Old City Hall (38 page)

An older woman stood behind a linoleum counter dispensing the orders with practiced ease. The sweet smell of baking dough and warm sugar permeated the air. The combination of the ovens and the crowd of people in a confined space made it very warm. An old black fan over the front door and two white standing fans inside seemed to do no good at all. Greene undid the top button on his shirt and loosened his tie. The line moved fast.

“I’ll have two dozen sesame and a dozen poppy seed,” the man at the front of the line said.

With a swish the old woman opened a paper bag and filled the order. “What else?” she asked.

“Give me a dozen plain.”

“A dozen poppy seed,” the next man said.

“What else?” the old woman said, ringing the order up on an ancient cash register. A hand-scrawled sign on the front of the machine said
CASH ONLY
.

Greene fished out his wallet. Cash, he thought. For the last few months, as he’d ramped up the hours preparing for the trial, he’d practically lived off his Visa card. He liked using credit cards when he was on a big case. It made it much easier for him to tally up his expenses at the end of the day.

He pulled out his wallet and started to paw through it. I hope I have enough money, he thought as he reached inside. There was the familiar feel of cash, and then he touched a folded piece of paper. What’s that? he wondered as he unfolded it.

It was a receipt for thirty dollars from City Hall parking lot. He shook his head. It didn’t make sense. Whenever he parked in the big underground lot, he always used his credit card. Why would he have paid cash?

“What else?” the old woman behind the counter asked another customer. Greene moved up a step. He was getting closer.

He looked at the receipt again. It was dated back in mid-February. He shrugged. He’d been up all night, and he was tired. Needed his early-morning tea.

“What else?” he heard the woman ask the customer in front of him.

Greene had been coming to Gryfe’s since he was a kid. In grade seven he went to a junior high school down the street, and he and his friends used to come here after school. The same woman was behind the counter, and she looked just as old way back then. She’d give them bagels right out of the oven. In the springtime they’d bring winter gloves to school with them so they could hold the bagels and eat them piping hot.

He’d been hearing this same old lady ask customers “What else?” for his whole life. Just now it occurred to him what a brilliant question it was. Classic witness interview technique. Always use an open, not a closed, question.

For example, don’t ask a witness, “Did anything else happen?” That leaves a fifty-fifty chance that the witness will say no. Better to say, “What else happened?” It turns the mind to giving more information.

He held the receipt in his hand. What else can you tell me? he wondered.

“A dozen sesame, and what else?”

Greene looked up. Without even asking, the old lady had tossed thirteen sesame bagels into a brown bag. His usual order.

He smiled. “Some cream cheese,” he said, pulling a plastic Loblaws bag from his pocket. “You won’t tell my dad?”

“Of course not. How is he?”

“As difficult as ever.”

“Good,” she said. “What else?”

“That’s all.”

Greene grabbed his bag of bagels and took another look at the parking receipt on his way out of the store. The time stamp was for 10:15. That didn’t make sense either. He always arrived early when he went to court, never later than nine o’clock.

He felt an elbow jab into his arm. “Oh, excuse me,” a man said. “I was just loosening my tie. It’s hot in here.”

“Yeah, it’s warm,” Greene said, taking a quick look up at the man, then refocusing on the receipt. “Everyone loosens his tie in here.”

He took another step. Then it hit him.

The receipt. The cost of parking. The overheated room. Now he remembered.

He looked back at the man loosening his tie. Of course. It was the natural thing to do in a warm room. On a warm day. Your neck is the first place you feel the heat. And the last thing you want to cover up, unless . . .

“Oh no, oh no,” Greene muttered as he muscled his way out the door. He looked at his watch. “Oh no,” he said again as he headed toward his car two blocks away. In a dead run.

T
here was a smell to the Toronto harbor that was foreign to the rest of the city. Pungent seagull guano, moist coiled rope, and a whiff of out-board motor oil. Sounds too. The squawking gulls, the flapping sails, and the rhythmic undertone of waves hitting the tall piers.

