Chapter Thirteen

I like the old downtown part of Montreal, the old geegawed stone buildings that have been sitting there getting sootier since the city was founded, the narrow one-way streets, the stately dark-grey halls of banking and finance.

And I found, this morning, that I also liked the way the little Morris behaved in this part of town. Sometimes it had been so much trouble wheeling Riley through these streets, I’d left him behind and walked. Now the Morris puttered along, in and around irritated stalled taxis, under the running boards of high trucks, skipping away from traffic lights with two wheels on the road and two in the gutter.

I parked on Notre Dame Street at the back door of the Bank of London—it fronts on St. James—got out, and walked leisurely across the sidewalk. Before I made the bank, a paper stand stopped me. Copies of the Clarion were plastered all over the stand, and the headlines were attracting customers as if they were the announcement of a new war.

FINANCIER MURDERED IN LOCAL GAMBLING DEN, the black line across the top of the paper shouted. I bought one and looked around for a place to read it. Across the street was a tavern.

I went in and ordered a quart of Molson, and sipped. The tavern was curious enough to get some of my attention before I settled down to the Clarion; it was a small, quiet tavern, ordinary in every respect but one—it was fronted by a large, ornate stained-glass window. The pictures of the window apparently depicted stages in the brewing of beer, but that didn’t make any difference. One still got the rather eerie feeling of sitting drinking in a church. The sun came through the window and dropped a patch of crimson on my hand, holding the glass. It was only the crimson from a brewer’s jacket but it was the same shade as the patch of St. Peter’s robe that used to fall on my hand in the middle of the sermon, at the church I went to with mother years ago. I felt guilty enough to pick up my Clarion and my beer, and move to another table.

Under the black top head, the Clarion had a series of drop-heads discussing the location of the gambling club (“Apartment on Sherbrooke West Raided as Result of Crime”) and the identity of the victim (“C. Winston Wales, Investment Banker, Shot by Unknown Gangster”). There was also one picture on the front page—a picture of Wales, the pathetic little man who had died in the hallway before apartment sixteen.

The story, for which MacArnold had been given a by-line, didn’t give much play to the killing. It told how Wales’ body was still warm when Framboise and his squad, summoned by an anonymous telephone call, arrived on the scene. It gave a brief review of Wales’ life.

Then MacArnold took the bit in his teeth and galloped into the part of the story he had background material to write. He told in minute detail about the gambling club—the high stakes, the wealthy patrons, the luxurious trappings, the free liquor and food. He suggested that Wales might have dropped a roll and started out to call on the cops, only to be stopped by a bullet. He more than hinted that the late unlamented Chesterley had been associated with the joint. And by the time I had followed the story over to the second page, he was holding up his hands and editorializing in holy horror about the state of morals in Montreal, when a club like this could exist undetected and be patronized by the elite, the wealthy, the pillars of the city’s business and financial life. He pulled out the vox humana stop and labored this point for a good six paragraphs.

On the second page there was also a number of pictures of the club. MacArnold had been on the job, and a Clarion reporter had been there while the police were rounding up the found-ins and booking them. They were a very sorry-looking bunch.

I looked. Then, at one picture, I looked more closely. I let out a peal of laughter that woke three sleeping drunks and made the waiter jump as if he’d been goosed.

There, in the picture, standing in front of a sergeant with a notebook, his hands raised angrily to gesture, was my friend James Montgomery.

When I’d finished my quart I left the tavern and went across the street and into the Bank of London. I stamped through the high, hushed, hollow marble halls and accosted the grand ex-cavalry officer who started the twenty elevators. “Mr. MacFaden’s office?”

He looked me up and down for hidden weapons, but I’d taken off my shoulder holster. He completed his security check and told me confidentially, “Twenty-third floor. Take the express here on the left, sir.”

On the twenty-third floor, straight ahead as I got off the elevator, was a door broad enough for loading hay. It was labelled, “President’s Office.” I pressed on.

It was only a blind. Inside was a manorial hall, a good two storeys high, wall-to-walled with a dark and doleful rug and panelled in dull mahogany. Around the walls were about sixteen more doors. In the exact centre of this sanctum was a receptionist’s desk staffed by a young, sedate, bespectacled girl.

I approached her. I said, “I want to see Mr. MacFaden.”

“May I have your name?”

“Russell Teed.”

She fumbled at an intercom set. “Was your appointment for this hour, Mr. Teed?” she asked me.

“I don’t have an appointment.”

All action ceased. “Oh,” she said blankly.

“But it is a most urgent matter.”

“Personal?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a personal friend of Mr. MacFaden’s?”

“No,” I said patiently.

She could be patient too. “Mr. MacFaden is our president, you know,” she told me slowly enough so I could spell the words out mentally if I had to do that to understand them. “I’m afraid it’s impossible to see him without an appointment. There are many demands on his—”

“Yeah, I know. What do I do to get an appointment? Go back downstairs and open an account in the bank?”

