by Jack Batten
“Hey, Crang.” Georgie Gabriel greeted me with a big smile.
He and Willie Sizemore were admiring the view out back. Georgie held up his battered briefcase. “Got the goods,” he said.
Willie came toward me with his hand out. “Mr. Crang,” he said. “I believe we met at Heaven’s Philosophers. Sizemore is my name. Call me Willie.”
“Interesting to find you among this company, Willie,” I said.
“I came here to explain myself,” Willie said. His voice had a wheedling tone.
“Start with this one, Willie,” I said. “Where did you get the whack on the head from the cricket bat? At Upper Canada, Ridley, or Lakefield? And was it from a member of the Eaton family, the Weston family, or British royalty?”
“You get directly to the point, Mr. Crang.”
“We don’t have much time tonight, Willie.”
“My parents sent me to all three schools at different times.”
“The schools asked your mum and dad to move you on, did they?”
“There might have been some of that, but all of it happened long after I got the hit to my head,” Willie said, one hand fingering the gouge near his right temple, “I had trouble focusing on my studies.”
“So, which one of the schools did the whacking happen at?”
“None that you mentioned,” Willie said, stepping up the wheed-ling. “Before I went to them, I was at a small boarding school called Harrington out towards Lake Huron. Not on the level of UCC or Ridley. But it was at Harrington where a boy struck me with the bat. He was the scion of a family in photo engraving.”
“Not much of that going on these days. Photo engraving.”
“Why I asked Georgie to bring me along tonight, Mr. Crang,” Willie said, “I want to let Roger know how sorry I am about the misunderstanding over the eight million dollars.”
“I’m sure Roger will be glad to see you, Willie. He might take the opportunity to put his mean chauffeur on your ass.”
Willie looked from me to Georgie and back again. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good choice, coming here,” he said.
“On the contrary, Willie,” I said, “You being here, I think it’ll turn out to be beneficial to the cause I represent, namely Flame and his mother.”
“I’ve never met those two people, Mr. Crang, though I’m sure I’d be pleased to make their acquaintance.”
“The feelings might not be mutual, Willie,” I said. “Not when they hear from your own mouth that their eight million dollars found its way via Roger Carnale into your bank account. The beneficial part, it drives home the message Roger’s not the best guy to choose investment destinations for Flame’s money.”
“Speaking of which,” Georgie said, holding up his briefcase. “Certified cheque. Eight million. And we’re letting Willie here keep the interest the eight million earned while the dough was in his hands.”
Willie had the good taste to look sheepish. “I should emphasize, Roger went into our dealings with his eyes wide open,” he said. “It was a matter of him encountering a little bad luck in his investments.”
“Bad luck?” Arthur Kingsmill said, coming up behind us. He was speaking to Willie. “What Roger encountered was a bad hat in the person of yourself.”
“You’re supposedly an accountant, Arthur,” Willie said. “That means your duties include preventing activities you’ve always accused me of.”
“There’s no supposedly, Sizemore,” Kingsmill said. “I’m an accountant. About that there’s no doubt. But you, you’re nothing but a charlatan.”
I spoke over Kingsmill. “Gentlemen, l’ve got an agenda for tonight, short but sweet, and I don’t want you people squabbling before Carnale even gets here.”
“Why don’t we all have a drink?” Georgie said. “There’s wine and other stuff on the table over there. Vodka, I notice. Scotch.”
Georgie was pointing to a table against the wall, close to the door to the kitchen.
“I thought it might help smooth the way,” Kingsmill said.
“Thank you, Arthur,” I said. “Good planning.”
For the next few minutes, the four of us helped ourselves to drinks. The vodka was Stoli. I poured some into an old-fashioned glass, which I filled with ice cubes from a silver bucket. Peace and calm had descended on the room. It was an atmosphere that might encourage a more productive exchange of information.
We sat in the area with the two sofas done in floral designs. Everybody took a sip from their drinks. Then second sips all round. We looked at one another. Then looked away. Nobody spoke. Nobody exchanged information with anybody else.
“The collegial approach to our relationship doesn’t seem to be working any better than the argumentive style,” I said.
Everybody sipped again from their drinks.
In the stillness, we heard the front door open. That was followed by footsteps coming into the front hall. Then came the sound of keys being dropped in a bowl. A voice spoke. It was Carnale’s.
“Anin, I’ll be up in the office,” he said. “You want to see why all the living room lights are on. While you’re at it, make me a scotch and water. I’m beat.”
None of us in the living room moved or spoke.
Somebody, almost certainly Anin, whom I couldn’t help thinking of as Lex, dropped suitcases in the entrance hall. He walked across the hall toward the open living room door.
Lex got two steps into the room before he noticed the four of us sitting on the sofas, drinks in our hands. A startled expression made a brief appearance on his face. It was followed by a pleased smirk, the look of a little kid who’d discovered something secret and naughty. He turned his head toward the entrance hall.
