11

      Larry Burke was new in CID. He’d only been out of uniform a few months, in fact, and he very much wanted to make a good impression on his colleagues. He even worried that stopping into the Country Style at the top of Algonquin for a quiet lunch might be viewed as a complete cliché, the cop in the donut shop. But the truth was he didn’t give a damn about donuts, he just liked Country Style coffee. And they were making a decent sandwich these days, when you got down to it, so why shouldn’t he eat where he liked?

      It was his favourite thing to do on his day off, stop into the Country Style with the Toronto Sun – you couldn’t beat the Sun for sports coverage – order himself a gigantic coffee and a chicken salad sandwich and linger for a good hour and a half. Today the sunlight streamed through the windows, and Burke was actually hot, even though it was a chilly October day. Outside, the hills were scarlet and gold.