Keeper of the Flame Read online

“It’s my own call on the timing, Jerome. I’m going to be in New York from late tomorrow until Wednesday morning. It’s something I can’t avoid. Don’t want to avoid it either.”

  “This ain’t on Flame business?”

  “It’s not even on my business,” I said. “This is the woman in my life launching a book she wrote. The launch happens to be at Columbia University.”

  “Columbia? Do tell, man. The campus is only ten minutes from my place, walking time.”

  “A movie book, Jerome. Might be right up your alley. It’s a bio-graphy of an old-time comic actor named Edward Everett Horton.”

  “Man, Edward Everett was my kind of guy,” Jerome said, sounding as excited as I’d heard him. “He made movies with Cary Grant. Arsenic and Old Lace. I love those old movies, man. Edward Everett gets me laughing every time.”

  “You should come to the launch.”

  “It’s not one of those where you get in by invitation only?”

  “Consider yourself invited, Jerome. At the Miller Theater on the Columbia campus. Five o’clock, Tuesday afternoon.”

  “Your girlfriend wrote the book? Would I have maybe heard of her?”

  “Annie B. Cooke.”

  “Oh dawg, this is too much,” Jerome said. I thought he might swoon on the telephone. “Annie B. Cooke, she wrote the article about Jamie Foxx in Premiere. This was even before Jamie won his Oscar for Ray. Man, I loved that article.”

  “Back in the day when Premiere was still around.”

  “She’s retired from writing about movies? It’s a lot of years since I read her name.”

  “She’s still in the game. Mostly in Canada, but she blogs. You can find her online.”

  “Man, if I meet her at this book launch, I gotta tell her about Flame’s movie.”

  “She thinks Scarlett Johansson makes workable casting for the female lead,” I said.

  “I’m going Scarlett all the way.”

  “Scarlett’s perfect, but Annie and I were talking movies last night, especially your movie. Annie said Scarlett’s fee may too high for a production like yours.”

  “Annie really got into it about my movie, man?”

  “She likes the potential of the whole concept.”

  “That’s very nice, man,” Jerome said. “But you talk about money, me and Mr. Carnale been around the floor a few times about money lately.”

  “He doesn’t want to budget at the Scarlett Johansson level?”

  Jerome seemed to be taking his time about what he said next. “There’s a lotta things I can’t talk about, man.”

  “Concerning money?” I said.

  “Money seems to be at the root of it, yeah.”

  “You’re sounding cryptic, Jerome.”

  “That’s because I don’t know what’s happening, man.”

  “If money’s the issue with Carnale, the news about the Reverend caving in ought to put old Roger in a more amenable mood. This is eight million dollars saved in one fell swoop.”

  “Yeah, well, man, the swoop shoulda fallen faster,” Jerome said. “That’ll be Mr. Carnale’s point of view.”

  “Forty-eight hours from now, it’ll be a done deal,” I said.

  “You want me to tell Mr. Carnale about all of this right away?” Jerome said. “Or wait till you got the affidavit you talkin’ about signed?”

  “Cheer the man up,” I said. “First chance you get, spread the good word.”

  “But I don’t know whether cheering up gonna occur to Mr. Carnale, the way he’s carrying on this last while.”

  On that pessimistic note, Jerome rang off.

  I opened my MacBook and drafted the affidavit I wanted the Reverend to sign. I liked what I wrote, but at just two pages, it ran a little thin. I added some boilerplate paragraphs that beefed it up to five pages. The extra stuff was meaningless, but it gave the affidavit more heft. That was the practice of law in a nutshell, a business that offers the world more meaningless heft.

  I printed out two copies of the affidavit and went home to Annie and a martini.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I was back in the office just after nine the next morning. Annie’s and my plane to Newark didn’t take off from Billy Bishop Airport until mid-afternoon. We’d take a cab from Newark into Manhattan. In the meantime, before we left, I figured to shuffle a little paper at the office. I unlocked the door, picked up the empty water jug on my desk, and walked down the hall to the men’s room. I filled the jug with enough water for one cup of coffee, no more. When I came back, two guys were sitting in the clients’ chairs and a third guy, the largest of the trio, was leaning against the wall just inside the door.

