by Jack Batten
I lifted the papers from Annie’s arms. She sat down slowly in one of the metal chairs. I put the papers on the ground.
“He wasn’t my favourite person, Jamie,” Annie said. “Not if I judge him from the only time I’ve met him. But, holy cow, shoved off a building?”
I sat in the chair beside Annie, and told her about being at the cafe behind the Monarch, about seeing Jamie on the balcony, about the key missing from the box, about the Australian saying Jamie came off the roof.
“Are you sure he didn’t?” Annie asked.
“Come off the roof?” I shook my head. “I’ve thought a little about this. Jamie must have got into our room to look for the optical disk.”
“Oh God, that damn disk.”
“By this morning, more likely as early as last night, he would’ve known that Mike Rolland didn’t have the disk.”
“Because Rolland probably went straight to the Beau Rivage after he had the chat with you in the alley.”
“Right,” I said. “Though he might have taken a detour to let Georges freshen up. Jamie’s logical step after he convinced Mike he didn’t have the disk ...”
“That might not have been a cinch.”
“... would be to call in Dan Renzi for a showdown.”
“Sure, I follow,” Annie said. “If Rolland wasn’t holding the disk, Jamie would hit on Dan as the next suspect.”
“And when Jamie was satisfied Dan was in the clear, he’d finally conclude the only person who could possibly be in possession of the bouncing disk was me.”
“He’d have been correct if it hadn’t been for the smuggling services of that teacher in the Café des Nations.”
“Jake Finney.”
“So Jamie came over here and sniggled our room key,” Annie said. “Then what do you figure happened?”
“Mike Rolland and the Clutches were keeping an eye on Jamie,” I said. “They followed him. There was a contretemps in our room. Jamie lost.”
“But why would the Rolland bunch kill Jamie? That leaves them without Jamie and without the disk.”
“Hell, lots of explanations.”
Annie was silent for a moment. “I suppose,” she said. “Maybe a short fuse, for one. Those guys, the little I’ve seen and heard of them, Rolland and the Clutches, they seem to be the types to bash somebody and ask questions later. If the somebody is still alive and talking.”
“That’s a possibility,” I said. “another is that Mike Rolland probably figures all he needs in order to get at the big bucks is the disk. Jamie’s superfluous, and once Rolland was convinced Jamie couldn’t produce the disk, he didn’t care whether Georges and the Stove dispatched Jamie off the balcony.”
“Oh, Lord, but what this process of elimination means,” Annie said, “is that Rolland and his goons will be coming back after you for the disk.”
“Doubt it,” I said. “Not right away they won’t. Mike’s best move is to stay out of sight for a few days.”
“Because of Jamie’s death?”
“Yeah. And by the time Mike concludes it’s all clear, I’ll have passed on the disk to Swotty Whetherhill and the people who own the twenty-three million.”
“Thank you for that small blessing.”
“I’ll unload the disk this afternoon,” I said. “And take other steps to bail out of the case.”
“It seems to me a third party is bound to join in any minute now.”
“The police?”
“Of course,” Annie said.
“They’ll chalk Jamie’s death up to an accidental fall.”
“But you know differently.”
“If I tell the police everything that’s gone on,” I said, “their heads will spin.”
“This is murder we’re discussing. Murderers are supposed to get locked up, and people in the position we’re in, we’re supposed to help lock them up.”
“When I said police heads would spin,” I said, “I meant they might spin in my direction.”
“Ah, right, that’s a worry.”
“Maybe Swotty Whetherhill’s the answer.”
“At the start, for gosh sakes, he was one of the questions.”
“Yeah, well, he’s got clout and resources. If he agreed to put some of them on my side, maybe I could deal with the police from a position of strength.”
“And respectability.”
“That especially.”
“You’ll have to phone Swotty anyway,” Annie said. “Somebody has to tell people about Jamie’s death, tell Pamela and Dan and the others, and I think the somebody is you.”
