When the Killing Starts (20 page)

She had frozen, so I stood up. "Obviously this is something I have to take up with your husband, Mrs. Michaels. If you could tell me when you expect your husband, I'll go."

Now she went back to her couch and sat down again, glancing up and waving at me vaguely. "Sit down, please. It isn't that simple. I'm sorry."

When in Rome. I sat and waited for her to speak. She fiddled with her coffee cup, adjusting it into the very center of the tray, then looked up at me. "I'm sure you find all this very unusual," she said.

"Unique, in my experience. I'd like to know what's going on. Like why are you mad at Dunphy? You've obviously never met him."

"You're very perceptive," she said, her voice just this side of sarcastic. Then she realized what she was doing and shook her head. "I'm sorry, that came out bitchy. No, I wanted to meet Dunphy because of the hold he had over Jason."

I cocked my head as she had done. "What kind of hold? Last I saw of Dunphy he was trying to kill all of us, including Jason."

"He gave Jason a sense of pride that was lacking." She got up again and brought a cigarette box from a table against the window, opening it and flapping it at me. I shook my head, and she took a cigarette and lit up.

"Jason is arrogant, I grant you. But he has no sense of self."

"You mean you encouraged him to join a mercenary group so he could find himself? Something like that?"

"My husband did. In fact, he paid Mr. Dunphy a big bonus to take Jason."

I frowned. Who was it said the rich are different from the rest of us. "But didn't he know the boy would be in danger? What kind of a father would do that?"

She sucked on her cigarette with a greedy gasp. "I suppose I should explain," she said. "My husband is not Jason's father."

 

 

 

FOURTEEN

 

 

I held up one hand to head her off. "Look, Mrs. Michaels. I don't need to know any of this. I'm sorry your life has been so complicated. As soon as I've been paid for services rendered, I'll leave."

"I wish I could do that," she said. She looked around. There was an onyx ashtray on the table by the window, but instead of getting up for it, she butted her cigarette in the saucer of her demitasse and looked up at me with a half smile on her face. "You put it very well. Payment for services rendered. That would suit me perfectly."

I stood up. "I'm a cop, not a marriage counselor, Mrs. Michaels. If you'll just tell me how I can contact your husband, I'll take it up with him."

"You can wait for him here," she said, and her sexuality made the hair tingle on the back of my neck. I don't have to brush women off as commonly as some men do, so I've never developed the skill. She didn't care, anyway; she had decided to play games with me.

"I've imposed enough on your time," I said, but she wasn't buying.

"Don't mention it. My husband won't be very long. Perhaps you'd care for a drink while you wait." She turned away to one of the lower bookshelves and moved a book, and the shelf swung open on a big array of bottles. "What will it be? Vodka, scotch. No, let me guess." She turned to look at me, her left index finger on her lower lip. "I'll bet you're a vanishing breed. I'll bet you drink rye."

"I didn't come here to socialize. This is business, and I'd like to keep it that way."

She lost patience. "Don't be such a goddamn tightass. Have a drink with me." She took out a bottle of Canadian Club and sloshed a couple of tumblers half full. "Come on."

She was going to be mad no matter what I did. Better she should be mad and sober, but if I didn't make some concession, she would tell me nothing. "If you need company, I'll trade you," I said roughly. "You give me directions for getting to your husband, and I'll drink your rye."

She looked at me with her eyes wide with surprise. "Deal," she said hoarsely, and handed me the drink.

I didn't take it. "First, where can I meet your husband?"
 

"He's at the Yorkton Yacht Club. He may sleep aboard his boat, or he may be on the last ferry. I never know."
 

"Thanks." I took the glass from her and looked at it. She'd poured about six ounces. "Trying to get me hammered?"

"You look like a growing boy," she said happily, and I knew she was an alcoholic. She would have euphemisms for everything. Drinks this size would be "family size" or "executive specials." You never got a second drink; it would always be "the other half." Boy! This was a weird family. She raised her own glass, which was just as full, and took a quick gulp. Then she set it down on the coffee table and reached for another cigarette.

