The Cooperman Variations

by Howard Engel

  “I can’t picture a cellist on a chopper.”

  “Neither could Philip. Thought it was too dangerous. Also, he didn’t run after women the way Dermot did. He just didn’t have the looks or the glamour for it. But you should have heard his eulogy at Dermot’s funeral. There wasn’t a dry eye in the church.”

  “Does everybody call him ‘Philip’? Isn’t he ‘Phil’ to anyone?”

  “Philip’s rather particular about his name. Actually, he has a string of initials he uses in writing, plus his degrees, both the earned and the honorary ones. Plain Philip Rankin is as simple as it gets. The whole name is something like Philip Ross Gardiner Rankin, F.R.C.O., D.M., R.A.M., R.C.M. Shall I keep going?”

  “Was part of his value to NTC his closeness to Keogh?”

  “Naturally. Philip could get around him, get him to agree to do the promotion necessary to ballyhoo his shows. Dermot believed that the programs sold themselves, that his name sold them. He hated to appear to be pushing or giving a sales pitch. You could never catch him bragging, although he was on first-name terms with all of the greats of the musical world. Philip once said that he dropped in on him, this must have been five or six years ago, and the Three Tenors were making salad in the kitchen. Dermot was boiling potatoes. Apart from his playing in public, he was really rather shy without Hector to lean on.”

  “Hector?”

  “That’s what he called his cello. It was a Stradivarius, I think.”

  “What happened to Hector?”

  “I guess it was swallowed up into the estate. Ask Philip, he’d know. He’s one of the trustees of the foundation.”

  “Is Philip Rankin all that approachable?”

  “Are you kidding? If it has anything to do with Dermot Keogh, his door will open wide.”

  “Great!”

  A beefy man with a brown moustache, suit and hair sat down on Sally’s other side. At first she didn’t see him and then she turned, unpleased by what she saw.

  “I thought I might find you here,” he said, with just the suggestion of a Scottish accent.

  “Gordon! What are you doing here? Have you been following me again?”

  “I need to talk to you, Sally. I’ve got to.”

  “Gordon, this is neither the time nor the place. Remember what the judge said. You have to keep to what he says. Especially ‘watching or besetting.’ Section 381, Gordon. You know that.” I may have been imagining it, but now I could sense heather in Sally’s voice too. Nervously, she introduced us. Jackson looked at me with a face so troubled it could not even muster an unfriendly glare. We didn’t shake hands.

  “I said I needed to talk—”

  “Not now, Gordon. I’ll join you in the lobby in five minutes.”

  “What I’ve got to say can’t wait five minutes. I was outside your office all afternoon. You don’t know the—” Again she cut him off.

  “Not here, Gordon. Are you listening? In the lobby. Five minutes.” Gordon Jackson got to his feet. For a second, I thought he was going to do as he’d been told. But, as soon as he had gained his balance, he grabbed at Sally’s arm, pulled her off the stool so that it fell over into me and then down to the carpet and rolled into a startled waiter.

  “Gordon, you can’t—!”

  “Hey! Watch it!” My efforts at mending things between the Jacksons were foolish and badly executed. I reached out and tugged at his lapels, trying to get him away from the struggling Sally. He couldn’t punch me— he was too close—but I could see it in his eyes. Meanwhile Sally started moaning. I don’t think he’d hurt her, but the pain was real nonetheless. The farther away I got him from his wife, the greater were his opportunities for striking out. He missed me twice but landed a good one on his third try. I ended up sprawled next to the fallen stool, with a flailing sort of wonderment in my brain: This can’t be happening! Not to me!

  Suddenly, I couldn’t see anything but legs. My view of everything was cut off by a crowd of my fellow tipplers. I heard Sally still crying out, and by the time I got up and pulled a few bodies out of my way, I could see them leaving the bar together. Sally was walking on her own, but Gordon was holding her arm behind her back. As I caught up to them, I called out Sally’s name. When I’d cleared the bar entrance, still coming along as fast as I could, Gordon turned and let me walk into the fist on the end of his extended right hand. I went down again to the carpet in an explosion of colours and stayed there.

