by Jack Barnao
“Tell me more,” Janet commanded.
I sat there and gave her the whole rundown while she started the onions, then added the hamburger and garlic and her special choice of spices, finally tipping in a jar of the tomato paste she makes herself. Like I say, real wife- and-mother material. This night, she also had some feminine intuition for me.
“It sounds a little off if you ask me,” she said, tasting the sauce.
“How so?” With five grand of Wainwright’s money in my bank I didn’t want discouragement.
“Well, let’s say there’s a few gaps in the story,” she said. She put the spoon down and led me back to the living room to hear her tape. The second concerto is my favorite, but I interrupted it to hear what she had to say.
“Which areas of the story? Don’t you think a guy like this Corsican might have made a pass at her?”
Janet shook her head impatiently. “Oh, no, I don’t question any of that. What I’m looking at is the relationship between the man who approached you and this woman.” She frowned. “Niece is a bit too easy. Does the girl have a father? And if she doesn’t, why didn’t he mention it?”
“He’s a bit old to be the lover of a girl in her twenties. It would make damn near a half century difference in their ages.”
“Thirty-five years isn’t uncommon,” Janet said. “I’m just saying that it doesn’t ring twenty-four-karat true to my ear.
“Well, if you’ll come with me tomorrow night, you can check him out for yourself,” I said. “In the meantime, I’ve got his money, and you’ve got this wonderful recording of the Brandenburgs. Let’s listen.”
“Done,” she said. “Can I trust you to wind it back to the beginning of the second while I check the stove?”
I turned the tape back, and we listened to music, then ate spaghetti and drank a bottle of red wine like an old married couple. At ten-thirty, we exchanged a chaste kiss at her door, and I said, “Thank you for a lovely evening. Mañana,” and went upstairs feeling very domestic. That was when my phone went. I picked it up, and the lady lawyer said, “I know this is a hell of a time to call, but I’ve just finally uncovered the top of my desk and found your phone message. I was going for coffee and a doughnut. Does that sound like something you might enjoy?”
“Why not?” I said. Hell, I wasn’t feeling that domestic.
CHAPTER 3
The doughnut shop was a yuppie equivalent of the soda fountain where Archie and Veronica get together with Jughead and the kids. The only difference was that this one was filled with men and women in their twenties, dressed expensively, assembling here at the end of another sixteen-hour day before going on the town. Most of the bright-eyed geniuses in the place were sitting in front of a cup of black coffee, talking too loudly and wiping runny noses. I saw a guy at the counter who shook hands with most of them as they came in. Almost all his contacts went directly from him to the washroom and came out a minute later with a sniffle and a new lease on life. I also noticed that the guy left a twenty-dollar tip on the counter.
As far as I could tell, my own lady lawyer was clean. Her voice and deportment were normal, and she was taking cream with her coffee. She was sitting with a couple of live wires who suggested going on to some club or other, but the counselor took my advice instead, and she and I went on to a bar near the airport where Lou Rawls was performing.
In my car she said, “Thanks for coming down. Otherwise I’d have ended up in that same damn bar again, drinking Perrier and watching people I like getting high.”
She smiled sadly as she said it. I wasn’t convinced, but it’s not my job to judge people. I just smiled back and said, “Glad we didn’t go. I don’t like hanging around folks on crutches.” That had her seizing my arm as if it were a lifeline. Anyway, one thing led to another, and I was home by five with an updated reading on women in the legal profession.
After breakfast I got my car washed and went back to the reference library. They had promised to get me a transcript of Amy Roger’s thesis. It had been reprinted in an English scholarly journal and become part of the literature of the Roman period in France. It was an account of the trade of her area of interest during the Roman occupation, esoteric stuff with none of the military details that make history an interest of mine. I ploughed through it, anyway. I wanted to look knowledgeable for the evening if she started riding her hobbyhorse.
