'I'm not the one who's through, you thick-headed-hey!'
I clamped his wrist and dug my thumb into the ligaments there. His hand opened and the phone fell into my hand. I flipped it to Jenn, who caught it and snapped the lid off.
'Normally, she rips phone books,' I said. 'But sometimes a phone will do.'
'Are you out of your mind?' he said. 'You just assaulted me.'
I stepped forward and slapped him hard across the face. It felt even better than slapping Perry had. 'Now I assaulted you,' I said. Then I shoved him hard in the chest. He staggered backward, arms flailing, and landed on a brown corduroy couch.
'Three people are dead because of you,' I said.
'You're crazy!'
'Shut up and listen,' I said. 'I am this close to beating the living shit out of you.'
'You can't!'
'I think he can,' Jenn said. 'Hell, I could and I'm the minority owner.'
His mouth opened. I raised my hand. He shut his mouth. He looked at Jenn, then back at me. He looked at his broken phone, as if willing it to ring so he could take a call and end this nightmare.
'Martin Glenn was murdered,' I said, 'because he didn't want to fake a Record of Site Condition. It wasn't a random act of violence, a mugging gone wrong, a gay-bashing or a lovers' quarrel. He was murdered because of what he was doing for you. Last night,' I went on, 'Will Sterling was shot to death-rather professionally, from the looks of it-because he took soil samples from your work site and they have enough PCBs in them to give liver cancer to kids who aren't even born yet.'
'Will Sterling is dead?'
'That's right. Two people murdered in two days to keep this precious building of yours going.'
'And you think I killed them?'
'I don't know that you'd have the guts to do it yourself, but you're awfully good at picking up that phone of yours when problems crop up. Yesterday, for instance, two goons showed up at our office and threatened bodily harm against my partner and me.'
'Grievous bodily harm,' Jenn said.
'I didn't send anyone to hurt you,' he said weakly. 'I wouldn't know who to send.'
'But Mike Izzo would. Maybe you called Mike, who called his son-in-law Lenny, who called the two morons who stuck a gun in my face and held a knife to my partner's throat.'
Rob stared at Jenn as if picturing the blade itself; a latter-day Macbeth envisioning the dagger before him.
'They threatened to cut off my breast,' Jenn said.
'But you're okay.'
'I'm terrific,' she said. 'Thanks a bunch.'
'Look,' he said. 'You've got all of this wrong. I was upset with Martin because we had agreed on something and he wanted to go back on it. But I didn't kill him or ask anyone else to kill him. And this Sterling kid, I spoke to him once on the phone. Maybe twice. I don't even know what he looks like. I honestly have no idea what happened to him. I swear on my life.'
'Like that's worth a lot right now,' Jenn said.
'I'm telling you I haven't done one thing wrong!'
I leaned in close to him and grabbed his tie and pulled his face so close he felt the spray when I hissed: 'Three deaths, Rob.'
'That's what you said before. But you never even said who the third person is.'
'Like I have to, you worthless sonofabitch.'
I pulled him up by the tie and grabbed hold of him, just like I had done to Jenn moments before. She came around and took his other arm and together we frog-marched him through the doors and out onto the balcony. 'Look down!' I said.
I held the back of his neck so he had no choice. 'See the pavement?' I said. 'Imagine it rushing up to meet you, Rob. Knowing that when you hit, it's all over.'
'You going to kill me?' he said. 'It won't change anything. I didn't kill Martin. I didn't kill Will. I didn't do it and I didn't ask anyone else to do it.'
'But you killed her, didn't you?'
'Who, goddammit?'
I hoisted him up off the ground, bending the upper half of his body over the balcony wall. His glasses fell off and sailed down to the parking lot where they landed with barely a sound.
'Your own daughter, you bastard.'
'No!' he yelled. 'No. Please. I didn't. Don't let me go. Please don't let me go.'
'Was it like this?' Jenn whispered. 'Huh, Daddy? Is this how you had her before she went?'
'I loved Maya, you sick bastards. Loved her. I cried all night when she died. Ask Nina. I cried like a baby, like an animal.'
I looked over at Jenn behind Rob's back. She shrugged.
'Pull me up,' he pleaded. 'I'll tell you everything. I will, I swear. I'll tell you about Martin. About Sterling.'
'And Maya?'
'I never touched her. She killed herself.'
I leaned in close and said, 'Rob, your daughter did not kill herself. She was murdered. She was thrown from this balcony. And if you didn't do it, you better help us find out who did.'
Tears ran down his smooth cheeks, and fell like rain toward the pavement. 'Please pull me up,' he said softly. 'I think I'm going to be sick.'
CHAPTER 24
'This piece of land,' Rob Cantor said. 'This beautiful piece of land, all south of the channel, adjacent to the park.' He cleared his throat and scowled. He'd been prodigiously sick in the bathroom after I'd hauled him up over the balcony wall and clearly still had the taste in his mouth. 'From the minute the Olympics went to Beijing instead of Toronto, and I knew the city was going to put the land up for sale, I started working on it.'
He was sitting on his daughter's couch. Jenn and I sat across from him on kitchen chairs. He said, 'People like Gordon Avrith, sore losers all of them, they all implied-hell, they damn well said I got the land under the table somehow. That I paid people off, whether at the OMB, council, Committee of Adjustment, whatever. And it's all bullshit. What I did was what they should have done. I worked like a goddamn dog, came up with the best design- the grandest design-of anyone and made the presentation of my life. I outmanoeuvred everyone and they can't bring themselves to admit it.'
'No payoffs?'
'I never had to. You know what Toronto's like. Everyone is so ready, so desperate to be in the rank of world- class cities. But the waterfront is such an eyesore. When people saw my plans, they were impressed. And when Simon Birk came on board, they rolled over like puppies.'
'So what went wrong?'
'The only thing on the property-that had ever been on it-was a dairy factory. I thought, This isn't heavy industry. This isn't a tire manufacturer, like on the north side of Unwin. It's not an oil refinery. Not a malting plant. It's a place that made fucking milk.'
'But?'
'First there was a problem with heating oil. The tank in the factory had been leaking for years, oozing all this sludge into the ground. When I brought Martin in to test the soil and the water, he found problems right away.'
'And you didn't want to clean it?'
'No! I mean yes. We did clean it. Dug up all the soil, trucked it out for treatment, brought it back. It cost a fortune, and we were only able to recoup part of the cost from the city. Worst of all, the whole park area, which we thought we could leave wild, had to be dug up and cleaned, then replanted. It took two years of site prep before we
