As Gilbert reached Bay Street, he gazed up at the Polo Center. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand—it was hot, and the weatherman was calling for a heat wave. Except for a few interesting curves and a semicircular courtyard, the Polo Center was a generic skyscraper of glass and steel—bright, reflective, and futuristic. He pushed his way through the revolving doors into the marble lobby, grateful for the air-conditioning. He took the elevator to the third floor.
On the third floor he found his way to suite 308, the offices of Clifton, Simhi, and Lynn, Barristers and Solicitors. He went inside and presented himself to the receptionist, a young man in a white shirt and red tie.
“Can I help you?” asked the man.
“I have a three o’clock appointment with Daniel Lynn.” He showed his badge and ID. “I’m Detective-Sergeant Barry Gilbert of Metro Homicide. He’s squeezing me in.”
The receptionist glanced at Gilbert’s ID, then gestured at the chairs in the waiting area.
“Have a seat,” he said. “He’ll be with you shortly.”
Gilbert sat down in the waiting area.
Daniel Lynn emerged with a client ten minutes later. The client, a middle-aged man with curly dark hair and a mustache, looked grim, as if his meeting with Lynn had gone badly. He didn’t shake Daniel Lynn’s hand—didn’t even say good-bye—just walked right out and disappeared into the corridor.
“I don’t think we’ll be seeing him again,” said Lynn to the receptionist.
The receptionist smiled sweetly at Lynn. It occurred to Gilbert that the young man might be gay.
“This is Detective-Sergeant Barry Gilbert of Metro Homicide,” said the receptionist.
Gilbert rose. He didn’t particularly like lawyers, but Lynn looked decent enough, a tall man close to sixty, fit-looking, impeccably groomed, conservatively dressed, slim, handsome, with a swimmer’s build.
“Detective Gilbert,” said Lynn, extending his hand. “A pleasure.”
The two men shook hands.
“Thanks for taking the time to see me on such short notice,” said Gilbert.
A look of dismay came to Lynn’s blue eyes. “Poor old Glen,” he said. “Let’s go into my office, shall we, and see if we can sort him out?”
Gilbert followed Lynn into his office. Lynn had a puzzling accent. Gilbert couldn’t place it. It sounded Glaswegian, or Dutch South African.
“Have a seat,” said Lynn.
Gilbert sat down. “I can’t place your accent,” he said. “Are you South African?”
Lynn grinned like Prince Philip on the Queen’s birthday. “I’m Jamaican,” he said.
“Jamaican?” said Gilbert.
“Yes,” said Lynn. “A white Jamaican. There aren’t many of us, but we do exist. She was a British colony, after all, for the longest time.”
“So you’re originally British.”
“Actually, my grandfather emigrated from Wales. He came from Cardiff and started a coffee plantation in the Blue Mountains near Mavis Bank. That’s just north of Kingston. A lovely spot, really. The high altitude moderates the heat comfortably. I grew up there. So I don’t consider myself British. Or Welsh for that matter. I’m second-generation Jamaican. Have you ever tasted Blue Mountain coffee, Detective Gilbert?”
“No,” said Gilbert.
Lynn lifted the phone and dialed the outer office. “How do you take it?” he asked.
“With cream and sugar.”
“Donald, could you bring in two of the Blue Mountain, both with cream and sugar.” He hung up. “My uncle has the place now. Most of his market is in Japan. I don’t know why the Japanese love Blue Mountain coffee the way they do, but they’re willing to pay outrageous prices for it.”
While they waited for Donald to bring in their coffee, Gilbert and Lynn got down to business.
“I understand you have to honor counsel-client confidentiality,” said Gilbert, “even when the client has become deceased—”
Lynn quieted him with a wave of his hand.
“Detective Gilbert, you have my full cooperation. This is a murder. I’m not going to confound you with the need for court orders. Glen was not only a client, he was my good friend. I want to catch his murderer as much as you do.”
Gilbert warmed to the man. His fervency seemed genuine.
“Then maybe we can start with this restraining order Glen Boyd filed against Phil Thompson,” he said. Gilbert took out his notebook. “Do you know anything about it?”
A grin came to Lynn’s face. “I knew you were going to ask me about that.”
Gilbert shrugged. “Can you blame me?”
Lynn leaned back in his chair, rolling it a few inches from his desk, crossed his legs, and clasped his hands over his knee.
