by Jack Barnao
That was when I was certain that he’d set something up. Perhaps he had even specified which partner Amy should bring home to dinner. He wanted us together in my car. He rang the front desk, but there was no answer. He hung up and turned back to us. “I’m sorry. The security man must be on his rounds. Would you mind getting your own car, John? All you have to do is press P1 on the elevator and go right down to the basement. Your key will be in the ignition, and the exit door opens automatically as you drive up to it.”
“No problem,” I said, and we all made our farewells. Wainwright stretched out his parting with Janet, asking if he might telephone her at work to get confirmation on the time of some broadcast she was preparing. She gave him her office number, and we all left.
Harrod was sulking but felt obliged to accept my offer, so he spent the elevator ride telling me how bad he felt about taking me out of my way. Amy chatted to Janet about the same broadcast, which she probably would not hear since it aired during the morning, when she was usually in the university library.
We got to the basement, and I stood back to let everyone out. It got into an Alphonse and Gaston routine with Harrod, but he left at last, and I followed them out, looking for my Volvo. It was parked at the end of a row. I pointed it out, and we headed toward it, the women walking in front. I was opening the doors for them when a man wearing a ski mask jumped out from behind another car. He was holding a black automatic.
“Gimme your wallets and purses,” he said.
Janet and Amy both gasped in horror. Harrod said, “I say. What do you think you’re doing?” and the man jabbed him in the chest with the gun. I wasn’t scared. It was all too pat. Security at the door meant this shouldn’t be happening. I figured Wainwright had arranged it. I stayed calm, breaking into my few words of Russian in a baffled tone. “Prostite, pozhalista?” I said, smiling stupidly. “Kak ti delash?” Excuse me, please, what are you doing? Not what Gorbachev’s bodyguard would have said, but enough to confuse the man with the gun.
“Your wallet, asshole,” he explained.
I spread my arms, not understanding. “Nye ponimayou “ I said. I don’t understand.
It stirred him to new feats of translation. “Listen, prick,” he said, and waved the gun. It gave me my first good look at it, and I could see it was plastic, a superb likeness of a Colt .45.
“You won’t get far with that thing, sport,” I said. “If you’re going to be a mugger, you need the real thing. Now, why don’t you run away before one of the ladies stuffs that toy gun up your nose?”
He stiffened and glanced down at his gun. I batted it aside and shoved him against another car, pinning him there while I ripped the mask off him and took a look at his face. “Go home,” I said. “You’re in the wrong line of business.”
Then Janet laughed. “I know you,” she said. “You played Alec in The Price of Strawberries on radio last fall.”
Amy joined in her laughter. “Really, John. Did you and Eric cook this up to impress me?”
“Not me,” I said. “But since you raise the question …” I grabbed the man by the arm and spun him around against the car, where he couldn’t get lucky with a wild kick. “Who sent you?”
“My agent,” he said through clenched teeth. “I’m sorry. Don’t call the police, please. It was supposed to be a joke. I wasn’t going to take anything. You can ask her. She told me it was for an audition.”
“Who’s your agent?” Janet asked.
“Molly Rosewood. Ask her yourself.”
“I will,” Janet said. “And I’ll make sure we never use you again in any production I work on.”
I let go of his arm, and he turned, rubbing his wrist, frowning. He was short and seemed shrunken now, the way actors do if you visit backstage and find them taking off their makeup. “I’m sorry. Please. Don’t tell anybody. I thought this was legit, an audition.”
“I’ll think about it,” Janet said sternly.
We all stood and looked at him while he picked up his toy gun and backed off, not sure how to make the best exit. I ushered the women into the car. Peter got in next to me in front. The actor watched from the elevator, looking foolish, dropping his eyes as we drove by.
Amy Roger spoke first. “Russian,” she said with amusement. “What a good idea. You really put him off his stride.”
Like a good courtesan I batted the conversational ball back to her. “You speak Russian? Latin and the Romance languages, I would have thought. Why Russian?”
