by Jack Batten
“Just kidding,” I said.
“What’s this about all the possible guilty parties in one room?” Annie said. “That’s not such a sterling plan. Suppose the guilty parties outnumber you?”
“Here’s the part you should go for,” I said. “The cops’ll be in on this one.”
Annie took my face in both hands and kissed me on the lips.
When she was finished, she said, “You’ve seen the light.”
“I was seeing stars for a minute there,” I said. “You want to practise your kissing technique some more?”
“Give me details,” Annie said, ignoring my question. “Where’s the room you’re collecting everybody together? And who’s everybody? And how about the police? Is that who you were phoning at the ungodly hour?”
A horn honked three times from outside the house. Annie walked across to the window and looked out.
She said, “First cab driver who actually gets out of his car and rings the doorbell, I’m gonna give him a fifty per cent tip.”
“Only if he holds the car door open for you.”
“Come on, I’m not asking the moon.”
I watched Annie gather up her notes for the morning’s radio show. And did my best to keep the edges of guilt and relief off my face. She’d asked too many questions I wasn’t ready to answer yet. Saved by the honk of a horn. Annie hoisted her bag, and I followed her down the stairs.
“I’ll be on the tear all day,” she said, talking to me over her shoulder. “The radio program, two movie screenings, a press conference.”
“The interview with good old Day-Lewis.”
“Of whom you’re no longer jealous.”
“Switched my angst to Ted Koppel,” I said. “But, look, have I told you about me and Sonia Braga?”
Annie stopped at the bottom of the stairs.
“What’s that got to do with anything?” she said. “If it’s my opinion you want, I think Sonia Braga’s in the top five of the world’s sexiest women.”
“I think you just stole my thunder.”
Annie opened the front door, and we stepped on to the porch.
“I’ll phone you between screenings and things, here and at your office,” she said. “When we connect, tell me what’s happening. Okay?”
“I might be hard to reach myself.”
Annie looked at her cab and back to me.
She said, “Just so I know, Crang, no bullshit, whatever you’re cooking up, promise me absolutely the police are going to be present and accounted for.”
“Cross my heart.”
Annie brushed her cheek with mine.
“If all else fails,” she said, “if I can’t reach you, here’s the fallback position—meet me at the Belair any time after eleven tonight.”
“Agreed,” I said.
Annie brushed my other cheek with her other cheek, and crossed the sidewalk to the cab. I watched as the driver performed a screeching U-turn and barrelled north on Beverley. Annie’s arm was waving from the window.
Before she was out of sight, a car pulled into the space at the curb that the cab had vacated. It was a small-sized black Mercedes. Cam Charles stepped out from behind the wheel, and walked briskly around the car and up the three stone steps to my porch.
“An opening question, Cam,” I said, pointing at the Mercedes. “Sun Myung Moon give you that thing?”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“Just wondering.” I was still wearing my maroon dressing gown. “Come on up. It’s fantastic timing you dropped by. I’ve got a little assignment for you.”
“The shoe’s on the other foot, Crang.” Cam didn’t give the impression he intended to come in off the porch. “It’s I who am bringing you a word of advice.”
“Just a quick stop on the way to the office?”
“Your phone was busy for forty minutes when I tried earlier,” Cam said. His voice sounded put out. “And I need to bring you up to date before you make a complete hash of things.”
“Could we just take my déshabillé upstairs and have the discussion?”
Cam trailed after me up to the living room. His eyes darted around the place. I couldn’t tell whether he found it wanting.
Cam said, “Trevor intends to have Stuffy Kernohan invite you to his office for questioning about the Fenk murder.”
“You can beat Trev to the punch,” I said. “That’s the assignment I’m talking about.”
We were still standing in the middle of the living room.
“We might as well sit,” Cam said. He chose the sofa. Recognized quality when he was next to it. I stayed on my feet and spoke first.
“You get to your pal Stuffy,” I said. “Tell him this. Tell him to organize a police raid for tonight on a booze can—I’ll give you the address— and tell him he’ll come up big.”
