ALL THAT GLISTERS
A Phillip Gold Mystery
by Mark W. Walma
Chapter One
A hot, bitter August. Just three months since I’d buried my
mother, seven months since my first and only long-term
girlfriend had flown the coop for a guy who looked like
Jesus Christ and smelled like soggy pizza, and 24 months
since I had hung out my shingle in the core of the
industrial city I call home, trying to scrape out a living
as a legal beagle for all and sundry.
The city sweltered and sweated through a summer-long
election campaign. A helluva race that heated up even more
when Mary Kate Dallanger, eight-year-old daughter of the
mayoral front-runner, disappeared into the mist on a
Tuesday evening. Today was Thursday and fear was starting
to take hold. A pedophile was loose, the papers wailed. A
sex-killer on the prowl. Fearful parents kept their kids
home from summer camps, art classes and soccer leagues. Air
conditioning and panic – the orders of the day.
But misery and I were old friends and I still had a dollar
to earn. While everyone else took days off to stay in the
nest and guard their offspring, I sweated it out in the dim
pair of rooms I called an office. In those early stages,
all the action with the mayor’s race and the missing girl
meant nothing to me. I was just a small-time lawyer – a
"cheapie", I think is the term – working my tail off to
build a business. I focussed on whatever would pay the
bills. Real estate deals, wills, estates, the odd bit of
criminal defense work when it came through the door.
Anything. For any one. I’d soon learn the value of being
picky.
On the day in question, I wandered into my office in the
Lister Block at about four in the morning, trying to beat
the heat. The Block was a hulking pile of bricks, a bitter
leftover from better times, before life had fled the
downtown core for the cozy suburbs, before the bingo
parlours and the coin-op sex-flick centres took over the
area. The Block’s six floors were mostly empty – just me, a
couple of on-the-slide accountants, a temp service, a
low-budget dentist and a flock of nondescript nameless
business that came and went with the tide.
Abandoned cars littered the empty downtown streets,
jostling for position with overflowing trash cans and
bundles of fresh newspapers. The moon and stars hid behind
the haze that blanketed the city and the air moved around
you like equal parts steam and water.
I put in a couple of hours’ work before the sun started
glinting off the windows opposite, driving the humidity
through the roof and the coolish, early-morning breeze back
into its lair. Business had been good that summer and
keeping busy was okay with me – I took the morning to catch
up on my outstanding reports. I had just scripted
“Sincerely yours, Phillip Gold” on the eleventh letter of
the day and started to contemplate a long, cool
scotch-and-water when the hallway door opened with a bang.
I wasn’t out of the chair before the connecting door
followed suit and I found myself face to face with two men
– I thought maybe I recognised the first; the second I’d
never seen before in my life.
The lead man was tall, about six-two, with the broad
shoulders of a natural athlete. His hair was an enviable
mix of grey and black but was starting to show signs of
thinning, his face broad and calm, with fatigue making
inroads around his eyes. He grasped my hand. “Mr. Gold,” he
said in a voice I knew from TV and radio, “Kevin Dallanger.
A pleasure.”
He stood before me for a moment, his smile still thick on
his face, letting me genuflect a little, then swept an arm
toward the tiny, tin desk I was still using. “Please, sit.
I’d like to talk to you about something.”
I went back around the desk and lowered myself into the
leather captain’s chair I’d recently acquired; Dallanger
took up one of the new wingbacks while his companion, an
even larger man with a face like porridge and dark,
mean-looking eyes, continued to stand with his meaty hands
clasped formally in front of his well-muscled body.
“I’m sorry to hear about your daughter, Mr. Dallanger,” I
told him.
His head bowed for a second, his eyes misty. “The police
are doing all they can; my people too,” he said quietly.
“We’ll find her – and the bastard that took her.”
I nodded and waited.
“I’ve come to talk to you about the press, Mr. Gold,” he
said, the business back in his voice. “I understand you
have some experience with them and I need your help.”
“In what way?”
