Riviera Blues

by Jack Batten

  “Jamie lost fifty thousand francs,” Dan said. He sounded like a tattletale.

  “Wait till I develop my own system,” Jamie answered. “I’ll win it back. No sweat.”

  “Systems are what you’re good at?” I asked.

  “A hobby of mine.” Jamie grinned. “You could say that. Or maybe” — the grin stretched — “you could say an obsession.”

  “For bringing in ships?”

  Jamie didn’t bother answering, and I couldn’t see much reason for Annie and me to stick around any longer. The champagne bottles were upside down in the buckets. Babette’s appeal had worn thin. And the conversation wasn’t as bracing as it’d been when Mike and I were exchanging falsehoods.

  “Time for Annie and me to push on,” I said. “A sightseer’s feet never rest.”

  “For sure you will be busy,” Mike said. He didn’t seem inclined to prolong our visit. “If you are in Monaco again, I buy you vodka on the rocks. But, you know, you will not have the time probably. Next visit, for sure.”

  “Until then, Mike,” I said. “And don’t forget to play the disk for the fellas.”

  “The disk?”

  “Meryl Streep not crying for Argentina. Or is it the other way around?”

  “Oh, Evita, for sure.” Mike smiled broadly.

  Annie and I went out through la piscine. The elderly gent was still in the pool. He’d switched to the breast stroke.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  We retraced the route that had got us up to Monte Carlo. Past L’Hôtel Hermitage, down the almost vertical street.

  “Honestly,” Annie said, “Liza Minnelli Sings Neil Diamond, two people you can’t abide.”

  “Well, let’s see, how about Tony Bennett Sings Johnny Mercer? No, that wouldn’t have sparked the same recognition from the gang on the deck.”

  “I didn’t get the reason for all the blarney in the first place.”

  “It was a way of seeing which way the wind was blowing,” I said. “Finding out who was tuned in to what information. The other reason was that I got a kick out of the bullshitting once Mike Rolland set the pace.”

  “That man. Five minutes in his company, I was expecting him to sell me a piece of the rock.”

  “Sincerity isn’t Mike’s strong suit. Or honesty. Some chaps wouldn’t fault his taste in female pulchritude, though.”

  “Oh sure,” Annie said, “as long as you don’t mind if the beautiful bundle has the sensibility of a mud wrestler.”

  The elevator carried us to harbour level. We started toward La Condamine.

  “I deduce from Mike’s dipsy-doodling he’s got the disk and doesn’t want Jamie to know it’s in his possession.”

  “That’s obvious,” Annie said. “Haddon was surprised to hear Rolland had even been to Toronto.”

  “So Mike wasn’t on a mission for Jamie.”

  “Then how did Rolland know about the disk?”

  “And who stuck it behind that piece of garter belt mania?”

  Behind us, running feet pounded on the pavement. I glanced back. The runner was Dan Renzi. The beginnings of sweat stains showed in the armpits of his chocolate-brown jumpsuit.

  “Mr. Crang, sorry.” Dan was puffing hard. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Go right ahead, Dan,” I said, “as soon as your lungs deal out more oxygen.”

  Dan stood with his hands on his hips, taking deep breaths. He looked at Annie.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Annie said to him. “Whatever you tell Crang, I’ll worm out of him anyway.”

  I put my arm around Annie’s shoulders and winked at Dan.

  “All right,” he said. He had his air intake under control. “You’re a lawyer, Mr. Crang, and I think I have a problem.”

  “Good opening, Dan,” Annie said. “Crang’s clients always begin that way.”

  “If you want to discuss something,” I said to him, “let’s make it over lunch. Except not at the prices you may be growing accustomed to.”

  “There’s a nice place I go to on my own,” Dan said. He favoured us with a guileless smile. “Sometimes when we eat at the hotel,” he added, “I’m not sure what it is on the plate.”

  Dan’s restaurant was two more blocks along the harbour and another two into the heart of La Condamine. It was called Le Texan. A large primitive painting of the Alamo graced the wall inside the door. The menu on display by the bar advertised burritos and chili dogs.