Cam took a long time crossing his legs. He had on a glen plaid suit that put my Cy Mann to shame. Even when my Cy Mann was dry cleaned.
“In the first place, Crang,” Cam said, “raiding a so-called booze can isn’t in the line of duty for a homicide detective like Stuffy.”
“I bet he’ll think so if you tell him he can scoop up Fenk’s killer in the process.”
“Will he? Arrest the person who strangled Raymond Fenk?”
“Got my word on it.”
Cam stared at me.
I said, “My unadorned guarantee isn’t the standard you’re looking for?”
“Hardly.”
“Try this for size, Cam,” I said. “A bunch of Vietnamese cocaine salesmen run the booze can. Fenk funnelled them a supply of coke from Los Angeles. Indirectly he did the funnelling. But something fouled up the transaction, and that made the Vietnamese very upset. After a while, they got even by putting the choke on Mr. Fenk.”
I allowed time for Cam to absorb the first blizzard of facts. He managed it calmly. Didn’t uncross his legs.
I said, “Stuffy gets in there fast enough, into the booze can, he’ll find himself enough evidence against the coke people, no defence lawyer could get them off. Including you.”
“Do I assume,” Cam said, “that Trevor is involved in what you’ve just described?”
“In the cocaine end,” I said. “And his involvement is as tight as . . .”
I stopped to root around for the appropriately expressive simile.
“As tight as a gnat’s ass stretched over a rain barrel,” Cam said, unsmiling. “Is that about it?”
“Terrific,” I said. “Where’d you get the line?”
“From a prominent rock musician. A client.”
“Yeah, well, that’s how tight Trevor’s in the cocaine business.” Cam tapped his forefinger on his chin and looked thoughtful.
“Leaving aside Trevor for the moment,” he said, “something you overlook, Crang, it would take the police days to mount the sort of raid you apparently have in mind.”
“Put it to Kernohan this way,” I said. “In one night’s work, the cops nab a killer, cut off a cocaine dealer who’s right up there with General Motors for organization, and close down a booze can, which I gather from the papers isn’t a victory they’ve experienced lately. Or ever.”
“Manpower, equipment, coordination,” Cam said. “The preparation’s monumental.”
“This isn’t just crime-busting, Cam,” I said. “For the police, this is what’s called a public-relations coup.”
“I could perhaps sound Stuffy out,” Cam said without much in the way of enthusiasm.
“Sounding out, Cam, I could look after that myself,” I said. “From you, I’m asking for a different level altogether. Persuasion.”
“See your point,” Cam said. His voice was developing a purr.
The flattery I was laying on Cam, the ego-stroking, might get him partly around to my side. But I needed a more practical argument. A clincher.
“Damage control, Cam,” I said. “That’s the advantage in sending Stuffy in at the head of the troops.”
“How so?”
“Trevor’s in with the coke gang,” I said. “No doubt about that. None, zip. Nada. So, okay, if he’s busted by cops from the drug squad, as he’s bound to be one of these days the way he’s carrying on, it’ll be messy. Names in the press, splashy trial, other criminal lawyers snickering behind their hands at your firm. You can anticipate what I mean, Cam, the public humiliation.”
Cam showed no sign he was about to go into panic, but I knew his mind was all mine for the moment.
“But,” I said, “suppose Stuffy Kernohan’s calling the shots on this raid at the booze can that’s going to produce the goods on Trevor, among other illegalities. Good old friendly, understanding, cooperative Stuffy. See where I’m going, Cam? Stuffy can play it any way you want with Trevor. Maybe just throw a scare into Trev. Tell him he’s got a choice, deal cocaine and go to the slammer or practise law and stay on the street. You and Stuffy work out the approach in advance. However it goes down, you can avoid all those other nasty consequences. No snickering lawyers, no embarrassment in the public prints.”
There wasn’t a gap, a blink, a millisecond between the end of my pitch and Cam’s next words.
“I’ll speak to Stuffy,” he said. “Persuade him.”
“That’s my boy, Cam.”
“You can count on the raid,” Cam said, his face firm and steely.
