The Cooperman Variations (12 page)

“You must be excited about the building of Dermot Keogh Hall.”

“Indeed, I am. It will be a memorial worthy of its subject, Mr. Cooperman. And glory enough in it for all concerned.” It seemed to me I’d heard that phrase before.

“Were you around at the time of his death?”

“Me? Oh, not me. I detest swimming in cold water, and when I do swim, I stay on top. I could never understand these snorkellers and scuba-diving types. Seems unnatural somehow. Know what I mean?”

“I think I do. I stay away from most vigorous exercise. I want my body well rested when the crisis comes and I need all my physical resources at short notice.”

“Good man! That’s the spirit.” Philip Rankin grinned at me, showing a mouthful of teeth in need of urgent attention. It was the face of an adenoidal carp. The smile seemed warm enough, but I wasn’t quite buying his “Good man!” and his “wonderful human being.” I was going to have to pick up a little more about Keogh as I went on with my body-guarding responsibilities. It would help me bear the tedium, like a side bet made to keep an edge on my interest.

Meanwhile, the body I was supposed to be guarding was talking to Ted Thornhill himself, while the CEO of NTC chewed on a handful of crackers and cheddar.

“Well, are you still having fun with it, Vanessa?” he was saying through a fine mist of expelled cracker crumbs. Vanessa was holding a glass of white wine, which she tasted and abandoned on the edge of a table as she spoke.

“I love the pressure, Ted. I get off on the problems, and crow over the rewards. That doesn’t mean I’m not looking forward to getting away as soon as I can put a normal long weekend together.”

“Yes, you should, you know. What’s happened to you wasn’t in your contract. This murder thing is killing us in the papers. Naturally, they delight in all of our difficulties. Particularly that Turnbull woman at the
Star
, and of course our old friend Carver at the
Globe
. Are the police coming up with results, Vanessa? The sooner the murderer’s put away, the sooner we can read the papers again without wincing, eh?”

I heard my name being whispered a few inches away from my ear. It was Sally, the usually glum receptionist. Only now she was almost smiling. “You’re wanted, Mr. Cooperman,” she said.

“I am? Who wants me?” I tried not to look startled. Nobody knew I was here.

“The police,” she said, looking me straight in the eye for the first time.

EIGHT

The police, announced so dramatically by Sally Jackson, turned out to be Jack Sykes and Jim Boyd, as I should have guessed. They were waiting for me in that part of Vanessa’s office that was sacred to me. Since I had seen them so recently, I wondered what brought them up to the twentieth floor this close to lunchtime. Could they be buying, I wondered?

“We gotta car downstairs,” Sykes said simply. From his tone, I decided that they hadn’t come all the way up to tell me this without my going down with them to see it for myself. So we did that. When I started questioning them in the elevator, they shushed me, like Vanessa had warned them about talking in the elevator. On the way out the cops had to hand in their paste-on VISITOR passes to the SWAT team at the security desk. “This way,” Boyd prompted, as though I didn’t know my way through a revolving door. Outside, with its lights flashing but without the noise, stood a cruiser with someone sitting in the back seat. I glanced through the window, while I tried to open the back door.

“Hello, Benny. How have you been keeping yourself?” Damned if it wasn’t Detective Sergeant Chuck R. Pepper, the cop who worked on that rare-book murder investigation I did six or seven years ago. It’s a story I haven’t told many people about yet, but I might one day. Chuck looked about the same, with a military look to his short-cropped iron-grey hair. There were red mousetracks on his cheeks that spoke of the good things of life. Underneath, he was grinning in a controlled way. Chuck never went overboard while on duty. Behind me, Sykes and Boyd were taking it all in.

“Chuck! How are you? Damn it, it’s good to see you!” We shook hands after I managed to get the door to open. Out of habit, Boyd clapped me on the head as I ducked under the door frame.

“Much better now I’ve seen you. I might make it to my pension after all.” The other two piled into the front seat, and with a squeak of rubber Sykes moved the car away from the ABSOLUTELY NO PARKING signs and into traffic on University Avenue. Sykes turned around, smiling.

“I should have brought my camera; I wanted to catch this reunion for posterity, but I forgot. Still, I thought that you might want to know that Chuck’s now in charge of the questionable death at 518 Sackville Street.”

“Bob Foley?” I asked, and counted three nods. “Is it still questionable, or has it been downgraded to a tropical storm?”

