Keeper of the Flame

by Jack Batten

  After a while, I left Alice’s porch, staggering a little under the champagne box’s load, at the same time keeping a grip on the white envelope from Wally Crawford. I lugged my burden down to Dundas Street to hail a cab. Standing there, keeping a lookout for empty taxis, thinking about my visit to Alice, I knew I’d deliberately omitted one essential part of the story I told her. I didn’t mention that the person I expected to prove guilty in the blackmail scheme, and just possibly in the murder, was the man who had created her son’s career. Roger Carnale.

  I tried to rationalize the omission. I hadn’t proved anything yet. I hadn’t pinned the blackmailing or the murder on Carnale or on anybody else, not beyond a reasonable doubt. Naming a name would come later, when I’d done more sleuthing. That was my excuse for keeping part of the story from Alice.

  Besides that, I happened to be a person who dreaded delivering bad news until it was impossible to avoid.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Archie Brewster opened the door, and said, “What have we here?”

  “Good things, Archie,” I said, holding the box of Armand de Brignac in my aching arms. “They come in heavy bottles.”

  A few years earlier, Archie bought three row houses on an east-west street just north of the gay village in the Church and Wellesley neighbourhood. He knocked out the interior walls between the most westerly house and the one in the middle, and set up his laboratory in the enlarged space. The house at the east end Archie kept for his family’s living quarters. He had a wife who worked in the labs with him.

  I was now standing at the front door to the Brewster laboratory.

  “Come in, come in, Crang,” Archie said. “I’ll get my people to carry the box. All the sweat on your face, you look like you’ve crossed hell’s half acre.”

  “Some parts of the city, it feels that way.”

  Two young women in white lab coats picked up the box of champagne, and deposited it across the hall in Archie’s office. Archie and I trailed after them. The decorating touch I always loved about the office was the absence from the walls of professional diplomas, scientific degrees, or anything else that mapped Archie’s scholastic and scientific life. The man had no airs. Hanging on one wall was a wacky painting by a Canadian artist named Dennis Burton. It showed what downtown Toronto might have looked like if the province had allowed a six-lane road called the Spadina Expressway to blast into the city centre forty years earlier. It was a rare time in Toronto’s history when good politics prevailed. The Spadina Expressway never got off the drawing board.

  “This box of what I assume is wine, Crang,” Archie said, “it’s a kind of bribe? I ask because I don’t have any work from you in the lab right now. So I’m drawing the conclusion the wine in the box is my reward if I jump a job for you to the head of the line?”

  “Simple payment in advance, Archie.”

  “That sets a precedent. Nobody’s ever handed me wine ahead of time before.”

  “It’s a special champagne, and it happened to become available all of a sudden. I thought of you right away.”

  I was exaggerating like crazy, but if Archie didn’t go for it, I had one more argument in favour of giving me instant service.

  “Archie,” I said, “this is a case where a fine young man is certain to be the victim of malign forces if I don’t get speedy about helping him out.”

  “Malign forces? Jesus, Crang, you’re really working me hard.”

  Archie reached into his desk and pulled out a box cutter. My optimism shot up. If Archie got a look at the Ace of Spades, I felt sure I’d be home free.

  He sliced into the box with three smooth strokes of the box cutter. Archie was a practised hand at this. I watched as he lifted a bottle from the box. He examined the Ace of Spades on the label from every angle. Intrigue was written all over his face.

  “I’ve read a lot about this brand,” Archie said.

  “In hip hop magazines?”

  “In wine tasters’ guides,” Archie said. “What in hell have hip hop magazines got to do with champagne?”

  “You don’t want to know, Archie.”

  Archie was staring at the bottle, rotating it in his hands. “There’s a big argument over this brand in champagne circles. On one side, the fussy people say it’s a showoff wine; the other side says only snobs reject it.”

  “Who are you throwing your lot in with?”

  “Haven’t tasted it yet, have I?”

  “Not ever?”

  Archie shook his head. “This stuff isn’t cheap.”

  “The nice young man I mentioned? My client? He wants you to have it.”

  “He’s a collector?”

  “You might say.”

  Archie put the bottle down on his desk. “All right, Crang, you talked me into a deal.”

  “You’re going to have a taste now?”

  Archie held up his right index finger. “One, I don’t drink during work hours.” He raised another finger. “Two, I drink champagne only with my wife.” Another finger came up. “Three, these bottles need some chilling.”

  “So, shall we talk about the matter of my young man coming to potential grief?”

  Archie laughed. “Don’t be so damn subtle, Crang.”

  “Strike while the iron is hot, always my motto.”

  Archie heaved a sigh. “Have it your way, Crang.”

  I handed him the white envelope holding the papers from Wally Crawford documenting the Reverend Alton Douglas’s murder.

  “What’s this writing on the outside of the envelope?” Wally said.

  “It’s about the guy who fell from the twelfth floor to the eleventh the day I ran into you at Fox’s office,” I said. “But he isn’t the subject of the material inside the envelope. Forget that guy.”

  “How’s he doing? The guy you’re telling me to forget, whatever his name is?”

