“Excuse me,” I said. “I have business to attend to.”
Annie and I were standing about dead centre of the crowd of reporters in front of Cam. I edged to the back of the pack, circled one of the TV cameramen who was shooting from an outer angle, and approached the man in the plaid jacket on his right side.
“Hi, there,” I said. “I believe we share a mutual affection for jazz.”
The man kept his face a blank, but his eyes shifted over me and opened fractionally wider. He remembered.
“Get lost, Jack,” he said. He had a rumble for a voice.
I said, “More specifically, a mutual affection for one jazz musician. Who could forget Dave Goddard?”
“You deaf or what?” the man said. His hair and moustache were dark-brown, and his face had a Slavic cast. “Take a hike.”
A pair of festival associates made shushing noises at us, and I could hear Cam Charles raise his voice at the microphone to keep the crowd’s attention from wandering to the exchange between me and the man in the plaid jacket.
I said to him, “The three of us got together last night, you, me, Dave, in the alley behind the Cameron.”
“One more time, Mac,” the man said. “Hit the road.”
“Is that who I think it is? Crang?” Cam Charles said, turning in my direction. He had his left hand covering the microphone, but his voice leaked over the sound system. “This is a press conference, Crang, and whatever you are, God knows you aren’t press.”
I said to the man in the plaid jacket, “Any second now, you’re going to run out of similes for go away, and we can start talking.”
The man planted his hands on my chest and shoved. I sat down hard on the thick green carpeting and heard the crowd of reporters go ohhhhh and ahhhhh.
“Get him out of here,” Cam said from the lectern.
Cam meant me. The man in the plaid jacket was already on his way through the door. I pushed off the floor.
Annie had her hand on my arm.
“Anything hurt?” she asked.
Trevor Dalgleish was right behind her, wearing a stern look.
“God’s sake, Crang,” he said, not as chummy as he’d been earlier. “That man was a guest here.”
“I assure you, ladies and gentlemen,” Cam was announcing into the microphone, “this little scene was not part of our presentation.”
“Do me a favour, honeybunch,” I said to Annie. “Find out from Cam or someone, maybe Trev here, who the bully in plaid is.”
“Never mind him, Crang,” Trevor snapped at me. “Just do what Cam asked. Get out of here and stop interrupting the press conference.” “Now for the very important surprise I mentioned earlier,” Cam said to the press. “I’d like to ask Mr. Harp Manley to step forward.”
“Crang,” Trevor hissed at me.
“What’re you going to do?” Annie asked me.
“Follow the bully,” I said.
7
THE BULLY didn’t look behind all the way to the Silverdore Hotel. His wide plaid shoulders made him a stickout in the pedestrian parade along Bloor Street. Bloor is prime for people-watching. Fresh-faced kids from the university a block to the south. Splendidly shaped, coiffed, and groomed young matrons conducting raids on Creed’s and Holt Renfrew. I only had eyes for my bully. How come he didn’t examine his rear? Didn’t he suppose I’d chase after him? Or didn’t he care? That struck me as humiliating, the not-caring possibility.
The bully marched resolutely along the south side of Bloor, crossed at Yonge, went three blocks south to Charles, turned east, then into the Silverdore. As Toronto hotels go, the Silverdore is middle-class tourist trade. It has a utilitarian look, fifteen storeys of pale-brown brick straight up and five flags flying from the marquee over the entrance. The Stars and Stripes occupies the middle pole.
I hung back of the Silverdore’s glass doors and watched my quarry. He didn’t head for the front desk. He was pulling a key from his jacket pocket as he stepped toward the elevators. Must be a Silverdore guest. Crang, the master of deduction.
I walked to the other side of Charles and leaned my hip against a phone booth.
Now what?
I knew the guy had a room at the Silverdore. I knew, or suspected on reasonable grounds, that he’d knocked me out in the Cameron alley and had probably made Dave Goddard disappear. I knew he was connected with Cam Charles’s Alternate Film Festival. And I knew he had a wardrobe of two or more summer jackets.
The question facing the house, how did I organize this dazzling array of facts?
I went up to the subway station on Bloor, rode a train and a Queen streetcar to my office, and got on the phone.
Abner Chase was at his club.
“I been telling you at least ten years, Crang,” he said after I identified myself.“There’s no sense me stocking the Polish vodka. You’re the only customer asks for it.”
Abner Chase always went to the point, whatever point was on his mind.
“This time I’m trying to do you a favour, Abner,” I said.“I think we might have a problem with Dave Goddard.”
“There’s a problem with the guy, I won’t know it till nine tonight.”
“That’s the thing. Dave may be among the missing.”
“Missing?” Abner said into the phone. “He don’t show bang on time the first set, Harper Manley’ll have his balls in a vice. Or I might do his balls myself.”
“Dave hasn’t called you today?”
“No reason to.”
“Harp hasn’t heard either?”
“You jokin’ me? The guy’s all over the place—TV interviews, personal appearances, record stores. Dave’d never get ahold of Harper. He’s a goddamn genuine celebrity. That’s why I’m doing this fantastic business at the club, on account of Harper’s getting known from the movies. You gotta’ve heard about that.”
“Hard to miss it, Abner,” I said. “Why have I always thought Harp is a nickname? Like Bird was for Charlie Parker.”
“Wrong. It’s short for Harper.”
“Probably you and his mother are the only people who call him Harper.”
“His mother, nice old lady, she’s dead.”
I was sitting in the swivel chair behind my desk. I swivelled sideways to look down into the wide sidewalk on Queen Street. A man in black pants held up by loose red suspenders was banging on a conga drum. A blonde woman who had the moves of someone on speed was twirling two large fans in time to the conga beat. People stopped to catch the show and drop coins into an upside-down grey fedora beside the drum.
I said to Abner Chase, “About Dave, anybody else you can think of he might be in regular touch with?”
“Ralph Goddard. You met Dave’s brother? He’s been getting Dave’s act together the last couple years.”
“He hasn’t done much to update Dave’s style in clothes.”
“The business side I’m telling you about. Dave’s a helluva musician, I don’t need to remind anyone knows these things like you. He’s just never acted like an Einstein with the dollars and cents.”
“I’ll try Ralph.”
“Out in the sticks somewhere,” Abner