The Cooperman Variations (16 page)

She was wearing a blue dressing gown; her hair had been brushed one hundred times. It glowed in a soft way that I had never seen before on Vanessa or on anyone else outside the movies. It certainly was not the Stella of the Grantham Collegiate Institute and Vocational School or the Vanessa of the National Television Corporation. “What happened to your
eye?”

“It’s all included in the service, Vanessa.”

“Seriously, Benny. Have you been in a fight? I don’t think I’m paying you to get involved in barroom
brawls.”

“You should have spelled that out back in Grantham. Anyway, this barroom brawl couldn’t be helped. I was collecting information.” She stood aside so that I could move past her through the hallway and into the tiny house. There were stairs leading up to a second floor, where lights were burning. In fact, the whole house was ablaze with electric light. She followed me into the hall at the foot of the stairs, then led the way into a living-room, which suited the Vanessa I knew as well as this new hairstyle.

“This house belongs to a friend, Benny. The cops said I could go home, but I’m still too upset to go back there. The owner of this house is travelling in Tuscany, so she let me have it until my place gets back to normal. Nice, isn’t it?”

“Why is everybody travelling in Tuscany this year?” I was thinking of the fair Anna Abraham and her mushroom millionaire. Vanessa didn’t bother with my question.

The living-room was done up in off-white walls and hangings with chrome and glass furniture, and expensive architectural magazines on the glass-topped coffee table. Lighting in the room was provided by three halogen lamps slung low over the backs of the couches and chairs. Large watercolours of lighthouses and wharves with lots of clouds showing broke up the walls with a calculated effect. It wouldn’t have been my mother’s way of doing a room. I suppose it told a lot about Vanessa’s friend, but I didn’t have time to decode the message.

“Vanessa, when you called, you said you had to see me in a hurry. Okay, what’s up?”

“I was going crazy, Benny. Too many people know I’m here. I tried to keep this place a secret, but I keep telling people. I can’t
help
myself. I don’t think it’s safe any more. Besides that, I feel so lonely on my own.” If she was frightened, why didn’t she pay more attention to whom she opened her door? Vanessa was determined to prove a paradox. Or was it just another one of her games?

“Nobody’s
ever
told me about the chill factor of raw fear before. I’m cold all the time.” She hugged herself to illustrate the chill. The gesture also pushed some cleavage through the top of her dressing gown. It was this part of the gesture that told on me, a mammal from the cradle.

“So, there’ve been no new developments? No pills you can’t account for? No threats, shotguns or frightening phone calls?”

“Not in that way. No. But I’m scared, Benny. And that’s real enough. I’m still getting used to the idea that maybe my 222s were drugged or poisoned in some way.”

I tried not to look too relieved. She’d hold that against me. From what she said, after announcing that she was trying to organize a cup of coffee for me, I gathered that she had been living here since soon after the police finished questioning her about the murder at her house. I followed her into the kitchen, where she squinted at the places where coffee might spring from. I found a kettle and plugged it in after filling it from a tap that gave me a choice of every kind of water but tidal. While that was coming to the boil, I found the instant in a cupboard. I took two mugs, brown and browner. Vanessa watched me pour out the instant powder like she’d never seen coffee made before.

“Vanessa, have you given my phone number to anyone?”

“Of course not! You mean at your hotel? No, I’d never do that. Maybe it was one of your police friends.”

“I don’t remember giving it to them either. Did you call me back after we talked the first time tonight?”

“No. I’d have remembered that. Are you sure I can’t give you anything for your eye?”

“Such as?”

“There’s a steak in the freezer, but I don’t think it will do any good until it thaws. I’ll take it out.” She did that, laying a slab of meat on the counter with a clunk.

“When your office door is locked, Vanessa, who has access?”

“In theory, nobody. In practice, there are a few keys about. Ted has a set. I suppose Security has another. Why?”

“I was thinking of the used shotgun shells found in your locker. Who else knew the combination to your locker?”

“Nobody had access.”

“Are you sure you didn’t have it written down someplace just in case you forgot it? I know I have a combination pasted to the bottom of a stapler in my office in Grantham. Usually, I remember it, but I’ve had to fall back on the stapler solution from time to time.”

