Читать книгу Riviera Blues - Jack Batten - Страница 8

Somebody, somewhere in Jamie Haddon’s apartment, was whistling “Memories.”

I was standing inside the apartment door. The first Abloy had got me into the house, the second into Jamie’s part of the house. The small outside lobby, which must have been the foyer before the old mansion was divided into flats, had dark wood panelling and shiny hardwood floors which continued into the part of Jamie’s apartment I could see from the doorway. The door opened directly into the living room. The whistler was deeper inside the apartment. As far as I could tell, he or she was whistling in tune.

I slammed the door hard. The whistling stopped in mid-bar. Silence took over the apartment. I didn’t move. Neither did the whistler. The standoff kept up for about fifteen seconds. Maybe my tactic of the slammed door had been too impetuous.

The whistler moved first. Firm footsteps, growing louder, echoed from a hall across the living room and opposite the door. Two lamps were on in the living room. The whistler walked into the light.

He was a guy about five-seven, four or five inches shorter than I am, but he didn’t look like anyone’s pushover. He was solid and muscular and barrel-chested. His black hair was clipped to within a quarter inch of his scalp. The cut gave his head the aspect of a missile.

“Hi there,” I said. I left my hand on the knob of the shut door behind me.

“Hello, my friend,” he boomed back. Even his voice had muscles.

“That’s kind of a record for me,” I said. “Only been here thirty seconds and already we’ve made friends.”

The little guy shot across the room and pumped my hand.

“You are a friend of Jamie, why else you come here?” he said. “And this makes you a friend of mine because Jamie, I am best friends with him.”

He had an accent. Nothing impenetrable, but he pronounced “him” as “heem.” And he didn’t use contractions, not “you’re” or “I’m,” but a precise “you are” and a definite “I am.” Italian maybe?

I played along with the instant friendship game. “My name’s Crang.”

“Michel Rolland,” the little guy said. “Call me Mike. All my good friends call me Mike.”

Not an Italian name. French?

“Jamie’s away,” I said.

“Of course.” The two words came out like an explosion. “That is how we are friends, Jamie and me. I meet him where I live. He comes to my condo.”

“This is where?”

Another explosion. “Monaco.”

“Ah.”

He could be French or Italian. Or French and Italian.

“Come in, my friend Crang,” Mike said. “Why not we sit down?”

Mike acted the host, ushering me to a pair of easy chairs. The chairs were covered in chintz, large red flowers against a fawn background. Pamela’s decorating hand. Across from me, short, forceful Mike was hard on the eyes in a head-to-toe silvery getup. Silver grey shoes, pants, shirt. A solid silver windbreaker was draped over the chair he sat in. None of the silver items had little pink polo players on them or miniature green crocodiles, but they looked to be in the high-priced bracket.

“What brings you to Canada, Mike?” I asked.

“Cats bring me.”

“Really? What, some special breed? You a vet?”

“No, no, on the stage. I watch it. I know all the songs by heart.”

“Oh, that Cats. Andrew Lloyd Webber and the other guy.”

“Beautiful music.”

“Listen, it’s too bad you came all this way, Mike. Cats closed in Toronto, I’m not sure, a year back.”

“No problem. Cats is opening in the city of Winnipeg, Canada, on Friday … where is Winnipeg, my friend Crang?”

“Keep going west, Mike. Can’t miss it.”

“I fly there tomorrow. This will make twelve times I have seen Cats. I love the songs. I love all musical shows. Everywhere there is a new show, I go. Or if I have not seen a show for a long time, I just go. Les Miserables is my best. I have been five times in three cities each time. Paris, London, and New York City. Incredible, you agree?”

“Took the adjective right out of my mouth.”

I had Mike tagged for a fanatic.

“What else do you do, Mike?” I asked.

“I shoot.”

Was he also a hit man?

“Pheasant is my favourite.”

A sportsman.

“Very big birds, but fast. Zip, zip, they go by. You need the good eye, my friend Crang.”

“I guess.”

“Last month I was in Scotland for the pheasant. Eight guns was on the shoot. In two days, we kill ninety-eight pheasant. Thirty-six were mine.”

“The good eye.”

“For sure,” Mike said. His voice came close to rattling the windows in the apartment.

“When I asked just now what you did, what I meant was, this is a very Canadian question, Mike, what’s your business?”

“Oh, I see. Lot of businesses. I have business in Antibes that sells cars. I have business in Nice sells houses and apartments. Real estate, yes? And in Monaco, my business is boats. That was how Jamie became my good friend.”

“Enlighten me.”

“Pardon?” he said with a French inflection.

“What’s the connection between selling boats and Jamie?”

“He bought one from me.”

“Little sailboat you’re talking about? Something to catch the light breezes?”

“That is funny. No, no, Jamie bought from me a Hatteras. Sixty feet.”

I drew a blank on the Hatteras, but the sixty feet caught my attention. That made it sound more like an aircraft carrier than a punt.

I said, “This is Jamie Haddon we’re discussing, young blond guy?”

“For sure.”

“He bought a sixty-foot boat?”

“Hatteras.”

“Cash money Jamie paid?”

“What else? Two guys go with the boat, crew. One guy is the captain. Other guy we call the mate, but he serves the drinks, you know, different things you ask him.”

“Big cash money, I’m getting the impression.”

“Very big. For sure.”

Mike stretched the “very” into two long syllables.

“Well, this is gratifying to us here in Toronto to hear how splendidly Jamie’s doing overseas.”