  “We come to the Riviera,” Annie said, “and for our first lunch, we might as well be in Laredo.”

  A waiter who spoke American showed us to a table under a rack of ten-gallon hats. I asked if Tom Mix had ridden by lately.

  “No,” the waiter said, “but Hopalong Cassidy’s in the back room drinking sarsaparilla.”

  “Everybody does schtick these days,” Annie said.

  Dan fiddled with the empty wineglass at his place.

  I said to him, “Is your problem the kind that could run you afoul of any country’s laws?”

  “Well, I don’t like to think so,” he said.

  I waited.

  “It’s about a disk,” Dan said. He checked my reaction. I had my noncommittal expression in place. “When you and Mike Rolland were talking about a disk earlier,” Dan said, “neither of you meant a CD. Am I right?”

  “As rain, Dan. You caught me in a fib. The disk wasn’t Evita.”

  “It was a computer disk?”

  “One that has ‘Operation Freeload’ printed on the outside.”

  “How in the world do you know about it?”

  “Uh, uh, Dan.” I waggled a finger at him. “That’s my story. At the moment, we’re focusing on yours.”

  Dan took a breath. “I sneaked it away from Jamie,” he said. “Then I hid it.”

  “Scotch-taped it to a painting in the Rowanwood apartment?”

  “In Jamie’s bedroom, yes.”

  “This will come as a blow to Pamela Cartwright,” I said to Dan. “She’s got you pegged as underequipped in the cerebral department.”

  “I never could stand the woman.” Dan’s delicate features did their darnedest to look irate. “It was hopeless between us from the start. I just clammed up whenever she was around.”

  I asked, “What is it about the disk that makes it such a valuable commodity to everybody?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Let me try again,” I said. “Why did you, in your own description, sneak it away from Jamie?”

  “As protection.”

  “For whom?”

  “Me. And really for Jamie’s own sake.”

  “Dan, this is getting to be in the category of pulling teeth.”

  “Well, the worst is that Mike Rolland has the disk now.”

  “Nice going, big guy,” Annie said to me. “That’s one solid fact you already had nailed down.”

  We ordered. I asked for chicken tacos. Dan wanted a cheeseburger. Annie said she’d try a salad called the Rio Grande. She looked skeptical. We got a big carafe of the house white.

  “Autobiography might be in order about here, Dan,” I said. “How long have you known Jamie?”

  “Oh, it seems like years. We recognized we were kindred spirits the day we met.”

  “There’s a phrase I haven’t heard in a while.”

  “It’s true,” Dan said. His tone was hurt and earnest. “We want the same things from life. Travel and freedom and, you know, no more suits and ties.”

  “That’s what you wear in your job?”

  “I did when I had one. I was an assistant manager at a Bank of Nova Scotia branch. That’s how Jamie and I met. About eight or nine months ago, one of the bank’s clients needed more financing than we could advance. I phoned Cayuga & Granark on the client’s behalf. Jamie was the trust officer assigned to the file. He an
d I started talking, and really we’ve never stopped.”

  “Talking about what?” I swallowed some wine. Dan hadn’t touched his. Annie was being forgetful about hers. Fine, left more for the serious drinker in the group.

  “We talked about getting away from the rat race,” Dan said. “About taking off to countries we had always dreamed of visiting. Stopping at funny little places that appealed to us on the spur of the moment. Working at jobs along the way when we needed money. But keeping on the move, living simply.”

  “L’Hôtel de Paris isn’t exactly a youth hostel, Dan.”

  Dan’s lower lip trembled. “That just shows you how Jamie has changed.”

  The waiter brought lunch. Annie’s salad was inside a thin pastry shell. It had marinated chicken slices, wedges of cucumber and tomato, sprinkled cheese, salsa. She ate some and looked much less skeptical.

  “Exquisite,” she said.

