Keeper of the Flame Read online

  “Cleft chin, man,” Jerome said. “Flame’s got one of those.”

  “Now that I think about it,” I said, “there’s nobody among today’s Hollywood leading men who’s Grant-like in looks or style or wit.”

  “Those guys need a shave, got their little goatees. You’re right, man, they ain’t got the touch old Cary had. Maybe George Clooney, but otherwise no way, man.”

  The waitress arrived with our main courses. While she went through the routine of serving us, offering fresh pepper, a sprink-ling of cheese, I wondered about Jerome’s estimate of Flame’s future.

  “A young black guy as the next Cary Grant?” I said. “Hard to see it.”

  “Puts you in the minority, man,” Jerome said.

  “Who’s in the majority?”

  “We got a finished script. Got a big-name director signed on. And, listen up here, Crang, we got a contract with a Los Angeles studio. Major studio, man. People’re putting fifty million into our project.”

  I stopped chewing. “I’m impressed, Jerome. Practically speechless.”

  “Gonna be a big public announcement the end of September,” Jerome said. “Providing there’s no setback before then.”

  “Like the blackmailing minister of God? That kind of setback?”

  “Like him, like the Reverend Alton Douglas. Only, the thing about Alton coming along at this particular moment, it’s coincidental.”

  “He’s not attempting his Flame shakedown because he knows the movie contract is going to put Flame in the chips any minute now?”

  “Not possible, man,” Jerome said. “Number one, he couldn’t have heard about the movie. We got the cone of silence workin’ for us till the minute we go public. There’s been nothing about the movie on Twitter, nothing in what they call the trade papers, Hollywood Reporter and such like. The Reverend’ll learn about it the same time everybody else does.”

  “So, you’re telling me Flame’s worth eight million without introducing the movie money into the mix?”

  “Mr. Carnale say he could snap his fingers at the bankers, man, and they’d send over ten million, twenty, in a Brinks truck, all cash money, do it in a flash.”

  “I follow you, Jerome,” I said. “But the coincidence of the Reverend Alton Douglas coming on to the scene right now means that whatever he’s got on Flame could blow up the movie.”

  “That’s the problem in a nutshell, man.”

  “So tell me this,” I said, “what information has this Reverend put together on my new client, Flame?”

  “Now,” Jerome said, “we at the ugly part.”

  “We are?”

  “Very ugly, man. Very.”

  Chapter Four

  Jerome stopped eating his spaghetti and meat sauce.

  “Goes back a long way, the thing I’m about to tell you,” he said.

  I stopped eating too.

  “Before Mr. Carnale discovered Flame,” Jerome said, “he was an unknown kid, like I said earlier. So, up in his bedroom, this one day a lotta years ago, he wrote the words for nine songs. Didn’t put them on a video, didn’t tape himself singing them. They were just words on nine sheets of paper, and these lyrics, man, they disgusting. They anti-gay, they against woman, they racist. I’m telling you man, these songs were so gross you couldn’t imagine them in your worst nightmares.”

  “The little I know about rap customs,” I said, “putting down gay people is a popular theme in the lyrics. Right up there with denigrating women. Faggots and whores — two universal rap themes.”

  “Not like these ones of Flame’s,” Jerome said.

  Both of us paused, then resumed eating.

  “What Flame did all those years ago,” Jerome said, “he put away these nine sheets of paper in the drawer in the place where he lived with his mama, the words for each one of the songs written down on the sheets. Flame’s mama saved all that shit to the present day. At her house, she’s stored away every single song Flame ever wrote. That includes these nine sheets causing the problems, man.”

  “And that’s what the Reverend Alton Douglas now has in his possession?”

  “Everything on the song sheets is in Flame’s own handwriting, his signature on every sheet,” Jerome said. He reached for his slim black briefcase on the floor beside his chair, and took out a handful of white pages held together with a paperclip.