“Let’s see,” he said. “Where to begin.” He leveled his friendly blue eyes at Gilbert. “Phil Thompson has a lot of outstanding concerns with Glen Boyd. And unfortunately most of them have never been resolved. I believe at last count we were defending Glen against seven Thompson-filed lawsuits. Mr. Thompson believes Glen owes him a great deal of money. But legally, Glen’s company, GBIA, owes Phil Thompson nothing. In the framework of the restraining order, you can see where this might fit.”
On Bay Street, a bus rumbled by.
“Go on,” said Gilbert.
Lynn’s jacket slid back, revealing a gold pen in his shirt pocket. “Are you familiar with Mother Courage at all?” he asked.
“Who isn’t?”
“Right, then,” said Lynn. His brow settled, and he sat forward. “Popularity is a fickle bird, Detective Gilbert. That’s something Phil Thompson has never understood. Mother Courage was hugely successful in the mid-seventies. But by the end of the decade, Phil, who was the de facto head of the group, should have had the good sense to call it quits. Punk rock and New Wave were all the rage by then, and power bands who played stadium rock were dinosaurs. I think everybody else in the group sensed this. But Phil…Phil believed Mother Courage could go on forever.”
Lynn shook his head as if at the folly of mankind.
“Phil liked fame,” he continued. “They all did. But Phil was addicted to it. Fame was like a drug to him. He liked to go into any restaurant anywhere in the Western world and have people ask him for his autograph. He liked to see album sales soar. He liked to do interviews. And I suppose it shocked him when the interviews tapered off and his record sales dipped, and no one recognized him anymore.”
A knock came at the door and Donald entered with two cups of Blue Mountain coffee.
“Here we go,” said Lynn. “Jamaica’s finest. Thank you, Donald.”
Donald placed the coffee on the desk and quietly left the room.
“You’re in for a treat,” Lynn said. “Try it.”
Gilbert lifted his cup and sipped. His eyebrows rose. “That is good,” he said.
Lynn grinned. “I’ll have my uncle send you a pound,” he said. “I’ll have him mark it: homicide. He should get a kick out of that.”
“You don’t have to do that,” said Gilbert. “Don’t put your uncle to all that trouble.”
“He’s always looking for Blue Mountain converts,” said Lynn. “It will be no trouble at all.” He lifted his own cup and took a sip. “Now…where were we?” Lynn’s eyes narrowed as he looked out the window. “Oh, yes. Phil was always…how shall I put this…always trying to convince the world that Mother Courage could go the distance, that they were in it for the long haul, like the Rolling Stones or…or Aerosmith, for instance. But Mother Courage simply didn’t have the staying power of those other bands. The record companies lost interest. The other band members thought it was time to…” Lynn smiled a kind smile. “To put the instruments away.” Lynn shook his head. “But Phil wouldn’t have it. He coerced the other band members into rehearsing for another tour. Even when Decca cancelled their contract, Phil didn’t give up. They rehearsed and rehearsed.”
“And what did the other band members say to that?” asked Gilbert.
“Michelle finally got fed up,” said Lynn. “She wanted a break. A good long break. To underline the point, she got pregnant. I believe they remained inactive for two years after that. Meanwhile, Phil took their rehearsal tapes to record companies and flogged them relentlessly. He got Glen to help him. Glen knew many higher-ups in the record industry. GBIA managed to get David Geffen of Geffen Records interested in the band. But before Geffen would offer them a record contract, he wanted them to go on tour to see how firm their ticket sales would be.”
“I think I see where this is heading,” said Gilbert.
Lynn’s left brow twisted upward. “You know about Palo Alto, then?” he asked.
“Only that it was more or less their doomsday concert,” said Gilbert.
“Ah…” said Lynn, raising his index finger. “But you don’t know the details.”
“No,” admitted Gilbert.
Lynn’s eyes grew pensive as he gazed at his coffee.
“Doomsday concert,” he said. “I like that. I venture we share the same sense of cynicism, Detective Gilbert.” He took a sip of his coffee. “In any case, it was…sad…particularly because it was so comical. Phil-invested a great deal of money into Palo Alto. The band got on one plane, and their equipment got on another. The band arrived at Palo Alto, and their instruments went to Miami. Whose blunder was that? I don’t know. Phil insists it was Glen’s. Of course they couldn’t go onstage without their instruments or all their other massive amounts of stage and lighting equipment.”
“So what happened?” asked Gilbert.
“They had to postpone,” said Lynn. “Phil drowned in an avalanche of refunded tickets. He thought fans would buy new tickets for the rescheduled show, but they never did. Glen still made a cut. He wrote the deal to guarantee an expenses clause for GBIA, so you can imagine how that made Phil feel. The rescheduled show was a bust, and that was the end of Mother Courage.”
