by Jack Batten
“Hey.” Annie stopped dead. “I think your guy may be in the neighbourhood.”
We were in front of one of the smaller boats. A man in nautical workman’s gear was putting the finishing touches to a paint job. He’d painted the name “Freeload” on the transom. Underneath were the letters “YCM.”
I said to Annie, “Does that look like sixty feet to you?”
“Yep. And the builder’s trademark on the side is Hatteras.”
“What’s YCM in English?”
“Yacht Club of Monaco, you fish.”
“It’d be a heck of a coincidence if there was someone besides Jamie Haddon in the good old YCM who would name their brand-new sixty-foot Hatteras by the same name as Jamie Haddon’s disk.”
The workman was wiping his hands clean of paint.
“Excuse me,” I said to him, “any idea where I might find the owner of this man o’ war?”
The workman frowned at me. He answered in French. Annie spoke up in the workman’s own tongue, and the two of them fell into an animated dialogue. The only words I made out were “monsieur” and “Haddon.”
“Merci, m’sieur,” Annie sang out to the workman, “et au’voir.”
Annie and I walked away from the Hatteras.
“It’s Jamie Haddon’s all right,” Annie said. She looked pleased as punch. “And the nice man back there says Jamie’s staying at the Hôtel de Paris.”
“Splendid piece of work, Cooke. Might be persuaded to keep you on as official interpreter.”
We went at a leisurely pace back around the curve of the harbour all the way to an elevator built into the side of the rock on the Monte Carlo side. The elevator went in only one direction from the harbour. Up. We got on board. Annie pressed the top button.
I examined the elevator panel. “Somewhere I pay for this ride?”
“Relax,” Annie said. “Elevators are the one thing you get free in Monaco. They’re how people move around. Move up anyway.”
The elevator didn’t take us all the way to the heart of Monte Carlo. We climbed one more steep hill on foot, turned two corners, and went past a hotel called L’Hermitage, which looked to be the last word in ornate architecture. We arrived at a small green square. On the south side, a building announced itself in gilt lettering across the front as the Casino. The Hôtel de Paris took up the square’s west side. I had been mistaken about L’Hôtel Hermitage. It wasn’t the last word in ornate architecture. It was the antepenultimate word, after the Casino and the Hôtel de Paris.
I said to Annie, “I think I saw these buildings on the top of a cake once.”
We went into the Hôtel de Paris. Its lobby was massive and marble, and populated mainly by poker-faced men in dark suits and shades. I read the menu outside the main dining room. Its prices were in francs with many zeros at the end. Annie went to the front desk, and spoke at friendly length to a clerk who was decked out in braid and brass buttons. The clerk placed a telephone call for Annie. He bestowed many smiles and bows on her.
“What did the obsequious clerk advise?” I asked when Annie was finished.
“The concierge, Crang. Mr. Haddon is staying at the hotel, oui, in a suite, if you please. But he isn’t answering his phone at the moment. Perhaps, the concierge thinks, we should try la piscine.’’
“La piscine. Ah … the sauna?”
“Good try. The swimming pool.”
La piscine, down two flights from the lobby and on the hotel’s south side, wasn’t the kind of setup that folks who swim at the Y would call a swimming pool. It looked like a large sculpture, scooped into the floor and painted a brilliant aqua. Around the sides there were dozens of tables set for lunch with cutlery and crystal that had been cleaned and polished to a high gleam. The tablecloths and napkins were white and aqua, the same colour as the swimming pool.
The south wall was glass and opened on to an enormous deck with white lounge furniture and a spectacular view over the sea. The deck also had most of the action. Inside, two couples sat over green drinks and one elderly gent was using the sidestroke to plough gamely up and down the pool. But outside, dozens of people sat and lay in groups, talking, gesticulating, drinking, soaking up the rays.
“See anyone who answers the description?” Annie asked.
