Authors: Howard Engel
Two of my therapists came looking for me. It seemed to me that they were always looking for me. One was for speech and the other was an occupational therapist. They wanted to know why I didn’t love them any more, why I was ignoring my time scheduled with them. I tried to explain that I was diseased in the mind and that my memory had largely vanished. I could see that irony wasn’t their first language, so I switched to an abject apology. They bought that conditionally, the condition being that I would make time to see them later in the day. I forget what the arrangement was, but it seemed to be a happy solution all around. I have a feeling that I’ve told you this already. I may have. The truth is that I can’t remember.
When they had gone, I thought of all of the strings I was trying to manipulate from this hospital room. Anna was checking into my office, Martha had already come through for me, and maybe the Toronto cops would share more information before too long. In a peculiar way, I was sitting pretty. I was just trying on a big grin for size when a thought hit me from behind: everything was coming up roses, but where was Rosie? Had she come to see me? No. Not once in … in … how many weeks? If Rose was my client, where was she? Had she gone off to hire an investigator whose head wasn’t mended with sticking plaster? Now it wasn’t her presence that was bothering
me, but her absence. And I couldn’t see anything good coming of that.
I picked up the phone and dialled 411 and asked for the number of the office of Vanessa Moss, of the National Television Corporation, where Vanessa Moss worked. The operator did not play games with me. Without a quip or epigram, she passed along the main number. The next operator turned out to be the witty one. But I survived that and soon had Stella, sounding like her suspicious self, at the end of my ear.
“Benny Cooperman? I don’t believe it! We have finished doing business together. The job I hired you for is over and paid for. A year ago! Thank you very much, and goodbye!”
“Wait a minute! Remember we grew up together. Remember Grantham Collegiate?”
“I’ve cut all my connections to Grantham, and your name was at the top of my list. We are no longer romping around at the collegiate. This isn’t the Diana Sweets on St. Andrew Street. Now take my name out of your book. Get out of my life. If you think you’ve got an idea for a TV series, sell it to somebody else. You’ve got enough chutzpah for—”
“Both of us. I didn’t call to rekindle old acquaintance, Stella. I’m not selling an idea for a sitcom. I don’t want to do lunch. I want to talk about Rose.”
“Rose? What about my daughter?” Her voice was different now, not quite unguarded, but I’d chipped through the enamel.
“When did you last talk to her?”
“Why, we … She is in summer school.”
“Where?”
“Why, U of T. Here in Toronto.”
“Is she living with you?”
“Of course not. She kept her room in residence. She didn’t want to stay with me, and frankly, I didn’t want her around. My life is all business, Benny. I didn’t want to deal with …” She was protesting too much and she knew it. Like the television producer she was, she went on to “take two.”
“I’m not the mothering sort, Benny. You know that. She has her own friends. She’s in that new residence, the one that won all the architecture awards.”
“Clarendon House? Under the O?” It was a guess, a leap in the dark.
“How did you know?”
“Because a professor was murdered there. I’ve got to talk to Rose. She may be in danger. Where is she?”
“Well, we had breakfast together, if you
must
know. We often do. As a matter of fact … As a matter of fact …” She stopped talking and that meant her twisted, scheming brain was working. “Benny, why are
you,
of all people, suddenly interested in my daughter?”
“Stella, the professor who was killed knew Rose. There may be a connection, and that means danger for Rose.” I couldn’t swear to that, but it seemed an inference worth cultivating. I didn’t want to confess that Rose might be my missing client.
“What do you know about her? The dead professor? This is the first I’ve—”
“Stella, I—”
“Why do you always irritate me? You
know
my legal name is Vanessa Moss. Stella belongs to the buried past. You didn’t question cheques with my preferred name on them.”
I don’t know why I kept hitting her with her discarded name. Maybe I was a bully at heart. Maybe because it was the only predictable hold I had on her. It kept alive the Grantham connection.
“Vanessa, please humour me. I need to find Rose.”
“Why should I tell you, the most disloyal, argumentative, stubborn man on earth?”
