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“A friend of a friend of a friend.”

  Leon passed her the phone. “Sounds like it might be your underworld gentleman.”

  Carrie cleared her throat. “Yes, I’m Carrington Barr.”

  “Yeah, can we get together? It’s about Cristal.”

  “What about him?”

  “Not something I enjoy to talk on the phone about. Bar named Digger’s Dell on Eastern Avenue. Nine o’clock.”

  “Just one minute — you can come up to the office —”

  “Tonight. I’d appreciate it.”

  And click, that was it. Carrie was annoyed at the abruptness of this command. Obviously Big Leonard had done his job. She would meet one of Sweet’s henchmen tonight. On his turf, but at least it was a public bar.

  “Where?” said Leon, looking very worried.

  “Oh, a crowded tavern, perfectly safe.”

  “Someone should go with you,” Leon said.

  “I don’t want the contact spooked. This is my case. I’ll do it.”

  Leon shook his head. “Carrie, I’m not going to say this is not a woman’s task because I would sound patronizing and sexist, but I suspect that bar is in some seamy neighbourhood with some kind of illegal back-room operation —”

  Carrie cut him off. “Leon, you are being patronizing.” Now she felt bad. “I’m sorry. Thank you for caring. I know you’re just trying to be a friend, Leon, and you are. A good friend.”

  Leon looked so hangdog that she relented. “Okay, Leon, you drive me down there.”

  ***

  Carrie wasn’t sure whom Billy Sweet would be sending to this Digger’s Dell place tonight, a top lieutenant perhaps, maybe even Speeder Cacciati. She was a lot less bold than she pretended to be about this underground meet, but she’d braved Montreal and Big Leonard, and that wasn’t so bad.

  Still, Leon’s company for the trip down there was welcomed — Eastern Avenue wasn’t the most sophisticated part of town. Railway yards and warehouses mostly, so Digger’s was probably a hard-hat bar. Leon’s car — an old Chev rattletrap he used when he wasn’t bicycling — blended well into the neighbourhood. Carrie was dressed down for the occasion, jeans and a light denim jacket, just a working gal meeting a guy on a date.

  Digger’s Dell was at a corner, a boxy-looking bar that didn’t seem too well lit. Carrie told Leon to wait outside with the engine running — just in case.

  “You’re okay about this?” Leon said.

  “We keep hoods out of jail. They like us.” She hoped.

  Alighting from the car, Carrie could hear the deep thrum of bass, heavy rock music from within the bar, and its volume increased as she opened the door. She should have expected this: strutting on a platform near the back was a so-called exotic dancer, and she was surrounded by a crowd of seated, drinking men.

  Several turned to stare at her as she entered, salacious looks that gave her the willies. Were she and the stripper the only women in here? There, talking to the bartender, was one other, but she obviously worked here, a dancer or a prostitute. Then Carrie recognized her: Trixi Trimble had been a brunette when she last saw her, now she was blonde, and she wasn’t wearing a cowboy hat. Barely covered, in fact, in something obscenely short and frilly.

  “That was some of the weirdest dancin’ I ever seen,” the bartender was saying to Trixi as Carrie walked up behind her.

  “I was grooving.” Trixi spun that last word out, groo-ving.

  “Yeah, you’re groovin’, all right. You better lay off that stuff.” He lowered his voice. “I think we got heat.” He was looking at Carrie — he must have thought she was a cop.

  When Trixi turned, Carrie could see her pinned eyes, and she looked down at her arms and saw a spot of blood inside the elbow. Trixi erupted in a crazy, stoned smile and threw her arms around Carrie.

  “Hey, Carrie, my main gal!”

  Carrie thought: everybody is staring, trying to figure this out, thinking low thoughts, two hustlers embracing. The bartender retreated, satisfied she wasn’t the heat.

  “What’re you doing in this awful joint?” Trixi said.

  “I’m working.”

  “Not in my terr’tory.” She giggled. “I just did my gig up there. Buncha staring morons. But it pays okay, and I’m broke, gotta do this.” She was slurring her words.

  “You’re using again, Trixi.”

