Straight No Chaser Read online

  “Where’s the lunch?”

  “It’s a press conference too.”

  “Matter of priorities.”

  “Both are steps from here.”

  Annie dropped her notebook into a cloth shoulder bag knitted in greens and blues. The notebook disappeared. Prince Edward Island would have disappeared into the shoulder bag.

  I said, “Whole world’s steps from here. You have that impression?”

  Don and Karen had attained the moment of decision.

  “No changing at the last moment,” Karen said to Don.“Once I mark it, this is final. The David Lynch, okay?”

  Annie looked at the two kids.

  “Are you talking about Sunday morning?” she asked.“David Lynch’s new movie’s on when the Truffaut series is running?”

  “It’s Stolen Kisses on then,” Karen said, a little tremor in her voice. She seemed awed to be addressed by the woman who had sat with Roger Ebert. Guess she’d changed her mind about the boring press.

  “And you guys are choosing the Lynch?” Annie said.

  “Well, yes,” Karen answered. “But, like, there’s arguments on both sides.”

  “Stick to Lynch,” Annie said. “Good choice.”

  I paid the bill and kept my mouth shut.

  6

  ANNIE SAID, “Cameron Charles goes first cabin.”

  The long tables in front of us had starched white cloths that were covered in goodies fit for kings and press. Platters of fat oysters in crushed ice. Little squares of quiche in chafing dishes, smoked salmon. Three or four salads, one with hefty chunks of avocado. Two guys in tall white chef ’s hats and long white chef ’s aprons were standing behind the tables. One was slicing a roast of beef cooked rare, and the other was slicing a roast turkey cooked tender. The champagne wasn’t domestic and it wasn’t the ersatz Spanish bubbly. It was Veuve Clicquot.

  Forty or fifty invitees were munching and slurping and milling around the room. It was the largest of the conference rooms that open off the west corridor in the Park Plaza Hotel. There was thick green carpeting on the floor, and down at the far end of the room, a lectern and a microphone waited for someone’s use, probably Cam Charles’s. Cam was nowhere in sight, but a sextet of tall and immensely chic young women seemed to be handling the role of hostesses more than capably. They circulated, made introductions, and bestowed dazzling smiles at random.

  “The ladies have PR firm stamped all over their silk Saint-Laurents,” Annie said.

  “Ladies?” I said. “What ladies? Don’t notice any ladies.”

  “Tell your eyeballs to stop spinning.”

  I dipped one of my shrimp into a tomato-and-horseradish sauce of surpassing richness.

  “Job like yours,” I said, “a person could blow their cholesterol level off the scale.”

  “Don’t kid yourself, sweetie,” Annie said. “This event is the exception.”

  “You telling me life isn’t a regular round of wining, dining, and other bribery for you swells on the movie beat?”

  “Free coffee at advance screenings,” Annie said. “In styrofoam cups.”

  I was making inroads on a little silver dish of macadamia nuts when someone slapped me cheerily on the shoulder. I turned and found Trevor Dalgleish on my flank. The slap, for all its cheeriness, gave my equilibrium a shake. Trevor packed some heft.

  “Well, well, Crang,” he said, “the movies bring all sorts together.”

  “At this shindig, Trev, I’m an appendage,” I said. “Annie here’s the main act.”

  I made the introductions, and Trevor lathered the charm on Annie.

  “I’m a fan,” he said to her. “Wouldn’t miss you on that morning show. Wednesdays, isn’t it, and Fridays?”

  Annie answered in words that were suitably grateful and humble, and Trevor followed up with more commentary that proved he really did listen to Annie’s reviews.

  Trevor Dalgleish was handsome in a beefy, Teddy Kennedy style. He looked older than his age, which was early thirties, a little grey around the temples, a bracket of deepening lines in the cheeks. But he exuded vigour. The vigour was of an upper-crust sort that usually comes from riding horses and hitting squash balls. Trevor had a faint sound of hoity-toity in his voice.

  “Trev’s another one of us,” I said to Annie when Trevor’s gushing wound down. “Criminal lawyer.”

  “An associate of our host’s,” Trevor elaborated.

