Blood Count Read online

  Other Crang Mysteries

  Crang Plays the Ace

  Straight No Chaser

  Riviera Blues

  Take Five

  Keeper of the Flame

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  So many people turned out for the wake that it had overflowed up the stairs of the house and into my apartment. I own the house. It’s a duplex on the west side of Beverley Street across from Grange Park, behind the Art Gallery of Ontario. I live in the upper apartment and had rented the lower to two gay guys named Alex and Ian. Alex was the wake’s host, if host is the proper term for the person who’s left behind when his companion has died. Ian had died.

  “I think Ian would have adored every minute of it,” Alex said.

  “Except for the food,” I said. “Not up to Ian’s standards, the little bitty Simpsons sandwiches and those puffy cheese things.”

  “Oh, he’d have been absolutely appalled if he knew I had his wake catered.” Alex paused and got a reflective look. “Imagine what Ian would have done if he’d cooked for his very own wake. Pull out all the stops, I mean heaven.”

  “Ian was divine in the kitchen,” Annie said. “Divine out of it, too.”

  Annie is Annie B. Cooke, the woman in my life. She and I and Alex were sitting in my living room. It was about ten thirty. Everybody else had left. Plumes of cigarette smoke still floated in the air, and someone had planted a glass half full of Scotch and water on top of the stack of magazines on the pine table behind the sofa. The glass left a ring in the middle of Branford Marsalis’s face. He was on the cover of DownBeat.

  “Smells like Rick’s American Café in here,” I said.

  I walked across the room and lifted a window higher. A light May breeze wafted through the stale cigarette residue.

  “Practically every person we knew in the world came,” Alex said. “Ian would have loved that part.”

  “Ian was a party guy,” I said.

  Conversation was limping along. I didn’t mind. The idea was to keep Alex company, even if the company was limp.

  “Who was the dramatic-looking woman?” Annie asked Alex. “In the black with all the veils?”

  “His mother.”

  “Whose?” I said. “Ian had a mother?”

  “She never gave up her dream that Ian would find the right girl and settle down. Old witch, she couldn’t abide me.”

  “So that’s why, all the years you guys’ve been tenants, what, nine years and change, I never laid eyes on his mother?”

  “Listen, dears,” Alex said, “we got off lucky. I was petrified Ian’s grandmother might attend today.”

  “Grandmother.”

  “The tongue on her. She’s ninety-one. She phoned Ian at Casey House toward the end. He was all skin and bones and sores and lesions, and the call came from Grannie Argyll. Ian got on the line. I was there, and he managed some banter, you know, and Grannie said, ‘Well, boy, if you’d never gone queer on us, you’d at least have died of something a person could tell her friends about.’”

  “Did Ian laugh?”

  “Damn near till he did die.”

  “Except,” Annie said, “it isn’t a laughing matter.”

  “No,” Alex said, “AIDS definitely isn’t.”

  I went over and took Alex’s wineglass from his hand. He was sitting in the wing chair. Annie and I occupied the sofa. I carried the glass to the kitchen and topped it up from an opened bottle of Australian Chardonnay in the refrigerator.

  “Stop me if it’s none of our concern, Alex,” Annie was saying, “but I think it is.”

  I handed Alex his glass.

  “No, I don’t have AIDS,” he said, speaking past me to Annie. “There, does that take care of what’s on your mind?”

  “We’ve been worrying, Crang and I, ever since we heard about Ian.” Annie wasn’t flustered by Alex’s direct answer. “AIDS is so virulent. I’m not an expert or anything, just what I read in magazines, but aren’t you at risk?”

  Alex was smiling. It wasn’t a sad smile, more like an expression of resignation. I’d liked Alex’s face from the first day he and Ian moved in. He was handsome in a rueful way. He had the face of a guy who might be entertaining a long-running secret joke. He was tall and slim, in his mid-sixties. Ian Argyll had been almost twenty years younger than Alex, and the opposite in build, short and chunky. Ian was a real estate agent, a natural at it, a peppy, sweet-tongued guy.

  “I’m not at risk, as you put it,” Alex said. “All I happen to be is angry, which is quite enough, thank you very much.”

  “A doctor’s cleared you?” Annie was in her persevering-interviewer mode, something she does for pay on television. “You have no symptoms?”

  “Annie, I couldn’t possibly have got AIDS from Ian, not unless it’s conveyed by hugs and snuggles. Now, can we agree to get off this particular topic?”

  I was drinking Wyborowa on the rocks. “But what you are,” I asked Alex, “is angry?”

  Annie laced her fingers through mine and squeezed. The squeeze meant I should lay off and leave the interrogation to her.

  “It’s natural you’d feel angry,” she said to Alex. “Angry at fate or whatever for taking Ian.”

  “Oh, screw fate.” Alex flapped his hand in the air. “My rage is much more constructive than that.”

