Straight No Chaser (25 page)

I stopped to root around for the appropriately expressive simile.

“As tight as a gnat's ass stretched over a rain barrel,” Cam said, unsmiling. “Is that about it?”

“Terrific,” I said. “Where'd you get the line?”

“From a prominent rock musician. A client.”

“Yeah, well, that's how tight Trevor's in the cocaine business.” Cam tapped his forefinger on his chin and looked thoughtful.

“Leaving aside Trevor for the moment,” he said, “something you overlook, Crang, it would take the police days to mount the sort of raid you apparently have in mind.”

“Put it to Kernohan this way,” I said. “In one night's work, the cops nab a killer, cut off a cocaine dealer who's right up there with General Motors for organization, and close down a booze can, which I gather from the papers isn't a victory they've experienced lately. Or ever.”

“Manpower, equipment, coordination,” Cam said. “The preparation's monumental.”

“This isn't just crime-busting, Cam,” I said. “For the police, this is what's called a public-relations coup.”

“I could perhaps sound Stuffy out,” Cam said without much in the way of enthusiasm.

“Sounding out, Cam, I could look after that myself,” I said. “From you, I'm asking for a different level altogether. Persuasion.”

“See your point,” Cam said. His voice was developing a purr.

The flattery I was laying on Cam, the ego-stroking, might get him partly around to my side. But I needed a more practical argument. A clincher.

“Damage control, Cam,” I said. “That's the advantage in sending Stuffy in at the head of the troops.”

“How so?”

“Trevor's in with the coke gang,” I said. “No doubt about that. None, zip.
Nada.
So, okay, if he's busted by cops from the drug squad, as he's bound to be one of these days the way he's carrying on, it'll be messy. Names in the press, splashy trial, other criminal lawyers snickering behind their hands at your firm. You can anticipate what I mean, Cam, the public humiliation.”

Cam showed no sign he was about to go into panic, but I knew his mind was all mine for the moment.

“But,” I said, “suppose Stuffy Kernohan's calling the shots on this raid at the booze can that's going to produce the goods on Trevor, among other illegalities. Good old friendly, understanding, cooperative Stuffy. See where I'm going, Cam? Stuffy can play it any way you want with Trevor. Maybe just throw a scare into Trev. Tell him he's got a choice, deal cocaine and go to the slammer or practise law and stay on the street. You and Stuffy work out the approach in advance. However it goes down, you can avoid all those other nasty consequences. No snickering lawyers, no embarrassment in the public prints.”

There wasn't a gap, a blink, a millisecond between the end of my pitch and Cam's next words.

“I'll speak to Stuffy,” he said. “
Persuade
him.”

“That's my boy, Cam.”

“You can count on the raid,” Cam said, his face firm and steely.

“Women find that sensual, Cam?” I said. “Your decisiveness?”

A sound like harrumph came from Cam's throat.

“Your point about Trevor is well taken,” he said. “But what you've told me raises other questions.”

“And I got answers, Cam. But how about later? Both of us have places to go, people to see, raids to synchronize.”

“For example,” Cam said, apparently not inclined to vacate the sofa yet, “if Raymond Fenk was involved with the cocaine gang at this booze can, isn't that going to reflect badly on my film festival?”

“Maybe it just presents another opportunity for you and Stuffy Kernohan to play ball.”

“You understand what I mean when I say questions need to be answered?”

“All in good time,” I said. “I'll brief you later tonight, post raid.”

“Debrief.”

“Meantime you put the sale on Stuffy.”

I gave Cam the details. Location and layout of Big Bam's booze can. The optimum time for attack. Nature of resistance.

“Timing is all,” I said. “Otherwise I could be left on the spot. That's as in, get the shit kicked out of me.”

My warning didn't make a dent in Cam's sense of concern. He was still mulling over consequences closer to his own interest.

“I'm giving an after-theatre reception tonight,” he said. “Come by and assure me everything went as arranged in the raid.”

“Debrief you.”

“At the Belair Café until one or so in the morning.”

“The Belair? I was heading in that direction anyway.”

