by Jack Batten
“I like it that French trains run on time,” I said. “I don’t like it that I can’t figure out what the hell the times are.”
“You’ll find there’s one leaving Beaulieu for Nice in about fifteen minutes.”
My finger stopped.
“Show me,” I said to Annie.
She showed me.
“Oh yeah,” I said, “the ever-reliable 16:05.”
I had on tan cords, a shirt with thin stripes in olive and dark blue, and the Walkers.
“Think I’ll pass muster at the Beau Rivage?” I asked Annie.
“Wear the snazzy jacket you bought last fall at that store on Queen,” Annie said, “the navy blue.”
I went into the bedroom and put on the navy blue jacket. Annie followed me in her towel.
“Fool that I am,” Annie said, “may I express the hope this visit to Haddon is your last go-round with these people?”
“Almost home,” I said. “Could you nudge along David Nestor while I’m gone? Ask if he’ll please finish his mumbo-jumbo on the disk today or tomorrow.”
“Sure.”
I looked at myself in the hall mirror.
“Presentable?” I asked.
“Hey.” Annie was standing in the bedroom doorway.
“Yeah?”
“You can jump my bones when you get back.”
She let the towel fall.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I rang Jamie Haddon on the house phone. He said to wait for him downstairs.
The Beau Rivage was to L’Hôtel de Paris as Nice was to Monaco. No plumage, no excess. Its opulence was understated. I did my waiting in a sitting room off the small lobby which featured ribbed columns and glass cages. The predominant colour in carpet and furnishings was lilac grey. I sat in a Queen Anne chair. The room was empty except for me and a bellhop in a lilac grey uniform who subjected my person to stern glances. Maybe the jacket from the store on Queen Street wasn’t doing its job.
Jamie was fifteen minutes getting from his room to me. He had on a black cotton turtleneck, black denim jeans with many pockets, and burgundy leather oxfords. Studiously casual. The bellhop greeted him with a slight bow of the head and went away. Jamie sat in a love seat that had vases of mimosa at each end. He wasn’t wearing his nonchalant air.
“The stunned prick at the hotel won’t do that again,” he said.
“Which of your many hotels?”
“L’Hôtel de Paris. The concierge isn’t supposed to tell anybody I’m down here.”
“Ah, Jamie, don’t blame the concierge. Poor chap was over-matched.”
“Your girlfriend?”
I nodded.
Jamie said, “I just finished telling him on the phone his ass is in a sling if it happens one more time.”
“Who are you hiding from?”
“Nobody.” The grin was back on his face. “I just like to make things difficult.”
“Pamela’s in town,” I said.
“Terrific.” The grin stuck.
“With Archie.”
“Even better.”
“Close by,” I said. “They’re five minutes from here.”
The Beau Rivage fronted on a little street called rue Saint-François de Paule, which ran past Nice’s opera house in the direction of the old town. The back of the hotel was split into apartments and had a prospect across a wide avenue to the Mediterranean. Two or three blocks to the west, the avenue merged into Promenade des Anglais and led to the Negresco Hotel’s doorstep.
Jamie said, “Pamela always stays at the Negresco.” He gave the words a hoity-toity twist.
“I’d have thought it was more your speed too, more than the Beau Rivage.”
Jamie held his hand out and wobbled it. “Variety, you know,” he said.
“Yeah, the spice of life.”
Annie had said Jamie wasn’t forthcoming. That didn’t get close to it. As a communicator, he might as well have been mute.
I said, “You’re in deep shit, Jamie.” Shock tactics.
“It’s the other way around,” Jamie said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Crang. I’m the one who’s got other people in deep shit.”
“Not if you’re missing the disk.”
“Well now, the disk. Jesus, Crang, you’re so predictable. I already guessed you came here about the disk.”
“It isn’t in your safety deposit box in Toronto.”
“You think I hadn’t figured that out?” Jamie said. “The comedy act you two clowns put on the day we had the champagne?”
“Saw through it, huh?”
“Dan’s got the disk. He’s the only person who could have taken it from the deposit box. Or Rolland’s got it. He might have conned Dan out of the thing.”
“What makes you so sure I’m not holding it?”
“Have you discussed the disk with old Whetherhill?” Jamie asked. He had his legs crossed and he was swinging one foot in the air as he talked.
“No,” I said.
“Or Pamela?”
“Nor Archie.”
“Then you don’t know what’s on the disk,” Jamie said. “If you did, you’re the kind of guy who’d go running to the family.”
“What kind of guy is that?”
“The honest kind.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“Not really.”
Jamie’s swinging foot wasn’t a nervous tic. It was a manifestation of arrogance. The way I was beginning to read Jamie, he was a natural-born show-off, the kind of guy who’d mail a lippy postcard to Swotty. Jamie probably figured he was invulnerable.
“Why aren’t you hitting on Dan to get the disk back?” I asked him. “Or on Mike?”
“There’s no rush.”
“It’s stolen property when you think about it. Stolen from you.”
“Know something, Crang? You’re a nosy bastard.”
“I like curious better. Makes me sound more detached and scientific.”
