“So the cops have you figured for a leading suspect-”
“Among a large supporting cast.”
“They appear to have missed the point of Renata’s being killed wearing your clothes and in your house.”
“Exactly.”
“Who’s in charge of the investigation?”
“At the moment it’s Jack Sykes. He’s a sergeant of detectives. He was in charge of the Wentworth case at Rose of Sharon Hospital. Remember? Those kids with liver poisoning?” Stella, or Vanessa, was tugging on the clasp of her bag, clicking it in and out again. It may have relieved her nervousness but it added to mine. I was still having to reconcile all that she was telling me with the high-school beauty of my dreams. Light coming in through my venetian blinds banded her blouse and legs with agreeable stripes. Stella was still a member of the league of beautiful women.
“Stella, what is it you want me to do exactly?”
“I need your protection. That’s what you do, isn’t it? But, Benny, you’ve got to call me Vanessa. Nobody knows me as Stella any more and I like it that way. Understand, Benny? It’s important.” I nodded my head and held a quiet funeral in my mind for Stella Seco, girl of my dreams and nowhere else. But Stella, damn it, I mean Vanessa, went on. “I guess you’d say what I need is a bodyguard: someone who’ll follow me around, check out security, and get me out of tight corners. Yes, I need a bodyguard until this thing blows over.”
“Look, Vanessa, there are real people who do that. I mean for a living. I don’t carry a weapon, for one thing. And if I did, I’m not a crack shot. What I’m saying is that carrying heat and doing all that secret-agent stuff you see in the movies is miles away from anything I know the first thing about.” I could see right away she didn’t like this line of argument.
“No, no, no, Benny. I don’t want some rent-a-cop without a brain for anything but his next coffee break. I want you! I’m not what you would call a wealthy woman, Benny, but I pay better than the going rates. You will be provided for. You have my word on that.” Here she removed an envelope from her bag and looked as if she was about to hand it over. My fingers got that twitch they get when I’m about to go to work.
“You drive a hard bargain, Stella.” She caught my eye with disapproval. “Hell, I’m not going to be able to manage this ‘Vanessa’ thing! You’ll always be Stella to me.”
“That’s sweet, Benny. I’m still ‘Stella’ to me, too. So that makes a pair of us. But, damn it, in public, I’m Vanessa. You got that?” Then, without a break, she asked: “When can you start?”
“I can get rid of these few files this afternoon,” I said, lifting the paper litter above my McIlvanney paperback. “I can be in Toronto tomorrow afternoon.”
“I’ll book lunch at Dooley’s. They’ve reopened it. I’ll book my table for 12:30. After lunch I’ll show you my office and get you started. Officially, as far as the network goes, you’re my new executive assistant. That will open enough doors for you to get you started. Oh, and by the way, this cheque should cover your retainer and startup expenses. If it’s not enough, I’ll fix things when I see you. Goodbye for now, Benny.”
So saying, Vanessa was on her feet and heading for the door. Obviously, she didn’t want to hear about the details of getting my smalls to the laundromat or about other similar banal but necessary chores. I liked her style, but I could already see that her company was going to be exhausting.
THREE
Wednesday
The National Television Corporation occupied a large building on the west side of University Avenue in downtown Toronto. There was a weather beacon on the top floor of this skyscraper that tested the zoning by-laws regarding the acceptable height limits in that neighbourhood of hospitals, publishers and insurance companies. At the top of the beacon stood the familiar NTC totem, a big-eyed owl looking down at me. A nest of peregrine falcons, perched high under the beacon, kept the local pigeon population trimmed to the smartest and quickest of their kind. This was pure Darwinism, nature drenched in its own blood. Below, in the offices and studios of NTC, a sort of social Darwinism was practised. Here there was no job security. No forgiveness, no pity. Yesterday’s boy genius was today’s has-been. Budgets were quick to follow the wunderkind of the moment, along with suites of offices and charge accounts. All of this could be stopped without a word on paper. Here talented people grew old before their time. Heart attacks were as common as head colds. Only the locksmith was safe from the whim of the people at the top, who themselves were not safe. Any day could bring them down from their twentieth-floor offices. If they were lucky, they could then join the rogues’ gallery of the formerly powerful along a corridor on the fifth floor where you could walk past their open doors one after the other, like Easter Island heads, familiar spirits of an earlier day. There they sat reading The Globe and Mail and The New York Times every morning, hoping that today would summon them upstairs, back into the Technicolor of power.
Of course, I knew nothing of this the first time I was ushered into Vanessa Moss’s big office on the twentieth floor. Her secretary seemed sincere in her welcome. She found my name in the appointment book right where it should have been. Her offer of coffee or tea sprang from the pure joy of seeing me in the right place at the right time. Her smile and sympathetic manner, I found, went with the job. Sally was more or less connected to the floor and to executives at that level. If Vanessa fell from grace, which was what my research told me was about to happen, Sally would stay on to offer coffee or tea on behalf of her next employer.
Earlier that morning, I had driven around the west end of Lake Ontario and into the huge welcoming arms of the Megacity, Toronto. I found a cheap hotel on Bay Street, a sort of YMCA without a swimming pool, not far south of Elm, and unpacked. I turned the room, which had only one bed in it-unlike most hotels I’ve been in-into my headquarters. Everything I needed was spread out on the bed. When I was happy with the look of things, I walked over to Dooley’s on King Street, about ten minutes before the appointed time, where the maitre d’ informed me that I was being stood up by my client. In my business, being stood up is no great crime. Whoever writes the cheque at the end of the week carries a lot of clout. So, I swallowed my pride and had a sandwich at a place down the street called Quotes, where there were old movie posters under the glass of the tables and vintage cartoons on the walls. While I was waiting for my bill, I called the number Stella had given me. A polite but firm voice on the other end, Sally, as I later discovered, invited me to drop into “Ms. Moss’s office on the twentieth floor of the NTC building” at 1:30 and hung up. I shrugged at the cartoon on the wall and took a taxi to University Avenue. Leaning back into the plush back seat, and reading the THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING sign, I started to get the feel of living on expenses.
At NTC I ran into a SWAT team posing as security guards. They wanted to know what my business was and whom I had an appointment to see. They passed my wallet around among themselves, checking my documents, and finally laid a big sticky label on me with the word “VISITOR” in loud letters. Under the word was the warning that this label was to be worn at all times and was not under any circumstances transferable. I wondered whether in the case of fire, only properly labelled visitors would escape roasting. As I looked about me, I noticed that everybody in the place was wearing labels. They were custom-made labels, naturally, laminated plastic, but labels all the same. But we VISITORS were the conspicuous ones; both by our badges and by the humiliated looks on our faces. We had the expression of restaurant guests forced to wear house jackets and ties before being seated. Meanwhile, the security police were phoning everybody on the twentieth floor, including, I suppose, the murderer of Renata Sartori, to let the world know that Vanessa’s most recent hireling was on the lot. I began to think, as I was finally cleared to go through a buzzing turnstile and frogmarched to the burgundy elevator, that maybe the people at NTC were not the creators of fun, entertainment and news coverage, but were guardians of the national hoard of gold bullion or maybe fronting for the CIA. It seemed to me that I had less trouble getting into the American Senate chamber in Washington. Anyway, I tried not to grind my teeth as I was wafted twenty floors above the sidewalk.