Body Blows (25 page)

“You still working the case?” I ask.

“Nope,” he says. “Murder investigation now. Have to let Homicide handle things. But, same guy three times?

No way it isn't connected.”

“Did you talk to Farrel Newton's mother?”

“The first guy tried. She ran him off. Told him to stop picking on her poor little Newt.”

“I'll have to pay her a visit,” I say.

“Good luck.”

Time to change my dressing. Gritch wanders in as I'm packing the cut.

“How's it doing?” he asks.

“Healing from the bottom up, just like the Doc said. Not that I spend a lot of time looking in there, but it isn't as deep as it used to be.”

“Everlast is safe for another week.”

“Or a month,” I say. “Newton's mom is leaving messages on Leo's machine. Wants to talk to him right away. Sounds like a person with issues.”

“Met anybody who doesn't have issues with Leo?”

“Not so far.”

“Wouldn't think a guy spent the last eight years in a tree-house could stir up that much crapola.”

The woman who answers the door was pretty at one time, say, twenty years ago, before sadness and mounting losses caught up with her. Her hair is an artificial shade of cherry red with pale roots visible, her rouge is vague as to where the cheekbones lie, her watery eyes are blue, unfriendly.

She leaves the chain on. “Yeah, what?” she asks.

“Mrs. Newton? Hello. My name's Joe Grundy. Leo Alexander passed on your phone messages and asked me to drop by, see if I could be of any help.” When did I get to be such an accomplished liar?

“He's still in the slammer? All the lawyers he's got? Christ, he must really have stepped in it this time.”

“He'll be back tomorrow. I'm sure he'll want to speak to you then. In the meantime …”

“Meantime nothing. What do you do? You write cheques? Here to negotiate?”

“I'm not exactly sure what I'd be negotiating.”

“Leo didn't tell you shit, did he? You even come from him?”

“Of course. Here's my card.” I pass my ID through the narrow space. “JG Security, Lord Douglas Hotel. That's me. I've worked for Mr. Alexander for eight years.”

She takes her time reading it. “Doing what?” she asks. “Cleaning up his messes?”

“Hotel security,” I say.

She hands it back, keeps the door on its chain. “So what are you doing here?”

“Leo wants me to find out who killed Raquel Mendez, someone he was very close to.”

There is a moment of quiet and the door closes. I hear the chain being cleared and the door reopens. “She was his girlfriend, right?”

“Yes,” I say.

She nods her head, accepting another inevitable cuff from life. “How old was she? There was a picture in the paper but I couldn't tell.”

“I don't know exactly, Mrs. Newton. In her thirties, I imagine, possibly forty, I suppose.”

Young enough to bear a child, old enough to consider it a miracle.

“That's about right for him. Thirty years difference, give or take.” She leaves the door open and walks away. I take it as an invitation to follow. “He doesn't much care for old broads,” she says. “'Course he never sticks around long enough to see them fall apart. He's Lo-ong Gone Leo before that ever happens.” She stops in the kitchen and looks around, trying to remember what she was doing before I showed up.

“The message said that you'd been trying to contact Theo Alexander. Can I ask what that's about?”

“I just want to make sure Far's final paycheques come through on time,” she says. “That fat bastard's so tight he squeaks.” She opens the refrigerator door and takes out a Pepsi. She doesn't offer one to me. “And I'm sure as hell not paying for the funeral. That's the limo company's responsibility. I'll sue them if I have to.”

“Raquel was killed the same night, maybe the same hour as your son,” I say. “Possibly by the same person. I thought we might be able to help each other find out who did this.”

“Who
did
this?!” She sits at the kitchen table holding the soda can in both hands as though wringing a neck. “I
know
who
did
this. Dimi asswipe
did
this. No goddamn mystery. Dimi, or his asshole brother, George, or that fat prick he works for,
both
fat pricks he works for. My moron son got mixed up in their shit. Got himself murdered. Dimi's the murderer. End of story.”

“Mr. Starr is who I'm trying to find.”

“When you do, kick him in the groin for me.”

“You don't have any idea where he is?”

