"My kingdom for a Dramamine patch," I moaned.
"Shut up," Jenn said. "My aspirations are climbing by the minute."
"To meet your expectations," Birk said, "we have sought out only the finest craftsmen, the finest goods, to bring you the new crown jewel of the Toronto port lands, the Birkshire Harbourview. For a virtual tour of the complex, just click on the link below. Better yet, click on the green link to join our exclusive mailing list."
"How exclusive can it be if anyone can join?" Jenn muttered.
"These magnificent residences will sell out fast," Birk said. "We anticipate every unit to be pre-sold before completion, so-"
Jenn had finally had enough too. She clicked off the web feed and left Simon Birk in mid-sentence. Something, I guessed, not too many people did.
"Hey," she said, looking at her watch. "Don't you have a date to get ready for?"
"Won't take me long."
"You're not going out dressed like that, are you?"
"You been talking to my mother?"
"Seriously. Why don't you knock off?"
"What about you?"
"I'll hang here awhile," she said. "Karl said he might swing by with Maya's computer after he closes up."
"He cracked her password?"
"Like an egg, he said."
"That's our boy. It'll be interesting to see what's on there," I said. "Because no one so far has a clue about why Maya did it. Her mother, brother, father, even her theatre prof: can they all be in denial?"
"It's the same with her girlfriends," Jenn said. "They were just as sure-insistent, even."
"She was a doer, Jenn. She wasn't withdrawing from the world, giving her things away, dropping hints, crying out for help. She'd never attempted suicide before, and how many people succeed on the first try? She was energetic, involved, engaged in things. And by all accounts, she wasn't faking it."
She looked at me across the desk. "Her mother said it couldn't have been an accident, not with that high wall around the balcony."
"You check it out?"
She nodded. "It's more than waist high on me, and I'm six feet. Marilyn said Maya was five-seven."
We sat for a moment in silence, broken only by the hum of machinery, traffic on Broadview, the sound of our breathing, the beating of still-living hearts.
"Why did she call Simon Birk?" I asked.
"Maya?"
"Yeah."
"He's her father's partner."
"What could he tell her that Rob couldn't?"
"Or wouldn't."
"We know she had a fight with Rob the night she died."
"And she had a bug up her ass when it came to the environment."
"We know a lot of the port lands are polluted."
"Except they'd have had to clean the site before they started building. Wouldn't they?"
"Yes. You can't break ground without an environmental assessment. The soil and water have to be analyzed and cleaned first."
I sat back down at my desk and went back to the Birkshire Harbourview's web page, then clicked onto a link that listed all the partner firms involved: the engineers, architects, banks and construction company.
The engineering firm that conducted the water and soil testing on the site was called EcoSys.
"Check this out," I said to Jenn.
The founder and chief executive officer of EcoSys was one Martin Glenn.
CHAPTER 9
I did indeed change my clothes for my date with Katherine Hollinger. I showered and shaved and put on clean black jeans and a black shirt that I smoothed on my dresser with my hands-one day I'd buy an iron-and over that a black cashmere blazer, the one jacket in my closet that didn't look like it had been fished out of a donation chute.
Hollinger lived in a condo on Bay near St. Joseph. I took the Bloor Street Viaduct across the Don River Valley, watching the last light of the setting sun through the Luminous Veil, two walls of metal rods built on either side of the bridge to keep people from jumping. The viaduct had been the city's main suicide magnet for years, the combination of the fall and oncoming Parkway traffic a guarantee of success. I doubted the Veil had cut the number of suicides, just shifted them elsewhere: another bridge, a subway, a razor or pills. Dorothy Parker had once written a poem about the many ways to do yourself in, but each had drawbacks, she wrote, so you might as well live. Maybe they should have etched those words in the stone of the viaduct, instead of spending $5 million installing the Veil's nine thousand rods.
I parked in front of Hollinger's building and entered the lobby. She was waiting there for me, her black hair tied back in a simple ponytail, leaving more of that face to savour.
"I figured I'd save you the trouble of parking," she said. "You leave your car here for a second and they ticket you."
All I could think of to say was hello.
"Hello yourself," she said and leaned in and kissed my cheek. Whatever scent she wore was lightly floral; just a trace of it to cloud my thoughts. When she stood back, I took a long, slow look at her. I could see murder suspects confessing just to keep her eyes on them, just to win a smile.
"Jonah?"
"Yes?"
"Shall we go?"
"Go?"
"They don't serve food in my lobby." We drove to the entertainment district, where old warehouses on Richmond, Adelaide and surrounding streets had been turned into massive nightclubs that turned drunken patrons out into the streets by the thousands at closing time. Spewing, pissing, weaving around in search of their cars, getting into fist fights over nothing. Occasional gunshots ringing out, usually directed at bouncers who had turfed out punks whose manhood was measured by the length of a gun barrel.
At this time of night, though, it was peaceful, the coloured lights of restaurant signs sharp and clear in the brisk autumn air. The temperature had dropped. Hollinger had drawn her coat closer around her as we walked up John Street. I wanted to put my arm around her, warm her the way her eyes warmed me, but it seemed a little soon for that. Maybe on the way out, with a good meal and a glass of wine or two inside me.
A black belt in karate, an expert in Krav Maga, a guy who could dismantle most opponents before they knew they were in a fight, and I felt like a hapless schoolboy around this woman.
Man, it felt good.
Then I saw the name of the restaurant we had stopped in front of, and my stomach dropped like an elevator whose cables had snapped.
It was called Giulio's.
She had said it was a place that served real southern Italian cooking. I should have asked the name. Because there was no way in hell I was going in there, not with Hollinger. One look at the owner, one hint that he and I had a relationship, and I'd be lucky if all she did was slap my face and walk out. Lucky if I didn't wind up cuffed.
Giulio's was now owned by none other than Dante Ryan, once a notorious hit man for the crew run by Marco di Pietra. He had told me this weeks ago on the phone, thanking me for my help in getting him out of the contract killing line and into something he could live with, telling me I'd never have to pay a bill in the place. That I could put my name on a stool at the bar. He'd told me how the man who had run it for forty years, Giulio himself, seventy pounds overweight and proud of it, had finally been ready to retire just when Ryan was looking to buy a place. He said he was keeping the name, the staff and most of the menu, adding just a few dishes from his mother's own collection of Calabrian recipes.
He said he was there every night, menus in hand, greeting guests the way Giulio did, even putting on a few pounds for the cause.
So how exactly was I going to explain to Hollinger-a cop who'd spent the last four months pondering the deaths of the Di Pietra brothers and their associates-that Dante Ryan was a personal friend of mine.