The first dozen pages of, Ashes of Trevor, a novel-length detective mystery infused with the stories and spirit of Toronto at the peak of the City’s confidence and prosperity, right on the cusp of the Great Recession. The novel will be up for sale on Amazon when editing is completed in the summer. Featured cover art by Brisbane-based graphic designer Steven Warenycia.

Ashes of Trevor

by M.G. Warenycia

I.

The impasto swirl of lavender and ultramarine which compassed the span of human sight told of life and energy; the same vernal vitality that plumped the maples like sprung umbrellas and painted fuchsia clouds over the blackened skeletons of the crabapple and cherry trees. The surf lapped with uncharacteristic timidity against the stone piles which held back the waters more sea than lake. Soccer moms jogged alongside playful retrievers, truants took a respite from their studies; the boardwalk which ran the length of this and adjoining beaches, while hardly crowded, had an extra complement of visitors eager to enjoy the first spell of really pleasant weather since Boreas plunged the great metropolis into shivering demi-twilight some six months prior. In the distance, a silvery glitter poked above an umbrous willow.

“Another one going up!” an aged voice of inconclusive accent muttered beneath brows more gloomy than the southerly stormclouds. “How can anybody live like that? You know, fifteen or twenty years ago, they said we’re all gonna have to start living like the Japanese? ‘Rabbit hutch’ apartments, people getting squeezed into subway trains like meat into a sausage casing. I said, nah, that’s stupid. And, if you visited Japan, you’d know that’s mostly just Tokyo, anyway. Even the Japanese were realizing it was a mistake, too. And what’s their excuse?” he pointed to the tower, which loomed too close for comfort. “There’s no reason I can see for it.” He swept his arm across the horizon to suggest the foolishness of people choosing to dwell in tiny rented boxes in the sky when there were vast swatch of undeveloped land all around the City.

“Gosh, I dunno; guess they want ta be like folks in New York ‘er Tokyo, like you say,” replied his companion, a tall, younger man whose scalp and brawny forearms were both covered with coarse ginger hair. “’Course, I’m from Up North myself, eh, so I could never get used to it.” Then, almost apologetically, he added: “Then again, maybe, people are working so much these days, you don’t have ta worry about cutting yer lawn, or shovelling snow.”

The older man’s grumbling was the equal of any Craftsman yard-clearing device. “Still, it goes to the root of civil society. Believe me. The architects and developers can say whatever they want. Vertical communities, ach! We humans don’t operate in vertical spaces; we operate horizontally. You need mixed-used neighbourhoods, mixed-class too, if you can. People encounter each other naturally in day-to-day life, interact. The public spaces are always visible, owned by the residents –“

“’Defensible spaces,’ right, we learn that in Situational Crime Prevention.”

“Right! Crime, too. When you know your neighbours, can see…take your tower block apartments, and compare them with a farming village in Guya-uhh, a fishing village on Sint Maarten or a feudal settlement in northern India. But, hey, gives you guys more work, doesn’t it?”

“Heheh, yeah, guess you could say that!”

“Yeah, which people like me pay for…”

“Don’t universities get most of their funding from the government, though? Which would mean that yer salary is…”

“Vertical communities!” The old professor waved his hand, simultaneously dismissing the off-duty policeman’s argument and drawing his attention to a tree, an especially large specimen that stood out among the beachside grove. “I’m not saying they don’t exist in Nature. Ehh, right in front of you. If you think about it, a lot of different cultures have got architectural ideas from Nature. Domes, beehives. The whole idea of cement, debatably. Wattle-and-daub walls – just need to have watched some species of birds building their nests. But that – that?!?!” he jabbed his chin at the distant tower. “Where’s the analogy to, say, a mature healthy tree, in these condo towers? It’s mere space. And hideous!”

The policeman nodded, holding his tongue regarding how the professor had purchased a charming Victorian house a few blocks from where they stood, while enjoying a globe-trotting, socially rich life that would now appear obscenely irresponsibly to any high school guidance counsellor, let alone to a struggling young couple. Times were different now, the officer reflected; what’s more, most people didn’t seem to have the slightest awareness that a change was on the horizon; a change of such overwhelming magnitude that the very complexion and direction of people’s lives would be altered by the millions without them noticing.

“It’s the subtle things, see. Those are the differences that really count. Yeah,” the professor tapped the tree’s bloated trunk with a stick. “You realize, even if we don’t chop down a single tree, the urban forest – the vegetation of the City, taken as a whole – it’ll be unrecognizable in a dozen years. I mean, to someone who knows one tree from the next. Most people won’t have a clue. Wonder if it’ll play with people’s psychology, the change in the ‘average green’ of the landscape or the ratio of sunny to shady spots – depends on what they replace them with, of course.”

“Wha…what d’ya mean?”

“I’m talking about this.”

“Gosh, geez…”

“Bah, it won’t hurt you.”

“Sure, but ya don’t have ta shove it in my face. It’s a…?” The policeman bent to inspect an object on the end of the stick the professor was holding. It was tiny and caught the sunlight like a forbidden gem.

“That,” the professor cocked his head towards the tree; “Is a glorious specimen of Fraxinus americana, common name: white ash. That is a Agrilus planipennis, the emerald ash borer.”