“I would've told the cops. Happy to help. Pick him out of a lineup, witness for the prosecution, pull the switch if they'd let me fry his ass. You know this asshole?”

“I saw him once, briefly.”

“He's a Communist.”

“I didn't know that.”

“Oh, yeah. Big Commie. Him and his Commie brother. Far didn't know what they were talking about. Farrel wasn't too bright. Not exactly retarded, but slow. He kept coming home saying stuff like, did I think he was a slave. I told him, Far, you're lucky to have a job. If it didn't have sparkplugs he was lost. Easily lead around. Dimi tied him up so tight he didn't know what he was doing.”

“Do you know what they were doing that night?”

“Stealing another car.”

“Okay, I heard that maybe there was some of that going on, but I'm wondering what they were doing at the hotel later on. The cars had already been switched. If they were only stealing a car they could have taken it somewhere.”

“Sure, to Georgie's.”

“Dysart Motors? The used-car place.”

“He's got more than one place.”

“You told this to the police?”

“I told them everything I know, which is more than those Ultra pricks thought I knew.”

“Would you tell me?”

“After the insurance company paid up for that first car, over a hundred thousand, Dimi hears from his brother, the Commie car-dealer, that whoever stole it walked away with fifty thousand, in cash.”

“How would he know that?”

“Hey, they're all crooks. Some guy George knows brokered the deal. So Dimi says, hey, why don't we steal one of our own? Theo gets his money from the insurance company, he's happy, we put the blame on Farrel Dummy here, he won't get fired because Theo has to keep him on. So they do it again. They work it so Far does something stupid, the kind of thing he's likely to do, run out of gas, get lost, whatever, and he comes back to the office, by bus, and he tells Goodier, ‘Hey, guess what, somebody stole my limo.' Again. Only this time it looks a bit suspicious. Duh. Do ya think?” She has a drink. “The insurance company sends around an investigator, the police are nosing around, questioning poor Far who can't spill anything because Dimi and George didn't tell him the plan. He's the perfect idiot. ‘I don't know, one minute it was there, the next minute it was gone. Duh.' Meanwhile, the limo's sitting in Dimi's brother's junkyard somewhere down in Steveston. It's not going anywhere until things quieten down.” She has another sip. “When they finally manage to unload the thing they get shit.”

“They did sell the second one?”

“Not for what they wanted. They only got thirty thousand. They were supposed to split it three ways, but fatass Goodier said he wanted a piece to keep his mouth shut. Far only got two.”

“He told you?”

“He had money he shouldn't have had. Two thousand dollars. Left it in his work pants, it nearly went through the wash. Two thousand dollars in hundred dollar bills. I said where'd you get this? He said ‘It's my share.' Your share of what? So he told me the story. Or at least what he knew. They give Far two thousand and all he has to do is say it's his fault. He won't get fired. Theo's not allowed to fire him.”

“Why not?”

“Because Leo says so.”

“Leo?”

“You really don't know shit, do you?”

“Can you tell me why your son would have defaced the award Leo got last Tuesday night?”

“He did?”

“He drilled a hole through it, through Leo's eye.”

She laughs. “Oh, God bless him, the poor little guy.” The laugh turns into a sob. “He did that for me.”

“Why?”

“He hated Leo. Leo drowned his father.”

“Where would he get that idea?”

“From me, damn it! Doesn't matter any more, does it?” She pushes the empty Pepsi can away and holds her face in her hands. “After Yarnell drowned, Leo wouldn't see me any more. He blamed himself. He couldn't look at me.”

“Was he to blame?”

“It was his boat. He was the captain. It was his responsibility.” She wipes her eyes, shakes her head sadly. “But it wasn't his fault. They ran into a fogbank, right in the middle of a bunch of trawlers. Leo's boat got broadsided. Broke it in half. Fishing boats are made of steel. Those guys call sailboats ‘Tupperware.'” She sighs.

“Anyway, they never found Yarn. Big search, Leo was out there every day, but they never found his body.” She looks up at me, her eyes reddened, her losses mounting. “After that he wouldn't come near me. I hated him for that. He broke my heart.”