  “These here,” Jerome said, handing me the sheets, “are copies the Reverend handed me the night before last. Monday that was. You can keep the damn copies for the time being, man, while you’re workin’ on the case. Personally, I don’t care if I never see this stuff again. But here’s the crux of the situation, man. The Reverend told me he gonna put these nine pages on the Web in two weeks’ time unless we pay the man eight million dollars.”

  Under the paperclip holding the nine pages, Jerome had fastened the Reverend Alton Douglas’s card and his own card. I removed the paperclip, put the cards in my inside jacket pocket. And then I started to read the first page of Flame’s song lyrics.

  “Hold up, man,” Jerome said in a peremptory tone. “Don’t read them right now, not when you’re eating your nice pasta. I’m warning you.”

  “I’ve got a cast-iron stomach, Jerome,” I said, “if that’s what you’re concerned about.”

  I read down the page. It appeared to be a song about two men making love with one another. And as they got intimate, one man used a very sharp knife to cut off the other man’s testicles.

  “Oh dear Jesus,” I said.

  “Brace yourself, man,” Jerome said. “There’s much worse in there, man. One’s about people pooping on other people.”

  I was still on the first song, the one that mixed semen and blood. It got very specific in its descriptions. Even as a kid, Flame seemed to have a talent with words. Waxing lyrical about one guy torturing another guy. The spaghetti lurched in my stomach.

  I looked at Jerome, and my face must have reflected what was going on in my belly.

  “Cast-iron, man?” Jerome said. “The way you appearing right now, it’s more like a leaky tin foil.”

  The waitress came to our table.

  “The spaghetti Bolognese not agreeing with you, sir?” she said to me, her expression showing concern.

  “Nothing an espresso won’t fix,” I said. “Double, if you don’t mind.”

  I didn’t speak until the espresso arrived, and I took a sip.

  “I assume the other song lyrics are in the same spirit as this first one,” I said to Jerome.

  “Worse, if anything,” Jerome said. “Two women dancing with no clothes on get their boobs shot off by a dude with a rifle watching them. Another song does what you might call variations on the n-word.”

  I read my way through all nine pages of lyrics. Two of the songs did imaginatively sick things with urine. All of the songs, taken together, added up to the most repulsive catalogue of written work I might have ever read.

  “If these see the light of day,” I said, “Flame can kiss away his chances of succeeding to the Cary Grant mantle.”

  “Those damn songs would definitely smear my man’s image.”

  “It would be hard to look at him as a mature and profound performer.”

  “Not a chance. Everybody’d stop thinking of him that way, man.”

  “All because of a youthful indiscretion.”

  “You might say so.”

  “I’m assuming the words Flame wrote all those years ago don’t reflect the big-time songwriter and singer he grew into today. What I’m asking, Flame’s not popular because he’s a musical master of misogyny and homophobia?”

  Jerome put down his knife and fork, and gave me a long look.

  “I wouldn’t be working with the dude these last six years if I thought he was the kind of guy you see in those words,” Jerome said. “He’s a very fine and decent
and thoughtful young man, Flame is.”

  “The ugliness was some kind of youthful abberation?” I said. “It’s all gone now?”

  “You got my word on that, Crang.”

  I nodded, and both of us took a moment to reflect on where the two of us stood on the matter of Flame’s problem.

  “As I see the situation,” I said, breaking the silence, “my assignment for you and Roger comes in three parts. Get back the original sheets of lyrics from the Reverend Alton Douglas. Be as sure as I’m able that the Reverend isn’t hanging on to more copies of the lyrics. And avoid paying the eight million or a large part thereof.”

  “You save any of the eight million, man,” Jerome said, “Mr. Carnale no doubt gonna give you a nice little bonus. But that’s not at the top of the damn list. We want the original song sheets back. All of them, man.”

  “You’ll probably like to know how the Reverend got his hands on the originals in the first place,” I said. “How did the sheets of lyrics get to him from Flame’s mother’s house?

  “Definitely that’d be of interest.”

