Ransom Game (7 page)

“Listen to Frank, and you'll be okay,” Vito put in. “You're some kind of private detective, eh?” The “huh” made Frank an American, and the “eh” sounded very Canadian to me. “Level with us and we'll walk out of here like we walked in, quieter in fact.” I tried to think of something that would make them go away. I could almost hear myself saying, but not quite, “You're nothing but a pack of cards!” But I held on to myself.

“Right,” I said, looking from one to the other. “I work as a private investigator. I'm working for a client, but I can't tell you that client's name. I've been asking questions about Johnny Rosa. Obviously, I'm trying to learn what happened to him. You know everybody in the country is looking for Johnny. And you know why. I don't see why you've been tailing me. Did you think I didn't see you? That car of yours is as inconspicuous as the Batmobile at a three-legged race.” I stopped. I could tell that that was a mistake.

“Keep talking, Mr. Cooperman, we hear you loud and clear,” said Vito. I tried to think of what to give him next. I'd passed on all of the free stuff; the rest was going to cost me. Frank and Vito looked at me, not like I was a person, but like I was a talking machine. I didn't like the feeling.

“I only started on the case yesterday, so you probably know more about it than I do. And what I've discovered you can find out at the public library and the parole board.”

“Gimme a break, Mr. Cooperman. I hate to go near that place.”

“Sure, and the parole board's poison too.”

“What can I tell you boys?” I heard myself saying in a voice like my father's. “You look like nice boys that wouldn't want to make any trouble. Do I look like I'm looking for the money for myself? I'm only doing my job: trying to find Johnny Rosa for a friend of his. Is that so bad? Is that worth coming into my father's house waving guns? Is that the way you behave in your parents' house? Why are you doing this to me?”

“How good a friend is Johnny to this client?” asked Frank. His voice was low, like burnt gravy.

“I told you I can't talk about that. You can understand that.”

Vito and Frank exchanged glances. Vito's face was working again. I didn't like it.

“We're going to sit here until you tell us who's putting up the money for this. We got all day,” Frank said. Vito was off wandering again. He found Coke in the refrigerator and brought one for himself and one for Frank, putting them down on the coffee table.

“That's the real stuff,” Vito said, tapping the table-top. They opened their cans and drank quietly. Vito was admiring the crystal chandelier. “Nice,” he said. “Nice.”

“Look, Mr. Cooperman, we ain't finished talking yet. We are still listening and you aren't saying anything we want to hear. I don't want to have to get tough with you, not here in your parents' house. I got feelings too, you know what I mean? But we gotta get some answers, gotta get them soon.” He'd just said that they had all day, but I wasn't about to point out little inconsistencies at a time like this. Vito was wandering over by the French doors now, looking at the plants.

“What is this thing?” he asked.

“Vito, shut up!” Frank warned.

“It's a rubber plant.” That didn't help.

“It could be plastic yucca as far as I'm concerned. I don't know my plants anymore.” He took hold of one of the leaves of the plant and pulled. The fleshy leaf came away easily in his hand. I found myself half-way across the room, shouting at him. Crazy.

“Take it easy. Take it easy. It's only a plant. Not worth getting your head blown off for.” Frank led me back to the loveseat.

“Well, tell your pal to stop ruining other people's property.”

“Vito, you listening?”

“I'm listening. Only I don't hear any answers to the questions you're asking, Frank. You hold on to him, and see if I do any better.” He took another leaf in his hand and looked over at me, his face sad as usual, but now mean on top of it. I knew that my mother had raised that rubber plant from a pup.

“I told you all I can tell you.” Vito pulled slightly. The whole plant shivered. “Look, use your heads. You know I don't work for the Warren family. They'd get one of the bigger agencies. So who else is there? His former partners? I'm not working for Todd, Ashland or Knudsen. Who does that leave? Who else is a friend of Johnny? I'm not working for the Horsemen; they do their own prowling. I'm not with the parole board; they've already given up looking. Does that narrow the field down enough for you?” Vito loosened his grip on the plant. He grinned at Frank. I didn't much care for Vito's grin. It looked like a smiling death's head.

