want to look at it?” Ivan let his cigarette dangle from his lips as he unstrapped the Bulova from his wrist.
It occurred to me that, although Ivan was likely a heavy smoker, too many of his fingers were brown for the stains to be nicotine. What else could they be?
I took Ivan’s watch and noted that it was two minutes faster than my own. Mine was likely the one in error, though; Ivan’s was the better watch, and how! A gift perhaps, or the symptom of a second job. But, if neither, if a crime columnist earned enough to be buying Bulovas, Ivan wasn’t the one in the wrong racket.
“Have you reset it since?”
“Never needs it.”
“So you reached the address indicated by two fifteen. Fast work.”
“I was lucky. The car came pronto.”
“Would you have its number?”
“Didn’t notice, but it was a Danforth Dollar Taxi. They’ll find the driver for you.”
“And was Digby Watt lying dead on the sidewalk when you got there?”
“Sure, just as I wrote.”
“Come on, Ivan,” I said. “Journalism’s show business. And showmen have to pep facts up or, in this case, tone them down to make a picture that thrills the Sunday school teachers but doesn’t shock them. When you and I are talking, I’d never hold you to what you write to earn your pay.”
“Calling my work hokum, Paul?” Calm still, but less agreeable.
“For instance,” I said, “you ask, ‘Who’s next?’ Do you have any reason to believe the killer will strike again?”
“I figured if a man as established as that could be shot down on his doorstep, no one’s safe.”
“And I guess you always want to give folks a reason to buy tomorrow’s paper.” No reaction from Ivan, so I carried on. “Did the caller say anything on the phone, or was there anything at the crime scene to indicate there would be further victims?”
“Neither.”
“And you found Watt just as you write?”
“He was dead when I got there. I didn’t move him.”
“Did you touch him?”
“To see if he needed a doctor and an ambulance—sure. He didn’t. What he needed was the police, so I called you.”
“What about the son, Morris Watt? Was he there when you arrived?”
“He showed up four or five minutes later. He’d been working late with the old man, but he’d gone to get the car from a parking garage. Digby must have been standing waiting for him when someone popped him.”
“Let me get this straight: while you were looking the body over, Morris showed up in Watt’s car.”
“On foot. He said he couldn’t get the car started. Once he arrived, I went to phone the police.”
“And how did Morris take his father’s death?”
“Noisily. ‘This can’t be true! This is terrible! If only the car had been working, I’d have been back in time.’ Stuff like that.”
“So, you were alone with the senior Watt for five minutes. Did you recognize him?”
“Sure. I work for a paper. He gets his picture in the paper.”
“Take any pictures last night?” I asked.
“The Examiner employs me as a writer, not a photographer. And they don’t print pictures of deaders, even fully clothed. You can take that as no.”
Something warned me not to, but I couldn’t pin it down.
“Ivan, who’s this girl Watt was stepping out with?”
“You’d have to ask the guy that writes the Evy Chatters column. He’s not in the office.”
“Was Watt engaged?”
“Search me.”
The sunlight and the smoke from his cigarette were making Ivan squint, which shrunk his already small eyes down to hairline cracks, but I could still see in them a gleam of superiority. He wasn’t altogether enjoying himself, but he still thought he was handling himself well, could perhaps handle any bull’s questions with his brain on two-thirds power.
“When Horny died,” I let fall, “you said you thought you’d look up the man behind Peerless Armaments if you got through the war. Did you ever meet Digby Watt while he was alive?”
“Not once.”
“How come? You did say you thought you’d look him up.”
Ivan stood up and towered over me.
“Now you’re making me sore, Paul. You’d take what a soldier on the battlefield says when he’s just lost a pal, and you’d put it in a police file? Not only is that a dirty trick, it’s a dumb one—and I took you for a smarter guy than that. You were there, weren’t you? You must know that just to keep some shred of sanity men let off steam by saying any number of things. But by the time we came home, the last thing we wanted was to settle old scores. I’d no interest in meeting up with Watt. He was a business story, and I was on the crime beat. To hell with him.”
“Sounds to me like you’re still mad at him. Was his clothing disarranged when you got there?”
“No, but I just never could resist petting stiffs.”
With that, Ivan strode out of the small office and disappeared behind the stairwell door. It was a fine exit, and I decided not to ruin it by giving chase.
Chapter Two
Before leaving the editor’s private office, I picked up his telephone and asked for an outside line. When I rang Bell and gave them my badge number, they were able to confirm one call from a public booth on the west side of Sheppard Street to the Broadview Avenue home of subscriber I. A. MacAllister, which call commenced at 1:44 a.m. and lasted less than a minute. Also a call at 1:51 of similar duration from MacAllister’s residence to the Danforth Dollar Taxi Service. As they had informed me often enough before, the phone company had no record of the content of these conversations or the identity of the parties involved. I always asked, ever hopeful as well as fearful about the progress of snooping.
My next call was to Danforth Dollar Taxi. They claimed to have received a request for a car at 1:51 from a man calling himself Ivan MacAllister. Driver Tony Bellotto promptly proceeded from the company depot at Danforth and Pape to 786 Broadview Avenue and at 2:01 picked up a fare identifying himself as Ivan MacAllister. Said fare was let off at 96 Adelaide Street West at 2:14.
Sounded like speeding, but let that go.
Yet another phone call revealed Morris Watt to be at the office rather than at home, so I deferred the pleasure of a visit to Glen Road. From the Examiner Building up to 96 Adelaide West was too short a stroll to allow for heavy-duty thinking. Instead, I gawked like any rube at all the construction. Since well before the war, Toronto had been putting up skyscrapers with as many as twelve or fifteen floors, but even downtown these towers were still the exception. Four storeys was about as high as you could go without attracting attention or requiring an elevator. Watt’s building had six.
It was on the north side of the street, and the patch of pavement where Digby Watt had fallen was bathed in sunshine. No blood had spilled onto the concrete. There was nothing to mark the spot. The sight of brogues and oxfords, pumps and workboots tramping over it held me a moment, fascinated. It put me in mind of a phrase beloved of military chaplains, something about this being the way worldly glory passes. Pedestrian traffic was certainly picking up as the City Hall clock struck noon. Men in suits were on the march from their offices to their clubs, while their secretaries trotted off to the sandwich