by Jack Batten
Without making any comment, he stowed the brown envelope in his briefcase.
“I’ll tell you what’s in the white envelope,” Carnale said to me. “Then you can just slip it in your pocket, and we can enjoy our champagne together.”
“How much?” I said.
“A certified cheque for twelve thousand dollars.”
“That’s just about right.”
“I’d say it winds up our business, wouldn’t you.”
“Not quite,” I said. “How about you tell me something about the second blackmailer?”
“You’re becoming tiresome, Crang.”
“You paid him off, correct?”
“Jerome has already told you I did,” Carnale said. “I thought it was necessary to pay this fellow in order to free myself of extraneous worries as we went forward with the movie plan.”
“And the blackmailer returned to you the originals of the song lyrics?”
“Of course he did,” Carnale said, sounding peeved to be going over familiar ground. “That was the term I insisted on when I made the payment.”
“Where do you suppose the blackmailer got the sheets of lyrics?”
“That’s obvious, isn’t it? From the late Reverend Alton Douglas.”
“Is that what the blackmailer himself told you?”
“He confirmed that set of circumstances.”
“You think the second guy was partners with the Reverend?”
“He didn’t say he was in so many words,” Carnale said. “But it wasn’t hard for me to draw the conclusion he worked with the Reverend. It’s even possible the second man killed the Reverend in order to keep the blackmail money all to himself.”
Carnale was making a lot of sense except for the major detail that the Reverend wasn’t in possession of the sheets of lyrics, not from the instant I liberated them from the his desk drawer. Carnale didn’t know that I knew he was lying.
“You’ve thought the whole thing through?” I said to Carnale.
“That should be obvious, even to you, Crang.”
“When you paid this guy, was it in person or by way of a deposit in a bank account in Zurich or Belize or some other foreign spot with loose banking regulations?”
“Since my dealings with the blackmailer were via a series of cell conversations, I’ve no idea what he looks like,” Carnale said. “I’ve never met him and almost certainly never will.”
He seemed close to the blow-up stage. Did I dare ask one more question? Yes, I dared.
“Where do you live anyway, Roger?” I said. “Man of your grand taste and, if I may guess, your impeccable breeding? On the old family estate on the Bridle Path? Something of that nature?”
“Crang, let me just say I don’t think any rational observer would doubt that I’ve been patient with you beyond all tolerance. It’s none of your concern where I live, how I conduct my business, who I deal with, what form the dealings take. And quite frankly, I’ve reached my limit in tolerating your intrusion into these areas. As far as I‘m concerned, you and I are now finished with our conversation.”
I looked at my watch.
“Yeah,” I said, “I’ve got a PVR I want to watch this afternoon.”
Carnale stood up from his chair.
“But hold on, Roger,” I said, “you’re leaving a bottle of Veuve Clicquot still a quarter full.”
Carnale’s chauffeur held open the back door of the Escalade. The car had been waiting on Yorkville during Carnale’s chat with me. Carnale got into the back seat.
“Hey Roger,” I called before the chauffeur shut the door. “I suppose a lift to my place is out of the question?”
The chauffeur shut the car door. Roger hadn’t acknowledged my request. The chauffeur gave me another of his attempts at the hard stare before he got behind the wheel. The Escalade pulled away.
I checked my watch again. I had set the TV set to tape Annie on The Charlie Rose Show on the PBS staton. Annie had phoned me late the night before with the news that she’d done her interview as part of a program where Charlie focused on movies. There were three separate interviews with different people: a Czech director, the American screenwriter and playwright John Patrick Shanley, and Annie. She wasn’t sure of the programmed order of the interviews, which meant I had to watch the show from the beginning and maybe do a little fast-forwarding. I figured to watch the whole thing.
Annie had interviewed Shanley years earlier and liked the guy. He told Annie about his father’s death. The old man had loved playing his accordion so much that when he died Shanley and his siblings buried their father with his accordion in the casket. It was the kind of story you didn’t forget.
I sat on the patio allowing the waiter to pour the rest of the champagne into my glass. I finished it, put the envelope with the twelve grand in my jacket pocket, and walked home to the television set.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The Czech director was first up on Charlie Rose’s guest list. He sat across from Charlie at the large round table, the backdrop on the set in the deepest black. Charlie and his questions gave the Czech guy all the space in the world to pontificate. The guy took advantage. “Existential” turned up in his conversation more often than it did in the entire works of Jean-Paul Sartre. And I caught at least a half-dozen invocations of “the zeitgeist.”
John Patrick Shanley came next, talking about his scripts for Moonstruck and Doubt and some other, more recent movies. He didn’t mention the accordion in his father’s casket, but he had other anecdotes that were just as funny and touching.
Then came my very own true sweetie. Annie had on her tailored jacket that showed a tantalizing hint of décolletage. I expected Charlie to get into a discussion of Edward Everett Horton’s sexuality, but all the way through Annie’s eighteen minutes, Charlie stuck with questions about the Horton comedy style. Annie hauled out material I recognized from her speech at the Miller Theatre, but she expanded on the points she wanted to make. Charlie sat back, and let her fly. Annie was smart and engaging and gorgeous. Television was made for her. Or maybe the other way around, she was made for TV.
