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. Going to throw me in jail?”
“If the man responsible for this death walks, I will! For obstruction of justice!”
“So then you admit you are investigating this suspect and you think he’s responsible?”
“I never said that!”
“You mean you never meant to admit it.”
Graham was by now breathing very heavily into the receiver.
“Hakeem, we have reasons for not going public on this.”
“There are usually two reasons, Sergeant Graham,” said Jinnah affably. “One is that you know who it is and you don’t want to make him run. The other is you don’t have a clue and in that case, you need my help.”
There was a longish pause, punctuated by little snorts from Graham. Jinnah looked at the clock. It was pushing deadline.
“Anything else?” he asked. “I’m a busy man, Sarge.”
“Jinnah, if you print this, I will launch a complaint with the B.C. Press Council. I will denounce you at the morning press conference. I will —”
“Do all the things you usually do or threaten to do when you are angry,” Jinnah cut him off. “Then when you cool down, you’ll see that I’m right and we’ll work together as usual.”
“Not this time.”
“Listen, Sarge, you know you can’t rule the possibility out.”
“You know damn well that we can’t rule out space aliens, a naked matador from Bolivia or your own self without checking it out thoroughly, so don’t give me that bullshit!” cried Graham. “If this guy walks —”
“So you’re telling me printing this will jeopardize the investigation?” said Jinnah, cutting to the bottom line.
There was an even longer pause. Jinnah sat, feet up on the desk, fingertips together, flexing his hands slightly.
“It wouldn’t be helpful —” Graham admitted.
“In other words, no, not really,” Jinnah interrupted him. “Great, fine. Thanks for the confirmation then, Sarge.”
Jinnah hung up. Five seconds later, the phone rang and Jinnah didn’t need the call display to tell him who it was. He ignored it and wrote his stories. He filed and went for a cigarette, looking over the lights of the city from the balcony’s third-floor vantage point. Somewhere out there was Sam Schuster’s killer. Likely not a professional and soon to be apprehended. Certainly, Graham had let it be known they were close to picking someone up. At least they knew who he was. And Hakeem Jinnah, not that bastard Grant, would have the line story, complete with photographs, on the front page of the paper tomorrow. Everyone would be chasing his stuff. It made Jinnah feel good.
When he went back down to the newsroom to check in with Perma-Frost, the good feeling vanished. Frost had Jinnah’s prose up on his screen.
“Hakeem,” he said. “This guy Chan saw: how can you call him a suspect?”
“What do you mean, Frost?” asked Jinnah, slightly nervous inside but betraying nothing in his outward manner.
“There’s