by Jack Batten
“Ever heard of Chuckie Domenico?”
“The condo developer?”
“Biggest builder of condos anywhere in North America,” Jackie said. “Not bad for a guy from right around here. But it was Chuckie’s wife, Audrey, who happened to be the broad in question. Chuckie was so crazy about putting up his condos he never noticed his gorgeous wife was sleeping around.”
“And the Reverend Al was one of her lovers?”
“Audrey got a kick out of seducing guys. With her, it was like a game, getting guys in the sack who weren’t supposed to be there.”
“That’s what cost Al his job?”
“It was a political error on Father Al’s part, if you follow me,” Jackie said. “Al was the priest of our congregation, here in Markham, very popular guy with everybody. Audrey kept making eyes at him until he tumbled, and that’s when he committed what I call his political mistake. Church politics I’m talking about.”
Irene Gabriel came into the living room carrying a tray with a teapot, three cups and a plate of digestive biscuits without any chocolate or other sugary trimmings. I wondered about the tea. I read somewhere it had as much caffeine as coffee did, not necessarily a good thing. Or so I understood.
“This is herbal tea,” Irene said. “No caffeine.”
Maury looked like he wasn’t enjoying the herbal tea experience. I, on the other hand, felt I might dedicate myself to healthy practices.
“What Father Al didn’t know but everybody else did,” Jackie said after his wife left the room, “was Audrey had been banging Father John Capelletti for a couple of years.”
“Another man of the cloth?” I said unnecessarily.
“Father John’d been the big priest over in Woodbridge for somethin’ like twenty years,” Jackie said. “He had the ear of the archbishop, major contacts inside the hierarchy, all that, and he was so pissed off about Father Al doing his dalliance with Audrey he pulled the strings to get Al tossed out of the church.”
“Father John, have I got this straight, was having sex with Audrey Domenico at the same time as Father Al?”
“But he started way before Father Al came along, which was why Father John took his revenge.”
“How did Al end up in Heaven’s Philosophers?”
“That was Georgie’s idea,” Jackie said. “My son.”
“Ah,” I said, “I’m beginning to follow the chain of connections.”
“Georgie was always nuts about Father Al,” Jackie said. “Most of the young people back then felt the same. So what happened, all these years later, Father Al gets bounced, and Georgie gives him a helping hand. I got no quarrel with that. My objection is I want Georgie to come back into business with me.”
“Running card games?” I said.
“Look at those guys on TV,” Jackie said, pointing to the figures slumped over their cards on the television screen. “Poker’s hot as a pistol right now.”
“George’s running gambling for Heaven’s Philosophers?”
“That goddamn church outfit.”
“My contacts,” I said, not mentioning the contacts consisted of my office researcher, “tell me Heaven’s Philosophers are laundering tens of millions of dollars every year.”
Jackie nodded. “Georgie would pull in a nice chunk of that from the gambling,”
I reached into my inside jacket pocket, and got out the list of names from the Heaven’s Philosophers computer. I handed the list to Jackie and asked him which names he could tell me anything about.
“I know that loudmouth Squeaky Fallis,” Jackie said after a minute or two. “Smart enough, but not a man I trust. The only other guy whose name means anything to me, apart from my son, is Willie Sizemore. He once made me a lot of money on the stock market. Other times, he lost me some.”
“I met Willie briefly,” I said. “A guy with a slick line of patter.”
“I gotta tell you a story about him,” Jackie said. “Willie comes from a rich family that sent him to Upper Canada College. Private boys’ school, you heard of the place I’m talking about?”
I said I knew the school.
“They played cricket there instead of real sports,” Jackie said. “This one time, in a game Willie talks about, a kid from the Eaton family swung his cricket bat and whacked Willie in the head by accident.”
Jackie leaned forward. “You know who I’m referring to? The Eaton family?”
“Everybody in Toronto knows the Eaton family,” I said. “They had department stores going back to Timothy Eaton in the nineteenth century.”
