The Cooperman Variations

by Howard Engel

  “How did you meet Dermot Keogh? You said he was a neighbour?”

  “Neighbour, friend, fellow music-lover. Fellow at the marina introduced him to me. He invited me to dinner that same day. We exchanged books and drank a lot of Scotch together. Also Irish, bourbon, rye and a few other things. Once we canoed down the Indian River singing ‘I Am the Walrus’ at the tops of our voices. Damned silly that he should be dead, I’ll tell you. It’s a great loss. I liked the man, Mr.— See, I told you I’d forget.”

  “Cooperman,” I prompted. “Did you do any legal work for him?”

  “Not much. That city fellow, Raymond Whatshisname, did all the fancy stuff. I wouldn’t know where to begin on those complicated recording and film contracts. No, I stick to the simple staples of a small-town attorney’s practice: conveyancing of real property, wills, torts and a little domestic work. It’s provided me with a good living for over forty years. I can’t complain. I’ve enjoyed the work. Setting something going that would get out of bed and turn itself on in the morning. Know what I mean? Like that palliative care unit I set up. It’ll still be doing good deeds when I’m gone too. Once set up a puppy farm too. Manitoulin Island. Wonder how it’s getting on.”

  “When did you give Vanessa the keys to your place?”

  “She’s got my keys, and I have a set of hers. We look after one another up here, young fellow. Evans at the marina, he’s got keys too. He sees to our roofs in winter; gets ’em cleared if the snow’s heavy. Alma had keys too, just in case.”

  “Alma?”

  “Alma Orchard. My secretary. Runs—I should say ran—my offices for me. She met with a tragic accident this spring. And I couldn’t even get out of here to go to Croft’s Funeral Home, and it’s just across the street from here. Big house on the corner. Lots of big houses end up as funeral homes in a town like this. Dying’s a thriving business. That and used cars.”

  “When would that have been, Mr. Patel?”

  “Call me Ed. Everybody does now, now that Alma’s gone. Could never get her to ease off on formality. You’d think that formality was the only thing that kept that woman hooked together. She died second Monday in May. They didn’t find her until Wednesday. Poor Alma. All those years of filing and writing the numbers of cases in a ledger.”

  “Does the name ‘Bowmaker’ mean anything to you?”

  “Not a thing. Unusual name, though,” he said, trying to lift himself higher on the bed. I helped him. He weighed nothing at all.

  “What about Renata Sartori?”

  “Ah, the murder victim! Yes, I knew Renata. Dermot was very close to her. She would have been good for Dermot. Now they’re both gone. And I linger on, temporarily.”

  I could see that I was beginning to tire him. That note of sentimentality wouldn’t have crept in normally, I suspected. I made leaving noises, scraping my feet and making the chair squeak on the linoleum. I promised that I would send him a few Erle Stanley Gardners when I next found myself in a bookstore. He waved me off with a forced smile. I navigated my way through the confusing corridors and found my car where I’d left it.

  As I swung the Olds out into traffic, such as it was, the first thing I saw was the sign on the front lawn of the corner house: “Croft’s Funeral Home Since 1913.”

  On a whim, I pulled into the lot connected to the chapel and parked next to the only other car. I got out and went through the glass doors that had been added to the side of the big white clapboard house. The quiet inside hit me. It was just the quiet of an empty house, but there was an extra hollowness underlying the silence. Then a man in a grey cardigan came through from a room at the back.

  “Mr. Egan? I’m Henry Croft. We spoke earlier on the phone.” The welcome that began as friendly as you please wilted as he came to realize that I wasn’t Mr. Egan at all. I quickly explained who I was, that I had just been to see Ed Patel across the street and that he had told me about poor Alma Orchard. The sound of those names warmed him up again. “Oh yes, Alma. She was quite a character around town. Everybody liked Alma once they got on to her little eccentricities. Did you know her, Mr. Cooperman?”

  “I didn’t, but Ed Patel was just talking about her and feeling sort of powerless because he couldn’t come to the service you held for her.”

  “Yes, indeed. He was missed. But, under the circumstances … It was very well attended. The service, I mean. Alma was local, you understand, and there weren’t many in these parts she didn’t know. My grandmother and hers were great chums when they were young. She’d been keeping Ed’s practice going after Ed took sick. Couldn’t take on new work, but kept up to date on what was there.”