  “Of Cameron Charles’s?” Annie said, perking up, maybe scenting some inside dope for her coverage of the Alternate Festival. “Really? And are you involved in the movie end too?”

  Trevor assumed a modified aw-shucks look.

  “Cam’s assigned me to book a handful of the festival’s films,” he said. “Fascinating to see the movie business from a different perspective.” Trevor didn’t get any further with his perspective. One of the tall, chic visions interrupted him. She was standing at the fringe of the crowd, waving one arm in the air, and she was asking us in her loudest voice if we’d care to bring our champagne glasses and coffee cups to the other end of the room.

  “Showtime,” Annie said.

  Three guys who looked more rugged and sweaty than the rest of us guests peeled off and strapped themselves into television cameras that had been resting on the floor behind the serving tables. A dozen others, radio types, got out pocket-sized tape recorders. Annie had a notebook and pen in her hands, and so did everyone else around me. I was the only stiff in the room who wasn’t working.

  Cam Charles looked sleek. He made his entrance from a door in the wall on the right side of the room and walked to the lectern. Cam had olive skin and black hair that was combed back flat from his forehead. His face and body showed a bit of excess weight, but if he was plump, it was a firm variety of plump. Dark and sleek and plump. Cam looked like he should be mated to an otter. He had on a light grey double-breasted suit, a darker grey shirt with a white collar and white french cuffs, and a blue tie with a delicate pattern. Cam tapped his finger on the microphone and got back a satisfying bump on the sound system.

  “Welcome to the first annual Alternate Film Festival,” he said into the mike. “I’m Cameron Charles.”

  The guys with the TV cameras switched on their lights, and the radio people held their tape recorders in the air.

  “I’m only going to take a few minutes of your valuable time,” Cam said.“The young ladies will have printed material for you as you leave, schedules and so on. What I have for you in my short time is an announcement of a purpose.”

  Cam paused. It was for one of his dramatic effects. I’d seen him do it a hundred times in court. I hated it all one hundred times.

  “And an announcement of a very important surprise,” Cam said.

  The sophisticated press got scribbling. Cam the silver-tongued devil had done it again.

  “As many of you will know,” Cam said, “I chose to leave the other film festival in town”—that drew a small snicker, Cam’s emphasis on “other”—“and my reason had to do with purpose. The Festival of Festivals has no purpose beyond simple entertainment. Mindless entertainment in too many instances of the films they choose to offer the public. At the Alternate Festival, my associates and I do have a purpose, and it is this: simply put, we will show films that, through theme or story line or character, through attitude, through the intent of the filmmakers themselves, make a statement about the reality of power and politics in the world today.”

  More people were filtering quietly through the door on the right side of the room. There were twelve or fourteen men and women, mostly men, and they gathered congenially a few steps back of Cam. They must have been the associates he was talking about in his speech. The man immediately behind Cam made an odd associate. He was Harp Manley, veteran bebop trumpet player and recent movie actor.

  “We have secured a film from South America that I assure you is stunning,” Cam was saying into the mike. “It was made inside Chile, unknown to the Pinochet regime, and smuggled out
of the country and into our hands. And I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, it is a devastating delineation of oppression under a military government.”

  One more man joined the clump of associates ranged back of Cam. I recognized him too. It was Beige Jacket. Different jacket, something in lightweight plaid this time, but it was the same moustache, same thinning hair, same Perry Mason build.

  “That guy over there,” I said to Annie in a low voice. “In the plaid jacket. He mean anything to you?”

  “From the neck down, he could stand in for Raymond Burr.”

  “It’s said if people spend long enough in one another’s company, they begin to think alike.”

  “I’ve heard that.”

  “With us,” I said, “I think the process is in an advanced stage.”

  “I still don’t know who the man in the plaid jacket is.”

  “Excuse me,” I said. “I have business to attend to.”

  Annie and I were standing about dead centre of the crowd of reporters in front of Cam. I edged to the back of the pack, circled one of the TV cameramen who was shooting from an outer angle, and approached the man in the plaid jacket on his right side.