“Leo was giving you some support?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, he made arrangements, got Farrel his job when he couldn't get anything else, made sure he hung onto it, sent me a few bucks from time to time.”

“You think that will stop, now that your son is dead?”

“How should I know? That's what I want to talk to him about.”

chapter twenty-three

G
ritch is waiting in the car with the door open, puffing on an El Ropo.

“Enjoying your day off?” I ask.

“Reminds me why I can't stand the East End.”

“You
live
in the East End.”

“Tell me about it. I could be shifting furniture six blocks away.”

“Virginia Newton thinks Dimi killed Farrel. Or possibly his brother George did it. They're both Commies by the way, according to her. She expects Theo to pay for her son's funeral. And she wants to talk to Leo about money. He's been supporting her for a while.”

“Out of the goodness of his heart, I suppose.” Gritch sounds dubious.

“They had a thing, he and Mrs. Newton, I guess, some years back.”

“And then her husband drowned.” Gritch blows smoke out the open window. “I don't think I could stand that much life,” Gritch says. “Dead wives, sunk boats, long-lost kids cropping up, people shooting at me, no wonder he went into hiding. He needed a vacation.”

“Don't we all?”

We're heading for Chinatown. I'm hungry again. I have a craving for some braised beef the way they make it at the Kom Jug. Gritch is all for the plan.

“The Gold-dust Twins'll be so pooped from shifting furniture they'll send out for pizza,” he says.

“You don't like pizza?”

“Not with shrimp and pineapple,” he says. He has a last puff and consigns the cigar butt to the road. “It goes against nature.”

“There's probably a bylaw against that,” I say.

“Pineapple on pizza?”

“Cigar butts on the street.”

Gritch is unrepentant. “You know, pal,” he starts, “there can't be a helluva lot of people knew Leo wasn't going to be home Tuesday night. That Dimi character had to have a floor plan or something, some way of getting in without setting off alarms. Somebody had to send him on the mission. That's got to narrow the list.”

“The connection to Theo looms larger.”

Braised beef with Szechuan chili oil, Chinese broccoli with black bean sauce, a bottomless pot of tea. I've never been particularly adept with chopsticks but I seem to be shovelling substantial heaps into my mouth without too much wastage. I must be on the mend.

Gritch has opted for lemon chicken and fried rice; it's as adventuresome as he's likely to get. He's using a fork. “Say he
was
acting for Theo. Theo told him how he could get in, and what he wanted. Dimi gets in but he isn't expecting Raquel to be there.”

“She changed her clothes,” I say. “She knew we wouldn't be back until after midnight, probably took her time — had a shower, fixed her hair, tried on at least one other dress. Maybe she wasn't in the penthouse when he got there.”

“And she surprised him.”

“Won't know until we find him.”

“You'll never find him.”

“Weed thinks he's probably dead already.”

“Overly elaborate for a carjacking, don't you think?” He sounds skeptical.

“We're
assuming
they were stealing that limo.” I put down my chopsticks and refill the teacups.

“Natural assumption,” Gritch says. “Done it before, same MO, get Newton behind the wheel and a limo goes missing.”

I shake my head at the preposterousness of the situation. “They drive to the hotel, Dimi does his cat-burglar bit, fights with Raquel, sees his partner go flying, bleeds his way down the stairs …”

“And then leaves the limo behind? How does that make sense?”

My fortune cookie says, “You will find your heart's desire”. The next thing on my list isn't exactly my heart's desire, but it must be attended to. “They should have landed by now,” I say.

“Who? Theo?”

“And Marcia. Need to talk to them.”

“We going to West Van?”

“I thought we could try False Creek first,” I say. “Maybe he won't go straight home.”

“Nice neighbourhood,” says Gritch. “Waterfront, boats, what d'ya figure a townhouse is worth down here?”

“Haven't a clue,” I say.

“That'll be her place over there,” he says. “The one with the Japanese maple.”

“See that car?” I say. “Other side of the street? Canary yellow.”