Crang Plays the Ace (24 page)

“Go back in the kitchen,” he said to Pete. “Nice new coffee machine back there. Solly'll make you a cup. I settle with the lawyer here, and you and me talk some more. Quiet, I mean. We're brothers, Pete. You and me aren't saying goodbye till I make you happy about everything.”

Pete was still swivelling the shoulders, but his anger had been banked. Sol Nash crossed the hall to a door in the opposite wall, and when he opened it, sunlight streamed in and I could see a white kitchen at the end of another short hall. The lure of the bright, sunny room ended Pete's struggle and he followed Sol out of the entrance hall.

“Whatever you're doing here, Crang,” Charles Grimaldi said when the door to the kitchen closed, “you've made a mistake.”

Grimaldi sat in the chair on the other side of the antique table. His face was set in a glower and he had his hands laid flat on the table. Annie had been right about him. He was actually menacing. When I met him at La Serre, my eye had been taken with his shine and gleam. I hadn't registered all of the menace.

“Call Pete back in here,” I said. “He'd get a big kick out of why I've come calling. The whole family would.”

“Your choice, Crang,” Grimaldi said. “Make your point fast or I tell Sol and Tony to throw your ass on the street.”

“I've come to deal,” I said.

“You haven't got anything I'm interested in.”

“The other day,” I said, “you were keen to find out the identity of my client. That's where the deal starts.”

“Wansborough,” Grimaldi said. “I know already.”

“He wants his money back,” I said, “everything he put into Ace. Three hundred grand and change.”

“That doesn't sound like any kind of deal to me.”

“What you receive in return, Charlie,” I said, “is the documentation I'm holding on activities at Ace that might give some people cause to feel concern. Your family for one group and the fraud squad for another.”

My announcement didn't precisely shatter Grimaldi.

“You're blowing smoke,” he said.

“You've got the weigh-masters at the Metro dumps on the take,” I said. “That's number one. You're overbilling your customers. That's number two. One and two combined are bringing in better than two million every month.”

The snappy speech left me short on breath. Concise, I thought, succinctly worded and irrefutable. I was breathing hard but feeling triumphant.

Grimaldi said, “You know, Crang, I don't like dicking around with guys like you.”

“Here's the key word, Charlie,” I said. “Documentation.”

“You done?”

“Information on paper, Charlie. Invoices photocopied on the same machine you use to phony up the invoices that go out to your customers.” Grimaldi's face gave away nothing. Same gleam, same menace.

“The trade is,” I said, feeling marginally less triumphant, “my documents for Wansborough's money.”

“That reads like blackmail.”

“It's probably a field you're familiar with, Charlie.”

“Nobody calls me Charlie.”

My trouble with Grimaldi was his reluctance to address the issues. He'd doped it out that Matthew Wansborough was my client. That probably wasn't difficult, not after a week of reflection and a little adding of two and two on Grimaldi's part. Besides, there was no reason for keeping Wansborough's identity under cover any longer. The worrying point was that Grimaldi seemed not to be daunted by my insider information. I'd just finished telling him I could prove he was a crook. The news didn't shake him. It didn't even interest him.

“Charles,” I said, “you following me? I got the evidence?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

Was I handling this wrong?

“Let me explain,” I said. “Invoices. Copies thereof. The ones with the same billing and same number that go out to all your customers on any given day. Remember now, Charles? That's the scam I'm talking about. I walked into your office and took out the paper. I'm offering to deal it back.”

I listened to myself and I heard babbling. The implacable expression on Grimaldi's face was unhinging my tongue. If he was trying to stonewall me, he was succeeding. I'd come to threaten him into an arrangement, and now I was the guy whose nerves were turning shaky.

Grimaldi slid his hands off the table and stood up from his chair.

“Get the hell out of my house,” he said.

“No deal?” I said. Dumb question.

“Crang, the last couple weeks, you've been a pain in the ass,” Grimaldi said. “Not a big pain in the ass. A little pain. From what you've said the ten minutes in here, you sound like a guy looking to graduate to major pain in the ass. If I were you, I wouldn't do it. That's my advice. Smart people take my advice.”

