Читать книгу Riviera Blues - Jack Batten - Страница 4

I wasn’t crazy about the food.

“Is that salmon to your taste, Crang?” Swotty Whetherhill asked me.

“Hold on till I dig it out from under this yellow stuff,” I said.

We were eating at one of Swotty’s clubs. And not the best of them. I knew he belonged to the Toronto Club, the York, and the Concord. In terms of cuisine, they ranked in that order. We were in the main dining room at the Concord. The chef’s specialty was sauces that failed to disguise the sins of his kitchen.

“I imagine you were surprised to hear from me,” Swotty said. He was making inroads on a small steak that swam in brown gunk.

“Well, I didn’t think it was to cut up touches about the old days,” I said. “And I knew it wasn’t for legal advice, not unless you’ve done a major about-face in business ethics.”

“Pamela liked that in you,” Swotty said, “the cheekiness.”

“You didn’t.”

“Oh, I admire irony as much as the next man.”

“As long as we’re trading confidences,” I said, “I was scared stiff of you.”

“That seems appropriate.”

Fifteen years earlier, I had asked Swotty for his daughter’s hand in marriage. He said he’d keep Pamela’s hand and all the rest of her. Pamela and I got married anyway, and Swotty walked her down the centre aisle at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church. That’s a hike of about thirty privileged yards. Pamela was stubborn, an only child, the apple of Swotty’s eye. He gave in to her, not me. I was just a criminal lawyer with no prospects beyond a developing facility for defending persons charged with fraud. About five years after the wedding, Pamela and I broke up. I was still representing the con men.

“The fact of the matter, Crang,” Swotty said, “is that I have an assignment for you.”

“Assignment? In criminal law, we might say a guy has a case for us, or he needs a defence, or he’s in the glue with the cops. Assignment isn’t up our alley.”

“In this instance,” Swotty said, frost in his voice, “no one has committed a crime.”

The frost was in more than Swotty’s tone. He had snowy white hair, and his face was set in long vertical lines, like cracks in a glacier. I used to make up my own names for the guy. Wintry Whetherhill. Swott of the Antarctic. I never said the names out loud. Not even to Pamela.

“The no one who hasn’t committed a crime,” I said, “anybody I know?”

“Jamie Haddon. He would have been a youngster when you were in the family.”

“Sure. The blond kid with the long eyelashes. If Marilyn Monroe had had a younger brother, it could have been Jamie Haddon.”

“I would not use your description,” Swotty said, icy again, “but, yes, you seem to remember Jamie.”

“Your cousin’s son, right? Gerald Haddon, the branch of the family that stayed down in Strathroy? The country cousins?”

“Gerald did not stay in Strathroy,” Swotty said. “We left him there. Gerald has never measured up.”

“Might have something to do with whoever sets the standards.”

Swotty ignored this. “There was to be no mollycoddling simply because Gerald is family.”

“A man who does household work. I read that somewhere.”

“What?”

“Mollycoddle.”

A chill wind blew from Swotty’s side of the table. “In any event,” he continued, “Jamie is the first male Haddon to show real promise. That, of course, is why I brought him to Toronto. To the trust company.”

When a Whetherhill spoke of “the trust company,” it sounded as if the words came in uppercase letters: The Trust Company. The Trust Company had been one of the two sacred subjects that dominated conversation around the Sunday night dinner table at Swotty’s house. The other subject was The Family. Every Sunday night was a command performance for the Whetherhill clan. Always roast beef, always talk about The Family and The Trust Company. The family was Whetherhill, and the trust company was Cayuga & Granark. Swotty’s grandfather, a tight-lipped, parsimonious guy, had founded it in Strathroy. His portrait hung in Swotty’s front hall. The Whetherhills — grandfather, father, Swotty — were born with a sharp eye for a dollar, and Cayuga & Granark had provided the family fortune. It ranked somewhere in the top ten family fortunes in Toronto. Swotty’s father moved Cayuga & Granark’s head office out of Strathroy to a steel and glass tower on Bay Street. Among the company’s employees, it was known informally as C&G. Among its customers, it was known even more informally as Callous & Grasping.

