CHAPTER 2

 

 

I was home in time to watch myself on the eleven o’clock news. I didn’t think other viewers would have noticed me, not with Melanie Keene sparkling like the Fourth of July. But the newspeople used the portion of film where she mentioned my name and said what I’d done for her, and later the anchorwoman used the reference to fill in one of those flat spots that happen sometimes when there’s still some time left over at the end of the news. “A pretty nifty guy to have around, that John Locke,” she said, and her partner, a guy whose hairdresser deserves an Emmy, said, “You got that right, Pam,” and they both chuckled. There! Fame! Another fourteen minutes and Andy Warhol will be right about me.

When the news ended, I switched off the TV and sat, trying to come down from the combat high I’d worked up. It was hard, even with the faint strains of Mozart’s Horn Concerto in E Flat filtering up through the floor from Janet Frobisher’s apartment downstairs. If ever she switches to acid rock, I will have to move out, but her choices sit well with me, even close to midnight, and I slowly found myself decompressing. After a while, I gave up on my book and put the lights out so that I could sit looking out over the treetops in the backyard toward the lighted towers of downtown Toronto, thinking about the guy in the hospital with acid burns.

I wasn’t sorry for him. He’d hired on without qualms to destroy Melanie’s face and career, but I wondered whether his boss was going to take the setback personally and come after me. That was the flip side to the free publicity. Anybody with a grudge would know whom to look for.

The phone startled me. I put the light back on and answered with a nice neutral “Hello.”

“Well done, John.” It was my mother, sounding, as she always does, like a more dignified version of Queen Elizabeth.

“Thank you. You saw the news? I thought this was past your bedtime.”

She let that go by, and I waited for the attack to start. Praise from her is rare. She has never forgiven me for getting kicked out of university, two of them in fact. Harvard and Cambridge, places I’d never have gotten close to except for the family money. And, on top of that, ignoring the family company and joining the British army for the excitement. Well! I can still remember the way her lips pursed at the thought.

“No, not tonight. I wanted to see the news about the building fund. Did you catch that, or were you too swept away with your own appearance?”

“I see you’ve reached the three-quarter mark. Congratulations.” She deserved it. She was doing her best to rebuild Sick Kids’ Hospital with her own hands, both of them sunk to the elbows in the pockets of anyone she could get to listen.

“Yes. We’re making progress. Anyway, I was at the home of another committee member, and then we saw the announcement about you and that horrid little man with the acid. I was”—she paused, searching for a smaller word than proud—”quite pleased. One of the women made some comment about your appearance, and I volunteered the fact that you’re my son. She was almost—” Another pause.

“Impressed would do, Mother. I earned my keep tonight.”

“I suppose so.” This was vintage Mother. I didn’t have a degree. The only letters after my name are M.C. for the Military Cross I won with the SAS in the Falklands war. I’m male enough to be proud of that, but my mother has never acknowledged my military service. Soldiers are bums. My medal makes me a decorated bum.

“Well, thank you for calling,” I said, giving her the out I thought she was looking for. “I was thinking of coming over on Sunday. Is Dad still up among the polar bears?”

“Ellesmere Island, looking for oil. He won’t be home for a month at least. Yes, Sunday would be nice. Why don’t you come for tea? If you’re not busy, of course.”

“Should be fine. I don’t have any assignments booked for the next few days,” I minimized, and thought, Ever. My career, if you can call it that, was bumping along on the bones of its rear end, waiting for the phone to ring.

“Well, that’s why I called, as a matter of fact. Mildred, that’s my committee secretary, she has a daughter, bright little gal, as a matter of fact. She’s a lawyer. Frightfully dedicated. Mildred despairs of her ever marrying.”

“And you’re nominating me for the job?” I guessed Mildred’s daughter had thick legs—and glasses to match. My mother would never have offered to put me out to stud if she thought I might enjoy the work.

She didn’t even sigh. I guess it was a sign of increasing respect. She was treating me the same way she treated my father, just pausing for a moment and then going on in the same tone of voice. She wears him down until his only possible answer is “Yes, dear.” After which he heads north again on another of his geological expeditions. The Arctic can be a lot less chilly than my mother.