“You might say I'm invading the other side's territory,” Cam said, wearing a crooked little grin. “The Festival of Festivals people think the Belair's exclusively theirs.”

Cam lifted himself off the sofa.

“One last piece of data,” I said to him. “Where's Trevor apt to be this morning?”

“He has a ten-o'clock bail application at the College Park Courts,” Cam said. “After that, I've no idea.”

Cam left without asking why I was interested in Trevor's whereabouts, and I made a run for the kitchen radio. Too late. Or almost too late. Annie was winding up her movie review. She was discussing a baseball movie. The sportscaster, not missing a trick, jumped in to raise his own point about baseball films. Mentions of
The Natural
and
Bull Durham
and
Bang the Drum Slowly
whizzed by.

“The absolute low point in baseball movies,” Annie said, sounding like someone with a lock on the very last word, “the scene that hit rock bottom for authenticity, was in
Fear Strikes Out
. Tony Perkins played Jimmy Piersall, and in one scene he tries to catch a fly ball with his wrists together.”

Where did
that
come from? I went into the bedroom and got dressed. I knew for a certainty Annie had never seen the inside of a ball park, real-life or TV. I put on an elderly but still presentable tweed jacket, my grey flannels, a blue shirt, and a tie with maroon stripes. So where did Annie acquire the bit of expertise on Tony Perkins's lousy catching style? And how'd she blow it by so convincingly on the radio? I walked south on Beverley to my first appointment. It was a lesson to keep in mind, what Annie had done. If you sound authoritative, chances are you can talk your way through brick walls and other, more human obstacles.

28

T
HE CLERK BEHIND THE DESK
at the King Edward said Mr. Gant was having breakfast in the Victoria Room. Couldn't miss him, the clerk said. The clerk had a smirk on his face. Most guys behind desks in expensive hotels wear smirks. Probably learn how in first-year Hotel Management.

My heels made echoing clacks on the marble floor of the King Eddie's lobby. It was a rich sound. Everything about the King Edward sounded, looked, and smelled rich. Darnell Gant must have been a fellow in the chips.

I stood at the entrance of the Victoria Room. The clerk was right. I couldn't have missed Mr. Gant. He was the only black guy in the room. Also the biggest. Most handsome. Best-dressed. The man couldn't be all perfect. Probably didn't know the Johnny Mercer lyrics to “Early Autumn”.

“Mr. Gant's expecting me,” I fibbed to the maître d'. He was another smirker.

Gant was at a table for four, and over the settings for the other three people he'd scattered newspapers.
Wall Street Journal
.
USA Today
.
Financial Post
. He was reading the business section of the
New York
Times
early edition. He seemed only mildly curious to find me standing at his table.

“I'm Crang,” I said.

“Oh yeah,” Gant said. “The gentleman who's going into custody today.”

He moved some newspapers out of the way and motioned me to sit down. He was eating eggs Benedict.

“That'd be Trevor Dalgleish talking,” I said.

“Only man I know in Toronto,” Gant said. “You want some breakfast? Very good with the eggs Benedict here.”

“Anything on the menu got a lot of fruit?”

“Compote they call it.”

“That and coffee.”

Gant had the waiter at our table with a flick of his hand. If I were the waiter, I'd have hustled too. Gant looked like he began life as a large piece of granite, and some sculptor very long on imagination devoted a decade or so to chiselling away at it. His build was powerful, not weightlifter powerful, more like athletic, born-to-it powerful. He had black hair in tight little curls, a high forehead, an aquiline nose, full lips, and a chin with a dimple in it. The combination was pleasing, especially, I'd wager, to the ladies. He had on a tan suit that looked Rodeo Drive expensive. He knew how to eat eggs Benedict without dripping yolk.

I said, “I expect Trevor's given you a rundown on me.”

“A lawyer and a loose cannon.”

“Those were his words?”

“Some of them,” Gant said. “The rest were about how you're shielding the man who killed Ray Fenk. Sorry to hear about that.”

“Sorry about me shielding the guy Trevor says killed Fenk?”

“No,” Gant said. “About who the killer is. Dave Goddard. Always loved the way he plays tenor. Sounds like Stan Getz in the old days.”