“The beetle?” the constable asked redundantly.

“The beetle!” The professor flung the stick among some hummocks of bunch grass. “Eugh! About nine percent of all the trees in this City, one for every three residents, is an ash tree. Because of that iridescent insect, they’ll all be dead. I told them at the Ward Committee meeting. They said they have no records of emerald ash borers here; have to send out researchers, form a subcommittee. You watch, though – in two, three years, heck, maybe next summer, if the winter is mild. Then, they’ll be sending out tree removal teams. They’ll have to cut them down. Every single one. There’s no resistant strains, no effective treatment.”

“Hmph. S’pose they’re worried about liability, if one of ‘em fell on somebody’s house. Lots’a real high-end properties around here. Heheh, I tell ya, Doc, hangin’ out with you is like going ta university fer free.”

“Better. Anyway, you were going to tell me about some cases you’re working on? When are they gonna give you that promotion?…”

II.

“Good morning to you, too, Peter. I’m Rita Ramachandran, reporting live from the Scott Mission at 502 Spadina Avenue, which is one of the last reported locations where anyone saw or heard from Dylan Coleman. Staff and guests here both recall Dylan staying at the Mission intermittently during the past four to six weeks and he may have been here as recently as last Thursday night. However, none of his personal effects remain for police to examine for clues and a police spokesperson says it is too early to comment on any leads.”

The photogenic, blazer-clad Tamil maiden held the microphone awkwardly far from herself, hoping that viewers would not notice her efforts to restrain her breathing. Mercifully, the camera shifted focus to a grizzled man wrapped in a couple soiled windbreakers. “I know when I saws the posters. I says a myself, Christ, eh, just saw him like, oh, a couple days ago, eh. ‘Cept everybody here called him Justin, if they knew him. I mean, I didn’t really know him, ya know. He was a quiet kid, kept to himself. Come ‘n go when he needed. Ya don’t really ask questions, ya know.”

The camera switched to a hopeful-looking young shelter worker, labelled “Rev. Peter Houseman: “We provide a refuge, mainly. We’ll help facilitate access to counselling and treatment, but we don’t enforce it. Persons come here of their own free will. If you’re asking whether Dylan seemed troubled, yes, he did, but people do not come through our doors because they are healthy and their lives are well in order…No, no, he never talked to me about feeling threatened or scared, personally. I would have contacted police, but there was nothing like that.”

“Well, Peter, there you have it,” Rita gasped. “There’s just so much about Dylan’s life in Toronto that’s a blank page at the moment, it’s difficult to draw any conclusions.”

“Thank you, Rita,” Anchorman Peter Marlborough’s sober accents acknowledged. “Perhaps we can learn more about who Dylan Coleman is by talking to those who knew him best.” The anchor flinched, wanting to curse himself for the Freudian slip, but he carried on seamlessly. “We have on the Colemans on the line live from North Bay. Let’s go there now.”

The screen focused on a grainer feed, evidently starting somewhere in the middle of an interview being conducted by an on-site reported. The camera focused on the obvious parental couple. The text on the screen read “Rob Browning – Sue Coleman (Parents).” The man, who had a stern military bearing, sign of his employment at the local RCAF base, spoke first. “I don’t agree with the direction the police there are taking, sorry. I’m not an expert in psychology or anything like that, but Dylan would not simply ‘go missing.’ We know our son and, frankly, the cops in Toronto, he’s just a number in a case file to them. I don’t know how you can think somebody would want to disappear by choice, for no reason at all. He was a good kid, hard worker, never got into any trouble, besides the usual stuff, growing up. Half the question they’re asking us, I don’t know what it’s for, except so somebody can make overtime.”

“I just…” Dylan’s mother’s voice broke with sobs; “I just want my baby back in one piece. That’s it; that’s all.” Her mouth moved as if she wished to say more, but no intelligible words emerged.

The newsfeed returned to Miss Ramachandran. “There you have it, Peter. The parents are not happy with the way police are handling this investigation.”

“It certainly seems like that, Rita. We should give credit though, to the Toronto Police Service for taking prompt action on even imperfect reports coming out about a potential criminal event that would have been neglected or ignored only a decade or two ago. At least that was the statement of AEqualis Toronto on this story. Now we bring you live to 52 Division headquarters, where police are giving an official statement on this case…”

From the appearance of the Superintendent standing behind the podium, one could be forgiven for thinking it was high summer and the AC had broken down. “…It is my regret to say so, but unfortunately, if that is what the family are telling you, I must say there is nothing we have found to support it…No, I am saying we do not believe this was a voluntary disappearance and we do believe foul play is involved…Obviously, we cannot release all the evidence publicly at this time; goodness, we’re right in the middle of…Yes, evidence…Both statements of witnesses – probably witnesses – and the circumstances, all indicate…” A reporter asked a question, inaudible on TV, which the Superintendent must have found impudent in the extreme. “The community? The Community! Consulting? With whom?…We keep residents informed, yes, but at this stage…Impact? Public perception? I don’t know, ugh! We don’t even have a suspect yet, so I can hardly comment on what the impact of the investigation will be on the Community…Yes, relations with the police have been strained in the past, but the policy of conciliation and cooperation of the last fifteen or so…” His voice grew weak and dull as he repeated a script learned by rote…

III.

