by Howard Engel
“Dr. Carswell, that comes under the head of privileged information. You wouldn’t tell me what’s ailing Mrs. Brown, if Mrs. Brown was one of your patients. It’s the same thing in my business. Now, Jack Dowden wasn’t one of your patients; you just happened to be there when he died. You gave testimony at the inquest. I’d just like you to expand on what’s already on the public record.” I made a gesture to show that I wasn’t asking for the crown jewels.
The doctor thought about that for a second, nodding over the width of his desk and bringing his brows together to add the necessary accoutrements to deep thought. He was generalling this interview very well so far. I was prepared for bad news. He was going to stonewall me with that smile on his face. “I see,” he said. “Mr. Cooperman, I don’t quite know what to say. You see, in a way, Mr. Dowden was my patient. I am retained by the company to deal with medical problems that arise from the dangerous substances that the Kinross people come in contact with. They routinely handle some very nasty things, you see, and I have to deal with things like skin eruptions and generally give advice about the results of contamination from these toxic wastes.” He took a deep breath and he was off again, this time it sounded like part of a prepared text.
“You know, everybody’s excited about what’s happening to the environment these days, and the Environment Front people aren’t above using scare tactics, exaggerations and half-truths. That’s why you see my face on television so often. I’m just trying to keep things in perspective.”
“Excuse me, Doctor, but what has this got to do with Dowden’s death?”
“The point is, Mr. Cooperman, that I’ve been turned into a busy man by all this. I have to watch my time. I don’t want to insist on that, but since I’ve already said everything about the incident at the inquest … You see what I mean? It’s all on public record. Besides, I don’t think I have anything more to add that would be helpful. You see the spot you put me in? And, remember, it was well over a year ago.”
Now it was my turn to nod and look sage. It’s easier to do sitting behind a desk. Carswell wasn’t going to give me much time. He was already shifting papers off his desk and into an attaché case. “I think I understand your position, Doctor,” I said. “I’d just like to be sure that the account of the injuries sustained in the accident square with the circumstances described in the inquest transcript.”
“Well, I can put your mind at rest there, Mr. Cooperman. I was one of the first on the scene, and I saw the man just after it happened.”
“But you didn’t actually see the accident?”
“No. I thought you said you’d read the coroner’s report?” He was getting angry now, but keeping his hands on the arms of his chair helped to modulate his voice. I tried grinning to ease the situation.
“I’m just trying to get it clear in my head.”
“I understand your problem, Mr. Cooperman, but I don’t see how I can help you. I don’t think that Norman Caine would appreciate me speaking to you without you going through him first. I’m sure that that would be his view and I’m sure that Ross Forbes would back him up in that.”
“What does Ross Forbes have to do with this?” I thought I had put that name behind me for all time. “He’s no longer top man at Kinross, is he?” I hoped that my agitation wasn’t showing. I wanted nothing further to do with Ross Forbes.
“Of course not,” Carswell said, pitying my ignorance, “but he is still CEO of Phidias Manufacturing. Kinross, Mr. Cooperman, is a subsidiary of Phidias. Ross Forbes would support Mr. Caine in this, I think.”
“You’ve changed a speculation into a certainty, Doctor.” Carswell got up, terminating our conversation.
“Look,” Carswell said, elongating the word so that it sounded like sweet reason, “I’d like to go on talking to you, Mr. Cooperman, but I’m due to appear on a panel at the television station in less than an hour. As a matter of fact I’m going to debate some of the things we’ve been talking about.” He moved around to my side of his desk. “It seems to me that you have just started your work on this. Am I right?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He went right on talking as though I’d smiled, nodded or mimed assent. “After you get your feet wet, give me another call and I’ll see what I can do for you. Your questions about Kinross and Phidias are all basic research. There are answers you can get from other sources. I think there is somebody up at the university researching a history of Kinross. It goes back to the beginning of the last century, you know.”
