A City Called July (12 page)

“Why did the partnership break up?”

“That’s no secret. You’ve talked to Sergeant Pete Staziak, haven’t you?”

“Sure, we just had breakfast.”

“Well, Larry and I worked well together for a few years. We both made our mistakes and cried about them in each other’s offices. We were a young firm in a town full of established WASP firms. It was hard getting a foot in the door in those days, but we did get a start. The good old community threw us some business, couldn’t see home-town boys starve. And then we started getting a mixed range of business, not just from our Jewish relations and friends. I think that’s where the split came. I tended to play the field, ethnically speaking, and Larry tended to stay with the known and the true. His business got to be at least ninety percent Jewish. Mine was never more than, say, fifty-fifty.”

“Is that what did it?”

“Not exactly. We just started thinking differently, wanting different things. He changed a lot too from the pal from law school.” He thought about that one for a minute. I could hear the hum of the thought on the silent phone line. “When we split up, Larry wanted to make a lot of money. That’s what he wanted more than anything else. Now, don’t tell my wife, but I’m not in law primarily for the money, after all the jokes of course, and after I freely confess that I like being comfortable and being able to afford to belong to the club where I regularly beat the bejesus out of your cousin at racket-ball, after all of that shit, I have to tell you that I’m in law because of law. I’m hooked on it. I’m no intellectual the way Larry was when we graduated, but I’m learning. It’s getting to be my second skin. I enjoy trying to translate it to bewildered people who don’t know a writ from a tort. Law can be brutal, especially to people who didn’t grow up under English law. It’s complicated and it’s a lot more than just complicated. Hell, I could do twenty minutes on the law in a night-club. You should catch my act up at Secord, where we’re just starting a law program.” Another pause. “What else do you want to know, Mr. Cooperman?”

“The partnership was dissolved?”

“That’s right. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

“What happened to the ashes and dust?”

“We split it up the middle, according to our accounts. It was a fair enough split. I kept the building and the office, so he got a little more cash.”

“I see.”

“Your cousin should take a few lessons, Mr. Cooperman. He’ll never be good, but it will give me a better game. Is there anything else?”

“Not on the order paper, Mr. Bernstein. But I’d appreciate being able to call you back when and if I get stuck.”

“Any time. Any time. The least I can do.”

I filed what Bernstein had told me along with all the other stuff and sat there liking Geller a fraction of a scruple more. He wasn’t a cardboard figure any more. I could begin to see some weight and shading. I thought of calling his wife again, but I thought better and didn’t. Ruth might be keeping something back. Hell, she was. She’d seen Wally Moore. But I didn’t want to strip all the masks away at once. I thought of the murder case that Pete was talking about. Ruth Geller said she’d told me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and it still didn’t amount to anything. I wondered how Priscilla Gesell felt when she discovered she didn’t have any little white lies left to tell.

TEN

Joyce See was shorter than I was which made me like her right off the bat. She was wearing a short-sleeved summer dress with small flowers on it. Her black hair gleamed and so did something in her bright brown eyes. We were walking under shade trees on King Street from the registry office. She swung her attaché case as she walked, making it seem all the more out of place with that dress which should have been completed by a picnic hamper or a wide-brimmed straw hat with a fat ribbon on it. She’d called and we’d arranged to meet at three-thirty, at the corner of King and Ontario. In the summer, the registry office is the coolest place in town. And it doesn’t have air-conditioning. It must have to do with the thickness of those old walls and the rationed windows.

“Did you know Larry Geller?” I asked.

“No. But I’ve been hearing a lot about him. It’s hard to turn on the television for the local news without seeing that picture of him. As you may know I’m the newest partner in B.C.G. and S. This is a town of four-partner firms and they needed me so they could get on with business. I was like the second shoe dropping, the resolving chord on a piano. Why do legal partnerships in Grantham come in fours, just as in English almost everything comes in threes?”

“Like what?”

“Oh, like lock, stock and barrel, like win, lose or draw, like the long, the short and the tall.”

“Like
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly?”

“Same thing. I read it all the time. Maybe it has something to do with trinity. I’ll have to look it up.”

“What about
The Sound and the Fury
and
The Bad and the Beautiful?”