“Disgusting! It’s disgusting he thinks we’re disgusting! Look at the way he curls his lips, fat sausage lips. You wonder what shady business he gets up to in his spare time.” The bar patron was fuming over his Lakan Extra Premium Lambanog. He was balding, bespectacled; a dense beard, cropped tight, ran around the circumference of his face. Muscles bulged under his sleeves and a paunch swelled over his belt buckle, but his cheeks were sunken and papery.

The bartender and the other patrons eyed him with an uneasy mixture of deference and disapproval. They were mostly well-to-do and pale. The lips comment, ehhh…and ‘shady’? Why, in the context…There was much shuffling of glutes atop barstools, absentminded tapping of coaster rims on wood, and ploughing of cold condensation with fingertips.

“You shouldn’t…people might take it the wrong…” a drinker half-heartedly mumbled without finishing the thought.

“It’s good they’re representing more diverse communities now,” offered another, to which the ranter snapped:

“Do you feel represented by any of those guys up there, huh? Do you know what it feels like to see those badges and jackboots crashing in on you when you’re in the steam room, vulnerable…argh! Yeah, yeah, bet you know what a nightstick on your ass at three a.m. feels like. And did anyone stick up for you?” Him…and him, and her – all of them, they represent Mr. and Mrs. White Picket Fence, the burbs, respectability. They wish you didn’t exist. But, hey, who cares about history, right?”

The other patrons hung their heads, humbled, but the bartender, a man as venerable in the Community as the bearded haranguer, took umbrage. “Nobody’s saying don’t care about history, Matt. Come on, look at me: I was writing articles for Q-Dition, back when it was printed once a month on a mimeograph in a schoolteacher’s garage. Didn’t pay so good as this gig, either, and that’s saying a lot. I got harassed, got put in lock-up a couple times, had to deal with all that shit. Point is, though, it’s history. I’m happy – we all should be happy – that those days are gone and people like this guy –“ he jabbed his chin towards a younger patron, a university student – “Don’t have to go through what we did. I mean, if they did, then what did we fight so hard for all those years?”

The ranter finished his drink hastily and stomped out. The others did not share their neighbour’s blind hatred of the police. They were concerned by the news playing on the ceiling-mounted television, though they’d been but dimly conscious of the goal. When he went home and slept that night, the bartender would dream a long and vivid dream. He was in a park, thickly wooded but well maintained. He was not sure how he got there, but it was the sort of place he enjoyed jogging or cycling in, so he set out to explore it. Rain was on the way. He had no umbrella. There were houses, subdivisions; he could see their roofs and chimneys protruding among the treeline. But it would take him quite a while to reach them. There was probably a mall, with a food court, too. His stomach felt hollow. With the rain coming down now, he could foretell that his pants would become soaked through and his loafers would become slop buckets, so he sought shelter in a grove of trees, whose massive crowns of saw-toothed, generically-shaped leaves were conveniently broad and spreading, forming perfect vegetable umbrellas. The leaves caught almost all of the droplets. Unable to wander around and explore, and with no companions nearby, he grew instantly bored and focused, as a bored man often does, on the minute details of his surroundings, so as to provide coal for the boilers of his mind. The grass was evenly trimmed. One would naturally expect a great deal of leaves, twigs and other arboreal detritus upon the grass, given the setting, but the lawn was picked clean as a wheatfield in a time of famine. Everyone else must have see the stormclouds approaching, or else he would have encountered people shuffling hastily towards the hidden parking lots, hoodies drawn up over their heads or newspapers shielding their eyes and hairdos. A hundred and fifty years and more the trees must have grown there; a place preserved and protected, and not a belated attempt to rectify the sins of Man by declaring a park after strip mining or clearcutting. Birds there were; he could hear them. Robins, awaiting a meal of post-shower worms; starlings. As the sky grew darker and the rain fell heavier, the amount of water getting to him through the leaves did not appreciably increase, but the birdsong changed. The cheery songbirds of the day were replaced by the hooting, barking and whooping of the birds of the night, who, as if in deference to human prejudices, wear a sinister aspect. As he listened, the queer whistling and whooping grew louder and louder, till he was not sure whether it was birds he was listening to, after all. The appearance of a pair of luminous red eyes a couple feet from ground level, unsettled him. A coyote? Luminous they were, literally, for, like a highway patrolman’s MagLight in the eyes of a pulled-over inebriate, their glow washed out the form surrounding them, although it was clear that it blinked and ducked behind the trunks of trees and the rims of boulders. Soon after, other pairs of eyes, likewise glowing and red, emerged from the nocturnal blackness, only to disappear and reappear in a more disconcerting spot. He felt a strong sensation of familiarity, alongside that of fear, though where that familiarity came from in time and place, or whether it was a delusion, he could not be sure. He felt scared enough that he wasn’t embarrassed to cry out, though he stopped after the first sputtered moan, aware that the folks in those distant houses would not hear him, especially in this rain. His tense gaze shifted increasingly quickly left to right and back again, playing a game of whack-a-mole with the blinking and shifting lights. The trunk of the ancient tree gave him reassurance; four feet at least, across the middle. That he could not see behind him gave him comfort that no threat was present in that direction…until he felt the undulation; the rattling and pulsing transmitted into his spine through the wrinkled bark.

