Ransom Game (26 page)

Todd hadn't moved. I coughed politely.

“Well, Mr. Sugarman. Bad news travels fast.”

“Cooperman. I'm sorry to see you in this mess.” His shoulders heaved a shrug and his eyes joined in. “Mr. Christie said I could talk to you.”

“I'm not going anywhere.” He said that bitterly, a little melodramatically even.

“Not right now, maybe, but you haven't robbed a bank or held up a payroll. You'll walk out of here.”

“Is that on the level?”

“All it needs is the rubber stamp. You know the law well enough to guess that on your own. I want to ask you some questions.”

“Yeah, I remember,”

“And you remembered that suitcase, didn't you?” Todd looked up, like I'd suddenly passed a mild current through the chair he was sitting in. “It was one of the ones that held the ransom, wasn't it, one of the two you and Rosa picked up? Only this time it didn't have its share of half a million, just a nightgown, a toothbrush, and a change of clothes.”

“I couldn't be sure. It looked like it all right. I'd driven with it tucked between my knees for over sixty miles, and I had a lot of time in jail to remember every detail of the way it looked. That was as close as I've ever been to that kind of money. Funny how a well-dressed woman goes wild when somebody messes with her stuff. I thought she was going crazy.”

“She's not pressing charges.”

“Is that the truth?”

“I didn't tell you, but that's the way it is. By the way, thanks for that tip about the investigator Ashland hired. He caught up to me. You still figure it was Ashland that tripped the whole scam into the mud?”

“Still looks that way to me. When we called it off the first time, he must have boasted about it to his pals.”

“What do you mean ‘the first time'?”

“We were ready to go for the long weekend in July, but we pulled up short when the girl's brother got himself killed. Later on, I guess it was in August, Johnny said ‘Let's aim for the Labour Day weekend.'”

I don't know what else Todd said, my head started buzzing then and didn't stop until I found myself out of there and back at my own desk. I tried jumping all the old names through all the old hoops and set up a few new hoops to watch the results. Some things had started looking like sense for the first time.

The thread of thought, such as it was, was snapped by the telephone. It was Jennifer Bryant.

“Mr. Cooperman? He's back! Rolf!” I could see her beaming down the whole length of the wire. “He walked in an hour ago. The RCMP had been questioning him about Johnny Rosa. I don't know what you did to get him out, but we both want to thank you from the bottom of my …”

“Jennifer, forget it. Listen, what are friends for? So he's all right? Glad to hear it. Tell me, Jennifer, do you happen to have a cracked toilet seat?”

“I don't understand. Our toilet seat?”

“Yes, is it cracked? The plastic?”

“Yes, I guess it is. The place is falling apart, but we're only renting. But, Mr. Cooperman, I don't understand. Here I am telling you what a kind, wonderful thing you've done for us and all you can do is ask about the toilet. I don't know how to reach that.”

“Cracked on the right side? as you face it?”

“What? Oh, yes, yes. Just a second, Rolf wants to thank you himself.”

“Never mind, Jennifer. I'm coming right out there. See you in about twenty minutes.” I hung up and rescued the floor from my galoshes. It had already been whitened under the coat stand from the road salt I'd tracked in from the street. In a minute I had the phone with the answering service and was heading around behind the office to pick up the car. I was able to run most of the lights out to the west end of town.

A long line of kids from the Catholic school was walking along Pelham Road, puffing like a dragon as I passed them. Wind-breakers, rubber boots, and wool tuques on a noonday excursion. The recent snow still covered the rusting heaps in the auto-wreckers' yards on the high bank of the Eleven Mile Creek. The real estate signs looked as forlorn in the frozen vineyards as the straggling tendrils of last year's vines and the sagging wires looked like they'd have rusted out by spring.

I put my car beside a rusty little Fiat half-way up the drive of the Sanderson place on the Louth Road. It was feeling a little warmer as I pulled myself up on the wooden porch, my eyes blinking in the bright reflections from the white winter surfaces. Jennifer let me in. She was still beaming.

