The Cooperman Variations (31 page)

“It’s the same combination!” Chuck said. The waiter leaned in to see the paper Chuck was holding. He nodded agreement. Later, I got the waiter’s name, in case any of this should end up in a courtroom.

“Okay, Benny, what does all this mean? You used to feed rabbits for Blackstone the Magician when you were little, right? What’s going on?”

“Your paper has the number from Vanessa Moss’s locker, right?”

“That’s what he told me.”

“Fine. This is the number I wrote down in the shed behind Bob Foley’s place. You know, the one with the motorcycles inside?”

“Yeah. So Foley …?”

“Foley put his
own
lock on Vanessa Moss’s locker. It makes it more than a little probable that Foley picked up the shells at the scene of the Renata Sartori murder and took them to the NTC building where he put them in the locker. First, he had to cut off Vanessa’s own lock.”

“Does that mean that he killed Renata Sartori?”

“It makes him a damned good suspect. It also makes sense: he was a professional electronics technician. He had access to tools, including bolt cutters, and keys to offices.”

“But what’s the point? Why would he do it?”

“Foley and Vanessa go back a long way together. He attempted to rape her years ago at the CBC, and at the time, Vanessa tried to get him fired. She was trying again three weeks ago. He hated her guts.”

“That’s interesting, but what does it explain about the murder? Was Foley out to kill Moss but killed Sartori by mistake? Or does it mean that Sartori was the intended victim all along and that Moss engineered it all?”

“Who’s Moss?” asked the waiter.

“Could you find us some cinnamon toast?” Chuck asked through his teeth. The waiter, hurt, moved back to the kitchen.

“It means that Foley’s lock was on Vanessa’s locker. That’s all we have that we know for sure.”

“Okay. But on that premise, what may we build?”

“Let’s see. It means that if Foley wasn’t at Moss’s house for the shooting, he arrived later and took the spent shells. It means that he saw the body and that he probably took it to be Vanessa’s unless he knew for sure that Vanessa was still up north.”

“So, you think that Foley may not have been the principal bad guy here?”

“Could be.”

“There’s stuff missing. You know something you haven’t said. What is it?”

“I know—and I don’t want to say how I know right now—that Sartori’s murderer left the scene with the spent shells lying next to the body. I have a witness who will come forward, if we need him.”

“So that makes Foley the clean-up man for the real killer.”

“Fits him, doesn’t it? He was the gofer for Dermot Keogh. He was the boat wrangler, the buyer of arrowroot biscuits for the cello player.”

“Huh? Arrowroot biscuits?”

“What are you having to eat?” The waiter was hovering near again. If it wasn’t for more games, it could be that he was waiting to get on with his job. He placed some cinnamon toast between Chuck and me. I told him I now wanted some dry brown toast, a fried egg, orange juice and more coffee. With the addition of some back bacon, Chuck Pepper ordered the same. We didn’t talk again until the breakfast was partly demolished. And, even then, it didn’t prove very interesting.

When I arrived at the twentieth floor, twenty minutes later, Sally was at her desk, wearing a broad pink hair band. “Benny! There are two
men
in Vanessa’s office waiting for you!” She paused and added in a whisper: “I think they’re policemen.” I don’t know whether the last bit was to give me a chance to make a run for it or what. I squared my shoulders, gave Sally my best “damn the torpedoes” look and vanished into Vanessa’s sanctum. The cops were Jack Sykes and Jim Boyd, as I’d expected. Both were wearing the same clothes I’d seen them in last time. They looked the same, anyway. Maybe they had whole closets full of these mass-market outfits, designed to show off every overweight ounce they were carrying. Boyd was wearing that silly straw summer hat in his lap, like it was the only thing handy to protect his otherwise naked body.

I gave each of them a friendly grin and the opening for some wisecracks. They were not in the mood. “Benny,” Sykes said, “I gotta know when your boss is coming down here. I can’t get anything from the girl out there.”

“‘Girl’ usually means pigtails and freckles, Jack. You know: sugar and spice, skipping ropes and hopscotch, barrettes and—”

“I didn’t come here for a lecture on political correctness, Cooperman. You know goddamned well who I mean: the receptionist, secretary thingy, whatever she is. I know Moss is back from Los Angeles.”

“Back from the coast, you mean? That’s how we say it around here.”

