Keeper of the Flame Page 24

  “Nice carpeting on the stairs and the halls upstairs,” Maury said in a lowered tone.

  “You’ve really studied the entire layout, Maury?”

  “Keep your voice down.”

  I nodded.

  “We’re going to the office off the hall to the left, correct?”

  I nodded again.

  “We’re looking for a cane?”

  I nodded. Much more of that, and I’d turn into a human marionette.

  “You bring the equipment I told you to?”

  “White latex gloves and a plastic bag,” I whispered. It was a relief to talk again.

  His quiz completed, Maury opened the door, and led the way up the deeply carpeted stairs to the even more luxurious carpeting of the second-floor hall. We proceeded through Carnale’s sitting room into his office. Maury left the office door open a crack, and switched on a desk lamp. He made a careful check of the room.

  All appeared to be in order. Maury took up a position by the door, motioning me toward the walking sticks stacked upright on the wall opposite the partners desk. That was the signal to pull on my latex gloves and begin the search for a stick that included metal as a significant part of its makeup. The search stretched over the next three or four minutes. I was conscious of the noise factor. If I wasn’t careful, a stick could tip over and generate a racket of tumbling canes. I avoided that, but I still couldn’t see anything except wooden sticks. Dark wood, light-brown wood, white wood, all kinds of colours and shades, but all of them entirely in wood. No metal in sight.

  “I heard a door open down the hall,” Maury said. His voice was calm. “Gotta be Lex.”

  “Oh, terrific.” My voice wasn’t calm.

  “You duck out of sight for a couple minutes, Crang,” Maury said, “I’ll get the asshole back to his suite or some place else away from the office. Then you finish your search.”

  Maury started out of the office door. He stopped and turned back to me. “Gimme your cellphone. I want to see the pictures you took of Lex’s swollen balls.”

  I got out my cell. “I don’t know if they’re swollen. Definitely red.”

  Maury cut me off. “Just give me the fucking pictures.”

  “Sal told you about me shooting the pictures of Lex?”

  “Damn right she did.”

  I scrolled down the photos until I came to the Lex pictures. Maury took the phone from my hand, and walked out of the office door on his way to the corridor. I went around the partners desk and sat on the floor in one of the desk’s leg spaces. The sight line was straight through to the wall on the other side of the office. I was staring at the section of the wall where Roger Carnale’s collection of briefcases was on display.

  Loud voices reached into the office from the corridor, Lex’s voice and Maury’s.

  “How the fuck did you get in here?” Lex shouted. “Who are you anyway?”

  “You practically invited me into the place, Lex.” Maury’s voice was controlled and matter of fact. “If you don’t want people to come inside the house, you might think about locking the front door.”

  That brought silence from Lex’s side of the conversation.

  “Another thing, Lex,” Maury said. “You got no need of that gun you’re holding in your hand there.”

  A gun?

  “I got the gun to protect myself till I phone the cops,” Lex said. “They’re gonna wonder about somebody breaking into the house in the middle of the night.”

  “Lex, my friend …”

  Lex interrupted Maury. “I’m not your fuckin’ friend. And where in hell do you know my name from? I’ve never seen you in my life.”

  “That’s funny, Lex,” Maury said. “Because I know you intimately.”

  Another period of silence came from Lex’s side of the conversation.

  “How did you get these goddamn pictures?” Lex said.

  Now I understood the latest silence. Maury was giving Lex a look at the red testicles I photographed.

  “From Sal,” Maury said. “I got them from Sal. You know her. Sal’s the woman you sexually assaulted, Lex old pal. She’s the woman who happens to be my girlfriend.”

  “Sal with the big tits?”

  “You want to be a crude son of a bitch, that’s one way of identifying her.”

  “She’s way too young for an old guy like you.”

  “Ah, Lex,” Maury said. “There’s a lot you need to learn about women. So why don’t you put the gun in your dressing-gown pocket, and we’ll go downstairs to the nice white room where you make the porn videos, and we’ll have a talk that’s gonna help you a whole lot.”