  My tacos fell short of exquisite, but they were damned tasty. Dan took a nibble from his cheeseburger and began to talk again. He exuded youthful candour. I wasn’t sure whether it was genuine or adopted for my benefit.

  “Right out of the blue, Jamie started making everything more grand,” Dan said. “All of a sudden, it was to be the best hotels. We were going to find a ski chalet in Austria. Buy our own cottage on a Greek island. Jamie’s attitude got away entirely from our original plan of keeping things simple and going on that way forever.”

  “From what I’ve heard,” I said, “Jamie’s definition of forever stops at three months.”

  “Oh, you know about the leave of absence?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, it isn’t true at all.” Dan sounded miffed. “I thought it was true. Partly true, that is. See, Jamie originally told me we’d go back to Toronto after three months and he’d formally resign from C&G and everything, and then we’d get on with, you know, travelling the world. But I came over here a week after Jamie, and he said, ‘Oh, forget the three months thing. I’m never going back,’ he said, and ‘The trust company can just stuff it.’”

  “And Pamela could do roughly the same? Stuff it?”

  “She is going to be stunned.” A half smile came and went from Dan’s face. “I shouldn’t sound callous, I guess,” he said.

  I lifted the carafe and topped up Annie’s glass and Dan’s. My own required filling from the bottom.

  “What about the financing, Dan?” I asked. “How were you two drifters intending to pay for Austrian chalets and Greek cottages?”

  “That wasn’t a problem. Jamie told me it wasn’t.”

  “You accepted his word?”

  “Why shouldn’t I?” Dan’s voice became firm and virtuous. “I still wanted to stick to the simple approach we had in the first place. In fact, I know we’ll go back to it when Jamie gets over his craziness. But the money, well, Jamie said we could afford expensive places. I believed him.”

  “When did Jamie’s switch happen?” I asked. “When did he start talking rich as Rockefeller?”

  “A month or so ago.”

  “Around the time the disk made its appearance?”

  “That’s right.” Dan sounded cautious.

  “And you made a connection between the disk and Jamie’s glimpsing of golden horizons?”

  “I guess I did.”

  “Which explains why you took possession of it?”

  “Of the disk, yes.” Dan pushed his cheeseburger about three inches to the right on his plate. He had eaten no more than a couple of mouthfuls. “Getting it wasn’t difficult,” Dan continued. “Jamie kept the disk in his safety-deposit box. I borrowed the key and went to the box at Jamie’s bank. I signed his name, and nobody there noticed I wasn’t the box’s owner. Banks are like that.”

  “What did you have in mind? Holding the disk for ransom?”

  “You might say so.”

  “I just did.”

  “I told you earlier it was for Jamie’s own good, Mr. Crang. I knew the disk was important to Jamie. My idea was to tell him I was going to keep it until he came to his senses about the way we were supposed to be organizing our lives.”

  “I’ve often found confrontation an effective tactic myself, Dan,” I said.

  Annie made a rude noise into her salad.

  “How did Jamie react?” I asked Dan.

  “He didn’t,” Dan said. “Well, what I mean is I haven’t told him about the disk yet. I only got it from the safety-deposit box on the day Jamie left for Monaco. I was saving it as a last resort.”

  “In the meantime,” I said, “you taped the disk behind the woman in the garter belt.”

  “I thought it would be safe there until Jamie and I went back three months later. If things were settled between us, I’d just return the disk to the safety-deposit box and never say a word. If not, well, I could use it in whatever way I had to.”

  “Except,” I said, “at the time you laid your little plan, you didn’t know Jamie had canned the idea of going back in three months to resign and dump Pamela and one thing and another.”

  Dan blinked at me. His eyes were dark and moist. “That’s right. I didn’t know about Jamie changing his mind.”

  “Or maybe,” I said, “he never intended to go back. Maybe the leave of absence was part of a bluff, something to keep the Whetherhills at bay while he got out of town, something he didn’t bother letting you in on, Dan.”

  “I hate to think Jamie would have secrets from me, Mr. Crang.”

