Songs in the Key of Death (2 page)

In the Baytown stories, Bankier explores all his recurring themes. And the presence of Baytown colours most of his other fiction as well. A story may take place in Montreal or London or Los Angeles, but chances are at least one of the characters will be from Baytown. Creating unhappiness seems to be the towns’ largest industry; killers its biggest export.

Many of those characters, whether at home or abroad in the Baytown diaspora, are performers and the action is centered around the arenas in which they perform. Invariably, the arenas are ones in which Bankier himself has held a long and active interest. Amateur theatrics, in which he has been a keen participant, are the basis for this collection’s “The Last Act Was Deadly” but also show up in other tales such as “Rock’s Last Role” and “Is There A Killer in the House?”

Bankier is an avid sports fan. “A sports watcher,” he says, “not much of a doer.” His particular passion is for baseball, a common theme most notably in the loosely connected Jonathan “Johnny Fist” Fitzwilliam stories. Other sports that come up include boxing in “The Dreams of Hopeless White” where a security guard’s vision of a career in the ring ends in tragedy. Bankier’s Canadian roots show in his use of hockey in “The Missing Missile”, in which the star player of the Montreal Canadiens is kidnapped, which would be sort of like snatching the Pope out of Vatican City.

Television and ad writers abound. Radio station DJ’s show up frequently. The hero of “Funny Man” yearns to be a stand-up comic. Professor Harry Lawson is a retired stage magician. And then, of course, there are the musicians.

Ellery Queen once wrote, “No one in the genre writes about music better than William Bankier.” Several stories in this collection bear eloquent testimony to that. Bankier’s life-long love affair with music is reflected in some of his finest work, including his 1980 Edgar Award nominated masterpiece “The Choirboy”. In occasional pieces such as “Murder at the O’Shea Chorale”, the tone is comedic. Most often, however, music forms the soundtrack of a tragedy. Each musical story becoming a song in the key of death.

The types of music involved, each described with passionate understanding and palpable affection, range from jazz to pop, classical to chorale. “Music has always been important to me... I sang in church choirs for many years...I love jazz and taught myself to play the clarinet and tenor saxophone, but I let them slip. Today, I play recorder by ear. My big number is “I Can’t Get Started”.

The diversity of Bankier’s stories is as impressive as the output. Humour and suspense, whodunits and character studies, historical recreations and contemporary shock endings. The real mystery is why, with almost 200 stories to his credit, this is the first collection of Bankier’s stories to be published. Welcome then, to the world of William Bankier. A world where nightmare comes silently, in the dead of night. Where the last act is often deadly. Where fear is a killer. Now turn the page and enter a bar where the patrons demonstrate Bankier’s finely tuned ear for the lyrical, almost musical way people speak. Listen and find out what happens in Act One...

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

March, 1995

Postscript

On January 10, 1914, William Bankier died in Los Angeles. Behind him, in addition to a career spanning 50 years and hundreds of published stories, Bill also left behind loving family, devoted friends, admiring fans and story fragments, outlines and completed manuscripts intended for publication after his death. Bill was a consummate professional, a witty, charming man and a constantly inquiring mind. Although his output slackened in the last few years, every work he produced maintained the high Bankier standard. His love of music remained, along with his ability to find menace in the mundane and unexpected nightmare in any waking moment. Adios, Bill. You will be missed.

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

August, 2014

The
Choirboy

Originally published in
Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine,
June 1980.

THE MUSICIANS HAD TAPED THEIR TRACKS AND DEPARTED the studio, heading for wherever musicians go in Toronto on a July morning. Now Barry Latchford was alone in the soundproof room, adding his voice to the prerecorded background.

In the control room, Norman Inch pressed the intercom button. “You’re a disappointment, Barry,” he said.

Latchford was a sinewy man in his thirties with shoulder length blond hair and a sinister-looking mustache. Padded earphones gripped his head. He wore a striped freight-engineer’s cap to go with his vagabond outfit of leather vest and stovepipe jeans. His boots were army surplus—parachute corps.

Barry Latchford resembled more a villain out of a spaghetti western than the best singer of TV and radio commercial music in Canada. The drummer on the gig had been awarded the laugh of the morning when he said Latchford looked like a tall angry Muppet.

