Riviera Blues

by Jack Batten

  “Cuuuuurrrr,” I said.

  Curtis bent over the drawer that had held the twine and tape.

  “Bedroom’s awful dark, man,” he said.

  Oh, damn.

  Curtis produced a package of sixty-watt bulbs. He unwrapped one bulb and went away with it.

  The second hand didn’t make it half way around the clock before Curtis was back in the kitchen.

  “Put in a new bulb for you, man.” he said.

  In his large palm, Curtis held the disk, good old Operation Freeload, and for the first time, Curtis was showing a lot of teeth in the dark blue mask. His teeth were exceptionally white.

  “Yarggg,” I said.

  “Dig it, man,” Curtis said, “the Billie Holiday album in the livin’ room?”

  I nodded from my place of confinement.

  “Lester Young, Duke’s band, Ahmad Jamal? Those all your phonograph records on the shelf, man?”

  I nodded again.

  “Man plays Billie Holiday, Lester Young on his phonograph, he likely got a soul.”

  My nodding grew more vigorous.

  “Don’t merit I should slap him upside the head. Little payback for wingin’ that there bottle from the icebox.”

  I was bobbing my head like a frantic fool.

  “Stay cool, man.”

  Curtis took a step back, turned, and flowed out of the kitchen. From the bedroom, I heard faintly the sound of the window coming down. Curtis was no doubt lowering it from the outside. Immediately below the window, there was the roof over the downstairs patio. From there, it was a short drop to the ground, particularly short for a guy of Curtis’s proportions.

  I sat in the bright light of the kitchen and reviewed my position. Physically, my position was humiliating. In strategic terms, it was just as bad. Curtis the Hip Giant almost certainly burgled my apartment on a consignment basis. He was sent in to steal one object, the disk, and the employer who had sent him must have been Mike Rolland. Mike had probably gone back into Jamie Haddon’s place, failed to find the disk, reasoned that I had taken it, and called on Curtis’s services. The only other person who knew the disk was in my possession was Pamela, but she had no reason to retain Curtis to repossess the thing. Hell, Pamela wouldn’t even know how to contact a guy in Curtis’s line of work. But I wouldn’t put it past Mike Rolland to know and employ a Curtis or two in every country he dropped in on. Given the events of the evening, Mike would soon be on his way with the disk to Cats in Winnipeg. And I was in Toronto with egg on my face. Egg and tape.

  I took a few more tugs at the twine around my wrists and ankles. All I accomplished was to remove a few layers of skin. Curtis knew more tricks with twine than an Eagle Scout. The tape wouldn’t budge either.

  Maybe a different mode of escape might work. If I couldn’t get out of the chair, I’d have to take it with me. I gave the chair a preliminary rock. It wasn’t heavy, just a collection of wooden slats and a fatter piece of wood for the seat. I gathered my strength and lifted upwards and outwards. The chair came with me, hippety hop. I kept up the motion, and the chair went hop, hop, hop across the kitchen floor.

  My forehead started to break out in beads of sweat, and breathing through the nose wasn’t entirely comfortable. But I made steady progress across the kitchen and into the hall.

  Hop, hop, hop, I went, and then crash.

  The legs of the chair had caught in the folds of the hall rug, and I tipped over sideways. I landed on my elbow and lay on the floor, right side down. The elbow ached, the twine was digging into my wrists and ankles, and I felt like a helpless idiot.

  “What is the racket up there?” Alex’s voice came from the bottom of the stairs.

  “Yoo hoo, Crang.” It was Ian. “People down here are trying to watch Letterman.”

  “Ruffff,” I said.

  “Crang?” Alex called.

  “He didn’t have that much to drink,” Ian said in a lower voice.

  “And he does hold his liquor well,” Alex said.

  “Gets so much practice with that Slavic stuff.”

  “Polish.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Arghhh,” I said.

