Sitting in his cab on Queen Street West, Tony Bellotto was obliged to turn away potential fares and see the business he was missing. It wasn’t till after ten p.m. that I at last had a chance to go out and speak to him. I found his black Ford close to the foot of the City Hall steps and climbed into the front seat beside him. He was a short man with black, curly hair. A bit of a dandy by the look of his leather jacket and purple shirt. He was young, early to mid twenties, and understandably impatient.
“How long have you been working nights, Mr. Bellotto?” I asked.
“Since before Christmas, beginning of December.”
“You must see pretty well in the dark.” I scribbled a random sequence of numbers on a scrap of paper and dropped it in the back seat. I figured the street lighting was about the same here as on Adelaide, or Broadview for that matter. “How much of that can you read?”
He read all the numbers backwards in the rear view mirror and called them out forwards.
“Good enough, Mr. Bellotto. Now five men will be sent out here to us one at a time. Each one will get into the back of your cab, give you an address, and get out again. You’re not to say anything or give any sign while any of the men are in the car. Understood?”
“Sure.”
“All right. When you’ve seen all five, I want you to tell me which one, if any, is the passenger you picked up at 2:01 on the morning of April 20 outside Bull Moose Sporting Goods. Questions?”
“Can we get started?”
My parade included both Tinker and Ivan, but kept apart to avoid mutual recriminations. For the other three, I had collected a lanky car thief from the lock-up and from the detectives’ room the two men with the most substantial build. Ivan was unequivocally identified as the passenger Bellotto had driven to 96 Adelaide Street West. Tinker was then allowed to leave with both pairs of trousers.
Back at my desk, on the phone to the manager of the Alhambra, I conveyed that Robert Taylor had been offering the police invaluable assistance with an investigation, without being either charged with or suspected of any crime, and it would be taken most kindly if his absence this evening from his post at the piano could be overlooked. The manager, clearly no poker player, asked if this had anything to do with “that business of the fire regulations”—at which point I knew Tinker would stay clear of soup kitchens a while longer.
Ivan was in a less fortunate position. I now had enough evidence to charge him under either section 207 or section 267 or both of the Criminal Code of Canada. By rights, I should already have handed the photographs I’d found in his apartment over to the judge issuing the search warrant, but the more serious offence by far was concealing evidence. That had made Ivan an accessory after the fact to murder.
Although I still preferred to postpone arresting him, the threat was enough to induce him to turn out his pockets. The only weapon found on him was the clasp knife he had been playing with after Horny’s death. I took possession of it and let him keep everything else. I then allowed him to order in some coffee to go with his cigarettes and gave him a chance to wash up before resuming our talk in the now vacant interrogation room.
“Why did you take those shells?” I began.
Ivan sat hunched over the unsteady table, his forearms resting on it. He was watching my face closely. He appeared aware of the seriousness of his position. If this were a pose, it was the right pose.
“I’m a crime reporter,” he said. “I know cartridge cases are the best way to trace a gun. The bullets themselves bear unique rifling marks, but the bullets are often deformed by the impact.”
“Who shot Digby Watt?”
“I don’t know. Honestly, Paul.”
“Yet you admit to helping the murderer.”
“Whoever killed Watt may not have realized the value of what he was leaving behind. I just thought I’d give the hand of vengeance a little camouflage.”
“Meanwhile throwing away your freedom and your career. Some thought.”
“I was careless. How did you know I took pictures?”
“The sepia toner on your fingers. I figured it was nicotine at first, but the pattern was wrong. Pornographers should use tongs.”
“I was careless and dumb—but if it hadn’t been for the incredible coincidence of your being the investigating officer, Paul, I’d never have come under suspicion. No other detective would have known I had any feeling about Watt one way or the other.”
“How much of a feeling was it, Ivan? Did you take the gun as well?”
“No. There was no gun there.”
I laid the Spanish pocket pistol on the table in front of him. I saw Ivan’s eyes take it in, then direct a brief look of contempt at me. Contempt, not guilt.
“If you found that in my apartment, it wasn’t me that put it there.”
“Tinker?”
“Tinker hasn’t come to my place since the murder. Besides, I can’t imagine a little toy like that in Tinker’s mitt. Can you?”
“Pretty deadly toy. Have you ever seen it before?” I handed Ivan the gun. He took it in his handkerchief.
“How would I know? I’ve seen guns like it.”
“How recently have you seen one like it?”
“In the past week.”
“When in the past week?”
“Yesterday.”
I whistled my surprise. Was it possible I had a witness?
“Yesterday in the early hours?” I asked. “In front of 96 Adelaide Street West?”
“No, later, just after eleven p.m.—and not there.”
“Where?”
“I don’t—”
“Yes, you do.”