  “Good morning, gentleman,” I said. “New clients are always encouraged.”

  I could put a name to one of the seated guys. He was none other than Squeaky Fallis. He had on the same lightweight black sports jacket I’d seen him wear at Heaven’s Philosophers, but a different noisy tie, this one featuring an assortment of lollipops in orange, pink, and yellow against a medium blue background. The other two guys I recognized from my photo sessions at Heaven’s Philosophers, but I couldn’t identify either by name. The guy sitting beside Squeaky had a placid expression and a hairline that had receded all the way to the centre of his skull. The guy doing wall duty was working hard on a ferocious mien. He might be one of the enforcers Jackie Gabriel warned me about. He had the extra-large size going for him and the guileful look of someone committed to a career in bullying.

  “Clients?” Squeaky said. “Do we look stupid enough to hire you, Crang?”

  The line drew chuckles from the other two guys.

  “Care for coffee, Mr. Fallis?” I said, looking at Squeaky, then at the other two. “Either of you gentlemen?”

  “No coffee, goddammit,” Squeaky said. He was apparently the trigger-tempered type.

  “I’ll just help myself,” I said. “But if you’ve got time to sit awhile, I’ll fetch the water for three more cups in case the aroma wins you over.”

  “Sit the fuck down,” Squeaky said. First I started the coffee machine, then I walked around the desk to my chair. My moves were unhurried and deliberate. No sense letting Squeaky think he was intimidating me.

  “You been annoying Reverend Al,” Squeaky said. “I want to know why.”

  “Did the Reverend say I was annoying him?” I said.

  “What I say is what counts, Crang,” Squeaky said. “And I say you been an annoying son of a bitch.”

  “I attended the Reverend’s service yesterday afternoon.” I said. “He’s a loquacious speaker, don’t you think?”

  “You got no business I know of around the goddamn building.”

  “Everyone can use a little spiritual reinforcement,” I said. “Isn’t that reason enough to visit the Reverend?”

  The coffee machine signalled that it had finished its business. I got up and poured myself the one cup it produced.

  “You were hanging around the place one morning last week,” Squeaky said.

  “I had a coffee in the lobby,” I said, sitting down again.

  “You were asking questions about the Reverend.”

  “Damn,” I said, “that barista is a real Chatty Cathy.”

  “Sunday afternoon, you went into the Reverend’s office after his bullshit service.”

  “Jimmy the travel agent spilled the beans about that one, am I right?”

  “I’m telling you, Crang,” Squeaky said. “Answer the questions or I’ll tell Ernie to pop you.”

  I turned to the guy holding up the wall.

  “How do, Ernie,” I said.

  Ernie didn’t answer. He was busy practising his malevolent stare.

  “What’d you want with the Reverend?” Squeaky said. “You’re running out of chances here.”

  I sipped from my cup of coffee.
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br />   “Client confidentiality applies to my conversation with Reverend Douglas,” I said.

  “Bullshit,” Squeaky said. “You’re not his lawyer.”

  “The Reverend is someone my client has dealings with,” I said. “I can’t tell you what Reverend Douglas and I talked about because my professional relationship with him is covered by the confidentiality I owe my client. If all of this is too deep for you, Squeaky, I’ll reduce my explanation to words of one syllable.”

  Squeaky slammed his fist on my desk. “Call me Squeaky one more time, and I’ll tell Ernie here to toss you out the window.”

  “Windows in this building are built not to open,” I said.

  “Then through the damn window.”

  “Whatever you say, Mr. Fallis,” I said. “It’s Mr. Fallis from now on.”

  “You got something going with the Reverend,” Squeaky said. “What the fuck is it?”