I didn’t know, so I hiked up one of my eyebrows to show surprise. I was impressed. In 1800 there can’t have been much industry around Grantham. For a minute I thought I’d awakened the born teacher in him but he quickly regretted the impulse and took early retirement. When he beat me to the door, we shook hands and parted on friendly terms. Only he wasn’t feeling about as stupid as moss. I was burning mad at the way things had happened today. At three o’clock I’d never heard of Jack Dowden. Now the doctor was expecting me to be an expert in everything he touched. Sure, I was out for learning. My ignorance was almost total. Why not? Dr. Carswell watched me go through the waiting room to the front door, judging by the sensation between my shoulder-blades.
I walked up Ontario Street, feeling a cold wind blowing off the park. Winter was coming, I thought, as a few rusty leaves blew across my path. I remembered the smell of burning leaves from years ago. The environment was now safe from the smoke of burning leaves. It got plastic garbage bags instead.
Back in my office, I tried Irma Dowden’s number again. She was still out on the town. Maybe she was bending the ear of another investigator about her year-old loss. I tried to imagine her jockeying three or more cards in a church basement bingo game on Pelham Road. I made a mental note to call her later.
The chief ingredient adding to the acid in my stomach was the fact that Ross Forbes’s name was back in the case. My memory of picking myself up of his petunia bed in front of his office at Kinross was still fresh, in spite of the time that had gone by. It was a lucky punch, of course. He was as surprised by it as I was. I remembered that I bled a lot. Some of it got on his suit, I think. I hope he had to scrap it.
That was ten years ago. I’d been hired by his estranged wife to keep an eye on him. I played a small part in a long and well-publicized divorce proceeding. My client, Teddie Forbes, made a lot of money in the settlement. In spite of this, it took me nearly a year and a half to collect the eleven hundred dollars she owed me for getting to know her old ball and chain. That included my trip to the General to have my nosed cauterized.
I checked my city directory and found the name of a friend of Teddie’s. She put me on her trail and I had her on the other end of the phone in less time than it takes to smoke three Player’s cigarettes. I tried not to look at my stained ceiling. Teddie had been a dressage rider when I first met her, and she still haunted horse shows all over the country and down into the States. She told me that she was staying in town temporarily, getting ready to leave again for Flagstaff, Arizona, but she agreed to have a drink with me. I didn’t tell her what prompted the invitation, but it wouldn’t be hard for her to guess. The end of my nose twitched at even the thought of the man that pulled us together. Passion is a wonderful thing. It was enough for Teddie to cancel her plans for the evening or to postpone a quiet hour or two bringing her scrapbook up to date. Better to sit across from me discussing her old bête noire. That punch in the nose could almost make me forget that I was working for a woman I couldn’t trust. If I was in my right mind, I’d stop dieseling on about the past. The ignition had been turned off too long ago.
FOUR
“It’s been sooo long, Benny. It’s years since we did our little number on poor Ross,” Teddie said, sending a broad smile across the table. “You’re lucky to catch me in, you know. I’m only here for the wedding. Then I’m off to Arizona for the winter.”
“It’s only the beginning of October.”
“Well, between you and me, Benny, I hate to stay cooped up in t
his town. I don’t know how you handle it. Really I don’t. I mean you’re not so old, you’ve got a portable profession. I don’t see the attraction, frankly.”
Teddie Forbes had pressed my hand with something of the ancient warmth when she’d arrived in The Snug. She was looking at me so intently that I had to let my eyes wander away to the velvet and leather decor of the room. It was full of overtones of Ireland, from the piped-in music to the foolish leprechauns on the coasters under the drinks. She’d been her usual ten minutes late, just for old times, and I’d had plenty of time to take in the throng of trendy business people unwinding or wheeling and dealing over martinis and imported beer. Teddie was reminding me that a decade ago I had let the PI/client relationship get a little sloppy.
“My parents are still here, Teddie. I’m the apple that didn’t fall far from the tree.” She sent an intimate look at me over the rim of her martini glass and I lifted my rye and ginger ale to meet it.