“I was interested in the early Romanovs,” she said easily. “But the academic world is enormously political. To research Peter the Great would have meant trips to Leningrad. That could have been arranged easily enough, but my tutors were all Brits with leftist sympathies. They would have expected a ‘What about the workers?’ slant to my findings. I might have ended up agreeing with them, but in the meantime there was no room for any subjectivity on my part. Anyway, I did take a year of Russian.”
“I suppose you learned yours in the army,” Harrod said. He sounded disapproving.
“You have a lot of time to yourself on some assignments,” I said. “I used mine in various ways. Did a lot of reading, of course, but also learned a few oddments. One particular time I was isolated with an intelligence officer, and he taught me some rudimentary Russian.”
Harrod saw his opportunity and dived in with the obvious “That comes under the heading of an oxymoron, you know. Military intelligence, like airline food. Not possible.” He chuckled, but nobody joined him, and he subsided sulkily.
There was nobody in the security office when we drove by. Wainwright was a big tipper, I guessed. But the door had opened up automatically, as he had promised, and we rolled out into the late-evening traffic. “Where are we going?” I asked.
“Three twenty-seven Huron Street,” Peter said, then swiveled his head in surprise when Amy asked me, “Are you going through Rosedale?”
“Can do. We’re heading north, to Moore Park.”
“Oh, fine, then perhaps you could drop me at sixteen Crescent Road,” she said. Harrod made an angry humphing noise and sat up very straight in his seat, his arms folded tightly across his chest. Once again the best planned lays of mice an’ men had gang agley, I guessed.
He was polite when we dropped him, leaning down to say good night to each of us in a cut-glass voice. I glanced in my mirror as I drove away under a streetlight, but Amy’s face was showing nothing I could detect. A cool customer, I thought, perhaps one of those women who liked to tease, giving a suggestion of untold delights and then airily saying good night and vanishing. No wonder the Corsican had got mad at her.
Janet was doing some homework for me. She had been a researcher before she was a producer on her radio show, and she’s good at digging out facts. “Is Peter an associate?”
“No. As you heard, his field is the Thirty Years’ War,” Amy said. “I bump into him in the library all the time, but he’s heading off to Prague this summer. I’m going to France.”
I decided it was time to talk shop. “I guess you know why Eric brought us together this evening?”
“Eric can be tiresome,” she said. “I happened to mention what happened last summer, and he insists I need someone to look after me.”
“And what did happen?” I asked as I turned along Davenport and headed back toward Rosedale.
“Some man got unpleasant, and I looked after myself,” she said.
“And you heard what happened to the man on the film crew that night?”
“That was the end of it,” she said. “The machismo factor was resolved, and everything went back to normal.”
“You know Corsicans better than that,” I said.
“What do you know about Corsicans that should color my thinking?” Her voice was cool.
“I once had occasion to escort a British national out of Marseilles. It was a government operation, so I’m not going into any details, but I gave the queen good value for her shilling that day against some highly organize
d Corsican resistance.”
If Amy was impressed, she covered it well. “I don’t like the way you and Eric concocted this ridiculous business in the garage,” she said angrily. “What was my reaction supposed to be? Was I supposed to blurt out, ‘My hero,’ shoulder Janet aside, and fall into your arms?”
“Talk to Eric about that one. It was nothing to do with me.”
“All right, I will.” Her tone was bitter, but there was fear underlying it. She covered it by asking another question. “And suppose you tell me what you would have done if the threat had been real instead of staged.”
“I would have kept you safe. It’s what I do.”
“How?” she sneered. “Would you have told him about your service record?”
“I would have shot him if it was necessary.”
She gasped, and Janet spoke. “John is very good, Amy,” she said. “He was in the Special Air Service in Britain. He’s good. I was in a bad situation once, and he helped me. If someone is trying to hurt you, John can keep you safe.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to say anything else,” Amy said softly.