  “The mother doesn’t know how that happened?”

  “We’re keeping her in the dark about the blackmail, man. All she knows, from me asking her, is that the originals of the nine sheets don’t seem to be where they supposed to.”

  My stomach had settled, and the espresso brought a fresh jolt of energy.

  “Let’s see if you can give me more of a handle on the Reverend,” I said to Jerome. “He approached you Monday night. Where did this momentous meeting take place?”

  “Air Canada Centre, right here in your town, the place where Flame was doin’ a concert,” Jerome said. “A couple hours before the concert happened, I’m outside the Centre, just getting the feel of the crowd that’s showing up. So, there I am, tending to my duties when this dude comes up to me in a grey suit and blue shirt, nice tie. Dude’s about fifty-five, thereabouts, and he all business.”

  “Not wasting any motions.”

  “He hands me the sheets of paper. He tells me he wants eight million dollars two weeks from that day — Monday like I say. He says he be in touch with me before then, say where he wants the eight million sent. Gonna be some place offshore is what he says. Then he’s gone.”

  “Gone,” I said, “but not far. The religious institution he’s connected with? Heaven’s Philosophers? You and Mr. Carnale said it was on St. Clair West? That’s a few blocks north of where we’re sitting right now.”

  “I assume you’re gonna find him there, man.”

  “I’ll make it my first stop,” I said. “Maybe it’ll be my only stop if the Reverend is co-operative.”

  I swallowed the last of my double espresso, and Jerome signalled the waitress for the bill.

  “You don’t mind my saying,” I said, “the Reverend — this particular Reverend, I mean — makes a curious shakedown artist.”

  “Him being a reverend and all?”

  “There’s that, but he’s also going about the blackmail in a fashion that seems to me the last word in transparent.”

  “Transparent or opaque, man, it don’t matter,” Jerome said. “Just get back the sheets of the damn lyrics like you been hired to do.”

  “I’m your guy, Jerome.”

  Chapter Five

  When I got back to the office, Gloria was setting up a new coffee maker. It was a replacement for the older model that the moving guys broke during my shift in quarters from the fifth floor to the third.

  “Goodie,” I said. “A fresh source of caffeine.”

  “It’s a De’Longhi,” Gloria said. “Not absolutely top-of-the-line, but quite fine.”

  Gloria was my part-time researcher, bookkeeper, and all-round smoother of troubled waters. Part-time because I shared her services with two other criminal lawyers. Gloria was sixtyish, ten years older than me. She was tall, with silver hair that she grew long and free. She liked to wear baggy blouses and long, flowing skirts. I suspected a spectacular figure lurked under the billowy garments, but I’d never know unless we were invited to the same swim party.

  Gloria and I admired the sleekness of the De’Longhi for a minute or two. Then I went down the hall to the washroom and filled my office jug with water for the coffeemaker.

  When I came back, Gloria was examining a package of coffee I’d bought earlier.

  “‘Kicking Horse’?” she said, reading from the label. “‘Hoodoo Jo blend? Made in Canada’?”

  “Not made in Canada, if you look closer,” I said. “Blended in Canada.”

  “Were you feeling nationalistic when you bought this?”

  “There’s a lot to be said for throwing one’s business Canada’s way.”

  When I got the coffee machine started, I sat down to discuss lawyerly matters. Gloria was sitting in one of the client’s chairs, her iPad in front of her hooked up to a portable keyboard. The whole apparatus, iPad plus keyboard, probably weighed no more than a few ounces, which was a lot less than the thick file of hard copy documents in her hands. The digital age had its advantages.

  “This one,” Gloria said, raising the file in the air, “you put back in the cabinet and forgot to bill the client.”

  “It wasn’t tucked in there too long, I trust?”

  “Month maybe,” Gloria said. “It’s the murder case where the Crown dropped the charges a day into the trial.”

  “Yeah, my client was the nice girl from Sobey’s meat department,” I said. “It started out murder one. I got it reduced to manslaughter a couple months before trial. Then the Crown threw up their hands. One of my better results this year.”

