Read Straight No Chaser Online
Authors: Jack Batten
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #Humanities, #Literature, #FIC022000, #book
My vodka and soda was empty. This seemed to be a jobâfiguring out what the six movies sharedâfor the in-house film critic. If I asked Annie to take a shot at it, I'd have to go all the way. Tell her everything that had gone on: the tail job for Dave Goddard, Fenk's murder, the rest. Well, I was due to let her in on the events to date. Overdue. Then she could look over the six movies for points in common. She could also tell me what the hell a best boy was.
A
NNIE DIDN'T THINK
I'd used my most mature judgment.
“This is a case,” she said, “damn near terminal, of you losing your marbles.”
“It seemed a good idea at the time, the part about swiping the saxophone back. It still does if it weren't for the dead person.”
“You have to call the police. Come on, this is murder.”
It'd taken me a half-hour to tell the story of the stolen saxophone, my expedition with James, Fenk on the sitting-room floor. Start to finish, it was good for no more than ten minutes, but Annie interrupted with many variations on “say that again” and “you did what?” The food and wine got in the way too. Annie made us a platter of tuna-salad sandwiches with olives and tomato slices and gherkins, and she opened a bottle of white Dao. It was an early supper or a light dinner, whatever meal came at six-thirty before we went off to the premiere of Harp Manley's movie. I ate my half of the platter and more. Annie's appetite was on hold.
“So?” she said. “You want my opinion? There's the phone over on the table.”
“One point emerges, I think. I'm in kind of deep.”
“Take the sun ten years to reach you, that deep.”
I expected Annie to be upset. She wasn't. She was mad, which was better than upset. Mad is closer to rational analysis. I needed a little of that, as long as it didn't include a call to the cops.
“The police,” Annie said, “solve murders. They get paid for it. You, what you get paid for, the way you explained it to me one or two hundred times, you come along later,
after
the murder. You say to the judge, oh, no, it wasn't
my
client who did the murder. Or it wasn't
murder
. Or some such.”
“Yeah, well, events seem to have got out of the normal sequence.”
“No kidding.”
“Another factor, kind of crucial, the cops' idea of solving Fenk's murder, they'll charge Dave Goddard.”
“And you.”
“It went through my mind.”
“And that JD sidekick of yours.”
“James Turkin is delinquent, no question there, but juvenile, no. If you ever meet him, Annie, you wouldn't think of the word.”
“If I ever meet him, I'll kick his ass.”
Annie's temper had just about run the course. We were sitting at the butcher-block table in the window of her apartment. The chairs were bentwood knockoffs, and Annie had been perching on the edge of hers. She poured wine into both glasses and eased back in her chair.
“I'm scared for you,” she said.
“Feeling nervous myself.”
“I don't suppose that means you're going to do anything sensible.”
“There're beginning to be facts, you think about it, that dovetail.”
“For instance? The voices you and your pet criminal heard in the hotel sitting room? I don't care about accents or timbre, that could've been practically anybody.”
“Theoretically, yeah. But we know Fenk had some kind of contact with Trevor and two Vietnamese guys. There names were on his desk, and whoever offed him took the paper with the names when he or they left.”
“âOffed' gives me the creeps.”
“I used it to show you I was macho and unafraid.”
“Didn't work.”
“Whoever
murdered
Fenk left the room with the paper with the names on it.”
“Better. And the person or persons probably left with the briefcase too.”
“Now you're getting into it,” I said. “And another conjunction of facts: Trevor must be acquainted with Fenk from booking his movie into Cam Charles's festival, and Trevor for sure knows some Vietnamese guys who are his clients.”
“Hm.”
“Does that, the hm, mean I should go on?”
“Hmmm.”
“I produce for your perusal the contents of one brown envelope.”
It was the envelope that Cam's delivery kid dropped off at my place. I'd left the two separate sheets at home, the one with Fenk's record and the other with the four Vietnamese names. The movie info was still in the envelope.
“These,” I said to Annie, “are the six movies Trevor's got the responsibility for. Signing up the people, contracts, nitty-gritty details. What I wonder, Fenk's one movie and five others I never heard of, do they link together somehow?”