“To get them off my back.”
He was about to go on when we all heard the door from the
hallway to my outer office creak open and footsteps
announce another guest. Dallanger shuddered and his
companion made as if to go out to deal with the visitor.
I put iron in my voice. “Hold it. My office; my play.”
Dallanger nodded to the man and he resumed position. I went
around my desk, through the door and into the outer office.
I found a regular guy standing there, looking around with
little enthusiasm for the surroundings. Late thirties,
maybe early forties, easily six-three, maybe 200 or so,
with a nest of brown, curly hair and eyebrows like bushes
above clear blue eyes. He wore a pair of well-pressed,
light-coloured chinos and a matching short-sleeved shirt,
open at the collar. His shoulders were narrow and his hips
wide. He looked like a well-dressed pear with too much
hair.
A toothpick pointed at me from the corner of his mouth.
I put on my best business smile and held out a hand.
“Phillip Gold. How can I help?”
After a brief, dry shake, he clicked his teeth together
like a pair of castenets, somehow managing to avoid
breaking the toothpick in two. “Phillip Gold,” he said, his
face pondering the name. “Yeah, I recognise you.”
He eyed me some more, his lips moving the sliver of wood
around like a puppet in a show. Then he added: “I’m sorry
about your mother.”
I let that pass with a nod.
He paused for a moment, looking around. “You don’t seem
right for the part.”
“Too bad.” Another pause. “And you are?”
“Clive Rodney, the Spectator.”
I decided to dispense with further pleasantries. “And you
want?”
He smiled a narrow smile. “Nothing. Unless that’s Kevin
Dallanger you’ve got in there with you.”
I gave him my hundred-dollar grin. “You mean, Kevin
Dallanger, this city’s next mayor?”
“Uh huh.”
“What would a man like that be doing in an office like
this?”
He looked around again, his eyes flitting over the used
office furniture, the faded art, the peeling wallpaper.
“Beats me.”
“Me too. So I’ll get back to my client...”
“Who is?”
“None of your business.”
The toothpick dipped slightly and he turned on his heel.
“Nice talkin’ to you, Gold.”
Then Clive Rodney was gone.
Dallanger was picking lint off the sleeve of his tailored,
thousand-dollar suit when I got back to him, his companion
still motionless at his shoulder.
“Clive Rodney,” I said.
“That’s the guy – the main one at least. Driving me crazy.”
“He’s gone.”
“For now. Does he know I’m here?”
“He knows you’re around somewhere but he doubts you’d come
to someone like me.”
Dallanger nodded. I poured out a couple of glasses of water
from the pitcher on the side table behind me, placed them
on coasters and slid one across the desk toward him. I
mumbled something about a glass for his companion but
Dallanger waved away the thought.
“He’s fine,” he said. The guy stood there, motionless.
Dallanger reached for the glass but took up instead the
framed photograph I keep there beside the telephone. “This
your wife and daughter?” he asked.
I took the picture away from him and settled it back in its
place. “Mother and sister.”
He nodded again.
“Both dead,” I added.
His smile dropped. “Yeah, I read about your mother this
summer.”
“My sister was murdered shortly after that picture was
taken, twenty years ago. She was 12 at the time.”
“They get the bastard that did it?”
“Killed himself.” I looked at him hard. “It was my father.”
“Fathers can be shits sometimes,” he said. Then it clicked
and he looked back at me. “It’s not me,” he added, his
voice like flint.
He sipped some of the water, set the glass back on its
coaster and stared off into the distance. I took a sip of
mine and waited.
“The press have been dogging me all through the campaign,
looking for a sinister side, some dirt, you know,” he
began, settling back into the smooth tones of the
politician. “This Rodney guy in particular has been a thorn
up my butt since the start. Now, since Mary Kate,” he added
an artful bit of a tremor in the lip, “...since Mary Kate
disappeared, he’s been worse than ever.”
“He trying to pin it on you?”
