Chapter Four
“Well, the money’s got to be half-decent, right?” Meera dipped one of Dame’s fries into a puddle of ketchup. “I mean, those IVF bills aren’t exactly covered by insurance. Plus, you wouldn’t get evicted, so that’s a bonus.”
Dame already regretted telling Meera about Ray’s offer. “Dodge barely leaves the apartment anymore. And even if he did, there’s no way he’d get involved with something like this. The guy is very retired.”
“Your landlord doesn’t have to know that.”
Dame had to admit the thought had crossed her mind. “I’m not a detective, Meera. I’m a thirty-six-year-old municipal employee with significant credit card debt.”
“But you learned all that stuff from Dodge, didn’t you?” Meera adjusted the straw in her root beer. “He took you along on cases and stuff, right?”
“He didn’t have much of a choice. We couldn’t exactly afford a babysitter.”
“So, what’s the point of having all that know-how if you never use it?”
Dame looked around the diner. It was one of those new places that was trying to look old. “The point is not ending up like Dodge.”
“Hey, I’m not saying you make a career of it. Just follow the wife around. It might be kind of exciting — peeking in windows, taking pictures, snooping through people’s stuff — like being in your own true crime podcast.”
Dame sighed. “Staking out a cheating wife isn’t exactly a triple homicide, Meera. And even licensed investigators can’t peek through people’s windows or take pictures of them in private places. They still have to operate within the confines of the law. It’s mostly a lot of sitting around and waiting for people to walk out of buildings.”
“Still though. Maybe” — she cleared her throat — “maybe it would be good for you.”
“Good for me?” Dame stared across the table.
“You know what I mean. It’s been what — over a year? — since everything happened with Adam? And you never do anything anymore. You look after your dad, you hang around your apartment, and you work. That’s kind of it.”
Dame shrugged. “I like what I do.”
“I know. I’m just saying” — Meera proceeded with caution — “maybe it’s time you had something else in your life.”
Dame scrounged up the last of her fries and put them in her mouth. She thought it might keep her from saying things she couldn’t take back.
“Speaking of time —” Meera looked at her watch. “Shit. I was supposed to meet Lewis at a site inspection ten minutes ago.” She gathered up her things and raced toward the exit. “See you this afternoon!”
Dame watched as her friend flew out the door. “Guess lunch is on me.”
Eventually, Dame made her way back through Nathan Phillips Square and toward what her fellow City Hall employees had long-ago dubbed the Clamshell. She was barely inside the lobby when she heard the clawk-clawk-clawk of heels and saw an expensively dressed figure menacing toward her. Dame had to admit, there was something almost admirable about the woman’s tidy blandness and the sheer efficiency with which she carried her compact body through space. It was only when the Fish came closer that Dame was reminded of how her too-big eyes, too-big mouth, and overall cold-bloodedness bore an unfortunate resemblance to her nickname.
“Good afternoon, Ms. Polara,” Sharon Fischer said. “I understand your team will be presenting at the Atkinson hearing next week.”
“That’s right.”
“Well” — she distracted herself with the strap of her purse — “we both know that Toronto has its share of dilapidated movie theatres. I can’t imagine there’s a great deal of merit in preserving that particular one, can you?”
“We have to consider its character in the context of the neighbourhood,” Dame said. “It’s a part of the community’s culture and history.”
“Really? And how has that community honoured its ‘culture’ and ‘history’ since the theatre closed?” Fischer was still fussing with her bag. “By throwing rocks through the marquee? Spray-painting phalluses on the windows?”
“According to our records, the Okusha Corporation has owned that building for almost a year. Maybe they should take better care of it.”
“Yes,” she said, not looking at Dame. “I imagine they intend to. Goddammit.” She paused and forced a smile across her face. “I just bought this purse last month and all the stitching is coming apart.”
“Guess they don’t make things like they used to.”
“No, I guess not.” She looked at Dame. “Of course, that coat you’re wearing has certainly stood the test of time, hasn’t it? And those glasses. Are they … vintage?”
“They were my mother’s.”