  “The production people moved the movie stuff out, the white furniture, all that,” Lex said. His voice sounded subdued.

  “It’s a nice room anyway,” Maury said. “Let’s continue our little chat down there.”

  Lex said something else, but the voices were fading. Maury and Lex must have been on the stairs on the way to the first floor. That let me get back to the search.

  From where I was sitting on the floor under the desk, something had caught my eye. It was one of the briefcases stacked against the opposite wall. I stood up and walked around the desk to the row of briefcases. The one I concentrated on was slimmer than the others. Its leather was black. It was the briefcase Roger was carrying when he and Jerome first called at my office for the meeting that introduced me to Flame’s blackmail problem. In most ways, the briefcase wasn’t much different from the others in Roger’s collection, except that it had rims around the edges. The rims gleamed in the light of the table lamp in Carnale’s office. These rims were made of metal.

  If I was surmising correctly, the instrument I was looking for, the thing that combined leather and metal in its makeup, wasn’t a walking stick. It was a briefcase. It was the briefcase I was looking at on the shelf in the Carnale office. This slim black leather briefcase with the metal rims made a leading contender, maybe the only contender, as the weapon that killed the Reverend.

  Wearing the white latex gloves, I slid the black briefcase off the shelf. I paid special attention not to jostle the rest of the cases. Careful in all my moves, I carried the black case over to the partners desk. In the desk’s centre drawer, I found a magnifying glass. Studying the briefcase through the glass, I was able to see that the rim at one end of the case was speckled in tiny drops of something brown. Could the drops be dried bloodstains? I had no idea, but I knew a scientist who could come up with the answer.

  I slid the black briefcase into the plastic bag Maury told me to bring. Carrying the bag, still wearing the gloves, I hustled silently down the stairs to the first floor. Judging from the tenor of the voices coming through the living-room’s open door, Maury and Lex were having a brisk debate over a subject I couldn’t make out. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was over women in general and Sal in particular.

  I crossed the entrance hall, opened the front door, and made my getaway from the house. So far I’d committed no goofs. I hadn’t dropped the briefcase, hadn’t slipped on the tiles of the entrance hall’s floor, hadn’t let a door slam behind me.

  I climbed into the Mercedes. It was 12:40. Only twenty-five minutes had passed since Maury and I sneaked into the mansion. This seemed to me a miracle of efficiency.

  Ten minutes later, Maury got into the front passenger seat. He handed me my cellphone.

  “This guy Lex isn’t taking me seriously as Sal’s boyfriend,” he said.

  “You sound insulted,” I said. I started the car, made a U-turn and headed up to Kingston Road.

  “He had the fucking nerve to tell me he was gonna take another run at Sal,” Maury said.

  “That’s definitely insulting,” I said.

  “‘Totally’ is the word you’re supposed to use,” Maury said. “Not ‘definitely.’ You should’ve said ‘totally’ insulting. Wh
ich it totally was.”

  “Young people’s language.”

  “Of course young people’s language,” Maury said. He sounded irate. “What other kind of people do you think I’ve been keeping company with lately?”

  “I totally get it.”

  I took Kingston Road until I could merge into Queen. Traffic was pactically non-existent, and I was making such good time I knew I’d get the briefcase to Archie Brewster’s lab ahead of schedule.

  “You know what I’m gonna do before this thing is over?” Maury said.

  “Kick Lex in the testicles.”

  Maury turned to look at me. “How’d you guess that?”

  “Something in your attitude told me.”

  “The job Franny started on the guy’s balls, I’m gonna finish off,” Maury said with conviction. “I do that, you can bet Lex’ll be inoperative in the sex department for the next couple years.”

  “Totally awesome,” I said.

  I pulled up at Archie’s place at ten after one. Archie answered after just one knock on the front door.

  “A briefcase?” he said, taking a look into the plastic bag.

