Straight No Chaser (15 page)

“Stuffy Kernohan's first call was to me. As soon as he saw Fenk was connected with my film festival, after the body was found, by whom I don't know, Stuffy rang me at home, and we agreed he'd low-play the announcement to the press. I don't need that kind of publicity on the day the festival opens. Later in the week perhaps, but not right on top of the opening. Stuffy understood. He owed me one.”

Stuffy Kernohan? Should I know him? The Silverdore's manager? A police guy? With a name like Stuffy Kernohan, he could be the Chicago Black Hawks goalie.

“If you're finished with your questions, Crang,” Cam said, “let's get to business. I'm on a tight schedule.”

“Who's Stuffy Kernohan?”

“Oh,
Crang
.” Cam was good at scorn. “Stuffy's been on the homicide squad since before we came out of law school.”

“I don't do murder cases, Cam, remember?”

Criminal lawyers get slotted. I had a mini-specialty in fraud charges. The rest of my files were a hodgepodge of hold-ups, break-and-enters, other crimes against property. Alleged murderers seemed to go elsewhere. Just as well if it meant sucking around guys like Stuffy Kernohan who sucked around guys like Cam Charles.

“Everything I tell you from now on is in strictest confidence,” Cam said. He was into his earnest routine. “This concerns an associate of mine. Trevor Dalgleish.”

“Funny, his name's been crossing my mind lately.”

“I talk, Crang, you listen.”

You had to hand it to Cam—I did—he knew how to run a briefing. Crisp sentences, no wasted motion, and he was right into Trevor Dalgleish's bio. Thirty-one years old. Member of a FOOF. Fine old Ontario family. Undergraduate degree in economics. Scored high in the LSATs. Came out of the University of Toronto Law School clutching a prize in criminal law. Articled with Eddie Greenspan. Switched to Cam's firm when he got his call. Worked fifteen hours a day. Smooth in court, something I'd seen for myself a few times. Trevor, Cam said, was a rising star, and versatile. He sat in on the discussions when the Alternate Festival was hatched. And took over responsibility for a block of films—booking, contacts, drawing the documents, getting names on dotted lines. Leading up to the festival, Cam said, Trevor was working twenty hours a day.

“So what's the problem?” I asked. “Paragon like that, some other law firm's liable to steal him away.”

“All his life,” Cam said, now sounding concerned, wise, avuncular, and a pain in the neck, “as long as I've known him, which is very nearly all his life, Trevor's been a man who takes short cuts.”

Cam had an illustration. It seemed that as a young buck at St. Andrew's College, the very prep school that Cam had attended earlier, Trevor ran a lucrative scam that involved bribing a printer's apprentice to slip him exam papers in advance. Trevor peddled the papers to his fellow preppies. A suspicious teacher nailed a group of students who got uncharacteristic As on the exams. The fuss was short-term but scandalous.

“Look at the bright side, Cam,” I said. “Trevor probably learned a lesson. Cheaters never prosper.”

“That's just it. Trevor wasn't caught.”

“The mastermind, and he got away with it?”

“And may still be getting away with something.”

“Like what?”

“Like that's what I'm retaining you to find out.”

“Closer to blackmailing me to find out.”

“Don't take it personally, Crang.”

On the wall opposite the bench where we were sitting, there was a Town oil, about seven feet high by five wide. Green was the major colour, hundreds of tight little green balls with tiny black centres. A long, jagged white line cut through the entire middle of the painting, top to bottom. What was the picture supposed to be? Maybe a close-up of a monster zipper?

“Give me some help, Cam, teensy little hints,” I said. “Why's Trevor got you nervous?”

“Number one, my read on Trevor is he spends more money on himself than his billings at the firm warrant.”

“Is it that big? Trevor's house on Admiral Road?”

“It's also the scene of very lavish dinner parties.”

“Never been invited.”

“Doubt you ever will,” Cam said. “Besides the house, Trevor has his place in the country up in King.”

“Let me guess—he rides horses out there.”

“What else does everybody in King do? Trevor's very expert at it. Jumps his horse at the Royal Winter Fair, that kind of thing. All of which costs a great deal of money for a man just past thirty.”

