by Howard Engel
I turned out the desk lamp on Pete’s desk and let myself out. There was no switch to turn out the overhead fluorescent fixture. Probably needed an Act of Parliament.
TWENTY
Martha hadn’t got around to fixing the broken second step leading to her chipped green porch. I notice this with the satisfaction of a non-property owner. Maybe, when all of this was over, I thought, I’ll fix it for her. I wasn’t really a handyman, but I had generous impulses. She opened the screen door wearing a chenille housecoat and holding a glass of beer in her right hand. I went in, the screen door slapped back into place, and I followed Martha into her kitchen at the back of the house.
“Sit down, Cooperman. Take a load off your feet. Do you want the coffee I promised or would you prefer a cold beer?” I smiled.
“I get gas from beer. Thanks just the same.” I was brought up to believe that beer was the people’s drink and that I was cut above the people. A few years ago I went home for Friday night dinner at my parents after a few drafts in the Harding House with Ned Evans—Ned was trying to get me involved in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream to be staged under the stars in Monte-cello Park. To hear my mother talk, you would have thought a brewery had come through the door. “A drunk and his family are soon parted,” my mother observed, while my father shook his head from side to side. To him, to them both, my taking a drink was only a final confirmation of the fears they had when they found me eating bacon with the O’Reillys when I was four.”
“I’ll have coffee, Martha.”
“It’s instant,” she challenged.
“There’s another kind?” I guess she saw me looking at her as she crossed to the counter, piled high with dirty dishes, to plug in the chromium kettle. She looked at me, then at her housecoat.
“Don’t get any ideas; I’ve got trousers on underneath. Say, while the kettle’s boiling, I’ll show you Liz Tilford’s room. I never cleaned it out when she left. Thought I might get my rent if I left things as they were. But I don’t think she’ll show her dimples around here again. She’s moved on to bigger game, if you ask me.” She led me to a small, bright room at the back of the house. Through the window came a clear view of a water-soaked lawn struggling to become green again. It had reached the dirty straw stage. There was a black maple silhouetted against the sky, with the cut of the railway line on the other side of a ragged wire fence.
In the room stood a bed—neat and businesslike—and a small table and chair. What pictures there were looked like they came out of a Sunday Supplement. The place had a barracks-like feel. On the bedside end of the table, held together by wooden bookends, stood half a dozen books in paper bindings. She’d been dipping into Plutarch’s Lives, the plays of Corneille, speeches of Cicero, a biography of Charlotte Corday, and Rousseau’s Social Contract, in English translation I was relieved to discover. What would a fellow like Bill Ward have seen in a serious girl like this? I couldn’t imagine Liz Tilford knocking back one-liners in front of the TV on hockey night.
Martha was standing behind me with a cup outstretched. I took it and shook my head at the books.
“Funny, eh?” she asked. “And she didn’t read magazines or the papers either. Don’t blame her there, really. There’s nothing in them these days. I told you she didn’t go out unless it was with Ward. And he didn’t call more than a couple of times a week. As far as I know, Liz didn’t write to anyone, or call anyone. She didn’t hear from anybody either. As a room-mate for me, she was next door to living alone. I always suspected that when Bill Ward took her out to eat in a restaurant, if he didn’t pay attention, he’d order for one.”
“But, Martha, you said she was a knock-out: long legs, red hair, a good body. She didn’t have to tell jokes or make with the clever chatter, all she had to do was be there.”
“Yeah. Some people have it rough,” she said with a sigh mixed with a mock come-hither look then disappeared back towards the kitchen. I glanced again at the books. None of them was old. They all looked as though they’d been picked up on the same expedition. She hadn’t written anything in any of them. When I gave one a hefty shake, a sales slip tumbled out. It told me that she had bought five of the books for sixteen dollars and fifty cents on March third of last year, at the Basic Bookstore, 986 Queen Street West in Toronto. I pocketed the slip and shook the other books too. Nothing. I went to the closet. Not very much here: a well-worn raincoat—time she bought a new one. A couple of pairs of summer shoes lay strewn about the floor of the closet like dead puppies, and a wool skirt hung from a hook on the back of the door. The pockets of both skirt and coat yielded nothing. I looked at the labels. Nothing distinctive, except a Toronto name on the skirt.