“In a few minutes.”
Annie and I sat in silence on the metal chairs staring at the water and the wooden sailing ship.
“That’s Roman Polanski’s boat,” Annie said after awhile.
“I thought it might be Captain Kidd’s.”
“Polanski had it made for a movie of his,” Annie said. “Pirates.”
“I remember that one,” I said. “You reviewed it. Called it a bomb.”
“Total,” Annie said. “Polanski moored the ship out there to celebrate Pirates’ premiere at the 1986 festival. The movie flopped, and I guess he couldn’t afford to sail it away.”
“Well, it looks good for the tourist trade.”
“Unlike Jamie Haddon’s plunge,” Annie said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I sat on the end of the bed and phoned. Annie was at the desk leafing through her literature from the press conference. She avoided the balcony. I tried the Negresco. Swotty Whetherhill had checked in, but no one picked up the phone in his room. Archie and Pamela weren’t answering either. I asked the desk to have them paged. The desk reported failure. It was the same story at L’Hôtel de Paris. Dan Renzi didn’t respond to rings or pages. I left my name and number at both hotels. Annie and I went out for a late lunch.
“If the police are looking into Jamie Haddon’s death,” Annie said, “they’re doing it from deep undercover.”
“I didn’t identify any cops in the hotel lobby.”
“Maybe we expect them to look like Philippe Noiret,” Annie said.
“Or like Peter Sellers.”
We were in a restaurant near the train station. The other patrons were working guys with big appetites. They’d found the right place. The plat du jour offered three courses and large helpings. Annie and I ordered a lot of everything.
“I don’t get it,” Annie said. We were digging into a fish soup that came with pieces of toast, grated Parmesan, a thick garlic sauce, and other trappings.
“What?” I said. “That we’re gorging ourselves a couple of hours after somebody we knew died a violent death?”
“I read somewhere it’s a common reaction to eat this way in a time of tragedy.”
“And drink,” I said. I poured from a pitcher of red wine.
“The part I don’t get,” Annie said, “is not feeling the least bit guilty about gobbling the food, even if it is a common reaction.”
“You didn’t like Jamie, kiddo.”
“There’s that.”
“For Pamela, at least,” I said, “Jamie’s death is one way of keeping her affair with him quiet.”
“Now who’s being insensitive?”
“As a matter of fact,” I said, “almost everybody comes out better with Jamie dead.”
We finished with crème caramel and walked back to the Monarch. In the lobby, the fastidious assistant manager in the dove-grey suit asked to speak to me. Annie went up to the room.
“The hotel apologizes for the inconvenience, Mr. Crang,” the assistant manager said.
“Is it about the gentleman who fell from the building?” I asked. My tone was hushed and solicitous and about as genuine as a three-franc coin.
“I’m so glad you understand, Mr. Crang. An inspector from t
he bureau de police is having a short word with guests who occupy rooms on the rear south side.”
“If there is any way I can contribute.”
“It’s just for the police records.” The assistant manager leaned across the counter. “We asked the inspector to show discretion,” he whispered.
“You can be assured of it from me,” I whispered back. “Such a shame for the hotel, an accident like that.”
“Mais, oui,” the assistant manager said.
He opened the gate in the counter and ushered me to an office behind the check-in area. There were two policemen standing against the right wall of the room. They had on the crisp blue trousers and the tailored sweaters that make French uniformed cops look like models for Yves St. Laurent. The man sitting behind the desk wore a wrinkled brown suit, a faded green shirt, and a splashy red and brown tie pulled tight at the neck in a small hard knot. He didn’t look up from the paper he was writing on. I felt a slight tightening of trepidation across my chest.
“Mr. Crang of room 716,” the assistant manager said. “Inspector Farinaud.”
The assistant manager bowed himself out of the office. I sat in the chair on the customer side of the desk. The Inspector moved an official-looking blue form from a pile on his left to a position under his writing hand. The blue form had umpteen lines and boxes. It was thick with copies and carbons.
