Riviera Blues

by Jack Batten

  “Convinced, Mike?” I said.

  “Crang.” Mike had his barrel chest thrust forward. “Two times you take the disk from me.”

  “Now, Mike, let’s be accurate,” I said. I was feeling frisky enough to bend over and brush at the dust on the knees of my jeans. “The first time, at Jamie’s apartment, the disk was up for grabs.”

  “I am getting very angry with you, Crang,” Mike said. He looked very angry. “Where is this fucking disk?”

  “It’s, ah, with my client.”

  “Who is your fucking client?”

  “Jamie,” I said. “Jamie Haddon.”

  “What the fuck —”

  “That’s right, Mike,” I said. My delivery was smooth and confiding, bordering on unctuous. “Jamie retained me by telephone from Monaco ten days ago to recover the disk from his apartment in Toronto. You’re aware that Dante Renzi had appropriated it?”

  “I know that already.”

  “Or, rather, misappropriated it.”

  “Crang, you trying to tell me —”

  “And, of course, Mike, you have been apprised of the disk’s contents?”

  The expression on Mike’s face was of intense exasperation. “Why the hell you think I am looking every place for the goddamn disk?” he said. I was cheered by Mike’s exasperation. It deflected him from the more immediate emotion of anger at me. “Because I want to know what is on it, you dumb bastard,” Mike said.

  “On the disk, Mike,” I said, “is a foolproof scheme Jamie has devised for redirecting several millions in Canadian funds from a financial institution in Toronto to a bank in Monaco.”

  “Yes? For sure?” Mike said. My mixture of fact and fiction seemed to be hooking Mike.

  “This is a transaction without the potential for failure, Mike,” I went on.

  “On the disk this is?”

  “It contains the blueprint for the scheme,” I said. “Down to the most exacting detail. You can understand why I was required to take certain, um, drastic measures.”

  “And you give the disk back to Jamie, my friend Crang?”

  “Gratifying to be back on the footing of pals with you, Mike,” I said. “Yes, my duty to my client required that I return the disk to its rightful owner.”

  “Okay, so where is Jamie now?”

  “Well, Mike, as I say, my duty —”

  Mike motioned Georges to step forward.

  “But,” I said, “I can see my way clear to making an exception in your case. Jamie has rooms at the Beau Rivage in Nice.”

  “He is there with the disk?”

  “Please don’t reveal the origin of your knowledge,” I said. “A favour to me, Mike.”

  “Jamie will need a partner in this job,” Mike said. “I think for sure.”

  “You know Jamie, Mike,” I said, “always open to an interesting business proposition.”

  Mike wasn’t quite smiling. But he wasn’t scowling either. The only member of the troupe who looked twitchy was Georges. He was probably thinking that all the chatter meant his chances of another shot at me were diminishing.

  “My friend Crang,” Mike said, “the other two times I talk with you, you tell the tall stories.”

  “Strictly on the level today, Mike.”

  “You invent the whoppers.”

  “The one change in our present discussions, Mike,” I said, “is fear. It tends to bring out my honest side.”

  I marshalled my features into an expression that was intended to convey humility and deference. I felt like Uriah Heep.

  Mike spoke in French to the Stove. The words “Haddon” and “Beau Rivage” were prominent in the conversation, Emile started out of the alley.

  “Attendez un moment,” Mike called after him. Emile waited. Mike asked me where Annie and I were staying. I gave him the address on Avenue Denis Semeria. Mike wanted the name of the landlord. I said it was a landlady and supplied the name of Annie’s French friend who had rented us the apartment. Mike recognized the name. He sent Emile on his way with additional instructions. I assumed Emile’s destination was a telephone.

  Georges growled a few words at Mike. Whatever he said drew a smile. “You know, my friend Crang,” Mike said to me, “Georges enjoyed the punching.”

  “A man content in his work is a truly happy man,” I said.

  Across the alley, David Nestor was experiencing difficulty with a shimmy in his legs. I tried a reassuring smile on him.