“Sure, Cam,” I said. “But a minute ago you told me Trevor comes from good stock. Ever think it's family money that finances his conspicuous consumption?”

“An excellent family name, I said that, grandfather associated with E. P. Taylor, all the rest. Trevor's got the name, but the family money evaporated with Trevor's father.”

“Isn't that just the way, always a wastrel in there to blow the ancestral fortune.”

“Number two, Trevor's too intimate with clients.”

“Ho boy, that could be risky around your place, Cam, guys with the dreadlocks, smoke the ganja.”

Cam went through the motions of looking disgusted, but his heart wasn't in it. He was more interested in surging ahead with the briefing.

“You and I know it happens, Crang, criminal lawyers overly involved in the lives of the people they're defending.”

“Rubbing shoulders with the bandits, yeah. Start out drinking in the same bars, end up sharing a cell.”

“Precisely.”

“One problem, Cam, the way you described young Trevor, workaholic, nice way about him in front of a judge, I've seen that, he doesn't give off the feel of lawyers I know've gone down the tubes.”

“I hope I'm wrong. Probably am. But I want to find out if Trevor has troubles.”

“If, you mean, if
you
have troubles.”

“With Trevor.”

I gave the Harold Town more study, the greens and the white line zigging down the centre. If you turned the picture on its side, it'd look like an ECG printout. Guess again, Crang. If Town wanted it on its side, he'd have painted it on its side.

“Why me, Cam?” I asked.

“You've acquired a bit of a reputation, you must be aware, for this kind of thing.”

“What? Nosing around?”

“If you want to put it that way. The qualities I criticized you for a minute ago, don't be offended, they have their uses in situations like this. Irreverent, push in where don't necessarily belong.”

“Really glad I came to our little meet, Cam. Swell boost for the ego.”

“I can't ask about Trevor myself, obviously, or delegate one of the other people in the firm to make inquiries into our own associate.”

“Lousy for office morale.”

“And I'm not inclined to hire some sloppy private investigator.”

“So it's sloppy me.”

It was more fun to think about the Town oil than about Cam's proposition. I had another idea about the painting. It was a glimpse close up of a giant fissure in a rock. Bet it had Rocky Mountains somewhere in the title. Cam wasn't talking proposition. He was talking arm-twisting. My arm.

I said, “I need material to get me going, Cam.”

“It's yours.”

“Clients' names. Trevor can't be playing footsy with everyone who comes through the door. Make a list of the people you think are too much into Trevor. Or vice versa.”

Cam reached into his inside jacket pocket and brought out a pen and a small pad. The pad had a dark leather cover, and the pen was slim and gold. What had Annie said? Cam goes first cabin.

“Something else,” I said. “I want the names of the movies Trevor lined up for your film festival.”

Cam stopped jotting.

“No, Crang,” he said, dragging it out, exasperated. “The festival's unrelated. No bearing whatsoever.”

“Think of yourself, I know this is hard, Cam, as the client here. I'm the guy you do what I ask.”

Cam got his gold pen busy again.

“Raymond Fenk,” I said. “The deceased.”

Cam tightened up around the mouth, but he didn't speak. Cam had discipline.

“Get onto your pal at homicide, the old Stuffer,” I said. “Tell him to phone the Los Angeles police, telex, fax machine, whichever's fastest. Find out if Fenk has a record. Had a record.”

Cam was a swift notetaker.

“That's it,” I said.

Cam put away his implements.

“Expect a package of information by three this afternoon,” he said, and walked away from me and the Harold Town retrospective without a nod for either of us.

I'd run out of guesses about the green canvas. Fissure in the Rocky Mountains was what I was going with. I went over to the small card on the wall beside the picture. “1965,” it said. “Oil on Canvas. The Great Divide.” Well, what the hell, fissure and Great Divide were close. I took twenty minutes to look at the rest of the show, and on the way out, I bought a catalogue for ten bucks. I'd swallow the ten.

18

T
HERE WAS A BOWL
of five-day-old homemade chili in the refrigerator. The home it was made in was mine. I peeled back the Saran Wrap that covered the bowl, and sniffed. My nostrils didn't shrivel, and no blue mould lurked at the bowl's edges. I scooped the chili into a pan, and put the pan on the stove at a low heat.

