Body Blows (11 page)

The formal patio is a squared horseshoe looking west, north, and east.

A wide balcony runs along the west side of the hotel and opens to a broad, north-facing terrace with stone planters and outdoor furniture. When I step outside I can feel a wet wind moving over the top of the city. The sky is darkening. Rain is heading in from Point Grey but it hasn't hit us yet. From up here I can see the mountains and the North Shore and a glimpse of English Bay between the high-rises.

The downward view from terrace to excavation is less appetizing, especially now that I can pinpoint the exact spot where the body landed. Given a few variables — wind, angle of trajectory, desperately flailing arms and legs — he probably began his descent from exactly this spot. There are faint bloodstains on the concrete railing; dirt scattered across the tiles, broken glass from the French doors.

“Who we dealing with here, Ninjas?”Gritch has followed me. He looks over the edge to the street below. “Have to be a human fly to get in this way,” he says.

Ledges on the north face of the Lord Douglas are nonexistent, windows are sparse. The old Warburton Building once butted up against the Lord Douglas with barely enough space between for a tight fire lane. Guests regularly complained of being ogled by office staff next door and over time many of the windows were simply bricked up. Which might explain why no one saw a body falling.

“So, what happened?” Gritch wonders. “Two guys climb up, one of them doesn't make it, the other one goes on without him, does a murder and runs down the fire stairs?”

“A bizarre scenario,” I admit.

“Have to be nuts,” he says.

“Or highly motivated.”

“Yeah, well maybe he was hoarding gold bars and bags of diamonds up here. You don't climb fifteen stories to steal furniture.”

“I don't think they came in this way.”

“I'm with you there, Mr. Moto,” he says, “but somebody left from here. And something went on out here. Glass table got knocked over, somebody kicked those flower pots, two panes gone in the French doors …”

“Kicked from the inside. Probably started in there,” I say. “Maybe she tried to run out here, call for help or something, he chased her …”

“Or
they
chased her,” he says. “Officer Chan says more than one.”

“Okay, they chased her. And somehow, God bless her, she got one of them, pushed him over, and the other one dragged her back inside.”

Inside. There is a clear path of breakage from the terrace to the kitchen to the front hall.

The rain picks a fitting moment to hit. Not the usual Vancouver drizzle, this is a solid cloudburst. I can hear a rumble of thunder in the distance, uncommon in this part of the world.

“Comin' down heavy,” says Gritch. “Sky's black. Where'd that come from?”

The question doesn't require an answer.

The kitchen is a mess. Shattered glass and broken china cover the floor. A big platter of assorted canapés strewn countertop to sink, caviar, pâté, fancy cheeses, the air is rich.

“Stinks in here,” says Gritch, unnecessarily. “Cops never bother to clean up.”

“Not their job.”

“Are we supposed to do it, or call Housekeeping?”

“I'll do it,” I say. “Go water your fern.” Chaotic or not, the kitchen is well-stocked with garbage bags, cleaning supplies, brooms, dustpans, rags, and mops. I start slowly, picking up the bigger shards one piece at a time, taking a look at each one, not searching for anything in particular and pretty sure I wouldn't recognize a real clue if it cut my finger, which it might do if I handle things in my usual ham-fisted fashion. Take it slow. Broken glass and china into a metal wastebasket, foodstuffs into a plastic bag. Raquel took a lot of care with this buffet — toast points and little spoons, hard-cooked eggs and lemon wedges. All ruined.

The rain hasn't let up and it's getting on to evening by the time I've cleaned up the kitchen. I'm no wiser than I was when I started, merely more informed. There's a knife missing from the wooden knife rack. The carving knife. And by Christ I hope she got to it first, I hope she cut the bastard, I hope that I was washing some of his blood off the tiles.

The rain is pounding the deck, spattering through the battered French doors. I stuff a plastic garbage bag into the biggest gap and get a good scratch on the back of my hand for my trouble. Bound to happen.