When the producer from the advertising agency told him he was a disappointment, Latchford sat erect while a jolt of fear emptied his eyes. “What’s the problem?” He was perfectionist enough to believe that criticism was always justified. Once, years ago, he had become a hermit for weeks, practicing his scales and breathing to be ready for the December night when the choir would perform the Messiah.

Behind the glass, Inch put a hand on the shoulder of his companion, Steve Pullman, the copywriter. “We were hoping we could stretch this session into an extra day,” he said, his voice booming through the speaker. “But if you keep delivering the goods on the first take, we’ll be on our way back to Montreal tonight.”

Latchford relaxed. He slipped off the stool, eased the “cans” from his head, and hung them on the music stand.

“My wife complains about the same thing,” he said. “I’m fabulous but I’m a little too quick.”

“We’ll hear a playback of everything so far,” Inch proclaimed, “then we’ll buy you a drink.”

They went into a place near the studio. After drinking and talking baseball for a few minutes, Pullman said to Inch, “Tell Barry the idea. Let’s not waste time.”

“Mysterioso,” Latchford said, taking an invisible sip of whisky.

“We write songs,” Inch said dogmatically. “You’ve never heard of us because our commercial success to date has been the square root of nothing at all.”

“Welcome to the club.”

“Come on, you were in the charts with ‘Apple Dreams’ a couple of years ago.”

“The Canadian charts—and even that was a struggle. I’ve never made it with a pop single in the U.S.”

“So let’s get together and create some prosperity,” Pullman said. “Tell him the idea, Norman.”

“The idea is you come down to Montreal and record one of our songs.”

Latchford could feel remorse rising about him like ground mist in a horror film. God protect him from amateur songwriters. “Cutting a side is an expensive business,” he said in the gloomy voice of a businessman.

Pullman’s impatience was beginning to peak. “Will you tell him the idea, Norman?”

“We do it through my company, Inchworm Productions. The recording studio will be Carlo’s—he owes us a couple of favors, so there’ll be no studio charges. As for musicians, we do it on half scale. If the song takes off, everybody gets paid.”

Latchford looked for a way out. “I’ll have to check it out with Carol. My wife—she’s my business manager.”

“Do it and let us know as soon as you can.” Inch directed glances around the room like a marked man watching out for assassins.

“Even if you make the record and it’s okay,” Latchford persisted, “you’re only half way there. If the stations won’t play it, you’re dead.”

“Leave that to me,” Pullman said. “I worked for three years as a DJ at CBAY.”

“Baytown?” Years ago, on vacation, Latchford had spent an eventful thirty seconds driving through the town.

“The voice of Crystal Bay,” Pullman intoned, cupping his ear pseudo-professionally. “I know how the hit parade can be rigged.”

“Providing it’s a good song,” Latchford said. “You can’t sell garbage.”

“We won’t give you garbage to record,” Inch said patiently. “Be a good boy and check with your wife.”

Carol Latchford sat at the kitchen table in one of the old cinema seats Barry had bought when the neighborhood Palace gave up and became a block of shops. Four maroon-plush recliners were now bolted to the vinyl floor, two on either side of the low pine table.

“I think you should record their song,” Carol said. She was drinking beer from a bottle and smoking a thin brown cigarette.

Latchford was playing around with a wok on the gas stove, throwing in green peppers and mushrooms and slivers of chicken, being a virtuoso chef. “These are two little businessmen from the minor leagues,” he said. “The writer is from Baytown—do you believe that? It’s amateur night.”

“What are you doing otherwise that’s so important?” Carol was a short plump woman in her late twenties. She had a pussycat mouth, a turned-up nose, and green eyes with brows that arched in permanent astonishment. If faces had to be assigned countries, hers was Irish. “Something may come of it. You never can tell.”

“You don’t know these guys,” Latchford insisted.

“Take me to meet them then,” she said, finishing her beer, dropping the empty bottle into the case on the floor at her feet and flicking out a full one with a deft backhand movement.

Latchford frowned at the hiss of the bottlecap. “Could you manage to be sober if I did?”

“I can’t remember the last time you took me somewhere.”

“That’s where you have the advantage. I can remember.”