His face grew rigid, his lips pulled back across a clean,
white set of mean looking teeth. “Bastard.” His knuckles
went white as they gripped the glass. I didn’t mind – it
was a strong glass.
“So where do I fit in?” I asked him calmly, adding some
cool back to the conversation.
As if by conscious force, he unclenched. “I need some way
to get him off my back.”
“What about your people?” I shot a look at the meathead
standing guard at his shoulder.
Dallanger forced a smile. “My “people” aren’t in for that
kind of work,” he said, “besides, I’m in a race. I have to
keep my nose clean.”
“Fine, so why me?”
“You come recommended. Plus you’ve got some experience with
stuff like this.”
I waited for the punch line which didn’t come. “Recommended
by whom?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Miles Blakney. But that’s not
important. What’s important is that I’m here.”
Blakney was another legal type, specialising in family law,
trusts and estates. A straight-up guy, taking care of my
mother’s estate. I’d have to call to thank him.
“Why is Rodney so hot right now?” I asked Dallanger. “I
take it he doesn’t chase you through the city on a normal
day.”
“No, not like this.”
“So, what?”
The rigidity returned. His lips were drawn like bow strings
across his teeth; his eyes flared, his hands gripping
spasmodically. It wasn’t a pretty sight.
“The cops got a search warrant...” he said through the
vice.
“For your home?”
“And the car, the office, the works.”
“On what grounds?”
What happened next came like an explosion, out of nowhere,
with no relation to anything that had come before or come
after. Dallanger leapt to his feet and loomed over me, his
eyes bulging like a man struggling for his last breath. He
slammed a fist against the corner of the desk, a sudden,
violent movement that sent a blast of noise and vibration
through the office. His rage unquenched, he pivoted quickly
and swept the same clenched fist through the unoffending
air, smashing the water glass into tiny pieces that
splattered across the floor. The man behind Dallanger
didn’t move an inch.
I looked at Dallanger’s face and saw nothing human left in
it. It was a mask, the skin stretched tight, the eyes dark
and blank, the jaw rigid. So I sat, hands folded on the
desk, and waited. Slowly, colour drained back into his
cheeks and his jaw loosened slightly. He looked at the
fist, at the shattered glass, at the dent he’d put in the
thin tin desktop, then shrugged slightly and lowered
himself back into the chair.
“They’re not going to find anything,” he said finally, when
he could speak again.
I watched him for another minute or two, wondering.
“I need you, Mr. Gold, to handle the press for me.”
He looked at me hard again, his eyes fixed, intent. The
tension had left his body but not mine. I felt like a
spring tightened to the point of breaking. I wanted him out
of the office, out of the building, out of my life.
The only way to do that, I thought, was to help him out,
quickly, quietly, and then let him go.
I cleared my throat and made my voice butter. “Mr.
Dallanger,” I said, “I have learned that the best way to
handle the press is to talk to them, to let them see that
you’re cooperative – they’ll respect you if you respect
them.”
I was giving him lessons I had learnt the hard way, in the
wave of media interest that followed my mother’s murder. I
had tried to run from it, to bury myself, in hopes that
they would go away but – it was only when I let them see a
little of the misery I was drowning in that they took a
step back, let me deal.
Dallanger didn’t like the advice. “I’ve got a campaign to
run... and a little girl to find. I don’t have time for
that.”
“Okay, tell me what they’ve been doing.”
He made small motions with his hands, like he was dealing
cards, and watched those motions with steadfast eyes. His
breathing still rasped in his throat when he spoke.
“They’re outside my house, my office, my campaign
headquarters. Twenty-four/seven. I can’t make a public
appearance, a campaign stop, without getting peppered with
questions about Mary Kate, about Catherine...”
“Catherine?”
“My wife. My ex-wife.”
“Are they breaking into your house? Going through your
trash? Creating a safety risk?”
He shook his head each time. “They’re being shits.” Some of
the tension came back.
