Ransom Game (4 page)

A dark blue Mustang pulled away from the curb just after I turned the Olds up the lane and out into the oneway traffic. There were two men in the car, and I wouldn't have noticed them at all except that they were still behind me as I grabbed a parking spot with forty free minutes on the meter. The car went by me like a black cat on a Friday.

The door of the Correctional Services office was painted the sort of green you paint a door when you want it to say, “Come on in, this isn't as serious a place as you thought; we're real friendly here.” They should have stuck with the bilious brown of the old days; the brown was honest, the new green looked like a lie. The general office pool was furnished with typewriters that looked as though they might have been acquired from a big metropolitan daily after having been used to write up the War of 1812. The girls behind them looked considerably newer. It was odd thinking that the machines were already busy at work when they were still in the nursery. It wasn't a big operation. One office looked like that of the boss, and I crossed to it without causing a stir. The name on the plastic plaque on the door read “Nelson Christie.” I knocked. When I went in, Christie was seated behind his desk nibbling at his lunch which he'd spread in front of him on a paper towel. I counted seven green grapes, a sprig of green onion and a small piece of sandwich. If he wasn't diabetic, he should have got a divorce.

“You're not McDade,” he challenged.

“I never said I was.”

“Well, what do you want? This is my lunch. I've got to be in Hamilton at noon. Talk to Simpson.
Miss Wright!
What do you want anyway?”

“I want to talk to you about Johnny Rosa.”

“You're not a Horseman? Who are you?”

“Yes, Mr. Christie?” said a head in the door.

“Never mind, never mind. I asked you a question.”

“I heard you. My name is Cooperman and I hold a private investigator's licence. My client is trying …”

“Come on, let's have a look at your paper. Can't be too careful. Everybody plays tricks these days.” I handed him my wallet with the right plastic window open, and he looked at it and, with no apparent embarrassment, looked through my driver's licence, ownership papers, insurance, and a few credit cards. I guess that parolees don't lean over the desk and grab their property back again. Neither did this private investigator.

“All right, Mr. Cooperman, how much do you know?” He rested his pointed chin on his folded hands, supported by elbows about a foot apart on the green desk blotter. He was grinning with large dentures which he kept immaculately, living proof that it was the second chance that counted.

“I know that he got out of prison three months ago, and that he came here and that he has disappeared.”

“‘Disappeared'? That's a little melodramatic, isn't it? He's been eliminated, that's what's happened, and, speaking off the record, why not? He has acquired a pack of enemies, you know, and a greedy lot they are. Today we are getting out a Canada-wide warrant for his arrest. We've done all we can do. I put my best man on it, and he hasn't found a thing in two weeks. I've suggested to the Mounties that they might save a lot of trouble by dragging the canal for him. That bandit Johnny Rosa is as dead as this desktop, if you ask me. He left his girl friend without a word, didn't even take the flashy suits he'd bought. No, when he left town, it was to meet with his murderer, no mistake. What do you make of it?”

“Could be the way you plot it. Could be it was made to look that way. Did you know Rosa?”

“Of course I knew him. I get to know them all. We deal with the big criminals here, none of your penny ante provincial cases. All these people have done time measured in years, not months. All these files are fat, Mr. Cooperman.” He got up from his chair and made the three steps to the filing cabinet without a wasted gesture. He straightened only enough to clear the opening drawer, pulled out a large file, pivoted, and was back in his seat removing a broad elastic band from the manila folder. It was crammed with documents. “I should put some of these loose papers together with Bostitch pins,” he said, thinking out loud.

“Bostitch pins?” I asked. He looked up, as though I had looked blank when he mentioned the name of the sovereign.

“Bostitch pins,” he repeated, and reached for a stapler. With this he busily began to staple the pages together after shuffling them between his lean hands on the desk. He punctuated each push he delivered to the instrument by repeating the words for my benefit: “Bostitch pins.” I wondered how could I possibly discuss anything with a man who called staples Bostitch pins. I was glad I wasn't here to see him about a minor breach of my parole.

