Pronounce it the Canadian way, Jay-Zed, it was about as sleek as Diefenbaker. I read on my screen that Jay-Z was a singing, composing, and producing hip hop billionaire. He was married to Beyoncé, though the latest rumours on the couple suggested that they were separated. Her I knew a thing or two about. She was the one who sang “At Last” to Obama and Michelle when they danced at the inaugural ball in 2009. That was as close as I could place Jay-Z to a real song.
I played a YouTube video of Jay-Z singing his anthem, “Empire State of Mind.” Macho guy Jay-Z rapped while Alicia Keys sang the soprano part. His style was insistent, like a kid saying, “Pay attention to me!” What he sang was more a chant than a melody. The guy was arrogant. Just like Sinatra, except not one ounce as musical.
I checked out more Jay-Z YouTubes. Did he write love songs? I played a number of his titled “99 Problems.” It seemed to make the point that whatever problems Jay-Z had, a girlfriend wasn’t among them. Only he referred to them as “bitches.” Jay-Z was no latter day Cole Porter. I played a little more of the number. Girlfriends were also “hoes” with “pussies.” Jay-Z’s concept of romance reached dimensions unknown to square parties like me.
I stood up from my computer, stretched my arms, and sat down again, turning to the business of checking out Flame. I learned right off the bat, listening to the first Flame YouTube, that Flame’s voice was the opposite of Jay-Z’s — a baritone rather than a tenor. On recordings and YouTubes, Flame worked to the usual staccato background of beats and vocal groups. Almost all his numbers were love songs. Nothing profound that I could hear, lyrically speaking, but the words took a more generous attitude to women than Jay-Z’s “pussy.” “Tender” and “soft” kept turning up when Flame sang of his girlfriends. He got “crushes” on women and asked them to be “huggable.” He came across as the earnest guy where Jay-Z played the cynic. Did that make Flame unique? I couldn’t tell. Jay-Z was my only source of comparison so far, and I wasn’t in the mood for sounding out Kanye West or any of the other hip hop guys I had sort-of heard of.
Me, a fifty-year-old white guy who grew up on rhapsodic Bill Evans records, I’m hardly hip hop’s target audience. My interests could branch out from jazz, but it would be more in the direction of something orderly, Bach for instance, rather than something unruly by people with names like Snoop Dogg.
Another Flame YouTube came up on my screen. It joined Flame’s name with Billy Strayhorn’s. What was this? Billy Strayhorn was from my world of music. He’d been Duke Ellington’s right-hand man for years, a composer of memorable songs. I punched up the YouTube. The film quality was terrible, but the sound was clear, and I had no trouble recognizing the baritone voice. It belonged to my client.
Flame was singing Billy Strayhorn’s great ballad “Lush Life.” The song went back almost eighty years, all the way to a time when “gay” meant light-hearted and carefree. How did the kid come across it? His version sounded like the one Johnny Hartman recorded with John Coltrane in the early 1970s. That was the definitive interpretation of “Lush Life.” Flame singing the song was a revelation, the young guy doing justice to a tune that was a standard by my definition.
I played the YouTube again, this time concentrating on the visual. It showed Flame as he sang the song, a very young Flame in a tuxedo, and the figure of this boyish version of the man was superimposed over four people acting out the song’s lyrics. Three males and one female gathered around a table, all of them dressed in evening wear, tuxs for the men, though they were really boys, and a long gown for the girl. The four of them held champagne flutes in their hands, and they affected a languid air. As an actor, Flame was absolutely convincing in his world-weary pose.
This was all surprising, Flame’s voice and his play-acting. Just his choice of “Lush Life” as a song to perform was persuasive for me. I turned off the MacBook, and leaned back in my chair, feeling warm and fuzzy about representing the guy.
Five minutes later, Gloria came through the door carrying her familiar red leather bag and smiling her familiar smile. She began the ritual of unpacking the bag. Then she stopped to give me closer inspection.
“You’re looking blissed out,” she said.
“I think I’m a little crazy for our client.”
“Flame?”
“Don’t get the wrong idea.”
“I haven’t got any ideas.”
“Put it this way, kiddo. Listening to some of his music, I feel more involved in acting on behalf of Flame’s interests.”
“Glad to hear it,” Gloria said. “Now what’s with the coffee? I don’t smell anything brewing.”
I got out of my chair, and took charge of the coffee-making. In ten minutes, I set full cups in front of each of us.
“Okay, shoot,” I said to Gloria,“tell me what I don’t already know about the Reverend Al.”
Gloria opened her iPad and began scrolling through the pages.
“Not much on him personally,” Gloria said. “I concentrated more on Heaven’s Philosophers and the origin of the building they’re in.”
“You still got a little about the Reverend?”
“His annual income is sixty-two thousand bucks plus a clothing allowance.”
“Not bad for a disgraced clergyman,” I said. “Who’s his employer?”
“A numbered company,” Gloria said. “The same one that owns the church building.”
“No names that go with the numbers?”
“For pete’s sake, Crang,” Gloria said. “Give me a little more time.”
I held up my hands in a peace gesture.
“Care to hear the background of the church’s building?” Gloria said. “Probably doesn’t pertain to your problem, but it’s kind of entertaining.”
“Go ahead,” I said, “Entertain me.”
“Another conceivably unorthodox religious bunch put the place up twelve years ago,” Gloria said. “It went by the name Steady for Jesus. Apparently made up of stout Protestants who regretted the way Anglicans and Presbyterians and such like were drifting. So they formed their own church.”
“This group later morphed into Heaven’s Philosophers?”
Gloria waved both arms in a gesture that let me know I’d wandered way off track. “Different personnel entirely. Steady for Jesus was funded 100 percent by Stewart Sclanders. That name ring a bell?”
“Sclanders Lumber?”
“You got it in one,” Gloria said. “Sclanders is still Canada’s number one supplier of two-by-fours and whatever in wood products. Young Stewart is third generation and the scion of the family fortune.”
“Steady for Jesus was his hobby?”
Gloria shook her head. “It was his commitment until he fell hard for a lovely girl named Julie Fineberg.”
“Love trumped all?
“Stewart converted to Judaism, married Julie, and left Steady for Jesus to wither on the financial vine.”
“That’s the end of those guys?”
“More or less,” Gloria said. “The Steady for Jesus property sat vacant until three years ago when the numbered company I mentioned scooped it up at a bargain price and began operations.”
“What’s with them financially?”
“The question gets us right to the crooked flim-flammery.”
“You base this on what?”
“First, a question of my own. You’ve been out to the Heaven’s Philosophers? The physical operation?”
“Studied it intimately.”
“Do