“What else does everybody in King do? Trevor’s very expert at it. Jumps his horse at the Royal Winter Fair, that kind of thing. All of which costs a great deal of money for a man just past thirty.”
“Sure, Cam,” I said. “But a minute ago you told me Trevor comes from good stock. Ever think it’s family money that finances his conspicuous consumption?”
“An excellent family name, I said that, grandfather associated with E. P. Taylor, all the rest. Trevor’s got the name, but the family money evaporated with Trevor’s father.”
“Isn’t that just the way, always a wastrel in there to blow the ancestral fortune.”
“Number two, Trevor’s too intimate with clients.”
“Ho boy, that could be risky around your place, Cam, guys with the dreadlocks, smoke the ganja.”
Cam went through the motions of looking disgusted, but his heart wasn’t in it. He was more interested in surging ahead with the briefing.
“You and I know it happens, Crang, criminal lawyers overly involved in the lives of the people they’re defending.”
“Rubbing shoulders with the bandits, yeah. Start out drinking in the same bars, end up sharing a cell.”
“Precisely.”
“One problem, Cam, the way you described young Trevor, workaholic, nice way about him in front of a judge, I’ve seen that, he doesn’t give off the feel of lawyers I know’ve gone down the tubes.”
“I hope I’m wrong. Probably am. But I want to find out if Trevor has troubles.”
“If, you mean, if you have troubles.”
“With Trevor.”
I gave the Harold Town more study, the greens and the white line zigging down the centre. If you turned the picture on its side, it’d look like an ECG printout. Guess again, Crang. If Town wanted it on its side, he’d have painted it on its side.
“Why me, Cam?” I asked.
“You’ve acquired a bit of a reputation, you must be aware, for this kind of thing.”
“What? Nosing around?”
“If you want to put it that way. The qualities I criticized you for a minute ago, don’t be offended, they have their uses in situations like this. Irreverent, push in where don’t necessarily belong.”
“Really glad I came to our little meet, Cam. Swell boost for the ego.”
“I can’t ask about Trevor myself, obviously, or delegate one of the other people in the firm to make inquiries into our own associate.”
“Lousy for office morale.”
“And I’m not inclined to hire some sloppy private investigator.”
“So it’s sloppy me.”
It was more fun to think about the Town oil than about Cam’s proposition. I had another idea about the painting. It was a glimpse close up of a giant fissure in a rock. Bet it had Rocky Mountains somewhere in the title. Cam wasn’t talking proposition. He was talking arm-twisting. My arm.
I said, “I need material to get me going, Cam.”
“It’s yours.”
“Clients’ names. Trevor can’t be playing footsy with everyone who comes through the door. Make a list of the people you think are too much into Trevor. Or vice versa.”
Cam reached into his inside jacket pocket and brought out a pen and a small pad. The pad had a dark leather cover, and the pen was slim and gold. What had Annie said? Cam goes first cabin.
“Something else,” I said. “I want the names of the movies Trevor lined up for your film festival.”
Cam stopped jotting.
“No, Crang,” he said, dragging it out, exasperated. “The festival’s unrelated. No bearing whatsoever.”
“Think of yourself, I know this is hard, Cam, as the client here. I’m the guy you do what I ask.”
Cam got his gold pen busy again.
“Raymond Fenk,” I said. “The deceased.”
Cam tightened up around the mouth, but he didn’t speak. Cam had discipline.
“Get onto your pal at homicide, the old Stuffer,” I said. “Tell him to phone the Los Angeles police, telex, fax machine, whichever’s fastest. Find out if Fenk has a record. Had a record.”
Cam was a swift notetaker.
“That’s it,” I said.
Cam put away his implements.
“Expect a package of information by three this afternoon,” he said, and walked away from me and the Harold Town retrospective without a nod for either of us.
I’d run out of guesses about the green canvas. Fissure in the Rocky Mountains was what I was going with. I went over to the small card on the wall beside the picture. “1965,” it said. “Oil on Canvas. The Great Divide.” Well, what the hell, fissure and Great Divide were close. I took twenty minutes to look at the rest of the show, and on the way out, I bought a catalogue for ten bucks. I’d swallow the ten.
18
THERE WAS A BOWL of five-day-old homemade chili in the refrigerator. The home it was made in was mine. I peeled back the Saran Wrap that covered the bowl, and sniffed. My nostrils didn’t shrivel, and no blue mould lurked at the bowl’s edges. I scooped the chili into a pan, and put the pan on the stove at a low heat.
On television in the living room, CBS was showing U.S. Open Tennis. Ivan Lendl was playing. When wasn’t Ivan Lendl playing? I had a vodka and soda and the Harold Town catalogue. The Great Divide was reproduced in its whites and greens near the front of the catalogue, and on the opposite page there was an explanation of the picture. It said Town took his first plane flight in 1965. He was in his forties, and the experience of looking at the world from the new perspective of straight down blew him away. He went home and painted The Great Divide. It was his interpretation of a telescoped view out of the window as the plane came over the runway at the end of a night flight. Nice guess, Crang, fissure in the rock. Not even close.
I turned the catalogue’s pages, and on television the tennis match went on. By and large, tennis makes genteel noises. The light thonk of the ball coming off the racquet, the polite handclapping between points, the referee’s moderate tones. The occasional roar of planes heading into LaGuardia Airport near the U.S. Open stadium was a pain in the eardrum, and the now-and-then hollers from yahoos in the stands. But mostly the background tennis sounds seemed about right for a browse through the Town catalogue. After a while, I ate the chili.
At ten past three, the doorbell rang. The young man on the front step looked like he’d just been let out of Sunday school. He was wearing a light single-breasted black suit, white button-down shirt, and a tie that was so discreet I couldn’t tell whether it was black or deep purple. He said he was present on an errand for Mr. Charles, and handed me a large brown envelope.
“You haven’t been inconvenienced, sir?” The kid had taken lessons in earnest from Cam. “I was supposed to have this to you at three.”
“Just listening to tennis. No inconvenience.”
“Of course, Mr. Crang. Thank you, sir.”
The kid didn’t kiss my hand. No one’s faultless.
I opened the brown envelope at the kitchen table. There were two single sheets and a bunch of other papers clipped together. The top sheet dealt with Raymond Fenk. Ha, he had a record. Not much, but a record. Two convictions in California for possession of an illegal drug. On both, he’d been