Riviera Blues

by Jack Batten

  “Using it to get some sort of advantage over Jamie. Financial advantage.” Dan looked close to tears. “That’s why I’m so worried. Jamie will know I’ve let him down terribly.”

  The waiter came by to collect our dishes. Annie and I had left a few scraps. Most of Dan’s cheeseburger sat cold and lumpy on its plate. We ordered coffee.

  “Where did your interview with Mike take place?” I asked Dan. “At the Monaco penthouse?”

  “No. He has a house out on Cap Ferrat. It’s called Villa Pomme. Pretty hard to miss the place.”

  “That’s curious,” Annie said. “All the orange trees and olive trees in this part of the world, I haven’t noticed a single apple tree.”

  “The name of the house doesn’t come from the kind of tree,” Dan said. “It’s the way they’re shaped, cedar trees trimmed so they look like huge green apples.”

  “Topiary,” Annie said.

  “No,” Dan insisted. “Apples.”

  “Topiary is what sculpting trees and bushes is called,” Annie said patiently. “Revolting custom if you ask me, like the poor little poodles you see on the streets, sheared down to the bone practically.”

  “Well, anyway,” Dan said.

  “Who lives in the apple villa besides Mike?” I asked him.

  “Babette, and there’s a cook I saw when I went out there last night. And those two assistants were around the place. Very much around, if you follow me.”

  “The guys who jumped to attention when Mike snapped his fingers at the hotel?” I said.

  “They’re brothers.” Dan provided the names. Georges and Emile. The surname sounded like “Klootch.” I asked Dan to spell it. It came out C-1-u-t-c-h.“Ah,” I said. “Les frères Clutch.”

  I pronounced it the same way as the word that describes the time in a basketball game when Michael Jordan goes to town.

  “You say it like this, Klootch,” Dan corrected. “They drive the cars, and get things for Rolland, and give everybody sour looks.”

  “Muscle,” I said.

  “Georges is the tall one with the beard,” Dan said, “and Emile’s the other one.”

  “Shaped like a stove,” I said, “and it isn’t topiary.”

  Dan took one quick hit from his cup of coffee. “I’d better get back to the hotel,” he said. “I wish you’d help me get the disk back, Mr. Crang. You’re my last hope.”

  “Where’s Mike keeping it?”

  “The last I saw of it was in the centre drawer of the desk in his den at the villa.”

  “Not in a safe or some place more secure?”

  “Why bother when the Clutches are right there?”

  “You got a point, Dan.”

  He stood up and showed Annie and me another of his frank and open smiles. “Please, Mr. Crang,” he said.

  I waited until he was out of the restaurant. “You feel anything coming off Dan in the sexual department?” I asked Annie.

  “No gonads, as far as I could tell.”

  “How about whiffs of Ian and Alex?”

  “Do I think Dan’s gay?”

  “That’s my question.”

  “Well, Dan’s not quite as macho as Rock Hudson.”

  “Is that your roundabout way of saying Dan could be homosexual?”

  “It is,” Annie said, “and doesn’t that just open a can of worms?”

  I leaned back in my chair and looked at the painting of the Alamo. The artist’s style was primitive bordering on incompetent.

  “What’s crossing your mind?” Annie asked.

  “We should make a pact,” I said. “Let’s agree to spare Pamela our thoughts on Dan’s sexual orientation.”

  “Really, Crang, she’s probably figured that out for herself.”

  “Well, yeah, she’s not Dan’s biggest fan. She was more than direct about her dislike when I talked to her, but she didn’t let on it might be because Dan was, um, a possible rival for Jamie’s affections.”

  “Hey, a girl isn’t going to blab it around she’s having an affair with a guy who may be having an affair with another guy.”

  “I guess not.”

  “Of course not.” Annie patted my hand. “But if you’d like us not to raise the subject, though heaven knows I’ll probably never even meet the woman, I’ll go along with you.”

  “Just that it might be unnecessary embarrassment.”