  “Either way, the situation over here meant you had to find a way of retrieving the disk from its hiding place back home behind the woman in the garter belt.”

  “I was desperate,” Dan said, sounding desperate.

  Annie spoke up. “Know who you two guys remind me of?”

  I answered, “Of a crafty lawyer quizzing a potential client?”

  “Uh, uh.” Annie shook her head. “Of Abbott and Costello.”

  “Who’s on first?”

  “You got it, Buster.”

  “Sweetie, it must be my trained analytical mind, but the sequence of events is clear as crystal.”

  “Yeah,” Annie said, “and what’s on second?”

  “Come on,” I said. “Dan here snaffled the disk from Jamie’s safety-deposit box to use as a weapon to get Jamie back on track. He figured to use the disk, if necessary, when the two of them returned to Toronto.”

  “Three months hence,” Annie said.

  “Right, except that when there turned out to be no three months, and Jamie really was spending beyond what Dan considered their means, the Hatteras and so forth, Dan had to get the disk over here pronto.”

  “As leverage,” Annie said. “Okay, awfully labyrinthine, but I’m with you.”

  “And what I see coming up next,” I said, speaking to Dan, “was a serious error in judgment. To retrieve the disk from Toronto, you threw yourself on Mike Rolland’s mercy.”

  “Of which,” Annie said, “he might not have as much as Mother Teresa.”

  “Well, don’t you see, I had to have the disk actually in my hands before I spoke to Jamie,” Dan said defensively. “Otherwise Jamie might not believe I really had taken it from his safety-deposit box.”

  “Granted, Dan,” I said. “So you rung in Mike?”

  Dan let out a long quavery sigh. “How can I put this?”

  “As straightforwardly as possible,” I said.

  “Straightforward?” Annie said. “Now there’s a novel concept.”

  Dan went on. “I didn’t really know Mike, the kind of person he is, when I brought up the disk to him. I mean, honestly, Mr. Crang, I’d just got here, and I was sick over the whole situation, desperate like I said. So, this one night in the bar at the Casino, I was alone with Mike, and he was being, um, ingratiating. He mentioned his business trip to New York, and I had the thought I might, you
know, ask him to stop in Toronto and bring me the disk.”

  “Must’ve been more than a thought.”

  “Well, I started telling him about the disk, and right away, he was all over me with questions. So aggressive and everything. Just too interested. So I backed off.”

  “But it was too late.”

  “Oh, God, I know I gave him the idea how important the disk is, but I had enough wits to stop before I gave away where it was hidden. In the apartment, okay, Mike got that part, but not behind the painting.”

  “The upshot was Mike declared himself in the game.”

  “Isn’t he sickening? He gives everybody that best-friends line, but underneath he’s just another hustler.”

  “Solid thinking, Dan. He hustled you out of the disk.”

  “It’s unbelievable.” Dan’s eyes were as damp as Bambi’s.

  “How’d Mike get the Rowanwood address?” I asked.

  “From the hotel register, I suppose.”

  “And the keys?”

  “He stole mine from the suite. At least, somebody did.” Dan made a snuffling noise. “But I never dreamed in a million years he’d find the disk’s hiding place.”

  I restrained myself. If I revealed that I was the smarty-pants who had ferreted out the disk, it would only confuse the lad.

  “What about it, Mr. Crang,” Dan said, “can you help me?”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “You’re a lawyer. You must know a way to get back stolen property.”

  “It might be too late, Dan. Mike’s been babysitting the disk long enough for him to have found out what’s on it.”

  “Oh, no. He only got back to Monaco yesterday. He was seeing some stupid musical.”

  “You’ve already discussed the disk with Mike?”

  Dan sighed. “You couldn’t call it a discussion. He practically ordered me over to his place last night. Threw the disk on the desk. Said if I couldn’t tell him what it was all about, he’d get it transcribed. I thought I was going to throw up.”

  “Mike has what intentions for the disk after he’s made the acquaintance of its contents?”