Straight No Chaser (28 page)

Five minutes went by, uneventful, before a car stopped at the gate. It was big and American, probably a Lincoln, and the driver waited while three people got out. A man and two women, mid-thirties, dressed to party. One woman had on a satiny red dress that would stop traffic. So would her figure. Buxom and hippy.

“Want me to order you a drink?” the guy with the two women called to the guy at the wheel of the Lincoln. “What? Scotch?”

The answer was muffled.

“I'll be on the dance floor, honey,” the woman in red shouted to the guy in the car.

Ooh, ooh, her on the dance floor. That I had to check out.

The Lincoln pulled away, presumably to find a parking spot, and the two guards on the gate swung it open and let the happy threesome through.

“We the first?” the guy in the group asked.

One of the guards nodded his head.

“I'm gonna get in there and
shake
,” Red Dress said with a little yip in her voice.

Go to it, big gal.

The three frisked down the alley to the steel door. They turned in profile to me, and I couldn't monitor exactly what was going on. But, at a guess, I'd have said someone was examining them through the peephole. It didn't take long. The three seemed to be regulars. There was a quick splash of light as the door opened, and the guy and two women disappeared into the booze can. The quick splash of light disappeared too.

Thirty seconds later, another couple arrived, both in silks and leathers. Then a party of six, likewise chic. Did nobody ugly or shabby patronize the joint? Then a guy alone, probably the Lincoln's driver and Red Dress's honey back from parking the car. Then an erect, silver-haired gent who could have passed himself off as any country's president except he was escorting two girls who could have passed themselves off as Lolitas. Then a group, all guys, who had haircuts like Leonard Cohen's. Then a grey stretch limo with a TV aerial on the back. The limo released too many people for me to catch in a fast count. All I knew for sure was that the last person out of the back seat had on a clown getup. Just come from a masquerade? Maybe going to a masquerade.

The flood was on. People streamed in, all of them with the looks of a prime-time crowd. The gate's guardians gave the arrivals a close once-over and turned away no one. Neither did the guy on duty at the peephole. In fifteen minutes, by a rough estimate. I clocked about sixty men and women into Big Bam's booze can.

Time for me to join them.

31

T
HE TWO LADS
on the gate patted me down. That hadn't happened to anyone else. Must have been my jeans. And the voice that went with the eyes at the peephole asked my name. I answered truthfully. The peephole snapped shut, and twenty seconds went by before the steel door pulled open. A guy inside ran a metal detector over me.

“What's this about?” I asked. The guy might have been one of the lookouts from the afternoon at the Pits.

“It's about seeing if you got a gun. A knife,” the guy said. “You never been here before.”

“Big Bam's expecting me.”

“I know,” the searcher said, stepping back. “Have a nice night.”

“I'll try.”

I was shouting. The music from the giant speakers in the corners poured out at high volume. It was music that was heavy on repetition. Lot of bass guitar. Synthesizers. Overdubbing. It pounded through the huge space.

The busty dame in the red dress didn't mind the racket. She was on the midnight-blue dance floor shaking her formidable person. Her partner was the guy in the clown costume. They didn't have the floor to themselves. Eight or nine other couples were doing whatever was current and frantic in disco land. Did dances have names any more? What happened to the Twist? And was it necessarily a guy in the clown outfit? Did Red Dress care? Not from the expression on her face. Ecstatic.

There was room for another three hundred celebrants in the booze can, but the early arrivals were making enough whoopee to give the place a Hieronymous Bosch flavour. Half of the crowd was bellied up to the long bar, and behind it a dozen bartenders, all young guys, darted among the bottles. “Drinks six dollars!” signs over the bar read. “Cash only!” I had the distinct feeling not even Karl Malden could use plastic at Big Bam's.

I laid out six bucks for a vodka, and watched a woman in a tight spangled dress at a table near the bar. She was wearing one earring in the shape of a miniature Eiffel Tower. She leaned over the table, put a small straw in her nostril, and sniffed up a thin line of white powder from a small mirror. As she sniffed, the Eiffel Tower bobbed softly on the table top.

