Mike or Alec or Rufus

My guesses weren’t far off, though his name was Fred⁠—Frederick Agnew Rudd. He was known in Toronto, having done a stretch in the Ontario Reformatory as a boy of nineteen, caught shoplifting in his she-makeup. He wouldn’t come through, and we never turned up his gun or the blue suit, cap, and black gloves, although we found a cavity in his mattress where he had stuffed them out of the police’s sight until later that night, when he could get rid of them. The Coplin sparklers came to light piece by piece when we had plumbers take apart the drains and radiators in apartment 702.