  “Was she an elderly woman?”

  “Coming up to her retirement. Was worried what she’d do once she shut down the last of Ed’s offices. One here in town, I mean. It was a great shame about Alma. She was a healthy woman and a careful one. Not like her to take a radio into the bathroom with her.”

  “Nasty way to go,” I offered.

  “Closed casket, of course. They didn’t find her, you know, for some days after it happened. I told her time and time again about living alone in that big old house. It just goes to show you. Naturally, it tested our professional skills out back. But I think we made the best of it. Got her all dressed up in her Sunday best. Mrs. Croft is a licensed female embalmer, you understand.”

  “Of course.”

  “Yes, she’d just taken off a clean outfit for a bubble bath with the radio perched on the corner of the tub. That’s what Sergeant Hoffmeister told me. The Provincial Police took an interest for a few days. There were things that puzzled them. Things puzzled a few of us.”

  “Like what, Mr. Croft?”

  “Well, I never speak ill of the dead, Mr. Cooperman. They’re my bread and butter, so to speak. But Alma was never all that fastidious about herself. And I wondered what she was doing all dolled up in clean clothes before she took her bath. Most times you find discarded dirty clothes and linen in the bath or bedroom, but not in this case. She was all dressed up to go out to the church bake sale that Monday when she stopped to take a bath. How do you like that?”

  It was nearly noon when I hit the highway back to Toronto. It was a perfect day for travelling in an air-conditioned car. Unfortunately, none of the former owners of the Olds had thought of installing air-conditioning. The present owner hadn’t the initiative either. So he fried, even with the back windows open. Through the windshield, which had by now acquired an impressive collection of dead insects, I could see Canadian Shield granite following me back to town. It quit only as I neared Orillia, where I missed the overpass to Webers hamburger stand. Feeling that lapse keenly in the pit of my stomach, I pulled into the city of Orillia at the first suggestion from the highway signs.

  Orillia was a borderline sort of place. For those driving north, it represented the gateway to vacationland; for those moving back to the city, it represented the first touch of urban civilization. Here you were reintroduced to fire hydrants and sidewalks, curbs and parking meters. You were once more in the iron grip of the city. From the highway, shopping plazas and large, flat areas devoted to parking took the place of outcroppings of rugged granite rock. Names such as IGA and Zehrs and Century 21 led the way into the town on Lake Couchiching. In saying that Orillia was the tunnel through which you re-entered civilization, I don’t mean to bad-mouth all of those towns north of there. Places such as Gravenhurst, Bracebridge and Huntsville can all boast of curbstones and parking meters, but they are inside the inescapable context of being north. At least to a southerner like me, they are north. So, for me, driving back to Toronto, Orillia was the gateway to the south.

  Orillia was squeezed between the eight-lane highway and the south and west shores of Lake Couchiching. Part of the town spilled south of the lake, filling the gap between it and Lake Simcoe, which hooked up with the smaller lake at The Narrows. Like the great city of Rome, Orillia seemed to be built on seven hills as well, with streets climbing away from you towards the highw
ay or sloping away from you towards the docks of the port. A large information booth that was set up here for tourists was having a busy day. Men and women in shorts or cutoff jeans were filing in and out carrying maps and brochures back to their cars as though they spelled the way to ease from earthly pain. I spotted a restaurant between two stone buildings that must have gone back to the early years of the community.

  The meal at the Town and Country wasn’t exactly gourmet fare, but while I scanned the menu, I was watching a living diorama of busy Orillians taking their ease.

  “I’ve had that car on blocks for two years, Lyal, and I don’t dare fill them tires without a damned good reason.” Lyal was wearing a grey T-shirt, blue pants, a heavy brass bracelet and yellow work boots. His pal wore a peaked blue cap, a light-blue shirt and running shoes. He’d hung a blue-on-blue windbreaker on the back of his chair.

  “You got no call to talk like that, Bert. I only asked if she ran, is all.”

  “You know as much about cars as you do about livestock.”

  “The hell I do!”

  “You couldn’t breed rabbits, Lyal. You know that!” said Bert with finality.