  Footsteps sounded on the stairs, and in a few seconds, Ian and Alex came into view. Ian had on a long nightshirt in red and white vertical stripes. Alex was wearing a silk dressing gown. Both were barefoot, and when they saw me lying on the floor, tied to the chair, both developed expressions somewhere between shocked and amused.

  “Really, Crang,” Alex said, “have you been up to something kinky?”

  Ian set the chair upright, and Alex peeled back the tape, trying to do a slow and painless job. He almost succeeded.

  “My Lord, what happened?” Alex asked in a solicitous voice.

  I ran my tongue over my lips. “A tall dark stranger came calling.”

  “Ooooo,” Ian said, “lucky you.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  A strapping young guy inside the door of the Courtyard cafe asked me if I wanted smoking or non-smoking.

  “I’m meeting Mrs. Cartwright,” I said.

  “Say no more.”

  The young guy had on a sweater that probably cost a dozen yaks their lives, and his hair came in two shades, gold and fuchsia. He didn’t resemble many maitres d’ of my acquaintance, but he was carrying two menus.

  “Pamela prefers to sit back here,” he said.

  Back here was a booth against the wall farthest from the restaurant’s entrance. Secluded, but with a clear view of most of the room. The hour was early for the dinner crowd, but the place was two thirds full. Everybody looked glittery. It helped that the ceiling was one huge skylight letting in plenty of late afternoon sun. But even without the dramatic lighting, the Courtyard was a fashionable joint. Very jet set. A home away from Hollywood for movie types. Deals got cut at the Courtyard. The people who did lunch there had names that turned up in the Sunday Sun’s Panache column.

  Pamela arrived right after me, escorted to the booth by Gold and Fuschia Hair. He was gabbing up a storm.

  “This woman, a countess she claimed,” he was saying a half inch from Pamela’s ear, “when she found out Norman was a writer, she said he had to do her biography. Well, Norman heard her out, and then he said … Norman was sitting right over there at his usual afternoon table … he said to her she was no countess because he knew all the Romanian nobles left in the world, and, lady, you ain’t one of them.”

  “Too much,” Pamela said. She laughed more than politely.

  “Thought you’d appreciate it.”

  The maitre d’ hovered over Pamela as she sat down across the table from me. “So,” he said to her, “what can we bring you and your guest?”

  “Crang?” Pamela said to me.

  “Vodka on the rocks.”

  The maitre d’s eyes didn’t leave Pamela’s face.

  “I’ll have Campari and soda,” Pamela said.

  The maitre d’ tore himself away from the booth.

  I said, “I suspect that lad’s vaulting ambition is to be your personal lap dog.”

  “Pip’s a sweetie.”

  “Pip?”

  “He picked it himself. He was born Elmer in Owen Sound or somewhere awful.”

  Pamela opened a black leather handbag and took out a gold cigarette case and a gold lighter. Both were uncluttered by initials or any other design. She set them on the table within easy reach.

  “Isn’t this a shade public for an intimate tete-a-tete?” I said. “The Courtyard?”

  “I don’t see why.”

  “Well, you know, I can just imagine a line in Panache. ‘Caught bending in one another’s direction at the Courtyard, Pamela Cartwright and the former Mr. Pamela.’”

  “They wouldn’t dare.”

  “Never had my name in a real gossip column.”

&nbs
p; “And you’re not starting today,” Pamela said. She tapped her cigarette case on the table, but didn’t open it. “‘Operation Freeload’ you said on the phone. Translate it into something that makes sense to me.”

  “As a matter of fact, I got some late-breaking news that supersedes the disk.”

  “Let’s do it my way. I have an agenda in my head, and it begins with Operation Freeload.”

  “Well, listen, this just in, a report from a lawyer at Cayuga & Granark.”

  “Indulge me, Crang. Operation Freeload.”

  “I lost it.”

  A waiter brought the drinks. He made a beautiful ceremony out of placing them before us. Pamela and I sat without talking. I was watching the ceremony of the drinks. Pamela was watching me.

