Читать книгу Keeper of the Flame - Jack Batten - Страница 14

When I arrived home a little after ten, Annie was in her office on the first floor writing in longhand on a yellow legal pad.

“Wouldn’t it go faster if you went straight to your computer?” I said. “Type whatever it is you’re writing there?”

Annie held her left hand in the air while she continued to write with her right, meaning I should wait till she finished. I waited.

In a couple of minutes, Annie stopped writing.

“Have you heard,” she said, “that writing something by hand facilitates the memorizing process?”

“I learned that for myself at exam time in high school,” I said.

“Exactly,” Annie said. “Write out stuff about the hard subjects and memorize it long enough to pass the exams.”

“Physics and chemistry for me.”

“What I’m doing here,” Annie said, nodding at the pad, “I’m memorizing the speech I’ll give at the book launch.”

“Reading the speech to the audience might be easier.”

“Yeah,” Annie said, “but then they’d see my shaking hands, and that’s probably all they’d remember — the nervous woman from Toronto with the rustling pages. They’d forget everything else about me.”

“Including the subject of the book you’re promoting.”

“I’m going to look the Columbia people right in the eye,” Annie said, “and sell them on Edward Everett Horton.”

I gave Annie a pat on the back and a kiss on the lips.

“You’ve had a bite to eat already?” I said.

“At this hour, of course I have,” Annie said. “But consider yourself welcome to yesterday’s leftover salads in the fridge.”

Out in the kitchen, I made myself a martini and arranged a selection of the salads on the dining room table.

My iPhone rang. I looked at the screen.

“Fast work, Maury,” I said on the phone.

“Jackie’ll see you Saturday morning around ten-thirty,” Maury said. “He wants you to know he’s very keen.”

“But not keen enough to see me tomorrow?”

“He’ll be at the hospital, which is one of the things I should brief you concerning.”

“Brief me concerning?”

“Jackie had a stroke last year.”

“The poor guy,” I said. “He’s not disabled?”

“His left side doesn’t operate so good,” Maury said. “And his speech gets kinda shaky. But nothing’s wrong with Jackie’s brain.”

“Or memory?”

“That either.”

“What about this hospital visit tomorrow?”

“He has one of those every three months, just in case,” Maury said. “Saturday morning, I’ll pick you up at Kennedy subway station, ten o’clock. You wait out front.”

“That’s the far east end of the Bloor line, right?” I said. “Jackie lives in Scarborough?”

“North York.”

“I can never figure out the damn suburbs.”

“Why else do you think I’m driving?”

Maury hung up.

I took my time over the martini, and still hadn’t started on the salads when Annie came out to the kitchen. She poured a glass of Chardonnay, and sat down across from me.

“What trouble did you get into today?” Annie asked.

“I met a girl who’s writing her Ph.D. thesis on Richard Russo’s novels,” I said.

“Truly?” Annie was smiling, “That’s not the kind of person a criminal lawyer encounters every day.”

“Practically never.”

“What’s the catch?”

“She’s Maury’s girlfriend.”

Annie registered a moment of authentic surprise, but recovered in a hurry.

“For one thing,” she said, “that must mean the girl has attributes other than intellectual.”

“Remarkable knockers.”

Annie smiled a different smile, one of the rueful sort. She shook her head.

“My conclusion, you meeting the girlfriend and so on,” Annie said, “is that good old Maury is already involved in the Flame case, if I can call it that.”

“I think of it as a file.”

“In the past, “Annie said, “whenever you’ve gotten yourself into a piece of illegal behaviour, your buddy Maury was somewhere on the scene.”

“You know what we should do?” I said. “You and I should go out on a double date with Maury and his girlfriend. Sal’s her name.”

“‘Double date?’” Annie said. “Honest to God, Crang, where are you? Back in high school?”

“This girl, she’s different. From the sound of her voice, she must’ve grown up in Rosedale. But speaking of high school, Sal probably went to Branksome Hall.”

“Got the Rosedale honk, has she?”

I nodded. “So there’s the Rosedale background and the Richard Russo thesis,” I said. “You’ll find her interesting and kind of amusing. We all go out together, you might get a more balanced slant on Maury.”

“Nice try, fella,” Annie said, She got up and refilled her wine glass from the Chardonnay in the fridge.

She sat down again. “Tell me how far you got with the Reverend on St. Clair.”

“You’re going to think about the double date?”

Annie hesitated for a minute. “If you’re really serious, I promise I’ll think about it,” she said. “Now, what about the Reverend?”

I patted my jacket pocket. “I obtained irrefutable evidence that Reverend Alton Douglas was in possession of the blackmail document.”

“‘Obtained?’ That’s a weasel verb if I ever heard one.”

“Further,” I said, plowing ahead, “I have an appointment on Saturday morning with a man who has contacts inside the Reverend’s operation that he wishes to share with me.”

“More weasel words. ‘Inside contacts’? That must mean the guy with the contacts has his own criminal status.”

“That was before his stroke.”

“I bet this guy’s a friend of Maury’s.”

“Good bet there, sweetie,” I said. “But bear in mind, I’m merely at the information gathering stage.”

“I wish no ill to the man with the stroke,” Annie said, “but you’re skirting dangerous territory.”

“That’s the trick,” I said. “I stay on the edges, getting all the dope that’s available, then make my move on behalf of the client who is paying me.”

“Do I gather you weren’t actually in the Reverend’s presence today?”

“Not that anybody would notice,” I said.

“You know, sweetie,” Annie said, “it’d be a comfort to me if you spoke to Reverend Alton Douglas before we go to New York. Get it out of the way. Put my mind at ease for when I’m not around to keep an eye on you.”

“That’s exactly my intention,” I said. “I’ll have a sit-down with him after church on Sunday.”

“He gives sermons? This part is on the up and up?”

“Just like ordinary clergymen, which proves my point,” I said. “The guy’s harmless.”

“Maybe this isn’t going to be the disaster I’ve been thinking it’ll be.”

“My opinion entirely.”

Annie stood up. “I’m going back to the speech,” she said.

“After two glasses of Chardonnay? Won’t your memory be impaired?”

Annie shook her head. “I’m just going to read it out loud for timing. The aim is not to exceed twelve minutes.”

“That’s the same way a defence lawyer thinks in a jury address,” I said. “Nothing to be gained from boring the folks with too many words.”

Annie carried her glass to the office. I transferred some of each salad on to a dinner plate, and started to eat.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” I head Annie say from her office, “courage is not a quality…”

Courage? Edward Everett Horton?

This was sounding like a speech I needed to hear.