The Fish smiled her wide-mouth smile. “Well, you certainly have an appreciation for ancient artifacts, Ms. Polara.” She walked past Dame and toward the exit. “I’ll see you at the hearing.”
Dame stormed into the Heritage office and kicked the leg of her chair. She looked around to see if anyone had noticed her performance, but the room was empty.
It was maddening that, year after year, Sharon Fischer continued to authorize the destruction of some of Toronto’s oldest and most beautiful monuments. Why would you live in a city if you were only going to destroy it from the inside out?
Money, Dame reminded herself. That’s why. It was practically an open secret that Fischer was on the payroll of the city’s biggest developers. How she still had her job at the Municipal Review Board was anybody’s guess.
The file on the Atkinson Theatre lay open on Meera’s desk. Dame picked it up and once again scanned through the first few pages. Apparently, the place had been built in 1942, by a guy named Len Atkinson. It featured a roller-skating rink at the back of the theatre, and a two-lane bowling alley in the basement. In 1973, Atkinson tore out the rink, added another screen, and renovated the interior. When he died in the late nineties, some young cinema enthusiast named Todd Sergeant bought it and turned it into a repertory theatre. He wasn’t able to shake enough change out of people’s pockets to make it commercially viable, so it barely lasted a decade.
Dame went online and found a CBC archive video about the theatre’s reopening. There was the usual walk-and-talk through the foyer with Sergeant, but then the video cut to a talking head: a man in his eighties with significant tufts of white hair sneaking out of his ears.
“I used to go to the Atkinson during the war.” His voice was an elderly creak. “We’d go see Abbott and Costello, or Captain Marvel, and then I’d drop my sister off at the roller-skating rink and I’d go bowling with the fellas. I remember, I’d never seen an automated pinsetter before. I thought it was the damnedest —”
Dame paused the video. She grabbed the file again and found photocopies of the most recent blueprints. Main floor. Second floor. And, there. Right there in the basement. The reason why the Okusha Corporation couldn’t bulldoze the Atkinson Theatre, and the reason why Sharon Fischer couldn’t let them.
By the time Meera and Lewis walked into the office that afternoon, every previously bare surface was blanketed with historical documents. A bankers box stood empty on the floor. Blueprints lay draped over desks. Dame was talking to someone on the phone.
“Well, I really appreciate it.” Pause. “Yeah, I hope so, too. Take care.”
She hung up.
“Jesus,” Meera said. “What happened in here?”
“Did you start drinking coffee again?” Lewis asked.
“No. Take a look at this.”
They all crowded around Dame’s desk.
“So, I ran over and picked up the original blueprints for the Atkinson —”
“Wait,” Meera interrupted, “you went all the way to Archives?”
“I hate Archives,” Lewis said.
“Everybody hates Archives,” Meera said. “It smells weird and you can never find parking.”
“Like I was saying,” Dame persevered, “these are the original blueprints for the Atkinson Theatre. And this” — she slammed another sheet on top of the first — “is a blueprint of the renovations they did in 1973. Everything’s different, right?”
Lewis took a moment and eyed the plans. “Right.”
“Wrong. They never remodelled the basement.”
“Dame,” Meera said, “I know you went out of your way to dig this up and all, but no one’s going to save the Atkinson because it has the original scuzzy basement.”
“They might” — Dame folded her arms — “if that original scuzzy basement still housed Toronto’s very first automated ten-pin bowling alley.”
“Wait,” Lewis said, looking at the blueprints. “I thought Kingston Bowl had the first automated pinsetter.”
Meera shook her head. “You would know that.”
“Kingston Bowl opened in 1943,” Dame said. “Len Atkinson built his in 1942. Everyone just thought he tore it out when he renovated, but apparently, it’s been down there all this time.”
“Are you sure?” Lewis asked.
“I just got off the phone with the previous owner. He said the pinsetter was still there when he sold it. Said he and his buddies used to go down there after hours and bowl a few frames. Still worked and everything.”
“There’s no way they can bulldoze that place now,” Lewis said.
Meera smiled up at Dame. “What were you saying about not being a detective?”