  “Can’t help it. S’all over the street, twenty bucks a cap, can’t turn it down at that rate.”

  “Trixi, you can’t afford not to turn it down.”

  “Hey, Carrie, what’re you doin’ here?”

  “Meeting someone. Never mind. Heroin — it’s selling that cheap? That’s unheard-of.”

  “Whole ship must’ve come in.”

  “Well, you look like you met it. You’d better get a taxi home, you’re a mess. How could you dance in your condition?”

  “Easy, ’cause you’re not aware of the morons.” She got off her stool. “But I’m goin’, hon, I’m goin’ home. I don’t want to inn’erupt your scene here.”

  “Get some sleep. You come to see me tomorrow, okay? I want a serious talk with you.”

  “Yeah, I know, I gotta stop beltin’. Hey, you know that big old cute guy I kind of met in your office?”

  “Mr. Moodie.”

  “He followed me all the way home that day. Weird. Is he okay?”

  Carrie didn’t like the sound of that at all. But no, Mr. Moodie was probably just lonely.

  “I’ll look at that secretary course. Love ya, doll.”

  Carrie watched her walk toward the door, sort of float to it, actually. She took Trixi’s stool, checked her watch, and wondered where the messenger from Billy Sweet was, but she didn’t look around, didn’t try to catch anyone’s eye — that could provoke unwanted interest. Billy’s man would find her.

  But unwanted interest came, in the form of the local charmer, Sly Stallone in a muscle shirt, who swung onto the stool next to her and asked her what she was having.

  “That’s very kind of you. A glass of water.”

  He frowned at this. “You one of the dancers?”

  “I’m afraid not. I’m waiting for a friend.”

  “Maybe you’ve found one. Come on, how about a drink?”

  “Do you know what I would like?”

  “What?”

  “Some solitude.”

  The charmer started to lean toward her, perhaps thinking she was playing hard-to-get, but a thin brown arm came between his nose and her shoulder, and its fingers grasped the edge of the counter.

  Carrie swivelled around: a skinny young man, chinless and unshaven, an attempt at a Vandyke beard.

  “Hey, asshole, I’m having a conversation,” the charmer said.

  The skinny man glanced down at him, apparently without much interest, then called out to the bartender: “Cholly, open me a Blue.”

  “I’ll open your brain, smart-ass, you don’t butt out.”

  Again, the skinny man looked down at him, this time with an annoyed expression. Carrie was guessing it was time to slide out of here, and she was about to do so when her way was blocked by yet another man, this one a barrel, short and powerful-looking, a long, diagonal scar running from a corner of his upper lip and across the bridge of his nose.

  His voice was a bass rasp. “My friend wants to have your seat,” he told the charmer. “I want you should tender it to him.”

  Carrie’s seat-mate stared for a few moments at the long scar on the man’s face, then decided to bail out.

  “I take it you is the lady lawyer,” said the barrel.

  Carrie stuck out her hand. “Carrington Barr.”

  “I am pleased to make your confidence.” His grip was not very firm; he seemed uncomfortable, his eyes cast down.

  “And what is your . . . handle?”

  “H
ank Humphries is the name. And this here is Deeley.”

  The skinny guy smiled nervously. Carrie guessed their previous experience with women — especially professional women — had been rudimentary. What now?

  The bartender brought Deeley’s beer. He drank half of it in one long guzzle, and wiped his lips.

  “We would like you to do the pleasure of joining with us to meet a friend,” said Humphries.

  “What friend?”

  “He prefers to remain unknown.”

  “Where?”

  “In the privacy of our moving vehicle.”

  “I’ll meet him in public.”

  “He’s got t’ree hunnert thousand other friends with him, lady. They want to meet you. Your honour and safety is guaranteed.”

  Carrie didn’t like this at all — she was being treated by Billy Sweet like some chore girl or gopher. She wanted to insist that any transaction be done on her terms, at a place of her choosing. On the other hand, this didn’t seem out of some old gangster movie where the bad guy tells the victim he’s taking him for a ride.

