Manley shook his head.
“New York,” he said. “Bobby don’t mess with them big California studios. He got his own cash money.”
“From the bank. So you said.”
Manley’s drink had reached the level of the white paper napkin. How much of the stuff could he absorb before it fluffed his trumpet work?
I said, “I take it Bobby isn’t likely to have connections in the business with Raymond Fenk?”
Manley frowned and gave me the same inspecting look he’d greeted me with earlier. The look must have been a specialty of his. Or else he saved it for people who roused the suspicious side of his nature. Me, for instance.
I said, “My thought is, Fenk’s in movies, but he seems to be strictly Hollywood, and Bobby isn’t.”
“What’s going on, Mr. Lawyer?” Manley said. He still had on the frown and the look of close scrutiny.
“Let’s try to establish a small bond of trust, Harp,” I said. “We’re both interested in what’s happened to Dave Goddard, you for business reasons, me for personal reasons.”
“Personal, huh? You supposed to be the kiddie’s lawyer.”
“That too,” I said. “The reason I’m asking the questions about Raymond Fenk, I’m sure he’s got something to do with Dave’s disappearance. Why and how, I don’t know yet. You say you and your movie and good old Bobby have no tie-in to Fenk. That’s a start. Negative, but a start.”
“This Fenk whapped the kiddie upside the head?”
“That’s the assumption I’m going on.”
Manley’s eyes switched away from my face.
“I suppose I got to let that young kiddie I got on the piano stretch out some,” he said.
“Take up the solo slack until Dave comes back?”
“Ain’t worth shit.”
“Who isn’t?” I said. “You’re not talking about Dave?”
“The young kiddie on the piano. Plays too many notes.”
Manley finished the rest of his drink.
“All right if I ask something private, Harp?” I said. “How much Scotch can you hold when you’re on the job?”
Manley looked at his empty glass.
“I don’t hardly juice,” he said. “Only time is if the kiddies get to acting bad on me.”
“I’ll alert Abner Chase,” I said. “Get him to lay in an extra stock of Black Label for the rest of the week.”
9
COMMUTERS call it the DVP. They say it with affection. It’s the Don Valley Parkway. It’s three lanes wide both ways, five lanes at the collector points, and it carries traffic from the centre of the city to the northern suburbs and beyond. A tractor-trailer passed me, and my car shimmied. A Tinker Toy could pass me and my car would shimmy. I drive a white Volkswagen Beetle convertible. I was on the inside lane of the Parkway and heading north. A grateful bank robber gave me the Beetle. A bonus, he said, for getting him an acquittal. The gift may reveal something about my clientele. If Cam Charles had a client overflowing in gratitude, the Reverend Moon maybe, he’d probably reward Cam with a Lamborghini.
On either side of the Parkway, tall dark trees stood on hills against the sky. The trees were all that was left of the old valley from the centuries before it was paved for the four lanes each way. Somewhere down below me to the left was the Don River. It had turned as grey and greasy as Mr. Kipling’s Limpopo. I took the off ramp for Don Mills Road North and drove past a junior high school named after Marc Garneau. I had the top up on the Beetle, but the windows were open, and the air, away from the Parkway, felt damp and fresh. Marc Garneau was Canada’s astronaut. Mission Control in Houston fired him into space and brought him back. Good for Marc. Were other schools named after living Canadians of renown? Deanna Durbin Collegiate Institute? Didn’t seem likely.
On the north side of Eglinton Avenue, past the IBM complex, I took a right and got myself into the fringes of residential suburbia. The streets were laid out in loops and crescents that probably adhered to a master design. The design eluded me. I slowed and circled and watched for street signs. People who live in downtown Toronto look askance at people who live in the suburbs. The suburban dwellers drive into the city, take up parking space, talk noisy in restaurants, and go home to their crooked little streets on a highway they call by a pet name. Maybe it was just an image problem.
Ralph Goddard lived at 48 Hiawatha Crescent, and I was at the intersection of Tomahawk and Wigwam. Where was John Wayne when you needed him? I found Hiawatha and Number 48 on my own. Ralph’s house was white stucco and two storeys. There was a Pontiac station wagon in the driveway, and the porch light was on. I parked in front of the house and walked up the sidewalk. It was made of rust-coloured bricks that had been fitted together in an intricate pattern. There was a birdbath on the lawn, and a sign by the door, raised black metal lettering on a light-brown plaque, announced “The Goddards”. I didn’t spot any pink flamingos.
Ralph Goddard answered the door after I pushed the bell a second time. He didn’t look much like Dave.
“You must be the famous Mr. Crang,” he said.
Ralph had a grin that would crack most men’s cheeks.
“Any friend of Dave’s,” he said.
He gripped my elbow in his left fist and shook my hand with his right in a display of great conviviality. Ralph was taller, fatter, and greyer than his brother. He had on a short-sleeved white shirt, green gabardine slacks, and Hush Puppies. His eye alignment appeared to be in order.
“Come on up to the family room,” Ralph said.
He led the way up a short flight of stairs carpeted in pink and into a room straight ahead. The pink carpet continued around to the left, presumably to the bedrooms.
“Get you a drink?” Ralph asked. “Something nice and cool?”
“Vodka’d taste good.”
“One vodka coming up,” Ralph said. He’d inherited the hearty genes in the Goddard family. “Anything with it? Tang?”
“Ice, just ice, Ralph.”
He went back down the stairs. The family room had flocked wallpaper in a mustard shade. The shelves along one wall held a collection of china birds, and, on a low end-table, two marble bookends enclosed a short row of Louis L’Amour novels in hardcover. There was a set of a sofa and two armchairs covered in shiny material in browns and yellows that picked up the mustard on the walls. Another chair was aimed at the TV set. The chair had many movable parts, a headrest, a footrest, arms that raised up and down. You could buy chairs like that on your Visa card by dialling a toll-free number in Akron, Ohio. I’d seen the ads. Ralph’s chair was in brown corduroy. He’d left the television on with the sound down low. It was tuned to the Blue Jays ball game.
Ralph came back to the room empty-handed.
“What’s your second choice, Crang?” he said. “Doreen went to the booze store today and bought the place out, it looks like.”
“Except no vodka.”
“You got it.”
“Why don’t I have whatever you’re drinking.”
“That’ll be two dark rum and Coke.”
By the time I left the family room, I’d be on the road to gout. Why was it called the family room? If the kids were out in the world and Ralph and Doreen lived alone, wouldn’t every room in the house qualify as family room? I’d ponder the question next time I strolled Philosopher’s Walk.
The