Keeper of the Flame Read online

  Other Crang Mysteries

  Crang Plays the Ace

  Straight No Chaser

  Riviera Blues

  Blood Count

  Take Five

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Also Available from Dundurn

  FOR PETER AND ALBERT

  Chapter One

  The man on the other end of the phone was saying in a brisk voice that I shouldn’t leave my office in the next fifteen minutes. He wasn’t asking me. He was telling me.

  “Aren’t you the pushy one,” I said to the man, speaking on my brand new iPhone.

  “You’re the right guy?” the man said. “By the name of Crang?”

  “The very same,” I said.

  “I’m calling for Roger Carnale,” he said. I could hear traffic sounds in the background of wherever the guy was calling from. “Mr. Carnale’s on his way to your office. Right now, I’m talking about. I need to guarantee him you’ll keep yourself available.”

  “Guarantee to your heart’s content,” I said. “Do I assume your Roger is in the market for my sharp criminal representation?”

  “No way,” the man said, brisk as ever but giving his best to add an acerbic tone. “Mr. Roger Carnale is executive director of the Flame Group. He’s going to talk to you about something big that has to do with Flame. This is serious for Mr. Carnale. You don’t have to know anything else.”

  He hung up.

  I got out of my chair and walked over to inspect the view from my window. A couple of weeks earlier, I’d changed offices, moving down two flights in the same building to a space on the third floor. This office had a better view. Upstairs, the angle I had on mid-town Toronto and the world beyond had been limited, nothing past the south side of the condo next door. My new window gave me a prospect looking east across Spadina Avenue, which was all abustle. That was Spadina’s permanent state. On the far side, two pretty girls sat on a grassy hillock in the little park at the corner where Spadina met Bloor Street. Matt Cohen Park it was called — a tribute to a deceased novelist who once lived in the neighbourhood. Both girls were wearing baggy tan shorts. One completed her outfit with a pink T-shirt, the other with a halter top. Closer inspection from a distance told me both had superb legs.

  The brisk guy on the phone had said “Flame” in a manner that made me think it referred to a person. Who was he? Or maybe she? I had no idea.

  I went back to the iPhone sitting on my desk and punched up Annie’s number.

  “You heard of anybody possibly by the name of Flame?” I said when Annie came on the line. Annie B. Cooke was my go-to person for information on a far-flung variety of topics. She was also my live-in sweetie.

  “Canadian rap singer with a tilt to mainstream,” Annie said. “And how are you this fine September noon, old sport?”

  “The better for hearing your voice,” I said. “Are you speaking of Flame along the lines of the other rap guy from around here? Drake?”

  “Similar careers up to a point,” Annie said. “The major difference, compared to Drake or practically any other rapper, Flame projects profundity, relatively speaking. The thinking fan’s idol. It’s earning him oodles of cash.”

  “He’s new on the scene?”

  “Been at it awhile, but gotten big only the past three, four years. I’m speaking of filling the Air Canada Centre. That kind of big.”

  “I don’t recall you mentioning the guy before.”

  “Good heavens, Crang, I’ve never listened to Flame’s records or watched his videos or anything else fan-like.”

  “Your record-collecting days ended with late Marvin Gaye, if I remember?”

  “Actually, I’ve always been a Stevie Wonder girl.”

  “Wait a minute, if you’ve never heard or seen Flame, shouldn’t you have added an ‘apparently’ to what you just told me about profundity?”

  “Not really. I get the inside dope from impeccable sources.”

  “Maybe you could just divulge the sources? Let me weigh the impeccability?”

  “The magazines in Loblaw’s checkout line,” Annie said. “Waiting to pay for groceries is when I study up on my pop culture.”

  “I’m more a Vanity Fair browser.”

  “He’s a handsome-looking devil, Flame. Judging from photographs.”

  “What’s your frame of reference?” I said. “Evaluating handsomeness?”

  “Compared to you, sweetie,” Annie said, “I have to admit Flame comes up short.”

  “You think I was angling for a compliment?”

  Annie moved past my question and got back to Flame.

  “The magazines,” she said, “treat him with something like reverence.”

  “Should I be impressed?”

  “Probably depends on why you’re asking about such an unlikely person,” Annie said. “Unlikely for you, I mean.”

  “His executive director is going to walk through my door any minute now.”

  “That’s odd.” Annie said. “My sources don’t suggest there’s a whiff of scandal attached to Flame.”

  “Solid as your sources are.”

  “Flame’s reputation, the point I’m trying to make, he’s a spotless guy. No scandals, no sexual harrassment, not even tats.”

  “And he earns oodles, you say?”

  “So my sources report.”

  “I’ll let you know at dinner how much of the oodles he might care to share with me.”