Leo's bathroom, like the kitchen, is well-stocked. There's peroxide and Polysporin and I have my choice of Elastoplast or Band-Aid, pretty much anything a wounded klutz might need. As I'm fixing myself up I'm checking the inventory. Looking inside someone's medicine cabinet is akin to reading their mail; not something I'm comfortable doing but under the circumstances not out of line. Mooney and Pazzano probably handled these pill bottles. It appears that Leo has his choice of Viagra or Cialis, as well as a Chinese male potency booster called Hua Fo. He also has prescriptions for various age-related medications, none of which I'm familiar with. They don't have any bearing on what I'm supposed to be up here doing anyway, which definitely isn't standing in Leo's bathroom looking at his privacy. I already know a lot more than I want to about my boss.

And how much do I really know? Not that much. I may be a “house dick” by occupation, but I'm no detective. I don't have a snooper's curiosity. Private lives? None of my business. Back when I earned a living doing physical labour I took comfort in the precise outlines of the job. I knew what was expected of me, what I would be required to pay in pain and effort, the exact proportions of my roped-off territory. No confusion. The Lord Douglas is a bigger ring, but it's measurable, in size and requirements. At least that's how it's supposed to be.

Most of Raquel's personal things are in her own suite at the southernmost corner of the penthouse; self-contained chambers — kitchen, sitting room, bedroom — through a door at the end of the hall. According to Leo, I'll find suitcases there. Packing up that apartment will be a job for another day; right now Leo would like me to remove her things from his bedroom closets. He doubts he'll be able to sleep in there anyway. He says he may use one of the guestrooms. If he doesn't move out permanently.

It looks like Raquel had her sitting room organized for sewing. Two machines, bolts of cloth, a dress form, work tables, threads, ribbons, scissors, all neatly arranged. The half-finished dress on the mannequin is white. There is lace around the neckline. To my untaught eye it looks a lot like a wedding gown. Heartbreak upon heartbreak.

Back in Leo's bedroom, once very much
their
bedroom, obviously arranged for two people to watch television, read, sleep, side by side. I pack up Raquel's things as neatly as I can. Dresser drawers filled with underclothing, slips and stockings, jewellery box, makeup. Everything I touch reminds me of the woman who wore them. I'm clumsy with delicate things.

She had her own bathroom. Her pink robe is hanging on the back of the door, her moisturizers and creams and conditioners lined up on an open shelf. Near the tub is a wall rack holding a sheaf of magazines:
Prevention
,
Cigar Aficionado
,
Men's Health
,
Conceive
, and a glossy Spanish language magazine called
Agenda
Para Mama.

It's that last one that does it. My eyes are blurring and my face is getting hot and I have an urgent primitive need to punch something, punish someone, almost anyone. And I didn't love her; I just liked her, liked trying out my meagre Spanish on her, seeing her smile when I got it right.

Fresh air. Clear my head, cool my face. The sky is clearing in the west when I get outside, the rain has moved on. The trailing end of the storm has diminished to a steady breeze across the roof garden. The moon is breaking through the clouds. I can almost see stars.

I walk to the railing and look down at the street. At fifteen stories, plus the penthouse structure, the Lord Douglas is dwarfed by most of the buildings around it. When it was built it was a monument, now it's merely a mesa. Still, it plants a massive footprint, almost a full city block, hugging the sidewalk on three sides, flanked to the north by the empty pit.

Whoever originally designed what became Leo's penthouse fortress must have had a whimsical streak. The penthouse roof is cantilevered, dormered, cupolaed, and chimneyed. The cops have probably been up there. Not sure how they made the climb. Probably brought a ladder. Or stood on a planter. Or knocked one over.

Not as easy as I thought it would be. The planter isn't tall enough. There's a table that gives me another step. After that it's a matter of arm strength. I always hated chin-ups; they weren't part of my regular workout. Biceps aren't the most important arm muscles to a boxer and you definitely don't want them bulging and slowing punches down. Morely Kline considered weight-lifting to be one of the Seven Deadly Sins for a fighter.

Nevertheless, it looks like I still have enough residual curling strength to haul my bulk over the eaves and onto the penthouse roof.

