Death of a Sunday Writer (14 page)

“A what? No. Right. I'm sure you'll manage. Good luck, Mrs. Brenner. If any questions occur, about the ledger I mean, you'll find me here most afternoons. You can tell your lawyer you're meeting me.”

“There's one last name I want to check on. Nolan. You know him?”

Cowan paused before he replied, deciding what to say. “I know the name, yes. I believe he bets with a man I know. I happened to be talking to him this morning and he said that Mr. Nolan had not been around for a few days.”

So Nolan bet with Cowan, too. “Did your friend happen to tell you if Nolan had made any bets lately.”

“No. And he would have said something, I'm sure. Is that it now, Mrs. Brenner?”

Lucy stood up. “May I call you if I have any more questions?” “Here? Certainly. If I'm busy, you can leave a message. I'll get back to you.” He nodded politely and returned to his notebook, dismissing her.

There was a message from Johnny Comstock at her office. Would she call him? While she was preparing to, he called again. Would she go with him to Le Select for dinner. It was not far from her office.

“But we just had dinner last night!” It had to be said, this ancient instinct to create a decorous gap between dates in the early stages, not to ‘rush it,' though she was overcome with relief at the news that she hadn't screwed up by running away.

Comstock said, “So we did. But I've just found out I'm going to die.”

“When?”

“When did I find out, or when is it going to be?”

“Both. And stop it.”

“I found out sometime in the last ten years; it's been coming on slowly. As to the other ‘when,' that should happpen anytime in the next thirty years, sooner if I'm not careful.”

“Then what are you talking about?”

“I'm talking about the fact that we are not teenagers, or even young adults — is that the phrase? In other words we are in the second half, not much time left. So when I find a good thing I don't want to postpone enjoying it on the grounds that we have plenty of time. So can I see you tonight?”

Afterwards he drove her back to Trimble's apartment. As they came along Bloor Street, Lucy had no idea of what to say when they arrived, or what he would expect. The only experience she had had of dates was twenty-five years old, and Kingston experience at that, and no one in Kingston or Longborough had informed her of the new decorum, whatever it was. She had no doubt where she wanted to be at the end of the evening, or the next one, perhaps, but she hadn't the faintest idea of the conventional way to get there. Even the terms she was rehearsing were probably ridiculous for a woman of her age, at this end of the century, but she had no other vocabulary. Would he proposition her? Would she seem cheap if she said yes? Would they spend the whole night together? He stopped the car outside the block and she waited, but he was no help at all, simply sitting there waiting himself until she knew it was all up to her, and she opened the car door, turned, and said, “Do you want to come in?” And then the old familiar phrase, “It's not very tidy.” And then, the truth, “It's kind of crummy, actually.”

“Then let's go back to my place.”

“I meant for a cup of coffee.”

“There you go again. I didn't.”

With The Trog it had been so simple to say yes because he took her by surprise, and anyway she had no investment in the result. This was different. Johnny was no trog; he was someone she couldn't stop thinking about. If she said yes and it turned out badly, she would be shattered. But just this much hesitation was already too much. “All right.”

And, of course, there was no question of it turning out badly, certainly not for her, and when he called her the next day to tell her where they were eating that night, she knew that for the moment this was going to be her life.

It was Thursday and time to get ready to shadow Mrs. Lindberg. She looked at herself, or rather at her new tobacco-coloured leather suit in the mirror, and admired what she saw.

Tse put his head around the door and stopped in amazement.

“My god, Lucy, you look like a lawyer or something.” Satisfied, Lucy looked down at herself. “You like it?”

“Makes a difference.”

“Good.”

The telephone rang. “You look terrific,” a woman's voice said. Startled, Lucy looked up at the mirror and saw Nina, the travel agent, waving at her from her window across the street. “Now you'll spend as much time in front of that mirror as your cousin used to.”

“Probably. Anyway, thanks.” That was nice. The only thing that her suit had in common with Nina's red one was that both were made of leather, but Nina might have been miffed. Lucy waved her thanks and got a response from Nina who raised a hand in appreciation.

“You'll have to fight them off,” Nina said, and hung up.

Now Lucy wondered if she was properly dressed for work. What she had on was her meet-the-client costume, but she remembered what Lindberg had said when she took the assignment: “You'll do fine.” He meant her old image. She needed a disguise. Fortunately she had not yet taken home her original clothes and she still had a flowered skirt and a cleanish blouse in Trimble's tiny closet. Reluctantly, she changed back into the kind of clothes she saw now were likely to be ideal for the job.

Once more Lucy was ready as the woman pulled out of the lot. She was still nervous, but now only like an actor waiting for his cue. This time, they turned north onto Yonge Street. Lucy felt herself lucky that the woman was such a deliberate driver — every turn was properly signalled, and she always moved very carefully into the stream of traffic. It makes for excellent practice, thought Lucy, still grim about Toronto driving.

They drove up across Eglinton, where the woman slowed down, obviously looking for a parking spot, finding one opposite the police station. Now Lucy worried that the woman would have disappeared before she found a spot herself — in movies, she reflected, there was always a spot outside Buckingham Palace when the private eye needed it, but the real Yonge and Eglinton was very crowded. Lucy turned at the next side street and scrambled into a spot off the sidewalk beside a store that was covered in warnings about what would happen to anyone who tried to park there. She got out quickly and scurried up to Yonge Street before anyone could
shout her back. Half a block away, the woman was still locking her car.

There are plenty of pedestrians on that strip on a summer night and Lucy had no difficulty concealing herself as she followed her quarry half a block south. The woman paused outside a pub, surveyed the street, then walked down into the pub's basement. Lucy gave her two minutes and tried to follow her. She was stopped by a ticket-seller in a glass booth. “Three dollars, Ma'am.”

