Amateur Night

by K. K. Beck

  She put the paper down, turned her attention to her eggs Benedict, and looked around the incredibly civilized room, quiet except for the chink of glasses and cutlery and low murmurs. At the table next to her sat a good-looking man in a dark suit, who appeared as if he were on a business trip. His thick brown hair was still a little wet above his collar from his morning shower, and he had an appealing, freshly shaved look.

  Traveling and hotels brought out the libidinous in her, she thought to herself as she admired him. There was something romantic about the idea of strangers in transit, and the delicious sense she got when traveling of never knowing what might happen. Which was probably why she'd traveled so much.

  He caught her gaze, smiled at her, and she found herself smiling back. She managed to finish her breakfast without resuming eye contact, but when she left she gave him another little smile over her shoulder.

  Her spirits lifted by the brief encounter, she spent some time walking the historic streets, past cute little shops with tartans and bone china for the Americans, then went into the provincial museum and looked at Native art—dramatically lit massive totem poles in pale, bleached cedar. Stylized ravens, eagles, beavers, frogs, wolves, bears and killer whales transmogrified themselves into each other, faces sharing space with stomachs, wide eyes alert, with now and then blank-faced humans humbly intertwined in the composition, no match for the power of the thunderbird with his powerful wings. The exhibits were somewhat defensively labeled to indicate that the various chiefs had sold these works to the museum for reasonable amounts of cash back in the teens and twenties, and they hadn't been stolen by marauding colonial collectors.

  In the afternoon, she went back to the lobby of the Empress. There was a message for her at the desk from Gordon Trevellyan. She found a pay phone and called him back, noticing that the Canadian quarter bore an out-of-date portrait of the Queen. It had been minted at least one chin ago.

  “I've got what you want,” said Trevellyan—a little nervously, she thought. “A printout with Brenda MacPhersons from twenty-five to thirty years old. But there's been a bit of a wrinkle. How about if I come by your hotel and talk to you about it? I can be there in half a tic.” They arranged to meet in the lobby.

  He came in looking rumpled and seedy—the elegant surroundings made it even more apparent—and she shook his hand, catching the smell of tobacco and whiskey as he came toward her. “Let's go into the bar where we can talk quietly,” he said. “The tourists'll be coming in for their damn tea in a sec.” He looked at his watch and chewed a little at his yellowish moustache.

  In the bar, tricked out like Rangoon in the days of the Raj with lots of potted palms and Indian brasses, he looked around with the air of a slightly eager regular, apprising himself of who was here. No one took any notice of him, and they sat down at a small table at the back.

  “Got four of them,” he said. “All over the map.” He shoved a page across the table, fired up another Player's and hailed a waitress. There was a list of four addresses. One in Tofino, two in Victoria, one on Denman Island. There was a date of birth with each one. “That what you need?”

  “Yes,” she said. He'd mentioned a printout, but the information had obviously been transferred to this sheet. It had been typed on what looked like an old manual typewriter.

  He ordered a large whiskey and soda, and she decided that teatime was late enough for a sherry.

  “Forgive my asking, Mrs. da Silva,” he said. “But was this a collection matter? I wasn't quite sure what your interest in this person was,” he said, tilting his head sideways like a bird. “So I wasn't sure if you'd be interested in knowing about any other individuals who might be interested in this person.”

  “Someone else is looking for her?” said Jane.

  “Very common in collection work as I'm sure you know. Maybe the two of you could get together?” He paused delicately. Jane imagined there'd be a fee involved. She'd love to know who else was looking for Brenda. What she didn't want was for the individual to know who she was and what she was doing.

  “I hope I can count on your discretion,” she said. “I'd just as soon no one knew I was looking for Brenda MacPherson.”

  “Fine,” said Trevellyan. “Just thought I'd check.”

  “This person who's also looking for her? Is it a client of yours?” said Jane, trying to sound casual.

  He cleared his throat and ground out his cigarette in the glass ashtray. “Not exactly.”

  Jane decided she was tired of fencing around with him. After all, didn't he work for her?

  “Listen, Mr. Trevellyan,” she said pleasantly but firmly. “Can we be very direct?”

  He looked slightly alarmed.

  She smiled and tried to reassure him. “I can't help it, really, being American. Any more than you can help being subtle, because you're English.”

  “I'm not English,” he said with dignity. Damn. Now she'd offended him somehow, just when she was trying to be charming. He was probably a naturalized Canadian and was all prickly about the old country like some first-generation people could be.

  “I'm Cornish,” he said, sticking out his jaw resolutely.

  “Cornish? From Cornwall?”

  He looked defiant. “That's right. We're not really English, you know. The Anglos and Saxons and Normans and all that lot never really penetrated into Cornwall. We kept them at bay.”

