Crang Mysteries 6-Book Bundle. Jack Batten

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СКАЧАТЬ behind Cam made an odd associate. He was Harp Manley, veteran bebop trumpet player and recent movie actor.

      “We have secured a film from South America that I assure you is stunning,” Cam was saying into the mike. “It was made inside Chile, unknown to the Pinochet regime, and smuggled out of the country and into our hands. And I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, it is a devastating delineation of oppression under a military government.”

      One more man joined the clump of associates ranged back of Cam. I recognized him too. It was Beige Jacket. Different jacket, something in lightweight plaid this time, but it was the same moustache, same thinning hair, same Perry Mason build.

      “That guy over there,” I said to Annie in a low voice. “In the plaid jacket. He mean anything to you?”

      “From the neck down, he could stand in for Raymond Burr.”

      “It’s said if people spend long enough in one another’s company, they begin to think alike.”

      “I’ve heard that.”

      “With us,” I said, “I think the process is in an advanced stage.”

      “I still don’t know who the man in the plaid jacket is.”

      “Excuse me,” I said. “I have business to attend to.”

      Annie and I were standing about dead centre of the crowd of reporters in front of Cam. I edged to the back of the pack, circled one of the TV cameramen who was shooting from an outer angle, and approached the man in the plaid jacket on his right side.

      “Hi, there,” I said. “I believe we share a mutual affection for jazz.”

      The man kept his face a blank, but his eyes shifted over me and opened fractionally wider. He remembered.

      “Get lost, Jack,” he said. He had a rumble for a voice.

      I said, “More specifically, a mutual affection for one jazz musician. Who could forget Dave Goddard?”

      “You deaf or what?” the man said. His hair and moustache were dark-brown, and his face had a Slavic cast. “Take a hike.”

      A pair of festival associates made shushing noises at us, and I could hear Cam Charles raise his voice at the microphone to keep the crowd’s attention from wandering to the exchange between me and the man in the plaid jacket.

      I said to him, “The three of us got together last night, you, me, Dave, in the alley behind the Cameron.”

      “One more time, Mac,” the man said. “Hit the road.”

      “Is that who I think it is? Crang?” Cam Charles said, turning in my direction. He had his left hand covering the microphone, but his voice leaked over the sound system. “This is a press conference, Crang, and whatever you are, God knows you aren’t press.”

      I said to the man in the plaid jacket, “Any second now, you’re going to run out of similes for go away, and we can start talking.”

      The man planted his hands on my chest and shoved. I sat down hard on the thick green carpeting and heard the crowd of reporters go ohhhhh and ahhhhh.

      “Get him out of here,” Cam said from the lectern.

      Cam meant me. The man in the plaid jacket was already on his way through the door. I pushed off the floor.

      Annie had her hand on my arm.

      “Anything hurt?” she asked.

      Trevor Dalgleish was right behind her, wearing a stern look.

      “God’s sake, Crang,” he said, not as chummy as he’d been earlier. “That man was a guest here.”

      “I assure you, ladies and gentlemen,” Cam was announcing into the microphone, “this little scene was not part of our presentation.”

      “Do me a favour, honeybunch,” I said to Annie. “Find out from Cam or someone, maybe Trev here, who the bully in plaid is.”

      “Never mind him, Crang,” Trevor snapped at me. “Just do what Cam asked. Get out of here and stop interrupting the press conference.” “Now for the very important surprise I mentioned earlier,” Cam said to the press. “I’d like to ask Mr. Harp Manley to step forward.”

      “Crang,” Trevor hissed at me.

      “What’re you going to do?” Annie asked me.

      “Follow the bully,” I said.

      7

      THE BULLY didn’t look behind all the way to the Silverdore Hotel. His wide plaid shoulders made him a stickout in the pedestrian parade along Bloor Street. Bloor is prime for people-watching. Fresh-faced kids from the university a block to the south. Splendidly shaped, coiffed, and groomed young matrons conducting raids on Creed’s and Holt Renfrew. I only had eyes for my bully. How come he didn’t examine his rear? Didn’t he suppose I’d chase after him? Or didn’t he care? That struck me as humiliating, the not-caring possibility.

      The bully marched resolutely along the south side of Bloor, crossed at Yonge, went three blocks south to Charles, turned east, then into the Silverdore. As Toronto hotels go, the Silverdore is middle-class tourist trade. It has a utilitarian look, fifteen storeys of pale-brown brick straight up and five flags flying from the marquee over the entrance. The Stars and Stripes occupies the middle pole.

      I hung back of the Silverdore’s glass doors and watched my quarry. He didn’t head for the front desk. He was pulling a key from his jacket pocket as he stepped toward the elevators. Must be a Silverdore guest. Crang, the master of deduction.

      I walked to the other side of Charles and leaned my hip against a phone booth.

      Now what?

      I knew the guy had a room at the Silverdore. I knew, or suspected on reasonable grounds, that he’d knocked me out in the Cameron alley and had probably made Dave Goddard disappear. I knew he was connected with Cam Charles’s Alternate Film Festival. And I knew he had a wardrobe of two or more summer jackets.

      The question facing the house, how did I organize this dazzling array of facts?

      I went up to the subway station on Bloor, rode a train and a Queen streetcar to my office, and got on the phone.

      Abner Chase was at his club.

      “I been telling you at least ten years, Crang,” he said after I identified myself.“There’s no sense me stocking the Polish vodka. You’re the only customer asks for it.”

      Abner Chase always went to the point, whatever point was on his mind.

      “This time I’m trying to do you a favour, Abner,” I said.“I think we might have a problem with Dave Goddard.”

      “There’s a problem with the guy, I won’t know it till nine tonight.”

      “That’s the thing. Dave may be among the missing.”

      “Missing?” СКАЧАТЬ