"I don't drink often," she said, "but when I do, it brings out all my vices."

For the moment she was happy, the bubble-thin happiness of the drunk with just enough booze on hand to keep the rats at bay. Soon she would get either maudlin or murderous. I planned to be gone by then, but in the meantime I dug for information.

"Jason told me that he's about to come into money. Would this account for your husband's trying to get him out of circulation for a while?"

She lit her cigarette and held it in the corner of her mouth as she cocked her head back and blew smoke. She looked like a hardworking hooker when the fleet's in. "Inquisitive son of a bitch, aren't you?" she said in what she probably thought was a roguish voice.

"If it's going to help me get paid, I'd like to know."
 

"You'll get paid," she said, and laughed.

"I mean for services already rendered." I grinned to show her I wasn't mad.

She nipped at her drink again, grimacing slightly. Another sign that she was an alcoholic. I've never met a really dedicated drinker who likes the taste of the stuff. Moderate drinkers quit when it stops tasting good. Alcoholics punish themselves with every mouthful. "Let me tell you a story," she said, and then laughed and added, "A bedtime story."

"Go ahead." I wasn't going to flirt with her.
 

"Once upon a time there was a young debutante." She looked at me to make sure I wasn't laughing. "Really. We used to do that kind of thing in this town, once. Anyway, she fell for her tennis coach, and the next thing you knew, she couldn't button her school blazer. So her father, a tough bastard—you remind me of him in some ways—he did the proper thing."

"Which was?" I could see it coming, but as long as she was talking, I might learn something, and she wouldn't be rushing to pour more drinks.

"He bought her a husband." She laughed. "Really. The best that money could buy. Charming, intelligent, ambitious. And they got married, and people sent them toasters and place settings from the bridal list she opened at Birks, and six months later the baby was born."

"Sounds like a lot of people's stories." I wanted her mad enough to brag about her problems. That way I'd get through the crust and into the truth, the facts that would make sense of what was going on.

"You mean, and they all lived miserably ever after?" She laughed a little raggedly. "Yeah. Well, they did. At least the debutante did. The husband got to be really good at handling her father's money, built up an empire and took a mistress. The baby grew up pampered by the mother, hated by the nominal father."

"This still doesn't explain why the father would want him killed." I pretended to sip my drink. Two ounces was all I planned to drink. The rest could go to irrigate the dieffenbachia that stood in a corner.

"It does when you get all the facts." She was being very lucid all of a sudden. I guessed she was one of those people who need a drink to get them thinking straight. If she stuck to one a day, she'd be a genius.

"And what are the facts, Mrs. Michaels?"
 

She went coy on me. "Unless you're a lawyer or a whole lot squarer than you look, why don't you call me Norma?" she suggested, and I worked out that she must be in her fifties. The most recent star with the same name was Norma Shearer, last seen riding into the sunset in the middle thirties.

"Okay, Norma. What are the facts? This is one hell of an interesting story."

"I'm glad you appreciate that," she said. "The facts are that my late father could see how the company he had built was passing out of his control. He'd retired, and my husband had moved in on his territory, expanding and making money but stepping on Daddy's pride." I listened and nodded, knowing now how rich she was. Only the very rich around here refer to their old man as Daddy.

She was continuing, more theatrically now, as the rye took a tighter hold on her. "So Daddy changed his will. He locked a chunk of the company off into a trust for Jason when he turned twenty-one."

"And Jason hasn't made a will?" Not many guys of twenty do. They all figure they're going to live forever.
 

"Exactly. And with the stranglehold that son of a bitch has on everything, he'll break the trust and keep the whole thing."

She was growing more tense, as if she were up on a high board over a swimming pool, wanting to climb down but ashamed to give in. Very good, Bennett. If the rich need analysis, they can pay some shrink. All you need is your money, remember?

"The only thing that doesn't make sense is why this woman would come to me pretending to be Jason's mother and ask me to get him back."

She drained her drink and reached for the rye bottle. "Beats the hell out of me," she said. "Why don't you go ask her? She lives at Prince Arthur Place. Her name is Alison Beatty."