Janet chuckled. “I don’t know how to reply to that one. We’re neighbors and friends, nothing more.”
Now Amy leaned forward in her seat and snorted. “How does that make you feel, Mr. Locke? Your smoke screen just blew away.”
“Be as bitchy as you like to me, Amy,” I said pleasantly. “But Janet is my friend, and I’d like you better if you treated her with courtesy. Now, if you’ll give me some directions, we’ll bring this unpleasant evening to an end.”
“Turn left at Crescent Road,” she said quietly, then added, “Please,” and sat back.
Nobody said anything else as I drove to her door and stopped. She was out of the car immediately, but I got out and watched until she reached the door. Then she turned and called, “Thank you for the ride home. Good night.”
I raised my hand to her and got back into the car as the light went on in the hall. “Thank the Lord that’s over,” I said to Janet. “Would you like to come up front for the last leg?”
“Yes,” she said. She changed seats, and I caught the faint perfume of her hair. Impulsively, I reached over and kissed her cheek. “Thanks for the character reference.”
“Thanks for making gentlemanly noises,” she said. “That lady has a wide streak of rich bitch in her makeup.”
“It doesn’t matter, anyway. She won’t want me along.”
Janet turned her head toward me and put her hand on my arm. “Just watch yourself if you do get the job,” she said.
We exchanged pecks at her door, and I went up to my place. There was one phone message. It was Wainwright. His voice was cold. “Wainwright here. Call me when you get in.” He was cracking the five-thousand-dollar whip he had bought that morning.
I called, and he picked it up first bounce.
“Locke here, returning your call.” I could be laconic myself.
“What went wrong?” he snapped.
“I assume you’ve already talked to Mickey Mouse.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Think hard, Eric. Try and remember the chorus boy you hired to play with guns. Did you really think your niece would buy a charade like that?”
“Now listen.” His voice was harsh. “You can’t talk to me that way.”
“Why not? She’s nixed the deal. I’m not working for you anymore. I’ll return your deposit tomorrow.”
I hung up angrily. Damn his clumsiness. The job was attractive. And so was the very high-handed Amy Roger. Ah well. Back to watching the newspapers. There was a whole summer crop of movies to be shot in Toronto. Somebody out there would want my services.
It must have been five minutes later that the phone rang again.
“John Locke.”
“Did you have a gun with you tonight?” It was Amy.
“Yes.” I left it crisp. She had the apologizing to do, not me.
“I didn’t notice anything.”
“You weren’t supposed to.”
She hesitated; her words were spaced and ragged as she put her question together. “Have you ever used it?”
“On a number of occasions. I’m very good.” The truth is not a boast, my father says. If you can do this job, say so.
“I’ve been reading since I came in,” she said. “The Special Air Service is the group that entered the Iranian embassy in London when they had that hostage incident.”
“I was part of that team.” It was the only time the SAS conducted a maneuver in full view of the media. Terrorist activity in Britain has diminished since then.
Her voice was harsh when she spoke again. Apologies do not come easily to women like her. “I’m sorry I spoke the way I did, especially if I offended your friend.”
“She doesn’t hold grudges. Neither do I. You’re under more stress than you’re admitting, even to yourself.” A good line, I thought. I wasn’t going to plead for the job. If a hint didn’t do it, the hell with it.
“Then I’d like to take advantage of Eric’s offer,” she said. “Can we talk about it tomorrow, perhaps?”
“How about lunch?”
“I’ll be free about one o’clock.”
“Good. Shall I pick you up somewhere?’
“How about in front of the reference library on Yonge Street. You know where it is?”
It was time to acknowledge the importance I put on this job. “I spent today there reading your thesis.”
She laughed. “You’re very professional, John. I think I’ll enjoy having you along,” she said. “One o’clock, then.”
“One o’clock. Good night.” I waited for her to hang up and then did the same, smiling. I was going back to France, after all.