  Archie didn’t invite me in. Not that I wanted to spend time in chit-chat. Maury was waiting in the car, and I was keen to get home.

  “Very ingenious,” Archie said, still checking out the briefcase. “And not hard for us to work with. I’ll phone you later this morning.”

  “You’re going to start the matching job right now?”

  “It’s the least you should expect for all that Ace of Spades you gave me,” Archie said. “Now, Crang, you’ll excuse me.”

  Leaving Archie’s place, I drove Maury to Sal’s apartment. Then I went home, where I faced a choice between a martini and sleep. It turned out to be no contest at all. I lay down on the bed for a short, pre-martini rest, and fell into a sleep that didn’t end until the morning sun shone through the bedroom windows.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  The first things I noticed, walking off University Avenue and into the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre, were the rows of empty wheelchairs lined up next to the main door. Cardiologists apparently didn’t trust patients with weak tickers to get around the building on their own two feet. The second thing I noticed was the atrium on the ground floor, which soared three or four storeys high. It brought a hushed atmosphere among all us visitors and patients down at ground level.

  It was just before 10 a.m., a time that put me a couple of minutes ahead of the schedule set by Jackie Gabriel, but Jackie and Georgie were already sitting at a table in the only commercial outlet in the atrium. The outlet was a Starbucks.

  “You want a tea, Crang?” Jackie asked me. “Iced chai tea latte. I never had it before, but it ain’t bad.”

  Before I could say I’d rather eat ground glass than consume a Starbucks product, Jackie had dispatched Georgie to the counter for my treat.

  “You’re here for a checkup, Jackie?’I said.

  “Yeah, but don’t ask me what’s getting checked up. I lost track a year ago and never caught up.”

  Georgie returned with my iced chai tea latte, the same drink the other two had in front of them.

  I sipped mine.

  Jesus, the thing was so sweet I thought my teeth might fall out.

  “Hell of a smooth taste, don’t you think so, Crang?” Jackie said.

  “Got something going for it, Jackie,” I said. “I just can’t put my finger on what.”

  My answer seemed to satisfy Jackie. Georgie just grinned. I noticed he was taking his time getting through his own latte.

  “You called the meeting, Crang,” Jackie said. “What’s it all about?”

  “Willie Sizemore,” I said. “The cricket bat he got whacked with years ago? It’s acting up again.”

  “You know what?” Georgie said. “I heard Willie talking about the cricket bat the other day. But there was something different about the story. Willie said the school he was at was called Lakefield, wherever the hell that is, and it was a guy from English royalty that whacked him.”

  “Lakefield’s up near Peterborough,” I said. “The only royalty at Lakefield I ever heard of was Prince Andrew. But he’s about twenty years younger than Willie.”

  “It was another royalty than him,” Georgie said. “Willie said this guy was a cousin of the Duke of Kent, something like that. Anyway, Willie wound up with the same dent in his head he’s always had no matter who did it.”

  “Forget the goddamn cricket bat,” Jackie said to me. “Answer me this, Crang, there’s some guy you know, Willie took him for a few bucks? Is this what your problem is?”

  “Eight million.”

  Georgie made a whistling noise.

  “Guy stupid enough to let Willie talk him out of that much might deserve whatever happened,” Jackie said.

  “I can’t argue with that, Jackie,” I said. “But the trouble I’m having, the money he lost belongs to somebody else.”

  “Who’re we talking about here, Crang?” Jackie said. “You’re friends with the guy who lost the eight million to Willie or with the guy who the eight million really belongs to?”

  “Guy number one goes by the name of Roger Carnale,” I said. “He’s the sucker Willie Sizemore scammed, but I’m not friends with him.”

  “I know that guy,” Georgie said, speaking brightly. “Carnale.”

  “Somebody told me you know him,” I said. “Where do you know Carnale from?”

  “He’s played cards in some of the games I set up,” Georgie said. “I had a nice thing going on Friday nights up in Woodbridge. This guy Roger was a regular there for practically all of last year.”

