Straight No Chaser (6 page)

The bully marched resolutely along the south side of Bloor, crossed at Yonge, went three blocks south to Charles, turned east, then into the Silverdore. As Toronto hotels go, the Silverdore is middle-class tourist trade. It has a utilitarian look, fifteen storeys of pale-brown brick straight up and five flags flying from the marquee over the entrance. The Stars and Stripes occupies the middle pole.

I hung back of the Silverdore's glass doors and watched my quarry. He didn't head for the front desk. He was pulling a key from his jacket pocket as he stepped toward the elevators. Must be a Silverdore guest. Crang, the master of deduction.

I walked to the other side of Charles and leaned my hip against a phone booth.

Now what?

I knew the guy had a room at the Silverdore. I knew, or suspected on reasonable grounds, that he'd knocked me out in the Cameron alley and had probably made Dave Goddard disappear. I knew he was connected with Cam Charles's Alternate Film Festival. And I knew he had a wardrobe of two or more summer jackets.

The question facing the house, how did I organize this dazzling array of facts?

I went up to the subway station on Bloor, rode a train and a Queen streetcar to my office, and got on the phone.

Abner Chase was at his club.

“I been telling you at least ten years, Crang,” he said after I identified myself.“There's no sense me stocking the Polish vodka. You're the only customer asks for it.”

Abner Chase always went to the point, whatever point was on his mind.

“This time I'm trying to do you a favour, Abner,” I said.“I think we might have a problem with Dave Goddard.”

“There's a problem with the guy, I won't know it till nine tonight.”

“That's the thing. Dave may be among the missing.”

“Missing?” Abner said into the phone. “He don't show bang on time the first set, Harper Manley'll have his balls in a vice. Or I might do his balls myself.”

“Dave hasn't called you today?”

“No reason to.”

“Harp hasn't heard either?”

“You jokin' me? The guy's all over the place—TV interviews, personal appearances, record stores. Dave'd never get ahold of Harper. He's a goddamn genuine celebrity. That's why I'm doing this fantastic business at the club, on account of Harper's getting known from the movies. You gotta've heard about that.”

“Hard to miss it, Abner,” I said. “Why have I always thought Harp is a nickname? Like Bird was for Charlie Parker.”

“Wrong. It's short for Harper.”

“Probably you and his mother are the only people who call him Harper.”

“His mother, nice old lady, she's dead.”

I was sitting in the swivel chair behind my desk. I swivelled sideways to look down into the wide sidewalk on Queen Street. A man in black pants held up by loose red suspenders was banging on a conga drum. A blonde woman who had the moves of someone on speed was twirling two large fans in time to the conga beat. People stopped to catch the show and drop coins into an upside-down grey fedora beside the drum.

I said to Abner Chase, “About Dave, anybody else you can think of he might be in regular touch with?”

“Ralph Goddard. You met Dave's brother? He's been getting Dave's act together the last couple years.”

“He hasn't done much to update Dave's style in clothes.”

“The business side I'm telling you about. Dave's a helluva musician, I don't need to remind anyone knows these things like you. He's just never acted like an Einstein with the dollars and cents.”

“I'll try Ralph.”

“Out in the sticks somewhere,” Abner said. “You better be wrong about Dave. He's a reliable guy, freaky but reliable.”

“Which part of the sticks?”

“Don Mills, I think. Look it up in the fuckin' phone book. Ralph's the kind of guy, you first talk to him, you think he's got mud on his shoes or something. But I dealt with him a bit now, and he's a pretty astute guy.”

Abner hung up, and I found Ralph Goddard's number in the phone book. I dialled. Ralph answered. He didn't sound astute on the phone. He sounded like a pussycat. Or a cocker spaniel. He wanted me to trot right over to his place.

“Crang, well, sir, I always meant to meet up with you,” he said on the phone.“Ever since you got Dave out of the scrape way back there.”

Dave had almost lost his musicians' union card over a fracas in a club. It seemed the manager refused to turn off the TV set while Dave's quartet was playing. Dave put a gin bottle through the screen in the middle of
The Beverly Hillbillies
. That was in Dave's drinking and drugging period. I argued his suspension before a union disciplinary hearing and, by and large, won. Dave's only punishment was the purchase of a thirty-inch Panasonic for the club.

