A City Called July

by Howard Engel

  “Hey, down dere! Wally? Is dat you? I got a beer for you, you old son-uh-ma-gun.” Bolduc shouted down the ramp and sent his flashlight beam into the shadows where his voice melted. “Son-uh-ma-bitch, Wally, it’s me. Don’t be scare.” He was coming down the ramp. I pressed myself as close to the curved piece of wood as I could. My wet foot felt almost chilly, as Bolduc came closer.

  I hadn’t tried to imagine what Wally Moore had been doing down in the excavation the night he lost his discharge pin. Was he sleeping off some Old Sailor close to my hiding place? Did he have some nook that he preferred? As I looked around the end of the frame, I could see where Bolduc’s light was picking out muddy cementtruck tire marks, piles of lumber and pipe, my overturned wheelbarrow. He made his way directly to a spot where a canvas tarpaulin was stretched between two piles of lumber. His light picked out some old clothes, pieces of blanket and newspaper. It looked like a downy kip from where I was watching. Except in the worst of the winter, Wally could have made himself comfortable. He didn’t have exacting requirements as far as I’d heard.

  “Well, bugger you, Wally. I’ll drink de beer my own self.” Bolduc turned and began making his way back up to the ramp. The street light poked bright fingers through holes in the fence, and the moon could be seen looking up out of a puddle and shining on idle machinery, oxyacetylene tanks, power generators and stacked piles of picks and shovels. The place already smelled like an underground parking garage Bolduc’s feet shuffled in his dirty yellow boots. Then he stopped. I looked out again to see why Bolduc was shining his light at one of the new cement footings. The light hit the curved surface just above his head. He slowly approached the column like the column might back away or run off if he came on too fast. He kept the light on the same place. “Son-uh-ma-bitch!” Bolduc said, and dropped his flashlight in the mud.

  For a moment, I couldn’t see what was going on. The fallen flashlight pointed straight at my hiding place. When I next dared to look out, Bolduc was dragging a wheelbarrow over to the footing. Back near the base of the ramp he uncovered a long shallow trough. The tarp made a slapping sound as he flicked it back. Then, muttering just audibly, he took a spadeful of the cement from the trough and applied it to the footing while standing in the wheelbarrow. With a plasterer’s skill he smoothed off the new cement on the old, so that the added part blended in as well as possible with the lighter dried concrete. When he had finished, he stepped out of the wheelbarrow and surveyed his handiwork. He returned the spade to a pile of tools, re-covered the cement trough, and retreated back up the ramp, still grumbling to himself. I heard the door of the construction hut open and close before I dared come out of hiding. Before I did, I listened to the distant sounds of traffic and the snapping of plastic sheeting in the wind somewhere above me. Water was dripping behind me. They were the sounds you only hear when it’s quiet.

  I crept out of hiding. Bolduc was still inside. Occasionally I’d hear him banging around up there. I went over to the column that he had been working on. Except for his bit of redecorating, it looked like the rest of the columns rising from the footings. I found a stick and began to clean off the newly applied cement. What was Bolduc up to, I wondered. Was he trying to hide cracks in the structure before an inspector catches them? I couldn’t guess, and further speculation was stopped when I literally got an eyeful of fresh cement. I dabbed at it with a moderately clean handkerchief until the tears stopped.

  It took about two minutes to clean off the cement. When it became fairly clean, I polished the surface with an old vest found in the pile of rough bedding in Wally’s nest. It did the job all right, but I wasn’t in a position to see what was to be seen. The light available didn’t tell me more than the fact that there was no gross or obvious flaw in the column. I lit a match and cupped it in my hands. The brightness nearly made me fall off the wheelbarrow, but I held on to my balance and the match. I ran the light up and down the darkened wet portion of the surface. At first I saw nothing. Then I found a square darker area about a half inch on all four sides. There was a pattern in the centre. I rubbed the square with my fingers until the match burned down to my fingernail. The second match showed that the square I was looking at was red, that in fact it was a gem stone, a polished gem, probably a ruby. While I was trying to understand how a ruby, a ruby with some regular marking on it, had found its way into a cement column, I could see two more things which answered my question and made me forget about the match burning dangerously close to my fingers. The ruby in the column was set in a ring and the ring was worn on a finger.