  The restaurant was furnished in reproduced captain’s chairs, with captain’s stools next to the bar, where a Molson’s Export sign winked at the thirsty. A big Coke cooler filled the part of one wall that wasn’t occupied by the kitchen hatchway.

  “What can I get youse?” This last was a red-headed waitress with a blue butterfly tattooed on her bare arm. She wasn’t chewing gum nor was there a pencil stuck in her hair, but her apron and salmon-pink uniform were starched and pressed as though they came from a roller mill.

  “What’s the soup today?”

  “Too hot for soup,” she announced flatly. I moved my finger further down the menu. I placed my order and tried to move my ears away from the discussion.

  At another table, what looked like a small-town lawyer was eating a piece of apple pie, his chin nearly touching the plate. He was wearing a worn brown tweed jacket. Pens and pencils filled his shirt pocket beside a greasy necktie. Next to him, his briefcase threatened to explode, sending tattered pieces of writs and processes around the room. When my chopped-egg sandwich on white bread came, I tried to think of what awaited me in Toronto when I got back. Vanessa was probably still in L.A. and might be there for another day or so. That would leave me free to continue my digging. I would mend my fences with Sykes and Boyd by giving them the shotgun and shells. If that didn’t work, I’d try something else. I didn’t know what that might be, but I knew that I always thought of something.

  Back on the street, I found a second-hand bookstore, where I saw a clutch of Perry Masons. For five dollars, the clerk agreed to send them on for me. Before I’d quite got back to the street, I returned to change the instructions I’d given: I’d written Ed Patel’s address as “care of Croft’s Funeral Home.”

  Next, I headed for the newspaper office on Colborne Street and found it in the block between Peter and West. This was a busy block, containing the fire hall, the police station and a Tim Hortons restaurant.

  The office of the Orillia Packet & Times was busy that noon hour. A man in an old-fashioned straw hat, carrying a tuba in a case, was filling in a subscription form. A woman in pink shorts and a sweatshirt reading “It’s not ale if it isn’t Charles Wells” was waiting for him to finish. Was Charles Wells beer and ale taking over the Canadian market, I wondered, or were two sightings of advertisements on clothing just a coincidence? I’d have to be on the lookout for another appearance.

  The capable woman behind the counter had sculptured jet-black hair with a shock of white at the front. She was trying not to nibble the temple of the glasses she was holding near her mouth. She was short and buxom and was grinning at something interesting going on inside her head that had nothing to do with the Orillia Packet & Times. A photograph of what I guessed were her grandchildren stood on the desk to which she returned from time to time. When I came to her notice, I explained that I wanted to see copies of the paper going back several weeks, to May, in fact. I was looking for the write-up of a talk given on the evening of the fifteenth of May.

  “Aren’t you on-line?” she asked.

  “I beg your pardon?” I looked around to see if there was anyone in line who might claim to be ahead of me.

  “The information is obtainable on the Internet.” She said this as though explaining quantum theory to a six-year-old.

  “Oh!” I stuttered. “I don’t have my laptop in the car.”

  “You’d better come around and let me set you up. Clarence won’t be back until after lunch. If I hadn’t packed a lunch this morning, I’d close up this place for an hour. And just let anybody complain.” She lifted a flap in the countertop and showed me into an office that sported a framed poster of an old-fashioned reporter hollering into a telephone: “Make it snappy, sweetheart, and get me Rewrite!” I thought of Vanessa’s description of Ken Trebitsch, the hot-shot head of News at NTC.

  I was sorry not to meet Clarence, but I did find the story I was looking for as I flipped from screen to screen.

  The Junior Chamber of Commerce, meeting jointly with the Orillia Bar Association, was treated last night to the keen wit and interesting comments of Barry Bosco, a lawyer with the Toronto firm of Devlin and Devlin. Meeting in the library of the Leacock Museum on Brewery Bay, and introduced by Cam Millar, the curator of the museum, Mr. Bosco thanked the audience for coming out on a rainy evening. Reading from a prepared text, but illustrating his points with anecdotes, he kept the room with its 24 listeners enthralled for almost an hour. He talked about five of his interesting cases, which had caused a stir in legal quarters in the Ontario capital. Most interesting was his account of the baby deaths at Rose of Sharon Hospital. In thanking him afterwards, and in the act of presenting him with a T-shirt commemorating the incorporation of the town of Orillia as a city, Ernie Moffatt expressed the sentiments of most of those in attendance when he said, “Hopefully, we hope that you’ll come back and see us again before too long.” The deputy mayor, Harry J. Torgov, seconded the motion to adjourn to the next stage of the evening’s entertainment. Tea and cookies were served, with special thanks to Mrs. Halpern and her committee. The speaker informally chatted with his audience afterwards.