His reason slipped and he let out a loud, futile wail, cut off by the sound of the tenants on the floor below shutting their windows, filling him with shame and confusion.

IV.

“Oh my friggin…!” The barista had already been tired, white rings of sweat salt and antiperspirant staining the underarm of her black uniform t-shirt. She was wearing it for the second overtime shift in a row because she’d been too worn-out to do laundry when the machines in her building were free. Her fingers were the colour of a hided watermelon from the bleach, Ajax and other cleaning chemicals she could not pronounce. Judith, the floor manager, could see that and obviously knew the hours everyone was schedules. Yet, Judith assigned her to clean the men’s room, first thing after she had come back from break. The Z-Teca burrito was lying hot in its foil wrapping upon the counter. She’d carefully suited up with gloves, apron…she needed a hazmat suit. The urinal cakes were fresh, the porcelain therein clean-scoured, but the stall…what must have been the entire roll of toilet paper…how could anyone…The edges of the outer sheets fluttered like feathers in the current from the vent and the open door. The bulk of the sheets were held firm to the floor by liquid mass, and by the adhesive action of the said liquids towards the tile as they slowly gummed. Spray or splatter covered the inside of the urinal door, flapping loosely on its hinges. Handprints, full handprints of blood, still bright crimson, marked the white walls and, by the sinks, a certain quantity of it had been used to trace crude symbols – they were definitely symbols, or intended to be such – probably with a finger, though Amy couldn’t be sure.

Dazed, Amy retraced her steps, watching lest she accidentally come into contact with some hitherto unnoticed residues. A parka-clad student shoved past her in obvious urgency. “N-nooo!” She seized his sleeve.

“Hey, what the f*ck are you doing?” he shook her off. He should have listened. He and his coffee companion fled from the café seconds later.

“That’s the fastest clean on record,” Judith snarled from behind the cash. “Ummm, you can’t just leave the mop and bucket, unless you’re expecting the customers to clean it for you. Actually, that does sound like you.”

“N-no, Judith…I’m not…I can’t…”

“If you’re such a spoiled princess, you shouldn’t have got a job in food service. Leave the money for people actually willing to work for it.”

“Judith…I…I think we should call the police? Maybe? Like, if there’s that much…something must have happened. I mean, right?”

“Police? What happened? Nobody made a report.”

Armando, who was restocking the pastry case, looked up sheepishly. “Umm, ackshually, there was dis homeless guy that ran out like ten minutes ago. You were in the back. He had like, six or seven coats on him.” Armando spun a finger around his ear. He had not glimpsed the inside of the restroom, but he could put two and two together.

The two or three customers ordering drinks and food who stood nearest to the counter could overhear the employees’ conversation. Worried looks passed between them as they contemplated how close to completion a frappe could be before they cancelled their order. Those farther from the counter stiffened with alertness, perceiving a sudden change in the mood but unsure of the cause and too timid to ask.

No one noticed yet another deranged, disoriented homeless man shambling along Dundas Street. That was, of course, until he stood for a time which even to the casual passer-by and the more so to the staff and patrons inside, staring gape-mouthed and trance-eyed at the window, or the sign, or the people inside of the Tuen Mun BBQ restaurant. Eventually, the creeped-out head chef set down his cleaver and shoved his nose against the window, giving everyone else the unconscious signal they needed to justify abandoning whatever they were doing to gawk. The few who possessed cell phones with cameras drew them out to snap grainy pictures for posting to internet forums. The panicked manager called the police.

V.

Questioning of the lunatic was abruptly suspended when the officers became aware that he was seriously injured, as evidenced by the bloodstains on his lower pant legs and the fresh defensive wounds visible when he finally removed his hands from the Michelin Man ensemble of coats and scarves enfolding him. There was no way to tell what happened to him, gibbering as he was, plus certain aspects of his appearance led the officers to believe he might infect them with something, or some animal living on him, should they attempt to wrestle a pair of cuffs on him. They let the paramedics take him away. They’d barely finished calming down the restaurateur and feeding him the perfunctory advice on accommodating the presence of disturbing vagrants when eh bulleting came to go back and do a proper questioning of witnesses. Other officers would see the ME. Dylan Coleman had been located…and it looked like a homicide.

“You ever have a problem with homeless people around here before?” Constable Lambrakis waited patiently for the obviously never-fully-assimilated owner of the restaurant to process the question.

The small man, dapperly dressed in an out-of-date black suit, grabbed hunches of his long hair. “No, no. Yes, sometimes, go in garbage, looking food we throw away. In back. But never make trouble.”

“Yah-huh,” Lambrakis scribbled in his notebook. “Was this one of the men you saw poking through your trash before?”

“No. Nevah see him before. Neh-vah.”

“You sure? They all kind of look alike, sometimes.”

“Nevah, sorry.”