Jamie laced his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. His foot was still swinging. At the peak of its arc, the burgundy oxford came perilously near to clipping my kneecap.
“Okay,” Jamie said. He’d finished his examination of the ceiling. “Dan’s a nice guy, kind of an old maid sometimes, but I like him. The thing about him, though, he’s a follower, not a leader, and the position he happens to be in right now, he can’t afford to aggravate me.”
“What if I said I thought you and Dan might’ve been, um, pretty tight at one time?”
“Pretty tight?” Jamie put some derision in the phrase. “I love it, Crang. What you’re trying to say, you think Dan and I were lovers.”
“Were you?”
“I’m bisexual. That plain enough for you?”
“Dan still seems kind of stuck on you, Jamie.”
Jamie waved aside my comment. “Let’s leave it. I swing both ways from time to time. Okay? A liberal-minded guy like you doesn’t want to make anything out of that, right Crang?”
“Not me,” I said. “But how about we get back to the disk? What if Mike Rolland’s got it?”
“If he does, I’ll buy him off. Either guy, Mike or Dan, I don’t see myself losing any sleep.”
“What beats me is why the hell you’ve been holding on to it? I mean, keeping something as potentially dangerous as the disk on hand?”
“You haven’t asked me what’s on it.”
“I think I know the answer to that one.”
Jamie laughed. “I doubt it. But the answer to your question is, for future reference. The reason I’m saving the disk, it may be a blueprint for something I might try down the line.” Jamie’s laugh wasn’t long on mirth.
“Want me to tell you what I’ve doped out?” I asked him.
“About t
he program on the disk?”
“Among other of your criminal, quasi-criminal, and immoral deeds.”
Jamie pulled back the sleeve of his turtleneck to look at his watch.
“This gonna take long?” he said.
Was it going to take long? Jeez, I was on the verge of explaining how and why I was convinced the man was a thief and homewrecker, and he wondered if he’d be running late for his next appointment.
“I’ll condense as I go,” I said.
“Okay. Why don’t we have a drink? I’ve got fifteen minutes.”
Jamie stood up from the love seat abruptly and walked out of the sitting room. I fell in two paces back. We went down the corridor to the right. Jamie’s heels sounded like detonations on the marble floor. A man of authority. He wheeled left into a bar on the other side of the small lobby. The bar was subdued and tastefully furnished with dark wood. It made me want to check that my hair was combed, teeth flossed, deodorant functioning. We were the bar’s only patrons.
“You’d be amazed at the house wine here,” Jamie said as he sat down.
“I’ll have it anyway.”
The bartender brought the wine in crystal glasses. “Pouilly -Fuissé” Jamie said. “From a good year.” Steal some money and turn into a wine connoisseur.
“Okay, shoot,” Jamie said.
“You’re a thief,” I said. “About a three-million-dollar thief, I’d calculate. If you paid more than half a million for the Hatteras, you’re probably holding at least five times that much for the blissful future you’re savouring. The three mill came from Cayuga & Granark, and the information on the optical disk is the program, whatever the hell the term is, the record of how you engineered the theft.”
“What did you say I’m doing about my future?”
“Savouring it.”
“You got it,” Jamie said. He turned in his chair and asked the bartender for a dish of nuts.
“No, no, Jamie.” I shook my finger at him. “The true sophisticate doesn’t sully his palate.”
Jamie shrugged. “I like nuts.” The bartender put down a silver bowl of almonds, macadamias, and cashews. Jamie picked out an almond. “Yeah,” he said, “what else?”
“The theft isn’t the best part of the story.”
“Jesus, it sounded pretty great to me.”
“No, the best part, the most interesting as far as drama goes, is the reason for the theft and the affair with Pamela.”
“That’s getting around?” Jamie looked pleased. “You heard talk about me and Pamela?”
“Come off it, Jamie. You started spreading the word yourself a month ago. That was the idea. Leak the news, make Pamela look bad, humiliate her. You initiated the affair. Now you’re closing it down in the crudest way possible.”
“Why would I do a thing like that?”
“Same reason you stole the money. To get even with the Whetherhill family.”
Jamie popped a cashew in his mouth. “That’s stupid,” he said.
“It didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense to me at first. As a motive, revenge seems like a classic case of cutting off your nose to spite your face. You get even with Swotty by stealing his money, messing up his daughter. But you’re bound to be caught for the theft, maybe do time in prison. The trouble is, ridiculous as the explanation sounds, it’s the only one that adds up.”
“You haven’t told me what it is I’m supposed to be getting even for.”
“For what the Whetherhills did to your father, for the way —”
Jamie laughed. It was loud and sustained. A sneer I might have expected. A chuckle of scorn. But Jamie’s laugh was the stuff of withering contempt. What had I said that set him off?
“You kill me, Crang,” Jamie said. His laughing fit wound down. He took a drink of wine. “You really kill me.”
I waited for Jamie to tell me why I killed him.
“You met my old man?” he asked me.
“I talked to him once or twice in the old days.”
“When you were married to Pamela, right,” Jamie said. “So you might remember he isn’t exactly a rocket scientist.”
“Indelicate as it may seem to say so, I think that’s at the basis of my analysis.”