  “Freddie Chamblis. He’s under tender care at Mount Sinai. But, please never mind Freddie. It’s this forensics report I’m banking everything on.”

  It was silent in the room for a few minutes while Archie flipped through the report’s pages.

  “This is official forensics stuff meant only for the cops,” Archie said after a while. “Should I know how it found its way into your hands?”

  “A Homicide cop I know thinks I can solve the case for him,” I said. “But the report you’re looking at represents only half of the material I’m asking your lab to work on.”

  “There’s nothing in here about the weapon that killed the victim,” Archie said. “Except for some speculation.”

  “That’s the other half of the material.”

  “You’re going to bring it to me, whatever information about the weapon you can get ahold of?” Archie asked, giving the pages in his hand a little shake to keep them straight. “At the moment, there’s nothing in here that I can add to or object to.”

  “Tonight I expect to obtain by various means the implement that killed the Reverend.”

  “Which you’ll deliver to me?”

  I nodded. “You’ll be able to compare it with the blow on the poor Reverend’s head, and tell me definitively whether or not this is the weapon that did the terrible deed, am I right?”

  Archie nodded his head. “I can do some other tests too,” he said. “Take whatever fingerprints are on the weapon. Somehow you may come across somebody whose prints match up to what we find. And we can compare the blood on the weapon with the deceased’s blood. See if they’re the same.”

  “The Forensics people who did the report you’re holding right now, they analyzed the blood, got the Reverend’s DNA, all to your satisfaction?”

  Archie tapped a finger on the report. “It’s their usual beautiful work.”

  “So we’re in business?”

  Archie lay the report on his desk very carefully, squared it up with th
e edge of his desk, and said in a deliberate voice, “Just so I understand how far over the line I may be stepping in this case, could you give me some of the backstory? I’m not going to jump ship on you, Crang. I’ll keep our deal. But I’d like to know more. Just think of it as humouring an old guy in a lab.”

  I took my time and told Archie the entire tale involving the Reverend Al and the guys in Heaven’s Philosophers. I told him about Flame and his manager, Roger Carnale, and all the bad stuff I was beginning to believe Carnale had done. I left out the part about me in the shower stall while the Reverend had the piss to end all pisses. And I didn’t need to dwell on the incident on the roof of Fox’s building. Archie had already heard that part of the story shortly after it took place. With those two exceptions, I told him all the steps in the crime as most of them had happened. The rest of what I related to Archie consisted of my own deductions.

  Archie was quiet for a few moments after I finished, leaning back in his chair, his gaze directed at the Dennis Burton painting, though I knew his thoughts were on something other than the Spadina Expressway that never happened.

  “Follow the money, you say?” Archie said after a bit.

  “Sounds like I’m dramatizing things, but, yeah, that’s my modus operandi for the moment.”

  “Which leads you to finger this guy, Carnale?”

  “He’s the blackmailer for sure, and in my mind, the evidence is piling up that he was the guy who bumped off the Reverend.”

  “If he did the blackmailing, he was stealing eight million dollars from his own organization.”

  I was nodding yes in a rhythm timed to Archie’s words. “Right, right. I figure he hired the Reverend for a fee to pretend he, the Reverend, was the blackmailer.”

  “And you yourself were window-dressing to the scheme?” Archie said. “Carnale hired you as a way of convincing everybody else that he regarded the blackmailing as a serious threat to his client, Flame?”

  “The only place Carnale slipped up is he didn’t count on my tenacity.”

  Archie smiled. “He didn’t count on the Reverend changing his mind either.”

  “That was where my tenacity became Carnale’s problem,” I said. “He figured I’d fade from the case after the Reverend was murdered. And he definitely didn’t think I’d still be hanging around after he alledgedly paid the eight million to the second blackmailer who was actually himself, if my deducing is correct.”

  “Which explains why Carnale hired the guy presently under tender care in Mount Sinai to throw a scare into you.”

  “This is how I figure it,” I said.

  Archie paused. “There’s something about the money that’s still a little off,” he said. “I appreciate Carnale rigging a phony blackmail scheme because he needed money to pay the cost of maintaining his lifestyle. But eight million dollars? That’s a hell of a lot of money over a relatively short period of time just to cover the cost of a big house in east Toronto and a bunch of fedoras and walking sticks.”

  “Maybe he’s got a gambling problem.”

  “An eight-million-dollar problem? I don’t think so. There must be something you’re missing.”

  “You think my reasoning about the phony blackmailing is solid except for how I explain Carnale’s need for eight million bucks?”

  Archie, rubbing his jaw with his right hand, took his time about answering. “Yeah, I buy it with the caveat about the eight million.”

  “Is that begrudging approval I hear in your voice?”

  “The story is a lot for a person to take in, you got to admit that. You’ve been at the thing for days. I’m brand new to what you’ve figured out.”

  “Assuming you might be right, I’d say the next step I need to take today is to have another chat with Arthur Kingsmill.”

  “I’ve forgotten, which guy’s he?”

  “Carnale’s accountant. I’ll get him to give me a complete explanation for the eight million — an answer to the question, how did Roger run up such a big debt?”

