It was early afternoon as I coasted past it in my trusty 1983 four-door Mercedes. The building didn’t really have the air of a house of worship — not from the outside, at least. No steeple, no cross. In height, it stood three storeys, with the ground floor much larger in width and length than the two storeys above. Unlike the upper floors, glass enclosed the first level on all sides, giving it an airy look. On floors two and three, the exterior was all brick with just two tall narrow windows at the front. They weren’t stained-glass windows as best I could make out from down below.
I steered the Mercedes north on the street running along the west side of the church building, parked, and got out. I was dressed in casual but respectable looking duds. Two-hundred-dollar jeans from Rainbow on Yorkville, black Nikes, buttoned-down navy blue shirt, summer jacket in a shade Annie called wheat. Clothes fit for a religious experience if that turned out to be on offer. I walked back to the Heaven’s Philosophers front entrance.
Inside, the floor of the lobby was done in sleek grey marble. On either side, curved staircases, likewise marble, led to the second floor. Straight ahead, three shops ran in a line against the north wall. Left to right: a travel agency, a coffee bar, and a copy shop. Each was modest in dimensions; none of them was thrumming with commerce at the moment.
A fortyish guy in a suit and tie sat alone at a desk in the travel office, leafing through a brochure without much enthusiasm. The young guy in the copy shop was likewise on his own, sitting at a computer with a super-large screen and playing a game that involved blasting dragons to smithereens. The coffee bar was more my speed. It was the only place doing what might be called business. I ambled in its direction.
Behind the counter, a dark-haired kid in his late teens had two kinds of coffee on sale, espresso and an unidentified blend. The counter also sported a plate of glazed doughnuts in a round glass cage. The doughnuts gave signs of having been encased for more than a couple of days.
Three customers standing in a group were holding heavy, white china mugs of coffee, probably the unidentified blend. Everything about the physical appearance of two of these guys was thick. Thick bodies, thick voices, possibly thick heads. The third guy was just as tall as the other two but slimmer and less rackety. Grey haired and in his early seventies, he looked to have two or three decades on them.
What the first two guys reminded me of were people I saw in the hallways outside the criminal courts at Old City Hall waiting for their cases to be called. They looked like guys who could have been my clients. For a startled moment, I thought one of them was the real article, somebody I represented within living memory. Was that possible?
This particular guy was thick and meaty and loud. He wore jeans, a lightweight black sports jacket, and a tie with a design you couldn’t miss, something featuring large black balls against a deep maroon background. When the guy spoke, it was in a high-pitched voice that didn’t go with the rest of the package. I’d heard and seen the guy before, but not, I realized, as a client of mine. He was Fox’s client in a fraud case a couple of years back. I’d acted briefly for one of Mr. High-Pitched Voice’s co-accused. The representation was brief because the Crown severed the charges against my guy, and sent him to trial on his own. Before we got started on the new trial, the client fired me in favour of a lawyer his mother liked better.
I was pretty sure I’d nailed the identity of the guy with the voice, but to make it rock solid, I needed to check with Fox. If I was right, it’d be swift progress to get the identification thing squared away. Then I could put my mind to the reason why a possible bunch of heavies were hanging out in the halls of Heaven’s Philosophers.
I stepped up to the counter and asked the dark-haired kid what he was peddling besides espresso.
“Today, sir,” the kid said, “I’m featuring a blend from Paraguay.”
“You recommend it?”
“First day I’ve gone with the Paraguay, sir,” the kid said. He had the barista patter pretty much under control. “But my customers tell me they’re cool with its flavour.”
“Get many of them around here? Customers?”
The guy let his cheery barista manner slip a notch.
“Enough,” he said after a few seconds. “It, like, depends.”
“On what? Sundays better than week days?”
“I’m not open Sundays.”
“Aren’t you skipping a potential bonanza? Think of all those thirsty parishioners coming out of an uplifting sermon in the room at the top of those stairs.”
“Mister,” the kid said, a touch exasperated, “I do what I’m told, okay?”
“I’m assuming there is Sunday church, sermon included?”
“Yeah, Sunday afternoons, but the coffee bar is closed then, like I said,” the kid answered. “You want to order something or not?”
I asked for a Paraguay, paid three bucks, and carried my heavy, white-china mug to another counter where milk and sugar were available. It wasn’t because I wanted either milk or sugar but because I needed to take up position where I could surreptitiously snap a photo on my cell of the guy with the high-pitched voice.
I took a sip of the Paraguay and savoured it for a moment. This was good stuff. From Paraguay? That made it a first for me.
I put my mug down on the counter with the milk and sugar. I was standing in a position that placed me at an angle facing three-quarters away from the trio of gents. The guy I wanted the photo of was in the middle of the three. He was turned my way, though his head was slightly inclined allowing him to pay attention to the older guy on his right who was speaking. The third guy in the trio, the one on the left of the guy I was interested in, was notable for his aggressively jutting jaw.
I got the iPhone out of my jacket pocket, gripping it in my right hand as if I was raising it to my ear. When the phone reached waist level, aimed past me in the general direction of the three guys, I pressed the shoot button of the camera function. It went off without any flashing lights or any sound beyond a subdued click.
I have minimal skills at photography. Generally, I steer clear of taking photos of loved ones, never mind strangers. I’d used the iPhone as a camera just once. My subject was Annie. She said the picture added ten years to her age. It made her look like she was wearing a bad wig. She told me to delete the photo. I did as I was told.
Putting the phone to my ear in the Heaven’s Philosophers lobby, I pretended I was listening to a message. There was no message, and I wasn’t listening to anything except the three guys behind me. If they stopped talking, it might mean they’d caught me snapping the picture. If they shouted, “Hey, asshole!” it would mean for sure they’d caught me.
I relaxed when they carried on with their loud chat as before.
I carried my mug with the nice brew to one of the benches along the lobby wall. I flicked the screen on the iPhone to the photo I’d just snapped. The picture was half okay. The not-okay half showed nothing except the left sleeve of my wheat jacket. The close-up of the jacket eliminated from the photograph the guy with the jutting jaw. In the other half, I had a profile of the older guy and a pretty clear full-face view of the guy I figured for Fox’s former client.
I pressed a bunch of buttons to send the photo and a short note to Fox winging their way to Fox’s office. While I was winding up my communications, someone beside me cleared his throat. I jerked my head up in automatic surprise.
“Pardon me, friend, I didn’t intend to sneak up on you.” It was the older guy of the trio, the one with the grey hair. He had his hand stuck out. “Willie Sizemore, investment advisor.”
I stood up, still a little shaky from the guy’s stealth arrival. “Crang’s my name.”
“Just thought I’d introduce