Abner hung up, and I found Ralph Goddard’s number in the phone book. I dialled. Ralph answered. He didn’t sound astute on the phone. He sounded like a pussycat. Or a cocker spaniel. He wanted me to trot right over to his place.
“Crang, well, sir, I always meant to meet up with you,” he said on the phone.“Ever since you got Dave out of the scrape way back there.”
Dave had almost lost his musicians’ union card over a fracas in a club. It seemed the manager refused to turn off the TV set while Dave’s quartet was playing. Dave put a gin bottle through the screen in the middle of The Beverly Hillbillies. That was in Dave’s drinking and drugging period. I argued his suspension before a union disciplinary hearing and, by and large, won. Dave’s only punishment was the purchase of a thirty-inch Panasonic for the club.
I said to Ralph Goddard, “I hear you’re managing your brother’s career, Mr. Goddard.”
“Mr. Goddard was my dad. Call me Ralph.”
“Swell, Ralph.”
“Smartest thing I ever did for Dave. I got him to sign me over power of attorney, and ever since I been running the whole shooting match from right here in my den. Negotiate the fees, deal with the bookers. Mean buggers, pardon the language, those bookers. I should’ve done this for Dave a long time ago. But you know how it is.”
I said I did.
Ralph said, “I had to make my own pile. But now I’m retired, kids out in the world, and I’m doing for the baby brother. Get him something in the bank.”
“Reason for my call,” I said, “you happen to have heard from Dave this afternoon?”
“Not since Monday,” Ralph answered. “The first of every week I give him an allowance. Mail it if he’s out of town. This Monday, I took him a money order to Abner Chase’s club. Didn’t stay long. I’m more of a country-and-western man myself.”
I said, “Dave may be in some difficulties, Ralph.”
Ralph sounded like he was sighing.
“Not the drink again?” he said.
“Nor the drugs.”
I gave Ralph a précis of the previous night’s events.
“Well, that just bothers the dickens out of me,” Ralph said when I finished.
“The big guy doesn’t mean anything to you?” I asked. “The man Dave thinks was following him?”
“Dave used to run with some real characters. But that was all in the past. My brother’s a reformed person, Crang.”
“He drinks a lot of coffee all right.”
“You don’t think we might be jumping the gun? Why, heck, Dave is just as liable to walk into the club tonight like nothing happened.”
“Apart from the boff I took on the head.”
“I guess I like to look on the positive side of life,” Ralph said.
I told Ralph I’d check at Chase’s Club that night and let him know if Dave was absent. Ralph continued to look on the positive side of life. People who sound like pussycats and cocker spaniels tend to do that.
Down on the street, the conga drummer and his hopped-up fan twirler took a break to count their earnings. I swivelled back to the desk. The wits among my clients say my office looks like it’s furnished in Early Salvation Army. I have a wooden desk as solid as the oak tree from which it came and badly chipped around the edges. There are four mismatched chairs, also wooden, also chipped, and there is a metal filing cabinet, which is green and chipped. I bought the desk, chairs, and filing cabinet at the Salvation Army depot on Richmond Street. I never reveal my secret to the wits among my clients. On the wall, I have a framed Henri Matisse poster. It’s called Jazz and has a background of the loveliest blue I may ever have seen.
The phone rang, and I picked up the receiver.
“Fenk,” the voice on the other end said. It was Annie’s voice.
“What do I do with it?”
“Write it down, fella,” Annie said. “It’s the name you asked me to scout up.”
I wrote it down.
“On paper,” I said, “it looks like a typographical error.”
“Raymond Fenk.”
I wrote down the given name.
“He’s a producer,” Annie said. “From Hollywood. He’s got a movie in the Alternate Festival about Mexican illegals in Los Angeles.”
“You sure you’re talking about the guy that floored me at the Park Plaza?” I said. “He doesn’t look like a movie producer.”
“He isn’t,” Annie said.“Not in the David O. Selznick tradition. The movie about the Mexican illegals seems to be the first legitimate thing he’s got his name on. Hell’s Barrio it’s called. Imaginative, right? But get this, until now, Mr. Fenk’s movies have been strictly for the porn market.”
“Cam Charles fed you the hot stuff?”
“’Course not,” Annie said. “This is original research. I got Fenk’s name and the title of Fenk’s movie from Mr. Charles. Cameron, I should tell you, is very distressed with you. The rest I just finished digging out of my library. I’m home right now, doing your legwork, planning on a soaky bath, putting on the finery.”
Annie was covering the opening movie of the Festival of Festivals that night. The new Norman Jewison led things off.
“In your library,” I said, “you’ve got books on pornographic movies?”
“Two reference works,” Annie said. “I counted eight listings for Raymond Fenk before I quit. Betty Blows Baltimore is one of his.”
“Alliterative.”
“Okay, sugar,” Annie said, “your turn.”
“You’re wondering what nature of bad guy I’ve hired on to defend this time.”
“Something like that,” Annie said. “In fact, exactly like that.”
“Anybody’s the bad guy, it’s Raymond Fenk.”
“He looks the part, I’ll go that far.”
“And I’m not acting for him.”
“I didn’t have the impression you were trying to collect a retainer from him this afternoon,” Annie said. “So who is your client?”
“If I have a client, it’s a man named Dave Goddard,” I said. “Whatever he’s involved in—Dave’s a jazz musician—it may be troublesome. Other hand, it may be nothing.”
“Oho, the familiar dichotomy,” Annie said. “Knowing you, I pick troublesome.”
“Dave, the history he’s had, he doesn’t deserve any grief,” I said. “But he might’ve found it, and Raymond Fenk could be the one who made the grief. That’s as far as events’ve gone.”
Even to myself, I sounded defensive. I hadn’t told Annie about the Cameron alley assault. I didn’t want to get her worried. Or ticked off at my carelessness. No wonder I sounded defensive even to myself. Better to edge away from the subject.
“Annie?” I said.
“Uh-huh.”
“When Fenk sat me down at the press conference, how silly did I look?”
Annie said, “Who was the American president who was always bumping his head and tripping whenever he got off Air Force One?”
“That silly?”
“’Fraid