Not more than ten seconds after the program faded to total black, my phone rang. It was Annie.
“You were sensational with Charlie,” I said. “But I don’t think I need to watch the Czech guy again.”
“He actually said existential and zeitgeist about a dozen times while we were still in the green room waiting to go on.”
“I miss you, sweetie,” I said.
“I miss you, too,” she said. “But, listen, I’m worried about the trouble you’re getting into up there.”
“Oh,” I said, trying for a tone of innocence, “what trouble in particular?”
“A murder, the porno business, a bunch of guys who broke your new coffee machine. Just for starters.”
“Gloria phoned you?”
“I phoned her,” Annie said. “I grilled her, so don’t blame Gloria if you feel she betrayed you. I was tough on her, like the way a criminal lawyer would cross-examine a witness. I did my best imitation of your friend, Wolf.”
“Fox.”
“Huh?”
“The man’s nickname is Fox.”
“That’s beside the point,” Annie said. “When I come home, I want to find my guy all in one piece.”
“No danger, sweetie. Honestly.”
“You’re mixed up with guys who’re paid to maim people. That’s what I call a dangerous situation.”
“Listen, sweetie,” I said, “I don’t know when it was you gave Gloria the third degree, but it sounds like she wasn’t entirely up to speed on the whole Flame deal at the time. Things have evolved since then.”
“What horrors did she miss out on?”
I told Annie about my interview with Georgie Gabriel at his father’s house and about my champagne meeting that aftern
oon with Roger Carnale.
“That’s good news, getting together with this Carnale guy,” Annie said. “The way I look at it, if he says you’re off the case, then you have no client. So no need to press on further.”
“Yeah, but he’s lying about the set of Flame lyrics he got from the second blackmailer.”
“You’ve lost me,” Annie said. “Explain it all once more. But keep to the salient material.”
“Why you’re confused is you need to know one detail I haven’t mentioned until now. It’s about the set of lyrics the Reverend supposedly had in his office drawer. After I left his office on the first day I visited his church, I knew that the set of lyrics was no longer in the drawer. It was gone. So when Carnale told me he paid eight million bucks to get possession of a set of lyrics that came originally from the Reverend, he was misrepresenting the existing state of affairs. The sheet of lyrics was, let’s say, elsewhere.”
Annie took a little time to think about what I’d said. I had of course left out the part about me swiping the song lyrics from the Reverend’s office, which was how I knew he no longer had his hands on the damned things.
“What makes you so sure the lyrics weren’t in the Reverend’s drawer?” Annie asked.
“Information received.”
“Oh, sweetie, come on! I’ve heard that line in dozens of BBC procedurals.” Annie didn’t care for my answer. “It can mean one of umpteen different explanations, most of them disreputable.”
“How about I learned it from a reliable source?”
“I’ll ignore for the moment your possible evasion on this particular issue, and ask a different question.”
“Which is?”
“Why does that necessarily mean Carnale was lying when he said he believed the set of lyrics he received from the second blackmailer had previously been in the Reverend’s possession?”
“Because what he said couldn’t have been possible.”
“Sure, it could,” Annie said. “Suppose the Reverend made an extra copy of the lyrics. He concealed the copy from everybody except his confederate in the blackmailing scheme. Then the Reverend broke the bad news to the confederate that he was backing out of the whole scheme. That got the confederate so hot and bothered that he murdered the Reverend, took the extra copy of the lyrics, and used that copy to blackmail Carnale to the tune of the eight million bucks. How was Carnale to know there existed three sets of lyrics?”
“That’s not bad reasoning, honeybunch,” I said.
“Do I have to do all the analytical work around here?”
“Who do you suppose the confederate might be?”
“Crang, my dearest,” Annie said, speaking slowly and spreading out her words, “there is no need to worry over such matters now. Why? Because you are off the case. You get that? Off. The. Case.”
“I think Freddie Chamblis aka the Champ fits the role of confederate to a T.”
“Fine,” Annie said. “Tell that to the Homicide cop. Wally you said his name is?”
“Crawford.”
“Tell him.”
“You know I always like to weigh my options.”
“That’s another of your old euphemisms for stalling,” Annie said. “Come on, sweetie, retire from the darn field on this one.”
“Plus, I got to unhook Sal Banfield from her porn connections.”
“You’re right on that one,” Annie said. “I can just imagine the swell double date if you and I were lugging around the information that Sal and a bunch of other naked persons have been making out with the cameras rolling. We know all about this while her boyfriend of the moment, namely your friend Maury, remains in the dark concerning the nude gamboling.”
“You’re OK with the double date otherwise?”
“I agree it might be fun to have dinner with her.”
“And with Maury.”
“Maury included.”
“When do you figure you’ll be back?”
“Middle of next week, Thursday at the latest,” Annie said. “I’m turning down a bunch of the New York people who’ve come into the picture in the last few days asking to do interviews.”
“Turning down?” I said. “Aren’t authors on tour supposed to ride the waves of publicity for all they’re worth?”
