I’d knocked first. Always the gent.
I said, “Not Richard Gere.”
“If it was him,” Annie said, “it’d be for naked lunch.”
From where I was standing, I couldn’t see into the apartment. Blue air drifted out. Whoever was inside was a heavy smoker.
“The shade of Ed Murrow?” I said.
“Alice Brackley,” Annie whispered. “She phoned this afternoon. I asked her over.”
Alice was sitting behind a bottle of Cutty Sark at the table in the front window. Annie must have made a rush trip to the liquor store on Parliament Street. Scotch wasn’t a staple in her booze cabinet. Empty plates had been shoved to the end of the table. They’d eaten chicken breasts with some kind of tomato sauce. My stomach lurched in envy. Alice was using one of Annie’s cobalt-blue soup bowls for an ashtray.
“Am I trespassing on your time with Annie, Mr. Crang?” Alice asked me. She was wearing her gold and a smile that anybody would call winning.
“It’s me who’s making the surprise visit, Ms. Brackley,” I said. “Nice to see you.”
“Nice?”
“Honest.”
Alice looked at ease. Maybe the Scotch. Maybe the absence of Charles Grimaldi.
Annie said to me, “We’ve been talking more movies.”
Annie looked at ease too. With her, I knew it had nothing to do with Grimaldi or Scotch. She was drinking red wine sparingly.
“And talking about you, Mr. Crang,” Alice Brackley said.
“Alice was frank,” Annie said, again to me. “She wanted to know if she could trust you.”
“With what?” I asked.
I meant the question for Alice. She didn’t answer directly. She said, “The impression you made at La Serre, Mr. Crang, was mixed.”
“Smiling Charlie wouldn’t say so,” I said.
“I wasn’t speaking for Charles,” Alice said.
“He thought you were a smarty-pants,” Annie said. “I didn’t blame him.”
Annie’s tone was light, but she was letting me know there was a point to be made in the room.
“Whose side you on?” I said to her.
My tone matched Annie’s for lightness, but I was letting her know I wanted someone in the room to get on with the point.
“I hope I’m not presuming too much,” Annie said, turning from me to Alice and back to me, “but I think Alice might want to consult you, Crang.”
“Is that what the thing about trust is all about?” I said.
Annie had candles on the table. In their glow, Alice’s face looked soft and rosy. She reached into a bowl of ice, dropped three cubes in her glass, and poured Cutty Sark on top. Soft and rosy and tiddly. On her at that moment it wasn’t a bad combination.
“Do you know anything about the disposal business, Mr. Crang?” Alice asked.
“I’m picking up on it fast.”
“In disposal,” Alice said, “there’s no quarter given.”
“Especially tough for a woman, I’d imagine.”
“It’s sexist,” Alice said, “but so are many businesses.”
“Many businesses aren’t also crooked.”
“Crang,” Annie said, “you’re going too fast.”
Alice said, “One takes the edge where it’s offered. That’s what I’ve learned at Ace.”
It was Alice’s dance. I’d follow her lead. But as tangos went, it was mighty leisurely. I was sure to step on her toes before we got off the dance floor. Either that or I’d OD on my own metaphors.
“What else have you learned at Ace?” I asked Alice.
“The president’s office is the place where you find the only real satisfaction,” she said.
Where was the woman going with this line of palaver? I knew where I should be going. My watch said eight minutes to ten. Eight minutes until my assignation with James Turkin.
“What you just said,” I said, “sounds like something they teach at the Harvard Business School.”
“Mr. Crang, I’m in the business world,” Alice said. “I know where power resides.”
“And how it’s wielded?”
“Sometimes a line is crossed,” Alice said.
Alice may have expected me to understand. Rosy in the candlelight, safe in Annie’s company, comfortable in the Scotch. I couldn’t be sure whether she wanted to spill some beans or was merely high and loose on the ambience and the liquor. It might take another hour to find out. I made a swift weighing of priorities. My meeting with James won out.
“Let’s get together, Ms. Brackley,” I said. “Take lunch. Have your machine call my machine. Pencil in a date. All those other things you guys do in the executive suite.”
“Don’t pay attention to the flip stuff, Alice,” Annie said to Ms. Brackley. “You can rely on Crang.”
“I’ll be in contact,” Alice said to me.
“But will we touch base?”
Annie went to the door with me.
“You shouldn’t tease the woman,” she said in the hall. She was whispering again. “I think Alice might be on the verge of saying something important.”
“She’s treating it like the Geneva arms talks,” I said. “We don’t have the space for prolonged negotiations and other tap dances.”
“Well,” Annie said, looking back into the apartment, “she’s welcome to stay here and talk for as long as she wants.”
“Keep her mainlining the Cutty.”
“Crang, I’m not going to pump the woman. Just lend an ear to someone who’s got problems.”
“Come up with deep-throat material,” I said, “and I’ll stick the bottle of Scotch on my expense account.”
“That’s my guy. All heart.”
I kissed Annie on both cheeks, went down to the Volks, and drove around the corner to Sackville and Gerrard. James was waiting in front of a variety store. He had on a long-sleeved black shirt and black jeans.
I said, “I like a man who dresses for the occasion.