  “Such a sensitive guy.” Annie patted my hand again. “Anyway,” she said, “Dan’s gayness is only the second most interesting item that came out of his conversation.”

  “You’re referring to the perhaps self-serving nature of the story he told us?”

  “Oh, lordy, the big wet eyes, the quivering lower lip, all that effort he put into portraying himself as Mr. Innocent.”

  “The impression I got,” I said, “Dan might be editing out facts to protect his own hide.”

  “Facts about the disk?”

  “Yeah. If the disk has criminal content, which is shaping up as more and more of a possibility by the minute, Dan could be trying to establish distance between him and it in case the crime comes to light.”

  “Hmmm,” Annie said. She read her watch. It was a man’s pocket watch that she wore on a chain around her neck.

  “Not boring you with the disk conjecture, am I?” I asked.

  “No,” Annie said, “but according to our agreement, I’m just about due to get my innings in.”

  “For sightseeing?”

  Annie nodded. “But we’ve got time for a second cup of coffee, fella.”

  “Before what?”

  “Before the next train to Nice. I’m about to earn my spurs as your personal guide to the Riviera.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  To say that Annie liked to sightsee would be like saying that Marco Polo took a couple of trips. With her, it was an educational route march. We looked at the paintings in the Matisse Museum. We inspected examples of architecture that Annie said were baroque and Italianate and belle époque. We cruised the tiny streets of Nice’s Old Town and walked a promenade that snaked the length of the waterfront, part patrician, part tourist trap. My legs held up, but by six-thirty, the head was surrendering to a floating sensation. Maybe it was the cars. In Toronto, we’d call what was going on in the streets a demolition derby. In Nice, they said it was light traffic.

  “Anybody keep a body count around here?” I asked Annie.

  She flagged a taxi. The guy behind the wheel drove like Starsky or Hutch. But he got us all the way back to the apartment on Avenue Denis Semeria.

  Inside, I settled beside the phone in the living room. Annie retired to the kitchen with a string bag full of goodies she’d bought in Nice’s food shops. My first long-distance call was to Pamela. Hilda answered, the Cartwright housekeeper in the black dress and the veil of silence.

  “Madam is not at home,” she said.

  “Would you inform Madam that Jamie Haddon is at the Hôtel de Paris,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “In Monaco.”

  “Yes.”

  “And tell her Mr. Renzi is likewise in residence.”

  “Yes.”

  Hilda’s monosyllables ruled out any thought I might have had for a freewheeling exchange of views on matters of household protocol. If Pamela was “madam”, was Archie “mister”?

  “Well, okay,” I said, “thanks a ton.”

  A click came blipping down the line.

  At Cayuga & Granark, I was passed through three levels of personnel. Each asked my name. And spell it, please. The third level was Swotty’s private secretary. She buzzed me straight through to le grand frontage.

  “Extraordinarily prompt, Crang.” Swotty was almost buoyant. “I take it you’ve spoken to Jamie.”

  “He’s in the pink.”

  “How do you me
an, Crang?”

  “Mostly physically. Jamie’s got some sun on his face. Done wonders for his colouring.”

  “Yes.” Impatience was collecting at the fringes of Swotty’s voice. “Naturally I’m pleased to know that Jamie looks healthy. But if you will recall our conversation at the Concord, it is his state of mind that concerns me.”

  “That’s dandy too. Anybody’s state mind would be dandy at the place where Jamie’s put himself up.”

  “Oh? Where is he staying?”

  I gave it a nasal Anglo pronunciation. “The hotel duh Paris.”

  For a moment, nothing reached me except the telephone line’s random pops and gurgles.

  “Perhaps I didn’t hear you correctly, Crang,” Swotty said. He was speaking slowly and cautiously.

  “I could do it in French. L’Hôtel de Paris. It still comes out a pricey spot to hang your hat.”

  “Has Jamie to your knowledge been at the hotel since his arrival? The entire two weeks?”

  “Yes.”

