Straight No Chaser Read online

  I asked Annie, “How’s it shaping up for Cam’s festival?”

  “Nicely,” Annie said. “He’s bringing in at least a dozen movies you wouldn’t see booked into the commercial theatres in a million years. A Quarter to Three isn’t in that category. Harp Manley’s film. It’ll be in release all over the place later this fall. But, you have to hand it to Charles, it’s a sweet little coup he’s pulled, snagging the movie for its world premiere. All the press on Manley and the movie won’t hurt Charles’s festival one bit.”

  “At a cost in credibility,” I said.

  “Because A Quarter to Three doesn’t fit the festival theme?”

  “Political content, minorities, oppressed people, and all.”

  Annie said, “Well, Charles made a lot of noise at the press conference about Manley representing a breakthrough in American film for black actors.”

  “That’ll come as news to Sidney Poitier,” I said. “And Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Dexter Gordon. Harp Manley’s about the fifth breakthrough.”

  “The way Charles talked, it came across as very plausible,” Annie said. “Criminal lawyers are good at that.”

  The bananas were slathered in brown sugar and nutmeg and cinnamon and a squirt of rum. The waitress forgot the second fork. I used a coffee spoon.

  “The only trouble with Charles’s festival is the timing,” Annie said. “For me personally, I mean. It’s already taking hell’s own footwork to cover two festivals going on at once, and the Alternate hasn’t even started showing movies yet.”

  “That’s Cam’s way of making a statement,” I said. “Confrontation. Nose to nose. Up against the wall. Festival against festival.”

  “Take tomorrow,” Annie said. “Between Charles and Helga Stephenson, I got a choice of four press conferences, not to mention I can’t miss two movies the Festival of Festivals is running.”

  “And a party?”

  “No more parties. Last night’s was de rigueur, the opening bash and everything, but as far as getting material, forget it. Too many faces, too much crush.”

  “Dan make the party?”

  “Dan?” Annie scrunched up her face. “I’m trying to think Dan. Dan Rather? Danny DeVito? Daniel Ortega? ‘O Danny Boy’? Am I getting warm? Which Dan at the party?”

  “Day-Lewis.”

  “Daniel Day-Lewis,” Annie repeated, her face unscrunched. “Brother, you really got a bee in your bonnet about the man. No, he wasn’t at the party. He isn’t on my calendar until Tuesday or even in town till then for all I know. Besides, he isn’t my only interview. I got two more solo and a bunch of others in general scrummy media conferences.”

  “Dumb word.”

  “Which one?”

  “Media.”

  “Plural of medium,” Annie said.

  “You know what someone clever once said of medium?”

  Annie said, “Your definition of clever doesn’t always match up with Webster’s.”

  “Television is a medium,” I said. “So called because it is neither rare nor well done.”

  Annie laughed.

  “For a quip,” she said, “that one’s worth stockpiling.”

  Annie did most of the damage to the bananas au rhum. We had coffee, lingered another half-hour, and left. The Volks was parked at a meter on Jarvis Street. Walking to the car, Annie had her arm around my waist, and my arm was draped over her shoulders. I made a U-turn on Jarvis and drove to Annie’s place. It’s a flat on the third floor of a fine old house in Cabbagetown with an equally fine reno job. In the bedroom, Annie had two more black garments under the black blouse and trousers.

  “Want me to tear those off with my teeth?” I said.

  Annie went into the bathroom, and when she came out five minutes later, she’d removed her makeup and her black bra and panties. I was already in bed.

  Just before daylight, Annie and I came awake at the same time. We didn’t make love again. We snuggled. Like spoons. I lay on my left side facing toward the window. Annie lay on her left side facing in the same direction. Her right arm was around my waist, and her body touched mine in nice places.

  “I remember who said it,” I said.

  “Ummm.”

  “About medium.”

  “Um.”

  “Ernie Kovacs.”

  Annie was asleep.

  14

  BY THE TIME Raymond Fenk walked out of the Silverdore Hotel at two o’clock on Saturday afternoon, James Turkin and I had been lounging inside and outside the Volks for almost three hours.