Gilbert made a note of all this in his notebook. “David Geffen backed out?” he asked.
The lawyer nodded. “David Geffen backed out. So did the rest of the band members. For good. They’d made their last try, and now it was time to lay the thing to rest. The band’s breakup wasn’t particularly amicable, especially not for Phil. He thought they were all…well…you know…whatever he said, it wasn’t nice. He blamed it all on Glen. He didn’t want to end his musical career. He came to me and asked me if there was any legal way he could compel the other band members to continue.”
“And was there?” asked Gilbert.
“No,” said Lynn. “Then he asked me if there was any legal action he could take against GBIA. I advised against it. The contract wording favored GBIA. So Phil vowed to start a solo career. He wrote a dozen new songs, and toured small clubs, and the material itself was fairly strong. He’s a good songwriter. But he just didn’t have the pipes. He couldn’t belt it out the way Paul, Carol, or Michelle could. He tried for a record deal with a number of different labels. No one was willing to risk it. Not after Palo Alto. So he started his own label. If no one would sign him, he would sign himself.”
At this point, Lynn’s phone rang. He picked it up, made a few pleasant excuses to the person on the other end of the line, then gently rested the receiver back in the cradle.
“I’m not keeping you from anything, am I?” asked Gilbert.
“My wife’s having trouble with the home computer again,” said Lynn. “She counts on me as her savior in that regard.”
Lynn scratched his tanned forehead as he decided how to continue, then moved his coffee, for no apparent reason, two inches to the left.
“Phil, of course, knew a good deal about the record business,” he said, “but he didn’t feel he knew enough to start his own label. He didn’t feel safe going it alone, so…rather rashly…he let bygones be bygones, and got Glen Boyd in on the deal. I don’t know how he explained it away to himself, all the bad feelings over Palo Alto, or if Glen finally apologized as a way to get his toe in the door on the new deal. Whatever the case, Phil sank a significant portion of his remaining savings into the label, and borrowed heavily from the bank. You think he would have learned his lesson by then. But he was desperate to resuscitate his rock-star status. Glen more or less agreed to manage the label for a token salary of one dollar a year plus forty percent of any profit. Phil went into the studio and recorded his solo album. They got initial orders for a hundred thousand copies, and sold them wholesale at ten dollars apiece. That gave them a million dollars. Glen wanted to invest that money. Phil went back to the studio to start a second record, and left Glen to find the best investment opportunities.”
“Uh-oh,” said Gilbert. “I think I can see what’s coming.”
“A crystal ball is hardly needed, Detective Gilbert. I daresay, Phil could have used one at the time. Record stores can return whatever product they don’t sell for full reimbursement. A prudent label typically banks money as a reserve against these returns. Following this model, Glen should have banked half the money from those initial orders to financially guard against any of those returns. But he didn’t.” Lynn sighed, sat back, and folded his hands across his trim stomach. “He invested the money in Campeau.” Lynn gave Gilbert an inquiring look. “Do you remember Robert Campeau, the junk-bond baron of the retail industry? Campeau stock was all the rage at the time.”
Gilbert smiled grimly. “I lost five grand,” he admitted.
“What a house of cards that was,” said Lynn. “A big financial quicksand pit. Trendy, yes, but still a disaster. Glen sank Phil’s every last penny into it. He didn’t hold anything back for returns because he was convinced he would make money. Then Campeau went bust, and the label lost all its money. At the same time, it became apparent no one was buying Phil’s solo effort. Think Yoko Ono, and you’ll have an idea of sales. When Phil found out all his money had been swallowed by Campeau, he was furious. He had to somehow raise the money to reimburse all these record stores. And because he was paying Glen a token salary of only one dollar a year, he couldn’t go after GBIA. Here’s where the restraining order comes in. As lawsuit after lawsuit failed, Phil physically threatened Glen.”
Gilbert grew still.
“How did he threaten him?” he asked.
“He said he would get two of his Hell’s Angels friends to break Glen’s legs.”
“And how long ago was that?” asked Gilbert.
“Back in February,” said Lynn.
“So things were said.”
“It seems so. I wouldn’t presume to tell you how to do your job, Detective Gilbert, but I think Phil Thompson warrants more than just a brief look, don’t you?”
The next morning, Staff Inspector Tim Nowak, Gilbert’s boss, caught Gilbert as he was coming into the office.
“Joe’s already been in and out,” said Nowak, a tall, thin, gray-haired man in his mid-fifties. “Some old guy was found dead in a back alley in Etobicoke.”