“You do make things difficult, John. We merely shared the thought that you two had a great deal in common and might find one another interesting.”

“All we have in common is mothers who’re into good works, Maw. Not the kind of background to build a life on.”

“Really.” Now she was miffed. “One just does what one can for the city one lives in. Anyway, I told Mildred I would give you her daughter’s number. That hardly comes under the heading of solicitation.”

“Fine, shoot.” I picked up a pencil and wrote down the number. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. I’ll give her a dingle in the morning.”

“Good,” she said. “Heaven knows it’s time you grew up and settled down.”

“I’m giving it my best shot,” I said, but she had already grunted and hung up.

I put the phone down and moved off to the bathroom, feeling gloomy. I’m a bodyguard, not a gigolo. And lady lawyers are not the most enthusiastic partners I’ve come across. You pretty well have to read them their rights before you turn the lights out.

I cleaned my teeth and put out my own light just as the music ended below me. Nice timing, Janet, I thought. And then my phone rang again.

The man’s voice was middle-aged, English, cultured. “I’m sorry to disturb you at this hour. Do I have the Mr. John Locke who appeared on the television news this evening?”

“Yes, you do.”

“Mr. Locke. My name is Wainwright. I was impressed by what I heard of your work and by the highly professional way in which you conducted yourself during the interview with Miss Keene.” Miss, not Ms. or Melanie. I was right, this guy was a middle-aged Brit.

“That’s kind of you, Mr. Wainwright.” I kept my own voice cool. Professionals do not scuff their feet and say, “Aw shucks.” Maybe this was a job.

His next question threw me. “Are you aware of the significance of the necktie you were wearing at the time?”

“Yes. I’ve earned the right to wear it.” I’d been wearing my Brigade of Guards tie. My original entry to the British army was into the Grenadier Guards, although I spent most of my time with the SAS.

“Which regiment?” His voice had crisped at the edges. I could imagine him with a neatly trimmed mustache.

“Grenadiers, ten years, including some time seconded to another unit.”

“Rank?” He almost barked it.

“First lieutenant.” It’s not high, but promotion is slow in peacetime, and you don’t advance in your own regiment while you’re spending years on duty with the SAS.

“Very good,” he said almost gloatingly. “I have an assignment I would like to discuss with you. Are you free to travel?”

“For the right compensation, yes.”

This produced an appreciative chuckle. “Very prudent. Why don’t we discuss it in my office tomorrow? Would that be convenient?”

“It depends on the time,” I lied breezily. Hell, I could always get my car washed another day.

“Eleven hundred hours,” he said, and I did a small double take into the phone. What was he trying to prove? By the sound of his voice he’d been out of the army for thirty years at least.

“Eleven would be fine,” I said. “Where’s your office?”

He told me, and I repeated it and said I’d be there. And then I hit the feathers and slept like a baby.

I was up early for my run, putting in a brisk six miles while the streets filled with commuters headed in to start the day’s nonsense with two hours of overtime. The sight cheered me. I wasn’t one of them. I can’t stand routine, and I’ve been in enough life-and-death situations that the pressures of business seem pathetically trivial. I hope to be able to avoid working steadily as long as I live. And with luck and an occasional assignment from the Melanie Keenes of the world, I’ll do it.

I picked up the papers at the corner of Mount Pleasant and warmed down by walking the last block to my place, checking for coverage of the acid story. All three papers had it. The left-wing Star announced that the acid tosser had third-degree burns to his legs and speculated that he would sue me for assault. The business-minded Globe and Mail wondered whether the attack would have an adverse effect on the movie industry in Canada. But the dear old tabloid Sun had a picture of Melanie’s kiss at the airport with the cutline “Hero’s reward.” That and a story that compared me with Sir Galahad and the guys at the hotel with Satan.

I showered while the coffee perked and then cooked myself a bacon-and-egg breakfast. Three mornings with a movie star in her room had left me OD’d on grapefruit.