In addition, I checked the Canadian Who’s Who on Wainwright. There were no initial surprises. He had been born in England and been a regular army officer prewar, Irish Guards, having gone through Sandhurst, the British equivalent of West Point. But there were few details on his war service. He had served with a special unit of the British army and had received the Military Cross and the OBE. That’s the Order of the British Empire, a decoration they give to spies. It meant he had been undercover somewhere, in France, I guessed. If he did business there, he was fluent in the language.
After the war he had started his wine importing company and had moved to Canada a few years later, presumably when his business blossomed here. He was a wheel on a number of cultural committees, the Toronto Symphony and Royal Ontario Museum board, and was active in charity work, particularly for the United Way. It was all storybook stuff except that there was no mention of any family. It made me remember Janet Frobisher’s doubts about him.
I was home before Janet and left a note on her door reminding her of our dinner date. Then I went and changed into gray slacks and a blazer. I wore a white shirt of Sea Island cotton and the tie of my college at Cambridge. Amy Roger would recognize it without my having to draw any pictures for her. I hoped she wouldn’t want to compare academic careers with me. I didn’t want to tell her I’d been sent down, which is how you say expelled when you have a stiff upper lip. My sin was unbecoming behavior with a female history fellow. It was the story of my life prior to the years I’d spent in the British army. I’d been a near delinquent, and without the discipline and skills I’d learned in uniform, I’d probably be another aimless waster right now, shambling from one dreary job to another, drinking my brains out, and hating my life. As it is, I’m happy inside my skin. You can’t buy that; you have to earn it.
On impulse I wore my gun. It’s not conspicuous. I don’t affect a shoulder holster. They’re useless, anyway. I wear it at the left side of my belt, butt forward so I can do a reach-around draw. The blazer is cut fairly full, so it doesn’t bulge. I figured that if we got to the “yes, but” stage of a hiring discussion, I could let her see that I was tooled up and she hadn’t noticed.
At seven sharp I went down and knocked on Janet’s door. She opened it, looking handsome in a soft green dress that set off the near red of her hair. Once again her appearance made me wonder why I didn’t find somewhere else to live so I could move in on her without feeling bad about it.
“You look fantastic,” I said. “Heavy date?”
She laughed. “Naah. I’m providing protective coloring for the playboy of the Western world.”
“He’s a fool if he doesn’t propose,” I said.
She touched me on the arm and said, “I know. Come on in. I promise not to tell him you said so.”
We had a short drink. A glass of white wine for her, a Bushmills for me, and she asked, “Are you planning on taking something for our host?”
“At his income level it’s not the done thing,” I said. “It’s déclassé to bring gifts; it suggests doubt that the host can afford the occasion.”
“I’ve never moved in that rarefied atmosphere,” Janet said. “I’m from a family of proles. We like to pay our way.”
“Can’t be done,” I argued. “What can you take to the man who has everything? He imports wine; his cellar has to contain anything I could afford to take him.”
She shook her head. “Men are so blind,” she said. “I’ll bet he’s a music buff. How about a record?”
“I thought of that,” I admitted. “But it comes in so many flavors these days—CDs, tapes, LPs. And besides, he may b
e tone-deaf.”
“I despair of educating you,” she said. “Grab some flowers. You can’t just turn up empty-handed.”
It was easier to agree than argue. “As long as you hand them to him,” I said. “I’ve got to look capable of defending his niece. I can’t carry a gun and a garland.”
She laughed and called me a chauv, and we left, driving down past the Chinese grocery at Avenue Road and Davenport, where they have the best flowers in town. We arrived at his condo at twenty to eight. Security parked my Volvo while the doorman announced us and ushered us to the elevator.
We rode up eighteen floors, listening to wallpaper music that made Janet’s eyes crinkle with amusement. “I think hell would be like this, only hotter,” she said, and we both laughed.
Wainwright was waiting at the door of his apartment. He beamed as we came along the hall, looking at Janet with real warmth in his eyes. “Good evening. I’m Eric Wainwright,” he said to her, ignoring me.
