by Howard Engel
“Corso made the stuff, you know. Chester and I stayed clear of that.”
“But there was more than just making.”
“He was a good chemist. But it was all Chester and I could do to handle him.”
“Where did the Blake girl fit in?”
“She bought some of the stuff we were distributing on the campus. She got into us early. She wasn’t an addict, just interested in the experience-bending aspects of L.S.D. She wasn’t a thrill-seeker, like some of the them. She found out that Corso was making it in one of the labs. At first we thought that she wanted to shut us down. But no, she wanted to find more ways to change perceptions. I called her the Mad Redhead. She had a strange intensity. She and Corso were working on variations, and she was his eager guinea-pig. One night, something went wrong. Joe called us. It was a terrible night. A blizzard was going on outside. She didn’t come down. She raved for hours and then collapsed. At first we thought that she would come out of it. But there was something funny about her breathing. Her eyes were open. We were scared. Corso went to pieces, so Chester and I carried her back to her room through the snow. It was well past one o’clock.
“There was no one around in that weather, but if anyone saw us, it must have looked like we were helping a drunk. We tucked her into bed, and as an afterthought, I emptied a phial of sleeping pills I found on her table into my pocket and left it empty by her bed. Then we got away as quickly as we could. I figured that if she woke up, the empty pill-container wouldn’t mean anything; if she didn’t wake up, we needed a smokescreen. Nothing like this had ever happened to us before. We both came from good families. Our parents were a respected part of the community.”
“Good for you. Decent chap. Tell me, did Elizabeth Blake ever talk about her sister?”
“Seems to me she mentioned she had one. I don’t know. Yes, there was a sister who was always imitating her, couldn’t grow up fast enough. She was supposed to look a lot like Elizabeth, but I never met her.”
“That sister, Hilda Blake, is still alive. I’ve seen her name. She was one of Zekerman’s patients. I can’t guess what the good doctor was holding over her head. Can you?”
“Of course not.”
“Could it be about Corso?”
“She couldn’t know anything about that. Her sister was dead. She didn’t know us.”
“What might she have known?”
“I told you: nothing. Corso got frightened. It was too much for him. Then he missed getting a scholarship.”
“How very convenient.”
“Cooperman, I hope you’re not suggesting that I …”
“I’ll say it plainer. I’m telling you. Chester and you arranged for his taking that fall. You were both in on it. Only you as usual led the way. You went up to the lab where he was working. You got him to come out on the balcony to see something. It was then easy for you both to grab his legs and push him over the rail. I’ll bet you were back in the elevator before he hit the ground. But I don’t mean to suggest anything.”
“You can’t prove that. You haven’t a shred of evidence.”
“Right now I’m not interested in evidence. I’m just trying to focus on this. Now tell me, how did you keep Chester quiet after that? Was he trouble?”
“Chester always believed what I said and did what I told him. He was always like that, from riding school on. I was always looking out for him, one way or another. After Corso’s death, things quietened down. We took our degrees, started in business. Chester went into his father’s factory. I did some business courses in the States. We both got married. It was years ago.”
“And you all lived happily ever after until Dr. Zekerman began to show an interest.”
“I could handle him.”
“Somebody certainly has handled him.”
“Well, guess again, if you think that was me.”
“Zekerman didn’t think Chester was depressed. How did you know that Chester was on his list too?” Ward blinked his electric blue eyes.
“Andrew told me,” he said. The air was slowly leaking out of him like he was a forgotten beach ball.
“He was on the take from Harrington too. I caught up on a lot of reading at the potting shed down by the creek just before arson struck.”
“At least all the filth is gone.” He was staring at the blond fuzz on the back of his right hand.
“I suspect that I’m not the first with the news.”
“So, what? I don’t think you are going to turn me in for that.”
“Not even for trying to scare Zekerman before I ran into him the first time. Your boys did a first-rate job of frightening him, but he was so scared he decided to trust a cheap peeper like me. He needed an ally, and he couldn’t be choosy.”
“You won’t get far in his shoes, Cooperman. Not without Andrew’s files.”
“Is that what you think I’m doing? Look, my name’s Cooperman, not Zekerman. Maybe from your side of the table there’s not much difference in the sound. If you think all cats are alike in the dark, you’re crazy. To me, Mr. Ward, you are not the centre of the universe. I used to be able to live for hours on end without hearing your name. I liked it that way. I look forward to going back to that.”
A couple of minutes passed. Ward had got up and was facing the black window, running his fingers through his pallid hair. He went to the sort of barber who gave an English cut: no sign of clippers on the side. At length he turned to me. “Some people might not like your mixing in, Cooperman, however pure you claim your motives are. Some people might try to protect their legitimate interests. People have accidents all the time.”
“I thought you might get around to that.” I tried to muster an agreeable expression.
“Nobody knows you’re here.”
“You don’t have to convince me. But accidents can be insured. I’m a great believer in life insurance.”
“You didn’t arrange this meeting. I did.”
“Are you a card-playing man, Mr. Ward? If you are, you know that there are times when you have to put your money where your mouth is. You’re right; I didn’t expect this meeting tonight. But I expected it. When you expect something in my business, you take out insurance.”
