you today?”
“No reason to.”
“Harp hasn’t heard either?”
“You jokin’ me? The guy’s all over the place—TV interviews, personal appearances, record stores. Dave’d never get ahold of Harper. He’s a goddamn genuine celebrity. That’s why I’m doing this fantastic business at the club, on account of Harper’s getting known from the movies. You gotta’ve heard about that.”
“Hard to miss it, Abner,” I said. “Why have I always thought Harp is a nickname? Like Bird was for Charlie Parker.”
“Wrong. It’s short for Harper.”
“Probably you and his mother are the only people who call him Harper.”
“His mother, nice old lady, she’s dead.”
I was sitting in the swivel chair behind my desk. I swivelled sideways to look down into the wide sidewalk on Queen Street. A man in black pants held up by loose red suspenders was banging on a conga drum. A blonde woman who had the moves of someone on speed was twirling two large fans in time to the conga beat. People stopped to catch the show and drop coins into an upside-down grey fedora beside the drum.
I said to Abner Chase, “About Dave, anybody else you can think of he might be in regular touch with?”
“Ralph Goddard. You met Dave’s brother? He’s been getting Dave’s act together the last couple years.”
“He hasn’t done much to update Dave’s style in clothes.”
“The business side I’m telling you about. Dave’s a helluva musician, I don’t need to remind anyone knows these things like you. He’s just never acted like an Einstein with the dollars and cents.”
“I’ll try Ralph.”
“Out in the sticks somewhere,” Abner said. “You better be wrong about Dave. He’s a reliable guy, freaky but reliable.”
“Which part of the sticks?”
“Don Mills, I think. Look it up in the fuckin’ phone book. Ralph’s the kind of guy, you first talk to him, you think he’s got mud on his shoes or something. But I dealt with him a bit now, and he’s a pretty astute guy.”
Abner hung up, and I found Ralph Goddard’s number in the phone book. I dialled. Ralph answered. He didn’t sound astute on the phone. He sounded like a pussycat. Or a cocker spaniel. He wanted me to trot right over to his place.
“Crang, well, sir, I always meant to meet up with you,” he said on the phone.“Ever since you got Dave out of the scrape way back there.”
Dave had almost lost his musicians’ union card over a fracas in a club. It seemed the manager refused to turn off the TV set while Dave’s quartet was playing. Dave put a gin bottle through the screen in the middle of The Beverly Hillbillies. That was in Dave’s drinking and drugging period. I argued his suspension before a union disciplinary hearing and, by and large, won. Dave’s only punishment was the purchase of a thirty-inch Panasonic for the club.
I said to Ralph Goddard, “I hear you’re managing your brother’s career, Mr. Goddard.”
“Mr. Goddard was my dad. Call me Ralph.”
“Swell, Ralph.”
“Smartest thing I ever did for Dave. I got him to sign me over power of attorney, and ever since I been running the whole shooting match from right here in my den. Negotiate the fees, deal with the bookers. Mean buggers, pardon the language, those bookers. I should’ve done this for Dave a long time ago. But you know how it is.”
I said I did.
Ralph said, “I had to make my own pile. But now I’m retired, kids out in the world, and I’m doing for the baby brother. Get him something in the bank.”
“Reason for my call,” I said, “you happen to have heard from Dave this afternoon?”
“Not since Monday,” Ralph answered. “The first of every week I give him an allowance. Mail it if he’s out of town. This Monday, I took him a money order to Abner Chase’s club. Didn’t stay long. I’m more of a country-and-western man myself.”
I said, “Dave may be in some difficulties, Ralph.”
Ralph sounded like he was sighing.
“Not the drink again?” he said.
“Nor the drugs.”
I gave Ralph a précis of the previous night’s events.
“Well, that just bothers the dickens out of me,” Ralph said when I finished.
“The big guy doesn’t mean anything to you?” I asked. “The man Dave thinks was following him?”
“Dave used to run with some real characters. But that was all in the past. My brother’s a reformed person, Crang.”
“He drinks a lot of coffee all right.”
“You don’t think we might be jumping the gun? Why, heck, Dave is just as liable to walk into the club tonight like nothing happened.”
“Apart from the boff I took on the head.”
“I guess I like to look on the positive side of life,” Ralph said.
I told Ralph I’d check at Chase’s Club that night and let him know if Dave was absent. Ralph continued to look on the positive side of life. People who sound like pussycats and cocker spaniels tend to do that.
Down on the street, the conga drummer and his hopped-up fan twirler took a break to count their earnings. I swivelled back to the desk. The wits among my clients say my office looks like it’s furnished in Early Salvation Army. I have a wooden desk as solid as the oak tree from which it came and badly chipped around the edges. There are four mismatched chairs, also wooden, also chipped, and there is a metal filing cabinet, which is green and chipped. I bought the desk, chairs, and filing cabinet at the Salvation Army depot on Richmond Street. I never reveal my secret to the wits among my clients. On the wall, I have a framed Henri Matisse poster. It’s called Jazz and has a background of the loveliest blue I may ever have seen.
The phone rang, and I picked up the receiver.
“Fenk,” the voice on the other end said. It was Annie’s voice.
“What do I do with it?”
“Write it down, fella,” Annie said. “It’s the name you asked me to scout up.”
I wrote it down.
“On paper,” I said, “it looks like a typographical error.”
“Raymond Fenk.”
I wrote down the given name.
“He’s a producer,” Annie said. “From Hollywood. He’s got a movie in the Alternate Festival about Mexican illegals in Los