  Nestor was probably terrified that the network of half-truths and white lies I’d told Mike would come undone.

  Emile returned to the alley. Mike absorbed his report. Mike’s expression softened.

  “All right, my friend Crang,” Rolland said, “Jamie is registered at the Beau Rivage, like you say. And you have the rental at 68 Avenue Denis Semeria for two more weeks.”

  “Over and out,” I said. I didn’t even consider advising Mike that his information on my address was out of date, that Annie and I were moving down the road to Cannes the next day.

  “You are not thinking of leaving Pont Saint-Jean, Crang?” Mike asked.

  “Pull out of the garden spot of the Riviera?” I said. “Perish the thought, Mike.”

  “For sure,” Mike said. “One day, everything work out, maybe I buy you the vodka on the rocks, my friend.”

  He got behind the wheel of the Japanese Jeep. Emile went around to the front passenger seat. Pittsburgh Boomer climbed into the back seat on the right. Georges seemed reluctant to depart. He glowered at me. I beamed at him. Georges turned to get in the rear seat beside the Boomer.

  “Hey, Georges,” I said.

  Georges turned all the way back to me. I let go a straight right at a point just below his rib cage. I expected to hit a part of him with a layer of muscle. But it was like punching a water bed. Georges stumbled against the Jeep. His hands grabbed his belly. The parts of his face above the beard went suddenly pale. Georges bent over from the waist. One hand switched to his throat. Georges threw up. It was noisy and violent and messy.

  “Oh, jeez, I’m sorry, Georges.” I held his shoulders to steady him. “I hit you in the wrong place,” I said.

  Mike and Emile opened their car doors.

  “I meant to hit you in the solar plexus.” I tried to massage Georges’s neck.

  Emile was in the alley on the far side. Georges vomited again, Emile looked furious. Further ministrations to Georges seemed out of the question. I whipped around and ran out of the alley. David Nestor was fifteen yards ahead. Behind me, Georges was making retching noises.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  At eight-thirty, I was standing in the entrance to the apartment’s sunroom, the telephone receiver in one hand, a Wyborowa on the rocks in the other. I watched a cabin cruiser with all lights running slide into the darkening Villefranche harbour. I was waiting for Trum Fraser to come on the line. By this time, he should have just concluded his noon-hour quest for the sublime martini.

  “What’s it you want this time, Crang?” Trum sounded irascible.

  “Something wrong, Trum? Coaster’s is closed?”

  “I haven’t been out of the damned building since I got here this morning.”

  I held my glass away from the phone so Trum couldn’t hear the tinkling of ice cubes.

  “And I feel like I’m coming down with the bends,” Trum said. “Why are you calling long-distance?”

  “Tell me about ErnMax.”

  “Jesus, Crang.” Trum made a wounded noise. “Be right back.”

  I tucked the receiver against my chest. “Trum seems to be taking precautions,” I said to Annie. She was on the sofa with the Roger Ebert book and a glass of white wine.

  “Crang?” Trum was speaking close to the mouthpiece. “I had to shut the door to my office.”

  “Touched a nerve, have I?”

>   “How come you heard about ErnMax in wherever the hell you are?”

  “South of France,” I said. “There has to be quid pro quo, Trum. I answer your question, and you fill me in on ErnMax.”

  “I don’t know. If you’re screwing around, it’ll be my nuts in the wringer.”

  “Listen, you mind asking the operator to switch the call to Swotty Whetherhill’s office?”

  “Okay, okay.” Trum’s surly mood was close to the surface. “I’ll take a chance.”

  “Thanks, pal.”

  “Ernest Luphkin,” Trum said. “You know who he is?”

  “No. I’ve been living in Patagonia the last twenty years.”

  “Don’t get smart.”

  “The guy who’s ruined the skylines of more North American cities than anybody since King Kong.”

  “Luphkin’s supposed to do that,” Trum said. “He’s a developer. He makes billions at it. You ready for this? Millions of the billions go through good old C&G.”

  “Luphkin is ErnMax?”