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with my memory, Benny.”

“Before I leave, remind me to get the combination from you.”

“But the cops cut it off!”

“I still want to check it out.” By now I could fill both mugs with boiling water and stir up the powder.

Seated again in the living-room, sipping coffee, we pulled at a few more of the strands hanging from this bird’s nest of a puzzle. Most of it was repetition. I did what I could to reassure her that the villains hadn’t traced her here, that her enemies were not gathering on the porch and that I was on the job. It seemed to calm her, which was good, because both nervousness and fear are contagious.

“What happened this afternoon?”

“I think Thornhill intends to carve up the department.”

“You told me that already. I thought he was just playing with the idea.”

“You can’t trust that son of a bitch for five minutes. He’s famous for turning the vaguest, the filmiest of ideas into boilerplate with no further discussion.”

“Maybe he’ll turn it back the other way round just as fast?”

“Dream on. He wants my guts for garters, and I can’t figure out how to keep what I have. It’s only this murder thing that might slow him down. He knows that everybody’s watching. I don’t think he wants a shake-up in Entertainment until I stop being the Victim of the Week.” She had argued around in a circle. I was about to point that out when I noticed it had a mild calming influence. So I left it alone. “You were going to tell me about Barbara Turnbull, from the
Star.”

“I just ran into her.”

“Don’t tell her a thing about me or about the department. You can’t trust newspaper people.”

“I haven’t lost my grip yet.” I didn’t bother telling her of the incident in the lobby of the Hilton, or that my relationship with reporter Turnbull did not involve Vanessa or NTC. She might not know how to take it.

Vanessa leaned back against the eggshell white of the wall, flattening her body, trying to make a smaller target. When the wall failed to enclose her, she shifted her weight and came over to the couch where I was sitting. She moved slowly, giving me a sense of her perfume, and sat next to me. I wondered where George, the car jockey and computer animator, was at this time of night. When she started to get close, I let her. Anything to calm her down. It’s funny, I mean, I’d always been attracted by Stella Seco, even though I’d put it on hold for a dozen years or so. Now that she was Vanessa and my employer, I thought of what
she
needed before consulting my own usually healthy appetite. I thought of Anna, off in Tuscany. I thought of all she meant to me. I thought of Tuscany and the peanut-grower from California. Mushrooms. What the hell?

She had allowed her dressing gown to fall open both at the neck and again lower down, so that there was a fair amount of Vanessa on display and in the most beguiling way. I decided that what she wanted was a hug. Where’s the disloyalty in that? It was the least I could do. We all need hugs from time to time. Especially when we’re scared. Possibly good-looking women don’t get their fair share. Men are easily discouraged in a face-to-face encounter with the object of their desires. A pretty face, in spite of a come-hither look in those beautiful eyes, often has the effect of forcing a strategic retreat on the timorous seducer. So, I didn’t get either flustered or my hopes up. It was, as I said on my way in, all part of the service. While I was still seeing myself in terms of the steadfast little sentry at the door, the hug developed into something more serious, and the brave sentry could hardly abandon his musket at a time like this. Besides, the steak for my eye was still thawing in the kitchen.

ELEVEN

Friday

Staff Sergeant Jack Sykes shook his head sadly. He fussed with paper on his desk.

“You’ve made some powerful asshole mad at you, Benny.”

“What are you talking about? I told you, I walked into a door. It can happen to anybody. You can hardly see it.”

“It’s not the eye I’m talking about, Benny. It’s your making free with the division offices and your fraternization with two of its finest officers.”

“Somebody’s been on the blower, Benny,” Boyd added, just to make me feel good, “and he or she’s been complaining.”

“For crying out loud, I don’t even
know
anybody in Toronto. I’ve only been here since Wednesday.” Now he was nodding, agreeing with me, as though that made a difference.

“I know. I know. But I have my orders. I’m sorry, but I can’t have you dropping in here any more.”

