Keeper of the Flame Read online

  “So what?!” Gordie shouted. He was still aiming his gun at my abdomen.

  “So it’s logical for Crang to conclude somebody’s dead,” Wally said.

  “Wally,” I said, my hands still in the air, “could you tell Wyatt Earp to down weapons please?”

  “Gordie,” Wally said, “do like Mr. Crang asks.”

  Gordie complied, but he didn’t look happy about it.

  “Is this a professional visit, Crang?” Wally said to me. “And what the hell kind of way is that to get in the building?”

  “It’s the screwball route the man I have an appointment with told me to take,” I said. “The man’s name is Reverend Alton Douglas, and I hope to hell you’re not going to tell me he’s the one who’s dead.”

  “Hold on, Crang, I hope you’re not the type to go all weepy on me,” Wally said.

  “It is the Reverend who’s bought it,” I said.

  Wally looked down at the floor, then up at me. “He was killed in his office sometime last night. Sorry, Crang, it looks like you lost yourself a client.”

  “If you think I’m here on behalf of a client, you’re right,” I said. “But the Reverend, dead or alive, isn’t the client.”

  Wally took a moment to process what I’d said. He gestured me to sit in the back row of the auditorium’s seats. It was the same spot where the Reverend and I had our sit-down three days earlier. Wally plunked himself beside me. Gordie, the uniformed guy, hovered.

  “You came here to see this guy Douglas?” Wally said. Wally wore a bushy moustache going a little grey. He had a large gut and a sharp brain. “I suppose your next line is going to be something about client confidentiality preventing you from telling me what the meeting was about?”

  “That’s my line, Wally,” I said. “But if we keep things between the two of us, I’ll take a big chance and tell you my client’s name.”

  Wally turned to the uniformed cop. “Gordie, see if you can check out when the doctors are going to do an autopsy on our body.”

  Gordie looked offended, but he left on his assigned errand.

  “Is it going to help me, knowing who your client is?” Wally said to me.

  “You ever heard of a hip hop singer named Flame?”

  Wally gave me a wide smile. “I got two teenage daughters. So I’ll tell you how well I know Flame. He’s the guy I hear night and day on the girls’ sound systems. I see posters of him all over their bedroom walls. Last week, I took them to the ACC and listened to goddamn Flame for a couple of hours. Have I heard of him?”

  “You’re practically a fan.”

  “I hate to admit it, the guy’s not bad,” Wally said. “He’s your client for real?”

  “Spent last night with him at Right Now in New York City.”

  “Jesus, Crang,” Wally said. “I tell this to my girls, I’ll be their hero for at least a half hour.”

  “That’s only two degrees of separation between Flame and their dad.”

  “Okay,” Wally said, sounding like he was getting down to business, “you had an appointment with the deceased Alton Douglas for today?”

  “I talked to him on Sunday after he conducted his afternoon service in this room where you and I are sitting right now,” I said. “After the service, we went into his office back there, and made the arrangement to meet up today.”

  “The guy was an actual minister?” Wally said. “Gave sermons, a few hymns, the whole nine yards?”

  “The content of the sermons and the type of music, both of those you might not have recognized from any church service you’ve been to in your life,” I said. “But, yeah, essentially the Reverend Douglas was close enough to legitimate.”

  Gordie, the uniformed cop, returned. “Autopsy’s not till tomorrow,” he said to Wally. “They’ll let you know the results soon as possible.”

  Wally said thanks, and the cop resumed his hovering duties.

  “What about this appointment you say you had today?” Wally said to me. “That’s the goods?”

  I held up the envelope. “I got an affidavit the Reverend was going to sign,” I said. “That was the purpose of the meeting. He’d sign the thing, and the small dealings between my client and him would be wrapped up.”

  “You got anything besides your word that says it was going to happen, this meeting that the Reverend now can’t keep with you?”

  “That piece of furniture over there,” I said, pointing to the Reverend’s desk against the back of the auditorium. “If you’ve searched it, you’ll have found the Reverend’s daybook. I saw him ink me in for one o’clock today.”

  “Gordie,” Wally said to the guy in uniform, “what’s the report on the victim’s desk?”

  Gordie blushed pink. “I don’t believe we’ve got to the desk yet,” he said, “sir.”

  “Anybody even noticed the goddamn desk before now?”

  “Sir!” Gordie said. He made a smart about turn and set off on another chore.

  Wally walked over to the desk.

  “Which drawer?” he asked me.

  “Middle.”

  Wally put on a pair of latex gloves from his windbreaker pocket, and slid open the middle drawer.

  “Voila!” he said, lifting the Reverend’s daybook from the drawer.

  Wally flipped through the pages until he stopped, presumably at the page recording the Reverend’s plans for today.

  “Another voila!” Wally said. “You’re down for one o’clock on this day’s date.”

  “In ink?”

  “Crang, you’re coming up roses.”

  “Okay, if you don’t mind, Wally, it’s my turn to ask questions,” I said. “How did the Reverend get killed?”

  “A smack on the side of the head,” Wally said.

  “The proverbial blunt instrument?”

