by Howard Engel
“Well, it’s not off a seaman’s greatcoat or off the fly of a fireman, is it?”
“You’re barking up the wrong spruce.” I picked up the button and turned it around in my hand. “All you’re going to get from this is bud-worm.”
“How come?”
“Chris, I saw the button when it was still lying in Pambos’s palm, before the forces of law and order had had a chance to pass it around and bag and label it.”
“I hear you. Keep talking.”
“When I saw it first it was lying front side up.”
“So?” Chris was beginning to look testy. It was one of the professional looks he did best. “Cooperman, don’t ration it.”
“If I pulled a button off your coat while in a death struggle, trying to get out of here to catch up on the early night I promised myself yesterday when I finished moving and unpacking umpteen boxes in my new place, the front of the button would be touching my palm and the ripped off, dangling threads would point up. This thing was lying the other way round. So, I suggest that it was planted. It didn’t get there by normal or natural means. That’s all. It didn’t grow there.”
Savas thought about that, unless the process of scratching his late-night beard absently meant the opposite. He seemed to be turning it over in his mind, but what do I know about what goes on in Chris Savas’s head. “Okay, he didn’t pull the button off a female murderer’s coat. Who did it then?”
“It has to be the same character who filed the letteropener between Kiriakis’s ribs. That’s my best shot. Not too many innocent people carry around a button belonging to their hated enemy in hopes of finding some cold palm to leave it in.”
Savas sipped his coffee and I took a long drink from the mug in front of me. It was nearly cold. How long had we been sitting and talking here? Hadn’t Chris just brought in the cups a moment ago? What was going on with time in Niagara Regional? It was often said that they could fix anything but a parking ticket. Now I believe it. “The question to ask, Chris, is who had it in for one of Kiriakis’s lady friends.”
“Okay, spill. Who are they?” I tried to watch myself; I didn’t want to tell Chris for the fifth or sixth time that I had already told him all I knew about Pambos’s private life.
“You haven’t been listening, Chris. There is only one fact I haven’t passed on to you that Pambos told me. And it’s irrelevant and you already know it.”
“Christ. Cooperman, will you let me be the judge of that? That’s my goddamn job not yours!”
“Okay, he let it leak that my old friend Chris Savas’s first name is Christophoros not Christopher. You want me to add that to my statement?” Chris shifted a bubble of air behind his upper teeth and sucked on it. His big face went through the motions of returning to a calm and placid appearance, but muscles under the flesh of his cheeks pulsed with irritation. I tried to make it better. “Chris, I was just doing a job for Pambos. I don’t know any more about him than you do. In fact you probably know a hell of a lot more. I don’t know about his love life. I don’t know his friends or enemies, male or female.” I stopped, maybe a little more abruptly than was expected. I added:
“Come on, Chris. He wasn’t my best friend. I liked him and I’m going to miss him, but I’m a limited resource if you want to know what he did apart from what I just told you. I knew him best in the old days when he was working in the steakhouse. We used to sit up till all hours in those days talking everything from art to politics and back again. There was a gang of us: Wally Skeat from the TV station, Harold from the Beacon and sometimes Ned Evans from the Workshop Players, when he was sober enough.”
Chris slapped both thighs with his large hands and stood up. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s leave it there for now, Benny.” I got to my feet and started for the door. When I was part of the way through it, I turned back to face Chris Savas.
“Was there a lot more to Pambos than met the eye, Chris?” Savas winced. At first I thought that was all I was going to get, then he volunteered:
“There’s this whole Cyprus thing.” I waited for him to elaborate, but he had told me all he intended to. We shook hands and in a minute I was walking down the broad front steps of Niagara Regional to the friendly trees of Church Street.