“Exceptions that prove the rule. Are you hungry? I usually stop for a cup of tea in a little place by the market.”

“Fine,” I said, and we crossed King Street’s one-way traffic and went into a restaurant with a soda fountain on one side and an out-of-town paper rack on the other. Further back there were booths, one of which was not overloaded with teenagers half-way home from the Collegiate. One head of hair was dyed purple, and another was streaked blonde on black. At least there wasn’t a juke-box. They were trading a pair of earphones and gyrating to the unheard beat of a rock band.

“You’re doing this for the Jewish community?”

“Who told you?”

“The senior partner. I told him I was going to be seeing you. You feel responsible to the community?”

“In a way, I guess. It’s the weak spot in my armour. There’s nothing in the book about how to get out of talking to the rabbi and the president of the synagogue when they come to you with their hats in their hands.” I thought a second. “And I guess I owe it somehow.”

“You’re not just involved in mankind, but in certain specific strands of it. Is that right?”

“Isn’t everybody? Taking humanity all at once is a little like trying to put your arms around one of those giant Douglas firs they have out in British Columbia.” Joyce See ordered tea and I ordered coffee. “And I guess I feel guilty about what Geller did. Because of what he is and because of what I am.”

“Yes, that’s what it’s like being part of a minority.” She nodded as the tea and coffee arrived. A teenager returned the sugar to our table. “I share an apartment with an Armenian girl,” she added by way of explanation, then went on, “Chinese people are both a minority and a majority. In my heart I know there are vast millions of us in Asia, but that doesn’t seem to mean anything here where the numbers are very small. The closest I’ve ever come to feeling like I was really Chinese is walking down Dundas Street in Toronto.”

“Your firm handles Geller’s legal affairs?”

“Such as they are, we do. It’s mostly things going back to the old partnership.”

“Then you know about his property holdings?”

“The file stopped when it got to me. Full of dead ends, really. Just things Irving and Mr. Geller acquired, paid mortgages on and then sold or traded.”

“Traded?”

“There was a property on Woodland Avenue, an office building. Nothing huge. It was traded for six condominiums. Irving still owns his, but I understand that Mr. Geller sold his three.” She sipped her tea slowly, looking at me over the rim of the cup.

“Who bought the Woodland Avenue place?” I asked.

“It was Tom MacIntyre.”

“Who is?”

“Tom MacIntyre? Oh, Tom MacIntyre’s a lot of things. He’s been buying up most of unwanted Grantham, he drives a fast car, has a boat at Port Richmond, keeps an apartment in New York and is very cosy, in a business way, with Glenn Bagot.”

“Oh, I’ve heard about
him.
He’s connected with Larry Geller’s brother. The one who’s in construction. Sid. And Sid’s live-in friend used to be Mrs. Bagot.”

“You’ve forgotten to mention the connection with certain powerful names at Queen’s Park.”

“You mean he’s a bagman as well as driving a fast car? I don’t believe it.”

“Well, he grew up eating local peaches and drinking local wine. What can you expect?”

I got the exact address of the Woodland Avenue property from Joyce and found out where Tom MacIntyre hangs his hat in the daytime. It was still a good hour before closing time, so I walked into the solid marble temple in which he did business. His office was on the sixth floor behind a door marked
McHugh & MacIntyre, Consultants.
The secretary had never heard of a person without an appointment before, and so I introduced myself.

“You didn’t phone. Did you write him?” Her eyes were wide under her red bangs.

“No, you see I didn’t get up this morning knowing that I wanted to see him. I had breakfast and I still didn’t know I needed to see him. It came over me suddenly.”

“I’m afraid that Mr. MacIntyre doesn’t see people without appointments.”

“It’s a rule, I guess?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Never as long as I’ve been here.”

“I see. I like a place that stands by its rules. May I borrow that telephone book, just by your elbow, for a minute?”

“Oh, of course.” She handed it to me and I flipped to the yellow pages, stopping at
Consultants.
The girl was clever about keeping her sandwich out of sight. It didn’t go with the buff marble walls or the framed posters of ancient art shows that hung on them.

“Plummer and McCullough.
Are they good?”

“I beg your pardon?” she said, looking up at me.