“Crang,” Jackie said, “I heard my grandson saying to his friend the other day, ‘The Eaton Centre? Who the fuck is Eaton?’ He’s sixteen, my grandson. My point, not everybody knows about Timothy Eaton and all the rest of the Eatons since him.”
“Point taken, Jackie. What about the Eaton at UCC smacking your stock broker guy with the cricket bat?”
“Right in the temple,” Jackie said. “Willie describes it so graphic he makes you want to inspect his head up close, check out if it’s got a dent.”
“You can’t miss the dent,” I said. I still didn’t see the relevance of the cricket incident, but I imagined Jackie would get back to it somewhere in his narrative.
“Willie’s been in the stock market his whole life,” Jackie said. “Most of the time, he makes money for his clients without either him or them getting caught in what I might call shady shit.”
“But not all the time?”
“Willie’s been known to take his own clients for a ride,” Jackie said. “What happens, the client suddenly loses his whole investment. Willie says, too bad, it’s just a case of he got a bad tip on a stock or the market did something nobody expected. Willie’s always got a sorry excuse. But the truth is the poor schmuck’s money ended up in Willie’s pocket, and usually there’s nothing the schmuck can do about the loss.”
“You’re not going to tell me this happened to you?”
“Something like twenty years ago. Willie lost me one hundred grand. A misfortune was what he said. I told Willie it’d better be your fucking misfortune because I’m calling in somebody not so friendly as me. I was talking about a muscle guy who would beat the shit out of Willie. I named who I had in mind — a guy from the mob in New York City. Willie knew I meant businss, and the very next day, he brought me back my one hundred grand. That was when he told me the story about the Eaton kid and the cricket bat. He said every now and then he had an episode where he did something crazy, something out of his control, and it was all on account of the crack in the head.”
“Are you saying Willie is never purposely crooked? But he gets a little addled from time to time?”
“That’s his line,” Jackie said. “Just a couple years ago, a good friend of mine was out two million bucks on an investment he made with Willie. I went to Willie and asked him if he was having one of his cricket bat episodes. Willie knew this was code for he better rethink the situation of the lost two million bucks. The result was my good friend got his money back, just like I did twenty years ago.”
Jackie seemed to have gone as far as he cared to with Willie the stockbroker. But taking Willie and Georgie as examples, I thought there might be a discernible pattern of specialization going on at Heaven’s Philosophers. Maybe each guy on my list brought a particular criminal activity to the table. Willie did crooked things on the stock market. Georgie looked after the gambling side. Other guys tended to other money-making criminal ventures. There had to be somebody in the group lending money at exorbitant rates. And who knew what other scams and shakedowns the Heaven’s Philosophers guys carried on.
“Any of the other names on my list mean anything to you?” I asked Jackie.
“Ring no bells with me,” Jackie said. “But I’ll tell you an educated guess I can make.”
“What’s that?”
“At least one of the guy
s on the list is gonna be an enforcer. Maybe two.”
“I assume that’s like in hockey?” I said. “The enforcer’s the guy who scores no goals but runs up an hour in penalties every game.”
“Close to the same thing,” Jackie said. “Heaven’s Philosophers need at least one or two guys in charge of collecting money from people who’re slow payin’ what they owe the group. These enforcer guys keep the customers straight, making them toe the line. You see what I mean?”
“Got you, Jackie,” I said. “One or two goons.”
“They’re the guys you need to worry about most of all.”
“Because they’re tough?” I said.
“No,” Jackie said. “Because sometimes they need to kill people.”
Chapter Thirteen
Late Saturday afternoon, I was sitting in the office resisting another cup of coffee and fretting about Jackie Gabriel’s warning. The fretting was low-grade, not enough to distract me from the Flame assignment but enough to think I ought to advise Jerome Suggs what was afoot. As a matter of straight facts, Jackie hadn’t done much more than confirm the sort of information that Gloria’s research had aready unearthed. But coming from Jackie’s mouth, the situation of the Reverend Alton Douglas vis-à-vis the Heaven’s Philosophers people seemed more vivid and threatening.
