The Cooperman Variations (7 page)

Vanessa kept to an agenda. She listened to all of the section heads as they gave their reports, or what they called “the actual,” and kept the meeting rolling when it bogged down into generalities or—and I was surprised at this—gossip. I was amazed that these paper-pushers were in awe of the actors, hosts and anchor-people they had placed before their cameras. It was as though they had forgotten the parts they had played in making these faces so well known.

She introduced me at the beginning of the meeting. There were no smiles of welcome. No drums, no trumpets, no cheers. Executive assistants come and go too rapidly to pay much attention to the incumbent.

Vanessa asked for a progress report on “the proposed” from each of her section heads. Each, after his or her fashion, tried to bamboozle Vanessa into believing that progress had been made since last time. Vanessa was very clever in finding out which projects had made progress and which were standing still. Her idea of a meeting wasn’t just to rehearse the status quo, but to shake things down and slip through or around the bottlenecks. There were attempts at levity initiated by a few of the more secure people at the table, but they were killed off with a hard look from Vanessa. Even references to crazy Bob Foley, the independent runaway technician, couldn’t find a smile in the room.

“We’re still dangling on the Plath-Hughes special, Vanessa. The agent just isn’t returning my calls. It must be chaos over there.” This from a bright-eyed youngster who leaned back in his chair to the balancing point.

“Rod,” Vanessa said, staring anywhere but at him, “that’s where things stood last week and the week before!”

“I know, but you know the Brits.”

“Who have you got in London?”

“In London?” He was stalling.

“That’s the city we’re talking about. Who are you talking to there?”

“Vanessa, I’m—”

“Rod, your place at this table is under review. Do you understand me? Now get up to speed. There are no Jonahs on this ship. Audrey, since Mr. Sinclair is unable to help us, what can you tell me?” And so it went, on and on. Vanessa was critical of everybody. Even the few who could report progress had, according to Vanessa, missed a percentage of their advantage. I started to think how glad I was not to be working for her, when it came over me with a chill that I was. Was I staring at my future as I surveyed the smiling, unhappy faces opposite me?

The final item on the agenda was finding a replacement show for
Reading with Renata
. Vanessa gave credit to the producer who had thrown together a tribute show for the coming Sunday. But now it was time to find a permanent replacement. All around the table, it was thumbs down on another book show. Rod Sinclair may have saved his bacon when he told Vanessa about a fashion-show pilot he’d just seen.

“Okay, Rod. You run with it. But keep me informed.”

Afterwards, when the meeting broke up and Vanessa’s minions went to check whether their names were still printed on their doors, I got the feeling that I’d been through a document shredder. And they weren’t even aiming at me. After a washroom break, Vanessa sat me down in her office for a chat. While Sally went for fresh coffee, I thought I’d better clear up the unpleasant business of the omissions in my first conversation with Vanessa.

“Vanessa, I can’t be much good to a client who isn’t straight with me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“At 52 Division, I caught up with the story of the spent shotgun shells found in your locker. Did you think that if you said nothing the fact would blow away?”

“I can
explain
that. You’re not angry with me, are you?”

“You’re bloody right I’m angry. Do you have any idea how important those shells are?”

“They might have cleared me if it wasn’t for those goddamned shells!” She stopped there, as though she was measuring the importance of other things she’d saved me from knowing. “I was going to tell you, Benny, but we never got back there.” She moved a hand to rearrange a tress or two that had fallen over her forehead. “All right, they found the damned shells in my locker and say that they’re like the ones that the murderer used on Renata.”

“Were they yours?”

“Of course not! I’ve
never
owned a gun. And these shells didn’t have my fingerprints either. There were no fingerprints. Or at least, that’s what they say. Benny, tell me that you’re not going to be cross at me. Right now, the way I feel, I couldn’t bear that.”

“While we’re at it, why did you keep a metal locker in your office? That wasn’t picked out by your friend at Holt’s.”

“It was part of a pressure play. I’d ordered a proper safe for important papers, but Ted Thornhill was delaying things. You’d think a CEO would be above that kind of pettiness, but you’d lose your bet. I bought the locker myself, for practical reasons and to embarrass Ted. The week before Renata was shot, Ted spotted the locker, and I saw by his red face that I’d won the round. There, Benny, that’s the whole truth.”