The customers had proven hopeless. At most, they tried to exaggerate details plainly within the officers’ memory, to make the incident seem more graphic than it was. None of them knew it was a homicide investigation – what could they have ‘seen,’ then? Lambrakis wondered…

Spring is a slow time for murder in Toronto and thus a good time for detectives to take a holiday. Detective Constable Doulas McMurtry, with his experience operating in the area, was assigned to the case as soon as he began his shift. By that hour, in the late afternoon, there was no sign at the Tuen Mun that anything out of the ordinary had occurred, a light rain having washed away any stray droplets of blood. Constable Jennifer Koo, McMurtry’s partner, looked inquiringly at him as they stood below the neon sign depicting a sampan, red on yellow, alongside the like-coloured block script and bold calligraphic characters. Her eyes asked permission to go tear into the restaurant staff. There were a number of businesses in the Division where she was forbidden, if not when in uniform.

“Lambrakis doesn’t think anybody here has any connection to the victim,” the Canuck mused, recalling the briefing he got from the initial investigating officers. “Says everyone they talked to came across honest, and none of them were much help. I tend to agree with him. I mean, sounds like this Coleman kid was really off his rocker.”

“Why?” Koo asked in a thoughtful whisper.

“I figger from how he was yammering like a maniac, when he talked, if he was saying words at all. That and his appearance. Y’know, hasn’t shaved in five days, wrapped up in enough coats ‘n jackets to roast a normal –“

“Argh! You’re like a brick, sometimes! I meant, why do you think he ended up like that?”

“Well, ya know, a lot of these guys – not the Indians, though – a lot of them were hard working guys once, feedin’ their families, payin’ their taxes. But then they got hurt, ‘n workman’s comp’s not enough. Wife leaves ‘em, he gets on the bottle. Or the mine, or the factory – all the good union jobs, eh – they all close down. Yer seeing more ‘n more of it now, with all this offshoring stuff going on. Comes into Toronto ‘cause he gets a little work fer a while, or thought he could, or fer some kind of treatment, maybe. The homeless shelters are full-up, and you’ve got a ten, twelve year wait fer assisted housing, but ya need it next month, eh. Then, you find yourself fighting fer a warm spot on a sewer grate. Not like there’s anywhere else, is there?”

Jenny’s contrarian instinct revolted, yet her brain struggled to come up with anything. “Wait, though…”

“Huh?”

“That doesn’t sound like this guy, though. He was just a kid, not some Baby Boomer factory worker.”

“No, guess it doesn’t. Huh. Bad home?”

Jenny hurried him along on their work, sparing him from getting deflated by further argument. “CAMH is right down the street,” she suggested, but that line of inquiry was ended at the front desk, as no Dylan Coleman appeared on the institution’s records and none of the sane individuals on duty recognized his photo, except from the news.

The City was beginning to twinkle in the first shades of twilight when Constables McMurtry and Koo strolled back south on Spadina to 52 Division headquarters. A spark of inspiration, or rather accumulated years of open-eyed experience hit McMurtry. “Should have checked in here before anything!” He smirked, forcing Jenny to follow as he ducked into the tile-fronted LCBO on the corner of Baldwin and Spadina. In a country with much unacknowledged Puritan blood coursing through its veins, ‘The Liquor Store’ carries unsavoury connotations by name alone. However, as LCBO locations go, the Baldwin-Spadina outlet has a uniquely notorious reputation almost on a level with the McDonald’s at Dufferin and King. Despite apparently deliberate attempts to compensate with frequent renovations and a conspicuously bright exterior colour scheme, all the porous surfaces of the building are stained and reeking as soon as they are pressure-washed, and cigarette butts and other, more disquieting refuse collect with the dust and road salt in the seams of the concrete and asphalt. It even has its own temporary tenants; an Air BnB open to the sky. While history has generally proven the Prohibitionists wrong, if one ever wished for a place in Toronto to showcase the scourge of Daemon Rum, there could be few equal and none better. Here, the dregs of the downtown lumpenproletariat flock to purchase Oblivion with the residue of welfare cheques, the pay of brutalizing labour jobs (‘an honest day’s toil’) and the coinage deposited into coffee cups by pedestrians rich in misguided guilt. One might ask if the provincial government feels at least a little bit embarrassed having their name stamped above such a morally questionable trade, but it is too lucrative to privatize.

As on every Friday during Rush Hour, the place was packed, the regulars outnumbered by university students stocking up for the weekend’s recreation. Behind the counters were an acne-faced lad barely old enough to drink himself, a Madrasi housewife with perpetually startled eyes, and a rock-jawed matron who spoke with the Ulster-tinged accents of the orchard country beyond the metropolitan borders.

“Do you know this guy?” McMurtry showed the photograph to the cashiers.

“Yes, I see, news, ka-henh,” Lilawattie muttered, nodding her head as fast as the syllables left her mouth.

“No, no, I mean did you ever see him in here? Buy stuff, steal stuff?”

“No, no, I-I don’t know here,” the cashier tried to serve the next customer, terrified of appearing unproductive to her bosses. The customer shifted awkwardly on his feet – he could see the cops were doing something and, what the…he was supposed to shove a uniformed policeman out of the way, or rush around him or something?

Jenny peered over the cashier to examine the array of personas non grata, of which there were many tiny security camera portraits stuck on a bulletin board.

“Let me see what’cher lookin’ at,” the other cashier rasped, forgetting her work entirely. “It’s the kid on the news, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Jenny confirmed; “But we don’t want to put it out there too obvious, because people bog us down with fake tips, if they think we’re investigating.”

“You found him?”

