This Thing of Darkness Read Online Free Page A

affront to all that Green believed just and fair.
    His resolve hardened as he helped his father through the glass doors of his seniors’ residence and into the staff car parked illegally at the curb. Nate’s Deli was a mere five blocks away, but at his father’s creeping pace, too far for him to walk now. The deterioration had been slow, almost imperceptible, but every spring, Sid Green seemed never to bounce back to the form he’d had the autumn before. The snow, ice and bone-chilling cold of winter sapped his strength more each year.
    Sid leaned on his cane and eyed the alien car with dismay. “Where’s Sharon? And the baby?”
    The baby was now nearly five years old and had just begun kindergarten, but in Sid’s eyes, he would always be the new arrival.
    â€œThey’re going to meet us at Nate’s.”
    A smile spread across Sid’s face, momentarily erasing the pinched frown and the perpetual melancholy in his rheumy brown eyes. “And Hannah?”
    Green didn’t know where his daughter was. She was not answering her cell, and in typical eighteen-year-old fashion, she had not come home Saturday night. She had called just after the eleven o’clock news to say she would be staying at a “friend’s”. Judging from the loud chatter and the booming bass music, it was “friends” in the very plural.
    At least she had called. When she’d first arrived on their doorstep, fresh from a fight with her mother and spitting mad at the world, she had planned to stay only long enough to punish her mother, Green’s ex-wife, and put a face to her father. Two years later, she was almost finished high school, had found a part-time job as a special needs companion and had learned to meet them halfway on rules. Most of the time.
    Green too had made progress as a father in the past two years, but he knew the main reason Hannah had slowly been won over was Sid Green. She adored her grandfather almost as much as he adored her. In looks, she was the incarnation of his dead wife, for whom she’d been named —small and delicate, with an elfin innocence that hid a steely spirit. In Hannah’s presence, Sid shed ten years and half a century of sorrow.
    When Green had to tell his father she wasn’t coming, he could see the old man deflate. Sid lowered himself into the passenger seat with a sigh and barely spoke as they drove to Nate’s. Green knew the sight of Tony would reinvigorate his father, but he’d asked Sharon to come a little later, because he wanted a few minutes alone with his father before the energizer bunny burst in, full of bounce and chatter.
    He waited until Sid was settled with his customary weak tea before broaching the subject on his mind. He was still summoning the words that would not alarm his father when the elderly man raised his hands expressively.
    â€œNu, Mishka. You look worried.”
    Green hesitated. Nodded. “Just wondering, Dad. There’s a case...”
    â€œVoden,” his father said softly. “The old man killed on Rideau Street.”
    Green suppressed his surprise. “You know?”
    â€œI heard it on the morning news. You want to tell me not to walk alone on Rideau Street. Never mind I haven’t done it for five years.”
    â€œI know. But just in case you should feel like it...”Green toyed with his spoon, avoiding his father’s skeptical eyes. “But also I wanted to ask if you know a well-dressed Jewish gentleman maybe ten years younger than you, who lives alone around here, walks with a cane and wears a beige camelhair coat.”
    Sid looked thoughtful. “Well dressed. What—a tuxedo maybe?”
    â€œA suit and tie. But expensive. Classy.”
    â€œSo, rich.”
    â€œWell off, probably. His camelhair coat is a Harry Rosen.”
    â€œThat you can buy off the rack at Neighbourhood Services.”
    Point taken, Green thought. MacPhail had thought