Riviera Blues. Jack BattenЧитать онлайн книгу.

      Dedication

      For Marjorie and/or Gary Smith,

      King of the Côte d’Azur

      CHAPTER ONE

      I wasn’t crazy about the food.

      “Is that salmon to your taste, Crang?” Swotty Whetherhill asked me.

      “Hold on till I dig it out from under this yellow stuff,” I said.

      We were eating at one of Swotty’s clubs. And not the best of them. I knew he belonged to the Toronto Club, the York, and the Concord. In terms of cuisine, they ranked in that order. We were in the main dining room at the Concord. The chef’s specialty was sauces that failed to disguise the sins of his kitchen.

      “I imagine you were surprised to hear from me,” Swotty said. He was making inroads on a small steak that swam in brown gunk.

      “Well, I didn’t think it was to cut up touches about the old days,” I said. “And I knew it wasn’t for legal advice, not unless you’ve done a major about-face in business ethics.”

      “Pamela liked that in you,” Swotty said, “the cheekiness.”

      “You didn’t.”

      “Oh, I admire irony as much as the next man.”

      “As long as we’re trading confidences,” I said, “I was scared stiff of you.”

      “That seems appropriate.”

      Fifteen years earlier, I had asked Swotty for his daughter’s hand in marriage. He said he’d keep Pamela’s hand and all the rest of her. Pamela and I got married anyway, and Swotty walked her down the centre aisle at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church. That’s a hike of about thirty privileged yards. Pamela was stubborn, an only child, the apple of Swotty’s eye. He gave in to her, not me. I was just a criminal lawyer with no prospects beyond a developing facility for defending persons charged with fraud. About five years after the wedding, Pamela and I broke up. I was still representing the con men.

      “The fact of the matter, Crang,” Swotty said, “is that I have an assignment for you.”

      “Assignment? In criminal law, we might say a guy has a case for us, or he needs a defence, or he’s in the glue with the cops. Assignment isn’t up our alley.”

      “In this instance,” Swotty said, frost in his voice, “no one has committed a crime.”

      The frost was in more than Swotty’s tone. He had snowy white hair, and his face was set in long vertical lines, like cracks in a glacier. I used to make up my own names for the guy. Wintry Whetherhill. Swott of the Antarctic. I never said the names out loud. Not even to Pamela.

      “The no one who hasn’t committed a crime,” I said, “anybody I know?”

      “Jamie Haddon. He would have been a youngster when you were in the family.”

      “Sure. The blond kid with the long eyelashes. If Marilyn Monroe had had a younger brother, it could have been Jamie Haddon.”

      “I would not use your description,” Swotty said, icy again, “but, yes, you seem to remember Jamie.”

      “Your cousin’s son, right? Gerald Haddon, the branch of the family that stayed down in Strathroy? The country cousins?”

      “Gerald did not stay in Strathroy,” Swotty said. “We left him there. Gerald has never measured up.”

      “Might have something to do with whoever sets the standards.”

      Swotty ignored this. “There was to be no mollycoddling simply because Gerald is family.”

      “A man who does household work. I read that somewhere.”

      “What?”

      “Mollycoddle.”

      A chill wind blew from Swotty’s side of the table. “In any event,” he continued, “Jamie is the first male Haddon to show real promise. That, of course, is why I brought him to Toronto. To the trust company.”

      When a Whetherhill spoke of “the trust company,” it sounded as if the words came in uppercase letters: The Trust Company. The Trust Company had been one of the two sacred subjects that dominated conversation around the Sunday night dinner table at Swotty’s house. The other subject was The Family. Every Sunday night was a command performance for the Whetherhill clan. Always roast beef, always talk about The Family and The Trust Company. The family was Whetherhill, and the trust company was Cayuga & Granark. Swotty’s grandfather, a tight-lipped, parsimonious guy, had founded it in Strathroy. His portrait hung in Swotty’s front hall. The Whetherhills — grandfather, father, Swotty — were born with a sharp eye for a dollar, and Cayuga & Granark had provided the family fortune. It ranked somewhere in the top ten family fortunes in Toronto. Swotty’s father moved Cayuga & Granark’s head office out of Strathroy to a steel and glass tower on Bay Street. Among the company’s employees, it was known informally as C&G. Among its customers, it was known even more informally as Callous & Grasping.

      “What is it about Jamie Haddon that needs me brought into the picture?” I asked Swotty.

      “He is on vacation in Monaco.”

      I stopped scraping yellow stuff off my carrots, and took a slow sip of white wine. It was on the sweet side.

      “How is it you know I’m taking a holiday in the south of France? I don’t recall releasing the news to the press.”

      “Pamela told me.” Swotty seemed to be getting a kick out of his one-upmanship. “She mentioned that you and, your, um, ‘friend’ were off in a week or so.”

      “She has a name,” I said. “My friend. Annie B. Cooke.”

      “A movie critic, I understand.”

      “Annie prefers reviewer, movie reviewer,” I said. “How did Pamela find out about the trip? I haven’t run across her more than two or three times in ten years, and none of them has been recent.”

      “I do not question Pamela on her sources of information.”

      I let the waitress take away my plate. She had to be nimble not to spill the puddle of leftover sauce. Swotty and I ordered the same dessert, raspberry sorbet.

      “Between rambles on the Côte d’Azur,” I said, “you want me to look up Jamie in Monaco?”

      “Naturally I regard this as a business arrangement. I will pay accordingly.”

      “As far as I know,” I said, “there’s nothing criminal about a young guy taking a vacation in Monaco.”

      “I have already made the point I am not retaining you in your capacity as a lawyer,” Swotty said. “Why do you insist on raising the issue of crime?”

      “Something weird in the air,” I said. “You summoning me from out of the blue. My suspicious nature. All of the foregoing.”

      Swotty made like an icicle for a few moments.

      “It is simply this,” he said finally. “I received a disturbing postcard from Jamie two days ago.”

      “What, a naughty snap of Princess Caroline on the beach?”

      “It was the wording of the message that was disturbing,” Swotty said. He looked uncomfortable. “Jamie wrote, ‘Having a wonderful time. Glad you aren’t here.’”

      “Cousin Gerald must have been out of the house the day Jamie learned manners.”

      “Moreover,” Swotty added, “the salutation on the card read ‘Hi, Cuz.’ I have been ‘Cousin John’ to him from the time he was a small boy, except at the trust company in front of other employees.