Riviera Blues. Jack Batten

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      “When I come back,” Connie said, “it’ll be with the third.”

      “What time’d you get here, Trum?” I asked.

      “Noon,” Connie answered for him. “Stroke of. As usual.”

      I asked for a glass of white wine. The menu was printed in small type on the place mats. Trum said he’d have the Friday special. I went for a dish billed as half an appetizer plate.

      “Speaking of your shop,” I said to Trum, “how’s business?”

      “Be specific.”

      “Jamie Haddon.”

      “There you go, old buddy, another case of nepotism. But he’s smarter than you, Crang, young Jamie is. He has tied himself to old Whetherhill’s coattails, and he’s not about to let go.”

      “I think you got your metaphors mixed up there, Trum.”

      “Jamie also knows which side his bread is buttered on.”

      Connie made the round trip with my white wine and Trum’s third martini.

      “Leaving aside family advantages,” I asked Trum, “how is Jamie on his own merits, in your humble opinion?”

      “Well, one talent of his, he’s hot stuff in the boardroom. Very organized with the reports when his turn comes around. Doesn’t say a whole lot, but he drops the odd harmless witticism. Knows how to butter up the guy in the chair without brown-nosing. He’s a political guy, Jamie.”

      “Young man going places is what you’re telling me?”

      “Listen, I’ll lay it out for you from the top. C&G isn’t a bad place to work, not for Jamie, not for me, not for anybody. You think of it, we’re talking about the last of the old-school trust companies in this country that hasn’t been gobbled up by a bank or some marauding American. The company is solid as a rock, and it’s Whetherhill, him and his family, who built it. Swotty’s idea of a lavish salary doesn’t happen to coincide with mine, but there are other benefits. Stock options, smart people to work with, and God knows the place is going to be there forever. That’s all Whetherhill’s accomplishment, and you’re asking about Jamie Haddon, well, Swotty treats the kid like he’s seen the future and Jamie Haddon’s in it.”

      Connie plunked down two plates. The Friday special was chili. My half appetizer plate held a full complement of fish, crustaceans, and molluscs. Shrimp, lobster, herring, two oysters.

      “Computers,” I said to Trum, moving along my list of topics. “I assume C&G is chock-a-block with them.”

      “I love those suckers.”

      “You personally? You use a computer?”

      “I got a little honey right beside my desk. Every day I ask myself, how did I ever work, how did I live, before whoever invented computers invented them.”

      “You should understand this is coming as a cruel disappointment to me, Trum. I had you down for a fellow Luddite.”

      Trum pointed his fork at me.

      “I got something I want to give to my secretary … follow me on this, Crang, it’s a good example of what my computer does for me … and the secretary isn’t at her desk. Do I chase after her, wait around, look for another girl? Hell, no, I bang the message, the memo, whatever, into my computer and press a button and, zip, it’s in her computer. Or, get this, I’m setting up a short meeting with a couple of other people, say some guys two floors down from me. Am I gonna take the elevator, and it ends up these guys are out of the office, in a conference, something like that? You kidding me? I do the whole arrangement on the computer. Never leave my desk. Those examples, I save myself, easy, thirty minutes out of every day at the office.”

      Trum was serious.

      “That’s great,” I said. “What do you do with the extra half-hour?”

      “Get out to the golf course a half-hour earlier.”

      Trum was still serious.

      “What about Jamie?”

      “Never played golf with him. He looks more of a squash type to me.”

      “Come on, Trum, you know what I mean. Jamie and computers.”

      “Now you mention it, he’s pretty sharp. He talks all the time about ways we can use computers I never thought of. The truth is I don’t frankly understand it when Jamie gets on one of his kicks. ‘Your programming’s out of date, Trum.’ Shit, gimme a break, I’m only sending memos to my secretary. But, you know, to each his own. Jamie knows computers. I know law.”

      “Don’t undersell yourself, Trum. You’re sitting next to one of them all day, you must have a notion about the machines, how computers work.”

      “A thing I learned, lemme tell you, Crang, they’re resilient little suckers. There was a hell of a flap two, three weeks back. I’m punching away at my computer, putting in this big deal report to the head guy over in the securities department. My screen all of a sudden goes berserk. Jumping around like a bitch, like a movie out of focus, except sometimes the screen would be absolutely blank for long stretches. This wasn’t just my computer. Same thing all over the entire trust company.”

      “What’d happened?”

      “Some kind of massive short circuit, I don’t know. But never mind that. It isn’t the point of the story.”

      “I’m still listening.”

      “All right, you know the old brick warehouse, looks deserted, right at Spadina and Wellington, far side?”

      “No, but if you say so.”

      “That building, it isn’t empty at all. In there, they got a computer backup system for the C&G computer. It takes over in case the computer at the main office blows. Which it did. Okay, within minutes, the backup over at Spadina and Wellington kicks in.”

      “Trum, I’m astounded, really am. Totally awestruck.”

      “You don’t give a rat’s ass, Crang, I can tell. But to me, it was amazing. One minute, I was running around the hall. The computer’s out, I was saying, my report’s lost, the sky is falling. And next thing, a couple of minutes later, I was back in my office, and everything was normal. Not a syllable got lost. My report to the head securities guy was right there, right in the middle of the sentence I was typing. Fucking-A amazing.”

      Connie reappeared.

      “You going for four, Trum?” she asked.

      Trum wiped chili from the side of his mouth.

      “Not till I’ve called my friend here’s bluff,” he answered.

      Connie went away. I waited for Trum to call my bluff. What bluff? I was guarding a secret about Pamela and Jamie, but I wasn’t trying to blow anything past Trum.

      “I guessed soon as you started in with the Jamie Haddon questions.” СКАЧАТЬ