“What kind of insurance?”
“A letter to be opened in case of my sudden death or disappearance, placed in the hands that will not ignore it.”
“I say you’re bluffing.”
“Good. It takes more opinions than one to make a poker game.”
“Supposing you walk out of here?”
“You know I’m working for Myrna Yates. If you killed Chester, watch out. I’m after you.” Ward looked like he was weighing the proposition. Far off a phone was ringing. I could hear the deep voice of one of the boys taking the call. Ward looked in the direction of the closed door. One of the other torpedoes had taken over the call. I couldn’t make out any words. There was silence for a moment, then a soft rap at the door. Ward opened it, pinning me to my chair with a look first. Whispering at the door, then Ward’s voice on the phone, affable, reasonable, a friend to all. Further whispers at the door. The eyes of his two hoods on me.
“That was a lucky call for you, Mr. Cooperman. I’m going to have to break off this discussion. I’ve got business to attend to in town.” I nodded. It seemed reasonable enough: he was going to give me a stay of execution because he had other fish to fry. But I think he’d bought my insurance story. “I’ll have one of the boys drop you at your office.” He was climbing into a Burberry raincoat while he was talking. One of the boys, the one with the acne scars, moved in my direction.
“You’re all heart, Mr. Ward,” I said. “You know what I mean? By the way, since we’re both laying our cards on the table, I have a message that Chester was writing just before he was killed. The message is in code.”
“Unless it has my name on it,” Ward said, smiling, calmly adjusting the belt of the trenchcoat, “I’m not interested. Besides, Chester and I have been exchanging ciphers since we were k
ids. You detectives always trip over the ordinary looking for the unusual.”
I got up and walked past Ward toward the door I’d come in. By this time the letter I called my insurance was looking pretty real, even to me.
TWENTY-THREE
I woke up and it was Friday. The first thought that came to me was Friday night dinner with my mother and father. Then, when my eyes were well and truly open, I remembered how close they’d come to being closed permanently. Ward wasn’t the fellow to change his game plan because of a little guy like me.
There were a few things I wanted to clean up before the weekend settled in on me, so I kept after myself until I was washed, shaved, breakfasted—a bran muffin at Bagels—and on the road to Toronto. It was an hour and a half drive at the best of times, and I didn’t want to get stuck in weekend traffic. It was going to be a warm couple of days, I only wished that I could afford to take a few off.
The highway was busy but not in a snarl. I headed arrow-like towards the head of the lake, through orchards and vineyards with the escarpment following my every move through my left window. Up and over a windy bridge, that managed to rise at least a mile and a half higher than anything that might conceivably run under it and I was on the second half of the journey, this time through mile after mile of one-storey factories and assembly plants. The highway added a couple of lanes as we approached the blue silhouette of the Toronto skyline, and, when traffic slowed to the thickness of warmed-over stew, I began to get my old hay-seed feelings about the big city. I never arrived in Toronto without feeling like I was some rube off the farm come to sell my goats at the market. I let the phallic CN Tower lead me into town, wondering as I drove up Spadina Avenue, how it was that most cities are female except Toronto. Chicago, New York, Paris are the experienced old whores who know all about breaking in a new stud. Toronto somehow missed that cue, and doesn’t know where to get a sex change at this late date.
Spadina Avenue looked the same as when my father first brought me here as a kid. Every other Wednesday he used to buy stock for his store in the wholesale outlets south of Dundas. He’d do a little buying, a little gin rummy, have a corned beef sandwich and gossip with his crowd. He’d catch up on the news: who was in Florida, who dropped dead, who was going out of business. He would save up the best bits to take home to my mother.
“Sophie, did I get a shock today on Spadina Avenue.”
“Manny, I don’t want to hear about it.”
“And him just back from Miami.”
“Manny, I don’t want to hear.”
“I just saw him two weeks ago, healthy, in his prime.”
“I don’t want to hear.”
The Basic Bookstore at 986 Queen Street West was wedged between a cleaner’s and an optician’s. As locations go, it didn’t look very promising, unless you were looking for a tax loss. The guy behind the counter wore his hair long and blond. There was a suggestion of a moustache, which looked like a young lawn with signs saying “please” on it. He was in faded blue jeans. Maybe there are no other kinds today. Deep in the fiction department, I saw a guy in a whole suit of blue denim, a three-piece suit at that. His solid leather hat added a gauche touch. I started out lamely.
“I’m looking for a girl.” I immediately wanted to start over. I put the sales slip down on the cash counter. “The girl I’m looking for bought half a dozen books, real classics, here a year ago last March. A good-looking girl with red hair. Is there the remotest possibility that you might remember something about her. She bought some Rousseau, Plutarch, Corneille and Cicero, all in paperbacks. She might have bought a biography of Charlotte Corday, you know, from the French Revolution, here too. Any chance you might remember her?”
“If she was all that good-looking, I’d remember her. Some days, man, the only thing that happens all day is that a good-looking chick walks through that door. But, like, I’ve only been here a year. So she was before my time. Was she an out-patient?”
“A what?”
