Crang Mysteries 6-Book Bundle. Jack Batten

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      1

      DAVE GODDARD was asking me to tail a guy he said was tailing him.

      I said, “At law school, Dave, when I went, I don’t recall they taught a course in close and surreptitious pursuit.”

      “The reason I flashed on you for the gig, man, you’re a criminal lawyer.”

      “You got that part right, Dave.”

      “So dig this, you’re a criminal lawyer, and the thing going down, this dude on my case, it’s a crime.”

      “Watching and besetting maybe.”

      “That’s no jive, man.”

      “Dave, when I said watching and besetting, that’s what we lawyers call legal wit.”

      Dave wasn’t in the mood for legal wit. He had a cup of coffee in front of him. I was drinking vodka on the rocks. It was a few minutes after midnight, and we were sitting at the table in Chase’s Club reserved for musicians. The table was next to the door into the kitchen.

      “Here’s the deal, man.” Dave leaned six inches over the table. “The dude follows me to my pad. You follow the dude. I fall into bed.”

      Dave stopped talking. He was still leaning.

      I said, “That seems to leave me and your alleged tail all by ourselves on the street.”

      “Wait for it, man,” Dave said. “What this dude’s gonna do, me down for the night, you dig, he’s gonna head back to his own pad. You with me, man?”

      I said, “And I keep him company at a discreet distance. Which gets us the gentleman’s address and eventually his name.”

      Dave signified his pleasure.

      “Solid,” he said.

      “I’m a quick study, Dave.”

      I let a beat of silence go by. Dave swallowed from his cup of coffee. Black with enough sugar to give an ordinary man diabetes.

      “What if I have a doubt or two?” I said.

      Dave put down his coffee cup.

      He said, “Crang, the dude’s not how you said. Alleged? Last two days, he’s right there. I look, dude’s back there. Yesterday afternoon, I’m in my room at the hotel, TV’s on, I’m laid out on the bed watching my soaps, somebody starts working on the lock from out in the hall. ‘Hey’, I holler. Whoever’s out there splits. It had to be the same dude.”

      “Sounds persuasive, Dave.”

      I lied. Dave wasn’t persuading me to take part in his dingbat enterprise. But just because it was Dave, I was willing to sit at the table in Chase’s while he tried more persuading.

      Dave was a tall, reedy guy in his late fifties, about fifteen years older than me. His face was oval-shaped, the kind you usually see on a woman. It looked fine on Dave. He had a head of hair that was still dark, still full. One of his eyes was a fraction off-centre. I think it was the right. When he talked to me, the left was the eye that seemed to be staring into mine. Dave had on a lightweight brown sports jacket and a pale-brown shirt. The jacket had no lapels, and the shirt had a roll collar like the kind Billy Eckstine used to wear. Maybe Mr. B still wears them. A thin leather strap was looped around Dave’s neck and hung almost to his waist. A metal clip was fixed to the end of the strap. It held Dave’s tenor saxophone when he played. Dave was a jazz musician. In my value system, that gave Dave a status close to heroic. Should a grown man have a hero? Soft spot maybe. I had a soft spot for Dave, and it made me more patient than I’d otherwise be with the talk about trailing a stranger who was trailing Dave.

      I said, “Let me suggest something else, Dave, an alternate plan.”

      Dave focussed his left eye on me.

      I said,“Why not step up to the gent and ask how come the fascination with you?”

      Dave raised both hands and made shooing motions.

      “Definitely no eyes for that, man,” he said.

      “Understand, Dave, I’m doing what a lawyer’s supposed to do.”

      “Man?”

      “Ask questions.”

      “I’m СКАЧАТЬ