  “You what?” she said when the waiter went away.

  “‘Operation Freeload’ were the words printed on one of Jamie’s computer disks, presumably by Jamie himself. At least it was in the same hand as the printing on the labels for the other disks beside his computer. But it had to be special, this disk, because it was hidden. Scotch-taped to the back of the Dennis Burton painting.”

  “Scotch-taped?”

  “The one of the lady with the splendid thighs in the garter belt.”

  “I know the damn painting, Crang. It belongs to me.”

  “That’s a vivid collection you’ve got in the bedroom.”

  If I expected Pamela to blush or otherwise show embarrassment, I expected wrongly.

  “Jamie’s idea,” she said matter-of-fact. “I had all the paintings in storage. He wanted to see them grouped in one room.”

  “With the seven pillows.”

  “That’s enough inventory, Crang. Now get on with it about the disk.”

  “Okay, Jamie is probably the guy responsible for hiding it. Who else had access to the apartment? Just him, you, and lately, Dante Renzi.”

  “I never heard of Operation Freeload until you mentioned it,” Pamela said, “and that moron Renzi hasn’t got the brains to realize paintings have backs to them.”

  “So we go with Jamie as the hider of the disk.”

  “Which you found.”

  “And lost.”

  “To whom?”

  “Michel Rolland.”

  “What was he doing in the apartment?”

  “Trying to find the disk.”

  Pamela looked down at her Campari and soda, studied it, took a taste, and raised her eyes back to me.

  “How’s your law practice going, Crang? Doing all right?” she said. “What I’m getting at, do you make your instructions to clients as confusing for them as you’re making your explanation of the goddamned disk for me?”

  “Michel Rolland lives in Monaco. He met Jamie there. He came to Canada to see Cats … No, scratch Cats. It’s a red herring … Jamie asked Rolland to stop by the apartment to pick up some shirts … Ahhh, scratch the shirts too …”

  “Another red herring perhaps?” Pamela had acid in her voice.

  “More like an outright lie. The real goods is that Rolland knew the disk existed. Knew it was in the apartment. But he didn’t know where. I walked in in the middle of his search. And after he left, I completed the search. Successfully.”

  “So how did he end up with the disk?”

  “Went shopping for the world’s largest second-storey man and pointed him in the direction of my place.”

  “Crang, don’t exaggerate.”

  “Hey, this was a potentially life-threatening situation. I could’ve been maimed.”

  “You’re telling me your apartment was burgled?”

  “More than burgled. My safety was at risk.”

  “If you were diddled out of this elusive bloody disk, just admit it and never mind the dramatizing.”

  “I carry wounds.” I started to roll up the cuff of my shirt. “Scars of battle.”

  “Please, Crang.”

  I left the cuff alone. “But I’ll level with you, I’m beginning to get my back up about this whole deal, about your pal Jamie and his pal Rolland and Rolland’s pal Curtis the burglar.”

  “It isn’t your back I’m counting on.” Pamela looked slightly exasperated. “It’s your head, but I may be overestimating its usefulness.”

  “You should’ve been in my kitchen last night.”

  “Crang, I’m not interested in the details of how the disk got away from you.”

  “Yeah, well, here’s a detail that ought to grab you. It seems that Mike Rolland …”

  “Mike?”

  “Actually, morality aside, he’s an entertaining guy. Says to call him Mike.”

  “Keep in mind you’re supposed to be on my side in this.”

  “No fear,” I said. “Anyway, Mike is a big shooter along the Côte d’Azur. Sells cars, real estate, goods in the conspicuous consumption line. It seems, according to Mike, he made a large sale to Jamie. A boat.”

  “What kind of boat?”

  “You ever heard of a Hatteras?”

  “Of course I have,” Pamela said with a bit of a snap. “What length?”

  “Sixty feet.”

  “Eight hundred thousand dollars more or less, depending on how it’s equipped.”

