The Hidden Keys. Andre Alexis

       1 A Willow in Parkdale

      Tancred Palmieri was sitting in the Green Dolphin thinking about how best to dispose of a black diamond he’d stolen from a house on the Bridle Path. He was twenty-five years old and he’d been a thief from the age of eleven, but this was the first time he’d had difficulty deciding what to do with a stone. It was as if the diamond had a personality.

      Tancred was a tall and physically imposing black man, but he was also approachable. He could not sit anywhere for long without someone starting a conversation. This was, his friends liked to say, because his blue eyes were startling and his voice deep and avuncular. So, when he wanted to be alone without necessarily being alone, Tancred answered in French – his maternal tongue – when spoken to by strangers. Few who came into the Dolphin knew the language. But Willow Azarian did, and she took the fact that Tancred spoke it as a portent. They would be friends. She knew it and, touching his arm, she blithely began to tell him about her family.

      Tancred interrupted her. In French, he said

      – You know, I’m not really one for family stories.

      In French, Willow answered

      – What have you got against them?

      – I just don’t like them, said Tancred.

      Willow nodded in sympathy and patted his leg. Then she carried on from where she’d left off, speaking about her family as if its story were something Tancred had to know. Willow was in her fifties, more than twice his age. As he was chivalrous by nature, he listened to her, skeptical but polite.

      To be fair, there were a number of things that made Willow’s story implausible. To begin with, she was a junkie. Tancred himself had seen her, either high or strung out, stumbling around Parkdale like an outpatient from Queen Street Mental.

      Then there was what she told him. Though they were meeting for the first time, Willow expatiated on her family’s wealth. The Azarians – about whom Tancred had heard – owned property all over the world. Her father had been brilliant, generous, wonderful! He had always treated her – his youngest – as if she were a princess. She had millions, thanks to him. A fortune. Enough to last a hundred years.

      – Of course, he didn’t leave as much as he could have, she said.

      It all sounded to Tancred like the daydreams of an orphan.

      Then, too, there was her appearance. Willow was thin and pale. She was in her fifties but his impression was of someone older. Her hair was greying. There were crow’s feet at her eyes and her lips were those of a smoker, puckering when she spoke. Her clothes were out of style: a green-and-white floral dress with padded shoulders, a felt hat with wilted green plumes curling around to the side, a white sweater and clunky black shoes. It was not a getup you’d associate with wealth.

      Finally, there was the place itself. Why would a rich woman hang around the Dolphin? Tancred came to the Dolphin in the afternoons to think things through, to stand at the bar and withdraw. At night, the Dolphin was a different story: noisy, filled with regulars or stragglers or cops. He went then to be with people he knew – thieves, dealers, users and prostitutes. Seeking company, he would stand at the bar and talk to whoever was there. One night, for instance, he spoke to a Salvadoran refugee whose family had been wiped out by death squads. On another night, not long after, he’d listened to a Salvadoran refugee who’d been a member of a death squad. Neither had looked like victim or executioner.

      Though he did not often drink alcohol, Tancred had been going to the Dolphin since he was eighteen. In all that time, he could not remember meeting anyone posh. The place was too rough for it. Even Willow’s dealer – ‘Nigger’ Colby by name, though he was albino – preferred to drink across the street, at Jimmy’s. As far as Tancred knew, the most common reason for strangers to choose the Dolphin was the price of beer: it was twenty-five cents cheaper there than it was anywhere else. But Willow did not drink beer. She drank vodka and orange juice, and it seemed to Tancred that if she had really been wealthy, she’d have frequented better places, junkie or not.

      Then again, who could tell about the rich? In ’03 or ’04, there’d been a politician caught trawling for prostitutes on Queen Street, not three blocks west of the Dolphin. In those days, the most unfortunate women worked Queen between Lansdowne and Triller. The wealthy men who came around looking for sex must have been attracted to something in Parkdale: the lawless, the sordid, the unlikeliness of being recognized. For all Tancred knew, the streetwalkers’ desperation was itself what turned these men on. It may have been something similar that brought Willow.

      He found her difficult to credit, but she was also amusing and surprisingly sympathetic. He listened to her for an hour, listened until she spoke again about her father and then faltered and then stopped.

      – I’m sorry, he said, but I’ve got to go. It was nice to meet you.

      – You speak English, said Willow.

      – Yes, said Tancred, but I prefer French.

      – So do I, she said, but Japanese is my favourite.

      She held up a hand, limp-wristed. Unsure what he was meant to do, he held it. He felt faintly ridiculous, but that was part of what made the encounter memorable.

      Their second meeting was more memorable still.

      One night, Tancred was at Close and Queen, walking home. Behind him, toward Parkdale Collegiate, he heard a cry. Turning,