  “He appears to be paying for the accommodation himself?”

  “Yes,” I said again.

  “Do you see other indications of Jamie’s mode of living?”

  “Champagne before lunch. And a brand new Hatteras.”

  “That is a boat, I believe?”

  “Like Rolls-Royce is a car.”

  There was another lull from Swotty’s end. I made a bid to fill it. “Listen, Mr. Whetherhill, if you’ve got ideas about the source of Jamie’s …”

  “Crang.” Swotty’s voice snapped down the line. “I may need you to see Jamie again. Is that possible?”

  “Sure, but …”

  “And if I decide to contact Jamie myself, would it be at L’Hôtel de Paris?”

  “Saw him there this morning.”

  “Hold on, Crang.” Swotty was gone for fifteen seconds. I heard the sound of a hand wrapping around the receiver. The hand pulled away. Swotty spoke again. “All right, Crang, my secretary is on the other extension. If you would just give her your number over there, I will be back to you in due course.”

  “Hey …”

  “I’m ready, Mr. Crang,” said a neutral, polite female voice.

  I read her the digits from the phone I was holding in my hand. The neutral, polite voice thanked me and hung up.

  Annie walked past my chair. She was carrying a clear glass salad bowl and two dinner plates from the kitchen in the back of the apartment to the sunroom in the front where we had set up a perch for eating. The sunroom had the view over the water toward Villefranche.

  “I only heard your end of the conversation,” Annie said, “but I have the impression the flow of information was one way, you to him.”

  “I wasn’t at my most adroit,” I admitted.

  Annie made another shuttle from kitchen to sunroom with wineglasses and a bottle of Beaujolais I recognized from purchases at home when I felt flush.

  “We’re going first cabin on the wine,” I said.

  “In Ontario, sure, it’s a twenty-dollar bottle. This afternoon in Nice, I paid three bucks.”

  “Taxes,” I grumped. “About a thousand percent Canadian markup.”

  “Taste the wine,” Annie said. “It’ll do wonders for your mood.”

  She was right.

  “Wowie,” I said. “If this is a three-dollar bottle, I’d like to shake the hand of the man who crushes Beaujolais’s grapes. Shake his foot, as a matter of fact.”

  Dinner was ravioli, salad, and the remarkable Beaujolais.

  “So,” Annie said, “what executive decisions came out of the office of C&G’s president?”

  “Chairman of the Board and CEO,” I corrected. “Those are Swotty’s titles. He’s maybe going to get on to Jamie directly.”

  “Good luck to him if he expects to learn anything tangible. On the basis of this morning, I wouldn’t call Jamie Haddon a motormouth. Coy, yes. A smartass, maybe. But forthcoming, no way.”

  “One of your strong points, Ms. Cooke, instant character analysis.”

  “Haddon’s got a brain ticking over behind that bland face. A devious one.”

  “Ninety-nine out of one hundred women wouldn’t agree with you on Jamie’s looks. You think they’re bland?”

  “Or blah. Blond guys affect me that way.”

  “Fortunate me. Nondescript brunette.”

  “All the stuff about the name of his boat and the name on the disk, I find that cutesy and really, you know, cold-eyed.” Annie put down her knife and fork, and folded her arms on the edge of the table. “Phoning Pamela and her father,” she said, “now that’s one thing.”

  “Two, if you want to be pedantic.”

  “But dealing with Mike Rolland is something altogether different.”

  “No argument from me. He has the disk in his desk drawer at Villa Pomme.”

  “What do you intend to do about it?”

  “I think a reconnoitre might be in order.”

  “Whenever you invoke that word, I know you’ve got something silly in mind.”

  “Not to worry, my love.” I reached over and squeezed Annie’s hand. “It’ll be under cover of darkness.”

  We finished the pasta and salad. “There’s dessert,” Annie said. She took the empty plates into the kitchen.