After I’d completed the cryptic crossword in the Globe, I started getting ready, deciding what to wear to the meeting. I didn’t want this guy to think I was some kind of military toy, never out of uniform. In the end I settled on a pair of buff pants and the leather jacket I’d picked up in Florence at a stall on the street behind the duomo. It usually lives in the trunk of my Volvo; it’s scuffed up, but it’s still the kind of jacket guys were getting swarmed for by our street gangs. It was probably more than I’d need for warmth. It was June 21, and we were getting the first of our summer weather.

I left the car behind. Wainwright’s office was down in the high-rent district, where it costs more to park your car for an hour than it does to eat lunch. He was in one of the old buildings, no longer fashionable since the sixties, when our national banks started one-upping one another with the height of their head offices down here on King Street. The building Wainwright occupied was still bright and attractive, but it has a dated sadness to it, like a widow in a singles bar.

I went up to the nineteenth floor. It was five to eleven, but I wasn’t going to skulk in the corridor like a jealous husband in a hotel, so I opened the door of 1931 and went in.

The receptionist was a machine-turned blonde of forty or so. She stood up when I came in. “You’re Mr. Locke. I saw you on the news last night.”

I gave a modest little snort and said, “I’m not usually so conspicuous. I’m here to see Mr. Wainwright, I’m a couple of minutes early.”

She poured on the charm like maple syrup. “Mr. Wainwright said I was to show you in the moment you arrived. Come this way, please.”

She made it sound like I’d get lost without her, but there was only one other door in the room. She went to it, inclining her head first to listen respectfully. Apparently she liked what she heard. She beamed at me, rapped on the door, then opened it and said, “Mr. Locke’s here, Mr. Wainright.”

She stood back, but before I could go through the door, Wainwright came out. The mountain was honoring Muhammad. He was tall and rangy, the way elderly men get when they work at staying youthful. I judged him to be about seventy. And I was right about the bristly World War II mustache. He stuck his hand out, smiling. “Mr. Locke. Thank you for coming in.” His accent was more clearly English now but not regional. I know all the English tribal noises, and this wasn’t one of them. His voice showed breeding and/or money. We shook, and he kept hold of my hand long enough to draw me into the room and close the door behind me. Then he let go and waved me to the chair across the desk from his. “Sit down, please.”

I sat, glancing around the room. It didn’t have the framed sheepskins that lawyers hang everywhere, and there were very few books on the shelves. He had a couple of photographs on his desk, but their backs were to me. On the walls he had a Lawren Harris landscape that looked as if it just might be the real thing and not a print. There was also a photograph of a French château.

“You like my office?” he asked dryly.

“I was thinking you’d make a good poker player, Mr. Wainwright. Nothing in here gives any hint of what you do. Unless you import wine from France.”

He made an impressed face, the corners of his mouth turned down as he gave a brief nod. “Very good. What makes you think so?”

“You have that photograph of Chambord. It’s on the Loire.”

Now I had his full attention. “I see you know France,” he said.

“One of my favorite countries, except for Paris, of course.” To my mind, Parisians are the New Yorkers of Europe.

He chuckled. “Parlez-vous français?”

“Un petit peu,” I said. “Enough to get moutarde avec le jambon.”

He chuckled again, humoring me, then said. “As a matter of fact, the assignment I had in mind for you is in Provence.”

“I like it already. Whose body am I going to be guarding?”

He cleared his throat and hesitated for a moment. “I’m going to have some tea. Would you prefer Darjeeling or Lapsang souchong?”

“Whatever you’re ordering, thank you. In ten years among the English, I never managed to develop a taste for the stuff.”

He humphed and pressed the call button on his phone. The blonde appeared, smiling. “Jean, would it be possible to get some coffee, please?”

“Of course. I’ll go downstairs,” she said breathily, turning the full thousand watts on to me. “How do you like your coffee, Mr. Locke?”

“Black, please,” I told her, and she vanished, looking as if she were about to burst with the excitement.

I sat and waited for Wainwright to break his news to me, wondering what the problem was. Most clients buy my services the way they buy steak. They know what they need. Their questions are about costs. I’m not used to people playing hard to get. He looked at me without speaking until it became a kind of showdown. Who was going to blink first? I broke the tie. “Can I infer, from your reluctance to speak, that this job you want me to do isn’t legal?”

