by Howard Engel
“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?”
“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.”
“Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to rattle their chains with the news. And the Grantham police know about the break-in, even if they haven’t yet tied it to the murder in the Dumpster here.”
“You don’t know that!”
“Sure I do. Frank Bushmill would have reported it. Frank’s a good friend. By now, all the cops in the province know about it.”
“You started to tell me about this Rose you’ve remembered,” said Anna, bring me back on topic.
“Right, I was, wasn’t I? Well, somewhere in this junk pile of a mind, I found the name Rose or Rosie. She’s the daughter of Stella Seco. You remember Stella? Have I already told you this?”
“Don’t worry. Keep going.”
“Remember Stella Seco?”
“Who could forget her? She started building a career for herself before she was weaned. She was All About Eve and The Little Foxes all rolled into one attractive, but ticking, package.”
“Well, now she’s a big deal in television here in Toronto. Rosie’s her daughter. Oh! I said that. After talking to Stella, I have a feeling that Rose has disappeared. A woman named Sheila Kerzon is her roommate. Both of them might be in danger. There may be a third student, but I don’t know anything about her. Sheila’s a young medical student from Ottawa, where her father’s a power in the Tory party.”
“So, why are you worried about Rose?”
“Because she hasn’t been near me. How long have I been on University Avenue? First in one hospital, now in this one? Weeks? Months? And not a squeak from my client. She needed my help, brought me here to Toronto, and when I get hurt, she vanishes. Does that make sense? If she is okay, she’d have been in touch with me. If she’s in danger, she may be hiding out someplace. In the light of what happened to that professor and me in the Dumpster, hiding out is the most optimistic possibility.”
“All right, Rose has reasons for lying low. Besides you, who else is in danger?”
“Danger? That may be a little strong: more melodrama than hard facts.” Anna nodded for me to keep going.
“Okay. Her roommates at Clarendon House. Home of the Dumpster. Depending on how much they know.”
“In what way are they in trouble?”
“Well, they know at least as much as I do about all this. They may suspect where she’s gone. I don’t know. Maybe roommates don’t talk to one another nowadays. The feeling I get back of my knees says that I should talk to her.”
“But that’s not much to hang an investigation on. Unless you’re holding back on me.”
“After talking to Stella, I have a feeling Rose has disappeared. It’s a hunch, nothing I can take to the bank. Sheila Kerzon is her roommate. They live in the residence where Fiona or Flora McAlpine was living. So you see, she’s as likely to get into trouble as I am.”
“Is there anything more I can do?”
“You can try this number. See if you have better luck than I did.” I gave her a crumpled copy of the phone number of the Moss/Kerzon residence.
“I’ll try to find her next time I’m in town. Meanwhile, try to stay out of trouble for a change. And, Benny, remember what I said: this guy you’re after is smarter than most crooks, and he has more resources. Promise me you’ll be careful.”
I promised, of course, and we finished our milkshakes like a couple of teenagers, seeing who could make their straw bark the loudest.
FIFTEEN
I tried to wrestle all my separate confusions into one big ball and bounce it out the window. Of course, the window was closed. And my problems were not corporeal enough to allow themselves to be rolled up and tossed away.
I was on some villain’s mind. On his hate list. He had put me in here, and he probably wasn’t finished with me yet. Had the hospital security staff been told that my hide might be in danger? I pictured security guards sitting at a desk dozing off in front of a TV monitor. I saw a gang of black-robed, masked gunmen carrying a gigantic, horseshoe-shaped garland of red roses, like a victory wreath for a winning racehorse, pass the security desk. Perhaps getting helpful instructions on how to find my door from the least sleepy of the security guards. So much for daydreams coloured by too many Saturday afternoons at the Granada Theatre in Grantham.
Without thinking about it, I picked up the phone and called the number I had for Sykes and Boyd. I was startled to attention when I heard Sykes rasp out his familiar croak of response:
“Sykes.”
“It’s Ben Cooperman, Jack. I have to talk to you.”
“They haven’t sprung you from the Lame Brain Institute, have they?” I could always trust Sykes to be politically incorrect in private; he vetted his language in public.
“Maybe I got time off for good behaviour. Anyway, I was luckier than Flora McAlpine, wasn’t I?” I enjoyed the pause that followed. I could almost hear the changing of gears.
“Oh, yeah. Sorry about that, Benny. We had to see how much you knew or remembered. Yeah, that was a damned shame about her. She was a terrific teacher, they say.”
“You didn’t honestly think I put her there and climbed in after her, did you?”
“Now, hold on, Benny. We go by the book: we check out all the angles. And we’re still checking.”
“Will the leaves have dropped from the trees before you move on to another suspect?”
“Come on, Benny! Let a guy do his job! Are you feeling any better?”
“Let’s stay on the subject. I’ll tell you about my sore head later. Was she hurt the same way I was?”
“Yes, she was, only her skull was crushed. Both of you went into the Dumpster at the same time. Are you sure you don’t know her?”
“What am I going to use for a memory? As near as I can figure, she was a stranger. But I do have some kind of echo going around in my head. Let’s say there’s the ghost of a possibility. No more.”
“In that case, Jim and I are going to try to come down to eat your chocolates. You got any of those boxes of fancy nuts?”
“Jack, I need to know about what the papers have said about my being beaned at the university residence. What’s known about my condition?”
“Worried they might try again?”
“Sure. Wouldn’t you be?”
“Benny, my boy, the world knows about your getting clobbered.”
“That’s only partly true. What’s the rest of it?”
“What do you mean ‘the rest of it’? What makes you think there’s more?”
“It’s in your voice. You should never have become a cop. Your voice gives you away.”
“Okay. You’re right. Whenever we have a material witness
we want to keep under wraps, we tell the papers that the victim can’t remember his own name. It’s done to protect the witness. Now, as it happens in your case, what we said to the press was right on the money. You couldn’t remember squat about what happened to you. So, we were only telling the truth to the press.”
“Don’t take any bows in public about that. It’ll blow your game.”
“I figured that angle, too. If they didn’t believe us, you could be in a lot of trouble. I know that. I’ll call the liaison man at the hospital and have them change your room.”
“Yeah, to one with ‘John Q. Public’ or ‘John Doe’ on the door. Have you any idea how many people are trying to get a bed in here? The hospital people can’t afford to play those games, Jack. They’ve got stretchers parked along the walls downstairs. What other good ideas have you had today?”
“We’re still working out how the caramel filling gets inside the chocolate bar, Benny. There’s lots of time. They told me you don’t have to worry about rent until summer’s nearly over. Try to look on the bright side.”
“While I’ve got you on the line, tell me what the waiters from Barberian’s told you about my car. You said it had been parked behind the restaurant.”
“Yeah, Barberian’s on Elm Street. A good place to go for a steak.”
“Great! I’ll remember that. Now, what did you learn?”
“Not much. One waiter remembered that it was pretty beat-up for a car belonging to one of their customers. How long have you been driving that thing?”
“Since the reconquest of the Sudan by Sir Herbert Kitchener in 1895 or whenever. Let’s try to stay on the subject, okay?”
“Start by leaving dead generals out of this. Eliminate the irrelevant.”
“Pachyderms aside, don’t forget which of us has the brain injury. You been clobbered recently?”
“Okay.”
“Unless you’re interested in buying the car from me. They’re getting scarce.”
“That car? It should be in a landfill. The guy at our garage is still kidding me about it.”
“What else do you have from the restaurant besides scullery gossip?”