“In a blind pig—if you won’t hold that against me. In a cocotte’s handbag.”
I felt as if I had swallowed a mouthful of rancid butter.
“Which blind pig?”
Only a short hesitation. “The Lacombes’ joint, in the old Reliable Cartage stables.”
I thought hard about that. I didn’t like his knowing May. What I couldn’t make his knowing her add up to was any involvement by May in Watt’s murder. Ivan wasn’t selling out a confederate, merely trying to deflect suspicion onto an easy target.
Ivan’s lips weren’t smiling, but his smirky little eyes showed he knew he had got to me. His choice of a French word was a sly reminder that he and I had both served in Europe and were men of the world. He could see I resented the intimacy, and—despite the jail time he faced—that made him cocky.
“Smells like this has been fired, Paul. Is it the murder weapon?”
Before I could bite his head off, there was a knock at the interview room door, and an apple-cheeked boy walked in.
“Hope I’m not interrupting, sergeant. Inspector Sanderson would like a word.”
I swept the stripling out the door and shut it behind us.
“The surest way to find out whether you’re interrupting,” I growled, “is to wait outside a closed door for permission to enter. Now who are you?”
His already rosy face turned redder under his straight blonde hair.
“Acting Detective Ned Cruickshank, sir. From Station Number One. I’ve been working with you on the Digby Watt murder. Guess we’ve never been in the office at the same time, but you may have read my reports. Incidentally, the ex-chauffeur Webster has an alibi, ironclad. Sorry to burst in on you—”
“Okay, Ned. I needed a rest from that bird. You carrying a flask?”
Cruickshank was too shocked to answer, but I could imagine if there were a flask in any pocket of his glaringly cheap new suit, it would be full of milk. When I’d been permitted to make the switch from uniforms to plain clothes, I received a dress allowance of ten cents a day. I doubted if the figure was much more generous now.
“No whisky? It’s a shame to put men in the field without equipment. Now look, Ned: the crime reporter Ivan MacAllister is behind this door. I’ve already had a look around his apartment, but I want you to take him to the Examiner office and search anywhere he might be able to keep anything at all. Don’t let him see you blush at what you find. Above all, make sure he destroys nothing. His desk is to be emptied, and everything that is not his employer’s property brought to me.”
“Should I get a search warrant first, in case he makes problems?”
“He removed the cartridge cases from the murder scene and can be charged at any time as an accessory. Maximum penalty: life. Keep that possibility before him, and you should find him pliant. You’ll be arresting him anyway as soon as you get him back here, but he doesn’t have to know that. Let him live in hope.”
“All right, sergeant. Is he the murderer?”
“Everything but, worse luck. Grill him a bit more while you’re out. What, apart from the shells, did he touch while he was alone with Watt?”
“Ah—yes, sergeant,” Cruickshank stammered. “By the way, the inspector—”
“I’m just going. For once, I’ll have something to tell him.”
Inspector Sanderson wasn’t prepared to listen to what I had to say until he had got off his chest his unhappiness at having to hear from Morris Watt about my old grudge against Peerless Armaments.
“So are you reassigning me?” I said as soon as I could shoehorn a word in.
“I’ve reassigned Knight instead,” Sanderson huffed from the middle of clouds of tarry pipe smoke. “You and Cruickshank are going to complete this assignment to my satisfaction. Can we make that Curtis chap swing?”
“We haven’t enough on him yet. But we’ve got the cartridge cases.”
“That’s nothing unless they lead us to the gun. Where did you get them?”
“The newspaperman took them.”
“Your old acquaintance, as I now discover—columnist for the Examiner.” Sanderson smacked his lips over the name of the paper he was so tired of hearing praised in his own home. His eyebrows bristled. “The bright light that started this ‘Who’s next?’ scare. Let’s string him up. He had what he supposed was a motive—and it’s the motive that best explains sabotaging the Gray-Dort. I’ve always thought that was a needless frill. If all the murderer wanted was to kill Watt, there’d have been time enough while Morris Watt was fetching the car, even if the car was sound. The pin must have been pulled out just to be cute. Bum shell, bum car—see?”
“Won’t wash,” I said. “The taxi driver gives him what amounts to an alibi. Ivan arrived on the scene no more than five minutes ahead of Morris Watt. In five minutes, he’d have had to hustle to photograph the corpse—yes, sir, he did—then tuck the camera and flash equipment back in his rucksack and pick up the shells. But he couldn’t count on having even five minutes. How was he to know that Morris would wander off to call a taxi before he returned to tell his father about the trouble with the Gray-Dort? Morris might have arrived back in front of 96 Adelaide Street West a good four or five minutes sooner—before MacAllister even. The conclusion is inescapable: the sabotage of the car shows that Digby Watt’s murder was planned, and if Ivan had planned it, he would have given himself more time.”
