Crang Plays the Ace (9 page)

Moriarty had vacated his post at the door.

“He's gone to wipe off his shirt,” the young cop said.

“My guy's coming up in Twenty-one Court,” I said. “You mind taking a look who's sitting there today?”

The cop lifted the clipboard from Moriarty's chair and leafed slowly through the sheets of paper, one sheet for each courtroom in the building.

“Twenty-two's got Robertson,” he recited. “Twenty-one's got— hey, you hit it lucky.”

“Not Bert?”

“His Honour the old softie.”

I knew James Turkin wasn't going to jail.

The young cop unlocked the door to the corridor. I walked up the stairs to the first floor whistling a happy tune. From
The King and I
. Bert Ormsby was a judge who led his own version of the Children's Crusade. Confronted by a teenage accused, his heart bled, his eyes watered, his brain turned mushy. If Jack the Ripper were an adolescent, Ormsby would give him probation. He wouldn't put eighteen-year-old James Turkin inside, not even if I told him Turkin had the nerve of a fifty-year-old second-storey man and the morals of a slug.

It was twenty minutes to court time. I wandered down the hall to the front of the building. Two scrawny, animated men in their early twenties came through the big wooden doors and up the steps into the high, airy lobby. One had a package of Camels rolled in the sleeve of his wrinkled orange T-shirt. The other had Rambo tattooed on his right biceps. The guy was the size of Sylvester Stallone's thigh. He and his buddy looked like they subsisted on a diet of hot dogs and white bread. They found a place on one of the benches that line the corridor outside the courtrooms along the east side of the building. A black man with his hair in greasy dreadlocks sat at the other end of the bench talking to an overweight girl in a halter top and tight pink jeans that squeezed the fat out over her waistband. A Canadian Indian stood motionless by the wall, not touching it. He had a long scar on his right cheek and a hangover that made him squint his eyes against the light. In my line of work, you run into a lot of interesting folks.

Twenty-one Court is on the first floor directly over the holding cells. When I walked in, James Turkin was sitting behind the wire mesh of the prisoners' box on the left side of the courtroom. He was in between a man with mussed hair and a stained white jacket and a kid in a ripped Blue Jays shirt. In his pressed khakis and clean white dress shirt, Turkin cut the nattiest figure in the box. The judge arrived promptly at ten o'clock and everyone in court rose while he settled on the bench. Bert Ormsby looks like the guy Central Casting would send over to play Gramps in a TV sitcom. He's in his early sixties, apple-cheeked, kindly-faced, grey-haired, and rumply. Up close, his eyes probably twinkle. It took him fifteen minutes to process eight requests for adjournments, a bail application, and two other guilty pleas.

“I'll hear number twelve on the list, James Turkin,” he said.

I stood up at the counsel's table.

“Good morning, Mr. Crang,” the judge said.

“Your Honour.”

“Your client has pleaded guilty,” he said, “and I note from the pre-sentence report in front of me, Mr. Crang, that he's eighteen years old.”

I said, “You might also note, Your Honour, that Mr. Turkin has a previous record, one conviction for possession of a small amount of marijuana and another for theft under two hundred dollars. I emphasize that neither offence involved violence, Your Honour, and though the matter presently before the court is an assault, I would suggest that Mr. Turkin made the error of allowing himself to be influenced by his companion in the crime. He acknowledges and regrets the incident, and he'd like to assure the court that he'll never again permit himself to be drawn into such a misadventure.”

Where have you gone, Clarence Darrow? If Bert Ormsby ached for youngsters to be rescued, I'd give him James Turkin in self-recrimination and remorse.

“What does the crown attorney say?” Judge Ormsby asked.

The crown attorney was a pretty woman with streaked blonde hair and a frown.

“Your Honour, this was a heinous crime,” she said.

“I thought you crowns reserved heinous for the Supreme Court,” I said to her, not loud enough for the judge to catch.

The crown attorney's frown lines tightened.

“The prisoner used force to rob the taxi driver,” she said to Judge Ormsby. “I submit the sentence should be commensurate with the violence of the act.”