“Passport, please,” Inspector Farinaud said without much inflection. He held his hand out and kept his head down. The trepidation in my chest tightened another notch.
I took the passport from my jacket pocket. Farinaud wrote slowly and laboriously. He used a fountain pen and filled in lines and boxes with information from my passport. I considered my defence if he checked on colour of eyes. The only sound in the room was the scratch of the fountain pen. I didn’t think the squeezing inside my chest was audible to the others.
Farinaud handed back the passport.
“Where were you when the gentleman fell, Mr. Crang?” he asked.
Farinaud raised his head. He had round cheeks and thick eyebrows that strayed over his brow. His nose was bulbous, a wine-taster’s nose, and his lips were thick and purply. The man looked about as threatening as Andy Rooney. The tightening and trepidation fled from my chest.
“That’s hard to say, Inspector,” I answered. “Where would I have been? In the lobby of the hotel maybe. Or on the elevator.”
“You did not see the man fall?” Farinaud asked.
“I saw him on the sidewalk.”
“That is known to me.”
“Oh, really?”
Farinaud exhaled loudly through his nose. He leafed through another pile of blue forms neatly arranged on the right corner of the desk. The lines and boxes had writing in them. Farinaud selected one. “Monsieur Colin Terrill observed you,” he said.
“Did I observe him?”
“That is for you to say, Mr. Crang.” Farinaud studied the form in his hand. “Monsieur Colin Terrill,” he read. “Address, Broadbeach Waters, Queensland, Australia.”
“Ah. Big guy, mustache, brown hair, may or may not wear a shirt?” I said. “He was on the neighbouring balcony. The dead man was down below.”
“Bon.” Farinaud resumed his writing. He filled in a box that took up a quarter of the blue form. “Monsieur Terrill observed Monsieur Crang,” he said in a soft monotone. “Monsieur Crang observed Monsieur Terrill.”
Farinaud wrote to the bottom of the box. He lifted the sheets of paper and scanned the bottom copy. The fountain pen was still in his hand. He looked across at me.
“Is there anything further you wish to state concerning the dead man, Mr. Crang?” he asked.
“I wish to state?” I put on my thoughtful mien. “Don’t think so,” I said.
“Bon.” Farinaud’s fountain pen made a check mark in a small box on the blue form. He fitted the pen’s cap over the nib.
“Do you have a name for the man who, ah, fell?” I asked.
“A countryman of yours,” Farinaud said. He consulted another form. It was pale yellow. “Monsieur James Gerald Haddon,” he read. “Born in Strathroy, Ontario, Canada.”
“That’s about two hundred miles southwest of Toronto,” I said.
“Oui?” Farinaud appeared to warm up to the fresh fact.
“Always glad to be helpful.”
Farinaud uncapped the pen. Behind me, one of the cops in the chic uniforms held the door open. I got up. The Inspector was writing in the margin of the pale yellow form. I left the room and took an elevator to the seventh floor.
Annie was lying on the bed in her blouse and skirt. She had her hands folded over her stomach.
“Swell timing, big guy,” she said from the bed. She was giving me a crooked smile. “I’ve already fielded your return calls.”
“What an idiot,” I said. “Me, I mean.” I sat on the bed beside Annie. “I should’ve thought of that.”
“First, Archie Cartwright. Then Dan Renzi. Dan cried on the phone.”
“Uh-oh. How much detail did you get into?”
“Hardly any.” Annie raised herself on her elbows. “Just that Jamie was killed in a fall from a building. I didn’t reveal what building or how far he fell or anything else sordid.”
“And Dan wept?”
“Buckets,” Annie said. “He was also full of questions. I referred him to the Cannes police.”
“That was prudent.”
“I don’t know if this means anything,” Annie said, “but Dan called from a pay phone. He was talking so long he had to drop in an extra franc.”
“So he wasn’t on a phone at L’Hôtel de Paris?”