“Because I’m interested enough to ask. Because you know it’s not idle curiosity. Because you love your daughter. Because I might know something. Just
because.”
There was a pause as she looked for a loophole.
“Of course, I love my daughter,” she finally said.
“What’s her phone number then? Is she living alone?”
“Her permanent roommate is a medical student from Ottawa named Sheila Kerzon. Her father’s a power in the Tory party. There’s space for a third girl, but I don’t know her.” She gave me a number and I wrote it in my Memory Book.
“Thanks for the information, Stella.”
“What’s going on,
Benny?”
“When I find out, I’ll let you know. When you next hear from her, would you get her to call me?” I gave her my number, successfully reading it off the phone for the first time, and fell back exhausted. Stella always wore me out. Even in a short conversation, she could be a whole roomful of people. Her personality was part chameleon. Her saving grace was that little place she had in the woods up north. Nobody with a soft spot for the North could be entirely bad.
What did the conversation add up to? Rose is a resident under the O, where the dead professor came from. Stella was not straightforward and clear about where Rose was right now. She hedged, she changed subjects. Up to her old tricks. Always looking for pits, never enjoying the olives.…
When I woke up, it struck me that I hadn’t been doing too badly. Martha’s call, I think, had inspired the confidence to call Stella; that and a certain instinct for payback that lingered under my heart. I loved deflating her pretensions. I used to think I was bigger than that—above the need for petty revenge. But there it was, exposed for all to see: the real Cooperman, naked, mendacious, vindictive.
I punched my pillow and went back for another twenty minutes of dreamless sleep. I awoke suddenly when I remembered my appointment with my therapists. Grudgingly, I rolled out of bed.
I was walking on the treadmill when the mixture of body heat and mental free-ranging hit me with a thought: Stella, Rose’s mother, had denied knowing about the
death of Flora McAlpine in the Dumpster. But she called her “she,” when I hadn’t even hinted at the professor’s sex.
FOURTEEN
This time when I opened my eyes, I slipped my feet out into the space between my bed and the window. The floor was chilly to the touch of my big toe. As I reached for my slippers with my left foot, I noticed that there was a piece of paper attached to one of them. I had mail! I was eager to inspect it, but I put it off until I’d made a phone call. I found the number in the phone book. It only took me ten minutes.
“Who is this?” It was the voice of a young woman.
“My name’s Cooperman. I’m trying to reach Sheila Kerzon or Rose Moss. Can you help me?”
“They’re not here.”
“But they live there?”
“They don’t come around very much. What do you want?”
“I’d like to talk to either one of them. Who am I speaking to, by the way?”
My belly had just started warming up with the anticipation of finally getting somewhere, when the line went dead. She’d hung up on me! I tried the number again. This time there was no answer. Disappointed, I turned back to the note attached to my slipper. It was from
Anna. Who else? I sounded out each word until it came out like this:
Dear Benny,
You looked so sweet and peaceful lying there that I hadn’t the heart to disturb you. I’ve gone for some coffee and I will drop back to have another look at you before heading back home. Slumber on,
Anna
In honour of Anna’s imminent arrival, I gathered my washing things and closed the bathroom door behind me. All my trips to the bathroom were puzzling; my mind carried the ghost of a shower stall mounted in a bathtub, but it was nowhere to be seen. Rhymes With suggested that I was remembering the bathroom in the hospital I’d first been admitted to. Mount Sinai. This was the Rose of Sharon Rehab, where showers were scarcer. She was right, no doubt, but I felt the lack of a tub every time I went in there. The missing shower was like an amputee’s phantom arm or leg; it belonged to an earlier period, which I was having difficulty mastering. The world didn’t begin when I first looked up and saw Rhymes With’s helpful face. The story of this crazy head of mine was longer than that. Why did I make it so hard to remember?
I took a run at my teeth, made a pass or two at my whiskers with the electric razor, and put on clean clothes. In fact, when Anna stood in the doorway, we both looked
like we were ready for a stroll in the park. After Anna and Jerry had made small talk about the weather and the hospital food, we took a stroll down to the elevators by the nursing station.
