A City Called July Page 4

  “Mr. Geller is expecting me,” I said to the first face to look up from her typewriter.

  “Mr. Cooperman, is it?” she asked, and I wondered whether the whole office knew my name and the reason for my visit.

  “That’s right.” The girl was already opening the gate and holding it so I could follow her to the door at the rear of the office. She knocked and went in for a second, then came out to show me the rest of the way.

  Sid Geller was a huge man cramped into a small compass. He should have been six feet five instead of five feet six. It would have given more scope for a body that seemed to be bursting with energy even as it slouched in a high-backed leather swivel chair. He was wearing a three-piece, lemon-coloured business suit which set off a pink shirt and purple tie. The sun came through a window to his left, leaving no detail of the outfit to the imagination. His head was big, dark and I could find no trace of a neck. The face was darkly tanned, the eyebrows nearly meeting above a large squarely centred nose. The wide mouth was smiling as I came into view, and the figure rose from his chair; Sid Geller came towards me with his hand outstretched. When he finished with my right hand I was glad I’d broken off piano lessons at an early age. He motioned me to a chair, and as I pulled it over the bare floor, I saw that Geller’s shoes and trouser cuffs were spattered with the same mustard-coloured mud that marked the Olds outside.

  “Well, now, Mr. Cooperman. Can I call you Ben? I hate all that formal crap. Call me Sid, and let’s get right down to it. You said over the phone that it was about Larry’s disappearance. What do you know? Are you buying or selling? Ruth told me she’d let you get your foot in her door. That’s the only reason I’m talking to you, see? Ruth is going through hell, so I don’t mind doing what I can to help out. I can talk to you as the rabbi’s representative and be done with it. When some schmoe from the community comes asking after Label—that Larry to you—I can tell him I already gave.” He laughed at his own joke and I joined in to try to soften his steamroller methods. If he didn’t shut up, I’d never get to ask a question. When I tuned in again, he was taking off with more of the same. “But I’m warning you, Ben, Label’s my goddamned brother and I’m not going to do dirty on him. You get me?” I got him and told him so. He lit up a cigarette that looked like he’d rolled it himself, and leaned back until the chair squeaked. Above him was a framed photograph of the Flatiron Building in New York with a skeleton of girders showing through the front. I tried a question.

  “What do you know about the trouble your brother’s been involved in?”

  “Nothing. Next question?”

  “Back to the first one. You mean that Larry’s taking-off came as a complete surprise to you?”

  “Sure, if I knew he was leaving, I would have tried to stop him. For Ruth and the kids’ sake. I didn’t know he was involved in all this crap with his trust funds. Why should he tell me? When he was a kid he took my bike without asking and when he punctured the back tire he filled it up with a length of garden hose so I wouldn’t know. Can you beat that? I knocked him into the middle of the next week when I found out. He knew what to expect from me. I’d be the last man in town Label would trust. Not that I’d turn him in; I’m his brother after all. But I never minced words with him when he was asking for it. Most of the time we were on good terms. But when he did some jackass stunt, he heard about it from me first. You can bet on that.”

  He placed his dark palms on the desk blotter and leaned on his arms. There was sweat on his forehead.

  “When you heard about his confidence scam was he still around?”

  “When I heard first, it was from a little guy who owed me. Never mind his name. He came asking for advice. He explained what had happened and I could see the game Label was playing. Only usually lawyers don’t get in that deep and don’t get caught. It was the economy that was against him. He should have levelled with me. I might have helped. I could have put him in the hospital, that’s what I could have done, and he’d thank me for doing it.”

  “How long was that before he skipped out of town?”

  “Couple of days. I told him I wanted to talk to him. He knew what it was all about, told me he couldn’t talk then, but promised to come and see me on the Wednesday.”

  “That was the day he disappeared?”

  “Yeah, that was the day. I didn’t know he was playing such a big game. That kid brother of mine got away with over two million. Crazy bastard. Can you beat it?”