I saw Mike Rolland before I saw Jamie Haddon. And I saw the young woman who was with Mike and Jamie before I saw them or much else in the vicinity. She was tall, if I could judge the height of someone who was more or less horizontal on a deck chair, and she had legs that went on for days. Her mouth was in the pouty thrust style that Brigitte Bardot introduced to the world thirty years ago. Her hairstyle was from the school of reckless abandon, trails of light brown curls running over shoulders and deck chair. She was wearing a yellow string bikini. Cellulite didn’t seem to be a problem.
“Guess who?” I said to Annie.
“Miss All-World Sexpot of 1990.”
“I mean the guys flanking her.”
“That’s the quarry?”
“Jamie Haddon is the blond smiler in the green tank top,” I said. “And the guy dressed like Ricardo Montalban in the coffee commercial, the guy doing all the talking, that’s Mike Rolland, musical connoisseur and my newest best friend.”
“You left out the dark kid just to the right of Haddon. See, the sunglasses in the hair?”
“I don’t know Dante Renzi by sight, but the dark kid’s particulars are about right.”
“Oh yes, the unwelcome lodger.”
I put my hand under Annie’s elbow.
“Let’s get to it, babe,” I said. “Do the up-close assessment.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mike Rolland came belting across the deck. I couldn’t tell whether it was to greet Annie and me or to head us off. Was he worried about my arrival on the scene? Did I read anxiety in his expression or merely surprise? Was it an earthquake or simply a shock?
“My very good friend Crang,” Mike bellowed. Whatever was cooking in his head, he projected the hail-fellow front. “And this must be your very charming companion.”
I introduced Annie. Mike reached for her hand, turned it over, and kissed the back. Annie didn’t seem to know what to do with the hand after Mike had finished with it.
“This is marvelous, Annie and Crang.” Mike’s voice was at peak amplification. His shirt, slacks, and shoes were white but with some kind of silvery sheen. “On your holiday, I am right, yes? What a great place to come, for sure. Have you seen the sights? The Casino?”
Annie started to say something about the extravagant nature of Monte Carlo’s architecture. Mike galloped over her.
“You must meet other good friends of mine and drink champagne with us,” he said. “From Toronto, like you, but you will not know them, I think for sure.”
“Well, Annie doesn’t, Mike, but you know that I know …”
Mike trampled on top of my sentence.
“They will like to meet you, my friends Crang and Annie.”
If there had been a table between Mike and me, he would have reached his foot under it and kicked my shin. He was giving me every other signal in the book that Jamie Haddon and Dante Renzi, if that was who the dark kid was, were supposed to come as a surprise to me. Or that Mike and I hadn’t met at Jamie’s. If Mike was playing a game, I didn’t see any harm in going along with it. Just let matters unfold, I told myself. Let Mike keep up his deception, if that was what was afoot. Maybe I’d find out about the disk and its whereabouts. At least I’d get a free glass of champagne.
“You will love these friends of mine, for sure,” Mike boomed.
He trotted ahead of us, back to the grouping of chairs around Mademoiselle Bombshell.
I spoke to Annie from the side of my mouth. “It’s okay if you put the hand down now.”
“What’s the etiquette?” she whispered. “Do I wipe it on my skirt
or just leave it damp like this?”
Mike was standing beside Jamie Haddon and the others looking as if he were Alex Trebek shepherding the players on Jeopardy! Big smile, hands outstretched to encompass the bunch of us, making a show of the introductions.
“My very good friends Crang and Miss Annie Cooke,” Mike announced. “From Toronto also. Wonderful, I think, all of us, what is the expression, bumping into one another in this marvelous hotel. The sun, you know, the sea, everything so beautiful, good friends together.”
The long-stemmed glamourpuss’s name was Babette. Her response to Annie and me was no response I could detect. She lay back in the deck chair and practised her languid air. The dark young guy was, as anticipated, Dante Renzi, though if I followed Mike’s introduction, Dante preferred Dan. Under either name, he was polite about standing up and saying hi to Annie and me. So was Jamie Haddon.
Jamie had high cheekbones and small hollows under them. His eyes were pale grey. He wore his blond hair gelled in short waves, and his face and shoulders were lightly tanned. He had the grin I’d seen in the photograph Pamela gave me, nonchalant, and he remembered who I was. I could read it in his face. I could hear the wheels turning.