“You’d better tell me the whole truth from now on. If you want to stay alive, that is. Maybe you have other plans?” She made contrite noises and underlined them all with body language, knowing that that was the sure way to distract me. Then she began to berate me about neglecting her. I reminded her that I’d been out of her sight only a couple of times, notably when I was checking in with the police working on the case. Then she told me to leave the solving of Renata Sartori’s murder to the cops; my job was keeping her, Vanessa, alive. She was no longer the supplicant asking for another chance, she was back in the driver’s seat, not a motion wasted.

“But,” I argued, “finding Renata’s killer could be a shortcut to the same end.”

“Yeah, and the cops are working that corner, Benny. Don’t crowd them. You stick with me. Watch my back. That way I’ve got two strings to my bow, and I might still be alive in September.”

“Okay. I hear you. But, there are a few avenues I’d like to try out on my own, Vanessa. I know how to stay out of the way of the official investigation. They’ll know all about me anyway.” I saw the smile fade from her face. I was sinking into the same quagmire of disapproval that had caught Rod with his pants down. I knew I had to talk fast or I was going to line up with the other losers. “Look, Stel—” I did that on purpose to underline our special relationship. “You have told me practically nothing about what happened. I don’t know where you live, who knew you lived there, how long you’ve been in the neighbourhood or anything else. I need to know more about Renata: who her friends were, who your friends are. All that stuff. Where is your place in the country? when did you drive up there? who saw you? when did you get back? where did you buy gas? where did you stop to eat? Your life may be hanging from a thread woven from your full and unedited answers.”

She was angry at me now. Partially because she thought she had reached a position where nobody could talk to her like that and partially because she knew I was right.

“Okay, Benny, get out your notebook.” I grabbed a pad from my new desk. “I live on Balmoral Avenue. That’s two south of St. Clair, off Avenue Road. The place is owned jointly by me and my husband. I’ve been there for five years. Everybody at CBC, CTV and all the other places I’ve worked knows the place. I like to give big parties. Everybody in this building knows the house, the garden and maybe even how to get into the backyard from the cemetery at the rear. All of those people you met in the boardroom were at a party two months ago. I gave it to encourage our efforts before the sweeps. Talk about business losses.”

“What are the sweeps?”

“Benny! Your innocence is astonishing. It’s like not knowing what’s at the end of the Yellow Brick Road,” she said, smiling indulgently. Then she cleared her throat and began again. “The sweeps are the audience surveys run at fixed times of the year. Independent head-counters measure our audiences for a test week. Our advertising rates for the next season are based on the numbers they come up with. Part of our job is to make sure that our best efforts go into those important time-slots.” I scribbled all of this on the pad I balanced on my knee, and hoped to be able to translate my shorthand afterwards. She kept right on going.

“I found the place at the lake through Ed Patel, a small-town lawyer and an old friend of my Poppa’s. They used to hunt and fish together. The cottage is in my name; I have eight years to go before I renew the mortgage. It’s not a big place, just seven acres with only seventy-five feet of lake frontage. The lake is Muskoka. The nearest big town is Bracebridge, but Port Carling is where you go to buy charcoal and milk. Are you getting all this, Benny?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but kept larding on the facts and details. “The place is called
Puckwana
, and, no, I don’t know what it means. Probably Ojibway. The house replaced a log house dating from the turn of the century. The frame house is only fifty years old. I go up there to be by myself, although that’s getting harder and harder to do since Hollywood people like Peggy O’Toole and Goldie Hawn discovered Muskoka. Apart from the cellphone I leave in my car, there is no e-mail, Internet or fax up there. There
is
a phone, but it’s in the name of the former owner. It never rings. The lawyer I mentioned, Ed Patel, my nearest neighbour, lives an eighth of a mile away, but he’s in the Bracebridge hospital, so he didn’t see me while I was there. Nor did his secretary, Alma, because she electrocuted herself in the bath. Am I going too fast?

