by Jack Batten
“Who’s Lex?” I said from my undignified position on the car’s floor.
“The guy we told you about,” Franny said. “Thinks he’s doing Hamlet in every scene.”
“Totally a weirdo,” Sal said.
The girls might know the man as Lex, but to me, he was Roger Carnale’s chauffeur.
“It’s pretty usual for those two guys to be around, Crang,” Sal said. She had pulled up at the curb a half block from the mansion. “Why are you freaking out?”
I straightened up in the back seat. “Ernie’s the guy who smashed my coffee maker,” I said. “Ernie’s a guy I understand to be active in the protection racket and available for enforcer duties.”
“On purpose, he smashed your coffee maker?” Franny said.
I nodded yes.
“What’s Ernie doing at the porn shoot?” I said.
“Whenever Freddie can’t show up for whatever reason,” Franny said, “Ernie fills in.”
“Freddie figures muscle needs to be on the job at every video session?”
“I never thought of it that way,” Franny said. “But, yes, I suppose it may be his approach.”
“As far as you know,” I said, “neither one of them, Freddie or Ernie, has been called on to do any rough stuff?”
“They just stand around checking out girls’ tits and whatnot.”
“What’s the plan now, Crang?” Sal said. “You can’t come inside if there are all these people who’ll know you.”
“Let’s just go ahead as we discussed,” I said, “except you bring the contract out to me in the car. I’ll bide my time till the auditions get under way.”
“That’ll work,” Sal said.
She and Franny fussed with their handbags in a small display of what I took to be pre-performance nerves.
“Think of this as your last hoorah in the porn industry, girls,” I said. “And it’s all for a good cause.”
“What’s the good cause again?” Franny asked.
“Bringing down Freddie,” I said, “the exploiter of helpless females.”
“Oh yeah,” Franny said.
The girls walked back to the mansion, and it wasn’t until twenty minutes later that Sal reappeared. She was carrying her contract, and her clothing appeared to consist solely of a lightweight white gown that ended mid-thigh.
“What’s happening in the house?” I said.
“That creep Lex is doing an audition scene with me,” Sal said.
“Want me to write a clause in the contract that you never perform with people whose given names include an X?”
“Like I’m X-rated?” Sal said, smiling.
“They’re set to start?”
“Soon as I go back,” Sal said. “They’ll be locking the door into the set in a couple of minutes.”
“If I give it five minutes, I can make my move?”
Sal nodded. “I’ll leave the front door unlocked. That gets you in, and when you’re finished with your poking around, put the contract on one of the tables in the entrance hall.”
Sal handed me her contract, and walked back up the sidewalk. Halfway to the house, she flipped up the thin white gown and wiggled her bare bum in my direction. The reaction this little display generated in me was mostly embarrassment. I didn’t want to see the girlfriend of my friend in a state of clotheslessness. For that matter, now that I knew Franny a little, I didn’t care to be around when she was naked either. The way I was now feeling, I intended to keep Annie the sole woman I would study in the nude for the rest of my life. Maybe I was experiencing an attack of puritanism, but if so, so what?
The contract Sal had handed me read like routine stuff for any performer in movies or TV shows. Conracts were never my long suit, but for something to make me feel like I was earning my lawyer’s fee, I wrote in a clause about the Party of the First Part, namely Sal, refusing to appear in scenes involving oral sex.
Since I couldn’t spot a reason for making any other corrections or additions, I folded the contract, and slipped it into my jacket pocket. I got out of the Volvo, all set to do my sneak job on Freddie Chamblis’s porn mansion.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The mansion’s front hall would dwarf the living room in Annie’s and my house. It was more exquisitely furnished too. It featured two love seats with midnight blue satin covers and a scattering of small carved wooden tables. Next to one of the love seats, a plant with exotic green leaves sat in a white container. If I correctly remembered one of the Garden Goddess’s informal lectures, the plant was a schefflera. Commonly called an umbrella plant for a reason I couldn’t bring back.
The front hall’s floor was made of high-quality black tile, and on the wall just inside the front door hung a painting I recognized. I didn’t know the painting specifically, but I was positive it was a piece by a Quebec painter named Riopelle. It had the thick layers of paint in his style. Someone, maybe Riopelle himself, labelled the style “lyrical abstraction.”
What the hell, I thought to myself, standing in this lovely room looking at the high-priced painting. Something was way off here. I hadn’t been two minutes in the place, and already nothing squared with my expectations. Freddie Chamblis wouldn’t hang a Riopelle on the wall of a house he owned. From what I knew of him, he would be a black-velvet painting type of person, or maybe he’d put up comic pictures of bulldogs. The other thing about Freddie, no matter what impression Sal and Franny had formed — I was betting a seven- or-eight-million-dollar residence like this one was way beyond his financial situation. He might earn a large buck in porn and conceivably more as an enforcer, but he wouldn’t pull in mansion money. Something was screwy with the image of Freddie as the owner of the home I had just entered. I should have caught on to it earlier, not that there was any reason to reprimand myself now. Still, I silently vowed to build more common sense into sleuthing on the Flame case.