I looked at the bent desk and waited. When his jaw relaxed
again, I said, “I’ll see what I can do. I’ll check if there
are any legal options to take the pressure off.”
He got to his feet, looking a little more settled. “Take
care of it,” he said. “Them just knowing that I’m taking
this step, that I’ve got a lawyer working on it, might ease
it up a bit.”
I drew a retainer form from a right-hand drawer, filled in
the appropriate details. Under “Reasons for Retainer” I
wrote, “protection of privacy”, then slid the form across
for him to sign.
“This is a retainer, Mr. Dallanger. It says I’m your lawyer
and have the right to ask certain questions on your
behalf.” He signed the form, filling in his contact
information in the appropriate spaces without being asked.
“How much?” he asked once he had put the pen down, reaching
into his jacket pocket as he spoke.
“Five hundred.”
He pulled out a clean, impressive wad of bills from his
jacket. There were hundreds on the outside of the wad and
the inside wasn’t just hay either. He licked a finger and
peeled off five of the hundred dollar bills as if they were
grocery coupons, counting them calmly as they slid off the
roll. He dropped the small stack onto my desk in front of
me, away from the damage, then tucked the wad back into his
pocket. It was all done without flourish, like you’d drop a
pile of singles on a bar bill.
“You’ve got some wealthy backers, Mr. Dallanger, or is that
all from your private stash?” I asked carefully, eyeing the
stack of bills on the desk.
There was a gleam now in his eyes and, with it, the
cockiness I’d seen on the TV news. Money impressed him.
Money gave him power. Money bought him things, bought him
people. He figured his money could buy me.
“I got business interests,” he said with finality. “Just
get the press off my back.”
“I’ll do my best,” I told him, pointedly ignoring the pile
of brown bills. “Let me get you a receipt.”
He shook his head. “I like you, Gold,” he said. “We can do
business.” Then he glanced at the damage to the desk and
the glass shards on the floor, shrugged slightly, and
tossed a couple more c-notes in front of me. “Get yourself
a new piece of furniture.”
With that, he took his nameless companion in tow and headed
out of my office and back into the world.
Once he was gone, I pulled the cash across, enjoying its
crispness with the tips of my fingers, and wondered at him
a little. The desk was dented but still standing – I had
already ordered a new one to go with the chairs so I wasn’t
too concerned. The drawers still worked so I got out the
office bottle again, poured myself a stiff one and had a
bit of a think.
I didn’t like Dallanger much – he was too cool, too slick,
and the sudden rage did nothing to make me want to love
him. I couldn’t see him as the civic leader but, then
again, I couldn’t see why anybody would want the job. All
there was to it was money and power and who in their right
mind would want to pursue that kind of thing? Still, he was
a paying customer and I had five-hundred of his dollars to
earn. Maybe if I earned them quick, I could file him away
and out of my life.
I picked up the phone and made a call to a friend of mine
in the newspaper business, a reporter at the Spec. She
wasn’t in, so I left my office and home numbers with a
message to call.
I dialed up Blakney. He was available.
“Hello Miles,” I said, “Phillip Gold.”
“Hullo Phil, you calling on estate business or just to say
hello?” he said, his voice low and flat.
“Thanks for the referral; I’ve just met with your boy
Dallanger.”
He let out a long, slow sigh. “I figured of anybody I knew,
you’d be able to help him.” He paused for a moment, then
added, “Be careful with him, Phil.”
“How do you mean?”
“He’s got a short fuse and a violent bent.”
I glanced over at the dent and the remains of the glass.
“Yeah, I’ve seen that.” Silence. “How do you know him?”
“I took care of his divorce for him.”
“From Catherine Dallanger?”
“Yeah. Bloody business that was.”
“Someday you’ll have to tell me about it.”
He grunted. “Can you help him with the press?”
I told him Dallanger didn’t like my first suggestion but
that I was looking deeper.
“Just be careful,” he said again before he hung up.
_____________________
If you wish to read more of All That Glisters,
please contact the author at mark.walma@gmail.com