“Out-patient. Like, you know, that’s the Queen Street Mental Health Centre across the street. They’re the only people buy English books in this neighbourhood. If she bought books here, it was because she was a patient with street privileges, or she was a visitor. And if she ended up with the books, like, the chances are she was one of the shut-ins out for a walk.”
“You ever work for Pinkerton’s?” I asked. I was always careful to watch the competition.
From this side of the street, the Queen Street Mental Health Centre looked like the sort of building that was designed by the same committee that designed the camel. It consisted of a series of wings shorn from the bird. Later, somebody told me that the old asylum on the same lot had been one of the marvels of early Toronto, and like the rest of those marvels was pulled down. Some of the wings had been built before the old structure was destroyed, and now they leaned away from the spaces it had occupied as though it was a way of avoiding contamination. There were a few visitors—maybe they were patients; who knows?—walking in and out of the place. I bellied up to the Information desk. Behind it, a black woman with a pencil through her hair was cleaning her glasses on a piece of tissue.
“How do I go about finding a patient?”
“When did he come in?”
“I’m not sure. It’s a she.”
“Same difference. What’s the name?”
“Elizabeth Tilford.” She ran a long finger down three plastic-shielded pages of names.
“Uh, uh,” she said. “She’s not in here. You sure she here?” I nodded, and she shook her head. It wasn’t a contest I could win. So I asked her to direct me to the medical records department where I very quickly learned that I couldn’t expect to see any of the files without spending eight years in medical school first. Somehow, I doubted whether Myrna Yates would see me through more than pre-meds. I was on the point of leaving when the clerk who had been so forthright in reading me the rules asked what it was I was trying to find. I could see that he had now taken off his cold efficient clerk hat and was sporting one marked “concerned human being.” I told him that I had reason to believe that a woman who might be needed as a material witness in a murder investigation may have been a patient in that institution. He made sympathetic noises, joining me in railing against hidebound rulebooks and the inflexibility of small functionaries. He told me that I’d have to get a doctor to do my research for me, and that even he would have to have a good reason.
“Have you any idea how long this woman was supposed to be here?” he asked.
“I don’t even know when she left. She was in Grantham by August of last year, and that’s all I know about the movements of Elizabeth Tilford.”
“Well, you get a doctor to drop over, because we keep complete files on everybody, mental history, charts, treatments, everything. Did you say Elizabeth Tilford?”
“I did. Why?” He was biting on his nail as though the answer came from there.
“It’s just the name. Elizabeth Tilford. It strikes a cord. I know I’ve seen the name, or heard it. Just a minute.” He lifted a conspiratorial finger in the air and disappeared. After about two minutes, timed by my pulse, which I could feel beating without placing hand over heart, he came back with a grin that threatened to cut his head in two unequal pieces. “I knew I’d heard the name before, and now I’ve checked. Liz Tilford wasn’t a patient here, she was a nurse. They’ll tell you all about her in personnel. You don’t have to be a doctor to find out about staff.” He thought it was a big joke, and I left him there to enjoy it.
Personnel was a big woman with a plastic tag on her white coat that said “Ferrante.” I told her who I was looking for and she looked encouraging. From a file drawer her expert fingers drew a card to which other cards were attached with paperclips.
“Elizabeth Tilford. Yes, she was a nurse here for many years, worked in just about every department, it looks like, except the kitchen. She took courses on vacations. Looks like she was an all-round good nurse. What were you looking for
specifically?”
“When did she leave Queen Street?”
“She took her superannuation in February last year.”
“She took her what?”
“Superannuation. Retirement. She left because she’d reached the mandatory retirement age.”
“How old’s that?”
“Sixty-five. Some take it earlier. Depends how long they’ve been here. We have a formula based on the number of years worked and your age. If they add up to eighty-five, you can retire with full pension. Does that help?”
“I’m afraid it confuses me. I’ve been looking for a young woman.”
“Why don’t you talk with Mabel Kline, she’s senior nurse. She might be able to tell you about Miss Tilford.”
“Where can I find her?” She consulted her watch, and then dialled an inside number with four digits. There was a pause. The upshot of the conversation was that for ten minutes I found myself walking down corridors looking for a certain room number. At every junction, there were arrows with numbers pointing in all the possible directions. I simply had to follow the arrow with the number group that included mine. Easier said than done. I was beginning to believe that my grasp of the fundamentals of arithmetic was slipping, when I blundered into the right wing. I asked directions from a gray-haired man in a wine-coloured bathrobe, and soon found myself knocking on a door with Mabel Kline’s name on it.
The door was opened by a man of about forty. He was wearing a sweatshirt over a soft shirt, and looked like he’d just come from a gym.
“Is Miss Kline around?” I asked.
“She’ll be right back. Have a seat.” I made myself comfortable in one of the straight-backed chairs on the visitor’s side of the desk and offered a cigarette to the man.
“No thanks,” he said. “I’ve given them up completely now. I’ve seen the recent tests on tars, and I’m convinced that there is no way to eliminate all the noxious carcinogenic matter. Did you know that in one unfiltered cigarette, like the one you are now lighting, there is enough tar to destroy about fifty cells in your lungs.”
