A City Called July (13 page)

“How exactly did he pay you? I mean was it through a company or what?”

“Look, Mr. Cooperman, my brother’s the brilliant member of the family. All I know how to do is make money. I’ll have to see the ledger.”

When he came back into the room, his face was looking like he’d just stepped out of a sauna. He’d been in the file room and I’d heard him speaking with Vicki. I wondered if she thought any better of me. “Here it is,” he said, opening an old-fashioned ledger on his desk. “We set it up in this book when the property was transferred. It’s been put on the computer, of course, but this is the original of the arrangement. His cheques were drawn on the Bank of Upper Canada. Never any problem with them. He paid his money and I assume he made use of the space.”

“Want to take a look?” I asked.

MacIntyre grinned and finished his drink. He replaced the empty glass on his drink trolley.

“I don’t want to be caught any closer to 44 Woodland Avenue than I’m now standing. If I’d had my wits about me I would have informed the police as soon as I read about Larry in the paper.”

“Who said anything about getting caught? You have keys, don’t you?”

“Mr. Cooperman, I’m tempted, honestly tempted. But I suspect that the trail is cold. Besides, I’m far too conspicuous to go about doing that sort of thing except in my sleep.”

“I see. You wouldn’t let me borrow the keys for an hour or so. I’d like to have a look around.”

“No doubt you would, Mr. Cooperman. And no doubt the police will want the same opportunity. They usually like to arrive first on the scene. In fact they insist on it.”

“A little slow off the mark today. They usually do better. I don’t suppose you could study that ledger for an hour before tumbling to its true significance?”

“Mr. Coop—”

“I was afraid not. I have to play all the angles, you understand.”

“And you see that I would be playing a very silly game if I went over there with you. I’ll have to telephone the police. But perhaps it can wait until this evening. I do have a great deal to do before I leave the office. Yes, I think I can wait until this evening, when I’m home after I’ve had a run in my boat.”

MacIntyre wouldn’t go so far as sharing a conspiratorial grin with me. Instead he began playing with the papers on his desk in a way to suggest that the nub of the interview was over, and that I should begin my farewells. I was backing away from his desk and heading towards the door I’d used earlier, when he looked up from his papers and interrupted my speech of thanks. “Mr. Cooperman, why don’t you let yourself out the side door? It will save embarrassing Vicki any more.” He got up and took my drink from me without making the situation awkward. In my excitement, I’d forgotten I was holding it. “I see you haven’t got very far with that drink. I’m not surprised. Ginger ale and rye indeed. You should try a good malt one day, Mr. Cooperman. Good afternoon to you.”

I went through the door his left hand had indicated and found myself in an abandoned office with piles of papers and open filing cabinets everywhere. On a desk sat a box full of dusty Christmas decorations and next to that one of silver platters and trays. On the far wall hung a large board with bunches of keys dangling. Street addresses had been painted neatly dividing the space logically into the required rectangles, but some of these had been crossed out in chalk or felt pen, sometimes changed several times and new addresses filled in. Near the bottom of the board, off by itself and still legible in chalk, I read 44 Woodland Avenue. I took the small bunch of keys from the hook and let myself out into the outside corridor wondering why MacIntyre was making this so easy for me.

From the open window of my Olds, 44 Woodland Avenue looked like a building that had gone up the wrong year with too little invested in it and a hard-luck story right from the moment nobody arrived for the sodturning ceremony. It was a four-storey yellow brick building with a small entrance on the left side as I faced it after getting out of the car. I let myself in with a key when the door wouldn’t open for nothing. There was a directory near the entrance and somehow I wasn’t surprised that I couldn’t find Larry Geller’s name on it. I went over the names one by one until I had discarded them all. One looked as flea-bitten as the last. I tried walking down the main corridor to the back. MacIntyre had said that Geller’s office was at the back. He’d also said that he’d never been there. I looked at the bunch of keys. The labels were marked with room numbers beginning with 100 and running up to 405. I eliminated the denture-making establishments and the two rare-stamp wholesalers. I discarded the jeweller with the Swiss awards after his name. There were eight back offices and I had already disposed of five of them. Thank God for the invention of dentures. One of the remaining offices was marked
Lawrence Peyre, R.M.T., Cranio-sacral Therapy,
and the other two doors were unmarked except for their numbers. I tried the one on the top floor first. It was a single room with a desk of the roll-top type, with bookcases on all three walls. A standard typewriter stood on a frail-looking metal trolley in front of a leather-backed swivel chair. An ancient electric fan in a wire cage and an upright telephone on the desk made the whole place look like a scene from
The Front Page.
I could imagine the tenant wearing a green eye-shade and sleeve garters reading proofs.

