A City Called July Page 8

  “Well, it’s just he ain’t been around for a couple o’ days. He’s gone. Like that Geller guy on Queen Street. Only Wally didn’t have more than maybe twenty-five dollars tops.”

  “Maybe he’s found another kip? Maybe he’s found a nice park bench to sleep on during these warm nights. He’ll turn up.

  “Cooperman, you’re a shit-heel. You know what that is? You’re a real poop-and-scoop artist, that’s what you are. I told you Wally and me’ve been together. You know what that means? I know Wally, and I know what he’s going to do from Monday to Sunday. He’s a shrewd character, but habit-ridden. You know what I mean? He sometimes sleeps near his pitch, but he tells me first.”

  “I’m sorry, Kogan. I didn’t mean to be flip. I apologize.” Kogan made a pass at his nose with his fingers, squeezed the bridge of his nose like a bank president, then blinked trying to pick up the thread of the story again. “Kogan, what’s your first name? I can’t keep calling you Kogan.”

  “Give me a minute,” he said, squinting hard. “Victor.”

  “The hell it is.”

  “I seen it in print that way. Anyway, I been Kogan too long to argue. Just don’t call me Victor, you hear?”

  “Where did you see Wally last?”

  “We tucked into some 9-Lives on Tuesday night.”

  “Did he say anything about going off? Did you have a fight?”

  “Certainly not. And I checked the hospitals and the lock-up. Wally didn’t get hit by a milk truck, and he didn’t get pinched.”

  “Did he say anything about where he was going or what he intended to do the next day?”

  “Well, you finally got down to it. You finally asked. I thought I’d be a fine old bone before you asked that one.” Kogan’s old wallet of a face creased into a map of smiles. “He told me he was going to see the wife of a Queen Street lawyer.”

  “He what?”

  “I knew that’d get you. He told me he was going to see this woman over on Mortgage Hill. I forgot the name until I saw it in tonight’s paper.”

  “Tell me this again slowly.”

  “I don’t usually chew my cabbage twice. He said he wanted to see this Mrs. Geller. Said they had business.” Kogan now had all my attention and he knew it. He played the scene like an actor building up the momentum leading to the curtain line. “He said we were havin’ our last can of cat food. And that’s when he showed me the bottle he’d bought. It wasn’t his favourite, Old Sailor, it was Gordon’s gin. Where’d he get that kind of money? That’s what got me scared, Mr. Cooperman. Where’s Wally and is he all right?”

  I took Wally’s pal Kogan with me around the corner to the United for a coffee and a square meal. He had the coffee. I had the square meal. I nearly had to bust his arm to get him to accept coffee. He sat on the edge of the stool like he was afraid of breaking it and pretended not to notice the dirty looks I was getting from the waitress, who had “Nicole” stitched on her breast. It wasn’t Nicole. Nicole had left the United a year ago. “Nicole” went with the uniform the way a glass of water went with the menu. For the next twenty minutes I pumped Kogan about his friend: where he did his panhandling, what his habits were, and in that time I picked up about two minutes of valuable information. Wally’s favourite stamping ground was right in front of the Loftus Building at the Queenston Road end of St. Andrew Street, across from the closed-off block where the new fire hall was being built. To me it didn’t look like the best pickings in town, but Kogan put me wise to the stream of workers coming to and from the building site as well as the shifts going to and from Etherington’s Empire Carpet Works. Together we went around to the liquor store where it didn’t take long to locate the guy who’d sold Wally his bottle of gin. The fellow remembered him because Wally’d given him a fifty-dollar bill to change, flicked ashes on his change machine, and asked for a receipt. And all because he’d been on the Liquor Control Board list of those whose money was no good for about twenty years. Then the rules changed.

  Kogan had given me the only break I’d had in this case. His pal had been paid by Ruth Geller for something. What was it and did it have anything to do with the fact that he was nowhere to be seen? My stomach told me that there was a strong possibility that his disappearance had directly followed from something that Wally had seen and reported to Ruth. I’d have to question her about that. In the meantime I was happy to be helping the little guy. It made me feel like I was a real taxpayer instead of someone who only had aspirations to be one. Before we separated, I got Kogan to promise to keep his eyes open and to be sure to drop in to see me as soon as he heard from Wally.