She colored. “Mr. MacFaden’s personal secretary is also very busy. Perhaps you could speak to his assistant personal secretary.”

“Perhaps I could, and then perhaps I don’t want to,” I said in a huff. I added quickly, “But I will.”

She put her face down and talked surreptitiously into the intercom, and then pointed out a door. I went to it and through it. I was in a small, tidy office facing a girl twice as efficient as the first, but also a good deal prettier.

“Are you MacFaden’s assistant personal secretary?” I asked her.

“No, I’m his assistant personal secretary’s secretary. What can I do for you?”

“Not a Goddamn thing!” I yelled, “Only let me use your telephone.”

She slipped backward out of her chair and retreated from her desk with an open mouth and a red face. Beside her telephone was a Bank phone directory. I looked up MacFaden, and he was listed.

I dialled his local. I suppose anybody in the city could have done it. In the receiver a dry but pleasant voice said, “MacFaden speaking.”

After all that monkey business.

“My name is Russell Teed,” I told him. “I have an urgent personal matter to discuss with you right away, if you aren’t too busy.”

“Never too busy,” MacFaden said brusquely. “I’m on the twenty-third floor of the Bank building. How soon can you be here?”

“As soon as I get through the maze that protects your office,” I said bitterly. “I’m on the twenty-third floor, too.”

When I came back out into the baronial foyer, MacFaden was standing in an open doorway. The receptionist gawked at me. I went toward him and followed him into an office no bigger than the average aircraft hangar. There was a board table at one side, but you could set up bowling alleys in the empty space between that and his desk. The desk itself was big enough for a hockey team to practise on.

We sat down. He offered me cigarettes out of a silver box, but I was afraid they might be Turkish so I shook my head politely and pulled out a State Express.

He said, “What is the nature of your business, Mr. Teed?”

“Unpleasant,” I said. “I’m a private investigator.”

“I hardly expect you are investigating me,” he said easily.

“Why? Is all your life an open book?”

He gave me a starchy stare. “Perhaps you’d better tell me why you are here.”

“This.” I pulled Crawfie’s portrait of him from my pocket and skidded it across the desk to him. It only went halfway, so he had to get out of his chair to reach it.

He studied the snap. Then he said, “This is certainly my picture. But I don’t know where it was taken, and I don’t quite see its significance.”

“It was taken at the doorway of an apartment, in a building on Sherbrooke Street West. Its significance is on the front page of this morning’s Clarion.”

“Oh,” he said slowly. “I see.”

“You were right the first time, Mr. MacFaden. I’m not investigating you. I’m not trying to put you on a spot or embarrass you. But I would like to know two things: first, has it been your habit to gamble at the place this picture was taken?”

He looked at me shrewdly. “I’m sorry to trouble you, but have you some identification? You see my position. If, for instance, you were a reporter masquerading as—”

“Of course.” I got out my wallet and showed him the little official ticket the licensing board gives me. It had my name, birthdate, weight, scars, signature, picture and thumb-print—everything but a smear of my blood. It said I was a private investigator, and you could hardly doubt it.

“Thanks.” He tossed it back. “Just one more thing. Can I be assured that you aren’t working for interests detrimental to me or to my position?”

“Things can get Goddamn complicated, can’t they?” I said pleasantly. “Now, to answer that last question of yours, I’d have to ask my second question. And I wanted to clear up the first one first.”

“I’ve already admitted this is a picture of me. Let’s assume I admit it was taken where you claim it was—at this gambling place on Sherbrooke.”

“Okay. Thank you. My position is this. I know who took the picture—and others like it. I don’t know why he took it. The only logical assumption is he wanted to blackmail people who gambled, and whose public position was such they’d pay to keep it quiet.”

“Why are you interested in the person who took the picture?”

“Because he’s a stinkin’ little rat and I want to get something on him.”

“You couldn’t prove he was a blackmailer. If people were being blackmailed, and were paying off, they’d hardly be willing to take the publicity of a court case.”

He seemed to have a logical mind. That’s commendable, but sometimes it’s troublesome. “I’ll amplify,” I said patiently. “This person had disappeared. Both his disappearance and his present whereabouts may be explained by these pictures—the one of you, and some others. If I can find out what he’s doing with the pictures, maybe I can find him. After that I’ll get something on him if I have to beat it out of him. I’m working on a theory that says he’s hiding out where he can take the pictures and blackmail his victims.”

“I see. Well. What’s your second question?”

“Have you been blackmailed?”

“No.”

I looked into the polished surface of the desk. His reflection and mine were very clear. His face looked neutral, perhaps a bit expectant as if he expected me to say something more. It certainly didn’t look guilty. It didn’t look as if he’d just lied to me.

My reflection looked disappointed, or any stronger word you can think of along that line.

“Well, thanks,” I said. “I’m sorry I wasted your time.”