  “Yes,” said Jane, who vaguely remembered hearing something about Cornwall at some point. “The Cornish language is related to Breton French, isn't it.”

  “That's right,” he said, with a gleam in his eye. “A Gaelic language.”

  “Do you speak it?” said Jane, fascinated. His English was certainly free of any colorful dialect.

  “Well, no,” said Mr. Trevellyan with irritation. “Di'n't have much chance now, did I? The English stamped it out along with most of our culture. But it was spoken up to the eighteenth century.”

  “It's wonderful that there are Cornishmen like you who haven't forgotten,” she said stoutly. The picture of King Arthur on his office wall flashed into her memory. She remembered his castle was supposed to have been in Cornwall.

  “King Arthur,” she said dreamily. “Tintagel.”

  “That's right,” he said, warming up to her now. “Perhaps you're familiar with the Cornish nationalist movement,” he said rather breathlessly. “Some of us feel that what with the EC and that, there's no reason for us to be part of England anymore.” All the craftiness had gone out of him. His blue eyes were rounded and betrayed the glaze of fanaticism.

  She nodded solemnly, as if the idea were neither new nor eccentric to her, and their drinks arrived. He broke off when the waitress came to their table with their drinks. Maybe he thought she was an English spy.

  Jane racked her brain for more Cornish lore. All she could come up with was that she'd once known a Marjorie Warmington who'd told her Warmington was a Cornish name. She felt she'd managed, nevertheless, to establish some fellow-feeling with Mr. Trevellyan, and seized the moment to get back on track. “What I was wondering, Mr. Trevellyan,” she said, “is who else is looking for Brenda MacPherson, and why? And how you know about it. Could you tell me that?”

  “Well there is a question of confidentiality,” he began.

  Jane smiled. “I'd be glad to reimburse you for any extra work the answers to my questions might have required.”

  “Well it's a little sticky,” he said. “You see the source I used to get this information, well she's the one who told me someone else was looking for the same party. It made it awkward for her to run this name by the people on the Third Floor, that is, they wondered why there was so much interest in this person and it put my confidential source in an awkward spot.”

  “The Third Floor?”

  He waved his hand dismissively. “My source was very keyed up about the whole thing. Had to do some fast talking. Claimed I put her in a bad spot.”

  “How much,” said Jane, “would it require to put her
more at ease?”

  He smiled. “Another hundred might do the trick. As a token of our appreciation for any awkwardness she might have encountered.”

  “Fine,” said Jane, reaching for her bag.

  He looked a little more relaxed.

  “Do you know who he is?” she said, sliding a bill across the table as discreetly as possible. Thank God the currency was color-coded. Hundreds had a kind of wine-colored ink. It made it much easier than if she'd had to root around in her wallet.

  “Just that he's an American. And that he is staying at this hotel.”

  “That's it? That's all you know?” Jane looked at her hundred a little forlornly. Even with the exchange rate she felt it was too much for the skimpy information. She wasn't about to add to it.

  She leaned across the table. “Mr. Trevellyan,” she said, steadfastly maintaining eye contact as his hand darted out for the bill. “I wish you'd tell me everything you know. I feel I can count on you. As a Cornishman. You see, my maiden name was a Cornish name. Warmington.”

  “It was?”

  “Yes. My grandfather told me wonderful things about the Cornwall where he grew up. He always told me we weren't English, we were Cornish.” She fixed him in her gaze and looked as intent as possible.

  He didn't say anything for a while, and she kept staring at him. Finally, he smiled a little and said, “Well, you're stubborn enough to be Cornish. My source works for a doctor. Every once in a while, as a favor to me, she calls up the people at BC Medical and gets some addresses. Some story about paperwork with the doctor she works for. They can run a search by name and approximate age. The addresses are right about seventy percent of the time. More if they're self-employed.”

  “I see,” said Jane.

  “Anyway, a day or so ago, some American got ahold of her name somehow and asked her for the same thing. I didn't realize she was doing this sort of thing for just anyone.” He sounded peeved, as if he'd somehow been cuckolded. “She said she didn't want to call back and ask for the same information twice.”

  Jane's eyebrows rose. “So she didn't keep it?”

  “No. Passed it on to this guy. Took me a while to convince her to run it all through again. She came up with some story for them about having lost the first run. But she didn't want to do it. Repeating it like that would bring attention to the whole thing.”

  “But you convinced her?”

  He nodded and took a sip of his drink. Jane wondered how he'd convinced her. Subtle blackmail, perhaps? She couldn't imagine the authorities approved of medical personnel getting into people's medical records, even if it was just an address.

  “And the upshot was the people there at 1515 Blanshard questioned her rather sharply about the whole thing. The poor thing was afraid the RCMP would be around to question her. I calmed her down.”

  “Good,” said Jane. “And you managed to get out of her what you told me. An American, staying at the Empress. You didn't get a name?”