“Save it, Ben,” Boyd said, showing that he was in a sober mood. He crossed his long legs, hiding most of the hat.

“She got back yesterday.”

“We know that. We know what plane she was on and where she went from the airport. We know what she did last night and who she was with until two-thirty this morning. What we don’t know is when she’s going to walk in that door.” I blinked at the efficiency of the local cops. I didn’t give them enough credit. I had been planning to skip the end of Tuesday, since it didn’t seem to advance the story any. But, perhaps I owe a word or two to the unsatisfied. From the Montreal Bistro we went back to Vanessa’s temporary residence. I would like to flatter myself that it was my company that recommended me to my employer, but I have to be honest. Any company would have done as well. We went through the motions, without the handgun this time, and I let myself out into the quiet street at the time noted by the stake-out guys, wherever they were hiding. On the way back to the hotel, I thought of Anna and groused inwardly about what a low-life I can be on occasions. The thought of Tuscany and the Californian mushroom king salved only twenty per cent of my conscience. I spent the remainder of the night sweating out the rest.

Sykes cleared his throat theatrically.

“There’s a big PR reception and press conference this afternoon,” I said. “She’ll be there. She won’t miss that. Why all the interest?”

“You can guess the answer to that. The shells that killed Renata Sartori that we found in Ms. Moss’s locker were fired from the shotgun you left with us on Monday night. That makes her our leading suspect as of right now.”

“That was fast work. Good on the boys in Ballistics. Must be a new record: this is only Wednesday.”

“Whatever. Anyway, we know now what we only suspected before. She’s moved up a rung on the ladder of suspicion.”

“What are you
talking
about? That shotgun didn’t belong to my client! You don’t know where I found it.
I’m
the one you want to question. Vanessa can wait. Hell, you let her skip off to California for the weekend. If she was going to do a bunk, do you think she’d be here now?” I’m glad Vanessa missed this welcoming committee. A jetlagged suspect, even one who has just outfoxed the network brass and saved her skin, is hardly better than no suspect at all.

Jack Sykes ran his fingers through his hair. Besides some red fuzz, there wasn’t much of it. He moved his hands to a fallback position with his fingers intertwined at the back of his head. “Our bet is that she had access to the shotgun, and
she
had the spent shells. Benny, Jim and I are thinking of driving north to check out that cottage of hers.”

“Wait a minute and think before you waste the taxpayers’ money on trips to Muskoka. Why would she bring the shells back here? I found the shotgun on Lake Muskoka. If she drove back with the gun, why didn’t she get rid of the used shells along the road, toss them into a lake or a ditch? Why did she plant these deadly mementoes in her own locker? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Benny—!”

“If she wanted to take credit for the murder, why didn’t she call the chief of police, or send a note to Whatshername, Barbara Turnbull at the
Star?
Why not give an exclusive interview to
The Toronto Sun?”

“Benny—”

“And while she was at it, how did she pop back into town and head back up the highway to Muskoka without anyone noticing? Have you checked her gas receipts? Maybe she flew? Maybe she knows a road that hasn’t been discovered yet by people trying to beat the traffic on a Victoria Day weekend.”

“Benny, shut up for a second! We don’t like it any better than you do, but it’s the best we’ve got.”

“That’s not enough to run her in.”

“Who said anything about running her in? We want her to assist us in our inquiries. What’s the matter with that?” He looked into Jim Boyd’s blue eyes: the final arbiter of what was reasonable.

“You already talked both her ears off. Now you’re after blood.”

“We are just looking for things that we might have missed the first time around. We’ve got her statement, sure. We just want her to amplify it, that’s all.”

“That’s a load of garbage and you know it, Jack!” I wasn’t going to fall into the trap of thinking they weren’t already building a case against my client.

“What can you tell us that will make our trip north— when we make it—as short as possible? And I don’t mean tips on where we can buy worms and fishing licences.”

“It’s a clear conflict of interests, Jack. I’m working for Vanessa Moss. When she cuts me loose, I’ll tell you what I saw up there. In the meantime—Hell! I brought you the gun in the first place! What more do you want from me?”

“Okay, okay. Don’t rupture yourself. I hear you.”

“Jack, I had breakfast with Chuck Pepper this morning. Talk to him about the tie-in with Bob Foley. I think it’s important.”