  “It’s his personal holding company. Him and his wife’s. Her name is Maxene or Maxelle.”

  The cabin cruiser had docked somewhere in the shadows of Villefranche’s quay. “How do you define holding company?” I asked Trum. “A place where billionaires hide their billions?”

  “Sort of.” Trum was slowing down the pace. “ErnMax — you probably gathered this from the way I reacted when you brought up the name — ErnMax is very hush-hush around here.”

  “Not to question your status, Trum, but how inside are you with ErnMax?”

  “If I have to put up with insulting shit like that,” Trum said, “what you got to trade better be sweet.”

  “In your wildest dreams, Trum.” I took a swallow from my vodka on the rocks.

  “I’m the only lawyer on C&G’s ErnMax team,” Trum said. “Very tight group, very small group, handpicked by Whetherhill himself. ErnMax is Whetherhill’s special baby. My instructions from the start were, don’t discuss it with the other people in the legal department, and all paperwork goes through Whetherhill’s office.”

  “And right now, this afternoon in Toronto, there’s an ErnMax crisis on?”

  “Luphkin’s staff’s been camped out on the thirty-second floor since yesterday,” Trum said. “I heard from a guy in securities that two Luphkin people stayed the whole night in the computer centre.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Playing computer baseball.” Trum’s voice rose sharply. “How the hell do I know? I’m just the dumb cluck who’s been told to stick around the office, hasn’t had a drink all day, and hears ice cubes clinking over the long-distance phone.”

  “That’s impressive, Trum. You got a great pair of ears.”

  “What’re you having?”

  “Polish vodka over ice.”

  “Maybe if you describe it to me, I’ll feel better.”

  “The glass is still a little frosted on the outside, cold to the touch, and inside, the liquid looks thick, colourless but thick —”

  “Enough,” Trum said. “You’re making it worse.”

  “Maybe we should go back to ErnMax,” I said. I sat down in the fat stuffed armchair that matched the sofa Annie was on. The knees of my jeans still had dust on them from their contact with the alley beside the Café des Nations. I hadn’t mentioned the fracas to Annie.

  “Yeah,” Trum said. “What’s ErnMax got to do with the south of France?”

  “Quite a bit,” I said. I brushed at my knees. “Which is remarkable when you consider it should have more to do with Zurich.”

  Trum didn’t speak.

  “That’s in Switzerland,” I added.

  “Sure,” Trum said. “Chocolate, cuckoo clocks, and I know what you want me to say, you bugger, bank accounts that are more or less secret.”

  “In ErnMax’s case, I guess it would ordinarily be more rather than less.”

  “Goon. What else?”

  “Twenty-three million of ErnMax’s dollars didn’t make it to the Zurich account.”

  “Lemme get a file open at the right place.” Trum became businesslike. “Twenty-three million?”

  “Yes.”

  “Twenty-three million was supposed to go from us to Zurich on March fourteenth.”

  “It didn’t.”

  “Shit,” Trum said. “You mean that’s what the Luphkin guys are chasing after in the computer centre?”

  “They won’t find a trace of the diversion at C&G’s end.”

  “Where’d you get hold of a term like ‘diversion’?”

  “Ah, Trum, I’m experiencing all manner of new sensations over here,” I said. “Only two hours ago, I was sipping pastis.”

  “Murky stuff, tastes like candy, I’ll stick to gin.”

  “When you have access to it.”

  “Quit talking about drinking,” Trum said. “How did you pick up on the twenty-three million?”

  “This is going to call for all your diplomatic skills, Trum,” I said. I folded my left knee over the right. The dust was more deeply imbedded in the right. “We’re in a dicey area,” I said. “Family.”

  “Whose family?” Trum asked, then answered his own question. “Oh, Whetherhill’s.… Hey, Jamie Haddon.”

  “Right on the first guess.”

  “You’re phoning from where he’s gone on this leave of absence of his.” Trum’s voice had speeded up.

  “Not far away.”

  “He’s in Monaco.”

  “So’s the twenty-three million,” I said. “In an account at the Banco di Napoli.”