  And she wanted to meet those three hundred thousand friends. She looked over at the dancer, who was twirling a bikini top. And then she saw, seated at ringside, Staff-Sergeant Kronos, the man called Horse, gatekeeper to the cells at Provincial Court. He wore a big, goofy grin as he watched the dancer bobble her breasts. A kind of dirty-minded fellow — she hadn’t known that of Horse. But she remembered she’d seen him reading a copy of Hustler.

  “You comin’, lady?”

  She looked at herself in the bar mirror, between displays for Labatt’s and Molson’s. Those startled, innocent eyes. Maybe she was in the mood to take chances, maybe marital crisis had deranged her.

  Her father would have done it.

  “Okay, let’s go,” she said.

  Deeley finished his beer.

  A few minutes later Carrie found herself in the back seat of a yacht, an old gas-guzzling Chrysler, Deeley at the wheel, Humphries up beside him. Deeley kept looking at his rearview mirror as he weaved — a little haphazardly — in and out of the traffic on Eastern Avenue, then Front Street.

  They drove in silence. Carrie wanted to engage them, but they seemed shy.

  Humphries leaned around and offered her a cigarette, which she unthinkingly took. Or instinctively. She held it between her fingers, caressing it, loving it, wanting it. A remembrance of good manners must have rung a distant bell in Humphries’ mind, and he went through his pockets, finding some wooden matches. Fumbling, he dropped a couple of them, looking about despairingly for a place to strike one of them, finally ripping it across the brace between the windows. But he was too late — Deeley was passing her the dashboard lighter.

  She declined it. “I just remembered, I don’t smoke. But thank you, anyway, you’re both gentlemen.” Carrie preferred they see themselves that way, and perhaps they did. She put the cigarette in her handbag.

  Deeley stopped the car on the quay near Harbourfront. A man appeared from the shadows and got in beside Carrie. Speeder Cacciati — she remembered him from the criminal courts. He was wearing dark glasses and carrying a cheap zip-around briefcase and was chewing gum like crazy, hyperactive. He ignored her for the moment and spoke to Deeley, who was back in traffic again, still glancing at the rearview mirror.

  “Let me out toward Jarvis and Dundas, gotta run a chore.”

  Carrie watched him pick a sore on his elbow. The man smelled of yesterday’s sweat, and she shifted farther to her side of the seat.

  “You’re driving like a old lady, Deeley, stay in your lane.”

  “A back-seat driver, to boot.”

  “Why do you let this heat-bag drive, Humph? He’s gonna get us pulled over.”

  Deeley slowed down, and Cacciati finally turned and looked at Carrie, lowering the dark glasses. His gaze moved down her body, stopped at her crotch, and came back up. He smiled. She was revolted.

  “You don’t know who I am, Miss Barr,” he said.

  She didn’t feel like enlightening him. “Okay, I don’t know who you are. This is a bit silly, isn’t it? You could have met me at my office. I very much resent being on orders, meeting your flunkies in that abysmal tavern.”

  “Hey, I’m doin’ you a service. I just happen to know some people that know André, and these people took up a collection.”

  He unzipped one side of the briefcase. Carrie caught a glimpse: wads of rubber-banded bills. He closed it again, and passed it to her.

  “I have to make out a receipt to someone for this.”

  “Give it to André. And maybe when he gets out, he should talk things over with Big Leonard, who is like . . . his counsellor.”

  “Mr. Cristal has a counsellor.”

  “Yeah, and a real good one — I heard about you. But André, he’ll still wanna see Big Leonard. When Leonard talks to him, André should listen.” He shouted to Deeley: “Stay in the same fucking lane, okay? The guy thinks he’s an Indy race-car driver. I wanna ask about a guy named Normie the Nose, Miss Barr, he been in to see you? You gotta worry what a guy like that could say in court.”

  “I don’t know what he’s going to say.”

  “Well, I guess your job is to make sure he says the right things.”

  “I don’t need advice about my job. I’ll do whatever is in the best interest of my client. I also don’t like all these games, Mr. Cacciati.”

  He stopped scratching and his concave face turned sour. “You know me?”