I said to Ralph Goddard, “I hear you're managing your brother's career, Mr. Goddard.”

“Mr. Goddard was my dad. Call me Ralph.”

“Swell, Ralph.”

“Smartest thing I ever did for Dave. I got him to sign me over power of attorney, and ever since I been running the whole shooting match from right here in my den. Negotiate the fees, deal with the bookers. Mean buggers, pardon the language, those bookers. I should've done this for Dave a long time ago. But you know how it is.”

I said I did.

Ralph said, “I had to make my own pile. But now I'm retired, kids out in the world, and I'm doing for the baby brother. Get him something in the bank.”

“Reason for my call,” I said, “you happen to have heard from Dave this afternoon?”

“Not since Monday,” Ralph answered. “The first of every week I give him an allowance. Mail it if he's out of town. This Monday, I took him a money order to Abner Chase's club. Didn't stay long. I'm more of a country-and-western man myself.”

I said, “Dave may be in some difficulties, Ralph.”

Ralph sounded like he was sighing.

“Not the drink again?” he said.

“Nor the drugs.”

I gave Ralph a précis of the previous night's events.

“Well, that just bothers the dickens out of me,” Ralph said when I finished.

“The big guy doesn't mean anything to you?” I asked. “The man Dave thinks was following him?”

“Dave used to run with some real characters. But that was all in the past. My brother's a reformed person, Crang.”

“He drinks a lot of coffee all right.”

“You don't think we might be jumping the gun? Why, heck, Dave is just as liable to walk into the club tonight like nothing happened.”

“Apart from the boff I took on the head.”

“I guess I like to look on the positive side of life,” Ralph said.

I told Ralph I'd check at Chase's Club that night and let him know if Dave was absent. Ralph continued to look on the positive side of life. People who sound like pussycats and cocker spaniels tend to do that.

Down on the street, the conga drummer and his hopped-up fan twirler took a break to count their earnings. I swivelled back to the desk. The wits among my clients say my office looks like it's furnished in Early Salvation Army. I have a wooden desk as solid as the oak tree from which it came and badly chipped around the edges. There are four mismatched chairs, also wooden, also chipped, and there is a metal filing cabinet, which is green and chipped. I bought the desk, chairs, and filing cabinet at the Salvation Army depot on Richmond Street. I never reveal my secret to the wits among my clients. On the wall, I have a framed Henri Matisse poster. It's called
Jazz
and has a background of the loveliest blue I may ever have seen.

The phone rang, and I picked up the receiver.

“Fenk,” the voice on the other end said. It was Annie's voice.

“What do I do with it?”

“Write it down, fella,” Annie said. “It's the name you asked me to scout up.”

I wrote it down.

“On paper,” I said, “it looks like a typographical error.”

“Raymond Fenk.”

I wrote down the given name.

“He's a producer,” Annie said. “From Hollywood. He's got a movie in the Alternate Festival about Mexican illegals in Los Angeles.”

“You sure you're talking about the guy that floored me at the Park Plaza?” I said. “He doesn't look like a movie producer.”

“He isn't,” Annie said.“Not in the David O. Selznick tradition. The movie about the Mexican illegals seems to be the first legitimate thing he's got his name on.
Hell's Barrio
it's called. Imaginative, right? But get this, until now, Mr. Fenk's movies have been strictly for the porn market.”

“Cam Charles fed you the hot stuff?”

“'Course not,” Annie said. “This is original research. I got Fenk's name and the title of Fenk's movie from Mr. Charles. Cameron, I should tell you, is very distressed with you. The rest I just finished digging out of my library. I'm home right now, doing your legwork, planning on a soaky bath, putting on the finery.”

Annie was covering the opening movie of the Festival of Festivals that night. The new Norman Jewison led things off.

“In your library,” I said, “you've got books on pornographic movies?”

“Two reference works,” Annie said. “I counted eight listings for Raymond Fenk before I quit.
Betty Blows Baltimore
is one of his.”

“Alliterative.”

“Okay, sugar,” Annie said, “your turn.”

“You're wondering what nature of bad guy I've hired on to defend this time.”

“Something like that,” Annie said. “In fact, exactly like that.”

“Anybody's the bad guy, it's Raymond Fenk.”

