Booking In Read online

  “Isle. It’s too small to be an island but sophisticated enough to accommodate a bank that deals in hiding large sums of money.”

  “You’re talking about my ten million?”

  “I imagine Cedric refers to it as his ten million.”

  “Where exactly is this place? Rum Island?”

  “Isle, Brent. You should concentrate on details like that. Be to your advantage in future negotiations.”

  “Where in hell is it?”

  “It’s part of the Bahamas. One of those small spots no tourists visit.”

  “Can’t you describe it better than that?”

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out my iPhone.

  “I’ll show you on a map,” I said. “That way you’ll get the picture.”

  Brent flapped his hand at my iPhone. “Get that thing out of sight,” he said.

  “What are you so agitated about?”

  “You’re not supposed to have those things in the dining room.”

  A small metaphorical light bulb went on over my head.

  “I get it,” I said. “No business is allowed to be discussed in the dining room. Papers and documents are forbidden. Right, I remember all this stuff from lunches with my ex-father-in-law.”

  “Just put the thing in your goddamn pocket.”

  “No papers and by extension, no iPhones.”

  Brent nodded but still looked annoyed at my transgression.

  “Nice to see the Concord’s going contemporary,” I said. “Banning digital communication as well as the paper variety.”

  Brent grunted.

  I was having trouble with the damn sauce on my plate. It was yellow and heavy, and it kept sliding into the other food, the salmon, the small boiled potatoes and carrots. The plate was a mess, and my palate had gone in revolt.

  “Just tell me where the damn island is,” Brent said as he dunked pieces of his steak in the gooey brown stuff.

  “If you head south of Great Exuma Island by boat,” I said, “you’re on the right track to the piece of land which is called Rum Isle by everybody except you.”

  “Great Exuma? That’s the one where Georgetown is, correct?”

  “You got it.”

  “And not far from there, Cedric’s on this Rum Island?”

  “Isle. There’s a functioning bank on it, Royal Rum International, and it obeys all Bahamian banking regulations, including the ones about heisted funds. I imagine if you go in with a lawyer and some threats, Cedric might cave to the extent of a few million.”

  Brent put his knife and fork down. “The big question,” he said. “Why are you doing this? Telling me where my money is?”

  “Recover it, and you’ll make your mother proud of you.”

  “Why’s that any of your business?”

  “I’m on a little assignment for Meg unrelated to your personal fortune, but at no charge to you, I’m passing along the dope on Cedric that happened to come my way.”

  “Normally I’d think that was bullroar.”

  Brent had it right. It was bullroar, but I was keeping that truth to myself. All I was interested in was engaging Brent in conversation at the Concord, and therefore away from his house, for another half hour.

  “If it isn’t bullroar and I get my money back from Cedric,” Brent went on, “I’ll probably actually thank you, Crang.”

  “My pleasure,” I said. “Are we going to have dessert?”

  “The raisin pie’s not bad here.”

  “I’ll have a slice with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, if you please.”

  It was two thirty by the time Brent and I left the Concord. Plenty of time for Arnie and Artie MacGillivray to have completed the break-in at the Grantham house. I shook Brent’s hand heartily, and we went our separate ways. Mine took me through Allan Gardens, on my way to the subway station at Yonge and College and back to my office, moving with the easy confidence of a man who had accomplished a demanding mission.

  Maybe not all that demanding, but a mission nonetheless.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Acey Hickey was on edge. She sat in one of my client chairs, right leg crossed over left, the right swinging in an agitated loop. She drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair.

  “It isn’t three thirty yet, Acey,” I said. “That’s the approximate time the brothers are supposed to get here.”

  “You really think those two guys know how to keep to a timetable?”

  “There’s that.”

  A few minutes ticked by. Acey grew more impatient by the second, and I ran out of conversational topics to keep her thinking about something other than her father’s collection of correspondence. Acey looked like she was on the verge of blowing her top.

  Then, from the hallway, we heard the sound of something heavy being wheeled off the elevator. I stood up from my chair and opened the door in time to greet Arnie MacGillivray pushing a dolly carrying a modest number of smallish boxes of different colors.

  “My dad’s letters!” Acey wore a smile that I had never before seen on her face. “I can’t believe I’m getting them back!”

  Arnie shoved the dolly into the centre of the office. “How’s that, Crang?” he said, smiling almost as broadly as Acey. “Did me and my brother deliver the goods or what?”

  “You came through, Arnie. Nice job.”

  Acey’s face had lost the smile. “Did you check to make sure the letters are really in the boxes?”

  “Lady,” Arnie said, “they’re goddamn heavy enough.”

  Acey lifted the box on the top of the pile, one coloured deep blue. She placed it on my desk and took off the lid. Inside was a pile of letters, some typed, some in handwriting. Acey picked up the first letter and read the opening lines to herself.

  “This is a carbon copy of a letter my dad wrote to Norman Mailer,” she said.

  “Meaning it’s legit,” I said.

  “Yes,” Acey said, her smile back in place, though it wasn’t as large and committed as her first smile.