“Jamie be big man in Monaco, you wait, and Monaco, honest to God, this is a place where we got a lot of big men.”

“He’s only been there twelve days.”

“Spend the money, you get to be big man fast.”

“Really spreading it around, is he?”

“You know the American bar at the Hôtel de Paris?”

“Can’t say I do.”

“This is where I meet Jamie. Most beautiful bar in entire world. Jamie, the night I meet him, he buys drinks for everyone. For me, for this Spanish guy who is a count, for an American guy with his wife who is in the music business. Own a record company, I think. Jamie says to all these rich guys, your money no good here. They love him, new young guy in Monaco, handsome, lot of charm. Everybody think Jamie the greatest.”

“A vodka on the rocks, how much would that set me back at the American bar of the Hôtel de Paris?”

Mike shook his head.

“You have to ask,” he said, “you never go there.”

“I’m curious. Polish vodka.”

“Thirty dollars, probably.”

“You’re right. I don’t qualify.”

“Can I ask you, my friend Crang,” Mike said, “why you drop in? In this apartment?”

“Request of the landlady,” I said. “She wants me to keep an eye on the place.”

While Mike digested my improvised answer, I grabbed the initiative.

“What about you?” I asked.

“Me?”

“Why are you here?”

Mike didn’t miss a beat.

“Shirts,” he said, broadcasting the word with so much power I thought I felt the wind of his voice ruffle my hair.

“You looking for something in silver, Mike?” I said.

“Shirts for Jamie,” Mike said. “He tell me, long as you be in Canada, why not you please stop at my apartment and get me some more shirts.”

“The sort of chips Jamie seems to be in,” I said, “he could probably buy out every Hugo Boss outlet along the Mediterranean.”

Mike shifted his shoulders in what I took to be a shrug native to Monaco. It was less Gallic than Annie’s, less Anglo than mine.

“Jamie’s favourites,” Mike said. His eyes were steady on my face. “He wants his favourite shirts he left behind. Funny guy, Jamie.”

As a liar, Mike had a flawless delivery. But the shirt story didn’t hold water. Didn’t wash either.

“Well, Mike,” I said, “Why don’t I give you a hand?”

“Huh?”

“Round up the favourites.”

“Oh, for sure.”

We went down the darkened hall off the living room, Mike in front. The hall branched to the right at the far end. There were two rooms opening off the stretch we were in, one room on either side. I poked my head into the room on the right.

“No, no, my friend Crang.” Mike spoke quickly as well as loudly. “That is not the room for the shirts.”

Mike was right. A lamp was on in the room, and in the seconds I had for a fast glance, I’d say the room was Jamie’s den.

Mike ran his hand up and down the wall inside the room on the left side of the hall. He found the overhead light switch and turned it on. The room was a bedroom. A hell of a bedroom.

The bed was king-sized, set high off the floor. It had a frilly white canopy. The carpeting was white too. Mike and I stood in it up to our ankles. The walls were painted off-white, but what counted were the pictures that hung on the walls. Two Robert Markle drawings that concentrated on female crotches. A Dennis Burton painting from his garter-belt series. And a big Graham Coughtry canvas of a pair of entwined lovers.

“A fella could get horny just standing here,” I said.

“Merde,” Mike said.

I cleared my throat. “The shirts, Mike,” I said.

“For sure,” Mike said. He seemed to be having trouble taking his eyes off the Graham Coughtry.

There were doors on either side of the canopied bed. Mike mushed through the white carpet and opened the first door. A bathroom. He tried the second door and got lucky. It was a clothes closet. Shirts hung in it on hangers. So did a couple of sports jackets, a charcoal grey suit, and three or four pairs of slacks. The shirts, half a dozen of them, looked top quality, in silks and broadcloth and in elegant colour combinations.

“Just look, my friend Crang,” Mike said. He had a wide grin on his face.

“I’m looking.”

What I read on Mike’s face was the expression of a guy who was flabbergasted to find shirts that supported his cockamamie story about the favour for Jamie Haddon.

“I think Jamie will like for me to take all of these beautiful shirts,” Mike said.

He arranged the shirts neatly over his arm, and the two of us left the bedroom. I turned the light out on all that female flesh.

“Mission accomplished, Mike,” I said in the living room. I didn’t sit down. It might have encouraged Mike to remain on the premises.

“You too, my friend Crang?” Mike asked. “You have done the job for the landlady?”

Mike and I appeared to be operating from the same motive. I wanted him out of the apartment. He wanted me to leave first. I dug in.

“Plenty more to do, Mike,” I said. “Read the meter. Check the pipes. Speak to Jamie’s upstairs neighbour.”

Would Mike swallow that line? I didn’t think he had a choice, unless he was inclined to make a fuss.

“Well, my friend Crang,” he said, “we meet again maybe.”

“Wouldn’t be surprised. I’ll be in your corner of the world myself next week.”

“For sure?”

The hesitant sound in Mike’s voice said he hadn’t decided whether this was good news or bad news.

“A holiday,” I said. “Near Villefranche for a few days, and after that, Cannes. Me and a swell lady.”

“Oh, a holiday, my friend Crang.” Mike had decided. A holiday was okay. “You look me up for sure.”

“Any place except the American bar of the Hôtel de Paris,” I said.

I picked up Mike’s silver windbreaker from the armchair and folded it on top of the armload of shirts. I put my hand on Mike’s back. I may have been pushing him lightly as he went through the apartment door.