“Like shit it is. The reason is, you’re leaving something out.”
“What’ve I left out?”
“Or maybe a hotshot criminal lawyer like you didn’t happen to notice,” Jamie said. “Sure, my father’s in a dumb-ass job. The Whetherhills stuck him in it. I know that. You know it. Everybody knows it. But here’s a fact you don’t know, Crang. My father likes the job. He doesn’t even recognize it’s a shit job. He thinks he’s doing important work for the company. The fucking trust company. And you want to hear something else? My dumb father, the guy who gets royally dumped on by the goddamned Whetherhills, he’s actually happy.”
“Your father isn’t bitter?”
“The way he looks at it, it’s a fucking honour to work for C&G.”
“So, ah, you aren’t nursing a grudge on your dad’s behalf?”
“Don’t be a jerk, Crang.”
My revenge theory seemed to be out the window. Also in tatters and blown to the four winds. I busied myself with my glass of wine. Anything to gain a little thinking time. Across the table, Jamie wore a grin that set new records for disdain. I was wrong. Jamie hadn’t been compelled by the desire to settle scores. But I was convinced that the rest of my analysis held up, that Jamie had stolen from C&G and had pulled a foul trick on Pamela.
“Who sent you to talk to me?” Jamie asked.
“Don’t I get credit for personal initiative?”
“Pamela,” Jamie said. “Yeah, you’re sticking up for her.”
He laughed again, short and sardonic. “Sure as hell it wouldn’t be Whetherhill. You should’ve heard the stuff he said about you after the marriage broke up. Made what he called my old man sound like a compliment.”
Control of the conversation had passed to Jamie.
“Swotty’s a hard man,” I said.
Maybe it was preferable to leave control with Jamie. Maybe he’d drop something that would get me back on the beam.
“Lucky for you you’re out of the marriage, Crang. That’s the truth.” Jamie was looking at me over the top of his wineglass. His leg had gone into its bounce. “Pamela’s a slut —”
“Hey, listen —”
“No. You listen. She’s a slut. And I’ll tell you what her father is. Whetherhill’s bent out of shape. He’s crooked. Pillar of the fucking financial community, my ass. The guy’s about as upright as Ivan Boesky.”
“Swotty? I can’t —”
“I’m not finished.” The formerly unforthcoming Jamie was on a communication jag. “These people, Pamela, the old man especially, you know what they did to me all those years? You really know, Crang?”
“Gave you an education?”
“That was shit.”
“Well, I don’t know, Ridley College is supposed to work wonders for a lad.”
“They fucking patronized me.”
In the small, empty bar, the sentence was as concussive as a shot.
“Patted me on the head,” Jamie said. “Said they knew what was best. Told me one day I’d be on the thirty-second floor. Jesus, Crang, they thought I’d sit still for that?”
“The system seems to have worked for them.”
“Them! That’s what I’m talking about, man. Who are them? One of them is a bitch with round heels. And the other is the biggest goddamned hypocrite in the history of Canadian business.”
“Well, allowing for a dash of hyperbole, Jamie, maybe you’d like to give me the particulars of Swotty’s hypocrisy.”
Jamie rolled back his sleeve again. His watch was a Patek Philippe.
I said, “Of his crookedness too.”
“I gotta go.” Jamie put his wineglass on the table. “Date with a beautiful mademoiselle,” he said. He had pasted his grin back on.
“Not just when the story’s reaching the juicy part,” I said.
Jamie stood up.
I said, “Why don’t I buy us another round of the Pouilly-Fuissé?”
Jamie brushed a stray fragment of cashew from his black turtleneck.
I said, “I’ll even spring for one for the beautiful mademoiselle.”
“I stole three million?” Jamie said. “Don’t be a dickhead, Crang.”
Jamie strode out of the bar. I could hear his heels on the marble floor of the main corridor, hitting with the force of little gunshots.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Annie said not to pour myself a Wyborowa.
“David Nestor’s waiting for you this minute,” she said. “The disk doctor.”
“He’s finished work on it?”
“Sounds like the work’s finished him.”
I hadn’t even sat down. Annie was lying on the fat stuffed sofa in the living room. She had a paperback book closed on her finger to mark the page. The book’s title was Two Weeks in the Midday Sun.
“The professor’s excited about what he got off the disk?” I asked.
“He’s cross. Mad as a wet hen. And the unmistakable message he conveyed on the phone is that the man he’s cross at is you, with some residual animosity for me on account of I introduced you to him.”
“Just what I need, another meeting where I’m on the end of a chewing out.”
“Jamie Haddon was rude to you?”
“He was outspoken, believe it or not,” I said. “What’s the book?”
Annie held it higher. “It’s sort of a diary Roger Ebert kept in Cannes when he was covering the 1987 festival.”
“Ah, boning up.”
“And starting to go about crazy in anticipation.” Annie pulled herself to a sitting position on the sofa. “You’d better step on it, fella. Nestor’s at the Café des Nations. It was fifteen minutes ago he had his temper tantrum on the phone. I told him you’d just about certainly come home on the 17:40 train.”
“On the money, babe.… But why does it have to be the Café des Nations, wherever it is?”