Lucy had no idea what the charge covered. She was not sure if Toronto had legalised live sex shows, but surely they would cost more than three dollars, so it had to be some kind of bar with a modest entertainment. She paid her three dollars and walked along a passage to a pair of swing doors. Inside was a large room with a rudimentary stage at one end, backed by a fake brick wall. The room itself was in darkness, and Lucy had the time to pick out her woman who was seated at a table to the right of the stage, talking to a waiter. Lucy found a quiet spot near the door and ordered a beer, which was what everyone else in the room seemed to be drinking. For a moment, she wished she had worn her new suit, for the crowd was casually-dressed, convivial, and, on average, about thirty years younger than she.

Quite suddenly, someone at the end of the room began to make an announcement through a microphone, more lights were switched on, and a young man took hold of the microphone and proceeded to tell a string of jokes about the emergency waiting rooms of various hospitals he had visited in his time. Toronto General seemed to be the richest in the kind of scene he made comedy out of, followed by Western. His worst experience had been in England,

where the patients sat on a long bench inching eastwards until, just before they fell off the end, the doctor saw them. In Paris, he said, they start with a rectal thermometer, then ask you what's wrong. In New York they perform surgery on your wallet (there were boos at the hoariness of this one) but in Naples you get brandy, and maybe an Italian family will take you home for the evening.

All this was delivered feverishly, for laughs, and Lucy rather wished he would slow down because what he was saying, while not very funny, she found interesting.

When the young man stepped down to not much applause, a young woman took over and the crowd clapped noisily. She explained she was married to an Albanian and recounted in racist detail how he liked to make love. The crowd applauded every position. Then she explained how she used to be married to a Norwegian and she explained how he liked to make love. When the girl began to describe the antics, or rather non-antics of her first husband, an Englishman, Lucy tuned her out. The crowd was grinning at the comedienne, not because she was funny, but because of the atmosphere of the room. As far as Lucy could tell, it was simply a lot of students listening to some of their contemporaries retell anecdotes about things that had happened to them, retelling them in locker-room language, talking dirty as a substitute for wit. Lucy felt like an intruder at a fraternity party.

Another girl took the mike, and was genuinely funny, though not, apparently, to the woman Lucy was watching who simply sat there, looking slightly to left and right, apparently not listening.

A voice in Lucy's ear said, “Is that her over there?”

Lucy's arm banged against her beer-glass as she jumped away. A hand reached over and pulled the glass
back. A man sat down beside her. It was Jack Brighton, the private investigator.

“What are you doing here?”

Brighton grinned, pleased with himself. “Watching the show.” Lucy turned sharply towards the stage.

“Not that one.”

It took a moment, then Lucy said. “You mean me and her? You spying on me?”

“Watch your language, lady. You're in this business, too. Yeah. I've been worried about you.”

“For pity's sake. You've been following us?”

“It wasn't hard. You're practically falling over each other. I told you, I've been worried about you. There's something screwy going on. That woman doesn't care who sees her.”

“Why should she? Her husband knows she's out. Now go away.”

Brighton ignored this. “Same pattern as last time?”

“Will you please go away? Did you follow me from the office?”

“Just from the garage. You told me where to start. I waited in the Becker's lot. Is she on to you, maybe?”

“I hope not. The idea is for her to cope by herself.”

“You still believe this agoraphobic stuff? You think an agoraphobic would come here?”

Lucy looked around at the packed, noisy room. “Sure. But what do I know? If not, then what is going on?”

“I've been trying to figure it out. You've been staying real close, and if she's spotted you she could act innocent for two or three weeks until her old man runs out of money. Then she could go tap-dancing when you're not around.”

“Go what?”

“She could do whatever she does when her old man's not around. What he thinks she's doing.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I've been reading up about agoraphobia. No way an agoraphobic would come to a place like this. It's the last place.”

“Where is it? I mean, what is it? This place?”

“This is amateur night at Yuk-Yuk's. You've never heard of it?”

“Of course. I should have realised. Then what's going on?”

“He's having her watched. They may have one of these agreements that lets her out on her own one night a week, but he doesn't trust her.”

Lucy thought back over the last two Thursday evenings. “If she knew I was following her wouldn't she try to — shake me?”

“Not if she's smart. It might be me next time, and she wouldn't spot me. You haven't seen any signs of her shaking you, have you?”

“No, not at all.” Then, to prove her point, “Tonight, for instance, after she parked, I couldn't find a space and I had to run into a side street. She had lots of time to disappear. She could just have driven off. But when I came back to Yonge Street she was only just getting out of her car, she didn't look around or anything.”

Brighton snickered. “I saw that. I wondered how you would handle it. You know what you should have done? Dumped the car, charged the fine to the client. Or double-parked and stayed in the car until you saw where she went, like I did. I just sat there until I saw you both come in here, then took my time parking.”

“But if you hold up traffic out there, everyone starts
honking at you. She might have noticed.”

“On Yonge Street? She wouldn't have even looked around. Put your emergency flasher on if they honk too much. If you have to, put your hood up.”

“I'll remember that. In the meantime, leave me alone.”

“Relax. Two of us is less conspicuous. That's her, then, eh?”

“Yes.”

“What's she doing?”

Lucy gave in. “I don't know. She doesn't seem to be watching the show. And she's not expecting anyone.”

“How do you know?”

“She hasn't looked at her watch. She doesn't look around properly. See, now she's ordering another drink, so she isn't making one last a long time.”

“Very good. Is she hoping to be picked up?”

“Not among this group, surely.”

“Let me find out.” Before she could protest, Brighton had moved across the room and was sitting at the woman's table. Lucy saw him say something across the empty seats; the woman turned away from him. Brighton leaned forward to speak again and the woman picked up her drink and moved to another table. Brighton shrugged and made his way back to Lucy.