“Oh, Mr. Cooperman, I'm so glad you came.” She called out “Rolf!” and he came into the front room from the back of the house, looking long and tall and vague, with a bottle of beer in his hand.

“Hi,” he said, “can I get you a beer?”

“I will,” said Jennifer, and she left us alone in the nearly empty front room. The original brown wallpaper was peeling from three seams, the rug showed glimpses of dirty floor in important places and the old horsehair sofa looked like it had been rescued from the barn. I recognized the unmistakable calling card of the barn swallow.

“Were they hard on you?” I asked.

“Naw. They gave me lots of time to think, that's all. They didn't even raise their voices at me when they asked their questions.”

“Did you get an idea that they knew anything?”

“No, they were just hunting. They told me that Johnny's car had been found and that it had blood in it.”

“But you knew that that was just window-dressing.”

“I knew that …? What are you talking about?” His eyes were hard now, and the friendly welcome was going up in smoke.

“I'm talking about the fact that when Johnny Rosa disappeared, he came here, that he lived here with you until he left to pick up the money. He was probably here when I came the other night, or if not, he wasn't far away.” Jennifer had come into the room with a beer for me in her hand, still beaming. But she saw Knudsen's changed expression, and slowly lost her lustre.

“What's the matter?” she asked, handing me the bottle. I couldn't understand drinking out of cold bottles in the winter.

“He thinks that Johnny was living here with us,” he told her curtly.

“What does that matter now?' she asked.

“Shut up and leave us alone.” Jennifer was wounded and crept away showing it.

“Where do you stand in all this? First you ask questions like all the others, then you help me, and now you're coming on like the riot police again. What's with you?”

“If you'd told me the truth at the start, your pal wouldn't be lying in the morgue with two bullet holes in him.”

“I don't scare that easy. You're putting me on.”

“Yeah, well, if you don't believe me, you'll be able to read about it in tonight's paper. Or you can phone the Regional Police and ask. They'll tell you that I found the body and that he was killed not in a car out by the canal a couple of weeks ago by the mob, but less than twentyfour hours ago in a barn on Gillingham Creek. Now you were with the Horsemen; if that's so, nobody's going to say you did it. But they might be very interested in hearing you talk all over again. So you'd better come clean with me. We've already wasted too much time.”

“I told you all I know.”

“Rolf.” That was Jennifer from the doorway. “Tell him.”

“You were listening!”

“Tell him everything. He knows anyway.”

“She's right. I know that Johnny was here. When did he come, when did he go?” He whistled off-key between his teeth.

“He came right from Muriel's place, after he planted the car. I don't know the date. Just after he finished his last shift at the foundry. There's a cabin with a stove in it on the other side of the creek at the north end of the farm. He hid out there most of the time, but he came up to the house once a day or so for supplies, a meal and a bath. The last time I saw him was earlier the day I spoke to you. He said that now was the time to collect the money, since everybody was beginning to think that he was dead. He'd been busy trying to get a passport in a new name.”

“Did you know that he was also splitting the money with Muriel?”

“We knew she was in for a cut, sure.”

“Did you know he was double-crossing Eddie Milano with Muriel?”

“Eddie just got caught in his own trap. He was trying to steal the money from under Johnny's nose by using Muriel. Johnny was just too smart for Eddie and his whole organization, that's all.”

“He's still as dead as if he'd told Eddie all about it. Don't let's split hairs.”

“The plan was for Johnny to go and collect the money, then meet us back here.”

“When?”

“The night you came. I expected him after you left. He didn't come. He didn't get in touch. We were going frantic when the Mounties came for me. I didn't think Johnny would try that kind of stuff, but I didn't know what to think. I just kept my mouth shut.”

There was a noise outside: the slamming of a car door. Jennifer ran to the window. She looked at Knudsen.

“It's Daddy,” she said, her eyes searching Knudsen's face for direction. He shrugged and finished the beer left in his bottle in one gulp.

“Had to happen, I guess.” I never got it straight whether he meant that it was inevitable that Jennifer's father would catch up on them or that even smoothies like Johnny Rosa can't live for ever. Jennifer went to the door. Her face had taken on a flushed look that made her look like she'd eaten a little more red meat recently than was probably the case.

