A Victim Must Be Found (18 page)

“Yeah, well, what do you want?” she asked, blowing the ash from the end of her cigarette in my direction. I could see her trying to place me. I wasn’t carrying a clipboard or any papers that might need signing. That was a mark in my favour. “You hear those kids? Running around up and down the stairs? I told Shirley (she’s the super’s wife) that our rent includes a little protection from stuff like that. I didn’t mince words with her, I told her straight out.” I found myself nodding again. I tried to concentrate on her eyes. They were her good features. They were bright blue, surrounded by forgotten mascara. The rest of her looked like it was about to ripple or shake. She might be the only woman in town who had never read a magazine article on
anorexia nervosa
. “Damned kids, breaking everything in sight. You from Welfare?” For a moment I weighed the advantages of letting her think I was, but it seemed a temporary gain easily disproved. I just grinned and let her make whatever she wanted to out of it. “If you are, it’s about time. He’s not getting any better, you know. Come on in and see for yourself.”

She led the way into the apartment. I heard the noise of a daytime television program. It was a game show and the host’s voice rippled with the fun of the diabolical games he had in store, while the audience roared with delight. “Well, since you can’t take the Cadillac home with you, what about putting your other five thousand on
twin
Triumph sportscars!” The audience clapped and cheered and the contestant lost her bankroll when she couldn’t remember the world famous American president with the initials “F.D.R.”

“We got company, Wally! Wally? Can chew turn that rotten thing off?”

“Go drown yourself, woman. Do something useful for a change.”

“Watch your mouth, Wally. We got company. You did say Welfare, didn’t you?”

“No, you did,” I said, looking at the back of an overstuffed chair facing the TV. The top of the head that had its back to me was a faded red, like weak tea. He reacted to my confession at once:

“Ha! She’s tone deaf when it comes to money.” The man in the chair got up and stared at me. “You don’t look like money at all,” he said. “Not city money or any other kind.”

It’s hard to assess someone who is giving me the same treatment at the same time, but I tried. What I saw standing in front of a large colour TV screen was a man in his late fifties or early sixties. He wore his dying red hair over his forehead in bangs, like he was an extra in
Henry V.
It was a wide brow with penetrating eyes below wild eyebrows. The face, which narrowed rapidly from the nose down, was unshaven. The pale red was deepest under his nose, where he may have recognized a moustache, but it all looked like meat for the razor to me. His glasses were framed with a plastic that echoed the rusty colour above and below it and were mended with adhesive tape where the right temple met the frame. He looked like he needed watching. If I had been carrying a bankroll, my right hand would have automatically checked to see that it was still on my hip. Lamb tilted his head to one side, to get me from a slightly different angle, then smiled a one-sided smile and indicated a chair. “Sit down. What’s your pitch?”

I tried to picture Lamb standing in front of “Breakfast in Ayton” with a palette and brushes. It didn’t work. He looked like he’d be more at home standing on the sawdust of a carnival pitch. There was something beat-up and used in his appearance, as though he’d spent time in jail or the prizefighting ring. I thought of the metal furniture in Chris Savas’s office. He was wearing dirty corduroy trousers and a plaid shirt of flannel. I sat in the chair next to his. It too faced the television set, so I had to turn to keep Wallace Lamb in view. I hoped he’d turn off the television set; I’m very susceptible, especially to junk programs like the one now playing. I tried to think of where to begin.

“Pambos Kiriakis told me that Arthur Tallon gave him a list of your pictures that were out on loan. Kiriakis wanted to see a few before making up his mind to the one he wanted to buy. Then, Tallon died, the list disappeared and now Kiriakis has been murdered.” Lamb moved his jaw, like he had a cud in his mouth that he kept moving from cheek to cheek.

“‘Murder’s out of tune, and sweet revenge grows harsh.’ You’re not the police. Where do you come in? Is it money after all?”

“There’s quite a bit tied up in those pictures. Tallon’s estate can’t be settled until a proper inventory can be made. Pictures belonging to the estate have to be located and identified.”

“I charge big money for authenticating. I don’t get a cent for the bloody canvases. They’re all bought and paid for.”

“I don’t think that’s the angle they’re worried about. They know a genuine Lamb when they see one. It’s more a question of proof of ownership.” Lamb’s cud changed sides. He was looking for another crevice he could get a foothold in.

