Riviera Blues. Jack Batten

Pamela said, “he might have put the make on me.”

      Another pause.

      “Started the whole damned affair on purpose. In a funny way, inveigled me into it, lured me, you know what I mean? I hope to God I’m just acting crazy. The older woman-younger man relationship doesn’t matter to me one way or the other. It’s almost trendy these days. I could spin endless stories about middle-aged friends of mine and their twenty-five-year-old beaus. But I had no particular yearning to have an affair. Archie’s a perfect husband. I wasn’t thinking of straying. I certainly wasn’t thinking of straying with Jamie. Not that he isn’t divinely attractive and the rest of it. He definitely is. But he’d always sort of been around since I was a teenager, this little blond cousin stuck with the dim Haddons in Strathroy. Then he came to Toronto, and he was even more around. And then, somehow or other, I’m forty-two, he’s twenty-nine, and we’re in bed, and I’m uneasy, rightly or wrongly, about how we got there.”

      Pamela came to another stop. I judged this one signalled the end of true confessions. I tried for something to say that fit the occasion. The trouble was I hadn’t experienced an occasion before when Pamela had seemed vulnerable.

      “So,” I said, “you think Jamie might be lacking in the chivalry department?”

      “Just keep my unease in mind when you talk to him.”

      Pamela gave me the smile I used to call her hired-help smile. It accompanied tips to headwaiters, compliments to chefs, congratulations to jockeys.

      She said, “You’re being a pet about this.”

      Pamela’s hired-help smile also went with pats on dogs’ heads.

      “I haven’t much to do the next couple of days,” I said. “Why don’t I nose around? Ask about Jamie at the trust company? I know a lawyer who works there. And maybe I could rummage through Jamie’s apartment.”

      “I already rummaged.”

      “Find anything?”

      “I didn’t know what I was rummaging for.”

      “Takes a pro.”

      Pamela looked doubtful. “Well, you could be right,” she conceded. She stood up. “I’ll get the keys.”

      “And something else, if you don’t mind.”

      “A drink? You hardly touched your tea.”

      “A recent photograph of Jamie. I’ll take a rain check on the drink.”

      Pamela was gone from the living room for five minutes. When she came back, she handed me two keys on a Gucci key ring and a photograph with an address written on the back.

      “That’s where the apartment is,” she said. “The ground floor in a house on Rowanwood just over from Chestnut Park.”

      “Nobody’d accuse you of skimping on Jamie,” I said. Addresses didn’t come much more old-Toronto posh than Rowanwood Avenue in Rosedale.

      “It’s a sweet little flat,” Pamela said.

      The keys were to Abloy locks, real toughies even for break-and-enter specialists. I’d learned that from a client who pursued the B&E trade. In the photograph, Pamela was standing between two men. I recognized Jamie from the times I’d seen him years earlier, still California blond, all grin and eyelashes, slim, holding himself in a pose that said nonchalant. The other gent was older, straight as an arrow, tall, fit, good smile. The two men looked formal in dark suits. Pamela was wearing a red dress with frou-frou trimmings at the neckline and hemline. Her arms were around both guys’ waists.

      “The other one’s Archie?” I asked.

      Pamela nodded. “It was taken last Christmas.”

      I looked again at Archie’s face. He had a great set of choppers.

      “He is handsome,” Pamela said.

      “Jamie?”

      “Archie.”

      Pamela’s eyes were fixed on the photograph in my hand. She had a wistful expression. First, vulnerable. Then, wistful. It was more than an ex-husband should be expected to fathom.

      “Jamie’s the immediate problem.”

      “Of course,” Pamela said. Her attention was back on business. “Call me the moment you return.”

      “You bet,” I said. “Three weeks.”

      Pamela saw me to the front door, stretched up on her toes, and gave my cheek a glancing kiss.

      Outside, sitting in the Volks, I took stock. No sweat in the armpits. No apprehension in the gut.

      I wheeled the car in a U-turn and drove over to Rosedale.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      Somebody, somewhere in Jamie Haddon’s apartment, was whistling “Memories.”

      I was standing inside the apartment door. The first Abloy had got me into the house, the second into Jamie’s part of the house. The small outside lobby, which must have been the foyer before the old mansion was divided into flats, had dark wood panelling and shiny hardwood floors which continued into the part of Jamie’s apartment I could see from the doorway. The door opened directly into the living room. The whistler was deeper inside the apartment. As far as I could tell, he or she was whistling in tune.

      I slammed the door hard. The whistling stopped in mid-bar. Silence took over the apartment. I didn’t move. Neither did the whistler. The standoff kept up for about fifteen seconds. Maybe my tactic of the slammed door had been too impetuous.

      The whistler moved first. Firm footsteps, growing louder, echoed from a hall across the living room and opposite the door. Two lamps were on in the living room. The whistler walked into the light.

      He was a guy about five-seven, four or five inches shorter than I am, but he didn’t look like anyone’s pushover. He was solid and muscular and barrel-chested. His black hair was clipped to within a quarter inch of his scalp. The cut gave his head the aspect of a missile.

      “Hi there,” I said. I left my hand on the knob of the shut door behind me.

      “Hello, my friend,” he boomed back. Even his voice had muscles.

      “That’s kind of a record for me,” I said. “Only been here thirty seconds and already we’ve made friends.”

      The little guy shot across the room and pumped my hand.

      “You are a friend of Jamie, why else you come here?” he said. “And this makes you a friend of mine because Jamie, I am best friends with him.”

      He had an accent. Nothing impenetrable, but he pronounced “him” as “heem.” And he didn’t use contractions, not “you’re” or “I’m,” but a precise “you are” and a definite “I am.” Italian maybe?

      I played along with the instant friendship game. “My name’s Crang.”

      “Michel Rolland,” the little guy said. “Call me Mike. All my good friends call me Mike.”

      Not an Italian name. French?

      “Jamie’s away,” I said.

      “Of course.” The two words came out like an explosion. “That is how we are friends, Jamie and me. I meet him where I live. He comes to my condo.”

      “This is where?”

      Another explosion. “Monaco.”

      “Ah.”

      He could be French or Italian. Or French and Italian.

      “Come in, my friend Crang,” Mike said. “Why not we sit down?”

      Mike acted the host, ushering me to a pair of easy chairs. The chairs were covered in chintz, large red flowers