“What is it about Jamie Haddon that needs me brought into the picture?” I asked Swotty.

“He is on vacation in Monaco.”

I stopped scraping yellow stuff off my carrots, and took a slow sip of white wine. It was on the sweet side.

“How is it you know I’m taking a holiday in the south of France? I don’t recall releasing the news to the press.”

“Pamela told me.” Swotty seemed to be getting a kick out of his one-upmanship. “She mentioned that you and, your, um, ‘friend’ were off in a week or so.”

“She has a name,” I said. “My friend. Annie B. Cooke.”

“A movie critic, I understand.”

“Annie prefers reviewer, movie reviewer,” I said. “How did Pamela find out about the trip? I haven’t run across her more than two or three times in ten years, and none of them has been recent.”

“I do not question Pamela on her sources of information.”

I let the waitress take away my plate. She had to be nimble not to spill the puddle of leftover sauce. Swotty and I ordered the same dessert, raspberry sorbet.

“Between rambles on the Côte d’Azur,” I said, “you want me to look up Jamie in Monaco?”

“Naturally I regard this as a business arrangement. I will pay accordingly.”

“As far as I know,” I said, “there’s nothing criminal about a young guy taking a vacation in Monaco.”

“I have already made the point I am not retaining you in your capacity as a lawyer,” Swotty said. “Why do you insist on raising the issue of crime?”

“Something weird in the air,” I said. “You summoning me from out of the blue. My suspicious nature. All of the foregoing.”

Swotty made like an icicle for a few moments.

“It is simply this,” he said finally. “I received a disturbing postcard from Jamie two days ago.”

“What, a naughty snap of Princess Caroline on the beach?”

“It was the wording of the message that was disturbing,” Swotty said. He looked uncomfortable. “Jamie wrote, ‘Having a wonderful time. Glad you aren’t here.’”

“Cousin Gerald must have been out of the house the day Jamie learned manners.”

“Moreover,” Swotty added, “the salutation on the card read ‘Hi, Cuz.’ I have been ‘Cousin John’ to him from the time he was a small boy, except at the trust company in front of other employees. There, he quite properly calls me ‘Mr. Whetherhill.’”

“Let’s get off the names,” I said. “What’s the deal in Monaco? Strictly holiday, or does trust company business come into it?”

“Jamie asked for a leave of absence. Three months. He told me he had never had the opportunity to look about the world. That was quite true. I took Jamie straight into the trust company after he obtained his commerce degree. By all means, I said to him, enjoy the leave of absence. Broaden yourself.”

“You didn’t have impudent postcards in mind.”

“I cannot help thinking something is wrong with the boy.”

“How old is Jamie now?”

“He’ll be thirty on his next birthday,” Swotty said. “This postcard has deeply disturbed me, Crang.”

I polished off the watery sorbet and ate the desiccated wafer cookie that came with it.

“On the map, Monaco looks little,” I said. “But, I don’t know, standing on the local street corners watching out for Jamie Haddon isn’t what I had in mind as a holiday. That probably goes double for Annie.”

“Perhaps it is far-fetched asking you as I am,” Swotty said, “but for all your curious ways, Crang, I regard you as a resourceful man.” He almost gagged on the compliment.

“Annie and I are renting an apartment that’s in hailing distance of Monaco,” I said. “I don’t suppose it’d hurt to hop over for lunch. Do our bit for Monacan tourism. Is that the right word? Or Monesque?”

“Excellent,” Swotty said. He rubbed his hands together. “I am most grateful, Crang.”

The waitress brought coffee. Swotty dumped cream and sugar in his. I took mine black and, courtesy of the Concord’s brewmaster, bitter.

“One large point,” I said. “How do you know Jamie’ll still be around Monaco when Annie and I arrive? Make that two large points. Assuming Jamie is in the country, can you pin down details, like a hotel?”

“Jamie has been gone only twelve days,” Swotty said. “I understand his intention is to make Monaco his base for at least the first month of the trip.”

“He told you that?”

“No, Pamela told me.”

“Pamela again,” I said. “She seems to be the fount of all wisdom in the Jamie Haddon case.”