  TEN

  There have been a few times in my career when I have had to pick myself up off the floor. Ignominiously is the word that Frank Bushmill adds to my telling of these tales. An educated man, he should know. I merely pass the word on, as I remembered it, lying there, thinking of those other times. This time I reached up and found a warm hand and grabbed it. It remained calm while I pulled myself up on it. I held on with a good strong grip. I was on my knees, rising almost into the lap of a woman with wheels. It was a motorized wheelchair she was sitting in. She had curly red hair, was wearing plaid slacks and was grinning at me.

  “I missed the beginning,” she said. “Could you push the replay button?”

  “There were three of them, right?”

  “Oh, at least. Your nose isn’t bleeding. I don’t see any loose teeth. But your eye, your poor eye.”

  “Who are you?” I asked, loosening my grip on her and starting to brush the carpet fuzz from my jacket.

  “Barbara,” she said. “Barbara Turnbull.”

  “Well, Barbara, thanks. Did you get his licence number?”

  The remarkable thing was that nothing was spilled. No blood on the rug, no fallen drinks weltering in their own ice cubes. No broken furniture. Nothing. And, apart from having to meet the gaze of the manager and the assistant manager, a florid face and a grey one, I was in fairly good shape, thanks to Barbara Turnbull. She watched me as I scanned the room for my former poise and sense of purpose. A woman with a green dragon clasp on her dress offered me tissue from her purse. A tall young man with a Walkman plugged into his ears held out my fallen keys, notebook and pencil. The assistant manager presented my bar bill. It only took a zip-zip of my credit card and I was free to leave. The whole incident had been quietly encapsulated, purged and forgotten by the hotel regulars as quickly as a chewed olive pit. My right eye felt better when I kept it shut.

  The evening air hit my face like a slap in the eye, and the figure of speech knows what it’s talking about. I tried opening the eye and it took in a fuzzy image of the traffic on University Avenue and of the monument to something or other in the middle of the boulevard. I hadn’t been blinded. So I needn’t seek medical help right away. Judging from what I’d been reading in the papers, they wouldn’t get around to treating my eye for six or seven hours at the handy array of emergency departments in nearby hospitals.

  “May I get you a taxi?” It was Barbara, now puttputting after me from the hotel.

  “Thanks, but I think I need to clear my head.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yeah. I’m really okay. I’m just out of practice.”

  “Well, I think they’re giving a course in barroom brawling at George Brown College. They might let you go directly into the second-year program.”

  “Thanks a lot!”

  “Well, if I can’t be of further help, I’ve got to get back to the paper. See you.” She backed her chair up, executed a deft turn and headed off down the street.

  I wandered back to Bay Street and the New Beijing Inn. With my wonky vision, the city looked like a badly executed set for a low-budget movie. The panhandler, reaching for loose change, had exaggerated colours on his face as I passed his dark form leaning on the corner of the bus terminal. There seemed to be faces on the windshields coming towards me as I crossed the street. Their eyes followed me home.

  “I’ve got to get back to the paper,” she’d said. Barbara Turnbull, my rescuer. How did I know that the paper was a newspaper and that the paper in question was the Star? The answer didn’t hit me right away, but I assig
ned part of my head to work on it.

  The night clerk scarcely lowered his Chinese newspaper as I rounded his desk on my way to the elevator. I shut out the outside world when I snapped the various locks behind me. Eight floors should distance me from irate estranged husbands and all other physically demonstrative creatures. Looking out the window and without checking my watch, I tried to calculate the time of day. The sunset was reflected in the windows of the office building opposite my hotel. I hadn’t intended to fall asleep, but, without any direction on my part, that’s what happened. Dozing, I made a better showing in the fist-fight my subconscious dreamed up for me than I had earlier. In the future, I’ll confine all my scraps to the Beijing Inn. The Hilton’s bad news when it comes to mixing it up with the Marquess of Queensberry’s rules.