On television in the living room, CBS was showing U.S. Open Tennis. Ivan Lendl was playing. When wasn't Ivan Lendl playing? I had a vodka and soda and the Harold Town catalogue.
The Great
Divide
was reproduced in its whites and greens near the front of the catalogue, and on the opposite page there was an explanation of the picture. It said Town took his first plane flight in 1965. He was in his forties, and the experience of looking at the world from the new perspective of straight down blew him away. He went home and painted
The Great Divide
. It was his interpretation of a telescoped view out of the window as the plane came over the runway at the end of a night flight. Nice guess, Crang, fissure in the rock. Not even close.

I turned the catalogue's pages, and on television the tennis match went on. By and large, tennis makes genteel noises. The light thonk of the ball coming off the racquet, the polite handclapping between points, the referee's moderate tones. The occasional roar of planes heading into LaGuardia Airport near the U.S. Open stadium was a pain in the eardrum, and the now-and-then hollers from yahoos in the stands. But mostly the background tennis sounds seemed about right for a browse through the Town catalogue. After a while, I ate the chili.

At ten past three, the doorbell rang. The young man on the front step looked like he'd just been let out of Sunday school. He was wearing a light single-breasted black suit, white button-down shirt, and a tie that was so discreet I couldn't tell whether it was black or deep purple. He said he was present on an errand for Mr. Charles, and handed me a large brown envelope.

“You haven't been inconvenienced, sir?” The kid had taken lessons in earnest from Cam. “I was supposed to have this to you at three.”

“Just listening to tennis. No inconvenience.”

“Of course, Mr. Crang. Thank you, sir.”

The kid didn't kiss my hand. No one's faultless.

I opened the brown envelope at the kitchen table. There were two single sheets and a bunch of other papers clipped together. The top sheet dealt with Raymond Fenk. Ha, he had a record. Not much, but a record. Two convictions in California for possession of an illegal drug. On both, he'd been charged with trafficking but pleaded guilty to reduced counts of simple possession. Must have had a defence lawyer who was a winner at plea bargaining. Fenk paid a fine on the first charge and did ninety days on the second. The drug in question was described on the sheet of paper in formal laboratory language. But, scraping away the Latin and the chemistry, we were talking cocaine.

The second sheet was headed “Trevor Dalgleish Clients”. These had to be the people Cam thought Trevor might be romancing. Ten names altogether. The first six were separated by double spaces and had complete addresses and phone numbers after them. None of the names rang bells. The other four names were grouped and had one address for the lot and no phone number. Nho Truong. Dan Nguyen. Nghiep Tran. My Do Thai. I was in business. The names were Vietnamese. Were any of them matches for the two names I saw on Saturday afternoon? Written above Trevor's name on the press release for
Hell's Barrio
? In Fenk's hotel room? My memory was okay, but not photographic.

The address for the four men put me on more solid ground. It was an Oxford Street number. Oxford ran off Spadina Avenue south of College. It was in the Kensington Market area. Portuguese fish stores. West Indians peddling live chickens and rabbits and ducks. Fruit and vegetable stalls on the streets. Annie and I did monthly excursions to the market for provisions. I don't think we'd run into Nho Truong and the guys. Hadn't bought a live duck either.

The papers clipped together were publicity blurbs, cast listings, and other informative bumpf on six movies.
Hell's Barrio
came first. Raymond Fenk's name was front and centre as producer. I didn't recognize the names of the rest of the
Hell's Barrio
people: the actors, director, cinematographer, the best boy. On the other five movies, my recognition quotient was a total zip. The people who made the movies had names that meant nothing to me. Neither did the movies' titles. All I knew was, the same guy was in charge of lining up the six for the Alternate Festival. Trevor Dalgleish.

Was there a common thread in the six?
Hell's Barrio
, I already gathered, was about Hispanics having it tough in L.A. The second movie was about AIDS. I couldn't tell from the literature whether it was feature or documentary. Next was a film “as relevant as today's headlines and just as explosive”, the publicity said, about black street gangs in a city that wasn't identified. Hispanics, AIDS, and gangs? So far, not much of a common thread. People who weren't getting a kick out of life? Maybe film analysis wasn't my long suit.