“He’s just the outline of a man,” he said finally, opening his eyes. “Medium-height. In an overcoat of some kind. Pale skin, I think — probably white. Running from behind the car to the river. That’s all I remember before the second blast took me out.”
Jinnah put down his pen and took off his glasses, rubbing his eyes for just the right effect of the seasoned professional who has seen it all. If he handled this correctly, he would not just blow that bastard Grant off the front page, he’d force Sergeant Graham to sing like a bird. But it had to be dealt with carefully.
“Robert, my friend, you do know what this means, don’t you?” he said seriously.
Robert Chan did know. But he wasn’t about to admit it.
“It means I saw someone else out for a walk, probably,” he said grudgingly.
“Robert, not many people go for a walk in an abandoned sawmill site at the same instant a car explodes into flames.”
Jinnah looked at Chan with his dark eyes, but Chan said nothing. Tact, Hakeem, lead him gently …
“Do you really think the man was just out for a walk, Robert?” he asked quietly.
Chan looked up at Jinnah, sweating.
“That’s what I’d like to think,” he said quickly. “But —”
“But you can’t help thinking maybe you came this close to Sam Schuster’s murderer, hmm? Isn’t that right?”
It was right. And at that moment, the perils of talking to the press came home to Robert Chan quite clearly and he cursed himself for being so stupid. Kathy was right after all: he wasn’t a hero, he was a dope.
“I think you’d better go,” he said, rising from his bed. “And all that interview stuff I told you? That was off the record.”
Chan reached for the nurse’s call button. Jinnah’s experienced hand got there a fraction of a second ahead of him. He smiled reassuringly.
“Robert, Robert,” he chuckled. “Relax! Do you know who Sam Schuster was?”
Chan shook his head.
“A stock promoter. A con-man. He’d burned more investors than the noon-day sun at a nudist colony bereft of tanning lotion,” said Jinnah.
“Really?”
“Yes. His killer is almost certainly an investor who lost money on one of his share ventures. That’s his motive — personal revenge. What are the chances he’ll go after you?”
“Pretty high, I’d say,” said Chan emphatically.
“Not to be insulting, Robert, but don’t flatter yourself,” said Jinnah, putting his glasses back on. “It’s probably the first murder he’s ever done, judging from the amateurish manner in which it was carried out, hmm? And you’ve admitted you didn’t see his face, right? So what threat are you to him?”
“You really think so?” said Chan, looking slightly less panicked.
“In my vast experience, Robert, such first-time revenge killers turn themselves in within forty-eight hours. You have nothing to fear.”
Robert Chan relaxed back onto the bed and Jinnah’s hand dropped from the call-button. The rest of the interview went smoothly, even the part where Jinnah managed to con Robert’s photographs of himself and Kathy from the confines of his wallet.
“They’re just stupid airport passport machine photographs,” Robert had said, fumbling with his one good, unbandaged hand in his jacket in the tiny locker against the far wall of his room.
“You’d be amazed what the photo boys can do with digital enhancement these days,” Jinnah had encouraged him. “They can make you look like anything you want from Genghis Khan to Charley Chan.”
Chan had laughed.
“Something in-between would be fine. Just do my wife justice.”
Jinnah had looked at Kathy Chan’s picture appreciatively.
“My friend, your wife needs no artificial enhancement. She will be reproduced in all her natural glory.”
“You do that and I’ll sue!” Chan had joked.
The only awkward moment came just as Jinnah was leaving. He had idly asked Robert what he and Kathy had been discussing on their walk and Chan had volunteered it had been about an investment opportunity. Jinnah’s eyes grew wide.
“If you’re in the market for something, I have just the investment vehicle for you,” he said and, fishing a copy of the Orient Love Express prospectus from his jacket, handed it to Chan.
“You’ll see that the return on investment is a guaranteed fifteen percent,” Jinnah said as Robert’s eyes grew wide running over the lurid colour pages. “And it could be higher, depending on the number of units —”
It was at this point that Kathy Chan came in, still on her crutches and with her left arm in a sling. Robert’s face initially lit up, then flushed. Jinnah, instantly sizing up the situation, decided that some patented Franco-African charm was in order. He strode over to Kathy and bowed low.
“Mademoiselle,” he murmured, seizing her right hand and pressing it to his lips. “Enchantés. Vous’êtes une femme formidable!”
Kathy Chan was stunned into silence. Jinnah leapt through the opening to make good his escape.
“My compliments to you both,” he said, grabbing his jacket from off the chair. “You have my card if you need me. Adieu, mes enfants!”
Jinnah had learned a smattering of French while loafing about in Paris as a student. The language suited his deep, rich voice, but never failed to startle, coming as it did from a face most people in North America associated with other Indo-European languages. It was a Robert Chan destitute of explanation who faced his wife, who was looking pointedly at the prospectus clutched against his chest.
“It’s okay, honey! He’s not a stock promoter, I swear!” said Robert.
Kathy looked at her husband with a mixture of dumbfounded disbelief and disappointment.
“Oh?” she said. “That looks like a prospectus you’re holding.”
“It’s not like that at all,” said Robert.
“So what was he doing here?” demanded Kathy.
“Interviewing me,” said Robert defensively. “He’s a reporter.”
Kathy’s gaze ran the gamut from amazement to anger and back to disbelief. She honestly didn’t fathom Robert sometimes.
“What did you tell him?” she asked.
“About how I saw Sam Schuster’s killer just before you rescued me.”
Kathy Chan was silent for a long time.
“A reporter? Well,” she said at last acidly. “I suppose that makes everything all right then.”
Everything was all right for Jinnah by the time he got back to the Tribune and wrote his story. Well, almost everything. The call to Sergeant Graham had not gone well. Perhaps, Jinnah thought, in retrospect he could have been a bit less belligerent. But that was not the Jinnah way.
“You son of a bitch,” Jinnah had said in greeting. “You never told me Chan saw a suspect at the scene!”
At the other end of the line, Graham’s tone resembled tempered steel.
“Jinnah, there is only one possible way you could have found that out!”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Jinnah. “So I exercised my freedom of association under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.