TEN
“Hello, is Phil there?” This time it was a man. I explained that this number had been recently reissued and suggested that he should check with the directory or the operator about the whereabouts of his friend. I envied Phil his devoted friends and was inclined to be a little hard on him for not keeping them abreast of his moves from place to place. I wondered if I would get calls forwarded to me from the City House. I made a mental note to phone Gus at the bar and give him my new number. For some reason, known best to my marrow, I didn’t get around to it for several weeks.
I tried to get Pambos out of my head. He was dead. There’d be no more viewing of his treasures, no more discussions about the poisoning of Napoleon. Pambos was dead. It seemed strange, hard to accept. The image of him moving his coffee cup closer to me at the counter at the United was still at least as clear as the one with the letter-opener. As I looked around the room, I could see him disposing of the contents of my cardboard boxes and then flattening out the cartons and tying them with string. I thought I’d better give myself time, and began with a big bath in my new tub.
Climbing out and drying myself with one of the new towels I’d bought to mark my progress from King Street to Court Street, I began to feel better. I guess it comes to those who discover themselves to be, in spite of a narrow miss, still among the living. I’d just settled down to a book with a title that began The Man Who …, when the phone rang. I thought that I would be angry if it was Phil calling to pick up his messages.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Cooperman?” It wasn’t a voice I knew, and I was slightly alarmed that my new number had been traced so quickly. I began to regret the unkind thoughts I’d entertained for Phil’s pals.
“That’s right.” He didn’t speak up immediately. I added: “Who is this?”
“Sorry to bother you so late …” he continued, ignoring my question.
“Nobody else worries. Who are you and what’s on your mind?” Again, the silence between the question and the answer was alarming, not enough for me to grab my clothes and retreat back to King Street, but just enough to make my throat feet dry.
“Mr. Abraham would like to see you.”
“Mr. Jonah Abraham?”
“That’s right. He said he’d make it worth your while.” So, my friend from the other side of the curtains wanted to compare notes or get me to back up what he told the cops about his being in Pambos’s office before I got there. He must be a worried man, judging by the hour.
“Not a social call, then?” I gave him a few seconds to respond. He didn’t. “Tell him I’ll see him tomorrow. He can find out where my office is. I’m in the yellow pages.”
“He’d like to have a drink with you tonight,” the voice said, stepping up the insistence.
“It’s past my bedtime. I’ll see him tomorrow.” I didn’t want Jonah Abraham to think he could get me for a drink, like a stale pretzel. “Look,” I said, “I’m tired and ready to turn in. Your boss will understand that this hasn’t been an easy day for me.” The voice at the other end, even silent, had the sound of not listening.
“Mr. Cooperman,” he said at length, “if you look out your window, you’ll see that Mr. Abraham has sent a car to pick you up. He naturally doesn’t want to inconvenience you.”
“He shouldn’t have bothered. It’s after office hours.”
A hand or handkerchief went over the mouthpiece of the distant telephone. I thought I heard, but I might be inventing, the other voice say:
“He says he won’t come. How do you like that? A guy like that!” Still more distant, another voice came through. It sounded familiar:
“Give me the phone, Vince.” The hand came away from the phone and I could hear clearly again. “Hello, Mr. Cooperman
?” It was the real thing. It was like being called on the phone by the best rye that money can buy. He went on: “I hear we are not going to have the pleasure of your company tonight. I was looking forward to our second meeting.”
“Look, Mr. Abraham, I’m tired and it’s late. Why not call it a day? As for the pleasure of my company, I’m sure you’ll get used to it. Think of all those days that preceded tonight. Or, if you want to confess to something, you can do it right now on the phone. It’ll save gas and the line hasn’t been mine long enough to have a bug on it.”
“I like to do important business face to face, Mr. Cooperman. It’s a rule of mine. Call it an eccentricity”
“As far as I know, we don’t have any business to discuss.”
“I want to make you an offer.”