The idea made sense. I would probably find Michaels Senior there with his shoes off and a drink in his hand. But this woman didn't need reminding of that. I shook my head. "No, all this is irrelevant to me. I got Jason out as I contracted. Now I just want to get paid what I was promised and I'll go." I stood up. "Thank you for your rye and your time."

She froze with the uncapped bottle in her hand and gave a little cry of distress. "You're not going? You haven't even finished your drink."

"I've had my quota. Thank you." I put the glass down, and she picked it up, setting down the bottle and holding my glass in both hands like a magician on stage. She smiled craftily and raised my glass to her mouth and licked her lips slowly, a move that reminded me of photos in girlie magazines I'd seen as a kid. Then she drained the glass. It's a pity burlesque is dead. She could have made a fortune.

I turned away and walked out. I heard her screech something, and then glass shivered against the wall behind me. It took all my self-control not to sprint over the parquet to the door.

I got back into my car and fussed Sam for a few moments. He sat up and pressed his big head back against the pressure of my hand. The contact cheered me. Women like Norma Michaels leave me with a hole in my gut. Loneliness isn't something she could dispel by dragging the iceman into bed. She should know by now that her condition was contagious. Misery loves company, but misery also makes misery. There once was a time when I might have taken my chances on that, but I had Fred in my life now. I didn't need any more ships that pass in the night.

I pulled away from the curb and headed out of Rosedale back into the real world where family problems aren't complicated by the weight of ten zillion dollars on top of everything else. The only productive thing I could do was to go call on Michaels Senior's girlfriend. If she lived in Prince Arthur Place, it might be hard to get in. It seemed to me that it was one of the newer condominiums that have risen from the ashes of unprofitable apartment blocks in Toronto. Thirty some floors of half-million dollar pigeonholes with squash courts and saunas and beauty parlors in the basement and upkeep costs higher than most of us could afford to pay in simple rent.

I prepared my camouflage carefully. There was a Chinese grocery store open on Yonge Street, and I picked up a couple of bunches of freesias for a few dollars and had the clerk double wrap them for extra bulk. The package looked like the kind of bundle stars expect from their agents on first nights. Then I drove north to Prince Arthur Place.

It turned out to be two buildings artfully placed back-to-back as if to fight off the rest of the city. As I'd expected, they had a security man at the gate of the parking lot, but I was lucky. He was a twenty-five-year-old gum chewer with a radio tuned to some rock station. He came out of his little house and said, "Yes, sir?"

"Hi. Like your music. I'm from out of town. What station is that?"

"CKNY," he said, warming up to me.
 

"What's the frequency? All I can find is guys yakkin'."

He told me, and I thanked him with a wave of one finger. But he wasn't bought off entirely. "Who're you here to see?"

I did a conspiratorial chuckle. "Anybody you'd care to recommend? Like the gal I'm here to see is kind of senior."

He laughed with me. "Most of 'em are, here. What's this one's name?"

"Ali. Ali Beatty. Asked me to come up next time I was in town, and here I am."

The security man was impressed. "Asked you up? Hey, I wouldn't have thought that. She's kind of snooty."
 

"Yeah, before she lets her hair down." I grinned again like a salesman. "Listen, she said not to let the guys in the office know, so I'm gonna tell them I'm delivering flowers." I held up the bunch. "Which is true, only she gets to ask me in for coffee."

He nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, good idea. Old George inside, he's kinda nosy. Yeah, I'll tell him the delivery man's on his way."

"Good thinking." I flipped out a five-dollar bill, and he looked at it in surprise.

"For me?" I guess he didn't get much in the way of tips. George did all the Christmas collecting.

"Yeah," I said. "I'm feeling lucky." He snuffled a quick laugh and waved me through. I saw him lift the phone in his shack.

George was waiting at the door. "I'll take those," he said.

I shook my head. "'Preciate the offer, but the boss said to take 'em on up."

He tutted. "And who would he be, this boss?" I raised an eyebrow and stared him down. He was small and British, ex-service by the look of him, used to being ordered around. "Miz Beatty'll tell you if she wants you to know."