art work.
“Not there,” Grimaldi said. “Downstairs.”
Grimaldi hadn’t raised his voice from the moment I arrived in the Ace building. He conveyed authority with his tone. Low, husky, hard like nails. I was beginning to think Annie’s adjective didn’t come close to describing Grimaldi in his present state. He was more
