Free Crang Plays the Ace by Jack Batten Page A

old maid’s pride on Queen Street at Bay. It made do very nicely as Toronto’s city hall from 1890 till 1966 when a new civic building, spectacular but a trifle short on humanity, went up on the other side of Bay and the politicians and bureaucrats moved in. Since the move, Old City Hall has been given over to the Provincial Courts. They’re the lowest on the rung of courts and the busiest in criminal cases. Provincial Court judges hear all the messy low-life stuff, and the lawyers who appear before them don’t require gowns. I had on a shirt with fine vertical grey stripes and a plain maroon tie. I set my face in an expression to match my wardrobe. Sincere.
    I walked the fifteen minutes it took to get from my front door to Old City Hall. A breeze was blowing up from the lake and there was a hint of fish in the air. I knew James Turkin would be in the holding cells in the basement on the northeast corner of Old City Hall. He would have been brought in in a yellow police van that morning from the West End Detention Centre with a bunch of other guys who couldn’t make bail and were waiting out the time until their day in court in the gracious custody of the Province of Ontario. I rapped on the thick wooden door to the holding cells, and it was opened almost immediately by a policeman who was holding a plastic cup of steaming coffee in his right hand.
    â€œYou got a villain in here, Crang?” the cop asked.
    He knew me from many villains past. His name was Moriarty, and he was built like a linebacker who’d gone to seed, six four and close to three hundred pounds. There were dark sweat stains radiating from the armpits of his blue policeman’s shirt and grumpiness radiating from his flushed policeman’s face.
    â€œWarm enough for you, Moriarty?” I asked.
    â€œWhich is yours?” Moriarty turned to pick up a clipboard on a chair inside the door. He spilled a small stream of coffee on his shirt.
    â€œShit,” he said without much expression.
    â€œKid named Turkin,” I said.
    â€œBlack or white?” Moriarty asked. “Got most of the niggers in number one cell. Rest of them are in two.”
    â€œA whiter shade of pale,” I said.
    A young cop with a moustache standing behind Moriarty laughed.
    â€œWhat’s with you?” Moriarty asked him.
    â€œThe man made a funny,” the young cop said. “See, there used to be a rock group—”
    â€œShut the fuck up,” Moriarty cut him off. He looked at me. “Fucking heat.”
    â€œTurkin,” I said.
    â€œYeah, yeah.” Moriarty put his coffee on the flattened green cushion that covered his chair. Drops ran down the edges of the cup and made a wet ring on the cushion. Moriarty would be delighted when he noticed. He flipped through the pages on the clipboard.
    â€œTurkin, Turkin,” he said. “Over there, number two cell, and don’t mess around. I already had five of you lawyers in here this morning.”
    I stepped through the door and Moriarty slammed it behind me. Inside, the air was ripe.
    â€œLike a rose garden this morning.”
    â€œOne of those assholes threw up,” Moriarty said.
    I crossed the ten or twelve feet to number two cell. It was a space no larger than twenty feet square, all bars on the side facing into the room. Twenty or twenty-five men leaned against the back wall or sat on benches on the other side of the bars. Nobody talked. James Turkin was easy to spot. He had the looks of an earlier James: sulky and white-faced, with light brown wavy hair and a wiry body, he was a throwback to James Dean.
    He saw me and stepped close to the bars. I said hello. He stared at me. It wasn’t the stare of some of the wackos I get for clients. There was a flavour of the cool to James Turkin rather than a suggestion of the catatonic.
    â€œYour parents aren’t coming down,” I said.
    â€œFigures.”
    â€œWhen you go upstairs, I want to