“He looks the part, I'll go that far.”

“And I'm not acting for him.”

“I didn't have the impression you were trying to collect a retainer from him this afternoon,” Annie said. “So who is your client?”

“If I have a client, it's a man named Dave Goddard,” I said. “Whatever he's involved in—Dave's a jazz musician—it may be troublesome. Other hand, it may be nothing.”

“Oho, the familiar dichotomy,” Annie said. “Knowing you, I pick troublesome.”

“Dave, the history he's had, he doesn't deserve any grief,” I said. “But he might've found it, and Raymond Fenk could be the one who made the grief. That's as far as events've gone.”

Even to myself, I sounded defensive. I hadn't told Annie about the Cameron alley assault. I didn't want to get her worried. Or ticked off at my carelessness. No wonder I sounded defensive even to myself. Better to edge away from the subject.

“Annie?” I said.

“Uh-huh.”

“When Fenk sat me down at the press conference, how silly did I look?”

Annie said, “Who was the American president who was always bumping his head and tripping whenever he got off Air Force One?”

“That silly?”

“'Fraid so.”

Great line for an epitaph. Whom did the late Mr. Crang most remind you of, madame? Well, he had a touch of Gerald Ford.

8

H
ARP MANLEY
was playing “Milestones” again. So were the three young black guys in the rhythm section. Dave Goddard wasn't playing “Milestones” or anything else.

I had a vodka on the rocks and a seat at the bar. Chase's was as crowded as it had been the night before, except two of the principal characters weren't centre stage. Raymond Fenk was probably at the Silverdore practising push and shove. It was Dave Goddard's no-show that bothered me. Not half as much as it seemed to be bothering Harp Manley.

He ended the first set early and abruptly, and ignored his adoring fans all the way to the bar. Manley pushed past a waiter into the bar's service area and spoke to the bartender. The bartender picked up a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label with a jigger on the end and held it over a tall glass until the jigger filled and emptied three times. The bartender didn't add water. I got out of my seat and carried my vodka with me.

“You mind we talk about Dave Goddard?” I said to Manley.

He was wrapping a small white cocktail napkin around the bottom of the glass. He finished the job and had a long pull from the drink. I wasn't sure he'd heard me.

“Dave Goddard?” I said. Alistair Cooke couldn't have enunciated more clearly.

“Damn,” Manley said, “where's that kiddie at?”

His question was aimed at his drink.

“Let's discuss it,” I said.

Manley swallowed more Scotch and used the swallowing time to give me a look of close inspection over his glass.

“Kiddie plays real pretty,” he said. He spoke circumspectly.

“It's not Dave's musicianship I had in mind,” I said.

“Thought you was a critic.”

“A lawyer.”

“Dress like a critic.”

I followed Manley to the table beside the door into the kitchen. On the way, he drank the Johnnie Walker down to the middle of the glass.

“A lawyer, huh?” he said across the table. He had abandoned the circumspection. What I heard in his voice was the sound of a disgruntled boss.

“Yeah, and if you'll let me explain, I've got reason to think Dave Goddard may be in a piece of trouble.”

“Trouble's the only time a lawyer comes round,” Manley said. “Been my experience.”

“Lot of people's experience, but okay with you we stick to Dave?”

“Trouble, huh?” Manley had a little ridge of tough hair under his lower lip. “That kiddie ain't seen trouble he don't get his sorry ass in here real fast. You understand what I'm saying, Mr. Lawyer. I need two horns, man my age. I can't do all the damn solos. Ain't got the lip like when I was young.”

“Good point,” I said. What should I call him? Harp seemed presumptuous, Mr. Manley too formal. Abner Chase had an exclusive on Harper.

“Does Raymond Fenk mean anything to you?” I said. “That name?” Manley stared at me with an expression I read as incomprehension. His eyes were bloodshot, but apart from them and the patch of hair under the lip, Manley's face had a round and contained look. Symmetrical. No wonder the camera loved it. He had on a single-breasted suit jacket with three buttons. All three buttons were buttoned up. He wore a crisp blue shirt and a black knit tie that was knotted precisely dead centre of the shirt's wide collar. Short and rotund men don't always achieve the neat look. Harp Manley did. It was combined with an uncomprehending look.