  “Mike gave me the impression Jamie’s spending like a drunken sailor.”

  Pamela raised her hand for the waiter.

  I said, “In Jamie’s case, that might be closer to spending like a drunken commodore.”

  Pamela said to the waiter, “A double Johnny Walker Black, please, water on the side.”

  If Pamela ordered a big scotch when I told her about Jamie Haddon tossing around money, what would she order when I told her about Jamie bandying about her name? A twenty-sixer?

  I said, “There’s a disk in his collection with a label on it about investments and stocks and bonds.”

  “That’s pocket money,” Pamela said. Her lips seemed to have gotten tight and thin. “The entire portfolio, cashed out, wouldn’t come to more than fifteen thousand.”

  “I wouldn’t mind pockets like that.”

  Pamela’s double arrived at the table. She took a long tug at the scotch.

  “That’s better,” she said. She opened the gold cigarette case and lit a cigarette with the gold lighter. She blew smoke into the air over the table, inhaled more scotch, ignored the water, composed herself.

  She said, “I suppose you’re going to tell me Jamie took the money from the trust company.”

  “Crossed my mind.”

  “Get one thing straight in all of this,” Pamela said. “Jamie wouldn’t embezzle. Not from the trust company. Not from Daddy.”

  The way Pamela made her statement, I knew she didn’t think of it as a debatable point.

  “Urn,” I said, “I suppose if he stole to the tune of eight hundred thousand dollars somebody down there might have noticed.”

  Pamela nodded as if I’d come up with something sage.

  “Now,” she said, “you mentioned a Cayuga & Granark lawyer a few minutes ago. Who?”

  “Trum Fraser.”

  “I know Trum. Where does he come into this? Don’t tell me he knows about the money?”

  “What Trum knows is probably worse.”

  “I can’t imagine anything worse.”

  “Trum knows about you and Jamie.”

  It was what Pamela didn’t do that surprised me. She didn’t signal for more reinforcements of scotch. Didn’t scream for Pip to come hold her hand. All she did was sit very still and soak up more information.

  “Tell me what Trum knows.”

  “About the apartment,” I answered, “and about how long the affair has been going on. I don’t think he knows intimate details, the white rug practically to a person’s shins, that sort of intimate detail.”

  “And how did Trum fi
nd out?”

  “This is the freaky part. Jamie told Trum. Told a couple of other people too, guys around the office.”

  “Jesus.” Pamela got a slitty-eyed look that told me her calm was about to come unravelled. “As if I’m the prize among the bimbos, he can treat his friends to stories about how he got into my drawers.”

  Pamela’s voice was close to a whisper and hoarse. She was also paying more attention to the scotch supply. She polished off the drink on the table and whistled up another from the waiter. I slipped in an order for a second vodka.

  Pamela said to me, “You know, don’t you, that the Côte d’Azur is six hours ahead of us?”

  “The way I hear it, they’re in front in a bunch of ways. Wine. Painting.”

  “I’m not in the mood.”

  “I was going to add sunshine and pizza. But, okay, I’m aware of the time difference.”

  “Keep it in mind,” Pamela said, “when you phone me.”

  “I’m going to phone you?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you to do.”

  “Swotty wants a call, remember, after I’ve scrutinized Jamie.”

  “Phone me first,” Pamela said, “and don’t bother with the scrutiny.”

  “Swotty got his dibs in first.”

  “We’ll discuss Daddy when you call,” Pamela said. “All I’d like from you is the name of the hotel where that graceless swine is staying.”

  The fresh shipment of scotch and vodka arrived.

  “Let’s get the hours in sync,” Pamela said to me. “Phone the house, Toronto time, after ten in the morning and before six-thirty at night.”

  “When Archie’s at the office.”

  “How perceptive of you, Crang.”

  “What if you’re off being fitted for jodhpurs or something?” I said.

  “Leave the message with Hilda, the hotel’s name and address.”