  “I hope to Christ you’re not gonna read every damn letter in every damn box,” Arnie said.

  “Just a little sampling,” Acey said.

  “Keep in mind Artie’s downstairs waiting on me.”

  “The pay he’s getting from me,” Acey said, “he can just keep his damned shirt on.”

  Arnie shrugged and leaned close to me. “I got something confidential I want to show you,” he said in voice that was almost a whisper.

  “In the hall,” I said.

  Out of the office, Arnie reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out an envelope. It was white and of the type usually intended for business correspondence.

  “The thing inside the envelope,” Arnie said, “is something I noticed on the desk in the Grantham guy’s office. This was the room we got the coloured boxes from, the one we had to go through the clothes closet to get to. That guy’s house is weird in every damn way, I’m not kidding you, man. The guns you wouldn’t believe…”

  “So I understand, Arnie. But what is it you want me to see?”

  Arnie passed me the envelope. “Have a look and tell me if you think the paper inside’s got on it what I think it’s got on it.”

  First I checked the envelope. In the left-hand corner on the addressing side, it listed in plain type Brent Grantham’s name and street address.

  I looked at Arnie.

  “I just grabbed whatever envelope I could carry the page in,” he said.

  The envelope wasn’t sealed. I opened it and took out the only page inside. I recognized it right away.

  “This is the title page to the edition of the Reading Sonnets everybody’s fighting over,” I said to Arnie.

  “I wouldn’t know,” he said. “The thing that got me, why I brought it to you, take a look at the spots all over
this title page or whatever you called it.”

  I examined the page again. It carried the title of the book, Sonnets from the Portuguese, plus Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s name, the year of publication, and various publishing details. But I knew none of that was what Arnie was talking about. He wanted me to have a look at the rust-coloured spots that were splashed across the page. The spots were consistent enough that they made me think something had been spilled, not by intent, on that page of the book.

  “They look to you what they look like to me?” Arnie said.

  “If they look to you like dried blood, then you and I are on the same page, in a manner of speaking.”

  “I seen dried blood on pieces of paper before.”

  “What about the other pages? This one is the beginning of a book of forty-four poems. Did any of the others have blood spots?”

  Arnie shrugged. “You think I had time to look at them? Crang, damnit, man, I was there to do a different job entirely.”

  “I’m amazed you even spotted the one page. But if you’ll bear with me a minute, let me ask you about a page that came before this page in the book. It’s called the frontispiece. You notice it? It’d have an image of Elizabeth Barrett Browning on it.”

  “This one I brought you, this one right here, it was on top. The blood spots tipped me off something wasn’t kosher, you know what I mean.”

  “Definitely unkosher.”

  “How much?”

  I smiled at Arnie. “How much in money is this page worth to me? That’s what you’re asking?”

  “I don’t do stuff like this for free, you know.”

  “Hundred bucks sound right to you?”

  “I don’t want no cheque.”

  “Nothing but cash money, Arnie.”

  “I was ready to settle for fifty.”

  I reached for the bills in my pants pocket, peeled off five twenties, and handed them to Arnie.

  Arnie thanked me, and we went back into my office.

  “You finished in here, Acey?” I said. “I got some important new business to conduct on the phone.”

  I sat down at my desk and got out my iPhone.

  “I’m grateful to you, Crang,” Acey said. “I can’t tell you how unexpected all of this was. I didn’t believe you’d pull it off.”

  “How about Artie and me?” Arnie said.

  “And you too, you and your brother,” Acey said. “I appreciate what both of you got done.”

  “All that’s left is you pay us,” Arnie said.

  “Hold it,” I said. “Can you two please take this discussion elsewhere?”

  “You’ve got business to do,” Acey said to me. “I understand.”

  She turned to Arnie. “If you and your brother would carry the boxes to my car, I’ll pay your fee. It’s in my purse.”

  “Cash money?”

  I waved at them to get moving, to clear out of the office.

  “As you insisted,” Acey said to Arnie, “all cash.”

  “That’s cool,” Arnie said. He began to stack the boxes of letters back on the dolly. It looked like it was going to be a process done at glacial speed. I got up from the desk and helped with the stacking. We finished the job in a couple of minutes.

  “Now,” I said to the others. “Go.”

  “Crang,” Acey began, “could I just say…”

  “No.”

  “But …”

  “Later, Acey.”

  The two left with the trolley. I was alone at last.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  At my desk, I picked up the iPhone again and called Maury.

  “I got something to report,” he said when he answered.

  “Never mind,” I said. “I need you to do something that’s urgent.”

  “This is better than urgent, what I got. Charlie and Fletcher may be an item.”

  “Romantically?”

  “All I know is he took her out to dinner and went back to her apartment after.”

  “And stayed how long?”

  “That’s the problem, man. Sal’s getting antsy about me staying late on these stakeouts. She says there’s a killer out there, and I could be next after Biscuit if I keep on leaving myself exposed.”

  “I assume that’s Sal’s line about you being exposed?”

