The detective shook his head.
“The boss is out. It’s the only chance I get to steal a puff. If he shows up, the cigarette is yours.”
The detective laughed. Margaret put an ashtray on the counter.
“I thought this place was nonsmoking,” he said.
“Only when a cop walks in.” Margaret laughed. Does someone cook for him?
Finishing the pie, the detective wiped his mouth with a napkin and pushed the plate away. He took a sip of coffee.
“Tell me about the fight.”
“Wasn’t much to tell,” Margaret began. “The blond kid, Johnny I think is his name, was walking along the sidewalk out front. Good-looking tall young man. Reminded me of an old boyfriend I had. God, they’re all old now.” Margaret laughed before continuing. “Then Terry comes out of nowhere and stops him. Terry’s mother, Mary, and I are old school friends. Do you know her?”
The detective nodded. “She asked me to look into this.”
“I can see through the window that they’re having an argument,” Margaret continued. “Terry started pushing Johnny. Big mistake. He’s about a foot shorter than Johnny. Johnny levels him with one punch right in the side of the head. Terry just drops. I can see Johnny standing over him, yelling down at the sidewalk. Terry gets up off the sidewalk and kind of tackles Johnny. I can see that there’s blood on Terry’s forehead. He must have hit his head on the sidewalk. Johnny puts two punches into Terry’s stomach and that was it. Johnny walks away. By the time I got out there, Terry was already on his feet, bent over in pain but on his feet. I asked him if he was all right. He brushed me off and staggered away. I guessed he was going home.” 109
Margaret flicked a few ashes into the tray before continuing. “Mary must be pretty upset. It isn’t easy raising a teenager. Not that Mary was any angel when she was a kid. She told me once that Terry was God’s way of punishing her for her wild youth. That was about it.” Sam Kelly shook his head.
“Are charges going to be laid, Sam?” Margaret asked.
“No,” the detective responded. “Terry won’t talk to me about the incident. My hands are tied. All I can do is warn Johnny, maybe talk to his parents. That pie was delicious.”
Margaret picked up the plate and placed it with other dirty dishes. She took one last puff of her cigarette and ground it out in the ashtray and then removed the ashtray from the counter.
“Any idea what it was about?” Margaret asked.
The detective shook his head. “With teenagers, who knows? Could have been over money, drugs, a girl, a perceived slight. Maybe Johnny looked at Terry the wrong way. Or just male hormones.”
“I guess you didn’t need this on your plate?” Margaret smiled.
“Especially with that salesman disappearing.”
“You heard about that?”
Margaret nodded. “You hear a lot of things in this place. What do you think happened to him, Sam?”
The detective shook his head. “Don’t know. Maybe he’s out of town, maybe he woke up the next morning with a hangover and took off on his route again. We’re trying to put a trace on him. Ever see him in here?”
“Could have. We get everyone passing through the Six Points area in this place. What did he look like?”
The detective gave a description that he’d received from Helen Kraft.
“That could be any of a dozen guys that walk in here every day.
Sounds like a real loser.”
The detective finished his coffee and dug into this pocket for change to pay the bill.
“It’s on the house,” Margaret said. “We were going to have to throw the pie out. It was stale three days ago.”
“I thought you said it was fresh,” he responded.
“The only thing fresh in this joint is the customers,” Margaret responded.
The detective laughed. “You’re too much, Maggie.” The detective climbed to his feet to leave then turned again to Margaret.
“Do you know anything about a tall gaunt fellow? About seven feet.
Dresses in black. Asks a lot of questions. Has an obsession with the year 1950.”
Margaret nodded.
“I thought he was trying to hit on me. Filled with all kinds of useless information. Asking me a lot of stuff about Mary’s ex. Him and Mary are an item. Seemed very interested in any stories about people who have gone missing over the last few decades. Gave me the creeps, to tell you the truth. But he’s a good tipper.”
The detective smiled, reached into his pocket and threw some change on the counter.
“I can take a hint.” He laughed.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Detective Kelly pushed the wheelchair up to the edge of the sidewalk looking across Bloor Street to the Six Points Plaza. Ed Kaye, his passenger, sat mutely in the chair. When the traffic thinned out, Sam pushed the chair across the street and into the plaza. The two men moved leis-urely through the plaza past the bank and a video store. When they reached the Canadiana Restaurant, Sam wheeled in. A few minutes later the two men sat at a table by the window with a cup of coffee.
“Ya think that they would have torn this place down by now,” Ed said, his eyes wide and excited like a child’s first glimpse of Niagara Falls. “Haven’t been over here in years. Ugliest damn strip mall west of the Humber, and I miss it.”
The detective smiled. He sipped at his coffee, stealing a glance at the counter where Margaret served a customer. She spotted him and smiled.
“Where did all that time go?” Ed sighed. “Like it all happened yesterday. Like it never happened. Like I was always a surly decrepit old man.
Program the other night on the television about black holes. I thought they was talking about manholes. Scared the bejesus out of me.” The old man scratched his chin. “Seems that if you get caught inside one of these holes there ain’t no escape. Even time itself gets caught. Everything happens at the same time. Sounds like old age.” The old man shook with laughter, his voice gargling. Choking with phlegm, he cleared his throat and swallowed. Rolling his head around as if he were rolling dice with his memories, the old man spoke again.
“Remember one winter we found an old man… God, I can’t remember his name. Kids called him Captain Hook. Lost his hand in the war. We found him in a car, there in the driver’s seat. Dead. Car was buried under about three feet of snow. No one knew the car was there.” Something caught the old man’s attention at the other end of the room.
It was Margaret. The old man smiled.
“And then there were the fights between the Catholic kids and the Protestants,” he continued. “Pitched battles just around the corner in the hydro field. We had reform school then… I sent a kid named Ernie O’Connel up there. God forgive me.” The old man’s voice broke. He bowed his head for a moment. Then he looked up with a smile as if his previous melancholic thoughts had been totally erased from his mind.
“And then there were hot rods. Teenagers used to race their cars up by Richview Side Road. They changed the name to Eglinton Avenue when they built… I can’t remember why they changed the name of the street.” The old man stopped. He looked up into Sam Kelly’s eyes. “You ever wonder where all those troubled boys went, Sam? All those lives lost at such a young age. Disappeared into prison or alcohol. And nothing I could…”
Sam Kelly looked at the old man. He wondered if it had been a good idea to bring the old man over to the plaza. Sam sipped at his coffee. It was too hot. The old man started to shake again. And then he laughed.
“And there was the time,” he continued, “the Queen rode along Burnhamthorpe Road, and The Beatles landed at Malton Airport. And Trudeaumania…” The old man took a deep breath. “I guess they’ll bury all those memories in the same hole they drop me in.” The detective stirred his coffee slowly with his spoon. “Sure you don’t want some pie? They have real fine pie here.” Sam drank his coffee.