“You working for Muriel Falkirk, Mr. Cooperman?” Frank said.

“I'm not saying yes.” Vito tugged at the leaf of the rubber plant again, so I added, reluctantly, “And I'm not saying no.” That was enough for Vito; he dropped the leaf altogether and came back across the room.

“That's the right answer, Mr. Cooperman. I think we understand one another. Vito and me will be going now. Come on, Vito. Let the man finish what he started in peace.” Vito placed the leaf he had torn off on the coffee table.

“Sorry,” he said with an awkward shrug. They backed to the front door, and in another moment I was alone with my mother's plants again. The hind end of a blue Mustang was disappearing around the curve and pulling on to the highway.

EIGHT

On my shaky way back to town, I could see that it was beginning to get dark. And with the dying of the sun, the winter took another night-time grip on the city. The manhole covers were steaming in the middle of St. Andrew Street. The stores had their display signs lit. In another half hour the streetlights would blink on.

After parking the car, I crossed the busy one-way stream of traffic and went into the United. If I'd been a drinking man, this would have been the time for a straight belt of whiskey. As it was, I settled for a vanilla shake. After what I'd just been through, I needed to break the routine. The girl made it thick and set the aluminum container down with my glass. The straw stood up unaided in the centre of the froth.

I could hear my phone ringing while I was still climbing the stairs. I didn't hurry because those are the calls that stop as you rush across the room. I got the door open and it was still crying out when I plucked it off the cradle. It was Muriel. She sounded agitated, not the girl I'd talked to a few hours ago.

“Benny, what are you doing?”

“My best.” What else could I say? “What's on your mind?'

“Nothing special,” she said in a way that made me think she meant the opposite. “I'd like to see you.”

“Any time. That's what you're paying me for, remember?”

“I'd like to see you soon, but not at your office and not at my place. Both places may be watched. Help me think, Benny.” She sounded like she was trying to fit me into a tight schedule.

“How about the back row of the Capitol Theatre?”

“Benny, you're sweet. Think harder.”

“What about the library? That's quiet. I want to tell you about a run-in I had with a pair of tough customers who drive that blue Mustang I was asking you about.”

“The Public Library, you say?” She sounded a little abstracted from the here and now, like she was trying to talk with a manicurist working on both arms and a new hair-dresser doing strange things to her hair.

“Sure, I think that's the best bet. I can think of at least two hoodlums who won't follow you in there. It's about a quarter to six now …” I was translating from my Japanese watch which read 5:42 in ruby digits. “Can you make it by six, or a little after? I'll wait for you in the Special Collections section. It's in a room of its own on the second floor. You got that, Muriel? Now can you tell me anything about what's happened?”

“I'll tell you everything in a few minutes. Until then, Benny, Lord love you.” It was a fine and unexpected thing to hear her say. It passed on her fear to me.

Muriel was a hard woman to figure. She was as goodlooking as a subscription to
Playboy,
and obviously, judging from the fur coat and a few other things, well appreciated by more guys than just Johnny Rosa. She had two grand to lend Rosa, and didn't appear to be terribly concerned over finding out where it went. She seemed genuinely stuck on Rosa and worried about his disappearance. She wasn't always straight about her answers, but I appreciated her efforts. I thought about the story she'd told in my office. An Academy Award performance. The inconsistencies glared at me. But a man in my position gets used to dealing with liars. I've had husbands trying to pretend they were paupers in order to get off with a gentler bite at the end of a divorce settlement, and wives swearing to cruelty that isn't in the porno books yet in order to get rid of an unwanted spouse. After a while, like Hammett says, you believe the money not the story. I've always found that it is perfectly possible to enjoy a normal working relationship with pathological liars.

For the fiftieth time, I put on my coat and hat, and shuffled out the door, clicking the spring lock behind me, then making it down the stairs and out into the butt end of the working day for this Tuesday. The streetlights were now on, washing the late shoppers in a mercury-inspired unhealthy tint. It was just as cold as in the early morning and it felt as if this February would never end. I guess for some people, that was true.