“Kiriakis, eh? Murdered. ‘To be too busy is some danger.’ How do you come into this and who the hell are you, anyway?”

“My name’s Cooperman. Benny Cooperman. I’m a private investigator. Kiriakis hired me to find that list.”

Wallace Lamb snorted at my profession and turned to the large woman framed in the kitchen doorway. “Just as I thought, Ivy: he’s a lousy sleuth! Money-grubbing, not bestowing. Whatever happened to Lady Bountiful?”

“Wally, turn the bloody sound down!”

“Ivy, shut up!” He turned back to me, as Ivy moved out of sight into the kitchen. “What are you paying for information?”

“That depends on what you have to sell.” Ivy reappeared and turned down the TV a little herself. She used the opportunity to take another look at me. She blocked the whole of the screen.

“If you’re out to find information, it’s going to cost you,” she said, putting a heavy arm to the back of her head as though she was looking for a stray or errant tress, but none had escaped the tight-fitting hairnet which imprisoned all her mouse-brown curls. “We didn’t invite you here, so you better show us the colour of your money.”

“Ivy, bugger off!” Ivy held her ground and her tongue. “That list that Tallon gave Kiriakis made a lot of people sore, eh? What’s your name again?” I told him. This time it may have sunk in.

“I’ve talked to a few of the people on the list. Names Pambos thought important enough to remember. They had access to his office and possibly knew where he kept it. One thing I’ll say for them, Mr. Lamb: they’re all great fans of yours.”

“Fans? Oh, I’ve got plenty of fans. In 19 … I can’t remember the year, what’s his name, the governor-general? He bought twenty paintings from me at ten dollars each. They say he’s a great patron of the arts. I say he knew a bargain when he saw one. Tallon had sawdust where his brains should have been, but his heart was as sound as a good oak hull.”

“You knew him a long time.”

“I never knew where I stood with him, but I could always touch him for a few dollars even if I didn’t have any canvases to peddle.” Ivy moved from the television set, letting a blast of colour into the room, and came to rest behind Wallace Lamb’s chair.

“He got them pictures dirt cheap, if you ask me,” she offered.

“We didn’t ask, Ivy. He wasn’t as fair to me as a bank—he wasn’t any damned computer for one thing— but he gave me a fair price if I worried away at him. He was a gentleman, you know, and had that way of letting money and talk of money embarrass him. He’d go beetred if you tried to haggle. Like if I puked on his old school tie or unzipped in front of his lady friends. So, I’d have to settle or try it again later. He was a hard man to get around. Maybe it was because he was so damned honest.”

“Breeding has its advantages.”

“Ivy, why don’t you get us a beer?” Lamb looked like he was trying to mine my face for the money he was sure was there somewhere. All it needed was to find the right words, the right angle. He had to try to guess what it was that he had that I wanted badly enough to pay for it. Ivy moved back into the kitchen where I heard a refrigerator door open and close.

“Wally?” she called.

“What do you know about the missing list?”

“Wally, we’re all out of beer!”

“That woman’s a great extravagance. An Ivy I can ill afford. ‘As creeping ivy clings to wood and stone, and hides the ruin that it feeds upon.’” For a moment he looked regretfully in the direction of the kitchen, then sighed. “You’re paying, I hope?” he asked.

“If there’s any money going, I’ll see that you get some. Right now it looks like all people hope to get out of this are a few pictures with your name on them. That’s not much for you to look forward to.”

“Look, my friend, I’m finished with painting, washed up. I can’t hold a brush any more, not even with both hands.” He watched as I nodded sympathetically. “Can you let me have twenty bucks on account?” he asked. “I’ll see you get it back.” I temporized by feeling for my cigarettes. I found the package and offered it to Lamb, who shook his head. “Those guys who do it with their feet have it all over me now. And it hurts. You think I can sit in Hump Slaughter’s auction room and listen to the bidding on my stuff? You see, when I was good, I was bloody great! I was right up there with the big ones. Trouble is, I didn’t die young.”

“Wally, is that guy still there?”

“Put a sock in it, precious! We’re talking!” He leaned over and turned the sound down a notch lower. Now the neighbours had no reason to complain.

“How did you meet Pambos Kiriakis?” I asked, just trying to join together fragments of what I knew.

