A Victim Must Be Found Page 4

  “About that drink,” she said, as I found a place to leave the car. “I can’t just abandon you after you brought me way out here, now can I?” There was something sad in her face that hid under the ready smile. It didn’t take away from the warmth of the smile, but it was there, just detectable, like an old war wound or a rough upbringing. I smiled and shrugged, accepting her invitation, and struggled to get my door open. I ran around to the other side of the car and opened hers as well. She got out like that sort of thing happened every day. I followed Mary MacCulloch across the driveway and into the clubhouse.

  The Otterpool Golf Cub occupied rolling land along Otterpool Creek, which entered the Niagara River a few miles above the falls. It was choice farmland, but here the old fields had been trimmed and manicured into one of the tiny gems that local golfers neglected to mention to tourists, preferring to keep the greens free from outsiders. Unlike many clubs, the membership fee wasn’t steep, but then neither were the amenities. The clubhouse consisted of a number of lean-tos that had been attached to the original squared log farmhouse. The blue-grey of the thick wooden walls could now be seen only from the inside, supporting shelves in the pro shop, and standing behind the bar in that small, unpretentious room.

  I followed her to a seat by a window that looked out on the green of the eighteenth hole. It was still chilly enough for me outside to give me a sense of comfort and warmth sitting out of the wind. She wanted to buy me a rye and water, but I settled for some soda. I’m not much of a booze-hound. She ordered a double Scotch and wore out her right arm trying to pump me.

  “Have you known Peter long, Mr. Cooperman? Was this a friendly or a business call that brought you to Secord this afternoon?” I dodged the questions as well as I could, burying my nose in my drink when it was my turn to say something. I could see that she was losing patience with me. In her place, I would have wrung my neck.

  “Mr. Cooperman, why can’t you be more reasonable?” she said, moving into new territory. “Peter doesn’t care. I’ll pay you.” She looked at me over the top of her glass, so that I started wondering about those dark eyes again.

  “What was your husband doing at the Stephenson House the other day?” I thought I’d try to find the aggressive side of my personality. I watched the effect on Mary MacCulloch’s face. She looked more confused than startled, as though the question wasn’t among those submitted in advance by a reporter to a visiting head of state. Her mouth moved, but she wasn’t able to form a response and that made her angry. She began to look like she might explode.

  “I know you’ve been checking up on me! I know that’s what he hired you to do. You’ve been following me, haven’t you?”

  “Look, Mrs. MacCulloch …” I began, but she wasn’t finished yet. And while she spun on, I began to listen more closely. There were always things to be learned when people talked at cross purposes.

  “Admit it,” she said, “Peter hired you to spy on me.” I said nothing, letting her diesel on like a car that won’t quit even when the ignition is turned off. Like a lot of people, she pinned her current dislike of her husband on me. Later, they’d make up, but she’d go on thinking of me as something you smell on the bottom of your shoe. It always happened that way.

  “Hey, hey, hey! What’s going on? I just asked you a question, Mrs. MacCulloch. No need to start shooting at me. I thought we were just trying to have a friendly drink.” She stopped in mid-sentence, took a breath and seemed to subside, letting her shoulders relax. Now she resembled a woman you could lend a shoulder to cry on. She had lost the tigress in her eyes. She looked more hunted than hunting.

  “Look, Benny … May I call you that? My friends call me Mary … I know I’ve been foolish, silly, unstable at times, but I’d never leave Peter. He knows that.”

  “He may know more than you think”

  “You mean about Alex? Peter doesn’t care about Alex as long as we’re discreet. So far we have been.” She smiled an introduction to a confidence I wasn’t expecting. “But Nesta would nail my fine tawny hide to the barn door if she ever found out. She’s my best friend, after all.”

  “You share Alex’s interest in pictures?” I asked, trying to see how much I could squeeze out of this run of luck. Thank God for guilt, I thought, as she sipped her drink.

  “We share many interests. As you no doubt know already.”

  “Does that run to holding on to pictures that were supposed to be on loan?”