“It’s only the circumstances that are suspicious. The suicide part looks real enough,” said Chuck. “But I reckon it won’t hurt to have another look around. Would you like to come along? We were thinking of going for dim sum afterwards. You haven’t eaten, I hope?”

“No, I haven’t eaten. They’re serving plastic cheese up on the twenty-first floor. My client never eats and I could starve to death on this job. What’s dim sum? And thanks, I’d like to tag along.” Boyd explained about the Chinese tea lunch and Chuck warned me that I should say little and keep my hands in my pockets on the far side of the yellow plastic tape. Good old Chuck Pepper: he hadn’t changed a bit.

The late Bob Foley’s house at 518 Sackville Street looked like its neighbouring houses, 520 and 516. It wasn’t much different from lots of rowhouses and semidetached houses in that part of town: a rather narrow, three-storey brick structure with a bay window and a gable roof. From what Sykes said, I gather that the neighbourhood had sunk to the status of a genteel slum between the wars, but was now up again, showing off big brass house numbers on sand-blasted brick. Sykes parked on the “no parking” side of the street. He seemed to have a built-in contempt for traffic signs.

Bob Foley had had a comfortable life, judging from the downstairs rooms. One wall in the living-room had been stripped down to the brick, which set off a couple of good-looking watercolours of barns, farmhouses and other farm buildings. There was a woman’s touch in the furniture and curtains, but the general messiness of all the flat surfaces suggested that she was no longer in residence. A half-eaten box of pretzels stood near the TV set. Two old sweaters were draped around the backs of chairs. A smelly sleeping bag covered half of the couch, doubling as a blanket. The basement was a fully outfitted recording studio. Fancy recording and editing equipment, giant speakers, controlboards with dozens of sliding keys all looked ready to go to work. Racks of used and unused magnetic tapes stood handy, as did a dusty computer under a plastic cover. Much of this stuff was new to me.

On the second floor Chuck led the way to the bedroom. The bed had been stripped. Six empty bottles of Molson’s Export beer were sitting in a cardboard carton. An equal number of empties were lined up on a bedside table. A bottle that had once held Cutty Sark stood behind them. Pepper turned to me.

“There was an empty vial of sleeping pills on the table with the bottles, Benny. That’s gone to the lab. Dr. Melton, who took a look, gave me to understand they were the sort that are not recommended to be taken with booze. I’m not talking about him not driving or moving heavy equipment, I’m saying that mixing alcohol and that stuff was dangerous for him even if he was only lying there watching
Seinfeld
reruns. He even had a last cigarette. There was a long ash and a stain in the bottom of an ashtray, also taken from the bedside table.”

“May I speak?” I asked.

“Yes,” Chuck said the word so that it carried its own warning.

“I saw a package of Nicorettes downstairs. Had he given up smoking?”

“He had. It was too much hassle at work, I was told, so he gave it up with a prolonged struggle two years ago, about the time Jean left him.”

“That
Mrs
. Foley?”

Chuck nodded.

“So, he revived the habit as a last defiant gesture? Is that how you see it?”

“Unless the three of you can see some element that isn’t consistent with suicide.”

“Don’t use that word. ‘Consistent’ makes me want to have a smoke myself. Where’s the pack the cigarette came from?”

“It had fallen under the bed. A throwaway lighter was there too. They’re both downtown.”

“Supposing Foley had had a visitor. The visitor could have got Foley drinking and then slipped the pills into his drink when he was nearly drunk.”

“Yes, I thought that as well,” Chuck said. “But we found only one dirty glass on the bedside table. It had Foley’s prints on it.”

“Did you check out the glasses on the drainboard in the kitchen? There may be prints on them. Or inside the yellow rubber gloves by the sink.”

Chuck turned his mouth down, to indicate the remote possibility that I was right. He looked like Robert de Niro playing an older man. “I’ll try it. I’ll try anything that looks the least bit phoney.”

Then I thought of something. “Your gang has kept this place secure since it was labelled a suspicious death, right?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Well, look at the floor over by the bed, and over by that chair. It seems to me there’s a lot of cigarette ash around. How many smokes were gone from the pack you sent to Forensics?”

“Just the one.”

“And you say the ash from that was nearly intact?”

“Right.”

“Well, either we have a dead cigarette package in the garbage, or somebody took the rest of the deck away with him when he left Foley unconscious in his bed. The prints on the glasses or rubber gloves, if they exist, will help tell us who did the dirty deed.”

