Annie said, “Personally, me, if I were standing beside the quicksand with a board in my hands, I’d use it to bop you over the head.”
“Strong language,” I said.
“So far,” Annie said, “you’ve been caught shadowing a truck the size of a house, come close to getting beat up by a man who apparently knows how to do it, and you’ve intentionally alienated the two top executives in the company you’re supposed to be checking out.”
“You haven’t cottoned on to my modus operandi,” I said. “I’m needling the bad guys into submission.”
Annie asked if we could eat. I let her choose the restaurant. That was my idea of living dangerously. Once, Annie led us to a vegetarian place run by devotees of an Indian mystic. I was starved before we made it back to the parking lot.
“Great,” Annie said in La Serre. “We’re going to Brasil.”
“Long way for dinner.”
“This Brasil,” Annie said, “isn’t spelled with a zed. It’s that Portuguese restaurant in Kensington Market that we went to a few months ago.”
I put my American Express card on the table and Miriam was instantly at my side. “The bill has been taken care of, sir,” she said. Her smile was beatific. Somebody had given her the large tip. My guess was Ms. Brackley.
It pays to make friends in high places.
15
I WOKE UP Thursday morning with a headache and the beginnings of a plan. The sun shone through a space in the curtains and I lay watching motes dance in its beams. A cloud passed over and blocked the sun. I was gingerly getting out of bed. A cup of coffee eased back the headache. The plan remained in the starting gate.
I sliced a banana over a bowl of Harvest Crunch and ate it while I read the Globe and Mail. Jay Scott had a long piece on the films of Ron Howard. Scott is a witty and perceptive movie writer, and that afternoon he and Annie were getting together over a Nagra tape recorder. Annie was preparing a twenty-minute item for a CBC radio arts program on whither film in the late 1980s. She had an interview laid on with Vincent Canby of the New York Times. She said she was nervous about interviewing Canby. Not about interviewing Scott. Annie said Jay’s a pussycat.
Harry Hein was part of my nascent plan. I dialled his number from the phone in the kitchen. The line was busy. Harry Hein is a chartered accountant who practises by himself. Two years earlier, he was a chartered accountant who almost didn’t practise by himself or in anybody else’s company. A slick con man named Tony Holmes had unfolded a cockeyed scheme for Harry. Surefire moneymaker, Holmes told Harry. Couldn’t miss. Holmes said he had a shot at two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of municipal bonds that the Mafia in Buffalo had accepted in return for gambling debts and wanted to unload at forty cents on the dollar. According to the Holmes tale, he also had Arab purchasers who’d take the bonds off his hands at ninety cents on the same dollar. All he needed was a stake to make the buy from the mob in Buffalo. The suckers formed a line at Tony Holmes’ door. Harry Hein was one of them. He socked in twenty grand. Trouble was it was a client’s money. Harry knew he’d got himself shafted when Tony Holmes told him and the other investors that, oops, sorry, the bonds he said he scooped up from the Mafia were lost when the Learjet carrying the bonds to the Arab purchasers in Cairo ran out of fuel and ditched in the Mediterranean. Holmes had a smooth way with words and all the suckers but one swallowed his explanation and took their losses. Harry was the exception. He brought the story to me and I told Holmes that I’d hit him with a civil suit and drop a word in the ear of a contact on the Metro Police fraud squad unless he chose to ante up Harry’s client’s twenty grand. It was ninety-nine per cent bluff, but Holmes came through in twelve hours. I accepted the money, covered Harry’s tracks, and phoned my fraud squad connection. Holmes got four years. Harry said if the Institute of Chartered Accountants had found out what he’d done, they would have hung him out to dry.
The second time I called, Harry’s line was free. He said he’d be in to me all morning. I left the house and walked up Beverley Street and cut through the university grounds. Harry Hein’s office is on the second floor over a sleek Italian furniture store on Bay Street north of Bloor. It was a sunny, benign day made for an aimless walk. I crossed the front campus toward University College. The University of Toronto doesn’t have much to boast about in the architecture line, but University College fits near the top of the short list. It goes back a century or so, with time out for one historic fire, and it’s a handsome hybrid of a bunch of European styles. Canadian architects used to go in for hybrid. A dash of Romanesque, a pinch of Byzantine, some Tudor, a sprinkling of Italian palazzo. Stir, and fill with people. I walked under the Hart House tower, up Philosopher’s Walk, and east along Bloor past the upscale shops.
Harry Hein’s office occupies three rooms. He has a secretary, an accounting student, some leather furniture he got on sale downstairs, and a computer. The computer terminal stands beside Harry’s desk.
“Long time no see, Crang,” Harry said.
“Couple of years,” I said.
“You think I don’t remember.”
Harry shook his head and sucked in air with a faint whistling noise. The head was balding, and Harry’s face was a mix of jowls and bags and creases. He was in his shirt sleeves and had his tie loosened around the collar. He wore crimson suspenders. His desk was a clutter of printouts from the computer. Harry was in his early fifties and he’d never made much money. We sat in chairs in his office.
He said, “What can I do you for?”
“I want you to listen to a story, Harry,” I said. “It may be an accounting story.”
“Shoot.”
I told Harry about my investigations of the Ace Disposal operations. He listened very attentively. Practice was making me efficient at doing my Ace routine, and I had the story down to about ten minutes, start to finish.
“One guess,” I said, winding to the end, “is that Ace is leaning on the weigh-masters. Shaking them down somehow.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Harry said. It was his first interruption since I began my recitation. His voice had authority.
“Tell me why,” I said.
“Leaning on someone,” Harry said, “means that the someone is paying out to people who are doing the leaning.”
“That’s the usual definition.”
“But from what you’ve told me about the way the dumps run,” Harry said, “the weigh-masters would have no reason to pay out to a company like Ace.”
“Other way around maybe,” I said. “You mean Ace has no reason to make the weigh-masters pay.”
“Right,” Harry said. He snaked his thumbs under the crimson suspenders. “ It would be much more probable if the two sides were working in concert, Ace and the weigh-masters.”
“Harry,” I said, “I knew there was a reason for consulting you.”
“The weigh-masters could be doing a favour for Ace,” Harry went on. “Supposing they’re giving Ace a break on the weight of the truckloads.”
I said, “That’d account for the extra time it takes to weigh the Ace trucks going into the dumps. The weigh-masters need the time to rig the weights.”
“If they weigh the trucks in light,” Harry said, “then Ace doesn’t have to pay as much to Metro for dropping their loads in the dumps. Lighter the loads, the smaller the fees.”
“And in return for that piece of shiftiness,” I said, “Sol Nash drops around and makes a little payoff to the cheating weigh-masters.”
Harry had a question. “Didn’t you say,” he asked, “it also takes longer to weigh the Ace trucks out