A black woman in a long white fur coat came through the steel door.

“Maisie!” some guy screeched at her.

The two rushed into each other's arms. The guy was one of the Leonard Cohen haircuts. The other haircuts were right behind him. They fell on Maisie.

Old-home week at Big Bam's.

The comings at the steel door—no goings—were regular and brisk. And the body count in the room rose steadily. So did the noise and the temperature. I was ready for a more settled ambience. I deposited my empty glass on a table next to a man's Gucci handbag, and pushed through the throng to the far end of the bar, where I knew I'd find the door into Big Bam's inner sanctum.

The door was in a pool of darkness, and I didn't see Tran until he straight-armed me in the chest.

“No one allowed in here,” he said, tough, peremptory.

“Hey, Tran, loosen up,” I said. “Remember me? Guy that cracked open a couple of Sprites with you the other afternoon?”

“Oh yeah, you.”

It wasn't in a class with the embrace the haircuts gave Maisie, but it was an acknowledgement. Tran was dressed the same way he was the day before, same short-sleeved white shirt hanging outside the trousers. Same muscles too. He raised his arm in a gesture that told me it was permitted to proceed through Bam's door.

I opened it and caught the full blast of the Big Bam bonhomie.

“All
right
,” he said, standing up from his chair. “Crang, my man, let's get
down
.”

He reached across the desk and gave me a complicated handshake. I fumbled it. Truong stayed seated at his desk. He didn't look like he wanted to get down with me.

“Love your outfit,” I said to Big Bam. He had on something in one piece, a jumpsuit maybe, dark blue, with lots of pockets and zippers.

“You don't get this off the rack,” Bam said, looking down in admiration at his own stylish self. “Made to damn measure.”

He rubbed his hands together and moved around the desk.

“Gotta have us a taste,” he said to me. “Owner's prices.”

“Long as you're joining me, pal,” I said, striving to come up to the spirit of the occasion.

“Russian again?”

“Or Polish.”

Bam left on the drinks run. With the door shut, the office was satisfyingly quiet after the roar of the room outside. And it was cooler. Truong, behind his desk, eyes on me, was on the frigid side himself. Or was it just a higher level of inscrutability?

“What's happening, Mr. Crang?” he said.

“Beginning to talk like your boss, Truong,” I said. “‘What's
happening
?'”

“I haven't liked the sense of you,” he said.

“I think Bam would phrase that ‘bad vibrations'.”

“You give me the impression of a man practising concealment,” Truong said. The guy was single-minded. Also accurate.

“Well, I have my little secrets,” I said. “Don't we all?”

Truong came quickly out of his chair. He took two steps to the old iron safe in the corner, and began to spin the combination dials.

“Was it something I said?” I asked.

Truong didn't answer. He opened the safe door and removed two long, narrow leather something or others. Truong tugged his shirt outside his trousers and buckled one of the leather things around his waist. It was a money belt, a belt with small buttoned pockets for holding bills. Truong buckled the second belt above the first and tucked in his shirt. He shut the safe door, and reset the combination.

“Can hardly tell there's anything under there,” I said. “Under your shirt.”

Nothing from Truong. I might as well not have been in the room. He was examining the top of his desk. It was the usual jumble of documents and record books. Truong picked up his pocket calculator and put it in an obvious spot. In his pocket. That was all he picked up. He adjusted his shirt, walked past me, and went out the door.

I got up from my chair and went around Truong's desk. It wasn't the desk I cared about. Or the safe. It was the window behind the desk, the window that wasn't painted over. I eased back the black blind an inch or two and peeked out. The window looked into the street. I could see the two men on the gate. I could see two swell-looking couples strolling toward the gate. I couldn't see anything else. No cops. No vehicles that might be unmarked police cars. Good. It was too early for the raid. I still had a lot to get done in the booze can. A lot to get done? I had
everything
to get done. All I'd accomplished so far was watch Truong go through an act that looked like he was taking it on the lam.

Big Bam returned. He was balancing three glasses in his two hands. Behind him, the boom and thump of good times trailed into the office. Bam closed the door. Relative silence again.