  It was the ring of the telephone that brought me around. I was lying aslant the bed, still fully dressed even to my shoes. I could feel the strength of my heartbeat in my right eye. There was a throbbing in my head that wouldn’t go away until I lifted the phone from its cradle.

  “Benny?”

  “Yeah? Who wants him?”

  “Benny, I’ve got to see you.” It was Vanessa. For once she sounded scared. I hadn’t heard it in her voice when she first hired me, and I hadn’t noted it any time after. Fear puts humanity back into the most outrageous people. I liked Vanessa Moss sounding just a little as though she was caught up in the tangles of her own life. Fear was the right sensation for her to be feeling. It kept her human. Unless, of course, it was all fakery, acting for my benefit. If it was that, it sounded like she deserved an A in the course.

  “Where are you?”

  “Belmont Avenue. Number 365. You know where that is?”

  “Don’t worry; I’ll find it.”

  “What did the cops say about the 222s?”

  “I haven’t got their report yet. Make sure you don’t dip into anything you can’t personally vouch for.”

  “Okay, okay!” she said with irritation.

  “Vanessa, does Barbara Turnbull work for the Star?”

  “Yes. She’s been covering the murder investigation, and the network hasn’t ’scaped whipping. Why do you ask?”

  “Tell you when I get there. I’ll see you in twenty minutes.” I hung up and took a quick shower. While under the water, I heard the phone ring again, but I thought I could live with an unanswered phone once in a while.

  Forty minutes later I was leaning on the bell at 365 Belmont, a small, quiet street just off Yonge. There was still the purplish afterglow of dusk hanging about. The dark hadn’t taken hold of the night completely. An unwashed elderly red Volvo was parked across the street. For a moment, it looked as though there was someone inside. Since when are rusty Volvos the unmarked cars of choice used by the boys in blue? I tried to brace myself for whatever surprise Vanessa had in store for me. I could hear footsteps in the hall as the light above the door went on. She didn’t ask who was there, which, in the circumstances, might have been a good idea.

  “Why didn’t you ask who it was?”

  “Through the door? But I wasn’t expecting anybody but you.”

  “And who was Renata expecting?”

  “Oh, Benny! I see what you mean.” Her fingers momentarily tightened on the edge of the door, before throwing it open.

  She was wearing a blue dressing gown; her hair had been brushed one hundred times. It glowed in a soft way that I had never seen before on Vanessa or on anyone else outside the movies. It certainly was not the Stella of the Grantham Collegiate Institute and Vocational School or the Vanessa of the National Television Corporation. “What happened to your eye?”

  “It’s all included in the service, Vanessa.”

  “Seriously, Benny. Have you been in a fight? I don’t think I’m paying you to get involved in barroom brawls.”

  “You should have spelled that out back in Grantham. Anyway, this barroom brawl couldn’t be helped. I was collecting information.” She stood aside so that I could move past her through the hallway and into the tiny house. There were stairs leading up to a second floor, where lights were burning. In fact, the whole house was ablaze with electric light. She followed me into the hall at the foot of the stairs, then led the way into a living-room, which suited the Vanessa I knew as well as this new hairstyle.

  “This house belongs to a friend, Benny. The cops said I could go home, but I’m still too upset to go back there. The owner of this house is travelling in Tuscany, so she let me have it until my place gets back to normal. Nice, isn’t it?”

  “Why is everybody travelling in Tuscany this year?” I was thinking of the fair Anna Abraham and her mushroom millionaire. Vanessa didn’t bother with my question.

  The living-room was done up in off-white walls and hangings with chrome and glass furniture, and expensive architectural magazines on the glass-topped coffee table. Lighting in the room was provided by three halogen lamps slung low over the backs of the couches and chairs. Large watercolours of lighthouses and wharves with lots of clouds showing broke up the walls with a calculated effect. It wouldn’t have been my mother’s way of doing a room. I suppose it told a lot about Vanessa’s friend, but I didn’t have time to decode the message.