I was just turning away, disgusted with myself for not being able to pull Nero Wolfe out of one pocket and Phillip Marlowe out of the other, when my beady eye spied something in a dusty corner, half-hidden by a shoe. It was a laundry ticket with a South End address on it. Now I didn’t feel so empty-handed. I had two clues. With any luck, they might lead me into interesting dead ends.
I sipped at my neglected coffee and returned to Martha in the kitchen.
“Find anything useful?”
“Could be. Won’t know until later. I wonder if you’d mind my helping myself to these books for a few days? They might help me to get to know her better.”
“Help yourself. No skin off my shin if you don’t give them back.”
“I won’t forget to return them. Remember, you may never get that back rent. Tell me, Martha, is there anything else about her you haven’t already told me.”
“She was the last person to talk about herself. I think I got the idea she went to university. But it wasn’t from anything she said, it was just the crests on the book ends she has in there. She wasn’t a Niagara of information. More coffee?”
“Nope. Gotta run.” Martha walked me to the door, tried to keep a yellow cat out with her leg as she opened the screen door for me. I angled out, leaving the cat pouting on the porch.
“So long, Cooperman. If you find that tramp, tell her to remember her friend and to hell with the back rent.” That came through the screen at me as I reached the car door.
From a pay-phone in a candy store the size of a three-hole outhouse, I phoned the hospital. Frank Bushmill had been discharged. Then instead of driving back to my office by way of the high-level bridge, I went down the hill to the canal. To my right, as I approached the bridge, somewhere up in the gloom, stood the mansion erected by the canal’s builder. I guess he could stand outside on his widow’s walk at the top of the Victorian turret above the main entrance and count the profits lock in and out of the system, a bit like my father sitting behind the cash register watching the customers pull out the suits and dresses from the racks.
On the other side of the road, and on a street parallel to it, I could make out several good frame houses dating from the last century. They’d been built for the nobs of yesteryear who wanted to watch their goods move up and down the canal. Now they were full of three and four families each. They were the sort of houses you pay admission to get into at one of those pioneer villages in the States. Someday they’d be flushed out and made comfortable for the nobs again. The car went clunk, clunk, clunk over the bridge; the black water ran dark and close underneath, sliding away toward the lake. It was dark now and the night air was heavy with suphur; white froth from the papermills glowed on the surface of the water tempting the authorities to lay a legal action against the polluters. The road began to climb now, under the dark girders of the high-level bridge, circling around at the top and joining St. Andrew Street where Ontario Street made a large well-posted intersection.
At the United, the counter was clear. One of the girls was perched on a stool, her knees bracing a folded newspaper. She frowned at a crossword puzzle.
“What’s a six-letter word for Spanish wine?” she asked.
“Port,” I suggested.
“Can’t count. You going to have your usual?” I bought a pa
per, flipped through it, but found nothing new on any of the far-flung fronts I was trying to cover all at once. I turned to the back of the paper and began scanning the want ads. Under “Position wanted” I had begun to notice that the Beacon had started letting in the sort of ad that it would have discouraged a few years ago. I wondered whether the decent family papers were starting to get corrupted by the intellectual papers with the wild ads I’d heard about. One ad read:
WASP seeks opportunity part-time in public relations, experienced in French and Greek.
It sounded lewd to me. Maybe it’s my dirty mind.
That reminded me of Dr. Andrew Zekerman and his money-making schemes. What did he hold over Chester and Ward? What did he have on Hilda Blake? Was it connected with the death of her sister and the chemistry hot shot, Corso? I patted my pocket with the laundry ticket in it. It was the master key that was going to unlock all the hidden doors.