A hand-printed note was Scotch-taped to the closed door on the far left of the entrance hall: Private office. Video personnel must not enter this part of the house. The note wasn’t signed, not by Freddie or anyone else.
I opened the door and climbed the flight of thickly carpeted stairs. At the top, a wide hall ran both ways, straight ahead and behind me in the other direction. The floor was covered in a carpet with an even thicker pile than the covering on the stairs. I had the feeling I might sink in up to my shins.
Nothing stirred on the entire floor. The air up there was still and silent. Whatever sounds the video crew might be making in the living room didn’t carry to the second floor.
I took a few steps down the hall in the straight-ahead direction, glancing into the first room I came to on my left. It was a sitting room, furnished in masculine taste. A black leather couch and two matching black leather armchairs were the main pieces of furniture. Overhead hung a small black chandelier. Handy to the sofa was a coffee table in dark wood. Just one object sat on the coffee table, but the object, a book, was enough to knock me for a loop.
Edward Everett Horton’s face beamed at me from the book’s cover. I was staring at a copy of Annie’s new Horton biography. Flipping the book open, I turned straight to the title page. Annie had signed it:
For Roger Carnale,
From one movie fan to another.
Best wishes,
Annie B. Cooke
Annie had dated it the previous Wednesday, the day of the book launch in New York. She had never met Roger, and her inscription was the kind of pseudo-personal thing an author would write for somebody she had never met.
“Find something that interests you?” a man’s voice said behind me.
I turned around.
“As a matter of fact, yeah,” I said, holding up the book. “The woman I live with wrote this.”
“How nice for you,” the man said. Medium-sized and balding, he looked in his early forties. If hi
s comment was meant to convey disdain, it came across as half-hearted and maybe a little tired. But the tone of the guy’s voice was precise and careful. The same two adjectives applied to the way he was dressed. He had on a dark blue suit, a white shirt, and a tie decorated with narrow, slanted stripes. The shirt’s collar and cuffs looked starched. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d come across somebody in a starched shirt for everyday wear. Maybe the guy had been to church that morning.
“Jerome Suggs Fed-Ex’d the book to Roger?”
The man nodded. “You must be Mr. Crang,” he said. “The lawyer.”
I took my turn nodding, “And you are Roger’s accountant?”
“Jerome used Purolator,” the man said. “Just to be exact.”
“How about the accountant part, just to be exact? That’s you?”
“I’m Arthur Kingsmill,” he said. “And, yes, I’m Mr. Carnale’s accountant, for my sins.”
Kingsmill made no move to shake hands or to greet me as a welcome visitor. I didn’t suppose I was welcome. Taking the social initiative, I sat down on the leather couch. After a little hesitation, Kingsmill sat in one of the armchairs opposite me.
“Tell me,” I said, “is this Roger’s house?”
“Whose house did you think it was?”
“On that,” I said, “I was misinformed.”
“Maybe not entirely,” Kingsmill said. “If you came for the waters, there’s a very large swimming pool at the back.”
Kingsmill smiled for the first time. It looked like he was out of practice with his smiling. I smiled back, letting him know I appreciated his small Casablanca joke.
“I can’t help noticing the painting on the wall behind you,” I said. “That’s a Ron Bloore?”
“So I understand.”
The painting was one of Bloore’s white-on-white creations. It made a nice contrast with the sitting room’s black furniture.
“So far, I’ve been in two rooms,” I said, “and I’ve seen two paintings by Canadian artists who have terrific reputations.”
“The paintings play a part in one of Roger’s many schemes,” Kingsmill said.
“What’s the scheme? To build a nice collection?”
“Building the nice collection is only Part One.”
“And the second part? Not that it’s any of my business.”
“It isn’t,” Kingsmill said. “But I’m feeling confessional. Roger intends to donate the collection, when it’s complete enough, to the Art Gallery of Ontario for a sizeable tax credit.”
“He seems to have a good eye.”
“What he has, Mr. Crang, is a good advisor,” Kingsmill said. “Roger hired a woman to tell him what to buy and for how much. This woman normally chooses the paintings for big law firms and the head offices of banks.”
“Everybody interested in art has to start the learning process somewhere,” I said, sounding like mister magnanimous. “I learned about Canadian art from Annie.”
Kingsmill let my remark pass.
“As I’m sure you know, Mr. Crang,” he said, “you’re not supposed to be here, in Roger’s house.”
“Because I’m no longer Roger’s lawyer of record?” I said. “Yes, I know.”
“And you’ve been paid.”
“That too.”
“Are you going to tell me why you’re in the house?”
I reached into my jacket pocket for Sal’s contract, and held it up for Kingsmill’s long range observation.
“I’ve been retained by one of the young women downstairs,” I said. “She wants me to vet her contract. I came up here, looking for a desk to sit at while I checked it over.”
Kingsmill’s face registered distaste of a high degree.
“You don’t approve of the porn shoot going on down there?” I said.
“Even if I didn’t have a wife and two young daughters, I’d still consider the videos those people make shameless and dangerous.”
“Roger doesn’t feel the same way?”
“He goes down and watches the sex if he happens to be around, but what he likes best is the money a man named Chamblis pays for renting the premises.”
“How much?”