“I was in the bookstore in Port Carling, but I don’t know if I created enough of a stir to make your life easy for you. You might try the Esso station on the town-side of the lift lock. I filled my tank there and got the attendant to wash my windshield. I didn’t stop to eat on my drive back to the city; I just nibbled on the things that would perish if I left them in the cottage fridge and planned on a good dinner when I got home, a dinner I never got to order, because I walked into the arms of Sergeant Jack Sykes and his merry men in blue sitting in my livingroom. How am I doing? What have I left out?”

“When exactly was that, Vanessa?”

“I arrived home about noon on Monday, the twentysecond of May. The long weekend, remember? I wanted to avoid the mob scene on the highways later on, and I did.”

“So, Renata was killed on Monday, the fifteenth.”

“What a brain! You want more about Renata? I met her when we were both nobodies, just starting out. We lived on next to nothing at 410 Jarvis Street; it was a flophouse run by an old radio actor who’d lost both his arms. That was close to the CBC in those days. Hamp Fisher was still setting up NTC. He was switching from newspapers to TV.” She stopped talking when she saw that the name had changed my expression. “Ah, you’ve heard about him? Hamp Fisher’s the chairman and controlling shareholder of NTC. Owns about forty-two per cent of the voting shares. Nice for Hamp. Renata, on the other hand, worked her passage up from the mailroom and typing pool. Mostly at CBC. She did time at CITY and Global too. Back then, you moved fairly freely back and forth between the networks looking for somebody who’d let you try out new things. She knew about numbers, so she came out the other end here at NTC as budget manager of different shows.”

“Friends? Enemies?”

“She dated two budget chiefs—I can give you their names—an actor or two—
they’ll
give you their names, and for a brief moment she was the lover of the one and only Dermot Keogh. Remember I told you that her book show had one listener? It was Dermot. He watched it wherever he went. But their affair didn’t last long. She started as his bookkeeper and worked her way through from the office to the bedroom. I thought she’d made the gravy train at last, but it didn’t stick. It never did with Dermot. Of course, this time it was his death that got in the way.”

“How long was it before he drowned?”

“Oh, they were at it hot and heavy for about two months. He died in the last week of April last year.”

“Which lake did he drown in?”

“Muskoka. What other lake have we been talking about? Benny, a lot of people around here have places in Muskoka. Have you ever heard about the Bradings Trust?” Her face was about a foot away from mine by now, and she had been talking a mile a minute.

“Tell me about it.”

“Ernest Miller Bradings left a huge property on the lake to a trust, which has, for reasons I don’t think are relevant, sold off pieces to people in the industry.”

“TV people, you mean?”

“Closer than that. Many of the top people here at NTC have bought lake lots from the trust. It’s not exclusive, of course, but the Bradings properties are worth avoiding if you’re trying to get away from it all.” She got to her feet. “There, Benny, that’s all for now. We can have another go when your writing hand stops tingling.”

“Could you ask Sally to give me a list of the people I saw at that production meeting, Vanessa? And if there’s a rundown on each of them, I wouldn’t mind seeing that as well.” I tacked on this request as a bid for elbow-room.

“I’ve already instructed Sally to get you anything you want—short of old videos of movies from the forties. (This isn’t a joyride, Benny.) You may find Sally reluctant to be your pal on things. Just tell me if she drags her heels or gives you excuses. She’ll try that, but don’t take it from her. I mean it. If you say please too often, you’ll never get her to find you a postage stamp.”

“You seem skilled in the ways of the Sallys of this world.”

“Yes, the Sallys, the Jack McKellars, the Rod Sinclairs and the rest of them.”

Vanessa was still standing up under the pressure of a non-stop day. Her Armani suit was looking a little wilted around the edges, but I guess that’s part of the look. She shot me a wan smile and sat down to work again. She asked me to leave the door open. I was dismissed.

Someone had set up a dull wooden desk in a corner near one of the windows. It had a black leather inlay on the top surface and nothing in the IN and OUT baskets. The drawer offered paperclips in metal and colourful plastic. There were a couple of pink erasers and a clutch of sharp yellow pencils. When I worked briefly for a lawyer, a cousin of mine, he issued new pencils on an “as needed” basis: show him a stub shorter than one and a half inches, and he would replace it happily with a longer one. The same scene-shifters who had brought my desk had moved Vanessa’s out of the line of fire. It made the whole deal more sporting.