  “And why he would,” Annie said.

  Chapter Two

  When Roger Carnale arrived at my office, he wasn’t alone. He introduced his companion as Jerome Suggs, Flame’s vice-president of operations and chief of security.

  Carnale was a tall, slim, thirtyish guy with good looks of a bland sort. Making his entrance, he seemed a touch wary. A lot of my clients, meeting a criminal lawyer for the first time, get that way, but most of t
hem face criminal charges and have reason for wariness. As far as I knew, Carnale was clean of problems with the law and the guardedness that went with them. Maybe he came by circumspection naturally.

  He was turned out in a lightweight, pale-brown suit, blue shirt, and striped tie. In one hand, he carried a slim, black leather briefcase with metal rims around the edges. In the other hand, he clutched a fedora and a walking stick. The fedora, in the same light brown shade as his suit, was folded and creased the way Superintendant Foyle wore his hat in Foyle’s War on Masterpiece Theatre. The walking stick was made of black wood, and since neither of Carnale’s legs appeared to suffer from gimpiness, the stick must have been strictly for effect.

  Jerome, the security chief, was a very large black man. He had on jeans and a black summer windbreaker, which he wore over a black T-shirt notable for the symbol in its centre consisting of a single red and yellow flame. Jerome had a shaved head, a bemused expression, and he carried a briefcase in plain brown leather. He and Carnale sat in two of the three client chairs on the other side of my desk.

  “You come highly recommended, Mr. Crang,” Carnale said.

  “By who?”

  Carnale nodded in Jerome’s direction.

  “By Philip Goldenberg,” Jerome said to me in a deep bass voice — a voice with a strong New York accent.

  “As compliments go, that’s not bad at all.”

  “The other dudes in Goldenberg’s law office called him ‘Fox.’”

  “That’s because he’s smart like a fox. Does cross examinations that sneak up on witnesses.”

  “He said you took jobs that were off the reservation,” Jerome said.

  “He probably phrased it ‘off the reserve,’” I said.

  “Could be, man.”

  “What Americans call a reservation, Canadians call a reserve.”

  “You do things different up here.”

  “Other than that,” I said, “those were Fox’s words?”

  “Exact quote,” Jerome said.

  “If you gentlemen didn’t retain him,” I said, “I take it whatever brings you to my office doesn’t involve a criminal charge.”

  “Quite right, Mr. Crang,” Carnale said. “Our objective is to head off an offender. Almost as essential, we need to keep the matter we’re about to discuss out of the media.”

  “What kind of situation is it that hasn’t happened yet?”

  “I describe it as robbery, plain and simple,” Carnale said, turning once again to Jerome.

  “The situation is where a man wants money from us to keep his mouth shut,” Jerome said.

  “Your guy, Flame, he’s the one on the wrong end of this shot at extortion?”

  “Sad to say, man, he is,” Jerome said.

  “This fine young man’s future could be destroyed,” Carnale said. He sounded outraged.

  “To state the obvious, you want me to head off the extorter,” I said.

  “That’s why we’re here,” Carnale said.

  “Got any idea how I might learn this man’s identity?”

  “We know very well who he is, Mr. Crang,” Carnale said, leaning even heavier on the indignation. “And we can tell you where to find him.”

  “This whole deal sounds like the equivalent of a stickup in broad daylight,” I said. “Not your run-of-the-mill extortion.”

  “Very brazen, indeed.”

  “Let’s start with the guy’s name.”

  Carnale nodded to Jerome.

  “Goes by the name, Reverend Alton Douglas,” Jerome said. “The dude runs Heaven’s Philosophers on St. Clair Avenue West. I got the information off the business card he gave me.”

  “Imagine that,” I said, “a person of the cloth dabbling in criminal pursuits. How much is he asking?”

  “What he wants, man, that’s no dabbling,” Jerome said. “Eight big, big ones.”

  “Eight million dollars?”

  Jerome nodded.

  I made a little whistling sound. “What’s he know about Flame, asking for money like that?” I said to Jerome.

  Carnale stood up abruptly. He was even taller than I first thought. I was an inch short of six feet, and if I were standing, Carnale would tower over me.

  “I need to keep a luncheon appointment, Mr. Crang,” he said to me. “One of our bankers downtown. I take it we’ve now got you on retainer?”

  “Sounds like my kind of job,” I said.

  Carnale said he’d leave Jerome to get into the details with me.

  “Jerome will be your contact person until you tidy things up for us,” Carnale went on. “I trust that will be a matter of days. As few as possible.”

  Carnale turned, carrying his briefcase, walking stick, and Foyle’s War fedora, and was out the door before I could rise from my chair.