“Two more chairs I need here,” Mike said. He had a hand in the air, snapping his fingers. “Which you like?” he asked Annie. “Which kind of chair?”
Annie said, “The one Babette’s in looks like it does wonders for a girl.”
Someone snickered. It was Dante. Or Dan. Babette continued to concentrate on her sang-froid.
“For sure,” Mike said to Annie.
Two guys pulled up in answer to Mike’s fingersnaps. They had on sports jackets and ties. One was lanky and had a black beard streaked with grey. The other was built lower to the ground, with the general contours of a large stove. Mike spoke to them in French. They hopped to their assigned tasks.
The bearded one dragged up two chairs, one like Babette’s for Annie, a white wooden armchair for me. The Stove brought a waiter from the restaurant section. He had the waiter by the arm. Mike ordered three bottles of Piper-Heidsieck. The two guys in the sports jackets retreated to the edge of the deck and didn’t take their eyes off Mike.
“You may not remember me, Crang,” Jamie Haddon said. He was displaying a low-key grin. It still managed to put dimples in his cheeks. “It was a long time ago. I’m Pamela’s cousin. Pamela Cartwright? Used to be Pamela Whetherhill?”
“And my wife in between,” I said. “Nice to see you, Jamie.”
“Wonderful.” Mike sounded elated. “You two guys, I bring you together, my good friends, and you each know the other one already.”
“Fortuitous,” I said.
“For sure,” Mike said.
“You’re still a criminal lawyer?” Jamie asked me.
“Can’t break the habit,” I said. “And you? See much of Pamela?”
“Constantly,” Jamie said. I had to give him credit. He didn’t smirk.
“I work for her father, you know,” he went on. “At Cayuga & Granark. The old boy invites me to family dinners and so on. And I see Pamela on her own.”
“With Archie?” I said.
“Oh, Archie, sure.”
“Pamela is a load of laughs,” I said.
Dan Renzi piped up. “She’s got a tongue on her if that’s what you mean,” he said. Dan looked to be in his mid-twenties. Dark and attractive, as Pamela had said, but not soft, as she’d also said. Closer to delicate. He was wearing a chocolate-brown jumpsuit.
“On the subject of Pamela’s tongue, Dan,” I said. “I can show you a few scars.”
Dan smiled. It made him look even younger and more delicate.
The waiter returned with two sidekicks, transporting three silver buckets holding bottles of champagne and a silver tray with six champagne flutes. Mike supervised the popping of the corks and the filling of the flutes. Jamie took care of the signing of the waiter’s chit.
“To all my very good friends,” Mike said. He lifted his glass to the toast.
Babette’s glass overflowed, and a splash landed on her stomach just below the navel. Her skin was a tawny colour. The champagne trickled down her stomach, leaving a clean, wet path until it disappeared into the bottom of Babette’s yellow string bikini. Babette giggled. It was the first sound that had emerged from between her sullen lips since Annie and I arrived.
“I was wondering,” Jamie said to me, “how did you meet, you and Mike?”
“Over a disk,” I said.
Mike choked on his champagne.
“What sort of disk?” Dan Renzi asked. He had a light, almost adolescent voice. It may have been registering concern.
Jamie didn’t say anything. His head made a swivel from me to Dan to Mike and back to me.
“CD,” I said. “Compact disk. You fellas know how Mike is about musicals. Keen as mustard. Well, I was able to put my hands on a bootleg CD of Evita. Absolute top-drawer quality. This is Meryl Streep’s secret audition tape, the one she cut when it looked like she was going to do Evita for Oliver Stone. Very big deal. I made Mike here a copy.”
“In Toronto?” Jamie asked.
“You’ll like this part, Jamie,” I said. “You know Sam the Record Man’s main store on Yonge Street at home? Mike and I, two complete strangers, we reached for the same album at the same moment, and that just got us talking. Liza Minnelli Sings Neil Diamond.’’
Annie made a noise at my side that sounded like grrr.