  A little after eleven, I’d gone into the hotel and asked for Fenk’s room on the house phone. Someone male, presumably Fenk, answered. That you, Bill? I said. Wrong room, the male voice said. He sounded bad-tempered. Had to be Fenk.

  The Volks was on the north side of Charles east of the Silverdore. The hotel was on the south side. James filled in the wait with tales from the pickpocket world. He said, apart from South Americans, Soviet émigrés ranked near the top of the craft in the United States. Émigrés was James’s word. They had a touring company, James said. Hit the big conventions in the midwestern cities. Cute, I said.

  At twelve-thirty, I sent James over to Yonge Street for coffee and doughnuts. I wanted my doughnut plain. James reported back none of them came plain. The one he chose for me oozed something in raspberry paste.

  At one-fifteen, James asked did I know whether Fenk carried a hotel key with him or left it at the front desk? The one occasion I knew about, I told James, a key was in Fenk’s pocket when he went into the hotel. James seemed to like my answer.

  At two o’clock, Fenk emerged. He had on a deep-blue jacket with lighter blue piping around the lapels. The guy collected jackets like Lord Thomson of Fleet collected newspapers. Fenk walked west toward Yonge. He was carrying a briefcase. It was slim and black and had more locks than most bank vaults.

  “I got another way,” James said.

  He got out of the car and crossed Charles. What other way? I hired him to pick the lock on Fenk’s hotel room. That was the way.

  James strolled Charles in Fenk’s wake. I left the Volks and stuck to the north side of the street, watching the action. Fenk walked. James strolled. Some action. Just short of Yonge, Fenk wheeled into a small self-serve restaurant. The restaurant had six or seven tables on a front patio. Fenk went through the door. James stayed outside reading a menu mounted beside the entrance. Fenk came back carrying a glass of something in the hand that wasn’t clutching the briefcase. He sat down at an empty table. James stuck with the menu. This was exciting stuff.

  James disappeared into the restaurant. Fenk gulped at his drink and stared into space. Or maybe his eyes were trained on the building across the street. It was a Gold’s Gym, and young women were entering and leaving in tight and shiny garments that made them look like exotic dancers in mufti.

  James reappeared from the restaurant. He too held a drink. He stopped in the middle of the patio. He glanced right, away from Fenk, and left, toward the table where Fenk was sitting and eyeballing the entrance to Gold’s Gym. James looked lost and indecisive. The hick from out of town. He took a step and stumbled. The stumble moved him into Fenk’s space. Whatever was in James’s glass—Seven-Up? soda water? something pale and fizzy—splashed onto the Fenk table. Fenk jumped up. James landed on his shoulder. Fenk sat down. James caught himself against Fenk and the table.

  Fenk was concentrating on his briefcase. He gripped it with his left hand and used his right to yank his glass out of the spillage from James’s drink. James fussed. He pulled a handkerchief from his side pants pocket and swiped at Fenk’s table. Fenk stared thunder clouds at James. James kept on playing the hick. Wiping the table, smiling the sheepish smile, babbling words I couldn’t hear from across the street. The performance, all ninety seconds of it, ended when Fenk waved James away, and James beat his retreat in a posture that suggested homage to a Japanese emperor.

  I got back to the Volks before James.

  “Out of his pocket,�
� I said to James as he was opening the door on the passenger side. “You bumped against Fenk, all that business about spilling the drink, mopping the table, you picked him for the hotel key.”

  “What the technique’s called, it’s a mustard-checker.”

  “I missed the mustard.”

  “Well, the thing I did was a . . . variant.”

  “Variation’ll do.”

  “The Colombian guys, the teachers, they taught us you go up to one of those hot-dog stands on the street. Customer in a suit’s standing there. Got the frank in his hand. You squirt him with the mustard bottle, and it’s all, Jesus, I’m sorry, mister, wiping the yellow stuff off. Same time you’re dipping for his wallet.”

  James reached into the breast pocket of his shirt and lifted out Fenk’s room key. It was attached to a round strip of plastic that had 814 cut into it.

  “What’re we waiting for?” I said.