“I wish I could have helped you. Frankly, I’ve gambled in that place several times. It’s an old vice of mine. But I had no idea that picture was taken. I never saw it before you showed it to me, and certainly it hasn’t been used to extort money from me.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“If anything further happens, I’ll be glad to get in touch with you.”

“I’m in the directory,” I said. “Russell Teed.” I would have given him my number, but he didn’t have so much as a memo pad on that clean desk.

“Good morning,” I said. “Thank you again.”

As I went out he settled back again behind the empty desk and lazily pulled the silver cigarette box toward him. Maybe his personal secretary and his assistant personal secretary were busy, but he wasn’t. He just sat there all day, waiting for things like me to happen. It was nice to have enough experience and ability so you could be well paid for working like that.

I went out into the sunlight of Notre Dame Street and kicked the little Morris in the slats until it started. I went home.

Lila was sitting on the chesterfield in my front room, relaxing with all the good things of life I could provide. A flat fifty of my State Express was open beside her, and she was using my best crystal to drink sherry. The sherry bottle was beside her glass; it was the Harvey’s Bristol Cream I’d been saving for the next time Royalty called on me.

I said pointedly, “I thought you were going to get dressed and go, right after I left.”

“I like it here. I decided to stay.”

“Don’t get the idea you’re a permanent fixture.”

“That’s a sweet way to talk, after what we’ve—”

“No lip,” I said shortly. “Or I’ll give you your five bucks and throw you out on the street.”

She got up deliberately and came to me. She hit me across the mouth with the back of her hand. It was meant to hurt, and it did.

“All right, be a complete bastard,” she said. “I was just leaving anyway.”

“Oh, never mind. Sit down. You can be useful. Anyhow, you haven’t finished your sherry.”

I shoved her back into the chesterfield. I took out the two pictures, the one of Hamish MacFaden and the one of C. Winston Wales, and tossed them to her.

“What do I do with these?”

“What do they mean to you?”

“Nothing at all.”

“I guess I should have the Clarion delivered here in the mornings.”

“I don’t get it.”

“One of these two was murdered last night. It’s all over the front page. It doesn’t matter if you don’t get anything from them.”

“Why should I?”

“They come from the Crawford Foster Studio.”

“No kiddin’? He wasn’t handling anything like this while I was around. He didn’t take pics himself, of course, he just developed the ones we took. And all we took was night club shots.”

“He took these,” I said. “But I doubt if he showed them to any of you kids. Notice anything about them?”

“Well—They’re both taken at the same doorway. What do you want me to notice?”

“Go on. You’re doing fine.”

“They’re both taken from exactly the same spot. But exactly. It’s not just that the photographer was standing in the same place both times, but more like the camera was in some kind of rigid mounting. It was in the mounting for both shots.”

“That’s the kind of thing I want. Anything else?”

“What kind of light was used to take them?” she wondered.

“Don’t know. For a guess, they were shot by infra-red flash.”

“That’s funny. You’d think the light source would be near the camera lens, then.”

“You’d think so,” I agreed.

“Look at this.” She tossed me MacFaden’s picture. “Here, the face is lighted from top left.” Then she held out the photo of Wales. “In this one, the face is lighted from top right.”

“Huh,” I grunted. “What do you make of that?”

“What do you make of it?”

“Nothing. You’re the photographer.”

“I’d say the light source, the flash or whatever, was high left on one and high right on the other. Obviously. But that doesn’t tie in with an arranged set-up, like you’d have with a rigid camera mount. It’s screwy. And there’s something else funny about them.”

“What?”

She took the pics back from me and studied them again. She shook her head. “I don’t know. Something. Maybe it’ll come to me later.”

“Fine. I’ll see you later.”

“You kicking me out because I was drinking your good sherry?”

“No. Because I’m going out myself, and I don’t want to leave you here to start on the rest of my liquor.”

“Awww, Russell,” she mooned.

“Careful. I gag easily.”

“You were so nice to me earlier this morning.”

“It was your idea, not mine. And how I regret it.”

“Like me to come back this evening?”

“Sure,” I said, “but I haven’t got an extra key to the place. Wait just outside the door. I’ll be in sometime. Likely.”

She slapped me again. Then she kissed me. For just one minute I closed my eyes and made believe it was Elena, but that didn’t go on long. After all, I’m a big boy, and daddy told me the truth about Santa Claus when I began getting overexpensive ideas.

I put one hand between her major geographic features and pushed her away. “Goodbye,” I said. “If you run into Irish Joe again, tell him I’ll kill him if he scratches up my car.”

“What?”

“Irish Joe.”

“Who’s he?”

I took her by the hand. “We can spend longer getting nowhere than any two people I know,” I said. I led her to the door and put her out, like you put out a cat with bad night habits.

“Sometimes we get somewhere,” she said meaningly. She leaned against the door jamb and tried to seduce me with her eyes.

I closed the door. I snapped the latch and did the chain and turned the key in the night lock. Then I took a cold shower.