Riviera Blues. Jack Batten
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of absence. Three months. He told me he had never had the opportunity to look about the world. That was quite true. I took Jamie straight into the trust company after he obtained his commerce degree. By all means, I said to him, enjoy the leave of absence. Broaden yourself.”
“You didn’t have impudent postcards in mind.”
“I cannot help thinking something is wrong with the boy.”
“How old is Jamie now?”
“He’ll be thirty on his next birthday,” Swotty said. “This postcard has deeply disturbed me, Crang.”
I polished off the watery sorbet and ate the desiccated wafer cookie that came with it.
“On the map, Monaco looks little,” I said. “But, I don’t know, standing on the local street corners watching out for Jamie Haddon isn’t what I had in mind as a holiday. That probably goes double for Annie.”
“Perhaps it is far-fetched asking you as I am,” Swotty said, “but for all your curious ways, Crang, I regard you as a resourceful man.” He almost gagged on the compliment.
“Annie and I are renting an apartment that’s in hailing distance of Monaco,” I said. “I don’t suppose it’d hurt to hop over for lunch. Do our bit for Monacan tourism. Is that the right word? Or Monesque?”
“Excellent,” Swotty said. He rubbed his hands together. “I am most grateful, Crang.”
The waitress brought coffee. Swotty dumped cream and sugar in his. I took mine black and, courtesy of the Concord’s brewmaster, bitter.
“One large point,” I said. “How do you know Jamie’ll still be around Monaco when Annie and I arrive? Make that two large points. Assuming Jamie is in the country, can you pin down details, like a hotel?”
“Jamie has been gone only twelve days,” Swotty said. “I understand his intention is to make Monaco his base for at least the first month of the trip.”
“He told you that?”
“No, Pamela told me.”
“Pamela again,” I said. “She seems to be the fount of all wisdom in the Jamie Haddon case.”
“It is not a case, Crang,” Swotty said. “Must I keep repeating myself?”
“A situation.”
“A concern.”
“I’ll have to settle for that,” I said. “What’s Pamela call it?”
“She and Archie have always been very generous with Jamie.”
Archie was Pamela’s husband. Second husband. He was in a family business too. Cartwright Products. The products were cellophane wrappers, the kind processed food comes in. There was apparently a lot of money in cellophane. Archie Cartwright was a wealthy man. But not as wealthy as Swotty. Or as Pamela.
“What about a hotel?” I asked Swotty.
“I have no information on that, I regret.”
“Not even from Pamela?”
“No,” Swotty said, “but I have a place where you might inquire.”
Swotty permitted himself a small self-satisfied smile around the corners of his mouth. A thaw in the great glacier.
“The postcard Jamie sent me,” he said, “is the kind that restaurants give out as advertisements.”
“Overlit photograph of the dining room? Name of the place, address, phone number? That type of card?”
“Exactly. The restaurant seems to be close to the Monaco harbour. It stands to reason Jamie had a meal at this establishment. Perhaps he frequents it. The people there might know him by sight.”
“I’m not sure where reason stands in this,” I said. I was trying not to sound as if I was humouring Swotty. “But, yeah, I’ll stop by the restaurant. Might go there for lunch. What does Jamie like in the way of food? I mean, would he eat here? The Concord?”
“The restaurant,” Swotty said, skipping past my question, “is called Le Restaurant du Port.”
“Just a sec.”
I reached for a pen and notebook from the inside jacket pocket of my best blue suit. I’d worn the suit especially for the occasion. Nine hundred dollars’ worth of Holt Renfrew fabric.
“Crang, please.” Swotty’s voice had a note of reprimand. “Remember where you are.”
I remembered. The Concord forbade the transaction of business in the dining room. No papers could be examined, documents exchanged, facts recorded. I took my hand out of the inside pocket minus the notebook and pen.
“Close call,” I said.
The waitress gave me a big wink. Must have caught my faux pas. She refilled our coffee cups.
“Suppose I do stumble across our Jamie,” I said. “Then what?”
“I have a given a great deal of thought to that.” Swotty was using the tone he probably adopted for turning down businessmen who hit up C&G for big loans on inadequate collateral. “When you locate Jamie, you are to phone me immediately.”
“That’s all? I’m just the bird dog?”
“I am placing confidence in you to make an assessment of Jamie. His appearance, his conversation, his demeanor. Your task is to give me information on which I may base a judgment about the boy.”
My enthusiasm for the Jamie Haddon project was wavering. I could do Swotty the modest favour for old times’ sake, even if those times hadn’t much to recommend them except their age. But could he be holding out on me? Was he as shaken up over one snotty postcard as he made out? Or were there bigger issues here?
Swotty’s evasiveness put one damper on my zeal. Annie might represent another. The trip was our first excursion abroad in the three years we had been a romantic item. Annie would have one morning’s work conducting a seminar on film reviewing at the Canadian university on the Riviera, but the rest of the days were to be our time together, and the thought of scouting after young Haddon paled when I compared it to a vision of Annie and me sauntering hand in hand in the streets of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. Lingering over a bottle of vin rouge. Driving to Saint-Paul de Vence to lunch at whatever the place was where Yves Montand played boule with the friendly peasants.
“I hope you appreciate the responsibility I am entrusting you with, Crang,” Swotty Whetherhill said.
“Oh, yeah, sure.”
We finished our coffee. Swotty lead the way to the Concord’s smoking room, where two middle-aged fogeys were puffing on cigars the size of Cuba. My ex-father-in-law and I sat in a pair of facing leather chairs while he repeated the name of the restaurant in Monaco and recited the address from memory. I jotted the name and address in my notebook.
Swotty didn’t offer me a glass of port or a chance to look over the Concord’s bound volumes of Punch. Out on the street, he shook my hand solemnly and turned west, toward The Trust Company. His pace as he walked away from me was stately and remote and inevitable. Kind of like an iceberg.
CHAPTER TWO
I asked Annie what colour my eyes were.
She gave me an intent look from five feet away. “Swamp green,” she said.
I was filling out a passport application. Date of birth. Height. Weight. Colour of eyes stumped me.
“Too long,” I said. “The form doesn’t have room for descriptives.”
“Write smaller, big guy.”
“Please,” I said. “One simple colour.”
“Swamp.”
“Listen, kiddo,