“Your Honour,” I said, “there's been restitution of the money by my client.”

The crown snapped, “A term in reformatory is called for.”

“May I suggest, with Your Honour's indulgence,” I said, “that jail would work to the detriment of my client's prospects. He has behind him an excellent scholastic record and I submit it promises a positive future.”

Judge Ormsby aimed a grandfatherly smile at Turkin in the prisoners' box.

“Have you considered community college, young man?” he asked.

My kid turned his sullen face in my direction.

I said, “My understanding, Your Honour, is that the accused has ambitious career plans.”

Judge Ormsby beamed another smile and said reformatory seemed inappropriate in the circumstances. The crown attorney's frown deepened into a scowl and she made a display of tossing her file on the counsel table. Judge Ormsby put Turkin on probation for two years. He told Turkin to report to his probation officer every month, find a job, avoid evil companions, and stay out of underground garages. Fifteen minutes later, after Turkin had signed some papers and arranged his first probation meeting, he and I sat on a bench on Old City Hall's front lawn.

“Thanks,” the kid said. The word seemed to give him serious pain.

I said, “I trust I won't see you in court again.”

“Fucking right.”

“Does this mean you're going to tread the straight and narrow?”

“It means I'm not going to get caught.”

“That's what Murph the Surf said.”

“Who's he?”

“Infamous jewel thief and convict before your time.”

“So laugh at me,” Turkin said. Something earnest was struggling to break through his sullen expression. “I can already do any lock on the market. Shutting down alarm systems, shit, that's a touch. And I met this old geezer when I was in the West End, guy about forty, he told me the real professional stuff about checking out a place before you go in.”

“What was this forty-year-old geezer doing in the West End?”

“He made a little mistake.”

“James, isn't that a lesson?”

“Yeah, he told me his mistake. I won't make it.”

The kid shook my hand and walked away until he disappeared into the crowd of shoppers crossing Queen Street to Simpsons. He was probably right. He wouldn't make that mistake.

12

I
RODE UP AND DOWN
the elevators in City Hall, the new skyscraper version, until I found an office that gave out the addresses of the Metro dump sites. Most were in the suburbs, and I drove around to four of them with my watch and notebook. At five-thirty, I knocked off the tour until next day, when I visited four more dumps. The story was the same at all eight. The guys inside the weigh offices took longer to do their operations with Ace trucks, between twenty and forty seconds longer per truck. That piece of information was confirmed and reconfirmed for whatever it was worth. At a dump in the east end, I came across the two men in the pink Cadillac: Solly the Snozz Nash and his boxer sidekick in the straw hat. I took my notebook back to the office and let it sit on the desk. Rereading my notes inspired unease but no deep thoughts.

Mrs. Reid had been in and left a memo. Matthew Wansborough had called three times, Tom Catalano twice. My client was getting antsy. It was four o'clock. I dialled the number at McIntosh, Brown and asked for Catalano.

“Wansborough wants a meeting,” he said as soon as he came on the line.

“What happened to hello?” I said.

“Hello,” Catalano said. “It has to be in a couple of hours.”

“Is that his timetable or yours?”

“His,” Catalano said. “He's at a political meeting at the Albany Club and he can slide over here at six before he goes to a cocktail party at the Toronto Club.”

“So just like that you squeeze him into the appointment book,” I said. “He must be a big-money client.”

“Not that big, but old,” Catalano said. “The firm started doing his family's business right after the first McIntosh was called to the bar, 1880 or something.”

Outside my office, fresh developments were shaping up. I watched a pink Caddie stop and double-park.

“What're you going to have for us, Crang?” Catalano said on the phone. “You've been on this thing for a week.”

“Six days.”

The man in the straw hat got out of the driver's side, and Sol Nash climbed from the passenger side. He had on a light grey suit that looked shantung from my distance. His tan was deep and his nose was in the Jimmy Durante class. The guy with the straw hat was built like a ring post.

“So what have you got?” Catalano asked.

“Nothing conclusive so far,” I said, “but enough to keep Wansborough interested.”

The two men down below crossed the sidewalk and disappeared from sight. I could hear them opening the door off the street and starting up the stairs.

