Crang Plays the Ace (20 page)

Marty's Gym was in the fifth block east of Broadview. I parked on a side street outside a house that had been done over with metallic grey shutters and brick painted a raspberry shade. The gym was on the second floor over Koustopolos Video. Fifty per cent off on Irene Pappas movies. A double flight of stairs covered in worn linoleum led up to a large space, more loft than room, that smelled of sweat and last week's socks. There were peeling George Chuvalo posters on the wall and a hand-lettered sign that admonished patrons to mind their language and their valuables. A ring with thick ropes dominated the space, though it was getting competition from a silver Nautilus in one corner. The young man whose biceps were locked into the machine seemed more intent on attaining Mr. Universe's title than Thomas Hit-Man Hearns'. The other men at work, nine or ten of them, were pursuing more boxerly activities. Skipping rope, punching bags, shadowboxing, breathing through the nose.

Tony Flanagan stood out in the surroundings. He was the only white boxer and the bulkiest. The rest, skinny and black, were lightweights and welters, quick, bouncy kids. Tony was dogged and stolid and was administering vicious damage to a heavy bag. A grey-haired black man with a moustache like Count Basie's was holding the bag in place and offering encouraging words. Tony didn't need encouragement. His fists hit deep and solid into the bag. I admired from the sidelines until five minutes went by and the black man pulled the bag away.

“Enough, man,” he said.

I stepped into Tony's line of vision. He took ten seconds to make the connection.

“Reggie,” he said to the black man, “get that guy outta here.”

The black man put his hand lightly on my arm. “Hey, mister, Tony say leave, best be you split.”

I said, “Papa Anderson, you hear the name, Tony, Papa Anderson told me where to find you.”

Tony frowned.

He said, “How's an asshole like you get off talkin' to Papa?”

“He trained me, too,” I said.

The black man looked from me to Tony, took his hand off my arm, and began to peel away the small gloves that Tony wore to punch the heavy bag.

“College fighting, Tony,” I said. “Not like you.”

Sweat stood off Tony's face in hot little beads. He had on a grey T-shirt, purple boxing shorts, and black boots laced up to his shins. The T-shirt was dark at the armpits.

The black man said to Tony, “Can't stand around, man.”

“I'll wait till you finish, Tony,” I said. “All I'm asking is talk.”

“You know Papa?” Tony said. He needed time to compute the information.

“Since I was nineteen.”

The black man prodded at Tony.

“You want, stick around,” Tony said. “I might talk to you. Might not.”

“I'm a spellbinding conversationalist.”

“Might put my fist in your face like Mr. Nash wanted me.”

“Take my chances.”

Tony skipped rope. He lay on a bench and caught a medicine ball that Reggie the black man tossed onto his stomach. He threw punches at the air in front of a floor-length mirror while Reggie chanted beside him.

“Jab, hook, jab, hook, bap, bap, bap.” Reggie's voice had a light Caribbean lilt. “Upstairs, downstairs, chigga, chigga, chigga.”

After thirty minutes of labours, Tony put a towel around his neck and went into a room that said “Men” on the door. I didn't see any women on the premises. Two black lightweights wearing head protectors as formidable as space helmets flitted around the ring tossing punches at one another in blurs. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. By the time I was beginning to grow impatient, Tony emerged from Men looking fresh and sleek. His hair was damp and his straw hat sat on top of it.

I resumed my Papa Anderson pitch. Tony brushed past me at a swift clip and made an abrupt gesture with his hand. The gesture said to follow him and it struck me as a trifle smug. I followed.

We crossed Danforth to a restaurant called the Willow. It had Stevie Wonder on the sound system and plants hanging from the ceiling. The guys leaning on the bar that ran along one wall looked more Waylon Jennings and hubcap decor. If the neighbourhood was a mix of yuppie and working class, the Willow had a foot in both camps. The menu was Tex-Mex.

“So what about you and Papa?” Tony said. There was no mistaking the tone in his voice. Smug.

I said, “Papa trained pros, but he used to pick up walking-around money at the university. He coached the boxing team in the winters.” Tony and I sat at a table in the Willow's window. I went on, “I made the team, middleweight, and whatever I learned, it came from Papa. I got to the intercollegiate finals one year. Lost the decision to a left-hander from Queen's. The guy had this incredible reach. Jabbed me silly.”