That cracked his coma. He shook his head. “No. It’s perfectly legal, just unconventional.” He picked up one of the photographs on his desk and handed it to me. It was a graduation photograph of a girl in her late teens, and she was beautiful, dark haired and intense looking, but with high cheekbones and a generous mouth that softened any hint of snootiness. She was smiling, and there was an air of mischief about her that for some reason made her seem Irish.

“She’s lovely. And she also looks young to be getting a bachelor of arts from Cambridge.”

“She was nineteen in that picture. That was six years ago. She’s picked up her doctorate since. She’s an historian.”

“And she’s working on the Roman history of Provence?”

He glanced up, impressed again. “You know about it?”

“History’s kind of a hobby,” I minimized. “I know they were there a long time. The Rhone was a highway for exports from Gaul, salt and wine mostly. I also know that the town of Vaison-la-Romaine has the biggest Roman ruins outside of Italy.”

His voice was trancelike. “She’s going to Vaison.”

I handed him the photograph. “Well, unless somebody’s got a contract out on her, she won’t need my services,” I said. “She’ll be safer there than she would be in Toronto.”

There was a tap on the door, and his secretary came back with the coffee. Wainwright made the most of the break, thanking her and praising her speed. I added an approving smile when she looked my way, and she left happily. Wainwright opened the coffees and then spoke as he handed me mine. “It’s not a contract,” he said. “It’s more in the nature of a grudge.”

“Perhaps you can spell it out for me.” I sipped my coffee.

He left his untasted, seeming to be plucking up nerve. Finally, he said, “It started last year. She was over there, working in Vaison, and a film crew came to town.” He shrugged helplessly. “I don’t follow films at all, but they were working on some thriller or other, it seems, and they had a Corsican from Marseilles along with them as adviser.”

“Some mob heavy?”

“Yes. The French tend to lionize their criminals, the way the Americans once did with Al Capone and his ilk.”

I could see the story shaping up before he told it. Some jaded hood with a string of hookers available to give him the greatest sex money could buy and he’d flipped out for a clean-limbed beauty who was more concerned about dead Romans than she was about what shade of lipstick to use.

“And he put the moves on this young lady,” I prompted when Wainwright bogged down.

“My niece,” he said. “Her name is Amy Roger.”

The name fit the photograph. Amy, a no-nonsense name. I’ll bet that most girls her age are called Debbie. “He got fresh with Amy?”

“She was at dinner at the best restaurant in town with a friend, another historian. It’s not a big place apparently, not grand.” He waved his hand vaguely. “The film people were there, together with this man and his girl of the day. It seems he came over and tried to sit at Amy’s table. He was drunk, and Amy brushed him off, politely but firmly. It didn’t work. He pulled a chair up beside her and made a grab at her. She slapped him, and when he tried to slap her in return, she hit him with the wine bottle.”

I laughed. “Doesn’t sound as if she needs a bodyguard, much as I’d like the job.”

“It didn’t end there,” Wainwright said soberly. “One of the film people, a cameraman or something, he laughed at the man’s discomfiture. That night he was hauled out of his hotel bed by two men, tied and gagged, driven into the countryside, where they broke both his arms.”

“And what about Amy? What did she do?”

“She was staying with a very tough old Frenchwoman. She used to be with the Maquis, the Resistance. Amy told her what had happened, and she called out some old friends to guard the house with shotguns that night, and they drove Amy to the airport at Lyons the next day.”

“How did she take that? I’d guess she was very annoyed at having her work interrupted.”

“Indeed.” Wainwright nodded and paused to take a sip of his coffee. “Fortunately, this all took place toward the end of her time there, so she didn’t lose much in the way of fieldwork, but now she has to return for a few weeks on a new project.”

“And the guy she hit is still mad,” I finished for him.

“Yes.” Wainwright set down his cup very carefully, as if he were afraid he would slam it down and splash it everywhere in sudden, uncontrollable anger. “I have a lot of contacts with the wine-growing establishment there, as everywhere in France, and the word is out that he intends to punish her, most severely.”