“Does Joe want me to come out?” asked Gilbert.
“He said he’d call. Right now I thought we’d have a talk about the Boyd case.” Nowak’s gaze shifted. “In my office.”
“Sure,” said Gilbert.
Gilbert put his coffee and bagel on his desk and followed Nowak into his office. Nowak sat down. Gilbert followed suit. Out the window in the courtyard Gilbert glimpsed an odd piece of statuary, a bronze female police officer mortaring bricks. He’d never understood that particular sculpture.
“Toxicology called,” began Nowak. “They looked at your drug list. Joe says you had it marked urgent.”
“Right,” said Gilbert. “But even if you mark those things urgent, it takes a while. Has any of it been done yet?”
“They’ve done some preliminary color tests, but they’re inconclusive,” said Nowak. “The guy had such a mishmash of drugs inside his system, it’s going to take Toxicology a while to sort it out.”
Gilbert’s shoulders sank. “So I take it Melvin Blackstein won’t rule on the possible overdose until he gets the report back from Toxicology.”
“No,” said Nowak. “And that frustrates me as much as it frustrates you, Barry. Especially because Ronald Roffey from the Toronto Star is calling me about the Boyd case. He’s actually stopped by a time or two.”
Gilbert shook his head. “Shit.”
“I know,” said Nowak. “I’d like to wrap this one up quickly.”
“How are we going to do that if the toxicology tests are going to take a while?”
“Well…I’ve sent the crime-scene photographs to Deputy Chief Ling,” said Nowak. “Maybe once he sees them, he’ll call the coroner’s office.”
“You know Mel,” cautioned Gilbert. “He likes to be careful. And it takes a lot to budge him.”
“Yes, but if it swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it has to be a duck. I wonder if he’s ever heard that phrase. Maybe we can get Ronald Roffey to explain it to him. It’s a big sticking point. I intend to grease the works any way I can, so that’s why I’ve sent the crime scene photographs to the deputy chiefs office. I’ll be sending him regular updates as well, so keep me informed. In the meantime, we go ahead. We work with what we have.” Nowak looked out the window. “That means the preliminary DNA analysis on the skin scrapings taken from under Boyd’s fingernails. Joe received the report this morning.”
“Really?” said Gilbert. “That fast?”
“The new digital method really speeds things up,” said Nowak. “Bear in mind, the profiling is by no means complete. It’ll take another few weeks to individualize it. But Forensic has done enough sequencing to tell us that the left-hand and right-hand samples came from two different people.”
Gilbert stared at Nowak’s much-thumbed copy of the Canadian Criminal Code. This was indeed significant, and changed the complexion of the investigation considerably. In trying to defend himself, Boyd had gripped his attacker, and trace quantities of the perpetrator’s epidermis had lodged under his fingernails. Only now there were two attackers, one coming at him from the left, the other from the right. Even more puzzling, Boyd’s arm was broken. Broken after his attempt at defense? Two attackers? The Hell’s Angels? Possibly. As Daniel Lynn suggested, Phil Thompson warranted more than just a brief look.
“Thanks, Tim,” he said.
Nowak contemplated the gold signet ring on his left baby finger. “Boyd’s a bit high-profile, isn’t he?” said the Homicide staff inspector.
“Yes,” said Gilbert.
“I had no idea,” said Nowak. “Roffey’s certainly interested. I’ve never followed the rock and pop scene much. I’m a jazz buff myself.”
“What did Roffey say?”
“Just that the Star’s entertainment section is running a feature on Boyd this weekend, and that he’d like to do a more in-depth follow-up piece on the homicide investigation to run with it. I think we have to be careful with this one, Barry. Roffey had that look in his eyes.” Nowak gave him an inquiring glance. “You know the one he gets?”
“All too well,” said Gilbert.
“Speaking of which, Joe tells me you knew Boyd.” Gilbert’s shoulders tightened. Nowak tapped the marble base of his pen-set a few times. “I’m just wondering if it’s such a good idea…you know…you acting as the primary on the case…especially because you knew the man. We don’t want to give Roffey more meat than we have to.”
Gilbert sighed as his mood sank. “I knew him briefly twenty-three years ago,” he said. “He was an acquaintance. That’s all. A friend of my wife’s. I haven’t seen him since that time. If you want to yank me as the primary on the case, that’s your prerogative, Tim. But this is just another case to me, no different from any other. I’m capable of working it, and working it fast, as speed seems to be an issue.”
A relieved grin came to Nowak’s face. “That’s exactly what I wanted to hear, Barry.”