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am about new visitors.”

      “First time I’ve dropped by.”

      “May I ask what attracted you to us?”

      Sizemore was nosy, though so far not offensive about it. He was pretty good-looking for an older guy except for the deep gouge on the right side of his head running from the temple down to a spot behind the ear. The gouge looked as permanent as the Grand Canyon.

      “I might be keen on exploring ecclesiastical issues,” I said. “Maybe your Reverend Alton Douglas has something to offer in that line.”

      “Indeed he does,” Sizemore said, apparently thrilled with my explanation. “But keep in mind there are members of our group who offer advice and services of many sorts.”

      “In your case, it’s financial investments, I take it.”

      “Fifty years in stocks and bonds,” Sizemore said. “Haven’t lost a client yet.”

      He gave a little chuckle, and handed me a card from a small leather case.

      “If you ever feel dissatisfied with your present investment strategy,” Sizemore said, “all you need to do is give me a ring.”

      We shook hands again, and Sizemore returned to his meaty buddies.

      The three of them got refills and carried the cups of coffee up the curving staircase on the left side of the lobby. Their heels on the marble made storm-trooper clicks in the lobby’s emptiness. When they reached the top, I heard the opening and closing of a door. Then all went quiet.

      In the silent lobby, I got off my bench and walked over to the coffee shop.

      “It’s nice the way you brew the Paraguay,” I said to the barista. “Very tasty.”

      “Yeah, thanks,” the kid said, looking modest about it.

      “The Reverend Douglas in this afternoon?” I asked. “You happen to notice?”

      The kid gave me a blank look.

      “Alton Douglas?” I said. “The minister who runs Heaven’s Philosophers?”

      The kid brightened up. “Oh, you’re talking about Al?”

      “I guess I am if that’s how you address him.”

      “He’s, like, relaxed as far as religion,” the kid said, a big smile on his face.

      Geez, that irritated me, the verbal construction where the speaker didn’t complete the phrase. Should I correct the kid’s grammar? Or just let it go? I opted for straightening out one possible casualty to improper verbal constructions.

      “You mean,” I said, “‘as far as religion is concerned.’ Or ‘as far as religion goes.’”

      “Yeah, that’s what I said,” the kid said, looking like he was addressing a person of limited comprehension. “Al is relaxed about that.”

      I abandoned my educational efforts. “Al’s in, is he?”

      “In his office upstairs,” the kid said, “but, like, most afternoons, meetings go on up there.”

      “Meetings with the three gentlemen who just went up?”

      “Them and probably others, but what happens and who meets I don’t know anything about,” the kid said. He was growing cautious. “What’s it to you exactly?”

      “Maybe I’m thinking about discussing ecclesiastical issues with the Reverend,” I said. If the explanation worked with Willie Sizemore, it ought to go over with the kid.

      He shrugged, but otherwise had nothing more to offer. I put my empty mug down on his counter, nodded, and walked out to my car.

      According to my just conceived plan, I figured to wait in the Mercedes until the population in the church building had thinned, then I could carry out some creative snooping. I sat behind the wheel, noticing something I’d missed earlier. The church had a fairly large parking lot behind a row of thick trees separating the lot from the building. No attendant was on duty in the lot, and no machines for payment were visible. Four cars occupied slots. That could be one for Reverend Al and one each for the three guys who were having coffee in the lobby. But that was only a guess.

      While I was pondering vehicles and parking, an American-built car, big but not an SUV, pulled into the lot. Two guys got out, one extra-large in size, but neither of them running to the type of the two big lobby guys. The extra-large specimen was shaped like John Candy, and wore a white summer suit. The other much less hefty and had on an unbuttoned cardigan in an unappealing maroon shade. Both passed my car, presumably on their way to the meeting in the church. I snapped photos of the two. I was getting good at the surreptitious paparazzi thing.

      In the next ten minutes, two more cars and six more guys of different variations of extra-large arrived. Counting the three guys who were on the premises when I arrived, that made a total of eleven people meeting upstairs in the Reverend Al’s quarters.

      That seemed to be the end, and then things got quiet in the parking lot.

      I clicked open my iPhone. A text from Fox had arrived.

      You poaching my clients now, Crang? The one you’re asking about you’re welcome to take. You might remember him from the case you were briefly involved in. The guy’s mouthy. Thinks he knows more law than his counsel. Good riddance if you want him. Name’s Robert Fallis, known to one and all as Squeaky. He’s the guy on the left in your picture. The older guy is unknown to me though I suppose he could be Squeaky’s type.

      Fox

      P.S. I walked Squeaky on the fraud charge. Your guy in the case got convicted under other counsel, if memory serves.

      Fraud? Could something of that nature be the subject of the meeting in the Reverend Al’s office? Was it what Squeaky Fallis and his colleagues practised under religious cover provided by Heaven’s Philosophers? Was it all that simple? Fraud had a close relationship to extortion. Was the Reverend blackmailing Flame as the front man for the heavies he could be closeted with at that very minute?

      I texted my thanks to Fox, got out of the car, and walked down to a variety store on St. Clair. I bought the Toronto Star, the National Post, and a Mars bar. Back in the car, I ate the Mars bar and read the Star’s four sections, skipping nothing except the woman columnist on the op-ed page. She was a scold. Scolding is not a good attitude in a columnist. I looked at my watch. An hour had gone by.

      I got into the Post, all the way to their own op-ed woman scold, when the guys from Heaven’s Philosophers began strolling down the street from their meeting. I counted all eleven of them. They cleared out the parking lot, and I opened my car door.

      It was time to do something sneaky.

      Chapter Eight

      I was a half-dozen strides from the entrance to Heaven’s Philosophers when the Reverend Douglas came out the front door. It had to be him. He was a trim guy, youthful for someone past fifty. There was an all business cut to him, but with the sleeves of his shirt rolled up, he wasn’t sweating it any. He headed east on St. Clair, the direction that took him away from me.

      I waited until he got a block up the street before I tried the door. It wasn’t locked. I stepped into the lobby. Both the copy shop kid and the barista had closed operations and departed. The travel guy was still in business, talking on the phone and consulting something on his computer. I chose the flight of marble stairs on the right side of the lobby, out of the travel guy’s line of vision, and climbed the stairs silently, going over the marble at a good clip, feeling like a fleet fellow in my Nikes.

      At the top, a balcony was designed to lead people around to the right. I went that way, and arrived at a pair of double doors. Inside, rising two storeys, was a church — the kind of church imagined by Ikea. The benches and walls were done in light brown–finished wood, each seating place on the benches equipped with a fitted cushion in red and yellow. The rows

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