In fact, most of the city had precious little awareness of Lake Ontario, where it was strategically perched. Toronto seemed designed to ignore the fact that it was on the water at all. In the 1950s, highway-hungry politicians had slapped an elevated expressway right next to the shoreline, effectively creating a six-lane barrier along the lake-front. Twenty years later, when supposedly more enlightened politicians awoke to the fact that Toronto was a city on the water, they made a halfhearted attempt to resuscitate the moribund lakeshore. What followed was a quarter of a century of Keystone Kops–like grand plans, political promises, and—improbably in the name of “opening up the waterfront”—a Berlin-style wall of ugly high-rise condominiums.

Through it all, the one surviving piece of real on-the-water life was a community of small houses on the Islands at the far eastern side of the lagoon. Daniel Kennicott had fond memories of taking the ferryboat across to the Islands as a child, playing on the beaches with Michael and his parents. Now he was going back for the first time in many years because Jo Summers had called him on his cell. She said it
was urgent, and clearly she didn’t feel comfortable speaking about it on the phone.

The big white ferry chugged into view. There was something comforting and old-fashioned about the sight. It was a bit less than a fifteen-minute ride across the half-moon bay, then a pleasant five-minute walk along the south shore. There was a rich bank of trees along the path, and he drank in the heady smell of spring foliage.

When they’d left the Market Place Tower earlier this morning, Detective Greene had turned to him as they stepped onto Front Street, saying, “Get some rest, Kennicott.”

“Nothing we can do?” he’d asked.

“Not unless we come up with some more evidence,” Greene said. “Speaking of more evidence, this is for you.” He gave Kennicott a large manila envelope with no writing on it. “This is not pleasant, I’m afraid. My father has this idea about your brother Michael’s trip to that hill town in Italy.”

“Gubbio,” Kennicott said. His hands were shaking.

“He got this yesterday. I’m sorry. We’ll talk about this after today. Now I’ve got to run. Get some sleep.”

Kennicott had walked to a small park across the street from the condo and sat on an empty bench. He was stunned by what he read. For more than eight years now he’d believed that his parents were killed in a car accident. A drunk driver. Fifty-year-old guy who’d lived on welfare his whole adult life. Crossed the line on the two-lane highway five miles from their cottage. The same road they’d driven every Friday night for thirty years.

Over the years, Kennicott had tried not to think too much about the courtroom in Bracebridge, the small northern town where the driver, a pathetic alcoholic, stood with his head bowed and pleaded guilty. The judge, his robes looking tattered, which for some reason Kennicott focused on and felt angered by, sentenced him to two concurrent terms of six years in prison. He could remember only snatches of the judge’s speech about the horrible loss to the community, how Daniel and Michael’s parents had come to Canada on their own as a
young couple. His father had built a successful business. His mother, such an accomplished academic. What a waste it was of two such productive lives. And then it was over. Standing on the narrow steps of the sad little courthouse with Michael, the police officer shaking their hands, feeling that there was really no logical place for them to go next.

Arthur Frank Rake. Kennicott had tried to forget the man’s name. But it kept popping up in the infrequent letters he got from the Parole Board of Canada, telling him that Rake had been transferred to this or that institution, making his way down to minimum facilities, taking alcohol and addiction courses. And then one day telling him that Rake had been released and was living in some godforsaken halfway house in Huntsville, a town even farther north. And then the final letter—Rake had completed his parole. It was over.

But now he was reading a letter from the Italian consulate in Toronto, addressed to Mr. Yitzhak Greene. Rake had purchased a country home in Gubbio. The hill town in Italy where Michael was headed before he was murdered.

Michael had flown into Toronto from Calgary the night he was killed. They were going to have dinner together, and he was flying out the next day. Why Gubbio? Kennicott had never heard of the town. He’d assumed that Michael was going to Florence, where he went often to meet with bankers. There was a shop on the north bank of the Arno that their father had introduced them to years ago, where they both still went to buy handmade shoes. Kennicott had never heard of a shoemaker in Gubbio, and Michael had never mentioned going there. He’d been cryptic on the phone the night before and said there was something important they had to talk about over dinner. That was the last time they ever spoke.