  “Vanessa, when you called, you said you had to see me in a hurry. Okay, what’s up?”

  “I was going crazy, Benny. Too many people know I’m here. I tried to keep this place a secret, but I keep telling people. I can’t help myself. I don’t think it’s safe any more. Besides that, I feel so lonely on my own.” If she was frightened, why didn’t she pay more attention to whom she opened her door? Vanessa was determined to prove a paradox. Or was it just another one of her games?

  “Nobody’s ever told me about the chill factor of raw fear before. I’m cold all the time.” She hugged herself to illustrate the chill. The gesture also pushed some cleavage through the top of her dressing gown. It was this part of the gesture that told on me, a mammal from the cradle.

  “So, there’ve been no new developments? No pills you can’t account for? No threats, shotguns or frightening phone calls?”

  “Not in that way. No. But I’m scared, Benny. And that’s real enough. I’m still getting used to the idea that maybe my 222s were drugged or poisoned in some way.”

  I tried not to look too relieved. She’d hold that against me. From what she said, after announcing that she was trying to organize a cup of coffee for me, I gathered that she had been living here since soon after the police finished questioning her about the murder at her house. I followed her into the kitchen, where she squinted at the places where coffee might spring from. I found a kettle and plugged it in after filling it from a tap that gave me a choice of every kind of water but tidal. While that was coming to the boil, I found the instant in a cupboard. I took two mugs, brown and browner. Vanessa watched me pour out the instant powder like she’d never seen coffee made before.

  “Vanessa, have you given my phone number to anyone?”

  “Of course not! You mean at your hotel? No, I’d never do that. Maybe it was one of your police friends.”

  “I don’t remember giving it to them either. Did you call me back after we talked the first time tonight?”

  “No. I’d have remembered that. Are you sure I can’t give you anything for your eye?”

  “Such as?”

  “There’s a steak in the freezer, but I don’t think it will do any good until it thaws. I’ll take it out.” She did that, laying a slab of meat on the counter with a clunk.

  “When your office door is locked, Vanessa, who has access?”

  “In theory, nobody. In practice, there are a few keys about. Ted has a set. I suppose Security has another. Why?”

  “I was thinking of the used shotgun shells found in your locker. Who else knew the combination to your locker?”

  “Nobody had access.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t have it written down someplace just in case you forgot it? I know I have a combination pasted to the bottom
of a stapler in my office in Grantham. Usually, I remember it, but I’ve had to fall back on the stapler solution from time to time.”

  “Well, there’s nothing wrong with my memory, Benny.”

  “Before I leave, remind me to get the combination from you.”

  “But the cops cut it off!”

  “I still want to check it out.” By now I could fill both mugs with boiling water and stir up the powder.

  Seated again in the living-room, sipping coffee, we pulled at a few more of the strands hanging from this bird’s nest of a puzzle. Most of it was repetition. I did what I could to reassure her that the villains hadn’t traced her here, that her enemies were not gathering on the porch and that I was on the job. It seemed to calm her, which was good, because both nervousness and fear are contagious.

  “What happened this afternoon?”

  “I think Thornhill intends to carve up the department.”

  “You told me that already. I thought he was just playing with the idea.”

  “You can’t trust that son of a bitch for five minutes. He’s famous for turning the vaguest, the filmiest of ideas into boilerplate with no further discussion.”

  “Maybe he’ll turn it back the other way round just as fast?”

  “Dream on. He wants my guts for garters, and I can’t figure out how to keep what I have. It’s only this murder thing that might slow him down. He knows that everybody’s watching. I don’t think he wants a shake-up in Entertainment until I stop being the Victim of the Week.” She had argued around in a circle. I was about to point that out when I noticed it had a mild calming influence. So I left it alone. “You were going to tell me about Barbara Turnbull, from the Star.”

  “I just ran into her.”

  “Don’t tell her a thing about me or about the department. You can’t trust newspaper people.”