I wondered if she'd told Rolf about the twins. The man in the doorway filled it. His expensive overcoat covered an expensive suit. His muffler probably cost as much as my coat, and his hat looked like it had been placed on his head by the owner of the store. He was the sort of man who didn't know the meaning of the word wholesale.

“Jenny?” he said through the door.

“Coming, Daddy,” she said, and opened the door for him. Knudsen hadn't moved. He stood there in his ragged denims and dirty sweat socks and probably felt naked after discarding the empty bottle he'd been holding. Chet Bryant was doing his best to look less than his massive six-foot-six. His hat came off, he pretended that his neat little slip-on rubbers were going to damage the priceless sheet of plastic inside the front door, and he even smiled at me, whom he didn't know from a melting popsicle. Chet Bryant, the crown prosecutor, was used to dominating any stage. It was usually a courtroom, where his antics had been newspaper copy for ten years. He was like the spread-eagle district attorney on a television series, the one who always has it in for the young lawyers just getting started.

Rolf came forward, repeated a conventional welcome and helped the man with his coat. Bryant looked embarrassed about his clothes. He explained that he had to appear in court in an hour, and had just been passing. No one challenged him. Jennifer introduced me. It didn't mean anything.

“How are you getting on, Jenny? Your mother …”

“Just fine, Daddy. Everybody well?”

“Oh, yes. Yes. Your mother and I were wondering if, ah, you and Rolf might not drop over to the house on Sunday. Your mother thought that maybe if …”

“Oh, I don't think that we …”

“This Sunday?” Rolf put in, adding his first contribution to the conversation since Bryant's arrival, “Are we doing anything special this Sunday, Jennifer?”

“Rolf! I think we should talk about this for a minute. Would you excuse us?” They went off into the kitchen together and in a moment we could both hear voices raised through the stout kitchen door. Bryant looked like he didn't like his part. The lines weren't right for him and he didn't like the ending, but he was gamely playing on, on the understanding that there are no bad parts only bad actors.

“Are you from out here?” he asked, looking at the dark spaces in the patterned metal floor register.

“No, I'm from town. I should be getting back actually.” I shifted haunches, but got a look from Bryant which implored me to see him through this. “But I guess I can wait to say goodbye. I think,” I said, “that you've come at a good time. With a little give and take on both sides, I think you should be able to work this out. He's not a bad sort, you know, and he doesn't beat her.”

“Thanks, Mr. …?”

“Cooperman. Just a friend of the family. I think that with the right start and a vacuum cleaner they might surprise you. He's made a bad mistake, Mr. Bryant, but he's no criminal. He doesn't have the head for it.” I was beginning to sound like a sob-sister on television or in the comics. I was glad when they came back. Both looked a little flushed, but they were both smiling.

“We'd love to come out on Sunday, Daddy, is there anything we can bring?”

“Bring? No, I mean yes. Bring out some cider if you can find it. I've lost track of where to get it, being in the city. You might be able to lay hands on some. I've discovered that I have a thirst for good cider that must be thirty years old. Don't go to any trouble, now, Rolf. Just if you can find some easily.”

“Sure, I'll see what I can do, Mr. Bryant.”

“Chet. Call me Chet. Try it on.” They were all grinning now, then Bryant left in a flurry of “See you Sundays.”

I didn't stick around after that for longer than it took me to grab Knudsen by the arm and tell him that he'd better not blow this chance, because he probably wasn't going to get many more opportunities to break even. I told him that he wasn't bright enough to be a master criminal, so he'd better settle for what he had going for him. I told him to try to put Johnny Rosa out of his mind. So much for me and the lecture circuit. Rolf said that he'd try. I should leave the fairy godmother role to somebody who can make it with the crinolines. If everything went well on Sunday, I might take the credit for letting Bryant know about the Sanderson place. I was meddling, I know, but I've been feeling a little unsteady in my ethics for about twenty years or so. And the itching on my healing buttock didn't help. I'd pinched it on the broken toilet seat the night I spent on Knudsen's couch. The desire to have a good scratch made me lose all perspective.