  “About as well as I want to. You can tell Billy Sweet that I’m not a bag woman or a bonded carrier.” Something, maybe the encounter with Trixi, was setting Carrie off, and she was no longer able to hold her tongue. “I have a good idea how this money was raised so quickly. Heroin is everywhere right now, and it’s cheap, isn’t it?”

  “Where you gettin’ your information? Your client been talking to you maybe too much? Frankly, I worry about that Frenchman. I worry he don’t seem to keep too many secrets. Billy, he especially don’t like talkers, he likes the strong, silent type. Goddamn — Deeley, take a driving lesson!”

  “I’m doing an evasive tactic, that’s the t’ird time I seen that car. I think I got someone on my tail.”

  “I’m outa here,” said Cacciati. “Pull over by that cab stand.”

  He got out, and strode to the first taxi in the rank. Carrie took the opportunity to make her getaway there, too, out the other side of the car with her briefcase of money.

  “Hey,” said Humphries, “we wish to do the compliment of taking you home.”

  “Thanks, anyway.”

  “There’s that same car again,” said Deeley.

  Leon’s old Chev pulled up beside them, and Carrie quickly got in.

  ***

  The money locked in the office safe, Carrie invited Leon to her house to relieve the evening’s tension with a wind-down drink. When she clicked on the lights in the living room, she saw that a whole rack of tapes and records was gone from beside the stereo, and her first thought was that thieves had daringly entered during the day. Then she checked the music library more closely — only Ted’s rock and jazz were missing.

  “Wait a sec,” she told Leon, and went upstairs and found Ted’s closets and drawers cleaned out. He’d made a quick raid.

  He was worse than a thief. Did he try to clear this with her? No. Was there a note? Nothing.

  She went downstairs, and forced Leon to listen to her excoriations of Ted over a couple of snifters of the five-star Rémy he’d foolishly left behind.

  Leon just smiled. “You wanted to keep his underwear and socks?”

  “It’s the principle,” Carrie said stubbornly. But she soon relaxed again — after all, it had been the best day she’d endured of late: new offices, three hundred thousand new friends.

  “Carrie, do you really think Cristal wasn’t
involved in these murders?”

  “I . . . I’d like to think he wasn’t. Maybe he was framed.” That was a growing possibility, his arrest seemed too convenient.

  “I think you often blind yourself, Carrie. You want people to be innocent.”

  “Why shouldn’t I?” Carrie didn’t try to explain how she hungered for innocence, how she was emotionally trapped within the walls of this concept. But anything she’d say would sound banal and, worse, somehow defensive of her father, of her belief in him, his innocence.

  She felt the old pain return. What a kangaroo court he’d faced, what a corrupt vendetta that tax-fraud case was, that alleged tax fraud. Charlie was innocent. Innocent. Charlie was framed . . .

  Then the penitentiary term. And after his release . . . the family Pontiac sedan in the garage, locked, windows closed, engine running, carbon monoxide. His sad, limp body.

  After Leon left, Carrie went to bed but was unable to sleep. She was startled by the sound of garbage cans clanking in the back yard. Racoons, for sure, she told herself. Other sounds came. A soft, distant skritchy sound, as if from fingernails on a window pane. Don’t be ridiculous. It’s the night breeze hissing through the trees.

  Spectres haunted her sleep again that night. Again the Midnight Strangler in his many guises roamed the dark paths and alleys of her subconscious. A masked ball of monstrous men, leering, demanding that she dance, and she is the only woman here, naked, ashamed. Who is this one now advancing? Inspector Harold Mitchell, hatless, his bald phallic head. A bigger man shoulders him aside, a man in the mask of a horse but wearing a sergeant’s uniform: Horse Kronos, jailer to the halls of justice, and the ballroom becomes a courtroom, and she is pointing to Jock Strachan in his little bow tie. “That’s the man, that’s the man.” But they don’t believe her, and they take her away.

  14

  Harold Mitchell had assembled his team — the three male officers who made up Operation Sweet — in the drug-squad communications room, where under dimmed lights they viewed the latest videos. Mitchell had hand-picked these men, surveillance experts, masters of disguise.

  The screen first showed a wobbly picture of a stripper peeling her clothes to loud rock music.