A closer look at the books lying open and closed on the desk led me to believe that this was the haven of an author of Harlequin romances. The first page of each of the books suggested a similarity of authorship. I liked the names of the authors: Bonita Culver, Samantha Ross and Madras Richardson. I went through the desk but came up with nothing of interest except maybe to other Harlequin romance writers: plot charts and lists of names.

There remained the office on the next floor down, room 304. Here I hit pay dirt. The office contained a desk, swivel chair and a small filing cabinet. The room smelled of burned paper, and I could see flakes of paper ash in a green waste-paper basket. It was discoloured on the outside from the heat. A layer of dust covered the faded green desk blotter. I went over the place from top to bottom, bringing all the textbook tricks to bear short of making holes in the wall. Under one of the dark leather triangles that kept the desk blotter in place I found a torn-off piece of an envelope. On it was part of the name and address of Bolduc Construction on Facer Street. I promised to give myself a medal as soon as I got out of there.

The telephone on the desk was one of the cheap,
Made in Taiwan
types. I lifted it off the desk and heard a dial tone. On the bottom row of the push-button display was a button marked “redial.” I tried it. I could hear the seven tones jingle in my ear.

“Hello?” I didn’t recognize the voice. But then I seldom do.

“Hello. It’s Benny Cooperman here. Who’s this?”

“Oh, hello, Mr. Cooperman. This is Ruth Geller. What a surprise. Any news?”

“Just checking in. You know that your brother-in-law claims to have heard from your husband? He called me last night.”

“Why would Sid phone you and not me? That seems strange.”

“It wasn’t Sid; it was Nathan.”

“Same thing. Although Nathan’s a little less predictable. Do you believe him?”

“I don’t know. I’m surprised he didn’t tell you. I’m naturally suspicious, but all the same I think you’d get to hear all the real news first, don’t you?”

“Nathan’s trying to put you off the scent, you mean?”

“I’ll settle for that. I honestly didn’t expect him to help me collar your husband. Still it’s strange. The call was supposed to have come from Daytona Beach.”

“Nathan knew about our holiday in Daytona two years ago. But why would he …? I mean, that might be where Larry went. At least he knows Daytona better than the rest of Florida.”

“I’m sure that Nathan is not trying to close the net around Larry. It’s either mischief or he knows something. Naturally, if I go down to Daytona looking for him it’s because Nathan knows that Larry’s living in a loft in Papertown on canned anchovies and Ry-Krisp.” I heard a sigh from the other end. “If he is hiding out locally,” I said, “he’d better be careful who’s bringing him his meals. The cops aren’t completely up the road on this. I’m sure they know where Sid and Nathan and you have been since they opened a file on this case.”

“I guess you’re right. We’re no longer invisible. That’s another thing Larry hadn’t counted on.” She sounded like she was spiralling down into depression.

“Mrs. Geller, this may sound peculiar, but have you been talking with a man named Wally Moore, a panhandler you may have seen on St. Andrew Street? He and his partner are part of the scenery. Has he phoned or come to the door?”

“There have been dozens of calls. People threatening. I hate answering the phone. But I don’t remember him. I hope it’s not important. I’ve got to go. Debbie’s just come back. I’ll pass you to her and talk to you later, okay?”

“Never mind Debbie. Just one thing. Did Larry call you for any reason that last day?”

“The day he …? No, I don’t think so. No, I’m sure he didn’t. Why?”

“Just wondered.”

“I’ve really got to go, Mr. Cooperman.” I said “Sure” and she was gone.

So Larry burned his papers and telephoned home before he skipped out. And Ruth doesn’t want me to know about the call. It wasn’t much, but it was something I didn’t know ten minutes earlier. In this business you have to be thankful for mouldy crumbs sometimes.

I sat in Larry Geller’s chair for a minute trying to see things his way, from his point of view. Inspiration didn’t rain down on me from the ceiling, so I got ready to leave.