Grimaldi walked across the Persian rug to the door that led to the kitchen, opened it, and left me alone in the entrance hall.

Bravo, I thought, what a performance.

I went out to my car. Two Japanese gardeners had parked their truck behind me. I had to wait for the two to put down their rakes and hoes and move the truck before I could back out of the circular drive-way. The delay made me itchy. What was going through Charles Grimaldi's head? Didn't he believe I had the goods to prove he was a crook? He must. How else would I have been able to recite the nature of his crookedness? Did he want me out of the house in a hurry only because brother Pete was on the scene? Was that it? Would he deal later? Or did he have something else in mind? The gardeners spent five minutes shifting gears and stalling the truck until they moved it far enough to let me squeeze onto the street. I drove away.

Strike while the iron is hot. That's one motto I'd consider dropping from my escutcheon. In for a penny, in for a pound wasn't looking so terrific either.

28

A
T FOUR O'CLOCK
I bought Annie a drink at the bar across the street from the CBC Radio building.

“Down to thirty-two minutes and a bit,” she said, “and still cutting and splicing.”

I was of two minds about mentioning my call on Grimaldi. Clam up on the failure or discuss it with Annie in the hope that talk might lead to a more inspired approach? The choice became academic. Annie was so high on coffee and work that the topic of my adventures on the Kingsway passed only fleetingly through the conversation. Annie was giving herself a thirty-minute break from editing the tapes of her interviews with the movie people. She planned to stick with them till twelve that night and Tuesday night.

“Get another ten minutes out,” she said. Her voice made her sound wired. “Better than a rough edit but not quite finished product, and Wednesday morning I'll play it for the show's producer. With all fingers crossed.”

I cheered Annie on in her endeavours and at four-thirty I drove back to my house. It was quiet when I shut the front door behind me. I went up the stairs, turned to the living room and walked into a rousing welcome from Tony Flanagan.

He socked me on the jaw.

I lost consciousness for a couple of seconds, long enough to hit the floor and settle. I raised my head. Sol Nash was sitting in my armchair and had his shiny black loafers propped on a leather footstool. Pamela gave me the footstool the first year we were married. She thought a lawyer was someone who needed to put up his feet in the evening and smoke a pipe. She bought me a rack of pipes. Tony Flanagan was standing between Sol and me with his fists raised to deliver another haymaker. Tony was wearing his straw hat. I was on my back on the floor. Of the three of us, I cut the least dignified figure.

I said to Tony, “I thought we might have arrived at a non-aggression pact yesterday.”

“This here's business,” Tony said. “Get up.”

“Are you going to hit me again?”

“Unless Mr. Nash says never mind.”

I rubbed my jaw. It hurt when it moved. But conversation seemed a wiser alternative to standing up to Tony's hands of cement.

“Well, Solly,” I said to Nash, “we're awaiting your instructions.”

Nash said, “If he don't get on his feet, kick him.”

He was talking to Tony.

I stood up and Tony fooled me. I expected him to lead with a straight right. It was the punch that knocked me down the first time when he had surprise in his favour. I stuck out a quick left jab and tucked my head inside my shoulder to avoid his right. Tony swung a left hook and it landed high on my right cheek before I could block it. Tony didn't need the element of surprise. I fell down again.

After a few seconds I sat up. My head was ringing.

I said, “How'd you guys get in here?”

“Two queers and a dog let us in,” Nash said. “Get up.”

“Hospitable, didn't you find?” I said, not moving. “The queers and the dog?”

Nash said, “Tony, this guy doesn't quit with the chatter and stand up, put your boots to his knees.”

I held my sitting position on the floor.

Tony scrunched his face into a little-boy look.

“I dunno, Mr. Nash,” he said.

“You nuts?” Nash said. He bristled in his chair. My chair. “Give the guy your foot and let's do the job here.”

“I ain't no kick-boxer,” Tony said. His voice had a wounded sound.

“You ain't Rocky Graziano either,” Nash said.

“Get up, Crang,” Tony said to me.

I said from the floor, “Safer down here.”

