the word mean?” James asked. “About Lewis Lapham?”
“A touch of the bitter. That’s how you define acerbic. Astringent, okay? There you got another adjective. Put the two on the same list, acerbic and astringent. Use them when you want to say something has a taste of sour. Harsh.”
My espresso arrived.
“End of today’s lesson in etymology, James,” I said. “I want to talk to you about a job in the category of piece of cake.”
“I already said I don’t go into houses any more or apartments, places where people live.”
“How about where they reside temporarily?”
“Like what, an office where the guy sometimes sleeps over? That happened to me in this factory out in Etobicoke. I go in, three in the morning, and a man, must’ve been an executive, was sound asleep in the dark. Office as big as this restaurant, leather couch he was laying on, girl with him asleep also. No clothes on either one of the guy or the girl. I was . . . mortified.”
“Mortified is nice, James,” I said. “Let me test your philosophy of residences vis-à-vis commercial properties. What does a hotel come under?”
“I’ve never done a hotel.”
“People come and go. Hotels, at least not this one, aren’t permanent dwellings.”
“You shouldn’t be asking me this stuff. You’re a lawyer.”
“You’re right, James, the Law Society wouldn’t approve. But, take my word, this is a worthy cause.”
James hesitated. He was rummaging for a word.
He said, “That’s your . . . justification.”
He’d settled for second-best. I wouldn’t tell him about rationalization.
“Work it out, James,” I said. “The bad guy took something from the good guy, and we’re going to take it back from the bad guy.”
“Is this a new hotel or old?”
“Thirty, forty years it’s been up, from the architecture and everything else.”
“You know what’s a tough building? The library in North York, couple years old, and it’s got the latest. I went in Tuesday night for practice. Guy told me about the electronic things in the ceiling, high tech, they track you everywhere you move.”
“What’d you bring out? Dictionary?”
“Only practice. You don’t believe me, I already had seven hundred dollars from the naked guy’s wallet in Etobicoke.”
“Electronic surveillance I don’t think is a problem at the Silverdore.”
“A hotel would look good on my résumé.”
“I like it, résumé. Your profession’s gotten into white-collar procedures?”
“Not written down. Just, some guy asks what places I’ve done, I can say hotel.”
“This is rush, James, if you’re telling me yes. I don’t mean next week or two days from now. It has to be right away.”
“Tonight I got something on.”
“Make it tomorrow in the daylight. The guy, Fenk’s his name, we aren’t going in there and tiptoe around his room while he’s in bed. Some time before noon tomorrow ought to be right. That suit you? Fenk’ll be out and moving by then. Away from the room.”
“You the lookout or you mean you’re going in with me all the way?”
“Never send a man on a mission you wouldn’t go on yourself, James, or something along those lines.”
“What’s coming out?”
“One portable object dearly beloved by its true and long-time owner.”
“How much is my end?”
“Payment of two hundred dollars on completion of the operation.”
James’s face remained as immobile as usual. But I gathered the price met his standards, unless it was the idea of an addition to his résumé that attracted him. He agreed to meet me on Charles Street near the Silverdore at eleven on Saturday morning.
I said, “You’re not likely to get detoured, are you, by whatever’s on tonight, to the slammer maybe?”
“It’s a beginners’ class for dips. I’m the teacher.”
I got the bill from the waiter for my espresso and James’s coffee, and paid at the cashier’s desk.
“You want to practise on me?” I said to James on the street. “I’ll tell you if any bells go off. The wallet’s in my rear pocket.”
“No, it isn’t.”
I touched my pocket and felt nothing except a small wave of panic in my stomach.
“Here you go,” James said.
He was holding my wallet out to me.
“When you were going out the door,” James said, “I lifted it then.”
“That was scary, James. Not even a tinkle.”
12
IF IT WAS SIX-FIFTEEN in my apartment, it was three-fifteen at the Alley Cat Bistro. I got its number from California directory assistance and spoke to a man with an Hispanic accent who said the boss wouldn’t be in for an hour. He called me señor.
The focal point of my living room, I tell myself when I’m thinking decor, is a sofa covered in greyish-brown fabric that has enough of a satiny sheen to make a luxury statement. Jackie O. would willingly sit on my sofa. It faces the front window and is set about ten feet into the room. In the mornings, the early sun hits the sofa. Sometimes, if duty doesn’t summon me to office or court, I carry my breakfast coffee into the sofa and sun, and think of the Côte d’Azur. The fantasy doesn’t work in the evenings. I poured a Wyborowa on the rocks and sat on the sofa in the semi-gloom.
What the hell was so precious about Dave Goddard’s saxophone case? Not the old one. It was out of the picture. The new case. Raymond Fenk couldn’t have been after the tenor saxophone. He didn’t strike me as a guy who wanted to rehearse the John Coltrane songbook. He struck me as someone shifty who knew the saxophone case had value. Someone shifty and violent. Impatient too. And maybe kind of stupid. Couldn’t he have displayed a more subtle touch in relieving Dave of the case? An act of grab and assault, Fenk’s act, was a trifle obvious. Arrogant even. That was a possibility. Combine arrogance and impatience and you might have Raymond Fenk.
I went into the kitchen and phoned Annie’s answering machine to remind it of my dinner date with Annie. The machine was indifferent. I freshened my drink, two ice cubes and the same number of ounces of vodka, and got comfy on the sofa.
The