  “Hi, there,” I said. “I believe we share a mutual affection for jazz.”

  The man kept his face a blank, but his eyes shifted over me and opened fractionally wider. He remembered.

  “Get lost, Jack,” he said. He had a rumble for a voice.

  I said, “More specifically, a mutual affection for one jazz musician. Who could forget Dave Goddard?”

  “You deaf or what?” the man said. His hair and moustache were dark-brown, and his face had a Slavic cast. “Take a hike.”

  A pair of festival associates made shushing noises at us, and I could hear Cam Charles raise his voice at the microphone to keep the crowd’s attention from wandering to the exchange between me and the man in the plaid jacket.

  I said to him, “The three of us got together last night, you, me, Dave, in the alley behind the Cameron.”

  “One more time, Mac,” the man said. “Hit the road.”

  “Is that who I think it is? Crang?” Cam Charles said, turning in my direction. He had his left hand covering the microphone, but his voice leaked over the sound system. “This is a press conference, Crang, and whatever you are, God knows you aren’t press.”

  I said to the man in the plaid jacket, “Any second now, you’re going to run out of similes for go away, and we can start talking.”

  The man planted his hands on my chest and shoved. I sat down hard on the thick green carpeting and heard the crowd of reporters go ohhhhh and ahhhhh.

  “Get him out of here,” Cam said from the lectern.

  Cam meant me. The man in the plaid jacket was already on his way through the door. I pushed off the floor.

  Annie had her hand on my arm.

  “Anything hurt?” she asked.

  Trevor Dalgleish was right behind her, wearing a stern look.

  “God’s sake, Crang,” he said, not as chummy as he’d been earlier. “That man was a guest here.”

  “I assure you, ladies and gentlemen,” Cam was announcing into the microphone, “this little scene was not part of our presentation.”

  “Do me a favour, honeybunch,” I said to Annie. “Find out from Cam or someone, maybe Trev here, who the bully in plaid is.”

  “Never mind him, Crang,” Trevor snapped at me. “Just do what Cam asked. Get out of here and stop interrupting the press conference.” “Now for the very important surprise I mentioned earlier,” Cam said to the press. “I’d like to ask Mr. Harp Manley to step forward.”

  “Crang,” Trevor hissed at me.

  “What’re you going to do?” Annie asked me.

  “Follow the bully,” I said.

  7

  THE BULLY didn’t look behind all the way to the Silverdore Hotel. His wide plaid shoulders made him a stickout in the pedestrian parade along Bloor Street. Bloor is prime for people-watching. Fresh-faced kids from the university a block to the south. Splendidly shaped, coiffed, and groomed young matrons conducting raids on Creed’s and Holt Renfrew. I only had eyes for my bully. How come he didn’t examine his rear? Didn’t he suppose I’d chase after him? Or didn’t he care? That struck me as humiliating, the not-caring possibility.

  The bully marched resolutely along the south side of Bloor, crossed at Yonge, went three blocks south to Charles, turned east, then into the Silverdore. As Toronto hotels go, the Silverdore is middle-class tourist trade. It has a utilitarian look, fifteen storeys of pale-brown brick straight up and five flags flying from the marquee over the entrance. The Stars and Stripes occupies the middle pole.

  I hung back of the Silverdore’s glass doors and watched my quarry. He didn’t head for the front desk. He was pulling a key from his jacket pocket as he stepped toward the elevators. Must be a Silverdore guest. Crang, the master of deduction.

  I walked to the other side of Charles and leaned my hip against a phone booth.

  Now what?

  I knew the guy had a room at the Silverdore. I knew, or suspected on reasonable grounds, that he’d knocked me out in the Cameron alley and had probably made Dave Goddard disappear. I knew he was connected with Cam Charles’s Alternate Film Festival. And I knew he had a wardrobe of two or more summer jackets.

  The question facing the house, how did I organize this dazzling array of facts?

  I went up to the subway station on Bloor, rode a train and a Queen streetcar to my office, and got on the phone.

  Abner Chase was at his club.

  “I been telling you at least ten years, Crang,” he said after I identified myself.“There’s no sense me stocking the Polish vodka. You’re the only customer asks for it.”