“Yeah,” Tony said, pushing, “what else?”

“Not much,” I said. “I liked Papa. Who doesn't? He must have seen something in me, and we've kept in touch ever since.”

Tony spoke in a tumble of words. He said, “Nights when Papa's guys are on the card down the St. Lawrence Market, you're there, right? At the fights?” Tony looked like the cat that swallowed the canary. Better, the tiger that swallowed the crow.

“You astound me, Tony,” I said. “Is mind reading your sideline?”

“I asked Papa on the phone,” Tony said. “You think you're dealin' with some kind of dummy. Shit, listen to this, at Marty's they got a pay phone in the dressing room. I'm back there, I call up Papa and ask about this lawyer comes into the gym, wants to talk to me. I got you figured out, man.”

Chalk up one for Tony.

The waitress brought menus and Tony ordered without consulting it. Mexican black-bean soup, something called Tijuana tamales, and Tony wanted a plate of nachos while he waited.

“The training table has changed since my day,” I said.

“What I'm eatin'?” Tony said. Indignation had replaced smugness. “I got a good constitution.”

I asked the waitress for a vodka and soda, and Tony asked me what I wanted with him.

“To save your hide,” I said. Even to me, the line rang of insincerity, but I hadn't dreamed up a more convincing script. “You're up to your ear in fraud. Could be there's no way out of that. But the murder, it's where we might make room for negotiation.”

“The fuck you talkin' about?” Tony said.

It was barely possible to get a reading among the collection of scar tissue, unhealed bruises, and broken veins that made up Tony's face, but he seemed to be registering disbelief that was genuine.

“What murder?” he said. “I don't do murder.”

“Alice Brackley's.”

“She's dead? I seen her Friday walkin' around.”

“I saw her this morning lying down. Someone swatted her out with one punch.”

“You sayin' it was me?” Tony said. “I never punched a lady in my life. It goes against my religion. Not hard anyways.”

“The blow Alice took broke her neck.”

Tony said, “Jesus, that's tough. Nice broad, Mrs. Brackley. I used to run into her a little around the office out there.”

“How much else do you run into, Tony?” I said. “Payoffs to the weigh-masters at the city dumps? You want to talk about that?”

“What do I know?” Tony made himself busy with the black-bean soup. A thick island of sour cream floated on its surface. “Mr. Nash says drive the dumps, drive the office, drive downtown, I drive. Rest of the time, I sit in the car waitin'.”

“Mister innocence.”

Tony stopped slurping his soup.

“What is it they call you guys?” He said. “Shylocks?”

“Shysters.”

“Yeah, right, shylock's a guy puts money on the street.”

“Shyster puts words in people's mouths.”

“That's what I'm gettin' at,” Tony said. “You're lookin' for me to say somethin' bad about Mr. Nash. Stick his nuts in the wringer for you.”

Tony might have been headed some place interesting. I kept my mouth shut.

“Listen, what I'll tell you, you ought to watch your ass as far as Mr. Nash goes,” Tony said. “Kind of guy he is, he carries this big fuckin' cannon in his belt. Colt Mag or somethin', I don't know the name. Blow a guy's brains all over the wall. He tells me stories sometimes we're drivin' around the dumps. It's what Mr. Nash does, scare people, shit like that.”

I asked, “Would he kill Alice Brackley?”

“For what? They was both at the garbage company.”

“Business associates have been known to fall out, especially when it's monkey business.”

Tony tried out an expression that passed for disgusted.

“You back to that?” he said. “You're a friend of Papa's, all right, I'm sittin' here talkin' to you. It's a favour. Thing about the dumps, I drive the car. Do what Mr. Nash tells me. Murder, that's news to me. Fraud, also.”

Tony waited for a moment, not paying attention to his soup, thinking hard.

“You want somethin',” he said, “you should ask about the bikers.”

“The guys who drive Ace's trucks?”

“Them.”

Tony's thought processes were diverted by the arrival of his tamales. He soaked them in salsa sauce and ordered a piña colada to wash down the hot stuff. It came in a glass the size of the Seven Dwarfs' bathtub.

I said, “What about the drivers?”

“Huh?”

“Why did Ace hire a squadron of Hells Angels to man the trucks?”