Catalano said, “I know you're not the kind of lawyer who'd stall around just to pull in a big fee and then produce nothing.”

“Big fee?” I said. “That's the first time anyone has mentioned the magic words. Now I'll go into my major-league stall.”

Nash and his driver had reached the top of the stairs and were coming down the hall.

“Just be here at six,” Catalano said and hung up.

The man with the straw hat opened the door to my office. He was wearing a white-on-white shirt with the top three buttons undone and grey sharkskin trousers. His nose was flattened at the tip and he had scar tissue over his eyes. He wasn't tall, about five nine, but he was wide all the way down. The straw hat looked out of place on his head. Every man to his affectations. He glanced around my office, stepped inside, and held the door back for Sol Nash. Nash seemed about fifty years old. His black hair had grey at the temples, and even against the tan I could see deep lines around his eyes and mouth. He sat in a chair across from me. The guy with the straw hat closed the door and stood in front of it with his arms crossed.

“You know me, Crang?” Nash said.

“Your reputation precedes you, Mr. Snozz.”

The guy at the door uncrossed his arms.

“Never mind, Tony,” Nash said without taking his eyes off me.

I said, “And Tony's your interior decorator.”

“What's he talking about?” Tony said. His voice had a thick rasp. Too many punches to the throat.

“Offices are his specialty,” I said to Nash. “He rearranges the decor.”

“Oh yeah, I get it,” Tony said. He seemed to take my little joke as a compliment.

“Far as I know, Crang,” Nash said, “you got no beef with me personally and you got none with the company I work for.”

“Lovable me? I'm without enemies.”

“So I want to know how come your face keeps coming up in my business.”

“I'm thinking of a change of career,” I said. “Garbage strikes me as a field with infinite possibilities.”

I leaned back in my swivel chair and hoisted my Rockports on to a corner of the desk. That'd show Nash what a cool customer he was dealing with. Unless he thought Rockports looked wimpy. Mine were light brown canvas and leather. Maybe I should have left them on the floor.

“You assaulted one of my drivers,” Nash said.

“Hey, that's a fancy word for what happened,” I said. “Your driver and I went a couple of rounds. But I'll tell you straight, Sol, Tony here ought to give the guy a couple of pointers on style.”

Nash stared at me. The colour of his eyes was as close to black as eyes get.

“On the other hand,” I said, “Tony may not be the man for the job. From the look of his kisser, style isn't his long suit in the ring.”

Tony made rumbling noises from his post at the door.

Nash said, “You're beginning to piss me off, Crang.”

“Just when I thought we were getting along famously.”

“You been hanging around the dumps,” Nash said. “Tony and me spotted you twice and a couple weigh-masters said they seen that fag car of yours.”

“What is it with you Ace guys?” I said. “All of you scorn my convertible's sexual orientation.”

For the first time since he had sat down in the office, Nash looked somewhere besides at me. He turned to Tony and nodded his head. Tony stepped up to the desk. He stood within left-jab distance of my head.

“Here's your choice, Crang,” Nash said. His eyes were back on mine. “Tell me what you got on with Ace or Tony's gonna punch your lights out.”

I slid my Rockports off the desk.

“What makes you think Tony can accomplish your objective?” I said.

“He's younger'n you by twenty years,” Nash said.

“Ah, but youth is only one attribute,” I said. “I have a quicker brain and a nature that's wily.”

“Make up your mind, Crang,” Nash said. “I'm getting tired of this crappy office.”

Crappy? Modest, okay, but crappy was harsh.

“You've made your move too fast, Sol,” I said, “and I think you know it. If I'm interested in Ace, it's on behalf of a client. You want to find out who the client is. Sic Tony on me and I won't tell you. I guarantee. Let me alone and maybe you'll learn the client's identity in due and natural course.”

I felt sweat dampening the armpits of my shirt. Peddling a line of patter to Judge Bert Ormsby took one skill. Trying out evasive verbal tactics on Sol Nash was a dicier proposition. Nash wasn't restricted by court decorum or a warm heart. He also possessed a more acute bullshit detector.