“Loosen up then. Have a drink with me—we’ll have some fun.”

“You call this fun?”

Steve Pullman was setting out a meager bar in Inch’s hotel room: a bottle of Scotch, a bottle of gin, some tonic, four glasses, and a bucket of ice. “Why couldn’t they ask us up to their place?” he whined. He felt poor, as if he was back in his parents’ shabby house near the bay.

“His wife probably wanted to come out,” Inch said. He was accustomed to pacifying his partner. Writers were all the same—if they weren’t bitching about how terrible everything was, they were going over the top with enthusiasm over some minor success.

“I don’t think he likes our idea,” Pullman said.

“Then we’ll sell it to him.”

“Maybe we should line up another singer.”

“Latchford’s the best. We agreed we’d start with the best.”

“I’m worried about how we finish,” Pullman said grimly.

The Latchfords arrived in a mood of manufactured euphoria. Carol was wearing a crimson-silk jersey dress and charcoal nylons above plastic shoes without backs. Pullman fell in love with her legs immediately. He ordered the beer she requested and, when it came and he had opened one, placed himself where he could see every one of the frequent crossings of those smooth, shiny legs.

Everybody except Latchford drank a lot and the party was a reasonable success. By midnight when they were devouring room-service sandwiches and Carol was into her seventh pint of beer, Pullman was referring to her as the small-town girl. She was like the girls he remembered from the tea dances in the gymnasium at Baytown High School. Carol was flattered. “Let this guy write your lyrics, Barry,” she said. “He’s a magician with words.”

Latchford tossed his head back, pretending to laugh without actually producing any sound.

In the taxi on the way home he grumbled, “I should go see a psychiatrist, agreeing to do this.”

“We’ll go to Montreal. We’ll have some fun for a few days,” Carol said. Her head was back on the upholstery, her eyes closed. “What can you lose?”

“You’ll have fun. I saw you encouraging that bush-league lover. I should put you across my knee.”

“Right now, I’d be grateful for even that.”

Flora Inch, Norman’s wife, selected the song that Latchford would record. She came out of her study in the bungalow across the river in St. Lambert with the portable cassette player in one hand and a page of notes in the other. “Here’s my choice,” she said.

“ ‘Summer Silence,’ ” Norman read from the list. He tried not to look too pleased. “I like that one too.”

Flora moved a flower pot so she could perch on a window ledge. Her broad shape obscured most of the view of the Montreal highrise panorama in the distance. Richelieu, a tiny dog of indeterminate breed, limped from the kitchen, saw the woman he loved, took a skittering run, and leaped onto a lap that barely existed. Flora saved the dog from falling and cuddled it to her tank-topped bosom. She had the shoulders of a Channel swimmer, the cropped hair of a woman who wants a rest. Her face was as pretty as a doll’s.

“Richie, Richie,” she crooned. Then, after a pause in which her eyes went out of focus, “The lyric could use a little fixing. Would you like me to do it?”

“I don’t want a hassle with Steve.”

“You want a good lyric. Steve Pullman has blind spots. I know—I wrote copy in the next office for three years.”

“You may be right, but leave it alone. We have a delicate operation here. Stay home and write your novel.”

“God help me, I’ve written it three times. Let me up.”

“You’re the one who cried out for artistic freedom. Write the book.”

“I’m coming to that recording session. I’m not going to miss the rematch between Latchford’s wife and our little Stevie!”

Carlo’s Recording Center was a compact set of rooms engineered and hand-built by the owner. Carlo sat at the console, straight-backed, Spanish eyes alert, watching Barry Latchford through the glass partition as if the singer might fly at any minute and it would be his responsibility to trap him in a net. Norman Inch lounged beside Carlo in the producer’s chair.

Steve Pullman and the two women were crowded onto the visitors’ settee. Flora Inch had always been like a sister to Steve, taking him under her wing on his first day at the ad agency. She sat on his left now, bending occasionally to feed a chocolate tidbit to the carpet remnant she called a dog. “This is your best work, Steve,” she commented after the first take. “Be proud of this song.”

On his right, Carol Latchford crossed her legs, bringing a stiletto heel down across Pullman’s trousers. “Sorry,” she said, brushing her hand firmly and repeatedly over his calf.