“To you everything’s important except the answers to my questions.”

On their way out, I introduced Jack and Jim to Sally, who looked worried they were going to take me downtown with them. She disguised it by appearing decorative enough to make them run for the elevator in disorder. She was still wearing that expression when I came back from seeing them off.

“A call came for you while you were in there with those men. I didn’t think I should interrupt you.” She handed me a blue slip of paper, and I went over to my desk and dialled the ten-digit number. The phone was answered by a bright-sounding youngster named Hugh. He was Vanessa’s nephew. The things I learn in this business! He told me that he was home from school because he’d injured his knee long-jumping at the school field day.

I asked to speak with his mother, Franny, Vanessa’s sister. When she came on the line, she said, “I’ll be happy to talk to you. But call my sister ‘Stella.’ That’s her name. I don’t know where she picked up ‘Vanessa,’ probably from her arty friends in Toronto.”

We went on from there to have a pleasant chat. In the course of it I discovered that Franny’s ten-year-old son, Hugh, had been notoriously neglected by his auntie Stella for all ten of his years. Hugh and his mother were in Calgary on the day that Renata was killed. I thought that with the kid along, it would have been harder to concoct an alibi than it was for Barry Bosco. I dropped that line of inquiry. Franny, it turned out, was the head psychiatric nurse in a Calgary hospital. She had not been in Toronto for three years and didn’t expect a Christmas invitation to visit her sister this year or the next. I got off the line as soon as I could, feeling vaguely guilty. I neglect people too. I thought of a few of them as I wandered into the outer office where Sally sat nibbling on the corner of a sandwich.

“I hope you aren’t in some kind of trouble, Benny.”

“Naw. It’s just that the cops want me to do all their work for them, that’s all.”

TWENTY-TWO

The big event of the day to all the regulars of NTC was the press conference and reception at the Royal York Hotel that introduced the joint creation of Dermot Keogh Hall by the network and the Keogh estate. The hall was to be located deep in downtown Toronto, on a site between Jarvis and Church Streets, north of Carlton.

Instead of describing what was said, I should just attach some of the many PR releases that were available all over the Library Room on the mezzanine floor, but maybe you’ll take my word for it. In a few words, the Dermot Keogh Hall would change the centre of gravity of the music scene in the Ontario capital. It would, according to the speeches, surpass in acoustics, comfort and intimacy all the older halls in the country. Ted Thornhill made a fine speech, so did Raymond Devlin. One called it “the event of the decade,” the other “the first great architectural marvel of the century.” They introduced the architect, whose firm had been engaged to carry out the plans designed by I.M. Pei and to do all the work involved. They answered questions from the press before everybody was released from being on their best behaviour and allowed to resume their eating and drinking at the bar and buffet provided. Vanessa was there, but she kept her public comments to a minimum. Ken Trebitsch was there, pressing flesh for a news angle. His rival, Philip Rankin, spoke briefly, but only to introduce Raymond Devlin to the hundred and fifty journalists and guests crowded into the attractive room.

I stayed close to Vanessa through most of this. Press cameras reminded me of assassinations in old Hitchcock movies. One reporter tried to quiz my boss about the ongoing murder investigation but didn’t make many yards with her. She was magnificently turned out for the occasion in a suit by Donna Karan. I had read the label when the jacket was hanging in her office earlier. She didn’t have much to say to anyone and, when asked a question, gave short answers or forwarded the question to either Thornhill or Devlin. The overhead light shining on Rankin’s head did nothing for the illusion his hairpiece was attempting to create. He was talking to a tall Japanese reporter. His expression was stuck in a pout, which was supposed to look like rapt attention, I guess. “Why, yes,” I heard him say, “NTC can only become more and more involved in developing its own label of high-quality recordings. I needn’t remind you,” he went on—and I guessed at what he was going to say—“NTC has a duty to bring out and make available the works that Dermot Keogh himself had recorded before his untimely death last year.”

As the crowd began to thin out, I grabbed some smoked salmon on a dry biscuit. There was quiche for quiche aficionados and, to the evident delight of Ray Devlin and Ted Thornhill, no trays of orange and yellow cheddar lumps on toothpicks. The booze included wine, rye, gin, vodka and Scotch. There was even a bottle of Campari. The Perrier ran like water.