“Mr. Carnale,” Lex said, “you want to come in here and see what the fuckin’ cat dragged in.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Carnale didn’t react as gleefully as Lex did to the personnel that made up our little group of visitors. From the moment Carnale laid eyes on us, the air began to seep out of the man. It seemed to me he sensed exactly what lay in store. Lex got his boss a scotch and water. Carnale, sitting not very straight in one of the straight-backed chairs, clutched the drink in his right hand. He took a generous swallow. It didn’t appear to buck him up much. Lex, who had set himself up in a position behind Carnale, was looking increasingly bewildered by what was going on.
I was sitting in the sofa closest to Carnale, Georgie beside me.
“Roger,” I said, looking Carnale in the eye, “let’s begin with a little show and tell. Georgie here has something to show you. The part I’m calling ‘tell,’ you ought to be able to figure out for yourself.”
Georgie opened his briefcase, took out a cheque, and passed it to me. Very impressive this cheque was, the numerals in extra large type, one 8 and six 0s. The certification was stamped across the cheque. The signature at the bottom of the cheque was flashy and indecipherable but was attributed to the president of a numbered company, which was no doubt Willie Sizemore’s covering corporation.
I handed the cheque to Carnale. His face showed no emotion, unless defeat qualified as an emotion. He had no doubt figured what the cheque was all about in the instant Georgie produced it. But as soon as he saw it up close, the eight-million-dollar sum on the cheque’s face payable to the Flame Group, he knew how thoroughly he’d been nailed. He gave the cheque a long stare, maybe hoping to detect a flaw in it, something technical that would get him off the hook. When he spotted nothing out of place, he gave the cheque back to me.
Carnale looked at Willie.
“I’m ashamed to admit you tricked me out of such a large sum, Sizemore,” he said.
“A misunderstanding entirely, Roger,” Willie said. “If you’ll let me explain …”
“Save it for later, Willie,” I said.
Willie tried to speak again, but Arthur Kingsmill, beside him on th
e other sofa, put a warning hand on Willie’s knee.
“Roger,” I said, “you concede you turned eight million of Flame’s earnings over to Willie Sizemore?”
“The way you put it is too simplistic to even begin to cover the situation,” Carnale said.
“Yes or no?”
“Yes, with an explanation.”
“Next,” I said, “you organized a bogus blackmailing scheme with the Reverend Alton Douglas as your front man?”
Carnale paused, “Do I need a lawyer?” he said.
“Nobody’s talking criminal charges,” I said. “The people who know about your dirty tricks are pretty much all in this room, and none of us has the faintest intention of bringing criminal charges against you or against anyone else” — I aimed a stern look at Willie Sizemore — “in connection with the eight million dollars.”
“I thought it’d be best for the Flame Group in the long run,” Carnale said.
“After the Reverend died,” I said, “you put together a second blackmail scheme. That second one’s in the process of winding down right now, in this room, with the return of the eight million. For that, we can thank Jackie and Georgie Gabriel.”
Willie began to clap his hands, beaming at Georgie. Nobody joined in the applause. I shot Willie another of my stern looks, and he cut his ovation short.
“I’m authorized to speak for Flame in what comes next, Roger,” I said to Carnale. “Flame is willing to make you an offer. You stay on the job, managing Flame’s career in music. Flame and everybody else who knows the hip hop business accepts that there’s nobody better at guiding a client’s career in hip hop. You got the contacts and the right instincts. That’s why you’re getting a break on the fraud you tried to pull. You’ll get paid a decent salary, the right benefits, all of that. The one restriction, you won’t handle Flame’s money on your own. Arthur has a document for you to complete. It’s a waiver of all your signing duties in the Flame Group.”
Carnale got an indignant expression on his face. His confidence might have been staging a small return. “Without me running the entire financial side,“ he said, “who’s going to read and sign the contracts and every other piece of paper that comes through this office?” He turned his head in Arthur Kingsmill’s direction. “Not Kingsmill.”
“I’m the person who’ll sign, Roger,” Flame’s mother said, standing in the doorway from the kitchen. “For the time being anyway.”
Everybody turned to look at Alice. She was apparently shocked enough at what she’d already heard that she couldn’t wait for me to summon her to the living room.
At the sight of Alice, Carnale took a few seconds to reorganize his thoughts.
“Alice?” Carnale said. “You’re part of what’s being done to me?”
“Done to you!” Alice said. “What have you been doing to me all these years? The first thing, you stole those nine pages of lyrics out of my house.”
“That was a long time ago,” Carnale said. “I knew it would hurt Flame’s reputation if anybody else got hold of them.”
“Probably so,” Alice said. “But then you turned around and used them yourself to harm my son.”
“But that was only money,” Carnale said.
“It was his money,” Alice said. “Not yours.”
I made a motion to Kingsmill, who handed a document along with extra copies to Carnale and a pen to sign them with. The pen was a gorgeous Montblanc. What lucky guy owned that? Kingsmill caught my admiring glance. He mouthed, “Carnale’s.” Kingsmill clearly loved what was about to happen, his domineering boss taking a great fall and signing the document that measured the tumble with his own pricey Montblanc.
Once he started signing, Carnale wasted no time in getting through the original document and the copies. As he finished each piece of paper, Kingsmill slid it with the others into a large file folder. While all this was going in, I strolled over to the bookshelf, picked up Roger’s briefcase with the metal corners, and carried it back to the group.