  “Yeah, I can think of a lot of people in this town who can’t wait to give him a medal.”

  “Don’t start in with me, Cooperman. I have to live here too. He gets away with two million and I have to face those people. Sweet prospect, eh?” He folded his arms across his chest like he was having a hard time breathing, then asked, “When do you think we’ll be reading about it?”

  “Tonight, maybe tomorrow. The lid’s half off now. There’s no advantage for the cops to keep it a secret.”

  “I’d skip out of town myself until this thing blows over if it wasn’t for Ruth and the kids. They’re going to need all the help I can give them. Debbie can’t do everything.”

  “Are you on good terms with your ex-wife?”

  “You’re changing the subject, aren’t you?” He put out his cigarette butt in a distributor cap he was using as an ashtray. “Debbie and I are cordial, that’s what we are.” He didn’t want to embellish that and appeared to be looking forward to the next question on a different subject.

  “I hear otherwise. It was a messy divorce.”

  “Okay, okay. She took me to the cleaners but good. But that was ten years ago. I don’t hurt so much any more. I’ve got a happy situation going in my life, so I can afford to forgive and forget. I don’t like fighting in public.” He lit another fuzzy-looking cigarette which he took from his jacket pocket. “Neither of us wants anything bad to happen to Ruth and those two kids of hers. I’ll back her on that. She has her moments, Debbie. Sometimes she can be as sweet as pie.”

  “What about your sister-in-law? Is she going to be all right?’

  “What are you, Ben, all heart all of a sudden? Ruth’s in for one hell of a bad time. There isn’t any mud that’s not going to be thrown at her. And you’re not exactly a disinterested spectator, are you?”

  “I’m trying to find her husband. Is that so bad? Are her shoulders broad enough to take some of the heat?”

  “Sorry, Ben. I forgot my manners. You know how it is?” I agreed that I knew how it was.

  “Do you think that Larry got into this mess because of the economy, being pressed by creditors and so on, or as a matter of policy? Did he plan the whole thing, or did it just happen?”

  “That’s the big question, isn’t it? If I could see the books he kept, I could get some idea, but without them, I’m only a guesser like the rest of you.”

  “The cops will have his books.”

  “So, go bother them.”

  “Did Larry take any part in your business here?”

  Sid licked the hair on the knuckles of his right hand as he thought about his answer. Finally he said: “He did some legal staff for me. Nothing important. He didn’t even get paid for it. Never invoiced me, and I guess I never pushed him to.”

  “Did he owe you money?”

  “Christ, they all owe me money! I put him through school so he could learn the law and find out about three-piece suits and which fork to use at parties I wouldn’t get invited to. I’m still doing the same for his brother, only I don’t get my name in The New York Times like Nate does.”

  “You were the head of the family.” That gave him breathing time. He was getting a little excited.

  “Yeah, I was the head of the family. I had to look out for the family.” His eyes were shining when he looked up for a moment. He didn’t look me in the eye. I tried examining the pictures on the wall until he asked if I had any other questions.

  “Was there anyone outside the family he trusted and might have talked to?”

  “N
o.”

  “Is there any place apart from his office and house where he might have left some record of …”

  “No. Next question.”

  “Does he have a favourite watering hole in Florida or Arizona that you know about it?” That’s when I got thrown out. He wasn’t rude about it. He didn’t stop smiling at me through his clenched teeth. It was just that suddenly he wasn’t sitting behind his desk any more, he had me tightly by the elbow and we were moving towards the office door at some speed. After I got the ignition started, I could still feel his grip on my arm. I splashed my way out of there fast, nearly skinning the Olds on a silver Audi driving through the gate. There was a woman at the wheel. She didn’t stop to get acquainted.