  “You’re doing it today?” Archie said. “Today, you’re supposed to be getting me the instrument you think killed the Reverend.”

  “That’s tonight. Obtaining the instrument in question is an after-dark operation.”

  “What time can you drop it off here? At the lab?”

  “Probably not till two in the morning. But I don’t expect you to work on my case at an hour like that.”

  “If you deliver it by two, I’ll be waiting,” Archie said. “If not by two, I’m going to bed, and you can bring it over tomorrow.”

  “Won’t your wife object to you keeping late hours?”

  Archie shook his head. “Once I’ve told her the story, she’ll want to stay up with me.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Not in the least,” Archie said, standing up, ready to show me out. “My wife is a person who loves a mystery. Just like me.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  I bought a falafel with hummus, pita, and all the trimmings from the food wagon parked next to Matt Cohen Park. It was almost three o’clock. I hadn’t eaten since eight, and felt like a guy on a fast. I carried my Middle Eastern lunch across Spadina to my building and up the elevator, a cloud of exotic food scents trailing in my wake.

  Walking down the hall, I could hear two voices coming from the open door of my office. One voice belonged to Gloria. The other, a man’s, I’d heard before but couldn’t place.

  When I stepped into the office, Gloria was smiling at something the man with his back to me was saying. I recognized the back.

  “Mr. Kingsmill,” I said. “Convenient that you’re here.”

  “Call him Arthur, Crang,” Gloria said, still smiling. “He’s in a desperate jam. But he’s being brave about it.”

  Kingsmill stood up. “I knew I’d reached the end of my rope the minute you showed up at the office yesterday, Mr. Crang.”

  “It’s okay if I call you Arthur?”

  “Please do.”

  “Well, Arthur, you’re planning to retain a criminal lawyer?”

  “You think I should?”

  “Depends on what you came here to tell me, but whatever you say, I can’t represent you if the cops lay charges.”

  “Gloria explained why,” Kingsmill said. “But I still want to get some things off my chest. After that, maybe you can give me a hint of advice about my bleak future.”

  “Good move, Arthur,” Gloria said. “Crang’s a wonder at advising people.”

  “The prisons are full of them,” I said.

  For a moment, Kingsmill’s face froze.

  “That’s Crang’s idea of a joke,” Gloria said, patting Kingsmill on the arm.

  I spread my meal on the desk. Gloria poured me a cup of the coffee she’d already made. The cups she and Kingsmill had in front of them were almost empty. Gloria topped them up.

  “The last couple of days, Arthur, I’ve been working on a theory,” I said. I was talking carefully because my mouth was half-filled with falafel and pita.

  “A theory?” Gloria said. “Not just one. You’ve been working on half a dozen theories.”

  “Gloria’s point,” I said to Arthur, “is that some of my ideas about the blackmailing of Flame haven’t panned out.”

  “Go ahead, Crang,” Kingsmill said. “I have a feeling from the way things are happening, you’re close to getting it right.”

  “This second blackmailer, the guy who is supposed to have collected the eight million dollars,” I said, “he doesn’t exist.”

  “You’ve almost there, Crang.”

  “Okay, he exists, but he’s Roger Carnale.”

  “Now you’ve got it,” Kingsmill said.

  “The son of a bitch!” Gloria said. “He cheated his own client out of eight million?”

  “Is it plain old greed at work here?” I
said to Kingsmill. “Or is there something else going on?”

  Kingsmill was shaking his head.

  “Okay, another possibility,” I said, “Carnale needs it to support his lifestyle. He got himself in hock to the tune of eight million bucks on fedoras and walking sticks, a bunch of other very expensive toys, and a multi-million-dollar house.”

  “Not quite, Crang,” Kingsmill said, sounding sorrowful. “Roger spent the eight million all in one place. He needed it to cover a loss in a stock investment.”

  “Somebody talked him into a bad bet on the market?” I said, feeling outraged on Flame’s behalf. “You’re saying the entire mess of the last couple of weeks, a guy getting murdered, it’s all about something as simple-minded and wrong-headed as that?”

  Kingsmill made calming motions with his hands, letting me know that if I’d just shut up, he would explain what I was missing in the Carnale story.

  “It all began about a year ago,” Kingsmill said. “Roger got together with a man at the bar on the street level of First Canadian Place. Somebody had introduced Roger to this man earlier at a card game or some such affair. But it was in the First Candian bar when the two of them started talking deeply about investments. Roger decided this man was in the genius category at understanding the stock market.”

  “Is that a swindle I see on the horizon?” I said.

  “I wouldn’t be here if it were not,” Kingsmill said. “Roger rolled the whole eight million over to the man he called a genius. The money was gone in an amazingly short time. Roger was devastated, as you can imagine.”

  “Am I going to recognize the name of the investment genius who brought on the devastation?” I said.

  “I don’t know why you would. But it’s Sizemore.”

  “Willie Sizemore?” I said.

  “Oh lord, one of the damn gang on St. Clair,” Gloria said. She got busy on her laptop, scrolling down a list of names.