Stuffy Kernohan?”
“Oh, Crang.” Cam was good at scorn. “Stuffy’s been on the homicide squad since before we came out of law school.”
“I don’t do murder cases, Cam, remember?”
Criminal lawyers get slotted. I had a mini-specialty in fraud charges. The rest of my files were a hodgepodge of hold-ups, break-and-enters, other crimes against property. Alleged murderers seemed to go elsewhere. Just as well if it meant sucking around guys like Stuffy Kernohan who sucked around guys like Cam Charles.
“Everything I tell you from now on is in strictest confidence,” Cam said. He was into his earnest routine. “This concerns an associate of mine. Trevor Dalgleish.”
“Funny, his name’s been crossing my mind lately.”
“I talk, Crang, you listen.”
You had to hand it to Cam—I did—he knew how to run a briefing. Crisp sentences, no wasted motion, and he was right into Trevor Dalgleish’s bio. Thirty-one years old. Member of a FOOF. Fine old Ontario family. Undergraduate degree in economics. Scored high in the LSATs. Came out of the University of Toronto Law School clutching a prize in criminal law. Articled with Eddie Greenspan. Switched to Cam’s firm when he got his call. Worked fifteen hours a day. Smooth in court, something I’d seen for myself a few times. Trevor, Cam said, was a rising star, and versatile. He sat in on the discussions when the Alternate Festival was hatched. And took over responsibility for a block of films—booking, contacts, drawing the documents, getting names on dotted lines. Leading up to the festival, Cam said, Trevor was working twenty hours a day.
“So what’s the problem?” I asked. “Paragon like that, some other law firm’s liable to steal him away.”
“All his life,” Cam said, now sounding concerned, wise, avuncular, and a pain in the neck, “as long as I’ve known him, which is very nearly all his life, Trevor’s been a man who takes short cuts.”
Cam had an illustration. It seemed that as a young buck at St. Andrew’s College, the very prep school that Cam had attended earlier, Trevor ran a lucrative scam that involved bribing a printer’s apprentice to slip him exam papers in advance. Trevor peddled the papers to his fellow preppies. A suspicious teacher nailed a group of students who got uncharacteristic As on the exams. The fuss was short-term but scandalous.
“Look at the bright side, Cam,” I said. “Trevor probably learned a lesson. Cheaters never prosper.”
“That’s just it. Trevor wasn’t caught.”
“The mastermind, and he got away with it?”
“And may still be getting away with something.”
“Like what?”
“Like that’s what I’m retaining you to find out.”
“Closer to blackmailing me to find out.”
“Don’t take it personally, Crang.”
On the wall opposite the bench where we were sitting, there was a Town oil, about seven feet high by five wide. Green was the major colour, hundreds of tight little green balls with tiny black centres. A long, jagged white line cut through the entire middle of the painting, top to bottom. What was the picture supposed to be? Maybe a close-up of a monster zipper?
“Give me some help, Cam, teensy little hints,” I said. “Why’s Trevor got you nervous?”
“Number one, my read on Trevor is he spends more money on himself than his billings at the firm warrant.”
“Is it that big? Trevor’s house on Admiral Road?”
“It’s also the scene of very lavish dinner parties.”
“Never been invited.”
“Doubt you ever will,” Cam said. “Besides the house, Trevor has his place in the country up in King.”
“Let me guess—he rides horses out there.”
“What else does everybody in King do? Trevor’s very expert at it. Jumps his horse at the Royal Winter Fair, that kind of thing. All of which costs a great deal of money for a man just past thirty.”
“Sure, Cam,” I said. “But a minute ago you told me Trevor comes from good stock. Ever think it’s family money that finances his conspicuous consumption?”
“An excellent family name, I said that, grandfather associated with E. P. Taylor, all the rest. Trevor’s got the name, but the family money evaporated with Trevor’s father.”
“Isn’t that just the way, always a wastrel in there to blow the ancestral fortune.”
“Number two, Trevor’s too intimate with clients.”
“Ho boy, that could be risky around your place, Cam, guys with the dreadlocks, smoke the ganja.”
Cam went through the motions of looking disgusted, but his heart wasn’t in it. He was more interested in surging ahead with the briefing.
“You and I know it happens, Crang, criminal lawyers overly involved in the lives of the people they’re defending.”
“Rubbing shoulders with the bandits, yeah. Start out drinking in the same bars, end up sharing a cell.”
“Precisely.”
“One problem, Cam, the way you described young Trevor, workaholic, nice way about him in front of a judge, I’ve seen that, he doesn’t give off the feel of lawyers I know’ve gone down the tubes.”
“I hope I’m wrong. Probably am. But I want to find out if Trevor has troubles.”
“If, you mean, if you have troubles.”
“With Trevor.”
I gave the Harold Town more study, the greens and the white line zigging down the centre. If you turned the picture on its side, it’d look like an ECG printout. Guess again, Crang. If Town wanted it on its side, he’d have painted it on its side.
“Why me, Cam?” I asked.
“You’ve acquired a bit of a reputation, you must be aware, for this kind of thing.”
“What? Nosing around?”
“If you want to put it that way. The qualities I criticized you for a minute ago, don’t be offended, they have their uses in situations like this. Irreverent, push in where don’t necessarily belong.”
“Really glad I came to our little meet, Cam. Swell boost for the ego.”
“I can’t ask about Trevor myself, obviously, or delegate one of the other people in the firm to make inquiries into our own associate.”
“Lousy for office morale.”
“And I’m not inclined to hire some sloppy private investigator.”
“So