Anna bought us both milkshakes in the café we’d visited before. Far enough from the traffic moving smartly along University Avenue, the café seemed like an oasis in a crowded desert.
“You haven’t heard my big news,” I said, pulling a straw from its paper sleeve. “You know I’ve had a name rattling around in my head?”
“Is
that
what makes the noise?”
“I’ll ignore that. I’ve been haunted by the name Rose or Rosie for days. Now I know who she is. I think she hired me and that’s what got all this started.”
Anna breathed a quiet sigh. “Benny, should you be doing this?”
“They didn’t stop us getting on the elevator.”
“I don’t mean
that
. I meant playing about with the business that put you here. If they wanted to kill you once, you’re as good a target in your hospital bed as you were on the street. All that’s needed is a bunch of flowers, and
anybody
can get in to see you.”
“They keep a better watch than that. And statistically, very few attacks are committed on hospital patients.”
“Statistically! You can prove utter nonsense with statistics. My colleagues do it all the time.”
“Anna, I know you’re worried about me, and I’m glad that it’s you who’s worried. But I’m in less danger now
than I was at home. There, I was a walking target for anyone with a grudge against me. It was like that for years. You know that. At least now they have to buy some flowers before they can get to me. Don’t worry. It’s hard enough for the nurses to find me when they want me. Assassins will have to take their chances with the others.”
“Funny your noticing that people worry about you. You didn’t use to notice such things.”
“It’s not people, Anna, it’s you. And I appreciate that. I always have. When we first met, you were worried that I might be ripping off your father.”
“Everybody was always hoping to. I remember coming to your office and trying to psych you out.”
“That was the first time I saw you. You were wearing blue jeans and came up to my office to annoy me.”
“We actually met a couple of days earlier. You were talking to my father at our house.”
“You seemed like a spoiled tomboy when you came to my office and started annoying me on purpose: peering over my shoulder to see what I was writing, looking at some private files. You made me angry. You made me very angry.”
“You were no gentleman. You tossed me down the stairs.”
“I ushered you to the door. I’m working in a tough business. What did you expect?”
“You threw me out! I was so mad, I could have strangled you.”
In my mind’s eye, I could see the Anna of those days: her absolute honesty, her hard, blazing, blue eyes, and later my difficulty breathing when I was near her. Now, across from me sat the same creature, undiminished by time and only driven halfway to the funny farm by this crazy life I’d been living. And it was crazy. How could one man tidy up all of Grantham? Even without the suburbs it was crazy. While I was here in the hospital, I should have the rest of my head examined.
“You gave me some sleepless nights, Anna.”
“And you gave me my own share of long nights.”
“You
knew
my life was hectic. You want an old lady who lives in a shoe!”
“I know. I know. There were good times too.”
“And there will be more once I can get out of here. Let’s get to my future. What did you find in my office?”
“Are you ready for this?”
“Shoot.”
“Whoever hit you on the head has been to your office and has gutted your files.”
“What?”
“The office has been trashed, Benny. I didn’t want to tell you, but Frank Bushmill, your neighbour, found your door open and your files all over the floor. I’m sorry, darling.”
I remembered that Martha Tracy had said something about my office. I’d been wondering whether my mother had put her up to calling me. The information about my office got lost in the mental shuffle. I can’t keep two
thoughts in my head at once any more. Imagine missing a break-in! In my own office! I really had a one-lane mind. Two ideas at the same time overloaded the circuits.
“Did you talk to Chris Savas about it?” I asked.
“I couldn’t get through to him. I tried to, Benny. I’ll keep at it.”
“We have a very enterprising crook in this case, Anna. He murders … Flavia? Fiona? I mean, Flora McAlpine on the campus of a major university, bumps me on the head here in Toronto, then drives to Grantham, where he guts my files. Very enterprising.”
“Anybody who can strike here in Toronto and in Grantham is somebody you should be careful of, Benny. This villain cannot be trusted.”
“It’s still interesting.”
“Well, ‘interesting’ may be
your
word for it. I think you should tell your Toronto police contacts what you remember now.”