“If you don’t mind,” he said, “I’d prefer to do this sitting down.”
“They got benches in there,” I said. “In front of the paintings.”
There was a small congregation of people at the ticket counter. I bought admissions for two. That was seven bucks I’d have to charge to my client. Who was my client? Dave Goddard? I’d swallow the seven.
The Harold Town retrospective was on the second floor in the Sam and Ayala Zacks Wing. Sam and Ayala were a wealthy couple who had more taste than the guy who put Gumby Goes to Heaven on University Avenue. Cam said nothing on the way up the stairs. In the first room, where the Towns were hung, there was so much colour on the walls they gave me the sensation they were in motion. I stopped at the door. Straight ahead, dead centre, was a collage that looked like an abstract slice of ancient Babylon. There was another painting, mostly reds, of a toy horse, and one of a strange enormous seal—the kind that kings and potentates used to slap on their written pronouncements— against a midnight curtain. Cam made a beeline for a bench that had a black leather covering and no back. I sat beside him.
“What’s shaking, Cam?”
“Two points, and that’s one more than I had before I phoned you this morning. The first, really the second but never mind, is this— you’re in a bind, Crang, you know that?”
“Well, I’m pretty good at identifying binds, Cam. This current one, I’ve got no doubt, you’re wondering how come I knew Raymond Fenk was recently departed, not as in on his way back to Los Angeles but as in dead.”
Cam looked wonderfully pleased with himself. I didn’t take it as a comment on my present predicament. Cam always looked wonderfully pleased with himself. Maybe it was his barbering. Up close, on the black leather bench, studying Cam’s head, I had never seen a man shaved, trimmed, shampooed, and cologned to such perfection. Beside him, I felt shabby. That was worse than feeling in a bind.
Cam said, “You know what’s your trouble, Crang? Always has been? Don’t answer. You don’t want to know, but I’m going to tell you. You’re impetuous, irreverent, and too much of a smartass.”
Cam kept on looking pleased with himself.
I said, “We got to the part yet about what my trouble is?”
“My call two hours ago, the purpose was to ask you, to retain you actually, if you’d carry out a little job, something in the, shall we say, quasi-legal line. I still want you to do the little job, but now I’m not asking you. I’m telling you.”
“Because of the, shall we also say, previously mentioned bind?”
“I don’t care how you know about Fenk’s murder. I’m not even going to inquire about your embarrassing display with the man at the Park Plaza press conference. I don’t think any of that is relevant to my problem. But the fact is you know about Fenk and his murder and you shouldn’t, and I’m going to use that information for my own purposes.”
“For pressuring me into taking on the little quasi-legal job.”
“Correct.”
“Maybe I would’ve said yes anyway.”
“Maybe you would have.”
“Just so we clear the decks, Cam, satisfy my own curiosity, how’d you find out about Fenk’s murder?”
“Stuffy Kernohan’s first call was to me. As soon as he saw Fenk was connected with my film festival, after the body was found, by whom I don’t know, Stuffy rang me at home, and we agreed he’d low-play the announcement to the press. I don’t need that kind of publicity on the day the festival opens. Later in the week perhaps, but not right on top of the opening. Stuffy understood. He owed me one.”
Stuffy Kernohan? Should I know him? The Silverdore’s manager? A police guy? With a name like Stuffy Kernohan, he could be the Chicago Black Hawks goalie.
“If you’re finished with your questions, Crang,” Cam said, “let’s get to business. I’m on a tight schedule.”
“Who’s Stuffy Kernohan?”
“Oh, Crang.” Cam was good at scorn. “Stuffy’s been on the homicide squad since before we came out of law school.”
“I don’t do murder cases, Cam, remember?”
Criminal lawyers get slotted. I had a mini-specialty in fraud charges. The rest of my files were a hodgepodge of hold-ups, break-and-enters, other crimes against property. Alleged murderers seemed to go elsewhere. Just as well if it meant sucking around guys like Stuffy Kernohan who sucked around guys like Cam Charles.
“Everything I tell you from now on is in strictest confidence,” Cam said. He was into his earnest routine. “This concerns an associate of mine. Trevor Dalgleish.”
“Funny, his name’s been crossing my mind lately.”
“I talk, Crang, you listen.”
You had to hand it to Cam—I did—he knew how to run a briefing. Crisp sentences, no wasted motion, and he was right into Trevor Dalgleish’s bio. Thirty-one years old. Member of a FOOF. Fine old Ontario family. Undergraduate degree in economics. Scored high in the LSATs. Came out of the University of Toronto Law School clutching a prize in criminal law. Articled with Eddie Greenspan. Switched to Cam’s firm when he got his call. Worked fifteen hours a day. Smooth in court, something I’d seen for myself a few times. Trevor, Cam said, was a rising star, and versatile. He sat in on the discussions when the Alternate Festival was hatched. And took over responsibility for a block of films—booking, contacts, drawing the documents, getting names on dotted lines. Leading up to the festival, Cam said, Trevor was working twenty hours a day.
“So what’s the problem?” I asked. “Paragon like that, some other law firm’s liable to steal him away.”
“All his life,” Cam said, now sounding concerned, wise, avuncular, and a pain in the neck, “as long as I’ve known him, which is very nearly all his life, Trevor’s been a man who takes short cuts.”
Cam had an illustration. It seemed that as a young buck at St. Andrew’s College, the very prep school that Cam had attended earlier, Trevor ran a lucrative scam that involved bribing a printer’s apprentice to slip him exam papers in advance. Trevor peddled the papers to his fellow preppies. A suspicious teacher nailed a group of students who got uncharacteristic As on the exams. The fuss was short-term but scandalous.
“Look at the bright side, Cam,” I said. “Trevor probably learned a lesson. Cheaters never prosper.”
“That’s just it. Trevor wasn’t caught.”
“The mastermind, and he got away with it?”
“And may still be getting away with something.”
“Like what?”
“Like that’s what I’m retaining you to find out.”
“Closer to blackmailing me to find out.”
“Don’t take it personally, Crang.”
On the wall opposite the bench where we were sitting, there was a Town oil, about seven feet high by five wide. Green was the major colour, hundreds of tight little green balls with tiny black centres. A long, jagged white line cut through the entire middle of the painting, top to bottom. What was the picture supposed to be? Maybe a close-up of a monster zipper?
“Give me some help, Cam, teensy little hints,” I said. “Why’s Trevor got you nervous?”
“Number one, my read on Trevor is he spends more money on himself than his billings at the firm warrant.”
“Is it that big? Trevor’s house on Admiral Road?”
“It’s also the scene of very lavish dinner parties.”
“Never