“Janet Frobisher. Delighted to meet you,” she said, and Wainwright shook her hand, holding on to it for longer than was tactically necessary, his eyes sparkling with delight. He looked about ten years younger than he had in his office. Finally, he let go of her hand and shook mine, leading us into his lobby. It was high, anyway, and the ceiling was mirrored, so it looked endlessly lofty above us. He set down the flowers Janet had given him on the plinth of a reproduction of the Winged Victory of Samothrace, about four feet high but close to perfect. “John, how nice of you both to come,” he said. “Come on in.”
He ushered us down the hall to a long sitting room with big windows facing south over the Toronto Islands, a millionaire’s view, very impressive. But more impressive was my first view of his niece. She was sitting on a couch opposite the windows, talking to a lean guy of around thirty, who was wearing a tweed jacket that bellowed “academic” loud enough to be heard down on the street.
He stood up when Janet came in, doing it with a practiced clumsiness so that the lucky girl is always going to think, He doesn’t do this for everyone. I must be special.
Amy glanced at me first, then took a longer look at Janet. It seemed to me she was weighing the relationship between us, judging whether Janet had been brought in as a smoke screen.
Wainwright made the introductions. Amy, his niece, and her friend Peter Harrod. We all made the civilized noises, and then he poured drinks. Janet had white wine, like the other two, and then Wainwright turned to me and smiled. “You’re a Bushmills man, right?”
“Right. Thank you,” I said. God, was I that predictable? I carefully did not show any surprise. It would have looked vain and fluttery, as if my taste in booze were an exciting topic for all of us to discuss.
Wainwright didn’t let it lie. “My spies are everywhere,” he said happily. “You stayed at the Edinburgh Towers. That was all I needed to know.”
I figured he’d earned an acknowledgment. “Were you in intelligence during the war, Major?” There, that would let him know I’d done my own homework.
He looked up alertly as he unscrewed a new bottle of Bushmills and poured me a double. “Not exactly,” he said. “But you knew that, too, didn’t you?”
Amy Roger laughed. “What is this, Eric, a game of one-upmanship? I thought we’d all been invited for dinner, not a battle of wits.”
“You’re going to get a fine dinner,” Wainwright said. “You have to allow an old man his entertainments.” He said it in a playful voice that was more than half-flirting.
We changed gears and chatted sociably about the difficulties of getting around town now that the tourist season was beginning. I was hoping this would lead to Amy’s confessing that she was happy to be leaving town for the busiest part of the summer, but it didn’t. She moved first, asking Janet what her plans for the summer were. I was impressed. She might be a bluestocking, but socially she was on top of her game.
Janet talked about her work in radio, and Amy Roger gathered enough steam to move in on me. I detected an edge to her words. She had probably decided that Wainwright was bringing us all together for a purpose, and for her it was a reason to make a point of being unafraid and independent.
“Are you in broadcasting?” she asked.
“No, I’m kind of semiretired,” I said.
Amy smiled. She had a very nice smile but didn’t overdo it. “You seem a little young for retirement,” she said. “I think you must have some profitable sideline.”
“Kind of,” I said. “I’m in the personal-assurance business, free-lance. I work as the fancy takes me.”
This brought Amy’s date to life. He had the standard academic’s left-wing politics. “Insurance should be a government responsibility,” he said.
“The line I’m in already is, for the most part,” I said. “I take up the slack when police departments can’t provide the protection my clients need.”
“Police departments?” He frowned, wrinkling his face up like an apple doll. He looked like an impatient child. “Are police departments involved with insurance?”
“With personal assurance, yes,” I said. “It’s on all their vehicles. ‘To serve and protect.’ ”
Amy explained for him. “Really, Peter. Mr. Locke is a bodyguard.”
Harrod jerked his chin up almost angrily. “Good grief! Is there really a call for bodyguarding in this day and age?”
“Regrettably for some, fortunately for me, yes,” I said.