  “No.”

  “You didn't, by any chance, give him mine?” said Jane.

  “No!” he said, looking shocked. Jane wasn't sure she believed him.

  Chapter 15

  “But your source,” said Jane, “she must have gotten a name.”

  “I presume so,” he said, looking uncomfortable.

  “Well you must have talked about him some. After all, she told you he was staying at the Empress.” Jane vowed to hang on like a terrier.

  “Ye-es,” he said.

  “Well, how did that come up?”

  “Because she said she contacted him here. Left an envelope for him.”

  “So she presumed he was staying here,” she said. Of course, that didn't mean anything. After all, she'd made arrangements for the desk to take a message for her. And they had.

  “I had the feeling,” sniffed Mr. Trevellyan, “that she'd hoped to see him again, and seemed disappointed that she could only drop it off.”

  “So he was presumably charming,” she said.

  “Well that's the whole thing,” said Mr. Trevellyan. He snorted. “She made a point of telling me how attractive this fellow was. I had to act vaguely put out, as if he were a rival. You need a bit of charm to get someone like Lucy to help you. I mean, she doesn't really need the money. You have to butter them up a bit, you know?”

  “I see,” said Jane, nodding and trying to look as if his powers of persuasion with the female sex were a given.

  Encouraged, he expanded on his theme. “That's why you don't go for the young, pretty ones. You go for the middle-aged ones with some fat on them. They like the attention. And besides slipping them a few bucks, you send them a box of chocolates or something.”

  “Very shrewd,” said Jane. “You're telling them they're not really fat.” Mr. Trevellyan himself had quite a stomach of his own—the kind Jane usually associated with boozers.

  “That's right. Besides, if you send flowers, the other girls in the office want to know who they're from.”

  “Do you think you could persuade Lucy to tell us this guy's name?”

  “I tried,” he said. “Just in case you were interested,” he added hastily. Again, she sensed just a shade too much expression in this last phrase. Unless it was her imagination, Mr. Trevellyan was an appallingly transparent liar. It had to be a handicap for a private investigator to be saddled with body language and vocal qualities that functioned like a polygraph machine.

  She imagined he'd tried to get the guy's name so he could sell him something. Like Jane's name, perhaps.

  “Do you think I could talk to Lucy?” she said.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “She wouldn't want the world to know she was involved in anything irregular.”

  “And of course, she wouldn't want to think you blabbed her name around,” said Jane. “After all, there can't be that many Lucys who call the Third Floor at BC Medical once in a while and ask for addresses and other confidential patient information.”

  He narrowed his eyes a little, and she thought maybe she'd overdone it with her implied threat. She actually felt a little sorry for him, but she forced herself to move right on to the close.

  “Could you call Lucy and ask for the guy's name?” she said.

  “It might be a bit awkward,” he replied.

  “Oh?” said Jane.

  “Mmm,” he said pensively. “She's feeling a bit skittish after BC Medical questioned her. I've just managed to calm her down. I wouldn't want her all upset.”

  “Maybe we can see what we can find out at the hotel,” she said. “We don't have his name, but we have Lucy's. Or you do. Maybe we can ask if the envelope she dropped off got to the right party. Something like that.”

  “Umm, we could do that, I suppose,” said Mr. Trevellyan in a tone that indicated they weren't going to do any such thing.

  Jane decided to take his statement at face value. “Good,” she said, pushing back her chair. “How about you just tell them that Lucy dropped off an envelope and you want to see if it went to the right party, and you forgot his name or something.”

  “Bit thin,” said Mr. Trevellyan.

  “Maybe you can thicken it up,” said Jane, with a nice smile.

  “I suppose so,” he said gloomily.

  “How's this?” said Jane. “Tell him Lucy So-and-so of your office dropped off some papers that were supposed to go to Mr. Smith, but that she mislabeled them, and you're not sure who they really went to. And you have to get them back and you want the name of the party who took charge of the envelope.”

  “Well, I suppose...”

  “Of course, I'd be glad to do it myself. But you don't want to give me Lucy's name.”

  “Mmm,” he said.

  “Of course I could try and get her full name from BC Medical,” she added disingenuously. She doubted this would work, but she didn't doubt that he'd be put out if his source were compromised by an off-the-wall phone call from her.

  “That would never work,” he snapped. He ground out his cigarette and loo
ked at her with an analytical eye. She figured he was trying to decide if she was threatening him on purpose or out of stupidity. She smiled.

  “Well, I'll give it a try,” he said. “No guarantees. I doubt Lucy left her name along with the envelope.” He knocked back his drink, with the gesture of a man about to embark on the kind of task he wants to get over as soon as possible. “I'll be right back,” he said.

  As soon as he left, Jane settled the bill, gave him a head start, then went down to the lobby to see how he was doing.