“There’s half a grapefruit peel, coffee grounds and eggshells in the garbage. No paper, no cigarette package.”

“I think we just got lucky,” Boyd said.

“Not until Forensics tells us we have. But, we have got some hope, and that might be worth something.”

“If our suspicions here are supported by Forensics,” I said, trying not to sound fatuous, “might I suggest that you let Foley’s death remain on a low level of suspicion. As far as the media are concerned, I mean. I don’t think it will help with the Renata Sartori case if we insist that there is a thread linking the two cases.”

“It’s less than a thread at this point,” Sergeant Pepper said, expressing what the four of us were probably thinking. “But you’re right. It would be bad policy to see a link between the cases before we know there is one.”

“Right now, the only link is the fact that both Foley and Sartori worked at NTC. How many people are on the payroll over there? You see what I mean?”

“Let’s go to the Kowloon,” said Sykes. “I need a
shiu mai
fix.” At first, nobody moved, and then we all did. Chuck carefully restored the yellow plastic tape and turned out the light as we went out. While this was going on, I took a look out the back window. There was a small yard with a shed against the back fence, near the gate leading to a lane running behind the houses.

“Anything in the shed?” I asked Pepper.

“There’s a fine glory hole if you like antique wheels.”

“That’s too small for sportscars.”

“There are three old bikes in there. Motorcycles. An Indian Roadmaster, a Crocker—real old one—and a Brough. Must be worth from seventy-five to one hundred thousand, I reckon. Easy.”

“Where’s his car?”

“Kept it on the street. Parking permit. It’s the one with the parking ticket under the wiper. He should have changed sides of the street this morning. It’s the first of June.”

“How’s a dead man to do that?” Boyd asked.

“Send it to his widow,” Sykes said, trying to sound cynical and succeeding. “They were still legally married.”

“Is his car a Jaguar?”

“Yeah. How did you know?”

“I heard that it once belonged to Dermot Keogh, the cellist.”

“It’s still registered in Keogh’s name. Ontario licence number BWV 988. I reckon it still belongs to the estate,” Chuck said.

“Can I see the shed for a minute? I won’t be long.”

“I’m starved,” said Boyd. “Let’s move.”

“I’ll buy,” I suggested. That did it. Pepper handed me a ring of keys, and I let myself out the door at the rear of the kitchen.

The shed was a well-built structure with a stout door to it. The gate leading to the lane was equally substantial and showed signs of being improved within the last few months: fresh two-by-fours had been added along with a new and unrusted lock. I found the right key, and the shed disclosed to me the bikes that I’d been told to expect. I’m no expert on motorcycles, new or old, but the three here could awake the hidden collector in most riders. They were protected by plastic and revealed, once I pulled it back, a good dollar’s worth of motorcycles, oiled and polished to perfection. The shed also contained paint cans, a lawn mower, rakes, a workbench, metal and wood-working tools. The workbench had a grinding wheel mounted at one end. A cascade of metal filings had collected on the floor below it. Did Foley sharpen skates in his spare time? Next to the wheel rested a rubber ferrule, like the kind you see on the ends of crutches or canes. This one was smaller, as though it had been made to fit over the end of a chopstick. For the motorcycles, I wondered, or for what?

A two-drawer metal filing cabinet was parked on the workbench. It didn’t belong there, so I looked around for its previous home and found it at the back of the shed, where four pieces of wood were fixed in the gravel floor, to raise the cabinet off the ground. Nobody likes rusty filing cabinets. One of the drawers was slightly ajar, the one below it was shut. Foley, or someone, had fixed hasps to the side of this cabinet so that it could be secured with a padlock of some kind. There was no such restraint visible so I opened it first.

Inside I found a collection of fine electronic solderers, long-nosed pliers and the makings for the insides of computers: transistors, commercial cards with their printed spider-tracks and other hardware that has names to those who know about the electronic bric-à-brac that make this modern age possible. Under this mess were papers, business cards from car dealers, real-estate agents, marina operators and contractors. I thought that there might be an important clue here somewhere, but I was too hungry to write down all these names and addresses. I remembered that I had good intentions, because I had taken a notebook and pencil from my pocket, but I was distracted when I dropped the pencil. In retrieving it, I noticed pencil marks on one of the uprights supporting the corner of the shed. It was near where the filing cabinet had been, so there was lots of room to get close to the writing. It read, “R x 2 to 25, L x 1 to 11, R to 39.”