“Women find that sensual, Cam?” I said. “Your decisiveness?”
A sound like harrumph came from Cam’s throat.
“Your point about Trevor is well taken,” he said. “But what you’ve told me raises other questions.”
“And I got answers, Cam. But how about later? Both of us have places to go, people to see, raids to synchronize.”
“For example,” Cam said, apparently not inclined to vacate the sofa yet, “if Raymond Fenk was involved with the cocaine gang at this booze can, isn’t that going to reflect badly on my film festival?”
“Maybe it just presents another opportunity for you and Stuffy Kernohan to play ball.”
“You understand what I mean when I say questions need to be answered?”
“All in good time,” I said. “I’ll brief you later tonight, post raid.”
“Debrief.”
“Meantime you put the sale on Stuffy.”
I gave Cam the details. Location and layout of Big Bam’s booze can. The optimum time for attack. Nature of resistance.
“Timing is all,” I said. “Otherwise I could be left on the spot. That’s as in, get the shit kicked out of me.”
My warning didn’t make a dent in Cam’s sense of concern. He was still mulling over consequences closer to his own interest.
“I’m giving an after-theatre reception tonight,” he said. “Come by and assure me everything went as arranged in the raid.”
“Debrief you.”
“At the Belair Café until one or so in the morning.”
“The Belair? I was heading in that direction anyway.”
“You might say I’m invading the other side’s territory,” Cam said, wearing a crooked little grin. “The Festival of Festivals people think the Belair’s exclusively theirs.”
Cam lifted himself off the sofa.
“One last piece of data,” I said to him. “Where’s Trevor apt to be this morning?”
“He has a ten-o’clock bail application at the College Park Courts,” Cam said. “After that, I’ve no idea.”
Cam left without asking why I was interested in Trevor’s whereabouts, and I made a run for the kitchen radio. Too late. Or almost too late. Annie was winding up her movie review. She was discussing a baseball movie. The sportscaster, not missing a trick, jumped in to raise his own point about baseball films. Mentions of The Natural and Bull Durham and Bang the Drum Slowly whizzed by.
“The absolute low point in baseball movies,” Annie said, sounding like someone with a lock on the very last word, “the scene that hit rock bottom for authenticity, was in Fear Strikes Out. Tony Perkins played Jimmy Piersall, and in one scene he tries to catch a fly ball with his wrists together.”
Where did that come from? I went into the bedroom and got dressed. I knew for a certainty Annie had never seen the inside of a ball park, real-life or TV. I put on an elderly but still presentable tweed jacket, my grey flannels, a blue shirt, and a tie with maroon stripes. So where did Annie acquire the bit of expertise on Tony Perkins’s lousy catching style? And how’d she blow it by so convincingly on the radio? I walked south on Beverley to my first appointment. It was a lesson to keep in mind, what Annie had done. If you sound authoritative, chances are you can talk your way through brick walls and other, more human obstacles.
28
THE CLERK BEHIND THE DESK at the King Edward said Mr. Gant was having breakfast in the Victoria Room. Couldn’t miss him, the clerk said. The clerk had a smirk on his face. Most guys behind desks in expensive hotels wear smirks. Probably learn how in first-year Hotel Management.
My heels made echoing clacks on the marble floor of the King Eddie’s lobby. It was a rich sound. Everything about the King Edward sounded, looked, and smelled rich. Darnell Gant must have been a fellow in the chips.
I stood at the entrance of the Victoria Room. The clerk was right. I couldn’t have missed Mr. Gant. He was the only black guy in the room. Also the biggest. Most handsome. Best-dressed. The man couldn’t be all perfect. Probably didn’t know the Johnny Mercer lyrics to “Early Autumn”.
“Mr. Gant’s expecting me,” I fibbed to the maître d’. He was another smirker.
Gant was at a table for four, and over the settings for the other three people he’d scattered newspapers. Wall Street Journal. USA Today. Financial Post. He was reading the business section of the New York Times early edition. He seemed only mildly curious to find me standing at his table.
“I’m Crang,” I said.