  “Roughly speaking, yeah.”

  “Baseball bat, a billy, something like that?”

  “But not a baseball bat or a billy or anything resembling either one.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “The medical officer who attended here an hour ago, very sharp guy I’ve worked with on a bunch of cases, he said the wound was done by a weapon with edges. That’s on the basis of his eyeballing the victim. It could have been a metal instrument, but whatever it was, it was something that left straight lines in the Reverend’s skull. This MO said he’d let me know more detail later, him or somebody else on Grenville.”

  Grenville Street, in midtown, a couple of blocks from police headquarters, was home to medical and technical personnel who specialized in DNA, fingerprints, and other forensic solutions of mysteries.

  “Who found the body?” I said.

  “Kid in the little coffee shop downstairs,” Wally said. “He told us he came up here around nine this morning. It was his routine, fetching Douglas his morning coffee. Instead, he found the man dead.”

  “Here’s a tip for free, Wally,” I said. “Take a look at the eleven guys who run their businesses out of here. You and your people might recognize a few names.”

  “These eleven guys are in illegal enterprises?”

  “Such genteel phrasing, Wally.”

  “With the eleven of them,” Wally said, “what’s the fastest way I can find names?”

  “You notice a computer on the conference table in the office?”

  Wally thought about it. “Two computers in there, one on the desk, the other on the big table. It was the late Reverend’s office, right? So both are his computers?”

  “More complicated than that,” I said. “The Reverend ran the church as a kind of front for the gang of eleven, but they didn’t let him sit in on their meetings. That’s why he had the other desk out here. It’s where he retired to at meeting time.”

  “Crang,” Wally said, giving me a beady-eyed look, “you know a hell of a
lot for a guy representing a rap singer in what you call small dealings.”

  I shrugged, something I was getting not bad at. “I like to give my clients thorough representation. It keeps them coming back for more.”

  Wally turned and headed for the Reverend’s former inner office.

  I followed, then hesitated.

  “The deceased’s no longer with us?” I asked. “By which I mean, not still lying on the floor in there?”

  “Ought to be laid out on a slab downtown right about now.”

  I went into the office a couple of paces back of Wally. The first things I noticed were the sheets of paper scattered on the floor behind the desk. The desk’s left hand drawer, which was locked the last time I saw it, hung open. It wasn’t hard to reason what must have happened. The Reverend and his visitor got into a squabble over the whereabouts of the sheets with Flame’s scurrilous song lyrics on them. The Reverend opened the desk to show the visitor the lyrics hidden in the stack of copy paper. When he couldn’t find the sheets with the lyrics, either he or the visitor scattered the paper in a fit of pique. Not long after that, if I my reasoning was correct, the visitor whacked the Reverend with a weapon that was built on straight lines.

  “The pieces of paper on the floor,” I said to Wally, “they all blank?”

  “Far as I know,” Wally said. “Why do you ask?”

  “Just getting the whole picture in my mind.”

  “Don’t forget to include in the picture some tiny traces of blood on the pieces of paper.”

  “I noticed.”

  The blood on the papers looked more rusty brown than red. The papers themselves were scattered across the rug behind the desk. Probably, I thought to myself, the Reverend was standing back of the desk when the killer whacked him. The spray of blood from the blow seemed to be confined to a small circumference, reaching only a couple of feet beyond the place behind the desk where the Reverend had taken up position. That was just before the other guy in the room let fly with his whack.

  “One thing I should have told you,” Wally said. “Don’t move anything around in this room. Don’t touch any of the stuff in here.”

  “The forensics people haven’t finished?”

  “Done as far as I can see,” Wally said. “But with those guys, they’re kind of fussy about what’s a complete job and what isn’t.”

  I told Wally I’d keep my hands to myself. While he looked over the computer on the conference table, I scanned the room for any telltale signs of my previous presence. Nothing looked like a giveaway, though I couldn’t remember what I might have touched in the bathroom when I was concealing myself behind the black shower curtain.

  “Any of the eleven names mean much to you?” Wally asked me.

  “Squeaky Fallis is a guy I encountered on a fraud case,” I said. “Aside from him, I’m only aware by second hand about shiftiness among the other ten.”

  “What kind of name is Squeaky?”

  “An accurate kind once you’ve heard his voice,” I said. “In the computer, you’ll find he goes by Robert Fallis.”

  Wally was tapping on the computer’s keys.

  I walked over to the Reverend’s desk chair, planning to sit in it.

  “What’d I tell you, Crang?” Wally said. “About touching things in here?”

  “Not even sitting down?”

  “You got tired legs from climbing that ladder?”

  I stood around for a few more useless minutes before I decided the chances were slim I’d pick up any fresh revelations from the scene of the crime.

  “You mind if I leave now, Wally?” I said. “Preferably by the front door.”

  Wally turned. “Go ahead,” he said. “But we’re gonna talk again. To my way of thinking, you know too damn much about whatever’s going on in this building.”

  “The result of intense study, Wally,” I said. “All of it done on behalf of my client, and your girls’ hero, the one and only Flame.”