  NINETEEN

  I climbed slowly out of the wheelbarrow, my head a little light on my neck. Somewhere in my brain I was going through the words to that old campfire song “The head-bone’s connected to the neck-bone, the neck-bone’s connected to the shoulder-bone …” Whoever it was, he was in that column. All of him, part of him. I didn’t want to think about it.

  From the construction hut, I could hear Bolduc crashing around. Somehow I didn’t care whether he heard me any more. I had some questions for him that were forming in my head. I climbed the ramp.

  Back on ground level, the increase in light at first startled me. The night sky was looking magenta behind the dark silhouettes of the scaffolding and surrounding fence. Far away I could hear the thud-thud-thud of drop-hammers in the steel plant several miles away. I could smell the paper-mill on the night air. Was Alex Bolduc working his shift? Was he worried about being involved in Nathan’s death more than he indicated?

  I crept over to the side of the shed and looked through the window. Inside, on his hands and knees, Bolduc was putting his case of beer through a hole in the shed’s floor. It was a good hiding place, and judging from his motions alone I could see it was one that he’d used many times. The hole was slightly larger than the case of beer, and hidden under a work-counter against the far wall. Once the beer was beneath the floor, he moved a heavy tool box over the hole. Normally, when the tools were needed, the box could be pulled directly out from under the counter, still masking Bolduc’s secret.

  A high beam of light caught the corner of the construction hut; I got out of sight as a dark Cadillac drove to the gate and stopped its engine. I heard the rattle of chain and a moment later, footsteps. I peered around the corner carefully and saw Sid Geller about to enter the shed.

  Once more at the window, I could see Bolduc smiling, still on his knees but quickly getting to his feet. They shook hands. I wanted to hear what they were saying, but I couldn’t. Was Bolduc about to report on what he knew about the column down in the excavation? It would make sense, but there was no way of telling until it happened. I watched their expressions. Bolduc had said something about Nathan’s death. Sid nodded heavily acknowledging the greatness of the loss. That seemed right. But Sid wasn’t there to exchange chit-chat. He didn’t seem to be dipping into family memories of the good old days. He was soon on his hands and knees, pulling out the case of beer from under the box where Bolduc had hidden it a few minutes earlier. Sid was on his feet now and he was not friendly. He was shouting at the old man. I could hear the force of his tirade through the window without being able to make out separate words. I decided not to be backward about coming forward. At least that way I’d get to hear what was going on. I came around to the door of the shed. “Anybody home?” I shouted in an innocent voice. Both men looked around. Sid’s right hand remained stuck in the air in the midst of a gesture as he turned.

  “Who the hell is that? Is that you, Cooperman? That’s all I need.” Bolduc was forgotten for a moment while Sid’s heavy eyebrows met in a frown that had nothing to do with Bolduc’s beer consumption. “What brings you out at this time of night? You following me or something?” Luc Bolduc looked relieved by my timing and let a half-grin slide across his face as he stepped past his boss to the door and waved a flashlight at the two of us by way of explanation: urgent business on the site. Sid didn’t pay any attention as the old man left. He motioned me to a nail keg and I sat down. He mo
ved his compact no-neck frame into a battered swivel chair with yellow foam rubber sticking out of the seat. Instead of answering him, I flashed my Player’s and he shook his head. I lit one for myself and stared at the clean black shoes of my host. Sid Geller took one of his own homemade-looking cigarettes from a pocket, and tapped it against the top of a messy desk to tamp down the tobacco. Once lit, he didn’t bother taking the cigarette from his lips to get rid of the ash, he simply blew out of the corner of his mouth until the ash vanished.

  “I haven’t been following you,” I admitted rather lamely, and added “I haven’t been following anybody,” as though that made me an innocent man. I’d been wrong about my interruption; it hadn’t got me closer to the action, it’d stopped it. Now I was into something else. Whether I could turn it to account remained to be seen.

  “Cooperman, you’re an oddball. I can’t get a make on you. Whenever I look around you’re underfoot. It’s only because I got a lot of respect for Rabbi Meltzer that I give you the time of day.” He was looking at me like I was expected to explain myself in a topic sentence and a tight paragraph. I just shrugged.