“You haven’t told MacAllister he’s no longer a suspect, have you?”
“No, sir.”
“Then convince the taxi driver he must be wrong. It was dark. His eyesight is bad.”
“Nope. I gave him an eye test.”
“His eyes must be bad. Or he’s bad with faces. Explain what a public service he’d be performing. The forces of law and order would look good. The public would feel safer.”
I laughed.
“Honestly, Paul.”
“Help innocent folk sleep better by sending an innocent man to the gallows?”
“Doubtless he’s—”
“Guilty of something else. Yes, inspector, in this case that’s true. MacAllister’s guilty of concealing evidence, and that’s serious enough to make me think we shouldn’t let him out of here tonight. But it’s a non-capital offence. Ivan MacAllister took the shells; he did not kill Digby Watt. Look on the bright side, sir. You’ve got the conspiracy you’ve been looking for, after all—although possibly an unplanned one.”
“I’d say you have a soft spot for an army pal. Toughen up, sergeant.”
“Gunners had their uses, sir, but they weren’t infantry. For MacAllister in particular, I’ve a feeling about as warm as for the dirt on my shoe. I wish he had done this murder. He didn’t do it, though, and I won’t frame him for it.”
Sanderson set down his pipe and pinched his lower lip.
“Paul,” he resumed in an avuncular tone, “I don’t like it when I have to hear from a murdered man’s son what I should be hearing from my own men. Why didn’t you tell me about this Ingersoll business?”
“I don’t like to talk about the war.”
“What’s liking got to do with it? And where were you anyway between one thirty and two thirty on the morning of the twentieth?”
“You’re fingering me for Watt’s murder?” I asked, once I’d massaged my dropped jaw back into working order.
“Certainly not, Paul—but if your conscience is troubling you, confession is good for the soul.”
I let that opportunity pass.
“What I’m getting at,” the inspector continued, “is that frequenting a bar or house of ill-fame except in the line of duty is a firing offence, and one I’m less likely to overlook in unproductive officers.”
“Thanks for the reminder,” I said, at this point almost indifferent to whether I stayed a cop. “May I remind the inspector in turn that an average year sees three murders in this town? Two of the three are murder-suicides and the third so well witnessed that no sleuthing is required. In view of the circumstances of yesterday’s murder, I respectfully submit that your detective force has not been dragging its heels. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go home and get some sleep. Just so you know where to send the notice of dismissal.”
I asked around the office what they thought Sanderson’s hurry was. Knight said the detective inspector’s brother-in-law was planning to use the Saturday edition of the Examiner to offer an expense-paid private bodyguard to any company president on Bay Street, with the implication that the police were incapable of keeping the business community safe. For the honour of the department, Sanderson meant to frustrate this stunt with an arrest before the weekend. I stopped asking after that.
I was pretty fed up. I didn’t go home, though. I found I could get the case out of my mind all right, but not the phrase “in a cocotte’s handbag”. I went through the rest of the photographs I’d removed from Ivan’s apartment. Those in the Premium folder, like that of Digby Watt, seemed to have been taken for personal rather than for commercial reasons. Ivan used himself more often as a model, as if he were enacting his own fantasies, with partners both male and female. But the picture I was looking for and dreading wasn’t there. I didn’t get it until, about an hour later, Cruickshank brought me the contents of Ivan’s desk.
It was in its own brown envelope, marked “not currently for sale”. It was of May on her knees looking up at the photographer with the photographer’s long penis well down her throat, her lipstick-enhanced lips wrapped snugly around the shaft. She wore a black silk mask, but I recognized the mole halfway down the right side of her nose. And the sweet, cheeky look in her eyes.
Ivan had been with her last night. Just after eleven p.m., he’d said. That’s when he’d seen the gun in her handbag. The picture might have been taken on another day entirely, or minutes before I arrived at Dolores and Ernie’s. I closed my eyes, but found I liked what I saw then even less. If I’d put anything in my stomach since lunch, it would have come up.
Cruickshank was sitting across from me, fussing with some magnesium flash powder found in another of Ivan’s desk drawers, making too obvious an effort not to look at the photo. When my phone rang, he beat me to it.
“Yes . . . Yes, sir. Could you hold on a moment, please?” With his hand over the mouthpiece, he said, “It’s Professor Linacre, sergeant, calling about those cartridge cases. He thinks an Italian gun—”
I snatched the phone out of the acting detective’s hand.
“Shenstone here, professor. Can I have that once more?”
“Yes. As I say, marks left by the extractor and traces from the ejector are most consistent with rounds fired from a Beretta semi-automatic pocket pistol, the Model 1919. They couldn’t possibly have come from the Spanish Prince you fired into my box this afternoon.”