“Where's Truong?” Bam asked.

“Think he's gone to make a bank deposit,” I said.

Bam laughed. I didn't think he took me seriously. He settled in his chair with a Scotch. I had my vodka. Truong's soft drink sat fizzing among the papers on his desk.

“Basically,” Big Bam said, lifting his glass, “we're getting it on for some business here, you and me, Crang, but nobody said we can't party at the same time.”

“Business simultaneous with pleasure.”

“I can relate to that.”

“About the cocaine,” I said. “The four kilos. They're on the way with a third party.”

“Anybody I know?”

“No, but you're gonna love Darnell.”

“I'm gonna love the delivery,” Big Bam said. “After, I may love Darnell.”

“Delivery's always tricky.”

“
Tell
me about it.”

“For instance,” I said. “The cans over there” —I waved a hand in the direction of the film cans beside the safe—“when Trevor brought you the coke inside them, that was crafty of him. Very original form of delivery.”

“Cute, yeah,” Bam said. He looked at the film cans. “Not so cute when the other cans we had to swipe came up empty.”

“Well, not empty,” I said. “
Hell's Barrio
was in there.”

“When I said empty,” Bam said, “I'm talking coke, the four K I was short from Trevor. All the damn film in there doesn't count.”

“What'd you do with it? The film?”

“Still inside the cans.”

“Admirers of Ray Fenk's movies will be relieved you didn't destroy it.”

“Who's Ray Fenk?”

“The man you took the film cans from.”

“Didn't take them from a guy,” Bam said. “We took them from a theatre.”

“The Eglinton?”

“Movie place up the north end,” Bam said. “Nice place. I could get it on for a theatre like that.”

I congratulated Bam on his taste. But what I was thinking about was his apparent forgetfulness when it came to Raymond Fenk. He couldn't remember a guy he bumped off?

“This Ray Fenk,” I said, “he was the man Trevor worked with on the cans, the California end. Fenk put the coke in the cans in Los Angeles. Trevor passed them on to you. You took the coke out.”

“Except for the four kilos.”

“Right,” I said. “But that's who Ray Fenk is.”

“Guy in Los Angeles.”

“No.
From
Los Angeles. He's up here now.”

“What're we talking about, Crang?”

That was what I was beginning to wonder.

“Maybe,” I said, “about why the four kilos didn't reach you when they were supposed to.”

“I might be interested in that,” Bam said. “But basically not
very
interested as long as you're going to produce them any minute now.”

“I am, I am,” I said. “But, see, Fenk put those last four kilograms in Dave Goddard's saxophone case. Dave's a jazz musician. From Toronto. And happened to be in Los Angeles. At the time Trevor's contact was putting together the shipment. That'd be Fenk.”

I stopped. Big Bam was looking at me as if he had spotted an unidentified, unwelcome, and unnecessary object.

“I never was a vodka man myself,” he said. “What do they put in that stuff you're drinking anyway?”

Bam smiled at me to show he was kidding, but he was also making the point that my story had so far recorded at zero for him.

“That's the abridged version,” I said. “What I just told you.”

“Crazy about it, man,” Bam said. “But I don't think I got the time of night for the whole story.”

“You knew about the cans?” I asked, persisting. “You knew that's how Trevor was getting the coke to Toronto?”

“Right on,” Bam agreed, though sounding a trifle impatient. “Trevor told me the movies the coke was in. Six of them? Whatever, it didn't matter, 'cause he brought the cans over here himself, the cans that had the coke inside.”

“Except for
Hell's Barrio
.”

“I just told you, Crang,” Bam said, close to getting really fed up. “We had to go to that theatre. Break into the damn place Sunday morning and steal the cans ourselves. Waste of a good break-in, it turned out.”

“Sunday afternoon? This was after you couldn't get satisfaction from Fenk the day before?”

“What'd I want satisfaction from a guy I never heard of? Trevor's my man on this deal. I couldn't get anywhere with
him
. Couldn't get him to answer the damn phone.”