COMMUTERS call it the DVP. They say it with affection. It’s the Don Valley Parkway. It’s three lanes wide both ways, five lanes at the collector points, and it carries traffic from the centre of the city to the northern suburbs and beyond. A tractor-trailer passed me, and my car shimmied. A Tinker Toy could pass me and my car would shimmy. I drive a white Volkswagen Beetle convertible. I was on the inside lane of the Parkway and heading north. A grateful bank robber gave me the Beetle. A bonus, he said, for getting him an acquittal. The gift may reveal something about my clientele. If Cam Charles had a client overflowing in gratitude, the Reverend Moon maybe, he’d probably reward Cam with a Lamborghini.
On either side of the Parkway, tall dark trees stood on hills against the sky. The trees were all that was left of the old valley from the centuries before it was paved for the four lanes each way. Somewhere down below me to the left was the Don River. It had turned as grey and greasy as Mr. Kipling’s Limpopo. I took the off ramp for Don Mills Road North and drove past a junior high school named after Marc Garneau. I had the top up on the Beetle, but the windows were open, and the air, away from the Parkway, felt damp and fresh. Marc Garneau was Canada’s astronaut. Mission Control in Houston fired him into space and brought him back. Good for Marc. Were other schools named after living Canadians of renown? Deanna Durbin Collegiate Institute? Didn’t seem likely.
On the north side of Eglinton Avenue, past the IBM complex, I took a right and got myself into the fringes of residential suburbia. The streets were laid out in loops and crescents that probably adhered to a master design. The design eluded me. I slowed and circled and watched for street signs. People who live in downtown Toronto look askance at people who live in the suburbs. The suburban dwellers drive into the city, take up parking space, talk noisy in restaurants, and go home to their crooked little streets on a highway they call by a pet name. Maybe it was just an image problem.
Ralph Goddard lived at 48 Hiawatha Crescent, and I was at the intersection of Tomahawk and Wigwam. Where was John Wayne when you needed him? I found Hiawatha and Number 48 on my own. Ralph’s house was white stucco and two storeys. There was a Pontiac station wagon in the driveway, and the porch light was on. I parked in front of the house and walked up the sidewalk. It was made of rust-coloured bricks that had been fitted together in an intricate pattern. There was a birdbath on the lawn, and a sign by the door, raised black metal lettering on a light-brown plaque, announced “The Goddards”. I didn’t spot any pink flamingos.
Ralph Goddard answered the door after I pushed the bell a second time. He didn’t look much like Dave.
“You must be the famous Mr. Crang,” he said.
Ralph had a grin that would crack most men’s cheeks.
“Any friend of Dave’s,” he said.
He gripped my elbow in his left fist and shook my hand with his right in a display of great conviviality. Ralph was taller, fatter, and greyer than his brother. He had on a short-sleeved white shirt, green gabardine slacks, and Hush Puppies. His eye alignment appeared to be in order.
“Come on up to the family room,” Ralph said.
He led the way up a short flight of stairs carpeted in pink and into a room straight ahead. The pink carpet continued around to the left, presumably to the bedrooms.
“Get you a drink?” Ralph asked. “Something nice and cool?”
“Vodka’d taste good.”
“One vodka coming up,” Ralph said. He’d inherited the hearty genes in the Goddard family. “Anything with it? Tang?”
“Ice, just ice, Ralph.”
He went back down the stairs. The family room had flocked wallpaper in a mustard shade. The shelves along one wall held a collection of china birds, and, on a low end-table, two marble bookends enclosed a short row of Louis L’Amour novels in hardcover. There was a set of a sofa and two armchairs covered in shiny material in browns and yellows that picked up the mustard on the walls. Another chair was aimed at the TV set. The chair had many movable parts, a headrest, a footrest, arms that raised up and down. You could buy chairs like that on your Visa card by dialling a toll-free number in Akron, Ohio. I’d seen the ads. Ralph’s chair was in brown corduroy. He’d left the television on with the sound down low. It was tuned to the Blue Jays ball game.
Ralph came back to the room empty-handed.
“What’s your second choice, Crang?” he said. “Doreen went to the booze store today and bought the place out, it looks like.”
“Except no vodka.”
“You got it.”
“Why don’t I have whatever you’re drinking.”
“That’ll be two dark rum and Coke.”
By the time I left the family room, I’d be on the road to gout. Why was it called the family room? If the kids were out in the world and Ralph and Doreen lived alone, wouldn’t every room in the house qualify as family room? I’d ponder the question next time I strolled Philosopher’s Walk.
The ice in the large glasses tinkled against the sides. Ralph carried a glass in each hand. He handed one to me and leaned over to turn off the television set.
“Top of the sixth,” he said. “Jays in front by three. You a baseball fan, Crang?”
“You bet,” I said. It was the second lie I’d told to a member of the Goddard family in twenty-four hours. Baseball makes me nod off, but there was no sense alienating Ralph at a time when I had more worrying matters for him.
“Dave didn’t appear at Chase’s tonight,” I said.
“I thought that’d be it soon’s I saw you standing at the door down there,” Ralph said. He sat in the chair with the gadgets and touched something that swung it in my direction. I remembered the chair’s brand. Motolounger. I was sitting on the sofa.
I said to Ralph, “I’ve got a name since I talked to you this afternoon. Raymond Fenk. He’s the party seems to be responsible for all the rough stuff.”
“The whole shebang buffaloes me,” Ralph said. “Dave’s been toeing the mark ever since I got him to let me look after things.”
“Fenk’s in the movie business. Might he have any business connection with Dave? Does the name mean something? Fenk?”
“I thought you told me Dave saw this bozo and didn’t recognize him.”
“The face registered nothing,” I said. “Maybe the name does.”
“Fenk?” Ralph rubbed his jaw and took his time over the name. “I got to tell you, Crang, there’s a lot of people on a lot of contracts. But I don’t recollect Fenk. I could look through the files. I keep Dave’s records in apple-pie order. Nobody from Revenue Canada or any place else’d find a number out of place.”
“Remind me to call you around income tax time, Ralph,” I said. “Fenk is Hollywood. That’s my information, and I know it’s reliable. Let’s suppose they had an encounter out there, Dave and Fenk. What do your records say about Dave in the neighbourhood of Hollywood?”
“How’s that get Dave back on the job at Abner Chase’s?” Ralph said. “He’s