“Uhhh…I’m not at liberty to…”

“Well, I’ll see it on the news anyhow, tonight, won’t I, eh? I do know him, if ya want ta hear it. Seen him a few times, yeah. Polite little feller, quiet. Wouldn’t say I know him personal, but you know. Right, Lil? He’s been in here, right? The kid in the picture they got there.”

Lilawattie moaned and hummed in incomprehensible anguish, shaking her head.

“Did you check his ID?”

“…” The apple farmer’s daughter shrunk. She remembered hearing something about that kid’s age on the news, which meant…

“What did he buy, usually?” McMurtry asked. There was no way of tracking who sold what to customers with apparently valid ID, who paid cash on unknown occasions, months ago. The woman was shaking in her boots over nothing.

“Hmm…Lili, do you remember?” the Canadian tried subtly (she thought) to shift responsibility, as if Liliwattie must have for some reason been Dylan’s ‘regular’ cashier.

“Eee-ugh…” Much hissing and muttering.

“Hmm, well, I didn’t serve him too often, but, I seem ta remember…coolers? Rosé? Sweet wines, pink wine, that sort of thing.” She forgot herself watching the handsome cop scribbling on his notepad. “Oh, and there’s this, this special wine, from Hungaria? Sweet wine, too, I think. He asked fer it by name once. I remember, because it’s one of those things that never moves off the shelves. He had ta write it down fer me. Unusual tastes, huh?”

“Uh-huh. Do you, uh, if you remember from any ID, maybe, know where he might have lived? Maybe he had a shelter card in his wallet? They’re light blue pieces of paper with the City logo on ‘em.”

“Shelter?”

“You know, fer homeless people.”

“I never figured he was homeless, I guess. I dunno.”

“You never figured? His appearance didn’t, uh, give you any hints?”

“Well, I mean, I didn’t think he was a student, because, y’know, not ta judge, but the way he talked. Like he hadn’t got a lot of education. But he was always clean shaven, and…” she leaned to whisper to the detective: “He didn’t smell, y’know?”

“He didn’t smell?!?” The detective practically bellowed in surprise.

The cashier looked with nervous terror at the bearded, drowsy forms wrapped in stained overcoats standing further back in the line and imagine the righteous indignation they were surely feeling. She whispered even more quietly, “You know, the smell those people have? You can tell; musty, yick!”

“He didn’t smell?” McMurtry tapped his chin meditatively, then threw his colleague a meaningful glance. “It’s just a hunch, but tell me if ya think this makes any sense. So, this is things I heard, growing up, or from older guys on the force…”

VI.

The electric beat was pulsing as hard as the veins in Cyrus Gilani’s temples; the fog of cologne and vodka and sweat seemed to conduct electricity as well as vibrations like Tesla’s ether. The resurgence of a late winter flu had made Cyrus sluggish and cranky since he woke up at 2:45 pm, and he was not pleased to have to step out in the bracing night air, but the constant vibrations of his phone were driving him mad.

He didn’t recognize the number. It was in his contacts as Maitland Grange, but the yammering voice on the other end of the line did not sound like a ‘Maitland.’ “Ah-halloh, halloh, stop talking so f*cking fast. What is it? Who are you?”

The caller sounded half asleep and wholly drunk. He identified himself as Jurgis Mindaugas and claimed to have been hired by Cyrus’ father two years earlier to superintend one of his properties. This Mr. Mindaugas described it as a medium-sized apartment building; a block of dark bricks that preserved archaic features, like iron fire escapes and windows with real sills. “Right, right, I remember my dad showing it to me once,” Cyrus assured him, though he had no memory of the place. However, the address and age of it rang enough of a bell for him to infer that it must have been one of the properties he’d inherited from his father.

According to Mindaugas, while his tenants were normally discrete (which was how he preferred it), over the past two days, first the theatre manager by the fourth floor elevator, then the Mexican ‘students’ in the rearmost unit on the third floor had been complaining about a smell, though they could not agree on what it was nor on the source. It was possibly on the third and maybe on the fourth – sickly sweet, or rotten, a blocked drain or a rat in the walls. The superintendent himself could swear he scented something as the elevator doors were opening on both those floors, but, then, the elevator shaft runs the length of the building and the scent, which he struggled to describe, was absent from the halls.

“Whah..shit, okay, do you have any idea what it is? Why are you calling me now?”

The superintendent’s voice fell soft and deferential. The Mexicans claimed to have heard a banging or a loud popping. Mindaugas offered that it might be the retired chemistry professor also on the fourth floor, conducting experiments which the superintendent had observed on a past visit to his unit. Why didn’t he just knock on the door and find out?

As the liquored Lithuanian layered on the excuses, Cyrus began to see that he was afraid of his tenants and had no real understanding of the knowledge one reasonably expects a building superintendent to have. He was probably given the job as make-work by Cyrus’ late father, as a favour in recompense for some now-forgotten assistance rendered to the elder Gilani during his first years in Canada, before he became an obscenely wealthy businessman. Mindaugas didn’t live at the building. The place was not very particular, but the residents…how to say? Mr. Gilani, senior, had explained it to him when he was installed on the job. The residents were very particular about each other, and, while all colours, ages and occupations were tolerated, a man like Mr. Mindaugas would make the residents ill at ease if he was always there, listening and poking around.