The Reverend’s connection to Squeaky Fallis and the others meant he was tight with authentic villains. These included one or two guys who specialized in violence, possibly up to and including homicide. Whether any of the eleven Heaven’s Philosophers guys had a hand in the eight-million-dollar blackmail scheme remained up in the air. Now, more than ever, my intention was to move fast, and hope the schmoes on St. Clair didn’t catch on to my activities until after I squared around with the Reverend on all matters relating to the nine sheets of song lyrics.
I punched in Jerome’s cell number.
“I’ve been thinking, Jerome,” I said when he came on the line.
“I been thinking too, man,” Jerome said in his deep voice. He sounded enthusiastic about something. “I been thinking Scarlett Johansson.”
“I assume this is for the movie Flame’s supposed to be making and not just some free-form daydream you’re experiencing.”
“Supposed to be making, man? There’s no doubt he’s making it. And Scarlett Johansson, man, she’s the one can carry the load in a romantic thriller. Got some nice comedy too, this movie.”
“Uh–huh,” I said.
“Don’t you think so, man? About Scarlett for leading lady?”
“Tell me the storyline. Maybe that’ll help me with an opinion.”
“Flame plays a young guy just out of law school. Can’t get a job doing defence work, so he starts a blog to keep his hand in. Blog he’s doing, it’s all about cold cases, murders never solved. One day, this nice girl comes to him and says she likes his blog, but she says sooner or later Flame’s gonna stumble on her name in a case he’s blogging about. There’s people think she’s the killer. She says to Flame’s character, man, she never killed the victim in question, and she and Flame spend the rest of the movie finding the real killer and falling in love.”
“Not bad, Jerome,” I said. “Who came up with the story?”
“It’s mine, man. Original story by me.”
“You wrote the script too?”
“I wrote a script, man, but it’s been worked over by real professional Hollywood screenwriters since I did mine a couple years ago.”
“Let me get something straight, Jerome. The script idea for this movie of Flame’s is yours. You’re the guy with all the enthusiasm about it. Now you’re casting parts for it. So how come you tell me that Roger Carnale, Mr. Big Picture Man, deserves the credit when it somes to Flame as the new Cary Grant?”
“Man, that oughta be obvious,” Jerome said. “Mr. Carnale’s the boss of bosses. He hands out the money on Flame’s side of things. Mr. Carnale’s the man who meets with the Hollywood moguls. When he gets together with those dudes, man, I’m not even allowed in the same room. You see what I’m talking about?”
The conversation had wandered into the subject of a possibly internecine struggle at the Flame Group. This wasn’t anything I wanted to get myself involved in, though my natural inclination was to take Jerome’s side over Carnale’s. Still, no matter what else was going on, overall it was best for me me to stick to the blackmail scheme I was being paid to squelch. Leave the movie ambitions to the other guys.
“I’m with you on Scarlett Johansson, Jerome,” I said. “She’s a natural for the role.”
“But that’s not why you’re phoning me, man,” Jerome said, speaking without as much oomph as at the beginning of our conversation. “You’re calling because of what? You made contact with the Reverend Alton Douglas?”
“I expect to talk to him in depth tomorrow,” I said. “But in the meantime I’ve put myself in a position I like for future negotiations with the Reverend.”
“How’d you manage that, man?” Jerome said.
Should I tell Jerome about retrieving the Reverend’s no doubt illicitly obtained copy of the song lyrics? On the whole, I thought not. It might alarm Jerome who would pass on the word to Roger Carnale who’d be likewise distressed. No need to tell the client that stealth filching of documents was part of my repertoire.