Janet was watching the whole exchange straight-faced, but I could read her amusement. I’ve known her for a couple of years, and she’s got a pretty good idea of my capabilities. On one occasion they’d been used to her advantage. Oddly, it was Wainwright who came forward with an explanation. I’d been expecting him to let me carry the ball on my own. “You may have seen John on the evening news a couple of nights ago,” he said. “He saved his client from a very nasty personal attack.”
“I never watch television,” Harrod said automatically. “Was it reported anywhere?”
“Yes,” Amy said, looking at me with a glitter in her eyes. “It was in the newspaper. Your client was Melanie Keene, the actress, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right.”
Now Harrod frowned. “Oh, yes, that does ring a bell. You burned some poor chap with acid, didn’t you?” His disgust was thick enough to cut.
“No. He burned himself with acid he was planning to use in disfiguring Miss Keene,” I said. “It seems he was a leg breaker for a local loan shark.” I deliberately kept the language rough-hewn to see Amy’s reaction.
“Seemed unnecessarily violent, according to the report I read,” Harrod said huffily.
“That’s what I thought,” I said kindly. “He would almost certainly have blinded her as well as destroying her face. But let’s change the subject.”
“Yes, let’s do that,” Harrod sniffed.
Amy was not so squeamish. “What did you do to him? Twist his arm?”
“I didn’t touch him.” I shook my head. “He dropped his glass, and it burned him, that was all.”
Wainwright gave the subject another shove. “There were two of them, weren’t there, John? Didn’t the other one have a razor?”
“Yes,” I said. “But Peter’s right, Eric. No shoptalk in the mess, please.”
That made Amy chuckle. “Are you another old soldier? You don’t look old enough.”
“I wasn’t in at the same time as your uncle, but yes,” I said.
“And was that before or after your stint at Sidney Sussex College?”
I made a surprised face. “Were you at Cambridge?”
“Yes. Trinity,” she said. “What were you reading?”
“History. But I didn’t take it very far,” I said. “I understand that you did. You’re a full-time historian.”
“Yes.” She said it with the same quiet pride you see in mothers when you compliment their children. “I like the view of life you get from a thousand-year or so perspective.”
That gave Harrod his entry p
oint, and he took over the conversation and brought us around to his own brilliance. I was relieved to find that his thing was the Thirty Years’ War. It was more interesting to me than Roman France, and it also meant that he wasn’t likely to be a stablemate of Amy’s if she went to Provence.
Dinner was served by a self-effacing French woman who left as soon as the table was cleared, and we sat around with glasses of a very good cognac while Wainwright and Harrod smoked Romeo y Julietta cigars. “One of the few civilized things our disgusting government has done is maintain contact with Cuba,” Harrod said through blue clouds of smoke. “A model socialist state.”
I sipped cognac and said nothing. But Amy didn’t let it rest. I had already formed the opinion that among the interests Harrod did not share with her was her bed. She was using him more casually than I would ever have used any woman I’d brought with me. “Do you agree?” she prodded me. “Surely you’re not a socialist.”
“I’m not much of anything,” I said. “If you follow them far enough, left and right extremists can shake hands with one another at their furthest range. Both are funded from the same sources and train in the same places.”
This made Harrod splutter indignantly, and we sat and listened to him until eleven, when Wainwright stood up abruptly and said, “Well, I’m going to bed now so that all you nice people can go home.”
Amy and Janet both chuckled. I stood up. Harrod kept on talking until Amy tapped him on the shoulder. “That was last call, Peter. Be a dear and get my shawl.”
“Do you have a car?” I asked.
“Good God, no,” he said, laughing at the idiocy. “In this town? No. I go everywhere on my bicycle.”
“And you’re taking Amy on the crossbar?” I asked.
“We were going to take a taxi,” he said.
“No need. We’ll drop you off.”
He protested, but Wainwright overruled him. “I’m sure John and Janet don’t mind, old chap,” he said. “I’ll call security and they’ll bring the car up for you.”