“I can imagine what he has in mind,” I said. “The Corsicans run most of the prostitution in southern Europe.”

Wainwright couldn’t let it rest there. “I’m afraid that if she goes back there he will abduct her and abuse her and consign her to some North African brothel.” His hands were shaking as he spoke.

“And you’ve tried to warn her but she’s too committed to her subject to refuse to go on this trip.”

He paused to mop his face with his handkerchief. “I can see I don’t have to explain anything to you twice,” he said.

I nodded, weighing the financial opportunity I had here. Damsels in distress are more fun to guard than rock stars or oil sheikhs, especially when they’re as toothsome as Amy Roger. I would have taken the job for expenses alone, but my family did succeed in raising a businessman, even though they don’t approve of my business. “Have you told her you’d thought of sending someone like me?”

He nodded grimly. “She was very angry. She said she would not allow this hoodlum to spoil her work. That was the first thing. And secondly, she did not want to have some muscle-bound oaf tagging along chewing gum and breathing beer on her.”

“I hate being typecast,” I said, and he smiled at last.

“You have no idea how relieved I was last evening to see you on the news,” he said. “You’re a man of culture; I think we can overcome her objections.”

“At the risk of sounding mercenary, if we can persuade her that I’m housebroken, there is still the subject of compensation.”

“I can’t pay you as much as Miss Keene did,” he said.

“Who told you what she paid?”

“I deal with some influential people in Canada as well as France,” he said with a slight smirk. “From the owner of the Edinburgh Towers I got the name of Miss Keene’s agent and hence, your fee structure.”

“Your niece is a most interesting woman,” I said softly, “And the story you told me appeals to the knight-errant in my soul. But on the other hand, you don’t have a whole lot of options open to you.” There, I thought, ball in your court.

He held up his hand. “How does two thousand dollars a week for five weeks sound? Plus all expenses, of course.”

“Fine.” I nodded crisply, the way I’d learned to do when the officer in charge of the briefing told me what impossibilities he was expecting. No arguments. You do it. Period.

Wainwright extended his hand, smiling in relief, and we shook. Then he pressed the buzzer again. The sun shone from the doorway as the blond helmet came around the jamb. “Ah, Jean, would you be so kind as to make out a check to—” He paused and turned to me.

“John Locke, Personal Assurance,” I said.

He nodded and turned back to her. “You have that?” She beamed, and he went on, “In the amount of five thousand dollars. Mark it on account of services to be rendered, fifty percent advance.”

“Of course.” She looked at me with a respect that showed me my attractiveness had entered a whole new dimension.

When she had gone, I said, “How do you propose to break the news to your niece?”

He sat, rocking slightly, his forehead pursed, an old man’s gesture that made him look almost fragile. “I thought we might do it over dinner.” He uncrinkled his brow and looked into my face. “What do you think?”

“Excellent. Would you like me to bring someone?”

“You have a wife?” He sounded surprised.

“No, but I do have a good friend who might be persuaded to make me look less threatening.”

He nodded. “Good idea. Seven-thirty for eight, tomorrow evening at my apartment.” He told me where it was located, and after his secretary had brought my check in for him to sign, we got the business out of the way, shook hands, and I left.

The day seemed a lot warmer with five grand in my pocket, and I ambled around the financial district, ducking into the underground shopping complex on King Street, where I spent a pleasurable half hour in the bookstore. After that, because I was in the district, I called the lady lawyer my mother had told me about. What the hell? I could buy her a bun down here on neutral turf.

Not surprisingly, she wasn’t in, but I left a phone message and went on my way, feeling righteous. I had done my duty.

I banked my advance, keeping a modest couple of hundred out for walking-around money, then went to the central reference library and brushed up on the history of Vaison-la-Romaine before heading home. I got there just as Janet Frobisher drove up in her ancient Volkswagen beetle. She’s tall and good to look at, with soft auburn hair. She’s in her late twenties, and you’d figure she’d be a shoo-in to be out in the suburbs by now with a baby on each hip, but for some reason she’s unlucky in her choice of men. I’m very fond of her and have been tempted a number of times, but the old superstition about doorsteps has always kept Janet and me on a brother-and-sister basis.