I was glad to get behind the big glass doors of the library. A blast of heat hit me; it was spring again. The fountains were playing, the brook was running, the books were mostly circulating. I climbed up to the second floor and entered the Special Collections Room. Ella Beames had gone for the day. I didn't recognize the girl who sat at her desk. I found a chair at an empty table and pulled an old black atlas of the area off a shelf. It had been printed in 1878. I killed half an hour flipping through its pages, looking at the solemn bearded faces of the founders of these closely-linked communities. I wondered what they had to be so serious about. They looked like Roman senators, wondering whether they could afford to miss one of Caligula's poisoned feasts.

I looked at my watch: 6:11. I kept on with the atlas. Each of the old townships was illustrated with a map, showing all important roads, railways, churches, schools and mills. Each property had the name of the owner printed on it. You could see the same names clustered in a small group, the sons of the pioneer settler, probably. Occasionally a widow was going it alone. Some of the names were the same as kids I'd gone through school with.

When I checked again it was 6:44. I wondered whether I should call. I decided to wait another half hour, then drop around to her place. Back to the atlas. There were a few pages devoted to showing off the prosperous farms and residences of the county's best people. Some of them stood with their legs well apart, to sustain a comfortable paunch, with their hands held behind the tails of their coats. The houses looked new-built, the barns wellstocked, the steers Grade A beef, the cows oozing high butter-fat content. The toiler in the field rested a moment with one hand on spade, the other brushing the brim of a straw hat, eyes fixed on the distant horizon.

I heard my name. I turned and it was Muriel sailing between the tables like a playboy's yacht into an unfamiliar port.

“Sorry I'm late.” She looked breathless from the stairs and settled into the chair beside me without attempting to remove her coat. She looked around the room as though she had suddenly found herself backstage at the thoughtworks, where the books without pictures come from.

“I've never been here,” she explained, and I nodded. It must have appeared to be a self-satisfied nod, one which boasted that I did all my reading here, because her face got serious and her fingers were trying to make up their minds about whether to take off her coat or not. They decided to unbutton and I helped her put the fur on the back of her chair.

“You said you wanted to see me. Has something happened?”

“Tell me about what you said on the phone. The men in the Mustang. Are
you
all right?”

“They wanted to know what I was doing and who I was working for. Have you any idea who they might be working for? It would make my job that much simpler.” Muriel looked at me and opened up her blue eyes in a way that she had tried on me before. They were Little Red Riding-Hood eyes and I was learning not to trust them.

“I told you before, Benny. I don't know who they could have been.”

“What about Eddy Milano? Could they be working for him?”

“What do you know about Eddie? What has he got to do with this?”

“You admit you know him, then. Why did you leave that part out yesterday?”

“Because, Benny, it doesn't have anything to do with Johnny. Eddie's only one of the people looking for Johnny. Sure, he can find muscle when he needs it. Maybe it was him. Go ask him if you want to know for sure.” She'd placed her reddish leather purse on the table next to my atlas. It smelled like a luggage store. Inside I could see that she'd been shopping at two of the better stores along St. Andrew Street.

“Why did you ask me to meet you Muriel? It wasn't just to break up your shopping.”

She was looking at her watch when I looked at her again. Then she ferreted around in her bag and came up with an envelope with my name on it. “This is for you,” she said. “Only don't open it unless you don't hear from me for forty-eight hours.”

“Is it an insurance policy? Come on, Muriel, you've got to trust somebody.” She stopped worrying the corners of her mouth and looked at the green stone of her ring for the first time since she'd come into the library. It seemed to be her calm centre, a rallying point for her concentration.

“Let me play it this way. I've thought about it.”

“Okay, you're the boss.” She put the envelope into my hand and watched me put it away in my inside breast pocket. Only then did she allow herself a healthy sigh of relief, which, as usual with Muriel's sighs, had a lot of incidental appeal.