“Sweetie, I’m so sick of hearing my own voice,” Annie said. “Blah, blah, blah. All day long, the only person talking is me telling the same anecdotes again and again.”
“The limelight’s not all it’s cracked up to be?”
“If it wasn’t for Jerome offering a little conversation between interviews,” Annie said, “I might have lost my mind already.”
“Jerome’s good company?”
“He talks mostly about Flame’s movie. That’s entertaining, though it gets repetitive, all about him originating the movie’s storyline, casting, choice of screenwriter and director, and so on. Plus the part about Carnale keeping him out on the fringes on the money side of the movie.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard those tunes before.”
“But, listen, Jerome’s actually pretty savvy about moviemaking. He had some kind of job in Warner Brothers’ New York offices before he joined Flame.”
“But what is it that’s making Jerome uneasy?” I said. “Carnale’s money matters in general? Or strictly money on the movie project?”
“He seems to sniff something fundamentally amiss,” Annie said. “I pushed him on it, and he seems okay as far as receiving his own pay is concerned, and he says Flame still gets regular reports about his money investments. Jerome just senses a certain fishiness in the air. That’s as far as he’s willing to go.”
“Carnale paying me a reasonably healthy fee to go away raises a red flag in my own mind.”
“You’ve got a fee from the man?”
“By certified cheque.”
“How much?”
“Twelve grand.”
“Crang, that’s the bottom line in more ways than one,” Annie said, hectoring me just a little. “Put the money in the bank unless you’ve done the sensible thing already.”
“I just got the dough this afternoon,” I said. “The bank’s closed till Monday.”
“You can deposit it in your bank’s machine.”
“I’d rather wait for the tellers to get back to work.”
“Crang, you’ve got to adjust,” Annie said. “Tellers are so twentieth century.”
“Yeah, but machines don’t smile and say hello to me the way tellers do. They don’t ask if I’d like a cup of the coffee.”
“Sweetie, really, come on.”
“Do you know about the coffee? Banks serve it these days. Tellers make it themselves for us account holders.”
“Is the coffee any good?”
“They haven’t got that part under control yet,” I said. “But I still like watching when the tellers deposit the money in my account.”
“Crang, the ATM does the same thing,” Annie said. “Or you can make your deposits online.”
“The machine doesn’t give me a pretty smile after the transaction. Plus the tellers will probably get better at making the free coffee.”
“I love you, Crang,” Annie said. “But keep in mind banking in the twenty-first century is working quite well, thanks.”
“Sweetie, I’m going to take that last part under advisement. You may be right.”
Annie made spluttering noises on the other end, but that gave way to a few minutes of long-distance billing and cooing before we signed off.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
First thing Saturday, the morning was soft and still. Leaving the house, I walked up Major to Sussex Avenue, and turned right toward Spadina. No cars moved on the side streets; not even Spadina had much traffic. I noticed just one other person on foot. Half a block up ahead of me on Sussex, a bulky guy was walking in the same
direction. He had on a dark windbreaker and baseball cap, which I judged from behind to be Yankees gear. The bulky guy crossed Spadina to the other side. I turned north to the office.
I sat at my desk, typing notes about Georgie Gabriel and his connection to Heaven’s Philosophers. Fox had told me to drop by his office that morning, and fill him in on the criminal charges that could possibly be coming Georgie’s way. Just as I had figured, Fox said he’d get a kick out of acting for a Squeaky associate but would never again represent Squeaky himself.
When I finished making the notes, I printed out a copy and put it in the inside pocket of my ancient seersucker jacket. Before I left the office, I wandered over to the window to think about the rest of the day. Right away, I spotted the two girls with the great legs. They were wearing their tan shorts and their T-shirts. Both carried large-sized containers from Starbucks. Personally, I made a point of boycotting the place. The Starbucks idea of price gave me a case of outrage. Their coffee quality wasn’t so great either, in my opinon — on about the same level as the stuff my friendly bank tellers made.
Standing in the Matt Cohen Park, the two girls looked confused about where to settle. I could understand the dilemma. Their usual spot on the little hill was occupied. The occupant, his head down as he flipped through a newspaper, was the bulky guy I’d seen on Sussex an hour earlier. The dark windbreaker and the baseball cap were the giveaways, now revealed as Yankee gear for sure. The overall effect of the guy seemed kind of familiar, but his cap and his head’s downward angle, buried in the newspaper, meant I had no straight-on view of his face.
I checked back for the two girls. It took a minute to locate them. They’d retreated to a bench at the far eastern side of the little park. From the distance, I got not much more than a faint glimpse of the spectacular gams. There seemed no point in me hanging around any longer.
Locking the office door, I set off on foot for Fox’s office. He worked out of a building on University Avenue just north of the courthouse. I walked over to the University of Toronto grounds, and turned south past my favourite building on campus, Convocation Hall. I liked the hall for its domed roof. The glass that wrapped the dome made it the most gloriously bright public hall in the city. Annie once took me to hear John le Carré do a reading in the hall on an early summer evening. I spent so much time marvelling at the light that I hardly heard a word le Carré spoke. Annie told me later he was brilliant.