“What kind of offer won’t keep until morning?” I’d said that without thinking. I wasn’t purposely playing hard to get, I just wasn’t thinking fast enough. I mean, with Pambos in the cold room at Niagara Regional, I wasn’t working for anybody. With Pambos dead, I could go back to tracing a line of credit card receipts that would lead me to Matt Kirwin, who had picked up his daughter after school one day three months ago and vanished with her and her homework. The credit cards told me Kirwin was careless about details and I would be able to put that file away just behind the Kiriakis file. “I’m a reasonable man, Mr. Abraham, but I just got out of a hot bath and am looking forward to half an hour with the classics and then sleep. There’s an unpleasant sight I want to get out of my head. I think you know the one.”
“I do, indeed. When we first met,” he said, his voice trying to sound casual and even friendly, “we could both see that your business with Mr. Kiriakis had come to an end.”
“I ought to take up a solider line of work.”
“What I would like to suggest is this. I would like you to stay on the case. That’s my proposition. Same terms you had with Kiriakis. I want you to find that list.”
* * *
The place Jonah Abraham called home had been designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1938, when the German architect came to North America. It was said that he never saw the house either while it was under construction or later after it had been completed. He was kept informed of the project through detailed photographs and long-distance telephone. The builder was Jonah’s father. He’d started with the idea of having a simple house designed around an atrium. The spot he picked commanded a view of Lake Ontario and the plain rising from it to the Niagara Escarpment, immediately below the proposed windows. Somewhere between the initial sketch and the final installation of a doormat, the plans got out of hand. The simplicity of line was still there, as you drove up the curved approach, but the lines were longer, higher and deeper than those first clear intentions. The place was a mansion. Jonah told me that his father and mother could never leave well enough alone. Everything got embellished and exaggerated, even the plans of Mies van der Rohe. On weekends you could visit parts of the house for two dollars a head, but I never got past the velvet ropes before.
I’d relented on my stand. A position taken on the telephone requires face-to-face negotiation. Besides, thought that the night air might do me good, help me sleep, after the pressures of the day. I wrote out a note about where I was going and left it under my pillow. It was a silly tactic, but it made me feel better as I closed the door to the apartment and headed down the stairs.
Two of Abraham’s boys were sitting in the front seat of the car. They didn’t look particularly happy to see me; they kept eyes front, while the driver put the car in gear and moved smoothly on a fine German engine out of the downtown area.
When the car came to a stop, I didn’t wait for the royal treatment, I opened the door and walked towards the big front door. The car moved away soundlessly with the boys still maintaining radio silence. I rang. The servant who answered the door moved on oiled ball-bearings. We walked through a succession of screens and frames to an open space that appeared to be the reception area. I could tell that because there didn’t appear to be anything else going on there, and it was here that I first saw Jonah Abraham coming towards me, with his pal Vince, a respectable three steps behind his master. “Ah, Mr. Cooperman! I’m so glad you changed your mind.” He was wearing a green turtleneck sweater, which surprised me. I guess I was expecting a smoking jacket with an ascot tie. Vince was wearing both a tie and a dark suit. Informality is for those who can afford it. “I don’t think you’ve met Vince, here. Vince Davey. Vince is something of a righthand man around here.”
Abraham kept on talking. It was the sort of banter that fills up the empty spaces: “I was in the market for company tonight. My daughter has abandoned me for the dubious charms of the younger generation.” Abraham held out his hand and I took it. His clasp was firm but not extravagant. He didn’t need to prove anything, least of all to me. The sweater looked new up close, but his eyes, in spite of the smile they offered, looked old and tired. He smelled of talcum like he’d come from a late-night swim or rub-down. “Come,” he said, taking my arm, “we’ll talk.”
The servant who’d let me in had vanished. Vince began backing away from us, and disappeared when Abraham asked him to look after the boys from the car. To be honest, I didn’t see where he went. The geography of the house eluded me; I couldn’t find any doors or windows. It was all screens and pictures in large tidy frames with a lot of white matte showing. There were chairs too, but not the kind you can slip your jacket around the back of. It was a private house, but it had the chill of a dentist’s office or maybe, to give it credit, a retailer in high-quality business furniture.