“That went well,” Kingsmill said to me, sotto voce. He held the file folder with all the signed documents.
“It was the easy part,” I said. “Getting Flame’s finances straightened around.”
“Aren’t we finished?” Kingsmill said. “Or are you implying there’s a hard part still to come?”
“I am.”
“What is it?”
“Murder,” I said.
Kingsmill looked properly shocked.
“Roger,” I said, speaking loudly enough to get everybody’s attention, especially Carnale’s. “Roger,” I said again, holding up the briefcase for his inspection, “this is yours, am I right?”
“I own eight or nine briefcases,” he said.
“But only one with metal edging?”
“I suppose.”
“This, Roger,” I said, hoisting the briefcase a little higher, “is an instrument of death.”
Damn, I thought to myself, that sounded melodramatic and pompous. From the looks on the other people’s faces, mostly of bemusement and bafflement, they agreed I’d hit a wrong note.
“What I mean,” I said, “is this briefcase was used to kill the Reverend Alton Douglas two weeks ago last night.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Crang,” Carnale said.
“I had the briefcase tested by a private forensics lab. There’s not a doubt, Roger, somebody swung it at the Reverend’s head.”
I was back in stride and seemed to have regained the group’s confidence.
“This,” I said, once again holding up the briefcase, “is a murder weapon. The question is, who handled it on the fatal night? I think the answer must be evident to all of us here.”
“Crang,” Georgie said in a voice just above a whisper. Georgie was sitting on the edge of one of the sofas, to the right of where I was standing. He pulled on my jacket as he whispered my name again. “Hey, Crang.”
“Georgie,” I said, dropping my voice to Georgie’s level, “I’m reaching the climax here.”
“I know,” he said. “That’s why I need to speak to you.”
“Soon as I’m done.”
“We better speak right now,” Georgie said, “or you’re gonna make an ass of yourself.”
Georgie’s usual facial expression included a grin. At that moment, he wasn’t grinning. He was dead serious.
I excused myself from the rest of the group, and led Georgie over to the door to the entrance hall. I intended to give him a small blast for wrecking my big scene, but Georgie spoke first.
“Carnale didn’t kill the Reverend,” he said. “He couldn’t have. At the time you say the murder was going on, he was with me hundreds of miles away.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Georgie and I continued the conversation out in the entrance hall, the door to the living room closed behind us.
“We were comped by this casino in Atlantic City,” Georgie said. “They do that with big-time players, which Roger was for a little while.”
“No insult intended, Georgie,” I said, “but how did you qualify for the freebie?”
“I’m what they call a friend of the casino. What that means, I steer the big players from up here down to their particular joint. And just so you know, it ain’t easy to insult me.”
I smiled, and got on with the grilling. “For this jaunt, you left Toronto at what time?”
“Noon Tuesday — in one of those little Gulfstreams the casino leased for me and Roger and three other players I didn’t know. We stayed in the same hotel in Atlantic City, Roger and myself. He played blackjack till around midnight. We had something to eat and went to bed. Next day, Roger was back in action, more blackjack. He lost a ton of money, and the Gulfstream flew us home that afternoon, the Wednesday.”
“The impression I’m getting, Roger was hardly ever out of your sight?”
/> “Only way he could have done the murder is if he flew home after I fell asleep around 2 a.m., bopped the Reverend, and was back in bed in Atlantic City before I woke up around eight.”
“Not a chance Carnale killed the Reverend,” I said.
I knew I couldn’t let the confrontation with Carnale just dribble away, not tonight when I’d organized everything to reach a grand finale. He may not have been the killer, but he owned the briefcase that did the job on the Reverend. That ought to lead somewhere useful. The briefcase was all I had to work with.
Georgie and I went back into the living room. Everybody seemed to have fresh drinks; even Alice had a glass of white wine. She and Kingsmill had their heads together over the documents that gave Alice the signing power in the Flame Group. Everybody else was sitting or standing silent, even Willie.
“Roger,” I said, once more holding up the damned briefcase, “this is the weapon that killed the Reverend.”
“You don’t need to tell me again, Crang,” Carnale said. “But, if you listen for a moment, I’ve been thinking about the situation.”
“Never mind thinking,” I said. “Just answer my questions.”
I didn’t have much in the way of questioning, but I didn’t want Carnale taking control of the conversation.
Carnale still insisted on talking to me. “Georgie told you I was with him in Atlantic City at the time of the murder. Am I right?”
“Roger, will you just let me ask the questions,” I said. “Who had access to the briefcase while you were away?”
“That’s not the only thing you should be concerned about, Crang. It’s not only a matter of the person having access to the briefcase.”
I paused, wondering whether Carnale was on to something interesting, “Just this once,” I said, “I might listen to you, Roger.”
As I was speaking, Lex made a small movement. Lex had been standing behind Carnale all evening, just to Carnale’s right, never budging, hardly noticeable, the only person in the room without a drink. Now he stepped closer to the chair Carnale was sitting in. He placed his left hand on the back of the chair, as if he were reaching out for aid or protection.