Keeper of the Flame. Jack Batten
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kid, Flame seemed to have a talent with words. Waxing lyrical about one guy torturing another guy. The spaghetti lurched in my stomach.
I looked at Jerome, and my face must have reflected what was going on in my belly.
“Cast-iron, man?” Jerome said. “The way you appearing right now, it’s more like a leaky tin foil.”
The waitress came to our table.
“The spaghetti Bolognese not agreeing with you, sir?” she said to me, her expression showing concern.
“Nothing an espresso won’t fix,” I said. “Double, if you don’t mind.”
I didn’t speak until the espresso arrived, and I took a sip.
“I assume the other song lyrics are in the same spirit as this first one,” I said to Jerome.
“Worse, if anything,” Jerome said. “Two women dancing with no clothes on get their boobs shot off by a dude with a rifle watching them. Another song does what you might call variations on the n-word.”
I read my way through all nine pages of lyrics. Two of the songs did imaginatively sick things with urine. All of the songs, taken together, added up to the most repulsive catalogue of written work I might have ever read.
“If these see the light of day,” I said, “Flame can kiss away his chances of succeeding to the Cary Grant mantle.”
“Those damn songs would definitely smear my man’s image.”
“It would be hard to look at him as a mature and profound performer.”
“Not a chance. Everybody’d stop thinking of him that way, man.”
“All because of a youthful indiscretion.”
“You might say so.”
“I’m assuming the words Flame wrote all those years ago don’t reflect the big-time songwriter and singer he grew into today. What I’m asking, Flame’s not popular because he’s a musical master of misogyny and homophobia?”
Jerome put down his knife and fork, and gave me a long look.
“I wouldn’t be working with the dude these last six years if I thought he was the kind of guy you see in those words,” Jerome said. “He’s a very fine and decent and thoughtful young man, Flame is.”
“The ugliness was some kind of youthful abberation?” I said. “It’s all gone now?”
“You got my word on that, Crang.”
I nodded, and both of us took a moment to reflect on where the two of us stood on the matter of Flame’s problem.
“As I see the situation,” I said, breaking the silence, “my assignment for you and Roger comes in three parts. Get back the original sheets of lyrics from the Reverend Alton Douglas. Be as sure as I’m able that the Reverend isn’t hanging on to more copies of the lyrics. And avoid paying the eight million or a large part thereof.”
“You save any of the eight million, man,” Jerome said, “Mr. Carnale no doubt gonna give you a nice little bonus. But that’s not at the top of the damn list. We want the original song sheets back. All of them, man.”
“You’ll probably like to know how the Reverend got his hands on the originals in the first place,” I said. “How did the sheets of lyrics get to him from Flame’s mother’s house?
“Definitely that’d be of interest.”
“The mother doesn’t know how that happened?”
“We’re keeping her in the dark about the blackmail, man. All she knows, from me asking her, is that the originals of the nine sheets don’t seem to be where they supposed to.”
My stomach had settled, and the espresso brought a fresh jolt of energy.
“Let’s see if you can give me more of a handle on the Reverend,” I said to Jerome. “He approached you Monday night. Where did this momentous meeting take place?”
“Air Canada Centre, right here in your town, the place where Flame was doin’ a concert,” Jerome said. “A couple hours before the concert happened, I’m outside the Centre, just getting the feel of the crowd that’s showing up. So, there I am, tending to my duties when this dude comes up to me in a grey suit and blue shirt, nice tie. Dude’s about fifty-five, thereabouts, and he all business.”
“Not wasting any motions.”
“He hands me the sheets of paper. He tells me he wants eight million dollars two weeks from that day — Monday like I say. He says he be in touch with me before then, say where he wants the eight million sent. Gonna be some place offshore is what he says. Then he’s gone.”
“Gone,” I said, “but not far. The religious institution he’s connected with? Heaven’s Philosophers? You and Mr. Carnale said it was on St. Clair West? That’s a few blocks north of where we’re sitting right now.”
“I assume you’re gonna find him there, man.”
“I’ll make it my first stop,” I said. “Maybe it’ll be my only stop if the Reverend is co-operative.”
I swallowed the last of my double espresso, and Jerome signalled the waitress for the bill.
“You don’t mind my saying,” I said, “the Reverend — this particular Reverend, I mean — makes a curious shakedown artist.”
“Him being a reverend and all?”
“There’s that, but he’s also going about the blackmail in a fashion that seems to me the last word in transparent.”
“Transparent or opaque, man, it don’t matter,” Jerome said. “Just get back the sheets of the damn lyrics like you been hired to do.”
“I’m your guy, Jerome.”
Chapter Five
When I got back to the office, Gloria was setting up a new coffee maker. It was a replacement for the older model that the moving guys broke during my shift in quarters from the fifth floor to the third.
“Goodie,” I said. “A fresh source of caffeine.”
“It’s a De’Longhi,” Gloria said. “Not absolutely top-of-the-line, but quite fine.”
Gloria was my part-time researcher, bookkeeper, and all-round smoother of troubled waters. Part-time because I shared her services with two other criminal lawyers. Gloria was sixtyish, ten years older than me. She was tall, with silver hair that she grew long and free. She liked to wear baggy blouses and long, flowing skirts. I suspected a spectacular figure lurked under the billowy garments, but I’d never know unless we were invited to the same swim party.
Gloria and I admired the sleekness of the De’Longhi for a minute or two. Then I went down the hall to the washroom and filled my office jug with water for the coffeemaker.
When I came back, Gloria was examining a package of coffee I’d bought earlier.
“‘Kicking Horse’?” she said, reading from the label. “‘Hoodoo Jo blend? Made in Canada’?”
“Not made in Canada, if you look closer,” I said. “Blended in Canada.”
“Were you feeling nationalistic when you bought this?”
“There’s a lot to be said for throwing one’s business Canada’s way.”
When I got the coffee machine started, I sat down to discuss lawyerly matters. Gloria was sitting in one of the client’s chairs, her iPad in front of her hooked up to a portable keyboard. The whole apparatus, iPad plus keyboard, probably weighed no more than a few ounces, which was a lot less than the thick file of hard copy documents in her hands. The digital age had its advantages.
“This one,”