  “I’ve already covered that question.” I said. “Now let me ask you one: are you and the other ten guys at Heaven’s Philosophers engaged in a transaction with the Reverend that has a non-ecclesiastical slant?”

  Squeaky didn’t say anything for a few seconds. I assumed he was pondering whether to answer the question or call on Ernie’s services.

  “We hired the Reverend for one reason, you dumb fuck,” he finally said. “He runs our church. None of us give a damn how he runs it. Just so he makes things smooth, and keeps the place looking like a church.”

  “Nice of you to fill me in, Mr. Fallis,” I said. “Let’s go for another query on my list. You ever heard of a guy named Flame?”

  “What the fuck?” Squeaky gave my desk another crack with his fist.

  If I read things correctly, I’d gone too far.

  “Perhaps we’ve reached a finale here,” I said, “unless you gentlemen have changed your minds about coffee.”

  “Crang,” Squeaky said, “if I hear you been talking to the Reverend one more time, if I learn you been coming into the church again, I’m getting Ernie to put the boots to your ass.”

  Squeaky stood up. The other two followed Squeaky’s lead. The guy with the receding hairline pushed out of his chair. Ernie straightened himself off the wall.

  “Sure about the coffee, guys?” I said, a thoughtful host to the end.

  Squeaky gave a slight nod. It wasn’t to me. It was to Ernie.

  When I turned to face Ernie, he had grabbed the cord on my De’Longhi machine, and yanked it out of the wall. With one hand, he lifted the machine over his shoulder. The idiot was going to bust the De’Longhi.

  “I’ll make you a bet, Ernie,” I said.

  “Screw you, Crang,” Squeaky said.

  “Let me fix you a cup of coffee with that machine you’re holding, Ernie,” I said, “and you’ll love the taste so much you’d never dream of wrecking the thing.”

  “Give it a heave, Ernie,” Squeaky said.

  Ernie did as he was told. His target was the far wall of my office, but his aim was a little off, and the machine smashed into the floor just short of the wall. A broken handle flew off the main container, some glass broke, other metal parts came out of the crash in jagged pieces.

  For a moment, there was no sound in the room except the noise of Monday traffic drifting up from Spadina. Ernie and his fellow idiots seemed to be feeling the momentary shock of the crashing coffee maker. I was busy talking myself into not taking a swing at Ernie. The guy outweighed me by about seventy-five pounds. If I threw a punch at him, I’d end up in approximately the same shape as the coffee maker.

  Squeaky, Ernie, and the bald guy broke into laughs.

  “Next time, Crang,” Squeaky said, “it’s not gonna be a coffee machine that gets smashed. You understand what I’m saying?”

  All I could do was stare at the wreckage of my nice De’Longhi. The three guys left the office. They didn’t shut the door, and I could hear their footsteps echoing down the hall all the way to the elevator. The three idiots were still laughing.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I was on my knees and elbows on the office floor, picking up tiny pieces of glass with one hand and dropping them into a paper cup in my other hand. My back was to the open door. Somebody rapped on the doorframe.

  I turned my head, but not far enough to confirm who I thought was at the door.

  “If you knuckleheads are back for a return engagement …” I said. I wasn’t sure how to end the sentence.

  “I don’t guess I’m one of the knuckleheads you were expecting,” a woman’s voice said.

  I recognized the Rosedale honk in the voice. It belonged to Maury Samuels’s girlfriend.

  “Sal,” I said. “Sorry, I had a bad experience in here a few minutes ago.”

  I climbed to my feet, careful not to spill the broken glass out of the paper cup.

  “Somebody busted your coffeemaker?” Sal said. She looked clean and fresh, wearing a black blouse buttoned to the neck, jeans, and a tailored, white linen jacket. “Was it the knuckleheads who did the busting?”

  “Yeah, it was them,” I said. I didn’t feel like talking about it right then.

  “Maury isn’t with you?” I said to Sal.

  “I’m here for a reason I don’t want Maury to know about.”