Annie pushed the platter to my side of the table and organized the movie material in six piles. The platter had three-quarters of a tuna sandwich on it. I ate the three-quarters.
“I only recognize the titles,” Annie said, lifting the papers, reading, putting them down. “And that's just from seeing them earlier in the program Cam's ladies handed out at the Park Plaza.”
Annie got up from the table and went to the corner of the living room she calls her office. It has a white wicker desk and chair, a bookcase full of movie tomes, a typewriter, and the cursed answering machine, and on the wall there's a poster from
The Man with Two Brains
. I gave Annie the poster.
The Man with Two Brains
is my favourite Steve Martin movie. Annie came back with a program that had a glossy cover in silver and blue.
“Give me five minutes,” she said. She looked at the title of one of the movies and began flipping through the program. It was the program for the Alternate Film Festival. “Another thing I was wondering,” I said. “All the movies, you see in the credits âbest boy', usually right next to âgrip' and âgaffer'. You got any idea what a best boy does?”
“Five minutes,” Annie said, “of silence.”
I occupied myself with the Dao and the view out the window of Annie's corner of Cabbagetown. The sky was still overcast. Might rain. A leaf fell from a tree in front of the house across the street. I wasn't a whiz at marking time.
“Well, I don't know.” Annie gave the program an impatient shove. “If these've got something the same about them, it beats me. Different themes, different producers, sounds like different techniques.”
“You tried, kid. It was just a thought.”
“California, but so what?”
“So what, what? Where's California come in?”
“That's where the six movies were made, but so were probably six hundred other movies this year.”
If there'd been wine left in my glass, I would have poured it down my throat in one large, dramatic flourish. The glass was empty, and so was the bottle. I settled for giving Annie my best meaningful look. The gesture was wasted. Annie spoke first.
“I see what you're going to say, yeah,” she said. “Fenk's a Los Angeles person.”
“So doesn't it mean something that Trevor's booked only movies from California? Trevor who's been maybe up to fishy business with Fenk of the same state? Must be a tie-in.”
“California.”
“Why didn't you let me say it first, about the connection between the six movies and Trevor and Fenk?”
“Come on, you were going through all that nonsense about checking the wine and staring into my eyes like you were Sherlock Holmes. What was I supposed to do, sit here and look stupid?”
“Dr. Watson would have.”
Annie smiled. It was her first from the time I arrived and began the story that revealed all. Or almost all. I didn't get graphic in describing the look of Fenk on the sitting-room floor.
Annie said, “I wouldn't be mistaken, would I, if I guessed you want me to ask around, see who knows the dirt on the other five movies besides
Hell's Barrio
?”
“There must be people at the festival up from California for those. Producers, directors, writers, stars, best boys.”
“Actors in the movies in the Alternate Festival, except for Harp Manley, I think they're too lowly to be called stars.”
“If they're here is all that counts. Maybe they're hooked into Fenk or Trevor or both, some of the California types, and maybe there's a pattern of links somewhere.”
Annie said, “Well, I've got the right cover for a person asking pertinent questions. Impertinent questions too.”
“Everybody'll say, oh golly, it's just that adorable Annie B. Cooke doing interviews. Her occupation.”
“Part of my occupation.”
“Chatting up the stars, present stars, future stars, mega stars. Daniel Day-Lewis.”
“Again? You're bringing up the man again?” Annie said. She made a little gesture of semi-annoyance with her arms. Then, switching manner, she said, coquettish, “Well, just because he's one of the world's divine males . . .”
Why had I mentioned Daniel Day-Lewis? I didn't know his name was on my tongue till I let it roll off. What was this? Incipient green-eyed monster syndrome? Who was the dolt in the Preston Sturges movie? The one where the symphony conductor imagines his wife's having an affair with another guy?
Unfaithfully Yours
. Linda Darnell was the wife. Funny movie. Ah, Rex Harrison was the conductor. I was playing Rex Harrison. Not as suave, but as doltish.
Annie was looking at her watch upside down.
“We got half an hour,” she said. “You know what? I'm starved.”
She carried the platter back to the kitchen, and I followed.