Making a mental note to get the keys to Larry’s door and the building duplicated at Coy’s, I went out into the unlighted corridor. The door closed with a punctuating click behind me. My memory is vague on the subject of what I was thinking about next. In fact, apart from the ghost of an idea that I might have been thinking of my supper, things aren’t very clear at all about the next part. When I turned around from the door, thinking whatever I was thinking, I was staring into three badly lit mean faces and the open end of a .32 calibre revolver.

ELEVEN

“We don’t want no trouble,” said a voice somewhere above the gun. I wasn’t too particular which of the heavies facing me was the spokesperson. The two on the outside moved around both my flanks while my mouth tried to find something to do besides hang on its hinges. I started to turn to the right, the direction of the stairs, when a big sunflower bloomed suddenly behind my left ear. It developed magenta petals and enlarged to fill the whole screen. You read in mysteries that getting hit on the head is like diving into a pool of darkness. Tonight it was like diving into a three-hundred-watt bulb. I didn’t even feel myself hit the ground.

Two or three hundred years slipped by without my noticing. I think there were dreams at one point. I remember Ruth Geller was trying to tell me something. Pia Morley was glowering at me over my mud-stained desk. Somehow her car got into the office. I was walking down a line of parked cars and the doors kept opening to block the way. I leapt over one car, then a door opened and Joyce See fell out. She didn’t move. Nathan Geller was there fixing the windshield, and he was joined by the rest of the family pointing at the heap on the ground and then at me. They were leering at the gun that was smoking in my hand. I tried to explain; I tried to back up and get away, but true to the nature of dreams, the way was blocked by a pile of Nathan’s life-sized statues. A newspaper vendor in plaster of Paris, a balloon salesman in bronze, a traffic cop with his fat hand raised against me. Then it was a dinner-table with Friday night candles burned low and Ma and Pa frozen in an attitude of patient waiting, while the gravy congealed around a cooling brisket roast. Nathan’s skilled hands had put worry into both of their faces.

When my senses started coming back, it was the sense of motion that hit me first, I think. I felt short bristles under my cheek, a rug, maybe, and a bouncing movement. I couldn’t see anything. I moved and it hurt. My wrist banged against something cool. It was even cooler than I was. Fingers traced the outline of a metal object in the shape of a cross. It felt heavy without my trying to move it. The arms were about ten inches to a foot across. I felt the end of one arm and knew what it was. That was a low moment. Carefully I reached above my head. I was right. There were only a few inches above. The metal cross was a tire iron, and I was in the trunk of a moving car.

I’m not generally prone to feelings of claustrophobia. As a matter of fact I’m not generally prone, period. I could see panic beginning somewhere around my solar plexus and I knew that if I didn’t put a sock in it, it was going to come out a scream. I knew that wasn’t going to yield much of a harvest except maybe another bump on the head, so I tried to chill the urge. If they wanted me dead, I thought, I’d be dead. I tried to squeeze some pleasure from that. I tried to move around. Each movement was like having your ear-drums tickled with a chisel and mallet. At least there was a lot of room in the trunk. I wasn’t being taken for a ride in a cheap imported compact. I could move across to the fender covers, or down into a valley where I found a spare tire that felt new. I could feel little nipples of rubber on the treads that would have been normally worn away within a few miles of driving.

We were on a smooth highway, judging by the even flow of the ride. There were no sudden turns or stops. Another passenger in the trunk with me was a coat, a light raincoat by the feel. I went through the pockets and moved everything I could find to my pockets. I’d like to think it was training that made me do that. It was more likely that I did it just to stop myself from starting to holler. At the very least I would separate one of the hoodlums from his laundry for a while.

Gradually my eyes began to send weak messages to my brain. At first they were false notions of light in that dark place. I seemed to be able to see a faint glow in one part of the trunk and then in another. Maybe that’s what happens when the dark is that thick. I tried moving again and a bright light exploded in my face, forcing me to blink. It was the illuminated dial of my wristwatch. The glow seemed to light up the whole space under my nose and plunge the far corners into even deeper black. “Seven twenty-three” the little figures read. I hadn’t been out for very long, then. I kept looking at the little red lines that made up the numbers. Useless information was presented by a damaged mind: I’d get the maximum of illumination at ten-O-eight and the least at one-eleven.