  “Pictures? So what? Tallon’s dead. What’s the difference? There aren’t any orphans. And George, Tallon’s brother, is a big shot at Consolidated Galvin. Why not have a real drink, Mr. Cooperman? Benny?”

  I don’t know what went into that drink. I don’t know if it was Mary that slipped it to me. Maybe it was just two belts of rye on an empty stomach. Anyway, in no time I was telling her things that I should have kept to myself. Mary seemed fascinated. On the second round she was leaning closer to me and I was noticing the clever way her eye make-up was put on and the little lines around her temples and the dark roots of her hair. I was getting high, and I wasn’t minding it at all.

  “These pictures you have,” I said, “you should turn them over to the estate, Mary. Easy as pie. No questions asked.”

  “Benny, why all this interest in pictures? You keep changing the subject. Can’t we come to some sort of agreement? Just the two of us?”

  “Your husband might not like that.”

  “Because he’s paying you to spy on me.”

  “Have it your way. I never said a thing.”

  New drinks had come and it was bottoms up all over again. I try to stay away from situations like this. “No” is not hard to pronounce, but when I get a combination of somebody I want to know better and the possibility of shortcutting a long investigation with a bit of news that slips out between rounds, I bend an unaccustomed elbow or two. It’s all in the way of business, as my Irish friend Frank Bushmill always says. And he should know; he’s into more drink in a day than I see in a month. Still, today he was probably dead sober, working on somebody’s corns in his surgery next to my office, and here was I, a poor sight of a man, with my cheek trying to get cool from the glass in my hand. Mary MacCulloch was still talking. Why had I stopped listening? I guiltily tuned in again.

  “… can you expect from a girl from South Porcupine? You have to agree I’ve improved myself. I’m only five three, but I look taller. You want to know why?”

  “Uh?”

  “Peter Rowe said to me that I should get into the air force reserve. ‘That’ll make a woman of you.’ he said. And he was right, I look taller because I have what’s left of a military carriage. I was Sergeant Mary Boyce in those days. That was before we moved to Sudbury. Did you know I went in for law at the University of Toronto? Can you imagine me a lawyer?” She seemed to find that pretty funny. When she stopped laughing I tried to quiz her about Favell. That stopped the conversation dead. She sat back in her chair like I’d tried to get personal.

  “I’d stay clear of Alex, if I were you,” she said. “It’s just a piece of free advice I’m giving you. It comes with the drink, like the salted peanuts. Alex can be as gentle as anything one minute, the next … Well, you just wouldn’t want to be around. He can be quite ruthless. I wouldn’t try to cross him.”

  “I see.” I gave her a clear look in the eye to show that I’d taken in her warning.

  “Are you sure you will be able to drive?” she asked.

  “Like a fish,” I said. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m only going to the powder room. I’ll be right back.”

  I waited a minute, then felt the urge to confess my rye and ginger. Drink takes me that way.

  FOUR

  A shicker, Benny! That’s what you are!”

  “It was all in the line of duty, Ma. It’s when I do it for fun that you got to get worried about.”

  “Fun?” my mother said from her end of the telephone wire. “Who ever heard of such a thing? My son, the drunk! Your
father had a cousin who drank. It was a Harold or a Howard I think.”

  “He married money, Ma. There’s a happy ending. Are you going to be home later?”

  “Home? Where would I be going? I go out to have my hair done and to see my gynaecologist. I’m not due for either one this week.”

  “I thought I’d just drop by to say hello.”

  “Hello? You said it already. You want me to get the full effect? The unsteady legs, the powerful breath, the unfocused eyes? Benny, I’ve had a hard enough life without that.”

  “I thought maybe we could just … I could tell you about my move. I should give you the new telephone number.”

  “Benny, it’ll keep until Friday. Let me hear all about it then. Your father wants to know why you need to take an apartment when you’ve got a perfectly good room right here. But I know you, you want to be independent. Benny, I’m your mother. I understand about being on your own. Your father just sees things in terms of the boys’ room upstairs, which we had painted only a year ago, and that place over the chip shop.”