  “At Ian?” Annie said, persisting. “That’s who you’re angry at?”

  “Where Ian’s concerned, I never felt anger. With him, I went through a regular catalogue of wretched emotions. Devastation … I was devastated he had AIDS, and for a time there, not too long, I felt … betrayed. But I forgave him.”

  “You forgave him,” Annie said, “for straying.”

  “Annie, dear,” Alex said, “what a charmingly archaic word. Straying.”

  “Well, having an affair.”

  Alex was holding up the index finger of his left hand. “Actually,” he said, “one man, one time, one-night stand.”

  “And that’s how Ian contracted AIDS?”

  “One night is to exaggerate. More like a few nasty moments.”

  “That sounds so awful, so wasteful, I want to cry.”

  “I tried that already, Annie. Buckets. It didn’t help much of anything. Not the bloody rage, anyway. It’s sitting in me like some malevolent lump.”

  Annie’s hand in mine felt damp. “Ian told you about this other man?” she asked Alex. “When? Toward the end?”

  “Longer ago than that. He sat me down for a real heart-to-heart and poured it all out at once, the AIDS, the encounter, the certainty he was going to die. A real black-letter day, I tell you, last February fifth. Drank an entire bottle of Chivas between the two of us.”

  “Now I am prying,” Annie said, “but I remember Ian looking very much not himself back from about late autumn on.”

  Alex nodded. “Flu. He kept saying he had the flu, Shanghai flu, Hong Kong flu, bloody Mississauga flu, whatever strain was going. It was a litany with him. ‘Oh, luv, I’ve just come down with a touch of old devil ague and no time to bring it to its knees.’ Quite gallant when you realize he knew the truth.”

  “Gallant, okay, but misleading.”

  “An outright lie. But, don’t you remember, the real estate market went through the most remarkably silly boom about then? And Ian was selling a house practically every day over in Riverdale? Those old working people’s homes that yuppies go mad for?”

  “Sure,” I chipped in. “Ian was out most nights. Open houses on the weekends. I used to see him dragging in at crazy hours.”

  “Well?” Alex had a defensive challenge in his voice. “You see why I believed him about the flu? And how he was too busy to take to his bed?”

  “Alex,” Annie said, “nobody could have suspected AIDS, not you, not anybody in your position.”

  “That’s what I tell myself,” Alex said, “but I did go through a guilt period. The guilt is one of Ian’s legacies.”

  Conversation slacked off. Annie seemed to have checked out of the questioning, at least temporarily.

  “Plus the anger,” I said to Alex. “Ian left that behind him.”

  “That, too.”

  “Maybe you ought to see somebody,” I said. “You know, a professional, a shrink. Get rid of the bad stuff in your head.”

  “I’ve a mor
e satisfying therapy planned, don’t you fret about that.”

  “Yeah, well, a guy shouldn’t practise psychiatry on himself, especially if he isn’t a psychiatrist.”

  “Crang, think of this,” Alex said, leaning forward in his chair and enunciating each word as if he was addressing a slow student. “The swine who gave Ian AIDS.”

  “Come again?”

  “I’m going to confront him. That’s my notion of therapy.”

  “Yeah?” I said. “Ian, in fact, supplied a name that goes with the guy?”

  “The murderer.” Alex’s voice had an edge. “Why not call him by what he is and what he did? He murdered Ian.”

  I spent some time on my vodka, a pause to give Alex space to simmer down. “I don’t know,” I said, “there’ve been cases of guys who had AIDS, knew they had it, and went ahead and engaged in sex with other people and they got charged. Convictions registered in a couple cases for criminal assault. But murder? No way, Alex.”

  “Oh, Crang.” Alex hadn’t simmered down. “Stop sounding like a lawyer.”

  “Occupational hazard. I am one.”

  “I know that, but can’t you see? I don’t give a flying fuck about the law.”

  Sitting on the sofa, I didn’t pick up any vibrations that Annie was intending to return to the fray.

  “Listen, Alex,” I said, “back to square one. You got a name for the guy who infected Ian or not?”

  “Not.”

  “Okay, I’d say it’s game over.”

  “I think Ian must have held back on his killer’s name because he read my reaction. He saw how furious I was over everything.”

  “Does it matter now?” I raised my hand and wobbled it back and forth. “All that counts is no name, no confrontation.”

  “But I’ve got something almost as good,” Alex said.

  “Something Ian gave you?”

  “Where he met his killer. The very place Ian met him.”

  Annie and I exchanged a fast glance.

  “Oh, don’t look at each another that way,” Alex said. “I’m not crackers, and I don’t need anybody humouring me.”

  “Well, listen to yourself,” I said. “The place Ian met his killer. Even if you should go rooting after the guy, which is pointless right there, destructive really, the place by itself can’t be much help.”

  “It can, believe me on that, my friend.”

  “What? Some office Ian did business in? One of his open houses? Along those lines?”