“Oh yeah,” Gant said. “The gentleman who’s going into custody today.”
He moved some newspapers out of the way and motioned me to sit down. He was eating eggs Benedict.
“That’d be Trevor Dalgleish talking,” I said.
“Only man I know in Toronto,” Gant said. “You want some breakfast? Very good with the eggs Benedict here.”
“Anything on the menu got a lot of fruit?”
“Compote they call it.”
“That and coffee.”
Gant had the waiter at our table with a flick of his hand. If I were the waiter, I’d have hustled too. Gant looked like he began life as a large piece of granite, and some sculptor very long on imagination devoted a decade or so to chiselling away at it. His build was powerful, not weightlifter powerful, more like athletic, born-to-it powerful. He had black hair in tight little curls, a high forehead, an aquiline nose, full lips, and a chin with a dimple in it. The combination was pleasing, especially, I’d wager, to the ladies. He had on a tan suit that looked Rodeo Drive expensive. He knew how to eat eggs Benedict without dripping yolk.
I said, “I expect Trevor’s given you a rundown on me.”
“A lawyer and a loose cannon.”
“Those were his words?”
“Some of them,” Gant said. “The rest were about how you’re shielding the man who killed Ray Fenk. Sorry to hear about that.”
“Sorry about me shielding the guy Trevor says killed Fenk?”
“No,” Gant said. “About who the killer is. Dave Goddard. Always loved the way he plays tenor. Sounds like Stan Getz in the old days.”
“He does,” I said. “But, this is the real goods, none of that about Dave counts. He didn’t do anything to Fenk except try to avoid him.”
The waiter set down the compote in front of me. It had eight or nine fruits. All fresh. I started on the blueberries.
“Another thing,” I said, “I know the last place you heard Dave play.”
Gant looked at me, not much more curious than he appeared when I first showed up at his table.
“Culver City,” I said. “Alley Cat Bistro, club in a shopping mall next to a shoe store.�
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“Not bad,” Gant said, and went back to the eggs and other rich stuff.
“What I’m going to do,” I said, “I’m going to tell you a story, and when I get to a part that isn’t accurate, if I get to a part that isn’t accurate, you say stop.”
Gant poured himself more coffee from the silver pot on the table and got rearranged in his chair.
“Fenk dealt cocaine,” I said. “That’s when he wasn’t cranking out movies that don’t qualify for Oscars. You were a partner, associate, aide, something or other, in the coke line. He struck a deal with Trevor Dalgleish to peddle twenty-four kilos of the normal goods. The two of them, Fenk and Trevor, probably made their first connection when Trevor went shopping in California for movies to show up here at the Alternate Film Festival. My guess is Trevor got on to Hell’s Barrio, and that took him naturally to Fenk. From there, one thing led to another. Movies to drugs. Fenk must have allowed as how he sold cocaine, and Trevor must have come back with, well, now, isn’t that a coincidence, he happened to be in a cocaine-buying mood.”
Gant’s only reactions, as I talked, were to raise and lower his coffee cup and adjust his smile of irony.
“When it came to shipping the stuff up here, the cocaine,” I said, “Fenk got this fiendishly clever notion. He stuck the cocaine in cans of film. And the thing was, he had a lot of cans to choose from because, apart from Hell’s Barrio, he was the California contact man, no doubt by appointment from Trevor, for the five other movies from down Hollywood way. No difficulty for him to pack the coke in with the movies and ship them on to Toronto. But for some reason or other he didn’t want to risk putting the coke in the cans that held his own film. I doubt the reasons were artistic. Probably nerves. He already had two coke convictions, and on the off chance the cops or customs people, anyone in authority, got to the coke before Trevor, Fenk didn’t want to be roped in as the owner of the film and of the cans that held it. So he came up with the idea of making Dave Goddard the unwitting deliveryman of the four kilos of coke that weren’t in the other people’s film cans.”
“Stop,” Gant said.
He had his right hand in the air.
“That was my idea,” he said. “The coke in Dave Goddard’s saxophone case. Pretty inspired, you agree?”