She works for our national radio network, the CBC, and when she saw me, she beamed and hoisted her purse aloft like a trophy. “Big day at the factory,” she said. “I got the new digital tape of the Brandenburg Concerti. Would you like to hear it?”

“Love to.” I said. “I’ll head upstairs first and build us a couple of drinks.”

“G and T, please,” she said. “Give me ten minutes.”

She lives on the second floor, and I live on the third, so I held the door for her and went up the back stairs behind her. Then I headed up to my own door, where I checked my security marker. It’s not conspicuous, a hair just below the bottom hinge on the doorjamb. It’s located at a distance of thirteen comb teeth from the bottom of the hinge, not a measurement anybody would be able to duplicate without the same pocket comb as mine. I hadn’t been broken into. One of these days I will be. I’ve racked up enough black marks in the books of the PLO and the Provisional IRA that someone will get wind of me someday and I’ll have to move, but for now, all was well.

After a quarter hour I ambled down to Janet’s apartment with the gin bottle, tonics, and a couple of beers for me. She had changed out of her working skirt into blue jeans and racked up the tape. She let me in, then pressed the start button while I mixed her drink and opened a beer.

“The first concerto is my least favorite,” she told me. “I was going to fix a spaghetti sauce while it’s running, then listen to the rest. Would you like to eat with me?”

“Great,” I said. “On one condition. Can I get you to come with me to a spiffy business dinner tomorrow?”

“Spiffy?” She raised both eyebrows. “Have you been dating cheerleaders again?”

“You know my principles. No girl with an IQ of lower than room temperature.”

“Anything capable of reading and writing is in jeopardy,” she said, laughing. “But what makes you think the occasion will be spiffy?”

“It’s a prospective client. He imports French wine. I’d imagine he knows an escargot from a handsaw.”

“Probably.” She sliced onions, dashing at her eyes with her left wrist. “What’s the occasion?”

“His niece is gun-shy. She’s a historian, and she’s tangled up with a bad-news Corsican. She’s afraid I’ll shoot somebody in the head and break her concentration when she’s working.”

“Tell me more,” Janet commanded.

I sat there and gave her the whole rundown while she started the onions, then added the hamburger and garlic and her special choice of spices, finally tipping in a jar of the tomato paste she makes herself. Like I say, real wife- and-mother material. This night, she also had some feminine intuition for me.

“It sounds a little off if you ask me,” she said, tasting the sauce.

“How so?” With five grand of Wainwright’s money in my bank I didn’t want discouragement.

“Well, let’s say there’s a few gaps in the story,” she said. She put the spoon down and led me back to the living room to hear her tape. The second concerto is my favorite, but I interrupted it to hear what she had to say.

“Which areas of the story? Don’t you think a guy like this Corsican might have made a pass at her?”

Janet shook her head impatiently. “Oh, no, I don’t question any of that. What I’m looking at is the relationship between the man who approached you and this woman.” She frowned. “Niece is a bit too easy. Does the girl have a father? And if she doesn’t, why didn’t he mention it?”

“He’s a bit old to be the lover of a girl in her twenties. It would make damn near a half century difference in their ages.”

“Thirty-five years isn’t uncommon,” Janet said. “I’m just saying that it doesn’t ring twenty-four-karat true to my ear.

“Well, if you’ll come with me tomorrow night, you can check him out for yourself,” I said. “In the meantime, I’ve got his money, and you’ve got this wonderful recording of the Brandenburgs. Let’s listen.”

“Done,” she said. “Can I trust you to wind it back to the beginning of the second while I check the stove?”

I turned the tape back, and we listened to music, then ate spaghetti and drank a bottle of red wine like an old married couple. At ten-thirty, we exchanged a chaste kiss at her door, and I said, “Thank you for a lovely evening. Mañana,” and went upstairs feeling very domestic. That was when my phone went. I picked it up, and the lady lawyer said, “I know this is a hell of a time to call, but I’ve just finally uncovered the top of my desk and found your phone message. I was going for coffee and a doughnut. Does that sound like something you might enjoy?” 

“Why not?” I said. Hell, I wasn’t feeling that domestic.