  “All the more reason for being generous to yourself on the fees,” Gloria said.

  The coffee machine burbled to its conclusion. I got up and poured coffee into my two best mugs, both deep Matisse blue in colour and purchased at the Levin Ceramics Museum. Gloria and I took our coffee the same way — black, no sugar.

  “Hmm,” Gloria said, sipping and savouring. “It’s surprisingly fabulous, Crang.”

  “More specific, if you don’t mind?”

  “Hardy, an oaky taste, and a touch mysterious. That good enough for you?”

  “Label says it’s organic and fair trade.”

  “Okay, okay! It makes me feel on the side of the angels as well as caffeinated,” Gloria said impatiently. “Now can we get to the fee for the Sobey’s meat girl?”

  I sipped some more of the Hoodoo Jo, confirmed it was damn good, and said to Gloria, “Forget about the fee thing for a minute while I tell you about the juicy new file we got.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Juicy always thrills me.”

  I told Gloria all about Flame and the Reverend Alton Douglas’s machinations. She jotted notes in her iPad, and held back whatever comments she had until I finished.

  “You kind of skated over what this person Flame wrote in his songs that was so almighty horrible,” Gloria said as soon as I stopped talking.

  “Homophobically ugly, racially horrific, and so on, accept my word for it,” I said. “The point is, Flame’s people think the song lyrics are bad enough to take the Reverend Douglas’s intentions very seriously.”

  I got the pages with the lyrics out of my jacket pocket, neatly folded, and handed them to Gloria.

  “Read them if you want,” I said. “But if I were you, I’d give the whole thing a pass.”

  Gloria took the pages, not wasting so much as a glance at the words on them. “Why don’t I just open a file,” she said. “Put these pages in the file for future reference.”

  “Which may not be necessary,” I said.

  “So,” Gloria said after she’d filed the pages, “the alleged bad guy is a church minister?”

  “Seems that way.”

  “So what you’ll want from me is everything I can find out about Reverend Alton Douglas,�
�� Gloria said as she typed. “Background, financial situation, all that. And the building where his church is on St. Clair, if it really is a church. Who owns it, so on, so forth? And what in god’s name, if you’ll pardon the phrase, are Heaven’s Philosophers? I’ll see what gives with them.”

  Gloria stopped and looked at me.

  “That ought to do it,” I said.

  “I’ll get on things as soon as I leave here,” Gloria said. “But first, suppose you take a look at this butcher-girl file and tell me how much to bill her.”

  She handed me the file, and while I flipped through the notes and documents inside it, and wrote numbers on a separate sheet of paper, Gloria tapped on her iPad.

  After a few minutes, she said, “It appears your minister guy got kicked out of the Catholic Church.”

  “You mean it’s Father Alton I’m dealing with?” I said. “I assumed he was a plain old fundamentalist Christian fanatic.”

  “Maybe he is now, but a Catholic priest is how he started.”

  “What was it, doing terrible things with little boys got him in trouble?”

  “Just the opposite,” Gloria said. “His sexual contacts appear to have been with mature ladies of the parish.”

  “All of this, you got in fifteen minutes?”

  “Tricks of the Google trade.”

  “Nice start, kiddo.”

  “An old photograph of him is in here. He’s about late thirties at the time. Actually comes across as kind of cute.”

  Gloria turned her iPad around to give me a peek at the screen.

  “Got the collar on and his numbered St. Michael’s sweater over the religious blouse, whatever they call it,” I said. “Juggling a football in his hands. Athletic guy. Nice big smile. Probably knew how to sing the ‘Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ra’ lullaby.”

  Gloria switched off her iPad. She packed it and the keyboard in her red leather handbag.

  “Friday afternoon,” she said, “I’ll come back here and shed more light on the Reverend and his establishment, though I think we both smell fishy things already. In the meantime, how about the nice butcher girl?”