  James pointed through the windshield.

  “Him down there.”

  Fenk hadn’t finished his drink or his ogle.

  “Might’ve only come out for a soda pop,” James said. “We get in the room, and next thing he’s back, gets another key from downstairs, walks in.”

  After ten minutes, Fenk left the patio. He didn’t turn back to the hotel. He went the other way, out of our view into the pedestrian traffic on Yonge.

  The Silverdore lobby had wallpaper that imitated marble, and plastic trim that suggested wood. A chandelier, on the gaudy side, hung from the low ceiling. It seemed to be made of real glass. The elevators were to the right. James and I rode one to the eighth floor, and James rapped smartly on the door to 814.

  “Just in case he’s got a roommate,” James said. “Girlfriend, you know, assistant.”

  “Could only be Della Street.”

  James knocked again. The hall was empty.

  “That one of your jokes?” James said. “The Della Street?”

  “Very small.”

  “Sometimes you could explain them. I’m not totally stupid, you might not know it.”

  “You’re not even a little stupid, James. Just a little young.”

  James put the key into the lock to 814.

  I said, “But, sure, I’ll alert you when a joke’s gone by. Do some verbal underlining.”

  James opened the door, and we stepped inside. Fenk had a suite, and James and I were in the sitting room. It reminded me of Ralph Goddard’s family room. It lacked Ralph’s Motolounger, but for dubious decor it compensated with a painting of a dusky bare-breasted beauty. The painting was on velvet. There wasn’t much sign of Fenk in the room. Some papers on the desk, the September Penthouse on the sofa. But there was a significant sign of Dave Goddard. His spanking new saxophone case rested on the sofa beside Penthouse.

  “Bingo,” I said.

  I snapped open the case.

  “Hold the bingo.”

  The case was empty. Or almost empty. It contained the strap that Dave wore to hold his saxophone when he played. It didn’t contain the saxophone. The case’s lining was ripped open at the top of one side, and the rip, carefully done as if with scissors, extended from end to end of the case.

  James, standing beside me, said, “Something had’ve been in there. Inside the cloth. Only reason for it to be torn like that.”

  “I was thinking along those lines, something hidden in the case, just yesterday afternoon.”

  “You know where it probably is, whatever was in there? In the briefcase the guy was carrying who’s staying here. Fenk’s briefcase.”

  “Maybe. But where’s the saxophone? It’s the reason for this little break-and-enter. A tenor saxophone.”

  There were three doors leading off the sitting room, one to the hall and the other two, it stood to reason, to the bedroom and a closet.

  “You know what a tenor saxophone looks like?” I asked James.

  “Does it matter?” James said. “I find one musical instrument, it’s the instrument we’re looking for, I would think.”

  “Excellent logic, James.”

  James opened the closet door. The closet was empty of everything except wooden hangers, the kind you can’t take with you.

  “Do the bedroom,” I said.

  I crossed over to the desk. The first paper I picked up was a contract that said on page one it was between Wholesome Productions Inc. and Alternate Film Festival Limited. On the back page, Fenk had signed for Wholesome in a hand that was easily readable. Wholesome? The sinister smut peddler had a sense of irony. Cam Charles hadn’t signed for Alternate. The signature belong to someone whose first name was Trevor. I couldn’t make out the second name. But a guess wasn’t hard. Couldn’t be more than one Trevor connected to the Alternate Film Festival. Trevor Dalgleish.

  The contract was thick with clauses that lawyers stick in to button down events that might screw up a deal. Bankruptcy of one of the parties, earthquake, end of the world, failure to pay the lawyers’ fees. The only clause that counted was the one where the party of the first part granted to the party of the second part the right to screen the aforesaid Hell’s Barrio one time only in the course of the aforesaid Alternate Festival. Criminal law was simpler, no parties or aforesaids, just the crown and the bad guys.