“I see…Okay, and, I guess, you can’t go doing unit inspections, if the tenants aren’t there when you are?”

Oh, absolutely not, the super insisted. Even if there was a dripping dark leak coming out of a unit’s pipes, you didn’t just knock and ask to come in and have a peek. He’d made that mistake before. “I never know who is the real tenant unless I check the book!”

“Argh! Okay, okay. What do you want me to do about it?”

“Well, I, ah, I ask you, because you, you are the owner. I don’t know, I listen, whatever you say.”

Cyrus hung up and got a mate to drive him back to his apartment, where he would repose for the next couple days. Business! Sickness was a refuge; maybe people would stop bothering him for a while. Did it matter, this maintenance issue in one of his many, many buildings? Urgh! But the tenants there did pay some fat rents, and the margins were fantastical, given the abysmal standard of maintenance and the generally sturdy nature of old buildings like that. Maybe someone’s door needed to be unlocked? Ahhh, but that would be someone with a hidden nanny-cam, who would sue him before the Landlord and Tenant Board. TREB would take his license with another of these cases. So, he would need a warrant, but a warrant meant involving the police, which he was loath to do. But how ‘involved’ could they bem heh? A piece of paper, get it stamped…Then again, the inescapable inference asserted itself: folk who insist on such secrecy and discretion would undoubtedly have things – or people – in their dwellings that would be of more than passing interest to the police; that would be ‘in plain sight’ and then excuse further investigation, which would bring news cameras at some point…He wondered how soon he could get a contractor to cart away the illuminated “Gilani Developments Ltd” sign from the building’s lawn…

VII.

Toronto is not like New York, for it definitely sleeps, although its hours of slumber vary with the day and seasons. This Friday night felt so long that Kwok Chung Yee found himself imagining that it was summer, a delusion temporarily dispelled every time he went out for a smoke break, which was even more often than usual tonight. No respectable foodie blog would declare it, but customers eager for a plate of char siu fan and the crispiest, most luminously red siu mei goose were drawn in like moths to his heat lamp display and the neon glow of the Tuen Mun BBQ sign. The very tackiness of it and its seemingly retro (though actually quite accidental) linkages to certain zeitgeistal images of ‘Chinatown’ in Western popular culture acted upon the unconscious minds of passers-by (other than students at the nearby campuses and personal friends from the suburbs, no one ever actually sought out the Yuen Mun BBQ). The atmosphere and deliciously grisly display window did its part on the more conscious whims of any who had read too many vintage National Geographic articles about Hong Kong or watched too many subtitled Cantonese movies on the OMNI network or pirated VCD. Business was good, and he could not toss out a packed house; not till twenty or thirty minutes after posted closing, at least. A full clean was not done; the staff were shoed out, and Kwok Chung Yee finally got to clear his head – though first he had the head waiter move Chung Yee’s minivan to the curb out front. He didn’t mention that it was because he did not want to be starting it – or running to it – in the shadowed demi-courtyard out back.

Chung Yee merged with the still-abundant current of walkers on Spadina – it was a clubbing night. The bright lights and coarse commercial vitality were like a blanket to a fearful child. He was afraid of the dark, and he knew it. A dragon fruit that strayed from one of the polychrome produce pyramids struck the top of his shoe right when the thought resurfaced. A sign? His sister believed in such things and that’s why she hadn’t gone into business with him all those years ago. Or, rather, she had, but backed out. He began weighing up the relative luck in life of him versus Chun Fa, and, owing to his mood, found his own side of the scale tipping aloft. It was true that Chun Fa and her friend Hsiao Foong’s florist shop earned much, much less than the Tuen Mun BBQ, but her husband was a lawyer and they had not suffered the obvious and dramatic events of great misfortune that had befallen Chung Yee and his ex-wife. There was the divorce, first of all. He hadn’t intended for ‘Apple’ to be anything more than the immediately forgotten massage parlour entertainment she was. He had forgotten her, literally. Alas, the piquant pixie worked nearby…There were massage parlours everywhere, and he had a car, yet he’d been so lazy! Being conveniently close, Apple and her colleagues fuelled their nocturnal industry near their work, and, on a white and wicked January night, the radiant glow and lung-warming fumes roiling out of a busy char siu joint are salvation itself. It was a busy place, Apple and her pals observed; so many customers, buying so much food, and at prices that were not excessively economical. Neither meat nor sauce betrayed the faintest trace of corner-cutting in their succulent savour. At first, the restaurant owner did not recognize Apple in her parka, but Apple recognized a potential goldmine – the creed of her class being to try every shot, no matter how shameless or hopeless – and Mrs. Kwok, who was eating there, after shopping on the town, recognized adultery.

Apple paid for her meal, while Chung Yee paid for Apple with approximately half his earthly property. He sought sympathy from his sister. He had forgotten that she had ever told him so. Oh yes, she had, she insisted, back when he bought the restaurant, or, rather, the equipment needed to set up a restaurant, along with the business license. She’d never had any objection to the premises itself, which, though not ideal from a feng shui perspective (it was laid out, after all, by a penny-pinching Edwardian Scotsman), was not objectionable either.