  “You’re visiting the fire-hall site pretty late to see much activity,” I said. Geller pulled at his earlobe and thought for a moment.

  “For what it’s worth, I’m just checking up on the old man. He’s alcoholic and he’s been hitting the booze again.”

  “You feel responsible?”

  “Hell, no! I paid to have him dried out half a dozen times. I’m not his goddamned keeper.”

  “But you’ve known him for a long time.”

  “Yeah, too long. Luc was with me at the very start. Showed me the ropes. But it’s been downhill for him for the last fifteen years.

  “I heard he was dry.”

  “Yeah, I thought so too. He knows what I told him would happen if I caught him drinking himself silly again. He thinks he’s got some God-given right to make me feel guilty about not making him a partner. Somewhere in that thick skull, he’s got the idea that I cheated him. I don’t know where he gets the idea. It’s not from Alex. He knows the score.”

  “Is he disappointed that Alex didn’t make more of himself?” Sid looked at the rolled blueprints standing up in a metal-topped cardboard bin.

  “Why would he be disappointed in Alex? Alex was one of the fastest juniors in the league. He’s a good kid. Hell, I wish I had a kid like that. Alex is all right. I see what you mean, though. He’s not a world-beater these last few years.”

  “Did the old man have ambitions for him?”

  “Look, I’ve known Luc for twenty years, and I’ll be damned if I know what’s going on in that head of his. He knows that for all the noise I make about his drinking and wandering off the job, I’ll never really let him go. He’s part of all this. Hell, the yard wouldn’t be the same without him. He’s part of me and my life. It’s his name, for God’s sake. What am I going to do about it?” I shrugged, which was the expected answer.

  “Do you know what set him off this last time?”

  “No more than I know why it didn’t rain today. You can’t tell with him. And he knows that he’s got more than his job to worry about. He’s got health problems. It’s going to kill him if he doesn’t stop.” I didn’t say anything. I was trying to add up what Sid was saying and match it with what I already knew. Sid noticed the pause and filled it. “Look, Cooperman, I’m sorry about this afternoon. I was edgy after the funeral. If I said anything … I’m sorry. You rub my girl-friend the wrong way. But Ruth told me you’d been a help to her.” He cocked his head to one side awkwardly and smiled. “I’m not the most sensitive guy around, you know what I mean? I call a lot of shots in a day, and I don’t call them all right. I know you got your job to do, and I guess it’s dirty work. Ruth and Debbie say you haven’t been making a pest of yourself. And I’m glad you came to the funeral.” He looked at the floor and over at Bolduc’s cache of beer. “You want a beer?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Come on, split one with you.” He reached for the beer and brought out two bottles. He used one to pry off the cap of the other. He handed me the frothing open bottle and returned the other.

  It was quiet in the hut, sipping from the bottle and passing it back and forth. Sid Geller wiped off his mouth with a run of knuckles after each sip. He didn’t bother to clean the rim of the beer bottle with his hand. “I’ve enjoyed talking to your friend, Pia, this last week,” I said to Sid Geller. It seemed a good idea; the sort of talk for a construction shed. “You’re a lucky guy.” Geller closed his eyes and lowered his head slowly shaking it from side to side.

  “She’s a pain in the neck half the time, but the rest of the time it’s … I don’t even know how to describe it, it’s so good.” He looked at me with the broadest grin I’d seen on him since I walked in on him four days ago.

  “You’re a lucky guy,” I repeated, trying to put on a look that would inspire confidence. I didn’t know what Pia could tell me about the missing Larry Geller, but I didn’t think I’d mind hearing about Pia Morley even if it had nothing at all to do with the case.

  “She’s got the loudest laugh of anybody I know, and I know some wild types. She can handle all of them. Buck Corelli takes bottle caps off with his teeth, but for her he’s running out and buying pantyhose ’cause she’s got a run in the pair she’s wearing. Hell, she can drink any three men under the table.”

