Riviera Blues. Jack Batten

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СКАЧАТЬ confidentiality, I understand. You’re not gonna level with me.”

      Trum’s eyes, I hadn’t realized before, were surprisingly clear and sharp, a minimum of red for a man as dedicated to martinis as he was.

      “But if you expect me to go further,” Trum said, “I want it between us, officially, you heard nothing from me.”

      “About what?”

      “The affair, for chrissake.”

      “The affair?”

      I knew what affair Trum meant. But how did he know about it? And wasn’t Pamela going to blow her stack when I told her Trum knew?

      “Yeah,” Trum said. “The affair.”

      “Pamela and Jamie?”

      “See? I knew you were acting for Archie.”

      “Trum, not that it matters, but I don’t take matrimonial cases.”

      “Sure, you’re criminal. But I’m thinking to myself, maybe Archie found out Pamela’s screwing around, and he wanted someone to do a little preliminary digging before the divorce lawyers come in and the fees hit six figures, and he arrives at you because for reasons of your own, Pamela giving you the brush years ago, you might be willing to throw yourself into the job.”

      “I’m wounded, Trum, hurt to the quick. You’d think that of me?”

      “Must be my lawyer’s training,” Trum said. “Anyhow, I’m with Pamela if the time comes for choosing up who you have to be with.”

      “Archie Cartwright — listen to my every word, Trum — Archie Cartwright has never communicated with me by letter, by telephone, by an intermediary, by telex or fax, or by semaphore.”

      Trum eased his stomach away from the edge of the table. He looked at me from over his swelling nose.

      “Pamela and me,” Trum said, “we go back. I remember, years before you ever came along, I was at UCC, she was at Branksome. We went to the formals, the battalion balls, her father’s house, my father’s house. Same gang of us did all that teenage crap together. That’s why I still got a lot of time for Pamela.”

      “Very touching, Trum,” I said. “Now, how did you find out about the affair?”

      “Jamie told me.”

      “Holy shit.”

      “That’s what I thought too. An affair, you only tell your best buddy about, and I’m not Jamie’s. He’s just a guy I work with on projects at the office. But a while ago, he says, let’s have lunch. First time that happened, believe me. Anyhow, I’m into my second silver bullet, he starts in about him and Pamela. Wouldn’t shut up.”

      “How much did he tell you?”

      “That it’s been going on a year, that Pamela set him up in an apartment, and that, in so many words, she’s a great lay.”

      “Charming.”

      “I would’ve punched him, except I wanted to hear more.”

      Connie took away our empty plates and brought coffee.

      “You holding at three?” she asked Trum.

      “I’m saving number four for my confreres at the bar,” Trum answered, nodding toward the centre of the room.

      “Just another couple of questions,” I said. “Anybody else privy to all this?”

      “Two, maybe three other people at C&G. They found out the same way as me, same general time too. From Jamie, last month. The guy that runs the investment department, he knows, and Jamie’s immediate boss, him as well.”

      “What about Swotty? Any chance of these guys passing it to him?”

      “Are you nuts?” Trum jerked his hand and spilled coffee on his placemat. “Can you see one of us dropping in at Whetherhill’s office. ‘Oh, by the way, Chief, your married daughter’s banging a guy from the trust department. And, hey, you’ll never guess, Chief, the guy’s a relative of yours.’”

      “Yeah,” I said. “Dumb question.”

      Trum lifted his cup and mopped the spilled coffee with a paper napkin.

      “Sure sign,” he said. “When I start dumping coffee all over the place, I need another drink.”

      “This has been a large help, Trum,” I said. “I’ll let you know how it develops.”

      “You won’t need to. If anything hits the fan, it’ll be all over the office.” Trum put his hands on the table and levered himself out of his chair. The table rocked on its legs. “I did all the talking,” he said. “So you get to do the paying. Fair? Not at the bar though. I’ll pick up for what I drink there.”

      “Number four?”

      “All this shit we been talking about, I might feel a fifth coming on.”

      When Trum reached the bar, the guys sitting there opened up a space for him. A martini was waiting on the Formica top.

      CHAPTER NINE

      I got home just after seven, laden with purchases. I had Miles Davis’s autobiography, thick and in paperback. That was for overseas reading. I had two new shirts, a French-English dictionary, and, best of all, a beret in a raffish black model. I tried it on in front of the bathroom mirror. Someone resembling the young Maurice Chevalier stared back at me. Ah, France. Ah, Gigi. Ah, thank heaven for leetle girls.

      “Yo, Crang.” Alex of the downstairs duo of Alex and Ian called up the stairs. “You all alone up there?”

      I went out to the landing. “Annie’s working tonight.”

      “Poor you. Had dinner yet?”

      “I was planning on something from the kitchens of Campbell’s.”

      “Well, Ian’s cooked pots of ragoût d’agneau. We’d adore it if you came down and made us green about your big trip.”

      “What did you call the meal?”

      “Lamb stew, numb nuts.”

      I got two bottles of Côtes du Rhône out of the cupboard over the refrigerator. Alex and Ian and I ate, drank, talked, and laughed until almost midnight, and when I arrived back upstairs, I was feeling no particular pain.

      In the bedroom, I turned on the lamp beside the bed. A little breeze was floating through the open window. I walked over to the window and got closer to the breeze. It felt soft and sweet. I stood there and wondered, idly, vaguely, why a soft, sweet breeze was coming into the room. As far as I remembered, before I joined the guys downstairs, the bedroom window had been shut tight.

      “Be cool, my man.”

      The СКАЧАТЬ