“I'll find out what I can about the five movies.” Annie had her back to me and was mixing canned tuna, Hellman's mayonnaise, and chopped green onion in a small bowl. “You do what it is you've made up your mind to do. But I still don't get it.”
“Did I leave something out?”
“The part about the dead man and Trevor Dalgleish and the six movies, I'm in it up to there. I understand why you're poking around them. To see what they're up to, if anything. But who's your client? I know
who
he is. He's Dave somebody or other the jazz player. But who is he in the
story
?”
“An innocent bystander.”
“I don't believe this, I honestly don't,” Annie said. She kept on making her sandwich.
“Here's as far as I've got,” I said. “Things start with Fenk's confederate at the jazz club Dave worked in Culver City.”
“Confederate, I like that.”
“He stole Dave's old saxophone case at the Alley Cat, and next night this guy, a large black guy I gather from the Alley Cat boss, made Dave an anonymous gift of a new case. One difference, the new case had contraband hidden in the lining.”
“First, confederate. Now contraband.”
“In the lining, I'll give odds, it was cocaine.”
Annie turned around. In her hand she had a plate with one sandwich on it.
“Weirder and weirder,” she said.
She opened the refrigerator door with her free hand, took out a quart bottle of mineral water, and swung her rump at the fridge door. It closed. Annie had a great rump. We went back to the table in the window.
“Cocaine is Fenk's background,” I said. “Two guilty pleas for possession. And Fenk was the guy who went to all the trouble of relieving Dave Goddard of the case. He knew the cocaine was in there.”
“I never heard so much hypothetical in my life.”
“You don't like it?”
“I'm crazy about it. It's just hypothetical.”
When Annie ate her sandwich, she held it with both hands. Women do that. You hardly ever see a man use two hands on a sandwich. I poured mineral water into the two empty wineglasses.
“Thanks,” Annie said.
“Think of what I just said as in the early formative stages. What I'm doing, I'm gathering the elements I'm sure of. I'm sure Fenk has a cocaine record. I'm sure illicit stuff, about the size of a few kilos of cocaine when you think of it, was hidden in the saxophone case's lining. Why else was it ripped? And another thing I'm sure of, I'm sure Fenk knew the cocaine was in there, in the lining.”
“Which Dave the musician didn't?”
“Goddard's the name, and no, in this, from word go, he's totally in the dark.”
“He better be totally in Muskoka or you got trouble.”
Annie finished her sandwich and wiped her hands on a paper napkin. She wiped so gently that the napkin showed hardly any creases. Another difference between the sexes. My paper napkin was a shredded ball.
“Not to upset the applecart,” Annie said, “but why? Why would Fenk and the black confederate go to all the trouble? Hiding cocaine in the case and bashing Dave Goddard to get it back?”
“I might come up short there. But, what about, it was a nifty way, foolproof practically, of transporting cocaine from California to Toronto?”
“Could be,” Annie said.
She looked at her watch again.
“Better call a cab, sweetie,” she said.
I stood, and Annie put her hand on my arm.
She said, “There's one thing makes me feel kind of warm about this whole awful schemozzle.”
“I can't imagine.”
“You told me what was going on instead of clamming up.”
“You're welcome.”
“So what's the excuse you didn't come clean sooner?”
A
QUARTER TO THREE
, starring Harp Manley, was a heist movie.
Rififi
,
The Italian Job
,
Bellman and True
, that genre. Harp played a cop who went undercover into a gang that worked out a scheme to bust into the Philadelphia Museum of Art. No mean feat. The place looked like a cross between the Parthenon and the Acropolis. But it had an exhibition of jewels the gang planned to loot. The break-in was in the classic mouldâshutting down the museum's alarm system, duping the guards, climbing through a skylight, other intricate acts. Harp's character was supposed to stick with the gang long enough to catch the gist of the caper and bring in the rest of the cops at the penultimate moment. But he got tempted. Maybe he'd go along with the gang and pocket his share of the loot. Harp and his wife had a teenage daughter with some fatal illness. He and the wife did much discussing of options. Duty to law and order versus money to ease the dying daughter's last months.