  “I’m keeping the location to myself, so don’t bother cross-examining.”

  “Helping is what I figured on.”

  Alex was silent for a couple of moments. “I appreciate that, honestly,” he said. “I appreciate just sitting here with the two of you. But what I’ve got to do, I’ve got to do alone.”

  Alex stopped himself.

  “Did you hear that?” he said. “I sound like John Bloody Wayne.”

  “Even John Wayne had a sidekick,” I said. “Montgomery Clift, Katharine Hepburn, or somebody.”

  “Crang,” Alex said, “on this, I am alone and very determined.”

  Alex got a look on his face that I would have called determined.

  “Finding the man who murdered Ian,” he said, “is a rather personal crusade, if you like.”

  The room seemed to have become much quieter.

  “I’m going to find him,” Alex said. “And when I do, pardon the drama, my dears, I am going to kill the bastard.”

  Chapter Two

  Annie asked if I was awake.

  Alex had gone downstairs around eleven thirty. Annie and I sat up another half hour. We had a final drink and ate some of the bitty Simpsons sandwiches, mostly chopped egg with pimento mixed in. Annie said she didn’t feel like going home. She has a flat on the third floor of a nice old house in Cabbagetown. We went to bed at my place. When she asked if I was awake, the digital clock on the VCR against the far wall of the bedroom read 2:41 a.m.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I thought so. You weren’t making the right noises.”

  I rolled over on my back. “What do you mean, noises?” I said. “You implying I snore?”

  “More of a whistling sound.”

  “Through my nose?”

  “Your mouth.”

  “That’d be a fantastic feat, if I whistled through my nose. Probably’ve got me on The Gong Show.”

  “Crang.”

  Annie did a lot of rustling in the bed. She shifted one hundred and eighty degrees so that she faced me. She had my Greenpeace T-shirt on.

  “Do you think Alex is serious?” she asked me in the dark. I could feel and smell her breath. It was still sweet. I knew mine would smell rank. All I had to do was lie down and my breath turned sour.

  “I go one way, then the other,” I said. “I tell myself it’s an aberration of the temporary sort, what Alex was saying. But I don’t know, the way he sounded, he didn’t seem to be kidding.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Do you think he’s serious?”

  “That’s why I’m having trouble getting to sleep.”

  “What are you going to do about it?” I asked. “About Alex?”

  “Back you up every way I can,” Annie said. “But, honey, you’re the one who’s had experience with this sort of thing.”

  “With what sort of thing? A murdered person?”

  “That exact sort of thing,” Annie said. She reached over and laid her right hand on my chest. I didn’t have on a Greenpeace T-shirt or anything else.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But my experience, the few times I got involved, has always been after the people were already dead. What Alex is talking about, it’s before the fact. I don’t know where I’d start, apart from maybe putting a lock on Alex.”

  “That’s okay,” Annie said. She withdrew her hand from my chest and sat up. “I have a plan.”

  “I liked it when your hand was on my chest.”

  “I was afraid you might be getting tumescent.”

  “Getting?”

  “My plan,” Annie said, “is you should beat Alex to the person he thinks he’s going to kill.”

  “That’s your complete plan?”

  “Unless you’ve got a better one.”

  I propped my hands behind my head. “Another thing you should remember, toots, I didn’t choose to get in on these other murders you’re talking about. They were more or less thrust on me, and I had to solve them in order to get out from under. So to speak.”

  “Solve them?”

  “Come on, eventually I did, after maybe a misstep or two along the way,” I said. “Anyway, my point is you’re suggesting I get actively involved before there’s a corpse.”

  “My point is there won’t be a corpse if you get actively involved.”

  “Let me just ponder that.”

  “While you’re pondering,” Annie said, “keep this in mind. It’s Alex we’re protecting, Alex our friend and your tenant and someone who is in a state of something like severe dislocation.”

  “Sure, but maybe when he’s located again, gets over his grief and everything, he’ll drop this notion of revenge and the rest of it.”

  Annie said nothing for a minute. The sheets rustled again. She had drawn her legs up. I thought she was resting her chin on her knees, but the bedroom was too dark to tell.

  “That’s a chance we shouldn’t take,” Annie said finally. “Alex might not come to his senses in time.”

  “He’s a very sensible person. Got a good job in Queen’s Park, never late with the rent, no loud parties unless we’re invited.…”

  “Crang,” Annie said, “quit stalling.”

  “Okay, I agree, we have to do something.”

  “That’s my guy.” Annie slid under the covers and sneaked her arm around my waist. “Now,” she said, “we have to find out first where Alex is going to start looking for this man he thinks gave Ian the disease.”

  “My reading is Alex isn’t about to cut us in on that piece of information.”

  “That’s where you could be wrong,” Annie said. As she spoke, she was stroking my stomach in an absentminded way, probably too caught up in the conversation to realize she was stroking.

  “Why could I be wrong about that?” I asked.