“I saw him at openings. I could tell from his clothes that he wasn’t one of the well-heeled buying type, so I knew he was there to look. I liked that. I’d been in his shoes myself. Tallon introduced us and later told me he was a chef at a steakhouse and that he had a small perfect drawing by Lawren Harris. We started to talk and that was it. I had an interest in antiques at one time. That was another thing. He knew the Early Canadian stuff and he swotted up on information from the library so he could keep up with me. He was a funny guy for things like that. Tenacious. Once he got an idea in his head, he was driven. Hound of Heaven after him. Sorry he got himself killed.”

“Yeah, it’s not likely it had anything to do with that list of your pictures.”

“You talked to Mary MacCulloch yet?”

“Uh-huh.”

“She got away with some of my best. Her old man’s supposed to be the collector, but she’s the one with the eye. I bet Paddy Miles has let her steal him blind. He’s a pushover for a pretty face.”

“Wally.” The voice came from the kitchen, plaintive and intimidating. I got up to go. It was that kind of moment and Wally Lamb didn’t try to stop me. I slipped him the price of a case of beer minus the bottle deposit and got out of the apartment. Before I got to the elevator, I heard the TV set again. The sound followed me nearly out to my car. So, that was Wallace Lamb.

FIFTEEN

I drove back to my place and dropped into Tacos Heaven for a bite of lunch. I found myself confused by the menu; the print was so large I had to hold it at arm’s length in order to get it all in focus. It was altogether a bad experience. I ordered badly and got up, after an unhappy adventure with refried beans, shaking a lapful of tacos fragments to the floor. It was my first attempt at Mexican food, so I didn’t know whether to blame the negative reaction on me or on the lunch. I paid up with nine dollars and a cowardly smile. There was a sense of resentment as I pocketed the change. I thanked the man behind the cash through clenched teeth. “
Muchas gracia
s
,”
I said.

“
Szivesen,”
he replied.

It was just after three o’clock when I parked behind Hump Slaughter’s auction house. The lot was posted like a game preserve, threatening everything short of summary execution to illegal parkers. There were only three cars in the lot. I was encouraged by them and the four other empty spaces. I found a back door beside a nearly full bulk-loader, which carried the stencilled name “Bolduc” in capital letters. The message on the door read “Private,” just in case you’d missed the theme up to this point. I ignored this sign too and found the door was unlocked.

I was in a dim loading bay surrounded by packing cases. I’d stepped into one of those B movies with Lloyd Nolan playing the detective. He always found himself in a warehouse like this with the heavies lying in wait for him somewhere ahead in the dark. I was getting lost in the idea that I was Lloyd Nolan, when I began to remember that Slaughter’s auction house was on the site of the former Skippy’s Bowling Alley. I hadn’t spent too many years bowling, but I still remembered the place where I’d learned to keep score and run balls down the gutters, saving wear and tear on the hardwood alleys. I was getting a pin-boy’s eye view of the place. I began to remember where the rest of the space led.

Light entered this back part of the former bowling alley through three tiny square windows at the top of the back wall. Most of this was absorbed without a highlight by the thick velvet curtains that separated this behind-thescenes area with its rubble of wooden packing cases from whatever lay beyond. I moved through a zigzag alley between half-opened crates with glimpses of gilt antique mirrors, furniture under plastic wrappers and stacks of paintings with cardboard guarding their vulnerable edges. In a corner stood a group of marble nymphs playing at archery in unlikely costumes. They reminded me of wet T-shirt night at Widdicombe’s pub on Ontario Street. Maybe those Greeks had the same idea in mind that Terry Widdicombe had. I guess in those ancient days, before photography was perfected, a cold chisel and a lump of marble were the fastest way of putting down a permanent image.

These musings were interrupted by voices coming from the other side of the curtain. I tried walking in their direction. The old yellowed plaster that I remembered had been cleaned from the walls to my left. Now naked brick ran up to the honest rafters and beams of the ceiling. This brick was covered with paintings hanging from a track that ran along the wall and disappeared into the curtains. Catching some of the light, a couple of wood goddesses were cavorting with unicorns on a faded tapestry. The poor unicorns looked grey with age and not at all happy about the crowns around their necks or the attentions of the goddesses. Close up against the curtains, the voices were nearly human. One belonged to Mary MacCulloch. It had her superior teasing quality even at this distance The other voice was new to me. I heard something about “keeping your mouth shut” and “sewing mailbags for a living.” That was Mary.