  “Am I wrong in guessing he was one of your bigger losers?”

  “A loser, yeah,” Georgie said. “His type of guy I see a lot of in card games.”

  “What’s the type?”

  “The one where the player is very successful in whatever his regular job is. He thinks the success is gonna carry over to blackjack, poker, whatever. This type of guy figures it’s automatic he’ll win because he knows how to win at business. But he’s wrong about that. With cards, you need a whole different touch. Different psychology, you know what I mean?”

  “I’ll take your word for it, Georgie,” I said. “I got an aversion to gambling myself.”

  Georgie leaned back in his chair. “Oh shit, you know what?” he said. He looked stricken, as if a deeply unpleasant thought had hit him. “It just dawned on me.”

  “What’s the problem, kid?” Jackie said to his son.

  “I’m the one who introduced this Roger guy to Willie Sizemore.”

  “This was during your card games?” I said.

  “Not during,” Georgie said. “Nobody talks serious when a game’s actually on. It was when we took a break from playing. Those Friday nights, they were social evenings too. We left the cards for a half hour, drinks were on the house, everybody mingled a little. Willie was there. Roger had already asked me if I knew anybody in the investment business. So, this one night, I introduced Roger to Willie.”

  “A case of feeding the lamb to the wolf,” Jackie said. “On a platter.”

  Georgie turned to me. “I wouldn’t have done it if I knew you were involved with Roger.”

  “Wait a minute, Georgie,” Jackie said. “Let’s hear the rest of the story. Maybe you don’t have to apologize.”

  “Roger Carnale is in the artist management business,” I said. “That’s ‘artist’ singular because, as far as I know, he just has one client.” I paused for dramatic effect. “Either of you gentlemen ever heard of Flame?”

  “The hip hop guy?” Georgie said.

  “Good for you, Georgie,” I said.

  “Hip hop for crissakes,” Jackie said. “Doesn’t anybody listen to Vic Damone no more?”

  “Remember that we’re talkin
g about today’s music, Jackie,” I said. “Today, Flame makes more money in a month than Vic Damone made in any year of his whole career.”

  “I only heard of Flame,” Georgie said. “I never actually saw him sing or whatever.”

  “This guy Roger manages the other guy, Flame?” Jackie said. “That involved him looking after the big money you say Flame earned? I’ve got this right?”

  I nodded.

  “And eight million of Flame’s dough that Roger was looking after got conned out of him in one of Willie’s bogus stock deals?” Georgie said.

  “I think we all understand the circumstances we’re dealing with here,” I said. “Roger lost Flame’s money to Willie.”

  Everybody went silent for the next few moments, each of us thinking over the way future responsibilities might unfold.

  Jackie looked at me. “You want me to get the eight million back from Willie, am I right?”

  “That’s the idea,”I said.

  “Same as I did two other times.”

  “Restore it to Flame, its rightful owner, the man who earned it with his talent and hard work.”

  Jackie switched his attention to Georgie. “What’s your feeling, kid?”

  “Crang’s the guy who got me Fox, who’s a hell of a lawyer for getting right on top of things,” Georgie said. “I owe Crang for that. Plus, if I hadn’t introduced Roger to Willie, this kid Flame would still have the eight million.”

  “I’m thinking the same thing,” Jackie said.

  I said to Jackie, mustering my most sincere tone, “Flame and I would appreciate it if you scared Willie into returning the money.”

  “All it takes is a phone call, Pop,” Georgie said to his father.

  Jackie nodded, but didn’t immediately agree to get on Willie’s case.

  “I’ve been wanting to ask you since I heard about your past experiences with Willie,” I said to Jackie, “what’s the magic to retrieving the money Willie suckered out of people?”

  “This is beauty,” Georgie said to me, answering for his father.“You ever heard of Paulie Profundo?”

  “Not a chance I’d forget a name like that if I’d ever heard it.”