We walked through halls and places that were almost rooms, except that one bled into the next in a confusing way. The house might have gone up in the thirties, but it was doing that modern thing with more gusto than the new police headquarters or Secord University, and they were hardly five years old. Abraham was leading me, with some purpose, through the screens. Here and there I saw a familiar velvet rope pushed out of the way on its two brass stands. Suddenly, Jonah stopped. “But you must forgive me,” he said, giving me his most charming smile, “I’ve forgotten my manners. May I get you something to drink, Mr. Cooperman?”
“I thought we’d come to talk, but maybe Abraham was given to walking around his target. “Thanks, but no thanks,” I said. “I’m not much of a drinker.”
“Ah, but you must have one of my Bloody Marys. My father got the recipe from Hemingway in 1947 in Cuba.” We resumed walking, but in another direction. When he stopped he was standing before a professional-looking bar. “You need to make a whole pitcher of these,” he said, pulling out a long cylinder of ice, and letting it slide back into the pitcher again. “Ernest taught Dad to use tennis-ball tubes to get the right amount of ice. If you use cubes, the drink gets diluted with the melt-waters. A big chunk of ice like this is what you need …” He went on and on about how Hem added the Tabasco and the Russian vodka. I didn’t pay attention. I was wondering why he was buttering me up. He knew I had accepted his offer to continue the investigation when I agreed to come up here, so why was I getting this spiel about how the great Hemingway made his Bloody Marys?
When he finished talking, he handed me a frosted glass and took another himself. I tried it. I recognized the Tabasco and a trace of lime juice. People say you can’t taste vodka; was there ever a sillier statement made about strong drink? It was rough on the way down, but it was sneakier than rye or Scotch. Abraham leaned in for my opinion. I held the glass at the end of my arm, like I could taste it two feet away; I nodded with enthusiasm, and Abraham grew quite rosy with appreciation.
We sat, and finished our drinks while Jonah kept on talking about the mixing of drinks. He let me in on his version of the perfect dry martini. I don’t know whether it came from Hemingway, his father or from his own artistic imagination. He kept the olives in the freezer and used just enough vermouth to cover the bottom of the glass. He used the same tennis-ball tubes full of ice to chill the mixture. It sounded
like Hemingway to me, but he didn’t admit it. Maybe he wasn’t a complete snob.
When he had finished his drink and saw that I was not going to get any further into mine, he pinched the creases in his trousers and got up. “I’m glad you decided to come and work for me,” he said as he moved his right hand in the direction he wanted us to walk. He managed to balance the business of being my host and employer very deftly; I could feel the tug of ownership and the salve of hospitality rolled up together in his gestures. We walked by a huge Japanese screen about half the size of Albania, without a word. “You may find it awkward working for one of your suspects.”
“You may be a police suspect, Mr. Abraham. Remember I’m not looking for the person who killed Pambos Kiriakis. That’s a Niagara Regional matter. I’m looking for some missing pictures, that’s all. But now I’m working for you. I guess if you have some of them, I’m still going to try to find out about it. I’m not a specialist in this art stuff. I tell you that straight out. Still, maybe finding pictures isn’t a lot different from finding other lost or strayed property.”
“Through here,” Abraham said. He held open the lefthand side of a large double door that didn’t appear to be part of the original design. “I feel like showing off my collection.” We entered a large gallery full of pictures and glassed-in cabinets. “Here we are. What do you think?”
It was impressive. The walls were lined with paintings, with a few slim sculptures thrown in to break up the monotony. I recognized many of the pictures; I’d seen them reproduced in books and magazines, I guess. I looked deeply and tried to give back to Abraham’s proprietary grin, the response required. “Nice,” I said, “nice. Very nice. It must have set you back.” He walked towards one of the pictures.
“This Thomson is the only known portrait painted in his maturity. The National Gallery still badgers me about it.”
“Nothing like practice, eh?”