  “Tacos,” I said.

  “I don’t care what kind of chazerai it is. What are tacos, Benny?”

  “I’m not sure, but I’ve heard them described as omelettes with hardening of the arteries.” Ma was putting all the anxiety about my move on my father, but I knew she was still struggling to deal with the fact that I was never going to live at home again.

  “I think I can live without them,” she said. “And as for you, Benny, give me a call when you sober up. Goodbye.”

  “Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Have you ever heard of Alex Favell?”

  There was a pause at Ma’s end of the line. Then she repeated the name a couple of times, tasting it on her tongue and moving it from cheek to cheek. “Alex Favell. I think I heard your father tell me about someone at the Mallet Club. This would be, oh, three or four years ago, Benny …”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, all your father said was that he was a man with a bad temper. He wanted to know what Manny was doing there. Of course he was a guest. Either Lloyd or Alan took him, but he, this Alex Favell made a big fuss about it. Why do you want to know?”

  “Oh, I’m just fishing, Ma. Trying to get a line on a whole bunch of new people I never heard of.”

  “Your father thinks it’s a shame about the boys’ room, Benny.”

  “Ma, we went through that when I moved out nearly ten years ago!”

  “I know. Nobody’s ever slept in the boys’ room since you left.”

  “What about Aunt Rose when she came to stay?”

  “Except for your Aunt Rose.”

  “And didn’t Linda Levine stay that time when she …”

  “Benny, I’m talking about principle here! In the main, your father and I have kept the boys’ room empty so that if ever you or Sam decide …”

  “Ma, Sam has a wife and two kids. How are they …?

  “Benny, I can’t talk to you when you’ve been drinking. We’ll talk again when I see you.”

  “I could come over for dinner tonight.”

  “Your father’s got a meeting. I’ll see you Friday night as usual, unless you’ve got a date or something.”

  “Ma, I just …”

  “Tacos, you call them? Have a good meal. Goodbye.”

  “Ma!”

  I ducked out of the phone booth, but I couldn’t see Mary MacCulloch sitting at the table. I decided to try to place another quick call before rejoining my rye and ginger ale.

  “Hello?” That was a human touch. I’d been expecting something more formal like “Kesagami-Copeland, good afternoon. May I help you?” But I had to settle for what I got and that amounted to the information that, yes, Mr. Favell was in, but, no, he wasn’t seeing anybody this afternoon, thank you. Drink made me mutter something about “He’ll see me,” or “We’ll see about that.” I heard myself say the words, but I don’t think I got the menace into my voice that I’d tried to imitate from television. I think that in the abstract, I’m an excellent actor. But, put to a practical test I often fail. I finally left my name with the secretary and hung up not knowing what I had accomplished.

  When I got back to the table, I discovered that Mary MacCulloch had come and gone. Her cigarette had gone, the check had been paid and the drinks cleared. There was a note written on the back of a credit card slip, where I usually add the names of clients when I have to buy drinks to drum up business. It said:

  Benny,

  Sorry I have to run off, but I’m due to meet friends for tea in ten minutes. Remember what I said about AF. I’m not threatening, just passing on some good advice. See you around. Thanks for the lift.

  M

  She could have treated the drink as duty entertainment. I guess in her tax bracket it doesn’t matter. Anyway, she had the idea I was working for her husband and not for a third party. Funny how guilty secrets come out when you least expect them.

  I left the golf club and made it to the car without falling down more than once, slurring my speech, or failing to give a reasonable account of myself. Two and a half drinks did take its toll somewhere. How else did I get to Papertown in half the usual time?