“In Toronto?” Jamie was talking to Mike. “You said your business was in New York.”
“Oh, those guys on Wall Street,” Mike said, “they tell me, okay, Mike, we do the deal for sure, but one part of it, you go see broker in Toronto. So I go, and lucky for me, I meet my very good new friend Crang the way he say.”
“How’d you like the shirts, by the way, Jamie?” I said.
Mike had some more trouble with his throat and his champagne.
“What shirts?” Jamie asked.
“Something between Crang and me,” Mike said. He seemed to be regaining his grip on the story. “I told him I want to take a present back to a very good friend in Monaco …”
“And I said shirts were always nice,” I finished for Mike.
“Jamie’s bought drawers of shirts since he got here,” Dan said. His voice had an aggrieved tone.
“Nobody’s stopping you from buying whatever you want,” Jamie said to Dan. Jamie sounded no more than mildly perturbed.
“A man can’t have enough shirts,” I said.
Mike jumped up and poured more Piper-Heidsieck. I watched to see if Babette would do her party trick again. But the glass didn’t co-operate.
I said to Jamie, “Annie and I were admiring your boat.”
“How did you know it was mine?” Jamie asked. “I just bought it.”
“From my company he buy it,” Mike said.
“Too big,” Dan said. “The boat’s way too big.”
“It was the name,” I said to Jamie. “Freeload.”
“By that, you knew I owned it?”
“The workman down there told us your name,” I said. “But it was the boat’s name that caught our eye in the first place. Very original. Witty. A hidden meaning perhaps? Free? Load?”
“It’s symbolic,” Jamie said.
“Of what?” It was Annie who asked the question.
“Annie’s a movie reviewer,” I said. “Occupational hazard with her, symbols.”
“Of a certain style of life,” Jamie said.
“Not exactly a style worth emblazoning on a boat, is it?” Annie said. She wasn’t inclined to let go.
“Everybody does it in different ways,” Jamie said, “and nobody complains.”
Before Annie could pursue Jamie’s enigmatic remark, Mike charged in.
“For sure,” he said. “
Jamie is looking at a penthouse around the corner from here. Same building as me, that I live in, also a penthouse.”
“Useless place to buy,” Dan Renzi said. He seemed to be filling the role of wet blanket.
“As long as I can afford it,” Jamie said, “what’s the problem?”
I said, “All the signs I read, Jamie, the boat, penthouse, shirts, Babette here, I’d say you got the world by the tail.”
“Babette belongs to Mike,” Dan piped up.
“Belongs?” Annie said sharply.
“Well, I don’t know how else you’d describe it,” Dan said. “Talk about beck and call.”
Babette held silent and steady with her pout. I gathered her English was a match for my French.
“You might say, Crang,” Jamie said, apparently getting back to my remark about him and money, “that a few plans have worked out for me.”
“Ships come in, so to speak?”
“Exactly.”
Talk lurched on to tourist topics after Jamie’s one-word summation. The change in subject came as an obvious relief to Mike. He waxed on about the treasures available in Monaco. Many of them, according to Mike’s lights, were the kind of bauble one might pick up at a shop I’d noticed across from the hotel. Van Cleef & Arpels. Babette snapped to attention at the name. Maybe they were her only three English words.
Jamie didn’t contribute much. He sat in his chair, affable and smiley, but also close-mouthed and attentive. He might have been pondering my presence in Monaco. Or maybe the transparently phony exchange between Mike and me over the disk had tripped some kind of radar. Or maybe, behind the easygoing facade, he was a guy who instinctively played his cards close to the vest.
In the general scramble of talk, Annie got to discuss Monte Carlo’s architecture. That spurred Jamie to open up briefly.
“They give the gambling a nice sense of formality at the Casino,” he said. “We wore tuxedos when we went last night.”
“Just to play the slots?” I said.
“No, no, my friend Crang,” Mike said. He looked disgusted at the thought of vulgar slot machines. “Baccarat. Very superb, my friend. This is in la salle privee. You must pay just to get in.”