  When I got back to the office, I found the door standing open. I didn’t remember leaving it that way. I was in the midst of giving myself a sermon on forgetfulness when I saw that the office had a visitor.

  “Mr. Cooperman? I suppose you’re Mr. Cooperman. It’s silly even to ask, isn’t it?” The speaker was a woman in her thirties, about five feet six and not at all hard to look at with her large eyes and pouting mouth. I recognized the brunette hair from the time I’d seen it drive into the Bolduc yard in her silver Audi.

  “Well, Mrs. Morley! This is a surprise Do you always let yourself in? If I’d known you were coming I would have left the door off the latch.”

  “Please don’t be boring about the door, Mr. C. Those old spring locks wouldn’t keep the cat out. You didn’t actually want me to stand waiting in the hall, did you? With the Water Music from your bathroom? Besides, this old credit card’s expired.” She held up a mangled plastic card and dropped it with a dramatic gesture into the waste-paper basket. I walked around her, feeling that if I could recapture my desk, I could get the interview on a firm footing according to all the rules on the subject. I already had a feeling that Pia Morley didn’t necessarily bend where the rules said “fold.” Once I’d claimed my chair, I waved her to one of the others on the client’s side of the desk. She took it, composing her skirt under her as she sat. I offered her a cigarette and instead of taking out her own, she took one of mine. She wasn’t given to showing her independence in small ways. I leaned across towards her with a lighted match. She steadied my hand and bent to the flame. She was wearing a pink blouse, cut like a man’s shirt, that almost failed to contain her. A dim outline of lace appeared through the broadcloth and gave an electric jab to my innards. She wore her hair tied up at the back of her head, but there was enough left over to frame her face provocatively. Her eyes had been made up lightly and her lips parted in a smile that showed straight white teeth. There was no missing the long curve of her neck or the diamond studs in her earlobes.

  “To what do I owe the honour?” I asked. She crossed her legs grandly without bothering to check the horizon of her hemline.

  “I’m trying to make up my mind whether or not I’m going to like you,” she said, missing my ashtray by inches and not worrying about it. “You’ve been lifting up a lot of stones in the last two days, Mr. C.”

  “Let me remind you now that it was you who spoke of lifting up stones first. Sure I have. I’m working on a case. That’s no secret. I’m trying to find Larry Geller and see if I can get him to give back the money he’s taken.”

  “You know the police are doing the same thing?”

  “Sure. We’re all in this together. Only they have more patience than I have. They can afford to wait until Geller makes his move and then grab him. By ‘grab him’ they mean get extradition proceedings underway. When I hope to grab somebody, it’s a little more physical than that.”

  “You don’t look like a muscle man. You surprise me, Mr. C. I can’t actually imagine you manhandling people. You don’t seem the type.”

  “Well, between the two of us, I haven’t had to manhandle too many lately. I may be out of practice. But I do what I have to do. Mostly talk to people. Sometimes it works.”

  “You talked to Sid and Nathan.”

  “No law against that, Mrs. Morley. I’m entitled.”

  “You’ve been asking questions abou
t me. Me and Sid.” I nodded my admission, and she cocked her head to one side and flashed her eyelashes at me. “I don’t like to have questions asked behind my back, Mr. C. I don’t like it. I don’t know anything about Larry Geller you can’t read on the front page of tonight’s Beacon. So, I want out, please. I said ‘please,’ remember. I always start by saying ‘please.’”

  “And when that doesn’t work?”

  “But it’s going to work, Mr. C. Because you’re one smart detective, aren’t you?”

  “Never top of my class.”

  “But you’ve learned so much since then.”

  “And it’s built all this.” She looked at the hanging fluorescent fixtures and then at the light coming dustily through the Venetian blinds. She inclined her head as though acknowledging a point. I shrugged it off. A tendril of brown hair fell over her forehead and I wondered how she’d managed that. She leaned over my bleached oak desk trying to look tougher than she could in a pink button-down shirt with lace showing through.