  There was a time when pyramids of pulpwood were the skyscrapers of Papertown. They grew along the banks of the old canal like mottled boils on a pock-marked skin. Yellow piles of sulphur tried to brighten the landscape, but it needed an enthusiastic sun to bring out their best side. They reminded me of a bad cold and a hacking cough. Most of the mills had been built during the heyday of the first Welland Canal and its successor. The canal brought pulp and chemicals to Papertown and took away ten-ton rolls of newsprint by the cheapest transportation in the country. Today, there were fewer mills. The landscape all the way up the escarpment was marked by silhouettes of abandoned walls and turrets of mills from the last century and the beginnings of this one. In some cases, an old dark structure had been saved and turned into a warehouse for used tires or scrap metal, but the transformations were cosmetic only and sometimes they didn’t take.

  The offices of the Kesagami-Copeland Paper Mills were located in a new, red brick, two-storey structure that tried to mask a dark, fieldstone main building that contained most of its outdated machinery. The company was originally set up by an American newspaper baron to make paper for his Chicago presses. Timber leases in the north had removed spruce and other marginal woods from the James Bay area for well over one hundred years. The local operation of K-C was a Canadian branch plant of its American parent. The Canadian flag hung limply from a mast in front of the main entrance. I knew before I opened the door that I would see a picture of the sovereign in the foyer. American outfits try to be good corporate citizens of Canada, but they do it with an American accent. An all-Canadian mill might have a picture of its founder in the lobby, but usually nothing more patriotic than an honour roll of those employees who served in the major wars.

  I parked the car in front of a sign marked “Reserved” in the parking lot closest to the office block. The watchman gave me a dirty look as I walked towards the main door. He didn’t challenge me because I was wearing a jacket and not a windbreaker. People who wear windbreakers have a hard time with parking-lot attendants.

  The stairs to the second floor reminded me that I’d drunk my lunch at the golf club. I brushed my pants off with dirty palms and made an attempt at general repairs. My shin hurt where I’d barked it against the top step. When I had my breath under control, I walked through the big buff door into Alex Favell’s outer office.

  On one wall a huge blow-up of a photograph made during the twenties or thirties showed off the past of the paper mill. It was grainy and fuzzy in its details. The lineup of bosses in front of the mill looked out confidently at me while their dark business suits kept a note of panic at bay. Out the big window to my right, I could see almost the same view. But where was the bustle, where were the pyramids of pulpwood, where was the industry the beaver over the front door symbolized? Things were slow in the paper busines
s? I made a note of it.

  The drink gave me confidence I wasn’t used to possessing. It felt like I was wearing a six-shooter or that I was six foot five instead of five foot seven. I was breathing courage when I went up to the woman behind the reception desk.

  “Yes?” she said sweetly, like I was delivering rose petals. I went around her desk and tried to focus on the white letters on the door across the broadloom reading “ALEX FAVELL.” “You can’t go in there!” she said. “Who are you, anyway?”

  “I’ve found a painting he’s been trying to get. He’ll see me,” I said. I hoped she’d heard that line before. She fell back in her chair like I’d blasted her out of my way with a shot in one of her fleshy shoulders. Once in the inner office, I closed the door behind me and flopped into a leather and chrome seat in front of a vast black desk that looked like it had escaped from a sci-fi movie. On the far side I saw a tall, balding man with a moustache that would go well with his tennis whites. His eyes were wide with surprise, but held off judgment until I announced my business. After I’d given him my spiel about looking up Tallon’s unrecovered inventory, he allowed an angry look to settle all over his face. What I got was a “My dear Mr. Cooperman, we are not at all pleased by this visit” look. He allowed displeasure to make him look like he had touched a copper cent to one of his fillings.

  “Well?” I asked. “What can you tell me?”

  “You can go to blazes, Cooperman! I’m not obliged to tell you a thing.” I tried to see from his face whether I had a guilty creature sitting across from me, one whose fingers I was slamming in the cash drawer. On the face of it, it seemed unlikely. The suit he was standing up in was equal to the stress of being stretched as he gripped the edges of his desk and glared at me. It probably cost more than I’d put on my back for the last five years. Maybe ten. “Tallon was an imbecile when it came to keeping books and records. If his affairs are in disorder, he has only himself to blame. I warned him often enough.”