“Well, now, Mr. Cooperman, that's better isn't it?” I nodded. He sat there in his green jacket and green tie looking mighty pleased with himself. It must be government work. It does that to you after a while. “Now, Mr. Cooperman, let's get down to cases. I have a train to catch in twenty minutes. If you think I can help you find Johnny Rosa alive, I think you're mistaken. Look at it this way: his confederates in crime were cheated of the money they all jointly earned. Illegally, of course, but you have to look at it the way they do themselves. Put yourself in their … what's the word? … space. Put yourself in their space. Johnny's robbed them, you see, and one or the other of them has simply demonstrated to the rest of the world, to the criminal element at least, that they will not tolerate being pushed around, you see.” I nodded, and thanked him for all these tips. He waved a generous hand and gathered the rest of his lunch in the paper it had been sitting on. He didn't leave much.

“What can you tell me about the other three? They all come in here?”

“Oh, yes. They come in every month now. They used to have to report every week, but they've been on months for some time. We've had no trouble with any of them. We rarely do with middle-class people.” He got up and carried the folded paper to the wastepaper basket near the door. His trousers were green too. Three greens, all different, and a yellow shirt. His shoes were sensible black. Warren Blacking. “All of the men have jobs. That's the first step in not going back to serve the rest of their sentences. Working men are less likely to be involved in crime than idle ones. Parole, Mr. Cooperman, is a bargain negotiated between the man serving time and the people like me. ‘I see here that you can't handle your drinking; very well; that's out. We want to know if you plan to leave town, buy a car, or get married. We don't want you incurring debts, or carrying weapons, is that clear?' And if the convict doesn't like the idea, he can go back and think about it for a few months, and then try to negotiate a better deal. It's not that we like to be officious, although there is plenty of that in government work, it's just that some of these people can't manage the responsibility of, say, the unlimited credit a plastic card seems to promise. It's too much for them. We try to help them first of all from the penitentiary back to the street with as few bumps as possible, and then offer advice and counselling when rough spots develop. Most of them slip into the old ways, of course …”

“Excuse me, Mr. Christie. Remember you've got a train to catch. I just want to know about Ian Todd, Rolf Knudsen, and Bill Ashland. I'd like to have a clearer idea of the sort of man Johnny Rosa is, was, whichever, too. What sort of men are they?”

“Rosa's a thief. That's his nature. If he lives, he will always be a thief, in and out of penitentiaries until he dies. He's intelligent, he's amusing, even loyal in a primitive way, but quite impossible. He's a twister. When he got out on parole, he was supposed to report to Toronto. Most of them do. When he informed the board that he had changed his mind and decided to come here instead, we should have raised the roof, but—it's the old story of case-loads—we found that it was easier to pretend to be accommodating and understanding. Besides, he had some sort of job lined up pretty quick. He knew we'd put him back inside soon enough if he remained unemployed. He went to that foundry on the canal. You know the one?” I nodded and looked up at the clock He went on more quickly. “Knudsen, now: he likes his beer. Phlegmatic, malleable, but tough. Cannon-fodder of this gang. Ashland isn't as likeable as the other two; he's quite bitter about all this. Thinks that he took a wrong turning somewhere and won handcuffs instead of pots of money. He'd like to replay the whole thing with himself coming out looking better. It's not a moral question with him. He's just a bad loser. We have a lot of amateurs like him.”

As he talked, he began stuffing papers into files, and the files into a beaten-up attaché case. I thought that he might have fastened some of the papers together with Bostitch pins, they were sticking out in a disorganized fashion, but I kept my mouth shut. I was having enough trouble remembering all he was telling me.

He kept talking, now running a four-minute mile with the train. “Todd's a pathetic case: he really believes that initially he tried to stop it all from happening. Did you read what he said at his trial? Hog-wash, the jury thought, but I think he believed it. The jury was hard on him because he was supposed to have known better. A practicing lawyer letting the side down. One bad apple and all that. Some thought that they were hard on him because he was black. I guess if they gave him a lighter sentence than the others, the same people would have said that he got off easier because he was black.”

“There are liberals wherever you look.”