“Kick him,” Nash said.

“Shit, Mr. Nash, I box guys,” Tony said. “Kicking people's for somebody had no training.”

“Good point, Tony,” I said. “Kicking isn't legit.”

“Shut up,” Nash said to me. To Tony he said, “Stick your shoes in the man. Make him hurt.”

“Jesus, Mr. Nash,” Tony said.

He turned to his left, addressing the plea to Nash in the chair. Tony's attention was diverted from me. So was Nash's. I reached for a leg of the footstool with my right hand and pushed off the floor with my left. My head was light and buzzing, but my legs and arms felt able to do their stuff. I lifted from the floor and swung the footstool at Tony's head. He turned toward me at the moment I swung, and the stool came at his chin like an uppercut.

The stool made a cracking sound when it connected with Tony's jaw. Tony looked shocked. His straw hat rose off his head and spun three loops in the air. Tony stopped looking shocked. His eyes shut and he fell against the small table beside the chair that Nash was sitting in. Tony landed on the floor. The table tipped over and came to rest on his shoulders. He didn't notice. Tony was out cold. He wouldn't be fretting over the morality of punching versus kicking in the immediate future.

The impact with Tony's jaw had snapped the footstool in two pieces. The larger piece flew across the room and thumped into a row of hardcover American novels on a shelf. I held the other piece in my hand, one leg of the stool. Not much of a weapon. I dropped it.

Nash had his left hand on the arm of the chair and was pulling himself forward while his right hand reached behind him. The man was going for the gun that spread people's brains on walls. Forewarned is forearmed. Nash's gun was tucked in a holster at the small of his back. The motion of reaching for it flipped up his suit jacket. I leaned over Nash's shoulders and yanked the jacket above his head. My yank lifted his hand away from the holster. The hand came up empty.

“Fucking asshole,” Nash said. It was a businesslike mutter.

I pulled until the jacket bent Nash's head level with his knees. A wallet fell to the floor from his inside pocket. I gave the jacket one more tug. It didn't tear. Good tailoring. Nash's head under the jacket developed resistance. It held firm a foot from the floor and began to rise up. He was strong, Solly the Snozz, and as his head and shoulders rose, his right hand was returning to the gun.

I threw a short punch with my left hand at where I thought Nash's face was located beneath the jacket. The punch caught his skull and stung my hand more than it rocked his head. Nash grunted and his right hand kept moving for the gun.

Nash chopped at my legs with his left hand. I grabbed it and twisted the wrist. It was as thick and rubbery as a bologna. My twist slipped in its flesh.

His right hand found the gun. I dropped his left wrist. He brought the gun out of its holster. I raised my left knee. Nash's head was still covered by his jacket. He reached up to shake it off with his left hand. The gun came around Nash's body. I pushed forward with my knee. Nash had the gun pointed to the left, moving toward my stomach. His head came free of the jacket. My knee was aimed at his right hand and I lunged hard. My knee caught his hand and the gun and pinned them both against the arm of the chair. Solly made a noise like it hurt.

“Drop the goddamn gun,” I said. My voice sounded loud. It wasn't natural to scream in one's own living room.

My knee pressed deep into Nash's hand. He dropped the goddamn gun. I picked it up and stepped away from the chair into the centre of the room.

Sol Nash looked at me with the almost-black eyes.

“I got a message for you,” he said. His suit jacket was rumpled, his black hair mussed, and his right hand looked red and sore. His sangfroid seemed to be intact.

I said, “CN Telegraph's still in business.”

I had a firm grip on the gun and pointed it at Nash's chest. The gun didn't feel right. My acquaintance with handguns was limited to holding them in court while I examined and cross-examined witnesses. The guns were trial exhibits that the police had allegedly taken from clients of mine who were facing armed-robbery charges. I'd never pulled a trigger in anger or out of any other compelling motive. Sol Nash's gun, the one in my hand, seemed without the heft of the weapon that Tony Flanagan had described the day before. I put a tighter grip on it.

“Message is,” Nash said, “Mr. Grimaldi says you should butt out. Permanent, he means.”