The ranges, ventilators, one of the freezers, the original supply of silverware and pots, even the signs and trading name, he’d all purchased from another restaurateur, a Viet who, it was said, had lived in Tuen Mun as a refugee a couple years before coming to Canada in ’83. Why they were abandoning ship was not something he recalled, though he never heard from them after the purchase and had long since lost their names and contact info. All the equipment was in top condition – the original owners seemed strangely reticent about the work of cooking and serving food to people, though there were enough of them in that family to make a slender custom light work indeed. He’d tried to guess their real angle, but they didn’t seem to have the charisma and robust constitutions for underworld work. Their social skills, even among locals of the neighbourhood, were dreadful. Then again, they dressed unassumingly and economical little Nissans, so maybe there was no other angle to the situation. The curious thing was that they were selling a restaurant, effectively, and a decent one by neighbourhood standards…yet they were not selling the premises. It seemed pointless to move everything a block and half away, but they did the work, so Chun Yee couldn’t complain. He would have preferred the location he got, anyway, even if he’d bad to source everything full price.

The first restaurant to bear the name of Tuen Mun BBQ was in one of those stand-alone structures that still bear a commercial aspect, but are a block or two back from the rowhouse shops on the main Dundas-Spadina strip. Twenty or thirty years ago, there were more businesses on these linden-shrouded side streets, but commerce has become concentrated and the few establishments that remain watch lazily through dust-browned windows and faded signs as their partners leave and the family houses and Chinese hometown associations are transformed into overpriced sharehouses for students and hipsters.

Chung Yee had naturally passed by the ex-Tuen Mun since then. He saw that it had been converted into a restaurant supply distributor, thou he could not see past the rude stacks of pots, rice sacks and cooking oil drums to divine what manner of people operated it. When the wholesaler was moving in, he saw a car replacing the Viets’ and asked one of the white workmen, who worked with the renovation company laying down cobbles and replacing shrubs in front, but they claimed to know nothing. Nor, in all his many years running the Tuen Mun, did je see any person entering or exiting the distributor’s. It might simply be timing, of course, as it wasn’t a retail location. Regardless, the way it squatted there, taking up valuable real estate, arrogant and threatening to amateurs who dared meddle with it; it reminded him of a great tree, its wood grown dry and corrupt with the years, yet whose dark presence discourages even sensible men from lingering near and whose spidering roots reach points unfathomed, denying its neighbours any chance that a lucky breeze should rid them of its curse.

He slowed his steps when he reached the deserted side street, though he did not stop nor turn his body to face the building squarely. The place was still apparently used as a wholesale restaurant supply store, still apparently devoid of any activity, the general air of neglect intensified ever so slightly since the last occasion he saw it. He hurried on, circling round to reach back to his car, not wanting to return by the route he’d come.

On the highway home, he rehearsed asking his sister’s opinion, but, upon reaching the quiet house in the somnolent subdivision, his courage drained. Watching a movie with his second wife, who would understand nothing of his early days as an entrepreneur, could not satisfy his urge to vent his worries and grope for answers, but, with extra lights left on in the halls and dining room, it was enough to get through the night.

VIII.

The cold wet air passing through the perversely open window made Jenny’s feet curl, her body yearning for the shelter of heavy blankets which were, alas, once again for her alone. Meh, more time to devote to work. If she wasn’t serious about being a police officer, what was she doing it for, glorified cosplay? She would never admit it, but she was glad to be on a major case, gruesome as the raw material was. It’s not so easy to tell yourself that your focus is rightly on yourself, when your daily task is pushing paper or flipping burgers. The Inspector had given her a business card for an animal rescue before he went on vacation. As a result, she’d not communicated with him since, although she knew this case was right up his alley. A bluff got her what she was looking for, but the spoils rotted of their own richness.

The story she told Codrington was that a publican, a Queertown stalwart, had made some remark about a similar case, or series of cases, occurring in the late 80s – or maybe it was the early 90s? Codrington had enough experience to know what Jenny was suggesting: that the same person responsible for Dylan Coleman’s demise had been acting during that earlier period, perhaps not coincidentally the era in which the murder rate peaked just as the City was shaking off its gritty, grimy previous incarnation. This felt like a good idea – that is, that they could at least look like they were doing something to satisfy ‘the Community.’ The Colemans did not appear to have the money to feed a drawn-out lawsuit or any but the trashiest private investigators; they would reign themselves in when an easy windfall was no longer likely, thus extinguishing the sole reason for caring about their son leaving only righteous resentment for the shame he’d brought them. But those who lived under the rainbow banner, oh! They were a different story…

Codrington had inquired of his mentor, the long-retired ex-Chief Inspector Malone. With a string of expletives and tasteless jokes that hinted at why the force back then was not able to crack the cases, Malone recalled that indeed there had occurred cases, in the time period indicated, which more or less fit the fact patter of the Coleman case, at least as regards the identity of the victims. These words Codrington relayed, having located the files, to Jenny.

The darkness was seeping in, intruding into the space guarded by he table lamp. It was better the files stayed at the office, yes, or else even a quick dash into bed after flicking off the light might not have been enough to save her. Sleep came slowly, and she did not like the simple realism of fatigue’s mirages: the bulges in the drywall that emerge and recede; the solitary knocks on the door which one thought one heard. The eyes cannot be trusted and the mind suspects itself. She really wished she had taken up the offer of a cat…