  “You ever heard me talk fancy like that?”

  “Never,” I said. “How late was it when you left Fletcher at Charlie’s place in the Hemingway?”

  “About ten. Not late enough to prove they’re getting it on.”

  “Nice work anyway, Maury,” I said. “But sit on that thought for a while. We got a bigger issue to work through.”

  Maury let out a long exasperated breath. “What do you want?”

  “You know where Biscuit lived?”

  “Of course I do. It’s an apartment not far from my place.”

  “Out in Scarborough?”

  “Why do I get the impression you don’t think the suburbs are part of the civilized world?”

  “Because that’s an accurate reading of my true beliefs,” I said. “But what about Biscuit’s apartment?”

  “The cops haven’t been in there yet. They identified Biscuit. You notice it, little item in the Sun with Biscuit’s name?”

  “They had his name right, but how about his address?”

  “No way the cops got that yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “The apartment he lived in, Biscuit listed himself as the tenant under the name of a numbered company.”

  “‘Of no known address,’ it said in the Sun.”

  “That’s my man,” Maury said. “Biscuit had these layers of protection to keep himself low-profile.”

  “What I need,” I said, “is for you to get over to his apartment right away.”

  “What for? Biscuit’s son’s coming in from Vancouver tomorrow. I’m keeping the place nice till he gets here.”

  “It’ll still be nice when you’re finished what I’m asking.”

  “Let me hear it. I’ll make up my mind.”

  “I want you to get Biscuit’s toothbrush. Put it in a plastic bag. See if there’s a comb and take any hairs out of it. They have to be hairs with the roots still in them. Put the comb and the hairs in another plastic bag.”

  “You’re talking about stuff with Biscuit’s DNA on it.”

  “I am.”

  “You gonna explain to me why I’m doing it?”

  I told Maury about Arnie MacGillivray’s discovery.

  “So you want to see if it’s Biscuit’s blood on the page from the book of poems?” Maury said. “By comparing the DNA of the blood on the poems with the DNA from Biscuit’s hair and saliva?”

  “Yeah, assuming the rust spots aren’t coffee or some other innocent liquid.”

  “I’m betting it’s blood.”

  “Me too.”

  “Do I take the stuff from Biscuit’s apartment to your place?”

  “When you’ve got it, phone me,” I said. “We’ll meet at Archie Brewster’s lab as soon as I can swing an appointment.”

  “The science guy who does private forensic tests for free if he happens to like you, which he does you? He likes you, I mean. Him?”

  “Archie doesn’t do it totally for free.”

  “For bottles of wine. Yeah, I remember. He’s big on guys like you bringing him some kind of rare wine.”

  “I’ll get the wine, you get the stuff that’ll give us Biscuit’s DNA, and we’ll meet at Archie’s.”

  “What’s your thinking on this anyway?”

  “I’m thinking like the Crown prosecutor would think on the case.”

  “Not like the defence counsel, which is what you are?”

  “Just follow this, Maury. If we want to build a case against somebody, w
e got to place the person at the scene of the crime. One way is via Biscuit’s blood. Right now we got a lot of blood, but we have to prove it’s Biscuit’s blood. You with me so far?”

  “You’re being awfully damn rigid on this, don’t you think?”

  “Maury, bear with me. We surmise whoever whacked Biscuit with the stapler drew a lot of Biscuit’s blood. We surmise it sprayed the blood all over whatever was in the immediate vicinity. That would include the copy of the Reading Sonnets Biscuit had just brought with him into the store. This is what we surmise. But if we prove the blood was Biscuit’s, then it’s no longer just surmising. It’s proven fact. “

  “Well, it’s already a proven fact that the top page of the poems with blood all over it turned up in the Grantham guy’s house.”

  “Where Arnie MacGillivray was alert enough to spot it.”

  “This makes the Grantham guy look like a fit for Biscuit’s killer.”

  “The whole thing is moving that way,” I said. “But we got more hurdles to jump before we get there.”

  “The most important of them being we need to prove it’s Biscuit’s blood.”

  “Now you’re thinking like a prosecutor.”

  “What a terrible thought that is.”

  “Maury,” I said, “let’s both of us just do what’s necessary.”

  From the other end, I heard Maury heave a long sigh. “You want I should put my ass in gear,” he said, “go over to Biscuit’s place, and pick up the items that’ll help us get past the surmising?”

  “Please.”

  “I’m on it.”

  Chapter Forty

  On Monday, I lined up an appointment that afternoon for Maury and me at Archie Brewster’s clinic. Then I took a cab to Meg Grantham’s building on the waterfront and asked the natty-looking guy on the first-floor reception desk for directions to Beth Appleby’s office.

  “You’re in luck,” he said.

  “I could use some of that today.”

  “What I mean is Beth’s in town and not doing business on another continent like she is half the time.”

  “I think that’s what I mean too.”

  The guy shook his head slightly. Maybe he doubted my sincerity. I felt like telling him, in all sincerity, that I was on an essential errand and was feeling a touch impatient.