  When I pulled myself away from the back issues of the Orillia Packet & Times, I saw the woman with the shock of white in her black hair explaining to a newcomer that she couldn’t guarantee anyone the size of a photograph that would mark the winning of Sunday’s regatta. “It’s expensive to run a picture more than two or three columns, Carla. Besides, pictures is another department. Talk to Clarence when he’s finished drinking his lunch over at the Rendezvous.” Carla went out in a hurry. My friend behind the counter knew how to get Clarence back to work when she wanted him. Before I left, I asked her if any pictures were taken at the time of the Junior Chamber and Orillia Bar meeting at the museum. She opened a drawer on her side of the counter and came up with a grey manila envelope.

  “Clarence took these, but as you know, we didn’t run any of them. These are hard times in the world of print journalism.” She said this last in a sad, breathy voice that showed how much recent economies had hurt her personally. I took four glossy pictures out and looked through them. There was Barry Bosco being introduced, there he was giving his talk, there he was accepting the T-shirt, and there he was posing with some of the others, “informally chatting with his audience.” The only trouble was that Barry Bosco wasn’t Barry Bosco. The man in the photograph was Roger Cavanaugh, the man Raymond Devlin brought with him last Wednesday to sign the contracts for Dermot Keogh Hall. Roger Cavanaugh may not have had the most prepossessing of faces, but here on these glossies, he cut quite a dash. I could almost hear the sound of an exploding alibi as I grinned idiotically at the prints. The first thing I learned when I started in this business was to check everything. This was one of those times when it paid off.

  I paid for one of these photograph
s, collected a receipt and found, on locating the Olds, that my parking meter had expired, but that no parking ticket had yet been placed under my windshield wiper. I was at least half an hour over-parked and within spitting distance of the police station. After that, I won’t say a bad word about Orillia again, ever.

  SIXTEEN

  Tuesday

  Once more, I was installed at the New Beijing Inn on Bay Street, not far from Toronto’s Old City Hall. Although the floor was different—they’d moved me up to the ninth—the view from the window was unaltered. After showering and sorting my laundry, I called Sally at the office.

  “Benny! Did you have a good weekend?”

  “From the sound of your voice, I take it that Vanessa’s not back yet from sunny California?”

  “You’ve got it. Rumour has it she’ll be home late today. But I’d put my money on Wednesday. She has to be here on Wednesday.”

  “You know her pretty well, don’t you?”

  “Benny, I’m just guessing. She’s never here when Ken, Mr. Rankin or Mr. Thornhill are on the phone every ten minutes. All three of them have called at least twice. They’re still after her head. After all she’s been through.”

  “And all she’s put you through.”

  “Well, that’s show business. Are you coming in?”

  “I’ll be there in about half an hour, Sally. You want me to bring you a Danish?”

  “Why didn’t I meet you years ago, Benny? I like the gloopy kind. Bring napkins and—oops! I’ve got another line flashing. ’Bye.”

  Last night, as soon as I had got back into the steaming city and applied calamine lotion to the few itchy places on my legs, I got dressed in my remaining clean clothes and found a bite to eat at a deli called Yitz’s on Eglinton Avenue West. Here the service was crisp and speedy. Here I could afford to branch out from my diet of chopped-egg sandwiches and try a little chopped liver and a corned beef sandwich with sweet lemon tea. Just the way I like it. Still, I missed Orillia’s Bert and Ernie, or whatever their names were. I thought of Orillia again as I removed a parking ticket from my windshield. With the threat of starvation once more in check, I drove down to 52 Division on Dundas Street. Kids were climbing into the holes in a gigantic bronze sculpture at the corner outside the art gallery. They were having a wonderful time, while their parents looked as though they thought the holes might be better employed if they were filled with useful, necessary clocks.