No crime scene tape up here, nothing marked off, no sign that the police have crossed these peaks and valleys, hiked this expanse of slate, skirted these copper-sheathed cupolas. All the evidence said the crime happened inside Leo's domicile, and then I was helpful enough to focus things elsewhere by chasing footsteps down the fire stairs. They might not have checked up here at all.

Not enough moonlight to make searching worth-while. I'm just happy I make it to the south end without breaking my neck. It turns out that Leo's aerie is a citadel taking up less than a quarter of the hotel. I stand at the roof's edge looking down on a wide expanse of tar and gravel occupied by massive air-conditioner and elevator housings, vents and pipes, aerials and satellite dishes. That much equipment needs regular maintenance.

There will be a service access somewhere.

It's a long drop to the roof of the fifteenth floor but, hey, damned if there isn't a handy iron ladder bolted to the wall to make for a smooth climb. Who needs special keys and security codes? Simple, if you know where you're going.

People have spent time up here. Impossible to tell who and when but it looks like a popular gathering place. Cigarette butts, Styrofoam cups, discarded rags, a rank of dubious plastic lounge chairs aimed to catch the afternoon sun, a gas barbecue, a picnic table, an awning swollen with collected rainwater. I recall Gritch mentioning the summer lunch breaks on the roof, maintenance staff cooking burgers and steaks in the afternoons. He suggested that it was a tradition. I'd never been invited.

Housings for the six passenger and two service elevators are barnlike, padlocked from the outside. So? So, no one came or left through them. What does that leave? The other fire stairs. That door has a lock as well. It is conveniently broken. Light switch inside the door. This stairwell descends to the fifteenth floor and opens near the service elevators.

And Gritch is climbing the stairs.

“Thought crossed my mind, too,” he says.

“Did you know there was a ladder up the back of Leo's castle?”

“That's what crossed my mind,” he says.

“I don't think Pazzano and Mooney have been up here,” I say.

“Probably right. Otherwise they might have noticed the pair of gloves at the bottom of the stairs.”

“You've got to be kidding,” I say.

“Check it out,” he says.

Sure enough. A pair of black gloves, one lying on the bottom step, the other a level higher.

“Okay,” I say. “Let's get Maintenance to padlock this door until the police are inclined to do a thorough search of the premises.”

“They're going to just lo-ve you to death,” he says.

Brian Bester is looking for me when we get to the lobby. “I'm clocking off, Joe,” he says, “but I thought you might want this stuff.” He hands me a printout. “I left the medical tag on your desk.”

“Thanks Bri, I appreciate it.”

“My pleasure,” he says. “Good night. Good night, Mr. Gritchfield.”

“Yeah, right,” Gritch says. He watches Brian leave. “Probably running off to get a shoeshine and a trim. They always have fresh haircuts, you notice?”

I'm looking at the printout.

“What'cha got?” he asks.

“I found a thing at the construction site. Computer thing. Medical alert tag. He's got allergies.”

“Who has?”

“Jesus Santiago.”

Gritch says. “Jesus was camped out next door?

“He's from Fresno, California. He's in the Army.”

“Our army?”

“American,” I say. I take the Bronze Star out of my pocket. “Maybe a hero.”

“Maybe just a thief,” Gritch says.

chapter ten

M
idnight. I've made the late walkabout. I usually have a beer around this time. Once or twice a week lately I've had company. Sometimes I find her waiting for me at the foot of the handsome new staircase leading down from the lobby. That's where she is tonight, watching me descend, her curly head cocked to one side and her bright eyes squinting.

“You're all backlit,” she says. “Can't see your face. Are you smiling?”

“Always, when you show up.”

“You don't look very smiley.”

She puts her arms around me. It feels good and I wrap her close. Her tousled head is under my chin and I inhale the scent of her hair.

“This helps,” I say.

“That was a big sigh,” she says. She looks up. “More groan-like.”

“It's been a dreary day. You?”

“Not so bad,” she says. “Come on. Let me buy you a beer.”

“Not so bad? Is that akin to good?”

She takes me by the hand and leads me into Olive's. Olive herself is sitting in her private corner with her bassist and long-time friend, Jimmy Hinds. They must be reminiscing; they both have faraway smiles. Olive looks up and blows me a kiss as we pass.