Blood Count. Jack Batten

imagine I have anything else to lose at my age that I care about?”

      “Well, sure. Your career, friends, lots of things, little things, the Bobby Short tapes you listen to on Sunday mornings.”

      Alex lifted his bundle of magazines off the café table. He didn’t say anything, but his body language announced that the discussion had ended.

      At the counter, I bought an almond cookie and fed part of it to Genet out on the street.

      “That’s for your remarkable display of patience, sport,” I said.

      “Crang,” Alex said, smiling a little, trying it out, “I think you like the beastie.”

      “He’s no Wonder Dog, Rin Tin Tin, or One Hundred and One Dalmatians, that calibre, but Genet’s got his fine points.”

      “Perhaps you’d care to keep him company while I’m gone.”

      “What’s the alternative?”

      “He’s booked into a doggy haven out near the airport, which isn’t his favourite resort judging by past performances. But I can cancel the reservation.”

      “Why not?” I said. “Feed him and trot him through the park a couple times? That’s it?”

      “An outing in the morning and another after his din-dins.”

      We started up Beverley Street.

      “One question,” I said to Alex. “One question about your intentions and state of mind and everything, just the one and I’ll lay off.”

      “I doubt you will. Or Annie, for that matter. But go ahead, ask away.”

      “How can you be so sure you haven’t got AIDS yourself? The impression I got last night, you haven’t asked a doctor to run tests. So how do you know?”

      Alex pulled to a halt on the sidewalk. I stopped, too. Genet, trotting out front, stayed on the move. The leash jerked me forward. I did a Stan Laurel stumble, righted myself, and reined in Genet.

      “Because,” Alex said, mostly in words of one syllable each, “Ian and I had no sex for the last eighteen months or more.”

      “Uh. I have to say that to an outsider like me, the two of you seemed as chummy as ever.”

      “Of course we were.” Alex sounded cross. “We were absolutely committed to one another. It’s simply … well, I am sixty-four and I suppose, age and one thing or another, I got the sexual blahs. Didn’t care about it. Didn’t think about it. And so, consequently, Ian and I never got around to having it.”

      “Uh-huh, sure, but how did that sit with Ian?”

      “He understood.” Alex gave a look that dared me to question his answer.

      “Right.”

      “Oh, Ian made little jokes sometimes about madam and her bedtime migraines. But as you observed, we stayed as close as we’d always been.”

      “Uh-huh.”

      “Closer.”

      “Sure.”

      “Ian understood,” Alex said. “We shared the same bed, as usual. We just didn’t romp in it.”

      “Okay, I got it.”

      We resumed the walk up Beverley. Neither of us spoke another word until we reached the sidewalk in front of the house.

      “Ian understood,” Alex said. He was facing me. “That’s what I always assumed. In fact, it was beyond assumption. Sex went out of my head. I never dwelt on it, and I assumed — this is rather in retrospect, looking back now — Ian understood.”

      I nodded my head.

      “But —” Alex’s voice might have been close to breaking. “— But one time, I realize, he mustn’t have understood and it cost him his life.”

      We went into the house.

      Chapter Four

      Genet was my excuse for stepping into Alex’s quarters. I was supposed to feed the mutt. I had no excuse for what else I intended to do. I intended to conduct a search of the premises.

      There was a tin half full of dog food in the refrigerator. I peeled off the Saran wrap covering the top and scooped the meat into Genet’s bowl.

      “Yuck, this stuff smells terrible,” I said to the dog.

      Genet sniffed the bowl and turned his head up to me.

      “You think it stinks, too?”

      I looked at my watch.

      “Or maybe it’s the hour? Too early for dinner?”

      It was four thirty, Saturday afternoon.

      “See, Genet, I’m a tad keen to get on with the search.…”

      What was I doing? Explaining to a dog!

      Genet blinked his rheumy eyes and focused on the bowl’s contents.

      “Think of it as high tea,” I said to the top of his head.

      On the refrigerator door, a pair of silver magnets pinned a New Yorker cartoon done by the guy who draws in dots. It showed a doctor examining a patient’s arm and saying, “Well, Bob, it looks like a paper cut, but just to make sure, let’s do lots of tests.” Two more silver magnets held up a list of things to do: “Cancel Globe till May 19”; “Join Winston Churchill Tennis Club”; and “Book window washer.” The list was in Alex’s handwriting. None of the items said: “Advise Crang where to find Ian’s killer.”

      I walked down the hall to the living room at the front of the house. Behind me, Genet slurped his protein. I sat at the elegant little Biedermeier desk and looked at the small oil painting over it, an Albert Franck of a downtown Toronto backyard. It didn’t tell me anything except that it was a clear, evocative, tough-minded piece of art. Genet padded into the room and fixed a gaze on me.

      “Don’t even mention it.” My voice was on the loud side. “I shouldn’t be doing this, but it’s for a good cause, okay?”

      Genet whimpered.

      Alex kept orderly desk drawers. Receipts clipped together — Bell Canada, Imperial Oil, Visa, the University Club. There was a file marked “Income Tax” and another labelled “Ian’s Estate.” A bundle of fat documents with many official seals had to do with the ownership of the Key West cottage. I fingered through every scrap of paper and found nothing that revealed where Alex might have gone digging for the guy who gave Ian the disease.

      There was a black box beside the phone. It was a memory machine — an electronic gizmo that automatically recorded the number of anyone who dialed Alex’s place. I fiddled around until I located the button that lit up the machine’s screen. It showed three numbers.

      I dialed the first.

      “You have reached the Ontario Ministry of Education,” a recorded female voice said. “The offices are closed today, but if you call Monday after eight thirty in morning, we will be happy to assist you.”

      It was Alex’s business number. He’d been provincial deputy minister of education for as long as he and Ian had lived in the house.

      I dialed the second number on the memory screen.

      No answer. I let the phone ring a dozen times. Definitely no answer.

      I dialed the third number.

      “Purple Zinnia,” a pleasant male voice said. “Good afternoon.”

      “Have I got a flower shop?”

      “No, we’re still a restaurant.”

      “This isn’t the first time you’ve heard the flower shop line?”

      “Twice