Keeper of the Flame. Jack Batten

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “Is this a Viagra situation?”

      “Sal admires my stamina.”

      “That’s not answering the question.”

      “Hey, you guys,” Sal said, holding up the file folders. “Look what I got.”

      Maury introduced me to Sal. Sal’s last name was Banfield.

      “What’ve you got?” I asked her.

      “Jimmy in there’s my new personal travel consultant,” Sal said. She had a surprisingly cultured voice with a tone usually heard in the tonier Toronto neighbourhoods, notably Rosedale. “He drew up two ten-day winter holidays for a couple. One to Naples, Florida, the other to the island of St. Kitts.”

      Sal turned to Maury. “Which one do you like, my friend?”

      “St. Kitts,” Maury said, sounding definitive.

      Years back, Maury and a friend got busted in Columbus, Ohio, on an illegal boondoggle I’ve never understood. Both guys skipped out on their bail. That made Maury a wanted man in the entire United States of America.

      “You want a taste of island life?” Sal said to Maury.

      “Much better than mainland U.S.” I said. “Less confining.”

      Maury looked a dagger at me.

      “Listen you two,” I said. “Can I buy us all a drink before you go back to the shrimp dish? I got an identification parade to run by Maury.”

      We went into a bar another half block up the street. It was called Faith and Begorra. Inside, the decor ran to paintings of maidens with harps, signed photographs of the Chieftains, and arrangements of crossed hurling sticks. Everything was painted in shades of green.

      A waiter wearing a light green shirt and dark green pants pointed us to a table and took orders. Double Stoli on the rocks for me, beer for Maury, white wine for Sal.

      “Does the white wine come in green?” Sal asked with a teasing smile.

      “For you, darlin’,” the waiter said, addressing Sal’s chest, “anything’s possible.”

      The waiter went away, and I pulled out my iPhone.

      “I got ten guys in different photos on here,” I told Maury. “Tell me if anybody looks familiar. These people are all connected to the church back there. I also got eleven names, but I don’t know how the names go with the photos.”

      I showed Maury the list of names on my iPhone. Sal watched the name parade over Maury’s shoulder.

      “So one guy on your names list, you don’t got a picture to go with him?” Maury said.

      “No photo for one out of the eleven, yeah,” I said.

      “Let’s stick with just the photos,” Maury said. “Show them to me.”

      “You’re on.”

      I started from the beginning with the picture of Squeaky Fallis and the investment consultant I knew as Willie Sizemore. I wasn’t counting the guy blocked out by my jacket.

      “That’s your friend Fox’s old client on there, Squeaky,” Maury said. “Don’t remember his last name.”

      “Fallis,” I said. “His buddy’s named Sizemore. You know him?”

      “No idea who he is,” Maury said. “Listen, Crang, why don’t you run through the whole collection you got, and I’ll tell you at the end who I know? Be faster.”

      The waiter distributed the drinks. Sal’s wine was green.

      “That’s cute,” Sal said.

      The waiter thanked Sal’s chest, and left.

      I flipped slowly through the rest of my photos. Maury was silent.

      “You don’t know any of these guys?” I said to him.

      “Go back four pictures,” Maury said.

      When I flipped back, the photo on the screen included the John Candy look-alike in the white suit.

      “That’s Jackie Gabriel’s kid,” Maury said.

      The guy didn’t look like anybody’s “kid.” He was middle thirties at least.

      “Who’s Jackie Gabriel?” I said.

      “Five, six years ago, you wouldn’t have had to ask,” Maury said. “He was the king of poker games in the city. A little blackjack too. Jackie ruled the card games.”

      “An ace card player is what you’re telling me?” I said.

      “You’re not getting the concept,” Maury said, impatient again. “Jackie was the guy that set up the games. He’d work out of somebody’s basement, a vacant apartment over a store, a bunch of places like that. Guys came and played. Hundred or more players scattered around these different places every weekend, not so many during the week. Very systematic operation. Jackie took a piece of the action, and with him, the house never lost.”

      “Isn’t that why people go to casinos?” I said. “To lose their money at gambling games?”

      “Casinos grabbed a chunk out of Jackie’s business,” Maury said. “But he still has a nitch. The serious card players prefer Jackie’s games.”

      “Niche,” I said.

      “Like I said,” Maury said.

      “So Jackie’s son is George Gabriel, correct?”

      “Georgie,” Maury said. “You know him already?”

      “I saw his name on some documents belonging to Heaven’s Philosophers.”

      “That’s Jackie’s beef right there, this Heaven’s Philosophers,” Maury said. “He wants Georgie to get back in the family business. He thinks the religious thing, whatever Georgie and the other guys are runnin’ in there, it’s too big and risky. Jackie says outfits like that attract the cops sooner or later.”

      “Jackie knows what Heaven’s Philosophers are all about?”

      “He hates their guts, if that’s what you mean.”

      “You think Jackie would talk to me?”

      “He approves of anybody who might throw a wrench in the church bunch,” Maury said. “I’m assuming that’s what you got in mind.”

      I turned to Sal. “You have a view on any of this, Sal?”

      Sal said, “You mean, as a contributor to this evening’s break-in, my opinion now counts for something?”

      “What do you do with yourself when you’re not facilitating illegal СКАЧАТЬ