  I looked at Jerome. “Your boss is a man in a hurry.”

  “Got a car waiting downstairs,” he said.

  I went over to the window and watched Carnale as he came out of my building, now wearing the fedora. A large shiny black SUV was parked at the curb. A chauffeur climbed out of the front seat, and held the back door open for Carnale. I could tell he was a chauffeur from the dark suit and the hat he wore. The guy was almost as tall as his boss, slim, probably in his late twenties, judging from my view three floors up. He slammed the car door shut firmly.

  “Expensive looking car,” I said to Jerome.

  “Brand new Escalade,” Jerome said.

  I couldn’t tell an Escalade from an Eskimo Pie.

  “Chauffeur’s the guy who phoned me earlier on?” I asked Jerome.

  “He’s the one,” Jerome said. “Serious young dude. Tries hard to look cool.”

  “Looking cool probably comes out of the chauffeur manual.”

  The Escalade pulled away from the curb, and when I turned from the window, Jerome was checking his watch.

  “Where do you feel like discussing the Reverend Alton Douglas?” I said to him. “Over lunch maybe?”

  “It’s one o’clock, man,” Jerome said. “I always feel like lunch at one o’clock.”

  “Follow me,” I said.

  Chapter Three

  “Damn,” I said, “I hate it when they do that.”

  “Who does what, man?” Jerome said.

  We were sitting at a table in the window of Freda, an intimate, stone-floored restaurant around the corner from my office specializing in pasta dishes.

  “They changed the menu,” I said. “I always have the chicken sandwich. Now it’s gone. Eliminated. Disappeared.”

  A young waitress appeared. Like all Freda’s waitstaff, she looked crisp and smart in white shirts and black pants. Our waitress had exquisite features and a slim build. She left us with two menus and two glasses of water.

  “Chicken sandwich, man?” Jerome looked aghast. “You come to an Italian restaurant and you order a chicken sandwich?”

  “It’s organic chicken!”

  “Chicken sandwich ain’t a manly dish, man.”

  The waitress returned, and Jerome asked for spaghetti Bolognese and a glass of red wine.

  “Spaghetti Bolognese is manly, Jerome?”

  “The thing speaks for itself, man.”

  “You’re kidding, Jerome, right?”

  Jerome smiled at me.

  “I’ll have the same as my friend,” I said to the waitress.

  She wrote my order and went away.

  Jerome said, “What’s your opinion so far about the problem with Flame?”

  “Back in the office,” I said, “I couldn’t help noticing your Mr. Carnale didn’t always have the answers to my questions on the tip of his tongue.”

  “That’s ’cause he’s the big picture man.”

  “Give me an example,” I said. “I assume you’re talking about the big pictures
in Flame’s career?”

  “Roger Carnale’s the man that spotted Flame’s talent in the first place. This was before the kid was called Flame, back ten, twelve years when he was, like, fifteen, just doing his thing in some little neighbourhood ice cream soda club.”

  “Very astute of Roger,” I said. “But it’s ancient history. Not directly related to the present problem with the clergyman. What’s a more recent big picture item Roger’s promoting?”

  Jerome waggled an index finger at me. “Now we getting to the reason you been hired.”

  The waitress came back with our glasses of red wine.

  “The big step Mr. Carnale’s rolling with,” Jerome said, “Flame’s gonna become a movie star.”

  “There’s a market for rap movie musicals?”

  Jerome leaned over the table. “See, man, that’s where Mr. Carnale keeps his eye on the big picture before the average guy does.”

  “I’m all on tenterhooks.”

  “Listen to this,” Jerome said. “Flame’s the next great romantic movie idol.”

  “Not just a singer, but an actor too?” I said, probably sounding skeptical.

  “Flame’s got the acting chops, man. You heard of the Stella Adler Acting Studio in New York?”

  “Very leading edge, I believe. Or maybe it once was.”

  “Flame’s been studying there the last year.”

  “But you said something about Flame being the next romantic idol. What’s that mean? He’s going to pick up where Denzel Washington’s leaving off?”

  “Don’t think colour, man.”

  “What am I missing?”

  “Flame’s destiny, he’ll be the Cary Grant of his generation. Flame’s post-racial, man. Doesn’t matter to the audience he’s black. They never notice he’s black, white, whatever. Flame’s romantic in the eyes of the whole spectrum, you understand what I’m sayin’?”

  I didn’t respond right away.

  “You have heard of Cary Grant, man?” Jerome asked, persisting.

  “Jerome, it’s people of the present I’ve never heard of,” I said. “People from the past, they overlap with my past. Cary Grant was tall and handsome, cleft chin, made the ladies swoon, filled the men with envy even though they admired him as much as the ladies did.”