I paid my check and got into the car. It was early enough so the parking on the street was limited. I turned off into the lane which separated my building from the former home of a dead bank. It has been a long time since a bank went under, or belly up, as they now describe it, but the shock of seeing huge square stone letters spell out the name of a bank that can’t measure its assets in paperclips makes a fellow think. My headlights picked out other letters on the fieldstone front of the factory: “Rutledge Textiles.” The letters were large, old-fashioned and wooden, gilded and unilluminated except by the lights of my car. Above the door a plaque had been fixed into the stonework reading “Established 1868.” A dark, fortress-like place, it had been built so far from the street in order to take advantage of the hydraulic power which first ran the machines inside. Yellow light seeped from the heavily-grilled windows. I turned off the lights, got out and locked the door. The papermills were heavy on the night air even here, about twenty feet above the canal. I could hear the low rumble of whatever was going on inside the factory, as I turned and started to walk up to street level.
I’d taken only a half dozen steps from my car, when I saw two heavy figures walking toward me. I knew they were big because with each step they took, they blocked out more of the streetlight coming from behind them. As they got closer it was becoming a very dark alley. I didn’t like the way they were closing on me; black unfriendly silhouettes. I turned back, thinking to make for the wooden stairs that led down to the front entrance of Rutledge’s. The steps were better lit than the alley, I thought I might do better in the light. Coming up the wooden steps at about the same speed as the two palookas were walking toward me, but with a big unfriendly grin on his kisser, was another out of the same package. He was wearing a light ski-jacket and his muscles made the cloth stretch tight in far too many places. He was looking right at me, coming up steadily. I thought of getting back into my car. Even if I couldn’t get it backed up and out of there, I could at least lock the windows and doors. Not a very good idea. Not only were these three not very respectful of private property, from the looks of them, but I could see on the ground a dozen or so ways to break a car window open. Besides, I knew I wouldn’t even have time to get my keys out before they had me. My only chance of escaping them seemed to be the well-lit front door of Rutledge’s. Once inside, I thought, I would be safe. But I couldn’t head there directly. The guy on the steps would be waiting for me having caught his breath from running down only a dozen steps. No, I had to allow him to get to the top before I made my move.
I walked past my car, slowly, as though I hadn’t anything better to do than to examine the back of my office building. I looked over my shoulder, casually, I hoped. The two from the alley had turned after me. The one in the ski-jacket was about three steps from the top of the stairs.
To my right, the bank sloped away down the factory and the canal. To my left, stood the haggle-toothed backs of the stores of St. Andrew Street, some longer than others, some with their back ends supported by steel girders. Everywhere I looked I saw the black metal of fire escapes hanging just out of reach. Ahead of me the path narrowed. I had about a hundred yards to go before my way was finally blocked by two large bulk loaders. I saw what I would have to do. I would continue to walk slowly until I got to the loaders, then cut down the bank where I would try to lose myself in the bushes and stunted trees. When my way was clear, I’d head towards the front door of the factory. Not a great plan, but my own. Once behind the door of the factory, I would be safe enough. There would be people, a telephone, maybe even a few security men.
I had already begun to think I was sitting pretty, when I was sapped by the sudden thought that the front door might not be open at this hour. I could hear the low murmur of the machines. There had to be a good chance that the door would not be locked. I tried praying, like the time I tried to rescue my Saturday allowance, which had fallen through a grating, with a wad of gum on the end of a piece of string. On that occasion, now that I thought of it, a passing stranger asked what the trouble was and when I told him, gave me the money from his wallet. I didn’t see him standing near the door of Rutledge Textiles.
I made my move suddenly. I leapt from the packed earth of the path over the edge of the embankment and soon I was rolling among the empty wine bottles, broken glass, damp cardboard and other garbage of the slope. I came to rest against a tree trunk, and nearly lost an eye trying to climb through the thicket of fresh shoots that grew out of a nearby stump. The ground was all give, with no sure bottom to it. Sticks, stones and mulching leaves were hard going. There was nothing sure to get my feet on. Every step was its own hard-luck story of scraped ankles, twisted knees, ripped trousers and gouged eyes.