  The rest of the papers on the desk were press releases and a program for the festival. Someone, Fenk I guessed, had circled Hell’s Barrio on the program. It was being shown Monday night at eight. I leafed through the press releases. Three of them were devoted to A Quarter to Three, Harp Manley’s movie. The Hell’s Barrio release, one page long, had handwriting in the right margin. The writing was in black ink and in the same firm hand that signed the contract for Wholesome Productions, and it spelled out three names. The first two names were Vietnamese. I’d read Fire in the Lake, I’d seen Good Morning, Vietnam, and I knew Vietnamese names when I saw them. Another argument in favour of the well-informed life. The third name, the one after the Vietnamese, I recognized. Trevor Dalgleish’s.

  Trevor’s had a line under it and a telephone number beside it. Same black ink, same firm hand. The phone number began with 921. That put it midtown, probably around Avenue Road. There was a white pen on the desk with Silverdore Hotel stamped on it and a scratch pad with the same designation. I used the pen to write Trevor’s name on the pad and started on the phone number. I wrote 921, and that was as far as I got when someone out in the hall put a key in the lock to room 814 and turned the knob.

  It was ten feet from the desk to the bedroom. What was the world record for the ten-foot dash? I broke it getting from desk to bedroom. James had left the bedroom door open. I closed it behind me.

  “Someone out there,” I said. My voice surprised me. It was low, which was okay, and shaky, which wasn’t.

  The room had two double beds. Fenk’s suitcase sat on the bed closest to the door, and James was sifting through it. I didn’t bother telling him the suitcase wouldn’t accommodate a tenor saxophone. James stopped his sifting and slid under the bed. It was a move of remarkable grace and alacrity.

  I chose the closet. It had two louvre doors, and both were shut. I eased one open. It made no noise. On the closet rack, Fenk had hung the beige jacket and the plaid. There were no others. Lord Thomson of Fleet had more newspapers than Fenk had jackets. There were a couple of shirts alongside the jackets and a pair of loafers on the floor. I hunkered under the jackets and shirts, and closed the louvre door. It was as noiseless shutting as it had been opening.

  Inside the closet, all was black. Outside, all was silent. The black didn’t change much over the next few moments, but the silence was broken by voices coming from the sitting room. Two of them, or possibly three. I couldn’t make out words, but I could judge tone. None of the voices sounded happy. At a guess, I would have said it was a two-way or a three-way argument.

  Ten minutes went by. The dispute continued, and my legs, in the hunkered position, throbbed. I dropped my bottom to the floor. My left buttock crushed one of the brown loafers. I moved the loafer
s and reached my legs half the length of the closet. Both feet struck something metallic and made a ping sound. I sucked in my breath and counted to sixty. Nobody launched an attack on my hiding place. I let out my breath. The ping couldn’t have been loud enough to reach beyond the confines of the closet.

  I leaned forward from the waist, in the kind of stretch one makes to loosen up before a set of tennis, and I touched the object my feet had hit. It felt smooth and slick and had curves and interruptions in the curves that could have been valves. Had I found Dave Goddard’s tenor saxophone? Seemed close to a sure thing.

  Ten more minutes passed, give or take an eternity. It was no fun in the closet. The voices kept on, definitely angry. Then, in a snap, they were gone. Had I missed something? I listened so hard my ears hurt. A minute or two later, I got my reward. I heard a door close. It wasn’t loud enough to be the bedroom door but faint enough to be the door out of the suite and into the hall.

  I sat and strained some more and heard nothing. The voices had fled, all of them except the voice that whispered from the other side of the louvre door.

  “Okay to come out of there,” James whispered.

  I pushed back the door.

  “Thanks, James.” I was whispering too. “Close call.”

  “Had closer.”

  I shoved up from the floor and got myself tangled in Fenk’s plaid jacket.

  I said, “Fenk must have come back.”

  “Him and somebody else. There were two guys altogether. Maybe three.”

  Both of us were still whispering. James crossed the bedroom to the door. He opened it slowly, looked around the edge, and went into the sitting room. I slid back the other louvre door. It was Dave Goddard’s tenor saxophone on the closet floor unless someone else owned a forty-year-old Selmer with no polish and elastic bands holding some of the valves in place.

  James came back into the bedroom.

  “Guy’s in the next room,” he said, not whispering.