  I went to the bedroom and made wardrobe adjustments. The jeans I had on could stay, but I changed my light blue sports shirt for a dark blue in the same model. I got my black windbreaker from the hall closet and pulled the new black beret over my forehead. The Rockport Walkers, in two shades of tan, didn’t blend into the colour scheme, but they were the only shoes I’d packed that were remotely athletic.

  I presented myself to Annie. “Who do I call to mind?”

  “Not Cary Grant going over the rooftop in To Catch a Thief.”

  “Aw, rats.”

  “He had on a turtleneck sweater. His pants were perfectly pressed. And I think his shoes were the kind that take a shine.”

  “Well, different eras, different costumes.”

  I took off the beret and windbreaker. Dessert was persimmons and goat cheese. I tasted some of both.

  “Terrific combination,” I said.

  Annie pushed her plate to the centre of the table. She rested her elbows where the plate had been.

  “Know what I think, big guy?” she said. “The reason you’re being so tenacious about the Haddon business?”

  “Well, finishing what I started, getting even for having been burgled, following through on promises, sticking it out to the end. Homilies of such nature.”

  “It’s Pamela Cartwright.”

  I looked across at Annie.

  She said, “You want to show her she made a mistake when she ended the marriage and rejected you.”

  There was a heel of Beaujolais left in the bottle. I tipped it into my glass.

  “I’m not being critical,” Annie said.

  “Are you being accurate?”

  “I think so. And, really, Pamela should be flattered, you pulling her chestnuts out of the fire for her. None of this means I think you want her back or anything.”

  “I hope I’m spoken for, thanks very much.”

  “In a way, it doesn’t matter that Pamela’s a woman. She just represents somebody, a person, who once judged you a schnook, incorrectly, and you’re getting a kick out of having that person appeal to you, of all choices, in an emergency.”

  “Schnook?”

  “Just a term to underline my thesis.”

  “You succeeded.”

  Annie picked up a stack of tourist literature from a chair. She had accumulated piles of maps, guides, and travel books. From the stack, she selected a small, brightly coloured map.

  “If you’re hell-bent on tonight’s expedition,” she said, “better stud
y up on this.”

  It was a detailed drawing of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. There were two capes on the drawing. The smaller, Cap Saint Hospice, stuck into the Mediterranean past the little town of Saint-Jean to the east. The bigger cape, on the west, was shaped like a huge light bulb. It was Cap Ferrat, home to, among others, Mike Rolland.

  “Right around the outside of the big cape,” Annie said, tracing her finger on the map, “there’s a sea walk. See, on here, it runs in a narrow public area between the backs of the private properties and the sea. Gorgeous in the day time.”

  “But the entrances to the houses are off the roads?”

  “Yes. Avenue Jean Cocteau, all those. But keep in mind, it isn’t all level on the cape.”

  Annie went over to the window. “Even from here, you can see the hills and trees.” She was pointing south to Cap Ferrat. “And the rocks. The sea walk isn’t a flat path. It goes up and down along the contours of the cliff. Not good for people with vertigo.”

  I tried to memorize parts of the map while I put on my windbreaker and beret. Annie and I hugged. “Don’t do anything utterly absurd,” she said.

  “Who, me?”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I went a half-mile south on Avenue Denis Semeria and up a steep road that swept to the right. The silence was deep and total. I was in Cap Ferrat’s residential district.

  There was a three-quarters moon in the sky. And there were dim street lights spaced about one hundred feet apart. That was as much illumination as I cared for. I stuck close to the shadows thrown by long stretches of walls that were mostly stone and mostly fortress-like. The road I was on carried along the west side of the cape. I knew from Annie’s map that it ended at a lighthouse. The lighthouse was old and historic, and marked one of Cap Ferrat’s outer points. I stalked along, not making a sound. Somewhere on the road, Mike Rolland had his villa.

  At each gate, at each gap in the long distances of walls, I examined the houses for indications of life. More than half had parked cars and lights and the flicker of people moving past windows. I kept on the move.

  Damn.

  It wasn’t cars or lights or flickers I should be looking for. It was trees.