“Yeah, see, thing is the drivers do other stuff. Collections, for instance. Customer's slow payin' his bill, okay, one of the bikers gets sent around, asks for the money, customer shakes in his pants, and, shit, he'll pay double to get that big sucker out of his office.”

“Unpleasant all right,” I said, “but nothing illegal.”

“Well, it's muscle,” Tony said, disappointed. “Thought that was the kinda thing you were lookin' for.”

“You want to tell me about the hustling?” I said. “Deals the drivers make on the side?”

“You caught on, right, the day you followed the fat guy around in that wiener car you got,” Tony said. “Jesus, that stuff 's no sweat. Mr. Nash knows what's happening, he laughs. He lets those guys do their deals.”

I said, “The driver picks up a load and takes it to a gypsy dump.”

“Yeah, a little load, from a house or somethin'. The contractor, guy building the house, he pays the driver.”

“Cash.”

“Eighty bucks is as high as it goes, a hundred maybe, and the driver has to pay the guy who owns the dump half.”

“The transaction never shows up in Ace's books.”

“Mr. Nash says forty bucks, the drivers are entitled. Like tippin' a waiter, Mr. Nash says.”

“Gotcha,” I said. “Forty-buck tip for a collection, something more impressive for a murder.”

Tony gave me his stormy look, the one calculated to strike terror into the hearts of the comers in the Maritimes.

He said, “You get out of my face about this murder shit, Mr. Lawyer, or you go drink with them cowboys at the bar.”

“Think of this as practice, Tony,” I said. “Alice Brackley's dead. The police are going to come around wondering why. Tell me what you know and when the cops ask the same questions, you'll have the answers down pat.”

“What's the question?” Tony said. “You talk so much bull, I forget.”

“A driver as Alice's murderer,” I said, “does that fit?”

“You're asking, did a biker do it for sure, I don't know,” Tony said. “But those guys, their morals is all up their ass, y'know what I mean.”

I took Tony's splendid metaphor to indicate that murder wasn't unknown as one of the Ace drivers' talents.

“What about Charles Grimaldi?” I asked. “Your boss?”

“Not my boss,” Tony said quickly. “I work for Mr. Nash personal. Mr. Grimaldi, he's around, I walk away.”

“You don't like the gentleman?”

“Nuthin' to do with it, like or not like,” Tony said. “Mr. Nash's a hard guy, that's what he's supposed to be, the way he earns his living. Mr. Grimaldi's a hard guy, he does it 'cause he likes it. There's fighters, certain kind of fighter, hits guys that are already fallin' through the ropes. Weirdos. Mr. Grimaldi's that kinda person. I told Mr. Nash once. I said Mr. Grimaldi's weird, and Mr. Nash told me never mind. That's it, I never mind.”

Tony had fibbed when he said he knew nothing about Ace Disposal's wheeling and dealing at the Metro dumps. I'd bet my house on it. I'd make the same wager he was straight with me on the other items. He didn't kill Alice Brackley and he had no first-hand information on who handled the deed. But in his own assessment, he wouldn't rule out Sol Nash, worship the man as he did, or one of the drivers, maybe on a contract job. And there was more. Tony's pigeonholing of Charles Grimaldi's character seemed to make him, in Tony's mind, another possibility as a murderer.

“You done?” Tony said to me. “You wanta watch me eat key lime pie?”

“Enjoy, Tony,” I said. “Thanks for the time.”

“I never said nothing against Mr. Nash.”

“You didn't throw a right cross at me either.”

“Papa Anderson made the difference.”

“I'll tell him so.”

Tony said, “You go round and see Papa much, him dyin' and all that?”

“I intend to.”

“Me, I'm at his place, me and these other fighters, regular every Saturday.”

Chalk up two for Tony.

25

T
HE ROOM ON THE FIRST FLOOR
of the CBC Radio building where I found Annie B. Cooke had a high ceiling, no windows, and a machine for editing tape. The machine was large and homely, and when I opened the door to the room, it was playing a passage from one of Annie's tapes.

“Some people say if a movie works in the theatre, it'll work on TV,” the voice on the tape, casual and masculine, was saying. “Sometimes yes.
Testament
does. Sometimes no.
Nashville
doesn't. And anyway, you do get the idea of the Mona Lisa when the lady is printed on a bath towel, but what kind of idea is that?”