Annie shrugged from her semi-horizontal position.
“Archie Cartwright,” I said, “he wouldn’t have shed tears.”
“His voice got very resonant when I told him. Sounded like an announcer on one of those MOR radio stations. He said he’d ‘advise the family.’”
“I bet.”
Annie stood up. “I’m due for a meeting with Bruce Kirkland in fifteen minutes,” she said. She walked into the bathroom. “At Le Petit Carlton Hotel. We have to organize schedules, allocate tasks, divvy up movies.” Annie was studying herself in the mirror.
“Don’t change a hair for me,” I said. I was watching from the door.
Annie smiled. She continued her studies.
“What held you downstairs?” she asked.
“I was assisting the police with their inquiries.”
Annie opened the cabinet over the sink. “What did you tell them?” she asked. She took a long white comb from a shelf.
“I answered questions with some compromising of the truth by way of omission.”
“That got past the police?”
“The fellow who quizzed me wasn’t Inspector Javert incarnate,” I said. “Anyway, the official conclusion seems to be that Jamie took an unaided header off the building. Nobody is looking for facts that disturb the conclusion.”
Annie used the white comb to sweep at the hair over each ear. I failed to spot what change the combing brought to the styling. Annie wore her hair cut short and as close to her scalp as a helmet.
“Jamie shouldn’t have been killed,” I said.
Annie turned away from the mirror. “Nobody should be killed,” she said. She squeezed past me into the bedroom.
“What I’m getting at is that events had begun to assume an order,” I said. I leaned my hip against the door frame. “All returns weren’t in, but thanks to David Nestor, I’d nailed the how of Jamie’s theft. And thanks to Jamie himself, I knew the Whetherhill family was his specific target. The case was close to a finale.”
“Now the bad guy is dead,” Annie said. “Horrible, yes, but could we call it a kind of retribution?”
“Maybe it’s the timing that bugs me,” I said. “If Jamie had be
en killed before I learned what was on the disk and where the twenty-three million went, I could understand. But afterwards? I don’t understand.”
“You lost me back there around the last bend, fella,” Annie said. She was tossing equipment into her shoulder bag. Pens. Notebook. Film schedules. Publicity releases.
I said, “As of the other night when I told Trum Fraser about Jamie’s handiwork, C&G knew its missing money had gone to the Banco di Napoli in Monaco. The trust company would’ve taken instant steps to grab back the cash. They’d have frozen the Monaco account within a half hour of me spilling the beans to Trum.”
“Yes, I follow that part.”
“And Jamie would have been bound to discover almost as fast that his personal net worth was back down around zero.”
“I’m still with you.”
“So the money would be out of reach of Jamie and of anyone trying to get at him for a share of the booty. With that incentive removed, why bump off Jamie?”
“Oh, sure, now I get it,” Annie said. She stopped loading papers and pens in the shoulder bag. “But doesn’t that raise another question?” she said. “Why would Jamie bother coming over here, to this room, to root around for the disk?”
“The disk is still evidence,” I said. “It could put Jamie in the hoosegow. He wouldn’t want it falling into unfriendly hands.”
“Like possibly yours.”
“Yeah.”
Annie resumed the packing of the shoulder bag.
“That still leaves my main question up in the air,” I said. “Why would anyone kill Jamie when the monetary reason no longer existed?”
“Hey, come on, I thought we had it all worked out earlier. It had to have been Mike Rolland and his thugs, them and their, you know, penchant for spontaneous violence.”
“I’m having second thoughts.”
“Listen, big guy,” Annie said. She swung the bag to her shoulder. “Stop thinking like a Monday-morning halfback. Take the disk to Mr. Whetherhill. Give Pamela a peck on the cheek. Come back. We’ll see some movies.”
“It’s Monday-morning quarterback.”
Annie opened the door to the corridor. “Never mind the nit-picking,” she said. She blew me a kiss and left for her appointment.