Greene had attached a yellow sticky note to the letter: “My father had a hunch about this and followed it up. I checked. Arthur Rake never won a lottery. He just finished his parole and disappeared. I know this is tough for you to read. It looks like we might have a lead at last.”

When they’d parted earlier that morning, Greene had told Kennicott
to keep his cell phone on. “What are you going to do?” Kennicott had asked him.

Greene shrugged. “Buy my dad some bagels.”

Just the thought of food made Kennicott’s stomach churn. He’d been up all night and hadn’t eaten for hours. Maybe Summers would have something at her place. He liked the idea of having breakfast with her.

The day was already warm. As he left the ferry, he took off his tie and slung his jacket over his shoulder. It wasn’t hard to find Summers’s place. As she’d described it, there was a row of small cottages facing the inner harbor. Hers was the one with the blue and green swirling colors on the door.

“They’re the Mayan color symbol for ‘west,’ something I learned in Mexico,” she’d said. “That’s the direction my front door faces.”

The floorboards creaked as he walked onto the small porch. Before he could reach the door, Summers opened it. She wore a pair of loose-fitting jeans and a white T-shirt. Her hair was up, but it didn’t look neatly tied, the way it usually was. She looked exhausted.

“Thanks so much for coming, Daniel.” She reached for his arm and practically pulled him inside.

Her cottage consisted of one large room, with a ramshackle kitchen to the left and a few old sofas facing a woodstove to the right. Early-morning light poured in from the window above the sink.

“I didn’t know who else to call. I needed to talk to a criminal lawyer and, well, Daniel, I trust you.”

Kennicott nodded. He found himself looking around her small place, wondering, a little guiltily, if there were signs of another man.

She reached up and fiddled with her hair and then, seeming frustrated with it, pulled out the clip. Her hair rained down in a great cascade, but she seemed oblivious to it. She rubbed the clip in her hands, as if it were some kind of good-luck charm.

“It’s Cutter and that buddy of his, Barb Gild,” she said at last.

“The Crowns? What about them?”

“I don’t trust them.”

“No one does . . .”

“I got stuck late again last night in bail court. I went into the office by the back door, and I don’t think they heard me.”

“And?”

“They were talking about the Brace case.”

Kennicott stood absolutely still.

“Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this.” She gave him a wan smile.

They both knew their conversation had already gone too far. “You can’t unring the bell,” Kennicott used to tell juries when he was a lawyer and a witness had made a fatal admission on cross-examination.

Summers went into her little kitchen and poured herself some coffee into a handmade ceramic mug. She raised the pot toward him, asking if he wanted a cup.

He shook his head. “Just a glass of water?” he asked.

“I keep a cold pitcher of it,” she said.

The light coming through the window backlit her hair.

She poured a glass and gave it to him.

“I didn’t hear everything,” she said. She was cradling the mug in both hands. “Cutter and Gild were talking about Fernandez. How he was such an eager beaver. Perfect Crown for this. And how if he didn’t come through this morning, he’d be prosecuting impaired-driving cases for the next decade.”

Kennicott took a sip of the cool water and nodded. “They’re assholes. They think they run the office. Everyone hates Cutter.”

“I know.” She sounded nervous. “But then Cutter said, in that damn loud voice of his, ‘That Spanish fucker better keep his mouth shut about this.’ Gild said, ‘Fernandez is Mr. Ambition. He knows this case is his big chance.’ ‘Yeah,’ Cutter said, ‘and he knows what Brace told his lawyer.’”

“What?” Kennicott said. “How would he know what Brace told his lawyer? That’s privileged.”

Summers scowled. “Of course it’s privileged. That’s why I called you. Grounds for a mistrial, at least. It stinks. They talked about some guard over at the Don—sounded like Mr. Bunt or something.”

Kennicott put his glass down. “Mr. Buzz,” he said.

“You know him?”

“You Crowns never go to the jails. Every defense counsel knows Mr. Buzz. He’s a fixture at the Don.”

“This just keeps getting worse,” Summers said, biting her lip.

Kennicott looked out the front window. Along the sidewalk by the shore he saw well-dressed men and women carrying briefcases, walking quickly toward the ferry launch. That’s what it would be like, he thought, if I lived here.