by Howard Engel
“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.
A fresh noise exploded in the corridor. It came with the sound of the elevator doors opening in a sort of cushioned groan. I heard the sharp crack of Vanessa’s coffee cup hitting wood and the name “Devlin” hissed through her set teeth, as though the name unlocked a chestful of pestilence. Vanessa jumped up behind her desk. Sally’s eyes were wide. She was on her feet and ran into Vanessa’s sanctum sanctorum. They both came out a second later, shoulder to shoulder, to meet the man in a grey suit with a hat, a briefcase and his topcoat over his arm. He was accompanied by a dark, curly-haired man half a head shorter. There was no mistaking which was the bishop and which the clerk.
“Raymond! Raymond, you shouldn’t have!” This was Vanessa as she came within bussing distance of the newcomers. He kissed her soundly on each cheek without even noticing that Sally stood next to her. “I would have sent the contracts down to you by courier. You didn’t have to come all this way.”
“Vanessa, I don’t trust people. When I want something done, I do it myself. That’s the only way to survive. Besides, with all these changes in the air, I thought I’d better get the ink on the paper as soon as possible. By the way, you know Roger here, I think.”
“Changes? What changes? What are you talking about, Raymond? Do you mean our revised fall schedule? Revising is what we do best around here.” Vanessa smiled broadly, but I could tell that she hadn’t liked what Raymond had blurted out. Raymond, too, was now looking like a child who had said too much and now was being badgered to say more. Raymond took the fatter of the two briefcases from Roger here, and began a paperchase with its contents. Roger here stood by and watched.
“Oh, I must have thought that you’d be taking some time off now. Because of the shooting, I mean. By the way, I called Ted and Whatshisname, you know, from your plant department, or whatever you call it, to sign for the engineering side of things.” At
this point, Vanessa introduced Sally and me to Raymond Devlin, who was acting as though that name was better known than it was. Roger here turned out to be Roger Cavanaugh. Even with a last name, he remained the acolyte of his boss. Sally passed a man with a bald dome and black-rimmed glasses as she went out in search of beverages. He turned out to be Whatshisname.
“Oh, here you are, Harry.” Vanessa introduced Harry Parlow, head of Plant and Services, whatever that meant. The bald head bobbed, almost bowing, over handshakes.
Devlin boomed, “Glad you could make it, Harry. I don’t have long, so I’m glad you’re on time.”
“Raymond’s legal firm is the executor of Dermot Keogh’s estate, Benny. Thanks to Keogh’s estate, NTC is building a new concert studio and Raymond has generously allowed us to use Dermot’s name. He’ll remain as a consultant on the sort of things that the studio will be used for. We hope that it will rival the CBC’s Glenn Gould Studio.”
“Rival? Hell, Vanessa, it will make the CBC hall look like a swill bucket to this Limoges tureen we’re putting up.” Raymond Devlin looked like a young Henry Kissinger, with jowls poised to start sprouting after his next corned beef sandwich. Fussiness was written all over him. He fairly quivered with fastidiousness. His eyes drank you in and spat out the seeds, leaving your innards on his hard drive for later use. His weight was doing damage to an expensive, well-cut suit. He managed to make it look like he picked it up off the rack in a “Reduced to Clear Sale.” Roger Cavanaugh gave me the look he’d learned from his master. He was out for learning.
Sally arrived back not with coffee but with proper drinks. There was an array of bottles on a trolley and a nearby credenza yielded biscuits, glasses and napkins. While she was working on the refreshments, Vanessa was laying out four copies of the contract for all to sign. Raymond Devlin brought out a package of cigarettes. Menthols. “I don’t suppose that here on the twentieth floor we are free from the prohibitions that obtain elsewhere in this building?”
“You’ll have the security squad down on you in a minute. And you’d better not take it up with Ted Thornhill when he gets here. He’s a former smoker, Raymond, so you’ll be dealing with a convert. You know what they’re like.”
“The world is conspiring against smokers, Vanessa. The only way I can fly these days is Air India, and you’d be surprised at the places where Air India doesn’t fly. Why, in my own office I had to install a vent through the window. The owner is still furious at me, but we do rent the whole floor.”
Vanessa told me that she’d need Sally and me to sign as witnesses. When I asked her what this was all about, she told me to play along; she’d explain later. Just as we were about to make the papers immortal, someone introduced as Ted Thornhill, the CEO of NTC, came through the door with a photographer whose camera was already loaded and poised. Introductions were not attempted. I was the only odd man out. I could see that Harry Parlow was feeling good about it; he didn’t get to meet the top dogs every day. Vanessa was on her toes, playing hostess. Raymond didn’t sweat, but his brow showed a certain tension. His donation of Keogh’s hard cash gave him points and he knew it. Roger came into his own, pointing out small changes, places to initial and so forth. When we had had a go at examining the four copies, passing them around like it was a game, criss-crossing and twice getting mixed up, Raymond plainly relaxed. Ted Thornhill supervised all of this, glancing down over a cascade of double chins. His eyes were small but alert, his mouth the thinnest part of the whole anatomy. His suit showed the wear and tear that a large body can give to the best imported serge. Sparse blond hair betrayed a recent attempt to comb it with water. I found that likeable.