  “Mr. C. I’m asking you to lay off Sid and me. Sid’s already told you everything he knows. Everything he’s willing to tell, anyway. He’s not going to rat on his brother. You’ve got sense. Would you spill your guts to me about your brother?” I thought of my brother Sam. I could see him in his operating-room greens worrying about a parking ticket.

  “You’ve made your point, Mrs. Morley. And you know I’m not lifting stones because I like lifting stones. It’s all part of a job I’m being paid to do. With me around it means the stage isn’t cluttered up with the aggrieved and the hard done by. I’ve got the blessing of the whole community. I’m sanctioned.” She looked at me evenly while taking a pull at the cigarette. She slowly let the smoke out.

  “Supposing, just supposing there’s more in it for you to let sleeping stones lie? What then?” I stroked my chin where the beard was beginning to show through at the end of the day. I pushed my swivel chair back from the desk and rocked on the point of equilibrium and thought. She watched me like she had put a bunch of chips down on twenty-two black and the wheel was still going around. And I watched the way the lace came into focus under the broadcloth every time she breathed in.

  “Mrs. Morley …”

  “Don’t call me that. Call me Pia. My friends call me Pia.”

  “Look, you’re not making me an offer to look the other way because of the tricks your boy-friend’s brother has been playing. You have reasons of your own.”

  She tried not to let on I’d hit a nerve. That was one way of looking at it. The other way was to admit that I may have been miles from the truth. She extinguished her cigarette butt in the ashtray. Her nails were pink, like her shirt. “You have a wild imagination, Mr. C. I can’t think where you get your notions from. I want you to be my friend, Mr. C. Nobody tells me anything. Whenever I ask Sid, he just grins or chews on his cigar. He never tells me anything. Except that he loves me I mean. I can get him to tell me that, because I’m so back and forth with him about us that it’s a joke. He doesn’t think it’s funny, but what can I do about it? That’s the way I am. That’s the way I’ve always been.” She reached on the floor for the taupe bag she’d brought in with her and began to make signs of leaving. I got up, and started coming round the desk.

  “You must pick my lock again sometime.” She ignored that, and pushed herself out of the chair.

  “Now, I’ve stayed too long. I don’t want to get a ticket.”

  “I’ll bet you have friends who would take care of a little thing like that.”

  “Yes, I have friends, Mr. C. I hope that you’ll be a friend. At a time like this friends are very comforting, don’t you think?” She gave me the full force of her pouting smile, held it for a second longer than it took to make its point. She said goodbye and left me standing in the middle of my office wondering where she’d gone. She had that sort of presence that I find confusing. I walked over to the door and shut it, then came slowly back to my desk. Pia Morley had left a lingering fragrance behind her. I hadn’t noticed it when she was two feet away from me. Nice, I thought, very nice.

  NINE

  I was asleep, having one of those amorphous dreams where it isn’t unusual to find Napoleon and Marilyn Monroe on the same football field marking exam papers or folding laundry. At first I thought it was the alarm clock, perched on the usual pile of paperbacks beside the bed, but the dial told me it was only two in the morning. It had to be the phone, and it rang again to prove my point.

  “Yes?”

  “Cooperman? It’s Nathan. Nathan Geller.”

  “I know which Nathan. What can I do for you at two in the morning?”

  “Is it that late? I’ve been working. I lose track. Anyway, what I’m calling about is this: I’ve heard from Larry.”

  “Why are you telling me? I’m practically a perfect stranger.”

  “Okay, maybe it seems like I’m telling tales out of school, but I don’t want Larry to get into more trouble than he’s already bought. I don’t know what you think of my brother, Cooperman, but he’s my brother. My guess is that if he gives back the money he’s taken, maybe things won’t be so bad for him up here. I mean, a life of hiding is unthinkable.”

  “Uh-huh. So you decided to tell me about it?”