“Ten thousand for each week they shoot.”
“The payments are made in cash?”
“What else would they be?” Kingsmill said. “Roger calls it his pin money. It finances his lifestyle.”
“The canes, the fedoras, the champagne?”
“Taken altogether, the things that Roger insists he can’t do without run to a very pretty penny.”
“Veuve Clicquot and the rest of it — Roger seems to go first cabin in everything.”
“Unfortunately for our balance sheet, the ten thousand from Chamblis is a drop in the bucket.”
“You’re up against it at bill-paying time?”
I thought Kingsmill would probably avoid an answer, but before he could open his mouth, we could hear feet thumping on the carpeted stairs leading to the second floor, somebody moving very quickly.
“That’ll be Mahuda,” Kingsmill said.
“Who’s Mahuda?”
“I’ve been told you met him the other day,” Kingsmill said. “Roger’s chauffeur.”
The rushed footsteps reached the second floor, and turned down the hall in the opposite direction from the sitting room.
“Any idea what’s he doing up here?” I asked.
“The servants’ quarters at the far end of the hall are Mahuda’s,” Kingsmill said. “Roger likes him to be handy at all times.”
“Lex Mahuda, that’s his name?”
Kingsmill gave a small laugh. “Lex?” he said. “Is that what he’s calling himself?”
“According to two of the girls downstairs.”
“His first name’s Anin,” Kingsmill said. “I should know. I make out the pay vouchers around here.”
“Lex is probably an affectation for his porn persona.”
“That sounds like his taste.”
Kingsmill stood up. He seemed restless, on the verge of tossing me out. Doing it politely but firmly, I had no doubt.
I stood too. “Before I leave, you don’t suppose I could see some more of Roger’s paintings?”
“As long as there’s not much lingering, Mr. Crang.”
“I’m assuming Roger’s not around.”
“He’s out of the country.”
“Manhattan?”
“Los Angeles.”
“Ah, movie business?”
“Behind you, Mr. Crang,” Kingsmill said in an insistent voice. “If you’re content with two more pictures, they’re through that door.”
Before I made a move, there was another thumping of feet. This time, the thumps began in the servant’s quarters and continued down the stairs to the first floor.
“Mahuda again,” Kingsmill said. “Probably put on something sexy for the cameras.”
“As long as it’s white,” I said. “He needs white to meet the wardrobe requirement.”
“A codpiece perhaps?”
“Maybe not,” I said. “The point of the movies is for the actors to take their clothes off.”
“And in Mahuda’s case, disrobing would reveal the codpiece’s deception?”
“You’re catching on, Mr. Kingsmill.”
Kingsmill grimaced the way he had earlier. He walked across the sitting room, and opened the door into the room off the sitting room. It was a large office dominated by a beautiful partners desk that must have been a century old.
“Roger’s?” I said.
“As everybody always says, nothing but the very best for Roger.”
“So I’ve heard,” I said. “Where do you work out of?”
“I have a very pleasant office down the hall,” Kingsmill said.
The room we were in had other touches of a Carnale-esque nature. Two shelves opposite the desk held rows of his fedoras. On a shelf below the hats, another shelf accommodated several briefcases of different leathers and designs. And standing upright below the briefcases were racks of walking sticks, a dozen at least. Most were wood, some looked like they could be metal, the majority were round in shape, two or three gave me the impression they could be square from top to bottom.
A memory flashed through my mind, Wally Crawford’s description of the weapon that bludgeoned the Reverend. Wally said it was probably square. Was that it? Or did Wally just imply something about the bludgeon striking with a straight-lined force? Not from a round weapon but from something more rectangular?
“The paintings are on the other wall, Mr. Crang,” Kingsmill said.
My eyes went to the wall Kingsmill was pointing out, to a large painting of Second World War soldiers marching away from the fighting somewhere in Europe. It was by Alex Colville, and it was a beauty, probably from Colville’s earlier years after he returned from his own service overseas.
Further over on the same wall, sitting above a side table, there was a small Albert Franck painting of a Toronto backyard in early spring when the cityscape looked dirty and desolate. I loved Franck’s pictures. They were the most Toronto pictures I could imagine.
I stalled around for a while, gabbing about my enthusiasm for Albert Franck. Kingsmill wasn’t much interested, but I kept up the line of patter, figuring I might spot something else in the office that offered hints about Carnale’s business affairs. I’d already learned the guy might be spending beyond his means. Was there more?
Kingsmill went along with the stall for a few minutes until he ran out of patience. He steered me down the stairs, and waited in the front hall, standing at the foot of the stairs, tapping one foot, barely able to mask his impatience with my slow progress. I stopped at a small table against the wall close to the living-room door, though it wasn’t serving as a living room at the moment. The small table displayed a lovely vase. I lifted the vase and placed Sal’s contract underneath it.
I thanked Kingsmill, and turned toward the front door. Kingsmill vanished up the stairs. I hadn’t taken more than a pace or two across the front hall when the door to the living room swung open with force. Sal and Franny came out in a big hurry. They were not quite dressed. Each had pulled on a thong, but both pressed the rest of their clothes to their bosoms as they tore into the front hall.