Crang Mysteries 4-Book Bundle. Jack Batten

Turkin said. “You telling the probation officer or what?”

      I said, “The proposition I’ve got for you, I don’t think your probation officer wants to hear about.”

      “Yeah? For me? What kind of proposition?”

      “I hire you to open a few doors that the owner prefers to keep shut.”

      “You want me to get inside a place and steal stuff?” James asked. His voice lost some of its flatness. It sounded as close as James Turkin could approach to incredulity.

      “Just get inside,” I said. “No stealing.”

      James contemplated his Pepsi.

      “You trying to set me up?” he said.

      “Paying job, James,” I said. “One hundred dollars for a night’s employment. I’ll lead you to the building, you apply your arts to guide another gentleman and me past its locks and alarms.”

      “It’s against the law.”

      “Exactly why I thought of you.”

      James wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and rubbed the hand against the front of his Home Hardware shirt. It left a small, damp smear.

      “One hundred dollars?” he said.

      “Cash money,” I said. I’d finished half of the beer. It tasted like Lifebuoy.

      “When?” James asked.

      “It has to be after midnight,” I said, “and it has to be soon, probably tomorrow night.”

      “I’d want to look at the place first, whatever it is, an office building you’re talking about?”

      “Small office in the suburbs,” I said. “Got a fence around it, gate with a padlock I think. Don’t know about the door into the building. I haven’t been that close.”

      “I need to see everything,” James said. He put the glass of Pepsi on an end table beside the chair with the floral pattern and shoved himself forward to the edge of the chair. “Wire fence, padlock, all that, I got to see for myself.”

      “Case the joint.”

      “Huh?” James obviously hadn’t seen enough Edward G. Robinson movies.

      “I’ll drive you out after dark tonight,” I said. “What’s good? Ten o’clock?”

      James and I arranged to meet up the street at the corner of Gerrard and Sackville. I told him I’d be in a white Volks convertible.

      “What’s this deal about?” James asked.

      “It’s about one hundred dollars,” I said. “That’s all you need to know.”

      Emily Gruber came into the living room from the kitchen. She had put on a frilly blue apron over her white dress and was carrying an unopened bottle of beer and a bottle opener. The beer was Miller Lite. Could have fooled me. I declined the second beer, and after a friendly handshake, she instructed James to see me to the door.

      “How did your sister acquire the good manners?” I asked James when we were on the porch.

      He said, “Emily’s weird, all right.”

      I drove home and ate two ham sandwiches with a shot of vodka. Was I corrupting a teenager’s morals? Hardly. James Turkin’s morals had found their home in a nether region long before I appeared on his scene. If he was hell-bent on a life of crime, better he should perform in a worthy cause. Getting Harry Hein and me into Ace Disposal’s offices qualified as a worthy cause in my book. Nothing I or a probation officer could say would dissuade James from exploring the career option of breaking and entering. It would take a couple of stretches in prison to cure him of his predilections, and in the meantime, as long as he was operating under my thoughtful supervision, he had a better chance of avoiding arrest. I poured another shot of vodka and admired my gift for rationalizing awkward moral dilemmas.

      Me and Immanuel Kant.

      17

      I LEFT EARLY enough to drop in on Annie for an unannounced visit before my date with James. Annie’s apartment was five blocks due north of the Gruber homestead. The five blocks defined the distance from chic Cabbagetown to glum Regent Park. Something like the difference between the two Germanys. Without the Wall.

      “Guess who’s come to dinner?” Annie said.

      She was whispering in the hallway outside her apartment door. I’d knocked first. Always the gent.

      I said, “Not Richard Gere.”

      “If it was him,” Annie said, “it’d be for naked lunch.”

      From where I was standing, I couldn’t see into the apartment. Blue air drifted out. Whoever was inside was a heavy smoker.

      “The shade of Ed Murrow?” I said.

      “Alice Brackley,” Annie whispered. “She phoned this afternoon. I asked her over.”

      Alice was sitting behind a bottle of Cutty Sark at the table in the front window. Annie must have made a rush trip to the liquor store on Parliament Street. Scotch wasn’t a staple in her booze cabinet. Empty plates had been shoved to the end of the table. They’d eaten chicken breasts with some kind of tomato sauce. My stomach lurched in envy. Alice was using one of Annie’s cobalt-blue soup bowls for an ashtray.

      “Am I trespassing on your time with Annie, Mr. Crang?” Alice asked me. She was wearing her gold and a smile that anybody would call winning.

      “It’s me who’s making the surprise visit, Ms. Brackley,” I said. “Nice to see you.”

      “Nice?”

      “Honest.”

      Alice looked at ease. Maybe the Scotch. Maybe the absence of Charles Grimaldi.

      Annie said to me, “We’ve been talking more movies.”

      Annie looked at ease too. With her, I knew it had nothing to do with Grimaldi or Scotch. She was drinking red wine sparingly.

      “And talking about you, Mr. Crang,” Alice Brackley said.

      “Alice was frank,” Annie said, again to me. “She wanted to know if she could trust you.”

      “With what?” I asked.

      I meant the question for Alice. She didn’t answer directly. She said, “The impression you made at La Serre, Mr. Crang, was mixed.”

      “Smiling Charlie wouldn’t say so,” I said.

      “I wasn’t speaking for Charles,” Alice said.

      “He thought you were a smarty-pants,” Annie said. “I didn’t blame him.”

      Annie’s tone was light, but she was letting me know there was a point to be made in the room.

      “Whose side you on?” I said to her.

      My tone matched Annie’s for lightness, but I was letting her know I wanted someone in the room to get on with the point.

      “I hope I’m not presuming too much,” Annie said, turning from me to Alice and back to me, “but I think Alice might want to consult you, Crang.”

      “Is that what the thing about trust is all about?” I said.

      Annie had candles on the table. In their glow, Alice’s face looked soft and rosy. She reached into a bowl of ice, dropped three cubes in her glass, and poured Cutty Sark on top. Soft and rosy and tiddly. On her at that moment it wasn’t a bad combination.

      “Do you know anything about the disposal business, Mr. Crang?” Alice asked.

      “I’m picking up on it fast.”

      “In disposal,” Alice said, “there’s no quarter