“It is not a case, Crang,” Swotty said. “Must I keep repeating myself?”

“A situation.”

“A concern.”

“I’ll have to settle for that,” I said. “What’s Pamela call it?”

“She and Archie have always been very generous with Jamie.”

Archie was Pamela’s husband. Second husband. He was in a family business too. Cartwright Products. The products were cellophane wrappers, the kind processed food comes in. There was apparently a lot of money in cellophane. Archie Cartwright was a wealthy man. But not as wealthy as Swotty. Or as Pamela.

“What about a hotel?” I asked Swotty.

“I have no information on that, I regret.”

“Not even from Pamela?”

“No,” Swotty said, “but I have a place where you might inquire.”

Swotty permitted himself a small self-satisfied smile around the corners of his mouth. A thaw in the great glacier.

“The postcard Jamie sent me,” he said, “is the kind that restaurants give out as advertisements.”

“Overlit photograph of the dining room? Name of the place, address, phone number? That type of card?”

“Exactly. The restaurant seems to be close to the Monaco harbour. It stands to reason Jamie had a meal at this establishment. Perhaps he frequents it. The people there might know him by sight.”

“I’m not sure where reason stands in this,” I said. I was trying not to sound as if I was humouring Swotty. “But, yeah, I’ll stop by the restaurant. Might go there for lunch. What does Jamie like in the way of food? I mean, would he eat here? The Concord?”

“The restaurant,” Swotty said, skipping past my question, “is called Le Restaurant du Port.”

“Just a sec.”

I reached for a pen and notebook from the inside jacket pocket of my best blue suit. I’d worn the suit especially for the occasion. Nine hundred dollars’ worth of Holt Renfrew fabric.

“Crang, please.” Swotty’s voice had a note of reprimand. “Remember where you are.”

I remembered. The Concord forbade the transaction of business in the dining room. No papers could be examined, documents exchanged, facts recorded. I took my hand out of the inside pocket minus the notebook and pen.

“Close call,” I said.

The waitress gave me a big wink. Must have caught my faux pas. She refilled our coffee cups.

“Suppose I do stumble across our Jamie,” I said. “Then what?”

“I have a given a great deal of thought to that.” Swotty was using the tone he probably adopted for turning down businessmen who hit up C&G for big loans on inadequate collateral. “When you locate Jamie, you are to phone me immediately.”

“That’s all? I’m just the bird dog?”

“I am placing confidence in you to make an assessment of Jamie. His appearance, his conversation, his demeanor. Your task is to give me information on which I may base a judgment about the boy.”

My enthusiasm for the Jamie Haddon project was wavering. I could do Swotty the modest favour for old times’ sake, even if those times hadn’t much to recommend them except their age. But could he be holding out on me? Was he as shaken up over one snotty postcard as he made out? Or were there bigger issues here?

Swotty’s evasiveness put one damper on my zeal. Annie might represent another. The trip was our first excursion abroad in the three years we had been a romantic item. Annie would have one morning’s work conducting a seminar on film reviewing at the Canadian university on the Riviera, but the rest of the days were to be our time together, and the thought of scouting after young Haddon paled when I compared it to a vision of Annie and me sauntering hand in hand in the streets of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. Lingering over a bottle of vin rouge. Driving to Saint-Paul de Vence to lunch at whatever the place was where Yves Montand played boule with the friendly peasants.

“I hope you appreciate the responsibility I am entrusting you with, Crang,” Swotty Whetherhill said.

“Oh, yeah, sure.”

We finished our coffee. Swotty lead the way to the Concord’s smoking room, where two middle-aged fogeys were puffing on cigars the size of Cuba. My ex-father-in-law and I sat in a pair of facing leather chairs while he repeated the name of the restaurant in Monaco and recited the address from memory. I jotted the name and address in my notebook.

Swotty didn’t offer me a glass of port or a chance to look over the Concord’s bound volumes of Punch. Out on the street, he shook my hand solemnly and turned west, toward The Trust Company. His pace as he walked away from me was stately and remote and inevitable. Kind of like an iceberg.