corner of Maitland, Hollinger said, 'Drop me here, please.'
'You sure?'
'I have a crime scene to work and I need to arrive there on my own. I don't want to be teased or distracted by anyone or anything.'
I pulled over and shifted into park. She snapped her seat belt open and put her hand on the door handle. Then she paused. She kept her gaze fixed straight ahead, but her voice seemed to warm a bit when she spoke. 'I'm sorry if I seem paranoid about this. I was so ready for a nice evening with you, Jonah. I really was. I thought because the Di Pietra cases were all closed, the time was right, but hearing about Ryan-knowing his association with that crew-it threw me.'
'No kidding.'
She turned to me and surprised me with a smile. Nothing that lit up the night, but a smile. 'Give me some time to process this. Maybe after I've slept on it, it won't seem so bad. If it doesn't, then maybe I'll give you a call.'
Two maybes. Hardly ironclad.
She got out of the car and walked toward the alley that ran south off Maitland, where a man's life had ended. I drove one block farther south and parked. I didn't want to crowd Hollinger, but I was curious to see her work a crime scene. I put on a ball cap from my trunk, slipped an old raincoat over my blazer and walked back to the alley.
It was brightly lit-unnaturally so-by halogen lights mounted on stands. Crime scene investigators on TV might walk around with dinky penlights, but in real life they tend to flood scenes with light so as not to miss anything. A crowd had gathered outside the tape that crossed the mouth of the alley. I stood at the back where Hollinger couldn't see me. She was squatting beside the body of a blond male in a grey overcoat, talking to a uniformed officer, probably the first on the scene. After noting how the body had been found, she snapped on a pair of latex gloves and reached carefully into the dead man's pockets. From the breast pocket of his jacket she withdrew a wallet, examined the contents, made a few notes in a spiral notebook, and put the wallet back. A medical examiner came over and lifted the man's head and showed her something at the back. She frowned and touched the area gingerly. The tip of her gloved finger was bloody when she removed it.
She sighed and got to her feet and nodded to two men waiting with a body bag and a gurney. They laid the bag on the ground and unzipped it. One knelt by the victim's head, the other by his feet. When they lifted him over the bag, his head flopped forward and I got a clear look at his face. I gasped loud enough to make people around me turn.
Good thing I was standing near the back.
The dead man was Martin Glenn.
CHAPTER 10
World Repairs pays handsomely to subscribe to a variety of databases, one of which is called BizServe. I logged on remotely to the office server from home and read everything it had on EcoSys then moved on to the company's own website. Between the two of them, I got a pretty good picture of the work that Glenn had done.
He was an engineer by training and had worked for more than a decade for the Ministry of the Environment, helping it define and develop its site assessment policies. At the height of his career, he did what many civil servants do: resigned so he could offer the same services back to the private sector at a consultant's rate, instead of as a modestly paid government drone. Glenn and his associates helped clients assess the level of groundwater or soil contamination of their property and whether it was worth the cost of reclamation. If so, they would create a remediation plan. Restore soil to levels that matched samples taken from non-polluted sites. Build underground barriers to prevent toxins from seeping into or out of the site. Treat ground-water so polluted you wouldn't use it to put out a fire. Guide clients through the maze of government ministries that might be involved in a large project: the Ministry of the Environment, of course, but also Natural Resources, if a project posed an ecological risk to wetlands and other sensitive areas; and Finance if there were potential tax breaks to be had.
EcoSys would take clients through every step they needed to get a clean Record of Site Condition that met all criteria under ministry guidelines and the federal Environmental Protection Act.
Most of the time, according to the website, the ministry would review the RSC and audit the process to ensure all requirements had been met. 'But when a trusted partner like EcoSys has done the work,' the site boasted, 'with all the necessary skills and judgment, clients can rest easy that the RSC process will be approved in a timely manner.'
Martin Glenn had been qualified. As a former employee of the ministry, he would certainly have been trusted. An RSC submitted by him would in all likelihood have been rubber-stamped.
He had left the Harbourview job site in a fury earlier this afternoon and was now on the way to the morgue. I wondered what the hell he had gotten himself into. I also wondered who Eric was. Rob Cantor had told Glenn to think about Eric, and Glenn had been so angry he'd barely been able to respond.
It was ten o'clock when I was done. I was tired and I was also ravenous. I looked in the fridge and found little of interest. So I got into my car and drove back to the entertainment district. The interior of Giulio's was warm and inviting: the walls a deep vermilion, the tables and chairs glossy black. A fire burned in a stone fireplace along one wall; along the opposite wall was a long bar, where sparkling glasses hung upside down from wooden slats. Dante Ryan was standing at a podium with a reservations book open. When he saw me, his eyebrows raised and he broke into a smile. He set down the red leather-bound menus he'd been holding, came up to me and offered me his hand. We shook, then he pulled me into an embrace, clapping my back twice. 'Took you long enough to show your face,' he said.
'The place looks fantastic,' I said. 'Mazel tov.'
'You hungry? You here to eat?'
'Yes and yes.'
'Have a seat at the bar. I'll have a table for you in five minutes. Gino,' he said to the barman. 'Whatever this man wants, it's on the house.' Then he walked to the back of the room to speak to one of the waitresses.
Gino was a slight, balding man with thin strands of dark hair pasted across his dome. I ordered Black Bush on the rocks. He poured a standard shot then topped it up with another ounce or so.
A loud roar went up at a table behind us where four men in business dress were hoisting drinks and toasting one another. By the look of it, they'd been dining on steak and pasta, with plenty of wine to wash it down. One of them-big, beefy and red-faced-was crowing over a deal that had apparently been consummated that day. 'We took no fucking prisoners,' he bellowed. 'We took fucking scalps.'
The patrons at the table next to them glared for a while then went back to their meals. I nursed my drink, wondering what Hollinger was doing now. Still at the crime scene, probably, combing the alley for evidence. Maybe directing a canvass of the neighbourhood. Almost certainly not thinking of me or what the evening could have been.
'Hey!' came a shout from the noisy table. The big man had an empty wine bottle in his hand. 'You, behind the bar. Angelo, or whatever your name is. Bring us another bottle of red.'
The bartender looked like he wanted to send the bottle airmail. Then Ryan appeared from the back of the restaurant, walking briskly toward the table.
'Sir,' he said to the big man. 'If you want a bottle of wine, we're happy to serve it to you. But show a little respect for our staff and the other diners. All right?'
The man broke out laughing, egging on his compatriots until they laughed with him. 'Oh, sure!' he gasped. 'We'll respect the little fucker, won't we?'
Ryan shook his head. I eased off my stool. There were four of them, all drunk enough to mess with Ryan, something no sober man would do. If things got ugly, I'd have his back.
Ryan leaned down, his hand on the table next to the man's dinner plate, and spoke very quietly into his ear. He had once boasted to me about his powers of persuasion, and whatever he said now prompted the man to settle right down, reach into his wallet and pull out a credit card.