Behind me I could hear them shouting to one another, and smashing through the scrub. I heard curses, and I hoped they’d fallen into a tiger trap I’d overlooked. One of them let out a yell, and I could tell he had found a new home for some discarded broken glass. I heard my name called, but I was moving more surely now. My eyes were getting used to the hazards, my feet expected very little. I didn’t look back.
They were about half way down the hill above me. They’d crashed into the bush as soon as they saw that I had. That slowed them up. They weren’t very bright. Now I stood on the edge of a grass margin with nothing between me and the door but a flat straightaway with a cement sidewalk inviting me the last fifty yards. If my three friends came straight down, I would be well ahead of them by the time they were in the clear. If they tried to come down on a slant in the direction I was running, I’d be home and dry by the time they reached the door.
I took a deep breath and made a dash for it. I could feel a pulse in my ear clipping me faster than I was running. Voices above me, and the sound of gorillas breaking through the undergrowth, dogged my steps. Over my shoulder I saw one of them break clear and pound after me. His face was twisted by the distorting overhead light at the beginning of the sidewalk. But I made it to the door. Further back, the two others had come out into the open, and were barrelling this way. I tried the door. The handle turned and the door gave inward. In a moment it was closed behind me, and, for the moment at least, I was safe.
TWENTY-ONE
I wished there had been a big, old-fashioned bolt for me to slap home behind me, but there wasn’t. I dusted myself off quickly in a vestibule of dark stained wood, with a display cabinet showing the new miracle fabrics that Rutledge is making part of our everyday lives; on the opposite wall hung an oil painting of the factory from the front, showing the immaculate slanted approach to the front door in the early 1900s. Through a frosted-glass double door I found myself in a hall leading, over a part-metal part-hardwood floor, towards a silver-painted heavy fire-door to both left and right. But in front of me lay an office with a geezer looking through the plate glass window at me. I smiled and sauntered into the industrial green charm of this refuge.
“’ello, wad can I do for you?”
“Oh, I was just passing,” I said, rationing my breath and trying to look calm and businesslike. “Rutledge around?”
&n
bsp; “You gotta be kidding. Dere ain’t been no Rutledge ’ere for fifteen years. We keep the name, dat’s all.”
“You from Montreal? How’d you like Ontario?”
“Look, I was born in Ontario, spent all my life in Ontario, and dose bastards in Quebec can murder demselves in dere beds for all I care, and dat’s fur sure. Now, what do you want ’ere dis time of night?” I felt the door behind me open.
“I’m working on a project for school, and I wonder if I could bring my class through to see the machines?”
“Sure ting. Dey do dat all de time. I’ll show you around. Make you a hexpert.” I saw him looking over my shoulder at the newcomers. “We’re sure getting busy and dat’s for sure. You looking for somebody?”
I turned and saw the trio for the first time close up. I recognized the hefty one with the blue ski-jacket. There was blood on his shoe. The other two I’d only seen in silhouette against the light at the top of the alley. One was dark, the other darker. Both were wearing the sort of jackets hunters wear over plaid shirts, with twill trousers. The darker one displayed a large moustache over a blue chin and a black leather cap. The other was bareheaded with heavy acne scars. The chase through the bush had been kinder to me than to these guys. There were burrs on their trousers, scratches on their hands and faces. They were controlling their breathing well. The heavy with the black cap answered the foreman.
“We’re with him,” he said smiling at both of us.
“You sure look like you came down ’ere the ’ard way. Okay,” he said throwing down the clipboard he’d been holding since I walked in on him. “I’ll show you de working looms on dis floor. Upstairs it’s de same ting all hover again. Dat way,” he nodded toward my right, “is all finished now. Just storage, no machines. Dis way we ’ave hold machines, and den in de next room de new machines from St. Louis. Best in the world.” He led his docile group to the fire-door and hefted it with his shoulder; it rode uphill on tracks, so that it rolled down into place when we walked through it. What we walked into was a blast of noise from about fifty looms, in five rows.