“He is nerveless, tough, and dependable. But there's not one of them, save Rosa, who could have made corporal. And he's hardly officer material.” He paused a moment and shut the attaché case with a loud clap. Then he was off and running again.

“You want to talk to them all, I suppose. Well, I shouldn't let you mess in this thing, but I can see you take an interest. That's worth more than rules and regulations, although I'll deny I said that if I have to. I'll have Miss Wright give you the addresses, employers and that sort of thing. Is that all right? And if you want to see me again, come some morning when I'm not in a rush. Get out of here now. I must collect myself. I hate trains.” He waved a green arm at me and I shook something limp at the end of it and left. Miss Wright was as good as Christie's word. She pulled out a few hinged trays with plastic inserts, made the necessary notes, and handed me a list without looking at me. She had seen faces in her day and she had seen too many of them. When I came out of the post office building into the puffing traffic of Church Street, I had a list that made me feel pretty good. I was thinking that now I could bank a little of Muriel Falkirk's money with an easy conscience when I noticed a dark blue Mustang with two men in it waiting for spring to come to this happy valley.

FOUR

The name at the top of the list was that of Ian Todd. I was sitting in a hole-in-the-wall coffee joint in the middle of the market square where I could watch those two fellows overheating their car, waiting for me to move. I could also see three bearded Mennonites warming themselves over a brazier heating chestnuts. There weren't any horseand-buggy Mennonites in the market this morning. It was too cold. But a few black-truck Mennonites and blackwheel Mennonites and even the odd chrome-wheel Mennonites were busily selling pieces of sausage and smoked pork to the few half-frozen customers. Funny how, in February, you could tell who was doing most of the talking, even at this distance, by the steady puffs of vapour over the chestnuts.

For a minute I wondered whether I could trust myself to go through the back door of the coffee shop, cut through the mall and come out on the sidewalk on the blind side of the Mustang. I sipped my coffee, looking at the list and trying to work out a schedule. Knudsen looked like the easiest target, Todd the ugliest. Professional men get bitter when you remind them of their scuttled potential. Ashland swam in the middle. I decided to get the worst over first. I found the pay-phone in the back of the lunchroom, behind a pile of cardboard cartons and plastic crates of milk.

“Sinclair and Ambridge,” a rather weedy voice said.

“I would like to talk to Mr. Todd, your security man. Is he in?”

“Who is speaking please?”

“It's confidential. Security, you know.”

“Just a minute.” I felt the line grow cold as I was switched to that realm of helpless loitering called “hold.” When the voice returned me to the land of fish and chips, it was with the information that Mr. Todd was at lunch and wasn't expected back until one-thirty. A small exaggeration and a white lie got me the news that Mr. Todd ate his lunch at Nickie's Tavern, in the old papermill district. Not very choice maybe, but it was handy to the twoacre parking lot of the furniture warehouse. I looked out the window again. A man in a felt hat was breathing clouds of invective into the steaming insides of a blue Mustang. The uplifted hood looked like it was grinning at me.

I figured it would take me about fifteen minutes to drive to Nickie's. I didn't like the idea, but I had to earn my keep. If I had gone to law school, like Todd, I wouldn't be freezing my butt off in another Ontario February. I had that message tattooed on my heart in my mother's handwriting.

Nickie's was the oldest pub in town. The building was over a hundred years old, and the walls looked like they were two feet thick. In the old days the canal workers must have come to drink their lunch at the long mahogany bar. Then it was papermill workers, until the mills closed down in the Depression. Nowadays, it was hard to put labels on the clientele.

The only black man in the place, Todd was sitting alone at a table in the far corner of the noisy room. A waitress banged past me with a tray full of beer. She put seven glasses in front of two skinny men in faded parkas. They didn't object, so she put down two more. The room was fuzzy with smoke, and the sound of the juke-box sat on top of all the conversation. The table next to Todd's was free so I went to it and sat down. I was making up my part as I went along, and I didn't much like being so far from the door. Todd, having cleaned his plate, something with brown gravy, was drinking draft beer He was staring into it, watching the effect created when he added salt from one of the shakers provided at every table for that purpose.