Booking In. Jack Batten

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СКАЧАТЬ different clients of mine. Both sets were stolen last night.”

      He glanced from me to Maury and back again to me. Neither of us spoke.

      “One set is quite well known, the Walter Hickey papers.” Fletcher paused and did the double-glance routine again. “You’re aware of who Walter Hickey was?”

      “A novel of his was on a Canadian literature course I took thirty years ago in my second or third year of university,” I said. “The Man With the Arctic Face. Not Hickey’s best book, but I see it in Indigo to this day. They got whole rows of all his novels in a special softcover edition. Hickey still sells — the great Canadian novelist of his generation.”

      “Is Hickey the guy that got in the fight with the other famous writer?” Maury said. “They duked it out in a ring, had the gloves on, a referee, the whole nine yards. That guy?”

      “You’re more or less correct,” Fletcher said.

      “Hickey drilled the other guy, what was his name, Miller?”

      “Mailer,” Fletcher said. “Norman Mailer.”

      “For a guy who doesn’t subscribe to The New York Review of Books,” I said to Maury, “you’re not bad on literary history.”

      “I try to keep up,” Maury said. He winked at me.

      Our food and wine arrived, and between sips and mouthfuls, Fletcher spent the next twenty minutes setting the scene and describing the aftermath of the big fistic showdown between Walter Hickey and Norman Mailer. It had taken place in the summer of 1969 at a party thrown by The Paris Review. The setting was an abandoned church on Welfare Island in the East River just off Manhattan, and the guest list included everyone who counted on the eastern seaboard’s literary scene. At the time, Mailer had long since established his worldwide reputation as a novelist and journalist, while Hickey, already as well known as Canadian novelists got in their own country in those days, was just at the beginning of making an international success. The two guys got into an argument over their respective talents, and that led to the boxing match in a ring that happened to have been set up in the gym downstairs in the former church. Everybody from the party, many of them fellow authors of high status, crowded into the gym for the big bout.

      “I’m right about Hickey cleaning Mailer’s clock?” Maury said, interrupting Fletcher’s flow.

      “That was in dispute by Mailer and his clique,” Fletcher said. “But your version is generally accepted.”

      “Tell us this, Fletcher,” I said. “Can we assume the Hickey papers that were swiped last night mostly deal with the fight?”

      “Virtually all the papers are letters, and virtually their only subject is the boxing match. Mailer wrote exhaustively to Hickey; Hickey answered in like fashion. Each insisted he’d outfought the other. People from The Paris Review wrote letters in favour of one side or the other. George Plimpton, William Styron, Irwin Shaw. The controversy went on for three years, people writing back and forth, the whole crowd of novelists getting into the argument, and Hickey saved every scrap of paper. Some people say it was Hickey’s wife who did the saving. Either way, the collection was absolutely complete.”

      The three of us had finished eating. Each dish had come with a pile of frites that were the best I’d tasted this side of Paris. I made a mental note to tell Annie about the place. She was mad for great frites.

      Fletcher went on, “Hickey is, of course, dead now. Practically everybody who was present at the fight is dead. But Hickey’s daughter kept the correspondence that her father passed down to her. She’s Acey, the daughter, and she’s the one who retained me to find a buyer for the papers.”

      “What kind of name is Acey?” Maury asked.

      “Her full name is Anita Carmen, but she goes by Acey. Running the first letters of the two names together, if you follow. Rather a lower-class naming device, I would say. Common.”

      “Her parents pinned it on her?” Maury said.

      “Let’s not waste time on irrelevancies,” Fletcher said. “The point is I take my instructions from Acey, and in order for me to carry out her wishes, the papers have been in my safe for the past six months.”

      “Until last night,” I said.

      “Alas, yes.”

      “They’re worth how much?” I asked. “The Hickey letters?”

      “One million dollars is a low assessment. Two million is probably closer to the true price.”

      “No bull?” Maury said. “Almost makes me wish I were still in the burglary game.”

      The waiter asked if we wanted coffee. Fletcher waved him off. He told Maury and me we’d all have coffee at a place he knew in the market. He was talking about Kensington Market, the historic old neighbourhood south of College.

      “And you’ll tell us about the second set of papers that have gone missing?” I said to Fletcher

      “Crang,” Fletcher said in his self-satisfied mode, “you’re going to find the story of these other papers hitting awfully close to home.”

      Fletcher paused, still looking at me with his malicious little smile.

      “Your home,” he said.

      Chapter Six

      The three of us were sitting at an outdoor wooden table on Nassau Street in the thick of Kensington Market’s commerce. Maury and I had cappuccinos in front of us. Fletcher went for a double espresso. Around us the sidewalks were teeming with beautiful young women in skimpy shorts or colourful summer dresses that didn’t reach midthigh.

      “You ever seen so many first-class dames in your life?” Maury said to me.

      “Only when I’m alone in a room with Annie.”

      “And the clothes these girls got on, I can hardly believe it’s legal.”

      “There was a time in this part of town,” I said, “everybody female dressed long and black.”

      In the early twentieth century, modest rents for humble dwellings made Kensington Market the first choice in address for ethnic groups newly arrived in Toronto. It was the Jewish quarter first, where immigrants beating it out of Russia and Eastern Europe established their homes, shops, and businesses. Then, as the Jewish families grew flush and pushed north to roomier neighbourhoods, the market turned more heavily East Asian. Now, the area had morphed into a shopping centre for young people from all over the city hot after bargains in clothes, food, and electronics. Graffiti artists had gone nuts on the outdoor walls of commercial buildings, and the whiff of marijuana drifted on the breeze. To young Toronto, Kensington Market was the hip hangout of the moment.

      “Gentlemen,” Fletch said, “let me tell you about my other client whose papers have gone missing.”

      “You’ve got our full attention, Fletcher,” I said, though Maury, still tracking the girls, seemed less than deeply engaged in our conversation.

      “The client,” Fletcher said, pausing for emphasis and wearing СКАЧАТЬ