  Abner Chase always went to the point, whatever point was on his mind.

  “This time I’m trying to do you a favour, Abner,” I said.“I think we might have a problem with Dave Goddard.”

  “There’s a problem with the guy, I won’t know it till nine tonight.”

  “That’s the thing. Dave may be among the missing.”

  “Missing?” Abner said into the phone. “He don’t show bang on time the first set, Harper Manley’ll have his balls in a vice. Or I might do his balls myself.”

  “Dave hasn’t called you today?”

  “No reason to.”

  “Harp hasn’t heard either?”

  “You jokin’ me? The guy’s all over the place—TV interviews, personal appearances, record stores. Dave’d never get ahold of Harper. He’s a goddamn genuine celebrity. That’s why I’m doing this fantastic business at the club, on account of Harper’s getting known from the movies. You gotta’ve heard about that.”

  “Hard to miss it, Abner,” I said. “Why have I always thought Harp is a nickname? Like Bird was for Charlie Parker.”

  “Wrong. It’s short for Harper.”

  “Probably you and his mother are the only people who call him Harper.”

  “His mother, nice old lady, she’s dead.”

  I was sitting in the swivel chair behind my desk. I swivelled sideways to look down into the wide sidewalk on Queen Street. A man in black pants held up by loose red suspenders was banging on a conga drum. A blonde woman who had the moves of someone on speed was twirling two large fans in time to the conga beat. People stopped to catch the show and drop coins into an upside-down grey fedora beside the drum.

  I said to Abner Chase, “About Dave, anybody else you can think of he might be in regular touch with?”

  “Ralph Goddard. You met Dave’s brother? He’s been getting Dave’s act together the last couple years.”

  “He hasn’t done much to update Dave’s style in clothes.”

  “The business side I’m telling you about. Dave’s a helluva musician, I don’t need to remind anyone knows these things like you. He’s just never acted like an Einstein with the dollars and cents.”

  “I’ll try Ralph.”

  “Out in the sticks somewhere,” Abner
said. “You better be wrong about Dave. He’s a reliable guy, freaky but reliable.”

  “Which part of the sticks?”

  “Don Mills, I think. Look it up in the fuckin’ phone book. Ralph’s the kind of guy, you first talk to him, you think he’s got mud on his shoes or something. But I dealt with him a bit now, and he’s a pretty astute guy.”

  Abner hung up, and I found Ralph Goddard’s number in the phone book. I dialled. Ralph answered. He didn’t sound astute on the phone. He sounded like a pussycat. Or a cocker spaniel. He wanted me to trot right over to his place.

  “Crang, well, sir, I always meant to meet up with you,” he said on the phone.“Ever since you got Dave out of the scrape way back there.”

  Dave had almost lost his musicians’ union card over a fracas in a club. It seemed the manager refused to turn off the TV set while Dave’squartet was playing. Dave put a gin bottle through the screen in the middle of The Beverly Hillbillies. That was in Dave’s drinking and drugging period. I argued his suspension before a union disciplinary hearing and, by and large, won. Dave’s only punishment was the purchase of a thirty-inch Panasonic for the club.

  I said to Ralph Goddard, “I hear you’re managing your brother’s career, Mr. Goddard.”

  “Mr. Goddard was my dad. Call me Ralph.”

  “Swell, Ralph.”

  “Smartest thing I ever did for Dave. I got him to sign me over power of attorney, and ever since I been running the whole shooting match from right here in my den. Negotiate the fees, deal with the bookers. Mean buggers, pardon the language, those bookers. I should’ve done this for Dave a long time ago. But you know how it is.”

  I said I did.

  Ralph said, “I had to make my own pile. But now I’m retired, kids out in the world, and I’m doing for the baby brother. Get him something in the bank.”

  “Reason for my call,” I said, “you happen to have heard from Dave this afternoon?”

  “Not since Monday,” Ralph answered. “The first of every week I give him an allowance. Mail it if he’s out of town. This Monday, I took him a money order to Abner Chase’s club. Didn’t stay long. I’m more of a country-and-western man myself.”