Teddie Forbes had got prettier in the decade she’d been out of my sight. The puffy, dissipated face I’d been holding onto over the years had been replaced by sharply sculpted features with cheekbones and everything. The crowsfeet in the corners of her eyes made them look wiser than her years. I figured that she must be crowding forty by now. She was in the pink and had all the confidence that comes from knowing it. Her figure was still full, but now seemed as though she’d grown into it. She’d also learned a thing or two about clothes since I saw her last. She used to dress like a medicine-show wagon. Across from me, she sat in a tidy grey tweed that brought out the blue in her enormous eyes.
“… Now a week after I get to Flagstaff, I’ll start getting homesick for this looney-bin of home and friends and memories. I know it. I’m a sucker for nostalgia, Benny.” She took a deep sip and then gave me a smile that said we had come to the business part of our meeting. I was glad of that. She’d had me worried for a minute. “Well?” she asked.
“Teddie, something is going on at Kinross Disposals. My client thinks a family member may have been killed because he stumbled on what’s going on up there.”
“Wow!” Teddie said, putting down her drink without taking her blue headlamps off my face. “Do you think Ross is behind it?”
“Teddie, I know what you’re hoping. No, I don’t know anything except that I can’t see how I can get into the Kinross yard without being spotted. I’m not Dick Tracy and I’m not Sherlock Holmes. I can’t drive a big truck. I don’t even speak their lingo. It could take me a couple of weeks before I could arrange phoney ID, and that can run into money. If I go as myself, the phonebook unmasks me as a private investigator. Besides, in a place this size, I’m bound to run into somebody—somebody, hell! I’m sure to meet a dozen people who know me the first day on the job. That’s assuming they’ll hire me. I’ve never been in a spot like this.”
“Poor bunny, she said, enjoying my discomfort.
“There’s no way I can go undercover. No way into this puzzle. I’m going to have to do a crabdance around it until my client runs out of money. It’s going to be two steps back, three steps sideways for every half-step forward.”
“What are you going to do then? I can’t help you get through the gate at Kinross, Benny. I’m on the board of the holding company, but that doesn’t mean much, I can tell you.”
“I thought that you could help me to get Kinross and Phidias straight in my head. Ross has nothing to do with Kinross any more, right?”
“Right. That’s Norman Caine’s responsibility now. Ross has been kicked upstairs to run the parent organization. That’s Phidias.”
“Good. Now we’re getting somewhere. It’s the human side I’m short on. I need the facts on what’s going on behind the scenes.”
“That’s a tall order. I haven’t seen those people in a long time.”
“I know that. I know that. But I’m just trying to get a handle on this thing. I’m looking for a place to begin, that’s all. I thought you could tell me something about Norman Caine and what’s been going on.”
“Caine’s new. He hasn’t been around more than a couple of years. I’ve seen him a few times with Sherry, of course. But that’s only natural, considering—”
“Sherry?”
“Ross’s daughter. I mean our daughter. Remember? She and Caine are engaged. They’re getting married—”
“Great, Teddie! This is terrific stuff. It’s just the sort of information I need!”
“You’re a great talker, Benny. You come on like a real womanizer.”
“Me?”
“Sure. I can always spot a womanizer.”
“How?”
“When you tell them that you come from Grantham, Ontario, they lean across at you and say, ‘So you come from Grantham! That’s very interesting!’”
“And am I like that?”
“Aw, Benny, I know you too well.” Teddie gave me one of those warm smiles that had Special Delivery written on it. She knows how to make a man feel totally alone with her and the sole focus of her interest. She probably didn’t even know she was doing it, but I intended to relax and enjoy it all the same.
“Norman Caine is marrying Sherry. Is that like Kinross marrying Phidias, or France marrying Portugal?”
“It’s a bit like that, but Caine isn’t quite up there with the Forbeses yet. He’s trying hard, but he hasn’t quite made it.”