“What do you mean?” I was leaning over Jack’s desk, trying to keep my eyes off the word FRAUD, written on the open edge of the Toronto phone book. The last one said VICE. He just couldn’t help swiping things. He was also busy trying not to look me straight in the eye. Jim Boyd was sitting off to one side, attempting to look neutral, still wearing that silly summer hat. He, too, was not big on eye contact.

“I shouldn’t even be seen talking to you. That’s how bad it is. The way I see it is that somebody in NTC has raised a stink about you being so close to the investigation, and you working for one of the leading suspects in the case. You haven’t been passing out your professional cards down there, have you?”

“Vanessa Moss is the only person who knows. Except—”

“Except for all the part-time snoops that run around like laboratory mice from office to office, telling tales out of school. One of them thinks he can pick up the phone and complain. I don’t like getting pressure from College Street, which just happens to be the source of most of my headaches, but in this case, I have to agree the Chief’s got a point.”

“The Chief!”

“Yeah. For a snoop from Grantham you’ve been making big waves.”

“So, let me get this straight: we’re no longer cooperating? Is that it?”

“That’s right.”

“Wait a minute! When were we co-operating anyway? I paid a
courtesy
call. That’s all.”

“I’m not going to argue with you, Benny. I’ve heard the word from on high. When does a plain cop get to be so independent he can ignore a straight order?”

“You’re not going to tell me about those 222s, are you? And I’ll never hear about the combination lock on Vanessa’s locker either.”

“Of course not. That would be a direct contravention of my orders. What do you think, Jim?”

“Oh, yeah. The order says all contact must stop at once. No more free lunch, Benny.” Jim was trying to free a piece of his breakfast, lodged between molars, with the corner of an official-looking piece of bond paper. Then he looked over at his partner. “Jack, my mind’s going soft. What was it Art Dempsey said about those pills? Refresh my failing memory.”

“How many times …? Jeez! Twenty-five of the thirtyeight pills were a powerful anti-depressant. Among its listed side effects are drowsiness. You wanna stay away from machinery, especially cars, unless you’re riding in the back seat. Take some of that and you don’t want to be behind the wheel of a Range Rover. Not even in Grantham. You want to know the name? Desyrel. One hundred milligrams. Little devils look like 222s if you don’t look close.”

“Well, thanks at least for that.”

“For what? I wasn’t even talking to you.”

“Right. And thanks for … for … giving me street directions to the YMCA.”

“Okay, always happy to help out the tourist trade, but that’s the end of it.”

“Have you checked out that lock yet?”

“Get out of here! What’s with you and that goddamned lock, Benny? I swear to God I think you think the killer’s hiding inside the lock like a—a—troll.”

“Imp?” I suggested.

“Sprite?” Boyd said. Both were better than
troll
.

“Will you get out of here? Until I see how this bounces, Benny, I gotta watch my ass. In the meantime, don’t walk into any doors on your way out.”

“Sure. See you fellows around,” I said lamely, and backed away from the desk and out the open door. Slowly—because I didn’t want to outrun them—I walked down the echoing corridor and out into the marble halls of the lobby or whatever they call it. The desk sergeant looked at me, and I read into his expression that he too had been instructed to give no help. I thought of asking him for directions to the art gallery next door, but I felt too bad to be playful. The Yellow Brick Road to Paranoia was stretched out before me. I knew I had to get a grip on myself. I felt like the fat man in Shakespeare, the one who gets shafted by the young king. Falstaff! I thought, Yeah, Jack will call me tonight. He’s only going through the motions. That wasn’t Jack Sykes talking. That’s why the door was open, in case someone was listening.

Over coffee at the Second Cup across the street, where I’d had my first long talk with Jack and his partner, I pondered the changes in my position. The cops held all of the hard evidence in both the cases I was interested in. I’d even been some use to them: helping them to justify linking the two deaths and being on guard about the appearance of suicide in the Foley business. I wondered whether Sergeant Chuck Pepper was included in the ban. The Chief might not know about the Cooperman-Pepper axis yet. That might still be a live connection, but not one I cared to try out until the dust settled. Even as I went over the ground, I still half-expected Sykes or Boyd to walk into the café and pick up the tab like last time. But they didn’t.