  “A secret meeting?” I said. “I’m always partial to secret meetings.”

  I dumped the paper cup in my wastepaper basket, and Sal and I sat down at the desk.

  “I went by your house,” Sal said. “Annie told me you were over here.”

  “You spoke to Annie?”

  “We had a coffee in your gorgeous dining room,” Sal said. “She’s so nice, Annie.”

  “She’s a natural, all right.”

  “She said we should go on a double date, you guys, Maury and me.”

  “Annie said that?”

  “What is it anyway, a double date? Some old-timey social ritual?”

  “That’s as good a description as any I’ve heard,” I said. Then I moved the conversation along. “What is it Maury isn’t supposed to know?”

  “I realize you’re his good friend and everything, but this is something you got to promise me not to tell. Maury’d get pissed off.”

  “I’ll put it in the vault.”

  “The vault? What do you mean?”

  “It’s a term from Seinfeld for keeping a secret.”

  “It must be another generational thing, but honestly I don’t get Seinfeld.”

  “How do you feel about Laurel and Hardy?”

  “That’s different. Laurel and Hardy are classic. Something classic is easy to grasp. It’s timeless.”

  “Wait twenty years and you’ll feel the same way about Seinfeld.”

  Sal sighed. “Liking Seinfeld is probably one more old-timey social thing,” she said.

  “Tell me,” I said, “what might piss Maury off?”

  “Porn films.”

  I paused for a minute. “Are you implying you have something to do with them? Appeared in porn maybe?”

  “Almost.”

  “Almost? That’s like a woman saying she’s a little pregnant.”

  Sal made a motion with her hand that said we should wipe the slate clean on the subject, and start all over.

  “When you were showing Maury the names and pictures of the guys in that phony church on St. Clair the other night,” Sal said, “I recognized one of the names. Frederick Chamblis.”

  “But you didn’t see him in the photographs I took?”

  “I thought he must be the one guy you said didn’t get on camera. People call him Freddie the Champ.”

  “And you know him through your connection to the porn movie business?”

  Sal shrugged. “Well, I don’t know how much of a connection you’d call it.”

  “Take your time, Sal,” I said. “Go ba
ck to wherever this begins.”

  “It begins with this very attractive girl I know who lives in my apartment building,” Sal said. “Franny’s her name, and her ambition since she was a little kid is to be an actress.”

  “Is she getting anywhere with that?”

  “Oh, you know, bit parts in TV movies. She had a speaking role in a play at the Fringe Festival last year.”

  “Struggling. But she’s very attractive?”

  “Which is what got her in the porn game.”

  “Ah, a plot takes shape.”

  Sal nodded. “Franny needs the money, and porn, the kind she’s involved in, it pays good bucks.”

  “How good, roughly?”

  “Five or six thousand per movie, and it generally takes three days to shoot one of the films.”

  “Makes for an impressive pay package.”

  “Franny approached me around this time last year about doing porn with her, even though she knows I’m the last girl in the world who needs the money. The thing is, I got this inheritance from my grandpa. It paid for my apartment. My place, this is kind of interesting, is right around the corner from here, St. George and Lowther. The inheritance paid for that, paid for my Volvo, and it covers tuition at school, and there’s still lots left over.”

  “What’s in you that makes Franny think you’d get into porn if the money’s irrelevant?”

  “I’m a free spirit where relations with the opposite sex are concerned.”

  “To wit,” I said, “Maury.”

  “To wit, him, totally.”

  “In no time at all, if I follow where your story’s going, you were naked in front of a movie camera.”

  “Three cameras,” Sal said. “I’ll explain that in a minute. First, I should tell you I made it clear to Franny I had conditions.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t mind getting nude with guys who are nude, and I don’t mind fooling around with them in front of a camera. But the conditions I had, one for example, I wouldn’t do blow jobs.”

  I went silent, thinking to myself, as far as I knew, blow jobs were a staple of porn videos.

  Sal broke into my silence. “You do know what a blow job is, Crang?”