For a quiet, informal gathering, the signing itself was accomplished with sober deliberation. The principal pen was picked up and handed to all the signers by Ted Thornhill. All eyes watched as the ink moved along the paper. The pen was a Montblanc. It fairly blushed from black to grey with the weight of the honour entrusted to it. “There!” said Thornhill with a flourish after all the signatures had been applied. “We make a little history every day. The public event will be next …”
“One week from today. Wednesday at 4:30 in the library, on the mezzanine floor, southwest end of the Royal York Hotel.” Vanessa stepped in to help the forgetful Thornhill.
“Of course, I remember now. There’s a press conference to begin with. Right? I’ll call on you, Ray. You knew Keogh better than anyone, except maybe Philip Rankin. Not many speeches, just what’s necessary to hit the right celebratory note.”
“And then the drinks,” said Devlin. “I hope you’ve not ordered those bits of coloured cheese, Ted?”
“Cheese?” He looked puzzled. “I don’t ordinarily see to the catering, Ray. We might have better receptions if I did. Vanessa, will you look into that? We want the announcement of Dermot Keogh Hall to be a major cultural event. The usual cheese and crackers will not do. Not in any way. Please see to it.” Vanessa smiled one of those pasted-on smiles, the sort you get in opera when the clown’s heart is breaking.
“It has a good ring to it, that name: Dermot Keogh Hall,” mused Devlin. “The hall will seat five hundred, with ample backstage and lobby space.”
“We’ve got a logo that uses his signature, Ray. It will be on all stationery and, of course, above the doors. I’ve got a firm of architects working on it now. I want you to be pleased with this every step of the way.”
“Good. I knew you wouldn’t sell me out. This is a redletter day for the Plevna Foundation.”
The name Plevna stabbed me in the ear. I’d heard the name earlier in connection with Bob Foley, the independent-minded technician.
This sideshow didn’t last long. Nobody really drank more than a sip of his drink—Sally and I were excluded from the libations, by the way. Roger grabbed a drink when Raymond wasn’t watching.
“I don’t mind saying that I’m uneasy with even an unsigned document in my safe,” Raymond said. “Having the fully executed documents will plague my sleep, Vanessa. You keep those two copies and I’ll take the other two.”
“Why don’t you leave the original and all the copies here and I can get two of them matted and mounted for framing. I’ll send your copies over by courier. They should be ready by Monday or Tuesday. Lots of time before the reception on Wednesday.”
“I hate to let things get away from me, Vanessa. The world around us is fragmenting in every direction. I can’t do much about that. But I can try to keep a few things in order.”
“Don’t be a fusspot, Raymond. I won’t lose them. When did I ever let you down?”
“Vanessa, a man isn’t safe in your hands. All right, keep three copies. I’ll take one along with me. But you keep the others under lock and key.”
“I’ll put them in my new safe. I just got it this morning.” Vanessa shot Ted Thornhill a look that coloured the flesh over his cheekbones. He cleared his throat and didn’t meet Vanessa’s eyes.
“I don’t blame you for worrying, Raymond. I’ll personally see to it that nothing happens to them. But remember this: it’s not every day that NTC commits so much of its resources to one big project. We’re in this together. There’ll be glory enough for all.” Raymond thought that this was the cue for an informal embrace, which caught Vanessa off guard. She entered into the momentary entanglement in a lively spirit, then extracted herself without a hair mussed.
I missed the moment of Ted Thornhill’s departure. It must have been right after the photographer, who’d changed films at least half a dozen times. Thornhill had that rare skill of being able to retreat silently without taking away the feeling of his presence in a room. He and Raymond both made you feel as though you’d just witnessed the signing of a major peace accord.
“Now, tell me,” Raymond said, his voice in another register, and following Vanessa to a free couch, “how are you making out since this horrible murder? Are you all right? Are the police giving you the protection you need?”
“I’m fine, really I am. If I can only escape
north again for a long weekend, I’ll be completely recovered.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. No, no, no. I should think that you’d be more vulnerable at the lake than here. Have they let you go back to the house yet?”
“I don’t want to go back just yet, Raymond. I’ll go when I’m ready. It’s not for the police to decide. They’ve finished taking the place apart, I’m told. But I’m not up to putting it back together again.”
“It’s a Humpty Dumpty situation,” I volunteered.
“What?” said Raymond Devlin, examining my face as though it were turning purple. He seemed to be not so much at sea in Mother Goose as he was surprised that I had uttered at all. “What?” He looked at Vanessa with a quizzical expression. For a moment I thought that my remark might have made it necessary to sign the contracts all over again. But it was only my own craziness. He soon packed up his briefcase, watched over by Roger Cavanaugh, and began shaking hands with the remaining principal signers. The witnesses got a half-smile just before he turned and walked briskly to the elevator. Harry Parlow’s exit was less dramatic and took place not two minutes later. His expression showed a picture of the back room he was returning to.
I sat there for a few minutes, watching the rooftops below me. Time and place had been distorted by this meeting. It made me jumpy. Vanessa went from her valedictory posture near the entrance directly to Sally.
“Damn it, Sally! How was he able to get up here without my knowing it? Isn’t that why we have security? I want you to find out who’s responsible for the slip-up. I mean it. I want to see the name. Do you hear?” Sally immediately picked up the telephone.