  Once again the Bolduc fence followed me for a quarter of a mile along Facer Street. I rolled down the window. Under the sun, the interior had become a sauna without an oak branch. I was warm from my interview with Sid Geller too. Through a windshield pockmarked with yellow mud, a blue sky smiled over the landscape of one-storey houses built during and after World War Two to meet the housing shortage. These bungalows began life as alike as sardines, but now they all had sprouted eccentricities: aluminum awnings, added second floors, porches, extensions, chimneys. While across the road one industrial site gave way to the next. Sandwiched between two such sites, and opposite more depressing grey houses, I came on the two-storey warehouse that a little digging had told me served as Nathan Geller’s studio.

  I parked the car near a nest of green garbage bags and rang a bell. I couldn’t hear it make a sound inside, so I tried the door and found it open.

  I was in the biggest room outside a theatre I’d been in for some time. Except for a balcony-like second floor, which beetled over the work area, the room went up to the ceiling. A skylight let in the day and the light pooled in cool circles like theatrical work lights on a stage. In these white spots and bathed in the illumination stood life-sized human figures in plaster. In spite of a rough surface, I recognized the familiarity of these types: a fruit-vendor weighing vegetables, a fat woman on a park bench holding one shoe in her hand, a tourist photographing an unbending Mountie, a bag lady with her supermarket cart loaded with her possessions. That’s the sort of thing. These were finished pieces, and arranged to create the effect I’d walked into. Nathan Geller was an accomplished sculptor and it was the first time I’d heard about it.

  From under the overhang of the balcony, I could hear hammering. I followed the racket until I found whom I took to be Nathan Geller hammering at a wire armature that was as big as he was. He was dressed in farmer’s overalls and wore a railway engineer’s cap turned back to front. Welder’s glasses covered his eyes, although the torch was turned off near by. When he saw me walking towards him, he paused and pushed the goggles up on his sweaty forehead.

  “Mr. Rylands? I didn’t expect you until tomorrow. Didn’t Munby tell you? I left a message yesterday. But as long as you’re here …”

  “My name is Cooperman,” I said, putting on a smile. “The bell doesn’t work.”

  “You’re not from Munby?” he said, trying to get a grip on the fact.

  “Not so far. I’ve never heard of either of them. I came to talk to you about your brother.” He pulled the goggles off completely now and double checked the valve in the welding torch.

  “I heard about you. Debbie phoned and told me to be good. Come on upstairs.” He led the way from this work area up a flight of industrial stairs to a small comfortable room with a rug on the floor and books in shelves, a television set on a small refrigerator and a comfortable-looking couch and matching chair. It was a copy of any of thousands of rec rooms built during the sixties in finished basements. Geller had a fine eye for detail.

  He also had the family nose and cleft chin with dimples on either side of a frank mouth. He had more hair than his brother but it didn’t look like what he had would outlast the decade. Without asking, he went to the refrigerator and removed bottles of imported beer. He settled one with a tall glass near me and began working on his own from the bottle. “This gets to be hot work this time of year,” he said. “I always seem to be casting bronze in July and doing outdoor sketches in January. Well, so you know about Larry. Welcome to the club. Club, hell, it’s more like a convention,”

  “Did you have any hint that this was going on?”

  “Mr. Cooperman, look around you. Does it look like my life gets mixed up with stocks and bonds much? Sid pays the rent on this place and keeps my books straight. I’m a non-starter in the world of high finance. Surprise, surprise. My life is framed by Sid at one end saying ‘Go to it little brother! Have fun,’ and at the other by my dealer saying ‘Can’t you work any faster? I bust my ass getting you a show and what thanks do I get?’ Between these extremes I manage to have a pretty good life.”

  “Where do you show your stuff? Not locally.”

  “I actually did have a show here about ten years ago. Nobody knew what to make of me. Only sold one piece and that was to an American. When you came in I thought you were from Frank Munby, my dealer He has connections with the big commercial galleries in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. The stuff I do usually ends up there. Ever since he arranged for big shows in London and New York, the Toronto gallery can’t get enough of me. Munby phones twice a day to see if he can catch me going to the can or knocking off for a beer. ‘You keep your buns moving, boy,’ he says, ‘and I’ll make you as big as Takis or Jones.’ Hell, I shouldn’t complain. He got me that show in New York and you wouldn’t believe the press we got. But that’s not what you came to talk about, is it?”