  “I told you everything I know. All I’m saying is I had this call and I thought you should know that he’s in Daytona Beach, Florida. Or at least that’s where the call came from.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he was sorry for what he’s putting us through.”

  “All heart, isn’t he?

  “Look, I called you because I thought you’d understand. I don’t need any additional insults from the public these days. I’ve had my fill.”

  “Okay, okay. What else did he say?”

  “He said he won’t be coming back to face the music. Not yet anyway.”

  “What do you want me to do with this information? The phone number of Niagara Regional isn’t unlisted.” I pulled out a cigarette from the pack on the chair and lit it while waiting for Nathan Geller to find an answer. My mouth felt sticky and my teeth mossy. The room was illuminated by the street light across the street, which flashed an elongated version of my window across the far wall and onto the door.

  “I thought you might go down there, try to talk some sense into him.”

  “I see. Are you going to foot the bill, or do you expect my clients to pay my way?”

  “You know I haven’t got any money. I’m no millionaire.”

  “I never knew anybody who ever thought he was. Everybody’s just getting by. But you think I should go, eh?”

  “It might cut this whole thing short.”

  “Where do you propose I start looking? I’ll bet he didn’t give you his address and postal code.”

  “Well, you’re supposed to be a detective, aren’t you? It can’t be that big a place. You’ll find him.”

  “I guess I can get the phone company down there to tell me about long distance calls to Grantham tonight.”

  “Can you do that? I didn’t know it was so easy. Great!” He made “Great” sound like “What, cabbage again?”

  I got off the phone, waited a minute, then called him back. As I guessed, he was on the phone to someone else. I knew the line would be busy. I finished the cigarette in the dark, then pulled the covers over me and tried to get back to sleep. I worked at it for about ten minutes, but it wouldn’t take. I turned the bed light on and read the first chapter of a Ruth Rendell mystery I’d been saving.

  * * *

  At a quarter after eleven I was in the United Cigar Store practising my coffee-drinking on a second cup, when Pete Staziak slid onto the pedestal stool next to me.

  “Good-morning.” I returned the greeting and tried to find evidence of Pete’s state of mind in his face. He looked like he hadn’t been up all night. He hadn’t cut himself shaving, and his breakfast wasn’t drying on his tie. I asked him what was on his mind. I always did that when the Holmesian st
uff didn’t pay off.

  “You know who’s on my mind: Larry Geller. Not only do we have a fraud situation in this town the like of which hasn’t been seen since William Drummond Beal sold City Hall on a domed sports stadium …”

  “The less said about that the better.”

  “… but we are also trying to keep a rising tide of public indignation from slopping over the weir. You saw what happened outside the Geller place yesterday.”

  “Can’t you get them to leave town until things blow over?”

  “What we’ve got over on Burgoyne Boulevard,” Pete said, “is either a very gutsy dame or a boneheaded bitch. Frankly I can’t tell which.”

  “They’re within their rights to stay.”

  “That’s right, and I’m within my rights when I balk at having three men permanently detailed to that place. That’s three men that could be used in better ways.”

  “Hell, I can rattle my own doorknob,” I said. Pete gave me a look. “Just trying to help out.” I took a fresh breath. “Pete, for God’s sake remember: nothing lasts. That includes public indignation. The hardest expression to sustain is one of prolonged outrage. So take it easy.”

  “You must have read that somewhere.”

  “Sure I did. Look, Pete, I got a call last night from Nathan Geller telling me he had a call from his missing brother.” Pete’s eyes took on a glint which wasn’t all reflection from the overhead lights.

  “Where was he supposed to be calling from?”

  “Daytona Beach.”

  “Yeah, a lot of them do end up down there. And there’s a certain tension between their police forces and ours. Frankly they’re a bit galled by the fact that our bandits are starting colonies down among their sheltering palms. You can’t blame them.”

  “But you don’t think that Geller’s there?”

  “Come on, Benny. You don’t either. Since when does the family offer tips like that? It’s like going to the chief of police to announce you didn’t rob a bank. There’s something wrong with the way it bounces.”