“He has a free hand with Kinross, does he?”
“As far as I know, he has. But, Benny, they are both family companies. The Forbeses change the rules to suit themselves. I can’t swear that Ross hasn’t kept out of Kinross’s affairs, honest.”
“What’s happened to Ross since you left him? I he still with that travel agent?”
Teddie smiled and tilted her head at my ignorance. After scolding me for not holding my ear to the ground, she answered the question. “Ross left Marie Gladwell flat when he met Caroline Grier, back in 1982, I think. He and Marie had been keeping house without benefit of clergy for seven years. While he was still legally married to me, he kept up appearances, but that was it.”
“It’s beginning to come back to me. The last time I saw you, you told me I wouldn’t have to testify after all.”
“Ross sweetened the settlement when he found out what we had on him.” She was trying to get the waiter’s eye and wasn’t doing any better than I was. Her martini had disappeared with impressive speed, and she was gnawing on the olive stone, prettily. She went on speaking, although her eyes were no longer on mine. “I got out of town for a year after that. Even now, I stay as far away from Ross as I can. Ross is the perfect bully, you know, aggressive when the light’s on, but in the dark he goes to pieces. I should have seen him for a weakling from the beginning. He’s not a patch on the Commander.”
“The Commander? Ah, yes. His father. Has he been collected to his ancestors or does he still give Ross a hard time?”
“He’s still alive, but I don’t think he goes into the business any more. He must be pushing eighty! But, I’ll bet he still gives Ross a mark to shoot at. Murdo Forbes! Gosh, he was formidable in his day. I remember him firing six executives on Christmas Eve without batting an eye. All friends of his, people he played golf with.”
“Never had the pleasure,” I said. “Who runs things now? Ross?”
“He’s still CEO, but Norm Caine is breathing down his neck from one side, and the old man can’t stay retired one hundred percent. The Commander’s chairman of the board, naturally; Caine has the ambition, and Ross has the stock.”
“I can almost feel sorry for him. He’s the kid who can’t escape the shade of his old man, and at the same time he’s getting beaten by a poor newcomer. I’m glad I’m not Ross Forbes.”
“That makes two of us. He always was a man whose grasp exceeds his reach. But he could be sweet when he was away from the Commander and not trying to wheedle something.”
“Wheedling, yeah. That’s what stays with me about him. He never came straight out of his corner at you. He was al
ways ducking to the right or left, always sneaking around and backing away.”
“Bicycle Ross I used to call him. It wasn’t his fault when you come right down to it. The Commander was always paying people off to let him get out of one scrape after another. He got expelled from one private school because the Commander tried to bribe the headmaster. The Commander thought he could buy anything.”
“There wasn’t much he couldn’t buy.”
“But those were the things he wanted most. Ross adored him but could never please him. You wouldn’t believe the things Ross did to make the old man respect him, love him. It always ended with Ross and a bottle of Chivas in a corner somewhere where I couldn’t reach him.” The waiter’s eye had been caught by one of Teddie’s finely arched eyebrows. A few moments later he brought her a second martini. He left me and my nearly full rye and ginger ale to wait out this round. Teddie went on:
“I think Marie was good for him. She was able to put some sense into him. She was a smart woman, except where her own interests were at stake. What did she get out of it? A few presents, a few trips and a ‘Dear Marie’ letter when it was all over. No! I take that back. Ross wouldn’t put it in writing.”
“Is she still around? Marie?”
“Could be. I haven’t seen her in a donkey’s age. But then we were never close, Benny. Christ, I was the wronged wife!”
“One thing you can help me straighten out, Teddie, is the relationship between Phidias and Kinross. Phidias owns Kinross, is that it?”
“Let me see if I can remember all this. I have a seat on the board at Phidias, but I never sit, if you know what I mean. Kinross has been around for a long time, years and years. I think it got started at the time of the first or second Welland Canal. The original Kinross was a contractor for a stretch of the ‘Deep Cut.’”