  Having shut himself off from his favourite topic, it took him a minute to remember the topic at hand. He blinked a bit, like a golfer swatting tall grass, going through the motions of looking for a lost ball.

  “Larry,” I said. “Your other brother.”

  “Right! Yes, good old unreliable Larry. He went missing on July 3rd. I saw him the weekend before. As far as I could tell he wasn’t taking leave of us. He tried to impress Sid as usual with his inside information and kidded me about all this.” Nathan was carefully tearing off the oval beer label as he spoke. The object seemed to be to get it all without ripping it or leaving a white residue on the bottle. “Sid bellowed at both of us the way he usually did. Big brother stuff, very old country. Larry didn’t slip me any secret messages. He didn’t anticipate his going by giving me my birthday present early. He didn’t make any statements full of double entendres. No hits, no runs, no misses. Just Larry, with his jaw set tight when he talked about my work. Larry doesn’t approve of what I do. It’s funny, but Sid, with no education to speak of, understands me better. When I got a Canada Council grant it really fazed Larry, he couldn’t understand why anybody’d give a dime to me for these glorified plaster pies. He just doesn’t understand what I’m all about.”

  “Have you any idea where he might have gone? Is there a place he might hole up until this blows over?”

  “Come on! What do you take me for? I’m not going to play those cards. He’s flesh of my flesh and all that.”

  “Routine question, that’s all. No offence intended. Did he travel much in the last few years?”

  “Now you think you’re getting clever, eh? Sure he travelled. Winters in Miami Beach. We’ve got a duplex down there. You can get the address from the cops or from Ruth. He went to Phoenix a couple of times. Do you want to hear about the places he went skiing?” I would have looked sillier with a pencil in my hand taking all this down. As it was, I felt silly enough. Nathan wasn’t through with me yet: “… In 1981 he spent some time near Arles in the south of France. He travelled to West Berlin on business that year, and was in London twice in 1982. He stayed at the Dorchester …” I thought of shutting him up, but you never know about these things. Sometimes the first thing you find in a haystack is the needle. “He went to Scotland one time. Can’t remember where. Some cranny or is it a corrie north of Edinburgh. Went hunting with some MP he tried to butter up. Did I t
ell you about his two weeks in China?” He went on with his Cook’s tour for a few more minutes then finally stopped.

  “What about around town? What were his haunts?”

  “He was always going to B’nai Brith meetings as far as I could tell. Tell you one thing: I never once saw him in an art gallery. You can have that for nothing.” I put it down in my head with all the other nothing I’d heard. I slipped him a little silence to prime him. He didn’t need it. He was still working his joke and didn’t look like he was going to run out of places. “His office is on Queen Street across from the post office. He was a member— hell he was treasurer!—of the shul. He had regular habits. And you know what? I think he’s a son of a bitch leaving those kids of his to face this alone. That’s what I think. He’s got the backbone of an amoeba.”

  “Who drives the silver Audi?“ I asked, trying to move on to new territory.

  “The silver …? Oh, you mean Pia Morley. She’s Sid’s girl-friend.”

  “‘Girl-friend?’ That sounds like he’s borrowing the family car on Saturday night. Can you be more specific? This isn’t for a newspaper. Just background.”

  “Okay, Pia’s his live-in pal. Since they invented palimony, I guess that pal is an okay legal status, right?” He pronounced Pia to rhyme with Hi-yeh. “She’s divorced too, has been around, I’m told, and they’ve been together since a few years after Debbie flew the coop.”

  “Was she friendly with your brother?”

  “Pia and Larry? How should I know? They were friendly enough. Nothing special. But you’re asking the wrong guy. I’m not all that fast on the uptake. Relationships are things you have to put down on paper for me to see. My God, I mean I just don’t notice.”