  “She get that from her last husband? Glenn Bagot?” Sid took the bottle between his thumb and forefinger and finished it off. He reached into Luc Bolduc’s carton and fished out another. He had the top off before I could lodge a protest with my embassy and he gave me first swig. You can’t be fairer than that. I took a sip and passed the beer to him. He gulped down a third of what was left. He looked like he was trying to let the answer to my question bubble up to the surface.

  “Glenn’s got a lot of class, but he’s a prissy son of a bitch. He doesn’t like you. I’ll tell you that for nothing. He gets his guts from his family connections. I mean he’ll go anywhere, walk into board meetings, visit cabinet ministers without writing or phoning.” He paused for the length of a thought, then added, “She’s a lot like that. Nothing scares her. I saw her light into a guy on her street once for hitting his own kid. Now I got a lot of brass, but I probably would have kept on going. She’s got the right stuff. With Glenn, now, he’s more a back-stairs type. He gets in there, if you know what I mean, but he doesn’t make as much noise doing it as Pia does.”

  “She sounds like she would get along with Tony Pritchett.” I threw in the name Alex Bolduc had mentioned to see what would happen. I’d already been thrown out of a house by Sid. This might be my chance to get thrown out of a shed.

  “Pritchett? We both keep as far away from him as we can. He may be trying to look like a modern businessman these days, but he’s got some nasty habits that die hard. I wouldn’t want to bump into him or his boys after dark.”

  “Yeah, Gordon and Geoff can cut up rough when they want to.”

  “Sure, and they’re the tame ones. No, we steer clear of that bunch. I got enough problems just coping with the games City Hall thinks up for me. Look at those plans up there on the table. It took weeks to get each of those signatures. Nobody’ll just let me get on with the projects. That’s the only thing I’m good at.”

  “How well known is it that you and Glenn Bagot have put in a bid on that Niagara-on-the-Lake highway project?”

  “Nobody knows about that, Cooperman. You don’t and I don’t. It’s up to Queen’s Park in Toronto. I’m holding my breath until I hear who’s been awarded the contract. I think we made the best offer, but you never know. This stuff about my brother Label isn’t helping. Believe me it isn’t helping.”

  “But this isn’t your first government contract? There’ve been others.”

  “Sure. But that was small-time stuff compared to this. A lot of those jobs were so small they didn’t even ask for tenders. We got them because we were closest and didn�
��t have to learn how to read blueprints.” Sid was quiet for a minute, looking at me like he was trying to read my thoughts. Then he changed the subject. “I wonder where the son of a bitch went?”

  “Nathan said he was down in Daytona Beach.”

  “Not him. I mean Luc. You think he was drunk when he left?”

  “He looked like he could take care of himself. What was he doing here anyway?”

  “He promised me he was through with booze, so I told him to keep an eye on our sites here in town. He does his rounds like a watchman. It takes him hours to do it, because he doesn’t drive a car any more.”

  I began to get the feeling that as I was running out of questions, Sid Geller was beginning to think of some, like how did I happen to pay this social call at this time of night. I declined his offer of a third beer, and I got up and brushed myself off. We made our courteous farewells and I headed back towards my car. Waiting for me under my windshield-wiper was a bright yellow parking ticket.

  As I got into the car and started it up, I thought, when I considered what might be waiting for me, I wasn’t so unlucky after all. Sure, I had returned five hundred dollars of Glenn Bagot’s money. It might have distracted me from the affairs of the Geller family. I was even saved from searching titles for properties along the right-of-way of the new highway. Maybe I should be getting into the act and begin to look out for my old age. Information about that right of-way must be worth something on the Rialto. I thought about that as I drove along Geneva to Church and then down Church as far as Ontario Street. With me thoughts like that don’t get very far. I have an instinct about making money that keeps me poor. It goes against the grain of my nature even to seek out the gas stations where there’s a gas war going on. I can’t remember saving a nickel on a coupon or taking advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime money-saving ground-floor offer in the tons of junk mail I get every day. If I wasn’t going to take on a deal where I could get, at a fraction of the cost in stores, a genuine reproduction of a Shaker night-table, how was I going to get involved speculating in farm property. I sometimes think you have to have brains to be a crook. In my line of work, I just get by on what I have.