“He does,” I said. “But, this is the real goods, none of that about Dave counts. He didn't do anything to Fenk except try to avoid him.”

The waiter set down the compote in front of me. It had eight or nine fruits. All fresh. I started on the blueberries.

“Another thing,” I said, “I know the last place you heard Dave play.”

Gant looked at me, not much more curious than he appeared when I first showed up at his table.

“Culver City,” I said. “Alley Cat Bistro, club in a shopping mall next to a shoe store.”

“Not bad,” Gant said, and went back to the eggs and other rich stuff.

“What I'm going to do,” I said, “I'm going to tell you a story, and when I get to a part that isn't accurate,
if
I get to a part that isn't accurate, you say stop.”

Gant poured himself more coffee from the silver pot on the table and got rearranged in his chair.

“Fenk dealt cocaine,” I said. “That's when he wasn't cranking out movies that don't qualify for Oscars. You were a partner, associate, aide, something or other, in the coke line. He struck a deal with Trevor Dalgleish to peddle twenty-four kilos of the normal goods. The two of them, Fenk and Trevor, probably made their first connection when Trevor went shopping in California for movies to show up here at the Alternate Film Festival. My guess is Trevor got on to
Hell's Barrio
, and that took him naturally to Fenk. From there, one thing led to another. Movies to drugs. Fenk must have allowed as how he sold cocaine, and Trevor must have come back with, well, now, isn't that a coincidence, he happened to be in a cocaine-buying mood.”

Gant's only reactions, as I talked, were to raise and lower his coffee cup and adjust his smile of irony.

“When it came to shipping the stuff up here, the cocaine,” I said, “Fenk got this fiendishly clever notion. He stuck the cocaine in cans of film. And the thing was, he had a lot of cans to choose from because, apart from
Hell's Barrio
, he was the California contact man, no doubt by appointment from Trevor, for the five other movies from down Hollywood way. No difficulty for him to pack the coke in with the movies and ship them on to Toronto. But for some reason or other he didn't want to risk putting the coke in the cans that held his own film. I doubt the reasons were artistic. Probably nerves. He already had two coke convictions, and on the off chance the cops or customs people, anyone in authority, got to the coke before Trevor, Fenk didn't want to be roped in as the owner of the film and of the cans that held it. So he came up with the idea of making Dave Goddard the unwitting deliveryman of the four kilos of coke that weren't in the other people's film cans.”

“Stop,” Gant said.

He had his right hand in the air.

“That was my idea,” he said. “The coke in Dave Goddard's saxophone case. Pretty inspired, you agree?”

“I suppose, if it didn't involve Dave,” I said. “He's had enough trouble coping with the world, he didn't need that.”

“Maybe,” Gant said. He fiddled with his empty coffee cup. “But the idea worked as an alternative to the film cans. I knew Goddard was going from the Alley Cat to Toronto. Read it in
DownBeat
. And it was a snap to switch his old case for the new case. Four kilos in the lining, he'd never notice.”

“Then Fenk started screwing up at this end.”

“The man could be irrational,” Gant said. “But I didn't expect he'd get into some kind of fight with Goddard, and Goddard'd strangle the dumb SOB.”

“Dave didn't. That's the message I'm trying to get across.”

“I hear you,” Gant said, not at all irritable, but maybe not believing me either.

With all the chatter, I'd still polished off the fruit dish. Very tasty. Marvellous what money can do. I went for the coffeepot. It was empty. The waiter was over with a fresh pot in a blink.

“All the rest I told you was on the money?” I said to Gant. “The story I just spun?”

“What'd you call me? Ray's
aide
?” Gant looked pained. “Not me, not for a guy like Ray Fenk. I got other irons in the fire, but, yeah, I gave Ray a hand now and then when the job shaped up profitable.”

“Well, this job's gone kind of awry.”

“Awry?” Gant said. “Man's been murdered. You call that
awry
?”

“The violence may not be over,” I said. “Reason is Trevor's customer up here is still short the four kilos from Dave Goddard's case, and he's not a man to hesitate doing damage to anybody between him and the cocaine.”

“Who you suppose's got the four kilos?”