CHAPTER 4
The next couple of days went fast. I used them well. First thing I did was to warm up the contacts I’d made with the security forces of France and Canada back when I was with the SAS full-time. Through a friend who’s the boss of security at Toronto airport I was able to get the pass I needed to wear my gun while boarding. I could have smuggled it through in the bag I checked, but there was the outside chance it would miss the flight and end up in Addis Ababa.
A phone call to Claude Fussel of Interpol in Paris got me the same permits at his end, and I was able to travel armed, prepared for trouble.
I also spent a beery evening with Martin Cahill, a good buddy of mine who is an inspector with the RCMP, the Mounties. He’s involved with the dope squad and has access to all the information they hold on organized crime worldwide. I wanted to know what he could tell me about the Corsicans, specifically Vittore Orsini, the guy who was making my trip necessary.
Martin brought me a photograph. “It’s fifteen years old,” he apologized. “That was the last time he was arrested, murder. He got off, of course. The key witness lost his memory.”
I checked it over. Orsini looked tough. According to the details on the back of the photograph, he had been forty- nine at the time. He was 168 centimeters tall, around five feet six, and had a couple of interesting scars—knife and bullet wounds. The photo showed me that he was a solid- shouldered guy, the fisherman type, arms knotted up with muscle from hauling nets. He had a full head of black hair, graying handsomely at the temples, and a full mustache. His face had that flat, expressionless quality you see in a lot of criminals, especially those who’ve done heavy time inside. According to the file he hadn’t, but Martin gave me some details that explained the look.
“Interesting guy,” he said. “Born in Corsica, grew up in Marseilles. In 1942 he was seventeen. That was when the Germans took over all of France, not just the north, which they occupied in 1940, after Dunkirk. Seems his family owned a bar in the dock area. Anyway, some German soldier got rough with Orsini’s sister. Could have been a rape, could’ve been just that he groped her. Anyway, it was enough to get Vittore fired up, and he cut the guy’s throat.”
“Then what? Did the Germans shoot a bunch of ho
stages?” That was their usual tactic, courtesy of Clausewitz, their high priest of total war.
Martin nodded, creasing his big Irish face into a frown. “They did, and they also put a price on the kid’s head. So he dropped out of sight. Nothing more about him on the record until after the war.”
“Then what? Did he cut more throats?”
“For a while.” Martin took a pull at the glass of Bushmills I’d poured him. “Things were pretty hectic at that time. The civil authorities were in disorder, food was short, and there were still some German troops around, trying to get back home. The authorities didn’t know how to handle things. I don’t have any details. However, they do know that Orsini drifted into the black-market rackets, and when things improved, he went from that into rackets, period. He’s the godfather to a whole Marseilles family.”
“What kind of stuff are they into? The same as the mobs over here?” I expected the worst. Gangsters are gangsters in any culture, but I could almost empathize with Orsini. Maybe he would have grown up to be a hood anyway, but there was an outside chance that he was just another war casualty, a man whose life had been altered totally by the experiences he’d had as a young guy in an occupied country.
“ ’Bout the same,” Martin said. “Protection, girls, dope. Dope’s big, of course. I guess you know that Marseilles is on the pipeline from Thailand into the States and Canada.”
“I saw The French Connection.”
“Yeah, well, the guy with the beard could’ve been Orsini.”
That was about all the hard information he had for me. I took a long last look at the photograph, committing Orsini’s face to memory, trying to work out what he would look like now. Martin solved that problem for me. “We’ve got a computer program at the office; it shows us what age will do to a guy’s face. I’ve already asked the operator to work on this one, and I’ll have a computer likeness for you by tomorrow.”
“Thanks. I don’t want to have to wait for this girl to remember whether it’s him or not. That’s liable to take too long if Orsini shows up.”
“Tomorrow,” he said. “Which reminds me, I’ve gotta be back in the office at seven. I’m for bed. You wanna crash on the couch?”