“Plummer and McCullough, Consultants,”
I repeated with a smile. “They’re reputable? Sound, in a business way?” Her cheeks went hollow. “Or what about
C.N. Geale, Consultants?
I’ve heard only excellent things about them. Yes, Geale. It sounds like a name you can trust, doesn’t it?” She was sitting like a poker was sticking down the back of her white poplin blouse. She got up without bending the poker or making the chair squeak and asked if I would kindly wait for one moment. I promised.

A minute later she ushered me into the august presence of Tom MacIntyre, who looked me up and down then smiled. He was a man in his mid-thirties, I would guess, but the white hair totally fooled me. He was an albino, or an albino’s cousin. His pink eyes looked me over through thick lenses. Then he started to laugh.

“Well, you put the wind up Vicki, Mr. Cooperman. You took her in and more power to you. Will you have a drink?” He pulled a bottle from an open tray to the right of his desk and paused, waiting for instructions. The room was full of music. I could hear the sound of penny whistles, fiddles, pipes and a drum. They were busy doing a lilting jig tune in an enthusiastic but none too slavish way. He turned it down.

“That’s my brother’s group,
The Far Darrig.
This is their second album.”

“Nice, very nice.”

“And you’re drinking?”

“Ah, rye with water unless you have ginger ale.”

“I have, and I’ll give it to you as long as it’s rye you’re drinking. My arm wouldn’t bend if it was Jameson you wanted the ginger ale poured into. I also have some Black Bush, if you like.” I shook my head in the negative. He made a drink for me and poured an inch from a bottle marked Jameson into a glass with his fingerprints on it. The light coming through the large window framed his very impressive head. When we both had had a chance to take a sip of our drinks, he brought the conversation back to business again. “Mr. Cooperman, you are not looking for a consultant, whatever you told Vicki Daubney. She’s a wonderful typist, and she does usually take care of the tinkers. Are you a tinker, Mr. Cooperman?”

“I’m a private investigator, Mr. MacIntyre. I’ve been looking into some property once owned by Larry Geller.”

“Then it’s a tinker you are and no mistake. Good. I was getting bored sitting around here today. Larry Geller … ah! He’s the one who’s flown the coop. What did they say he got away with? A tidy sum, a tidy sum, to be sure. Here’s to enterprise, Mr. Cooperman. Enterprise and imagination.” We both drank to that; I didn’t know how to refuse a toast.

“I’m interested in 44 Woodland Avenue. What can you tell me about it?”

“Not very much. I own it and have since Geller splintered his partnership with what’s-his-name. Bernstein. It was a two-way real estate deal. No money passed. All very simple, honest and, I’m afraid, dull. Nothing spectacular there, Mr. Cooperman. A very dull property, on a dull street and filled with dull tenants who send in postdated cheques for a full year in advance. I even have a set from …” He stopped talking and looked at the tufts of white hair growing on his pink knuckles.

“You were saying?” MacIntyre got to his feet and stared down at the city from his window. From where I sat, the city could have been London or New York. It didn’t seem to interfere with his concentration that he was seeing the roof-tops of Grantham, Ontario. After a minute he turned back to look at me, with his arms leaning back on the window ledge.

“Well, you may be on to something after all.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, your quarry is, or was, a tenant of mine. Has been for several years.” I felt like I was running up a flight of stairs in a dream. “Small office,” he was saying when I was again able to tune in, “in the back, if I remember. Rents are cheaper in the rear. Silly of me not to have remembered sooner.”

It wasn’t behind a bookcase. It was a small office on Woodland Avenue. “The false wall,” I said out loud.

“I beg your pardon?” MacIntyre was splashing another ounce of Jameson into his glass. I was still sipping on my first rye and ginger ale.

“If Geller gave you a set of post-dated cheques for his rent, how would these cheques be honoured? Are you going to find those cheques bouncing?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Cooperman. I wasn’t thinking about that. Here we have stumbled upon a situation alive with possibilities, and all you can think of is whether I’m going to be out of pocket a few hundred dollars. You mustn’t imagine Geller’s office in terms of this place or even in terms of his Queen Street location. I’ve never been to Woodland Avenue to inspect it—I have people who do that for me—but from the outside I wouldn’t have high hopes about what I would find up there.”