  I went down to the lobby, which was busy with cops carrying out cop jobs. The coffee kid seemed to be doing good business with police customers. Neither of the other two shops had opened, and I saw no sign of anybody from the Squeaky Fallis crew. I pushed through the front door, and went looking for a cab.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  At home, I made a tuna salad sandwich on twelve-grain bread, poured a glass of orange juice, and phoned Jerome. I needed to keep the Flame group notified of developments. The Reverend’s murder was a hell of a development. But if Jerome was chauffeuring Annie to interviews around New York City, I didn’t want her to get the idea from what I was about to tell Jerome that I might be under siege from different quarters. This was going to be a tricky conversation, and I hadn’t thought it through. Maybe I should hang up before Jerome answered. I could start all over again after I came up with some tactics.

  “Crang, my man, what’s happening?” Jerome said on the phone.

  Too late to revise my tactics, not that I had any tactics.

  “Just reporting in, Jerome,” I said. “There’s been a significant turn of events up here.”

  “Lot going on down here too, man,” Jerome said. I could hear the honks of car horns from his end. “And all’s positive man. Capital P.”

  “With Annie, you mean?”

  “She’s got news for you, man, gonna blow your doors off.”

  “Annie’s right there beside you, wherever you are?”

  “Parked in Queen’s, man,” Jerome said. “Your girl’s inside a studio across the street doing somebody’s afternoon radio show.”

  “Jerome, be careful what you do with the information I’m about to give you.”

  “Don’t tell Annie, that what you mean?”

  “Somebody murdered the Reverend Alton Douglas.”

  “Sheesh, man,” Jerome said. Then he went silent, no doubt mulling over the implications of the Reverend’s demise. “Isn’t that a good thing?” Jerome said. “Good except for the poor man’s near and dear. I’m supposin’ he’s got some of those.”

  “There are complications, Jerome.”

  “The matter of who killed the man, that’s one of them?”

  “At the moment,” I said, “the police haven’t a clue.”

  “The way you’re talking, literally they don’t have a clue, or that’s just a figure of speech you’re using?”

  “The one clue they may think they have is my arrival on the murder scene in an unorthodox fashion.”

  “Whoa there, Crang,” Jerome said. “Police got you connected to the murder? Man, that’s some serious shit.”

  “Two things I want from you, Jerome. Don’t say a word to Annie about this part of our conversation. She’ll worry at a time when she needs a clear head.”

  “What’s the other thing?”

  “Get the news to Carnale. Tell him somebody killed the Reverend at Heaven’s Philosophers last night. The extortion plan died with the Reverend.”

  “What about the song sheets?”

  “No problem there either.”

  “That’s what I tell Carnale?” Jerome said. “‘No problem’?”

  “Let him know he should phone me if he wants more of the inside dope.”

  “You got nothing personal to do with the Reverend’s murder, am I right to assume that, man? Just ease my mind. You definitely don’t seem the murdering type.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Jerome.”

  “What about our Miss Annie, the new star of New York City?” Jerome said. “You got a message for her?”

  “Tell her I love her to pieces.”

  “To pieces?”

  “That’ll do it.”

  “If you say so, man,” Jerome said.

  He hung up, and I got back to my tuna salad sandwich.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Maury phone
d at the wrong time. The sun was just beginning to fade over the horizon, and my thoughts were turning to the first martini of the day. I answered the call anyway.

  “Get your ass out to the Kennedy subway station,” Maury said.

  “This is another command performance for Jackie Gabriel?”

  “He says he needs to see you, a life or death thing.”

  “I got the impression last time that Jackie’s already told me everything he knows about Heaven’s Philosophers.”

  “Another guy’ll be there besides Jackie.”

  “Somebody who might get my wheels turning?”

  “Georgie’s the other guy,” Maury said.

  Right away I was interested. This was a chance to talk to one of the eleven Heaven’s Philosopher people on more or less neutral grounds. To me, neutral meant any place where Squeaky Fallis wasn’t within shouting distance.

  “Also, you probably know this, somebody murdered the Reverend,” Maury said. “Jackie’s got his shorts in a knot about what it might mean for Georgie.”

  “Is Georgie given to violence?”

  “Maybe in a card game that goes south,” Maury said. “Otherwise, he’s a very laid back kind of guy.”

  “I’ll see you in three quarters of an hour.”

  I hustled up to the Spadina subway station, and was right on time for Maury and me to again penetrate the deepest northeast suburbs. As before, Jackie’s wife, Irene, met us at the door. But the note of grace she showed on our first visit was somewhere under wraps. This time, Irene invited us in with an abrupt gesture. The expression on her face was sour.

  In the living room, there wasn’t a cup of tea in sight. Jackie and his large son were sitting in armchairs, both with glasses holding an amber coloured liquid and a lot of ice cubes.

  Georgie Gabriel was as John Candy–like as I recalled from my glimpse of him in the church parking lot a few days earlier. But for a guy with such a bulging midsection, he managed to look natty in a tan-coloured summer suit. With the suit, he wore a navy blue shirt and a red-and-white striped tie. He gave me a sweet smile, and we shook hands.