“What’s more, Jerome,” I said, skipping over the answer to his question, “a bunch of certified criminals are part of the Reverend’s circle. I’ve got as far as identifying these guys. The next step is maybe I should think about using their connection to the Reverend as a plus for our side.”
“You’re losing me, man,” Jerome said. “Criminals and whatnot, what do you think’s going on anyway?”
“Just to keep it simple,” I said, “could you pass the word on to Roger that I’m meeting the Reverend tomorrow with expectations of knocking the man for a loop. You should preferably do that right away. Let him know I’m on top of things.”
“Tell Mr. Roger immediately, you say?”
“Please, Jerome.”
“Easier said than done, man.”
“Why’s that?” I asked. “The image I have of the Flame operation, it’s you and Carnale and the rest of your team in the penthouse suite of some midtown Manhattan tower.”
“Oh, man,” Jerome said, “Mr. Roger don’t even have a cubbyhole of an office in New York City. He got nothing down here at all.”
“Where does he work out of?”
“Toronto,” Jerome said. “But don’t ask me what street, what address, what neighbourhood, ’cause I haven’t the faintest idea, man.”
“The rest of the team is up here with him?”
“There isn’t what you call a team,” Jerome said. “We contract out the booking work, the publicity, security for concerts, all that. Everybody’s independent except me, and a guy name of Arthur Kingsmill who does the accounts. The two of them run their shop out of Mr. Carnale’s house somewhere in Toronto. They handle the money, pay the bills and such like. I’m on the road with Flame or else back here at my apartment on 125th Street. I’m taking care of our boy, Flame, and Mr. Carnale rings me on his cell five, six times a day. Tells me what he wants. Then I do it. You with me, Crang? That’s how the business runs.”
“You don’t phone him?”
“Now you’re beginning to understand what I’m talking about.”
“Have you even got a number for the guy?”
“Mr. Carnale says he changes his number a regular number of times, and that’s a person who don’t make jokes, man.”
“Tell me, Jerome, does everybody in the music industry keep themselves as elusive as Roger does?”
“I just know two things, man,” Jerome said. “Mr. Carnale pays everybody top dollar, me included, and he hasn’t ever stepped wrong these last few years in what’s called positioning Flame’s career.”
“An unorthodox business model is what I would say, Jerome, but I gather it’s been smooth sailing, glitch free and all of that?”
“Very steady as she goes, man.”
“Except for the episode with the Reverend.”
“Crazy thing like this never happened before. Nothing even close, and I ought to know. I been around Flame a long time, man.”
“Just one more question, Jerome,” I said. “If I absolutely need to reach Roger, what’s my procedure?”
“This is hypothetical, I’m assuming, man?”
“Let’s say so.”
“You call my line,” Jerome said. “Then I pass along the word to Mr. Carnale the next time he phones me.”
“A stately process.”
“One might call it that, man.”
“Speed is never of the essence?”
“Mr. Carnale’s made his choices,” Jerome said.
I thought about that for a few beats.
“Anything else, man?” Jerome asked.
“Not at the moment.”
Jerome clicked off his phone.
Chapter Fourteen
When I arrived at the auditorium in the Heaven’s Philosophers building a little after three Sunday afternoon, John Lennon was singing “Imagine.” The Reverend Alton Douglas was standing behind the lecturn at the front of the room. A laptop sat on the lecturn, and two large speakers flanked either side of centre stage. It looked like the Reverend ran the show on his own — he was the only performer and he was his own personal DJ.
All but a very few seats had people in them. They were mostly guys in their late twenties and early thirties. Some were accompanied by lady friends. Most weren’t. Everybody seemed alert and attentive. I was the only older party in the room, apart from the Reverend. He was giving the congregation a bright smile. I tried for my best imitation of a sympathetc parishioner.
John Lennon sang about imagining a world without countries and nothing to kill or die for, a world without religion. When the recording finished, the Reverend went into a five-minute riff on the song’s lyrics. He thought Lennon was on to something.