been in, we'd been working on a scenario where one arm had been wounded and I had to fight him off with the other.
'Ready?' Eidan asked.
'Ready.'
Then he smiled and proceeded to try to kick the living shit out of me. He aimed kicks at my weak left side, punches at my head, keeping me on defence as long as he could. He tried to choke me from the front, which I broke up with a knee to the abdomen. He tried to choke me from behind: I stomped his foot, the way Brazilian jiu-jitsu teaches, then delivered a hammer strike to his head. With only my right arm free, I had to deal with my own mounting frustration as well as his relentless attacks. I finally dropped to one knee, as if exhausted. He moved in with a kick aimed at my head, and my opening came. I planted my right hand and used my legs to sweep his out from under him. As he fell onto his back, I dove on top of him, got my forearm across his neck and head-butted him across the bridge of his nose. Then I rolled away from him and looked for a weapon to use. There was a phone on the wall: in a real-life situation I'd have ripped it out of its base and either thrown it at him, hammered him with it or wrapped its cord around his neck. I sprinted to it and put my hand on it.
'Stop!' Eidan yelled. 'Rip it out and I charge you sixty bucks.'
'I wasn't going to. I just wanted you to know I'd found a weapon.'
'Like hell,' Eidan laughed. He got up off the mat and freed my strapped-in arm and patted my shoulder. I was glad to see I'd made him raise a sweat-a light one, but still a sweat.
'You did all right,' he said.
'For a one-armed man.'
'You put me down and you found a weapon. That's good.'
'But?'
'But you should have run, Yoni. A phone might be okay if there is no way out. But to hit me with it or strangle me-that's what you were thinking?'
'Yes.'
'Then you have to get close again. But maybe I'm faking, yes? Maybe I'm waiting for you to get close only to attack you again. And if I do, then maybe I end up with the phone and I am hitting you with it or strangling you. You see? We're supposed to be tough guys, yes? But if Krav Maga teaches you anything, it's that you run if the odds are against you. There is no shame in that, Yoni. There is only shame in getting killed when you can save yourself. We like to say Krav Maga is about life and death, yes? But first and most, it's about life.' I was in the office by eight- forty, drinking coffee and wondering if it was too early to call Hollinger, when Eddie Solomon rapped on the door and stuck his head in.
'I heard you come in,' he said. 'You want to try a fabulous coffee I got? Comes from Indonesia. They only pick the beans after they've been eaten and shit out by some kind of monkey.'
'That's some recommendation, Eddie. I think I'll stick with what I have.'
'Why the downcast look, my white knight? No dragons to slay?'
'There's no shortage of dragons, Eddie. I'm just not sure I can slay them. You have our fee?'
'Chelsea stood me up last night, but I'm meeting her for lunch so I'll have it this afternoon. One thousand in cash for your labour.'
'That's great.'
'Beats cleaning out stables, mighty Hercules.'
I had to smile. You can't not smile around Eddie Solomon.
'That's better,' he said. 'I'll drop by after lunch. Your lovely partner will be here, I trust?'
'She'll be here, Eddie. For all the good it'll do you.'
'You chase your cars,' he said, 'and I'll chase mine.' Jenn came in at nine on the dot. 'I wanted to call you last night,' she said, 'but I didn't want to rain on your parade.'
'Someone beat you to it,' I said, and filled her in first on the disaster that was my date with Hollinger, then on the death of Martin Glenn.
'Jesus,' she said. 'Between that and Maya's email, there can't be any doubt she was murdered too.'
'What email?'
'Karl Thomson came by just after you left.' Jenn opened a Mac notebook computer, waited for it to come off standby, then tapped in a password. 'This is Maya's sent log,' she said. 'A lot of the usual things you'd expect from a student: gossip, chitchat, notes on class projects, scheduling meetings. And then there were a whole bunch to someone calling himself EcoMan.'
'Will Sterling?'
'None other. Look at this one, Jonah. Sent the morning of the day she died.'
Will, having dinner with dad 2nite… will try to find what u need… try my cell after 12… M.
'After 12,' I said. 'Could have meant that night or the next day. Either way, that clinches it. This was not someone who was planning to kill herself.'
'She knew something about Harbourview.'
'The land. The way it was cleaned.'
'Or not.'
I needed to get going if I was going to catch Will Sterling before his 9:30 class. 'See if you can find out who approved the Record of Site Condition at the Ministry of the Environment,' I suggested.
'Why do I get the bureaucrats?' she groaned. 'And don't give me any majority owner crap.'
'Will flattery work?'
'You can always try.'
'You're far more adept at getting people to open up.'
'Bureaucrats are not people,' she said. 'They're like the last mussel on your plate, the one you keep avoiding because there's no place to stick your fork in.'
If only I could send in Dante Ryan, maybe with a steak knife in his hand. 'Martin Glenn was one of theirs,' I said. 'Used to be, anyway. When they hear what happened to him, they'll talk to you.'
'I still don't feel like I've been flattered much.'
'Then consider the majority owner crap pulled.'
CHAPTER 12
A handful of young people stood outside the entrance of the University of Toronto's Earth Sciences Building on Willcocks Street, engaging in the distinctly non-environmental practise of smoking.
'Any of you guys know Will Sterling?' I asked.
'Sure,' said one of them, an Indo-Canadian girl with blonde streaks in her jet-black hair. 'We're in the same chem lab.'
'He's probably inside,' another said. 'He's usually in early.'
I had my hand on the door when the girl said, 'Wait a sec. That's him coming up behind you.'
I turned to see a tall, lanky fellow in black cargo pants and a long black coat kicking his way through fallen leaves, head bobbing to music playing through an iPod. He wore a watch cap over long sandy hair and beat-up black Converse high-tops. The bottoms of his pant legs were stained white with what looked like paint or plaster.
I walked down to meet him before he could get to the door. 'Will?'
He didn't hear me and started to move around me. I put my hand on his arm. He flinched, a startled look in his eyes. I could see the question form in his mind-Do I know you? — as he pulled out his earbuds.
'I need to talk to you a sec.'
'What about?' He had a prominent Roman nose and a slight growth of beard on his chin.
'About Maya Cantor.'
He stepped back from me and folded his arms across his chest. 'What about her, man?'
'How she died.'
'Who are you?'
I told him.