  “Sweet Jesus.”

  “You see why I mentioned diplomacy,” I said. “Swotty wouldn’t want a guy like Luphkin finding out it was Swotty’s own relative who —”

  Trum broke in. “Lemme have the name of that bank again.”

  “Banco di Napoli,” I said. “The money’s in a numbered account, but I guess C&G can deal with a little obstacle like that.”

  “Yeah.” Trum was abrupt. “Look, I got to attend to a few things here, Crang.”

  “Is Jamie a member of C&G’s ErnMax team?”

  “Whetherhill brought him in a year ago. Get Jamie’s feet wet, that kind of idea. Listen, Crang, I’ll catch you later.”

  “You and a host of other Torontonians.”

  Trum hung up. My vodka on the rocks was almost gone. The thought of another of the same appealed.

  “Give me five minutes’ notice before you want dinner,” Annie said. She had a few pages to go in the Ebert book.

  “That’s all you need?”

  “The salad is made. Water’s on the stove at low boil. The only thing to do is turn it higher and throw in the pasta.”

  I held up my empty glass. “One of these,” I said, “always tastes to me like one more.”

  “Of course,” Annie said. It was her mother-hen voice. “Now, would you care to explain how your jeans got dirty?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Annie was standing beside the bed holding out a cup of coffee to me.

  “It’s after ten, fella,” she said.

  “I overslept,” I said. My voice was muzzy.

  “When you’re on vacation, that’s called rising late,” Annie said. “In addition to which, rolling around in that alley might’ve taken some starch out of you.”

  I propped two pillows behind my head and shoulders. Steam rose out of the coffee cup. “Yeah,” I said, “I seem to have needed the sleep.” Annie made stronger coffee than I did. Drinking hers was like injecting caffeine directly into the nervous system.

  “You have a visitor coming in half an hour,” Annie said.

  “Oh, damn.” Coffee slopped into the saucer. “You shouldn’t break that kind of news when my guard’s down,” I said. “Not Mike Rolland and company?”<
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  Annie shook her head. “My predecessor,” she said.

  “You haven’t got a predecessor,” I said. “You are a one and only.”

  Annie leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “Pamela,” she said. “She phoned at nine. Wanted to come right over. I told her to hold off a couple of hours.”

  I shaved, had a shower, and put on my other pair of jeans.

  Annie had made a fruit salad. I ate most of it with a buttered raisin bun. Pamela arrived at eleven o’clock. She came in a large black American car. A guy in a cream-coloured suit and matching cap was driving. Annie and I watched the car pull up from the sunroom window. Annie went down to let Pamela in. I lingered behind and wiped butter and raisin off my fingers.

  “I’m Pamela Cartwright,” Pamela said.

  Her voice carried into the apartment from the doorway.

  “Annie Cooke,” Annie said. “Please come in.”

  Their encounter was a long way from Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor scrapping over Eddie Fisher. It was civilized and ordinary. When I walked into the hall, Pamela and Annie were shaking hands and smiling at one another. Maybe if I were a crooner whose bestselling single was “Oh My Papa,” Pamela and Annie would have scrapped over me.

  “I keep calling on you with questions, Crang,” Pamela said to me.

  “It happens this is probably one of the few times I’ve got some answers,” I said.

  Pamela might have been overdressed. She had on a sky blue dress in a silky material and shoes that colour-coordinated with the dress. The dress showed some décolletage. The shoes were high-heeled. She had a black patent-leather purse under her right arm and a floppy-brimmed hat in her left hand. Her face had more makeup than she’d worn at our meetings in Toronto two weeks earlier.

  Annie offered coffee. Pamela thought coffee was a smashing idea. I said I’d have a second cup. Living on the edge. The three of us sat with our coffee at the table in the sunroom. Nobody remarked on the view.

  “I don’t question you saw Jamie at L’Hôtel de Paris, Crang,” Pamela said to me, “but he isn’t there now, and nobody’s saying where he’s gone.”

  “You spoke to the concierge?”