The Cooperman Variation

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.

Back at Vanessa’s NTC office, I weathered Sally Jackson’s painful apologies for the way our quiet drink ended. She was very kind about my eye, which had turned an impressive purple with a rim of pale yellow reaching through green for blue. She reported that Gordon had gone off meekly into the night almost as soon as Sally had explained who I was. This kind of behaviour, she reported, was new to Gordon, and probably wouldn’t happen again. “He tried to sleep in his car last night, parked across from Crystal’s apartment, but he was made to move on by the cops. Now he thinks I called them. I know, because he was on the phone in the middle of the night. I’m at my wit’s end with that man, Benny.” Sally was looking a little wilted this morning. She’d taken extra care dressing and making up her face. The results showed more about her rough night than her voice did. I wondered whether Ken Trebitsch gave her a little extra on the side for being his snoop in Vanessa’s kingdom. I was guessing that it was Trebitsch who called the Chief.

“Where’s her ladyship?”

“Closeted with Mr. Thornhill. He called early; she had to reschedule two meetings.”

“What does Mr. Thornhill want?”

“Hard to say. He’s been on her back all week. He wants changes in the department. I know that. She’s not giving him an inch. She’s fighting him on the changes. So far, there are no winners.”

“Is Mr. Thornhill in this alone, or does he have allies?”

“Oh, Ken Trebitsch has his hands in that pie too. A bigger bite of prime time might make him smile. He might even take me to lunch without pumping me for information. Ken’s an empire builder of the old school. Thornhill likes him, because he knows the type. He’s easier to understand than someone like Ms. Moss.” This sounded like a confession. My black eye was paying off in spades.

“Do you trust Trebitsch?”

“As far as I can throw a baby grand. He’s had people in here measuring the floor space. How’s that for undermining the opposition?”

Before I could answer, Vanessa was suddenly standing there in the doorway. “Undermining what opposition?” she demanded. Her eyes looked as though she wanted to hit somebody. Anybody.

“I was asking about Ken Trebitsch.”

“That son of a bitch! He’s got more clocks on the wall of his office than CBS, NBC, ABC and Switzerland put together. He’s the sort of newsman who’s just bursting to yell, ‘Sweetheart, get me rewrite!’ The only trouble is that he wouldn’t get the joke. You have to recognize a cliché before you can see the fun.”

“You’ve had a rough morning,” I said, trying to change the subject.

“All my mornings are rough, Benny. You should see some of them. They dump their slag on my afternoons, which are worse.” I thought that after last night she might have lowered her gunsights. I never figured out why I was the favourite target for her black humour. Almost everything she said suggested that she was the only one who did any work at NTC. I don’t know what she was complaining about. She was still alive, wasn’t she?

Vanessa was wearing a charcoal grey pant suit with a white shirt that aped an Oxford button-down. She wore it open at the neck without a tie, just the way I like it. Her hair had abandoned the loose, newly combed look of the previous evening, and was now severely bound by an unforgiving silver clasp. “You’re expected to attend me this afternoon, Benny. My afternoons are dillies. Friday afternoons are the worst of the bunch. Especially now that this damned Dermot Keogh Hall is in the works.”

“How does that make it worse?”

“Where to start?” She took a breath. “Raymond Devlin is looking after Dermot Keogh’s estate. You know that. Since he decided to give a big whack of that money to us, he has been demanding first-class treatment from Ted Thornhill. Well, big, brave Ted has passed him on to me as often as he could. Ray needs a lot of hand-holding, Benny, and I’ve been elected to do most of it. After all, he can still back out if he wants to.”

“What about those papers I witnessed in your office?”

“That’s just for the building. He’s got I.M. Pei to do the design. Did I tell you? He’s the best. The big money will come later to sustain programs and endow concert series. Ray wants to keep a continuing interest in the Hall, even after it’s been launched. We’re going to see a lot of Ray Devlin around here in the next few years.”

She rested a small briefcase on the edge of Sally’s desk and opened it. She sorted some papers and left three with Sally. Then she added, as though it had just occurred to her: “Benny, I’m off to L.A. tonight. I’ll be there for four days, maybe longer. I’ll be back Tuesday at the earliest. I have to see the new man at Universal to get something solid in the way of deadlines and delivery dates. I’ve got to take a meeting with Max Winkler at Warners to settle the fall schedule. You got all that?” She was relaxing a little behind her rapid-fire stream of talk.

“I’ll pack a bag,” I said.

“What for? Nobody on the coast is trying to kill me.”

“But, where better to nail you?”

“Your job is here.”

“But, Vanessa!”

“I’ve thought it through, Benny. I can look after myself in L.A.” There wasn’t any point in arguing further.

“I’ll unpack,” I said. “Do you want me to drive you to the airport?”

“George is driving me, Benny. Now he drives as well as parks. He’s moving up in the world.”

Later, just when I was getting tired of moving from floor to floor, maintaining radio silence in the elevators and being dragged limp from meeting to meeting with Vanessa, I discovered that Vanessa kept up communications between appointments on her cellphone, which she used as she walked down the corridors. Once she emerged from the Ladies’ with the phone to her ear.

“Mark, are you listening to me, Mark? I want no more monkey business from you. I want the first six episodes, as you promised, on the agreed date. No ifs, ands or buts. So fix it up and get the six shows to me on time.”

Then she was in a wrangle with another outside producer. “Yesterday’s Headlines, Frank, is a game show. Why show it to Ken Trebitsch, sweety? Game shows are Entertainment, not News. Yesterday’s news is history, Frank, and that’s Entertainment. Capisce?” She lowered the cellphone and dumped it in her bag.

When I found a clear moment, I asked her more about her place on Lake Muskoka. While we waited in a very empty boardroom, between meetings, she filled me in on the details of how to get there and where to find the keys, which were kept hidden in an old barbecue under a leanto with other half-discarded junk such as paddles, broken oars, folding chairs and old sun umbrellas. She didn’t question me about what I was planning. To tell the truth, I don’t think she cared much. She had already moved out of Toronto and its problems; she was already in Los Angeles defending NTC interests against the moguls at Universal and Warners. When I bugged her to give me numbers where she could be located, she said she’d leave them in an envelope with Sally. We got through the whole afternoon without once looking into one another’s eyes. Last night was already in a sealed box, dropped overboard, only leaving me with the knowledge that she slept with a loaded gun under her pillow.

I don’t know what to say about that part of the night before. As I said, it began with a hug, but it quickly got out of hand. I have been with a few women in my time, but never have these encounters had so much violence and passion and so little personal feeling. Vanessa was good in bed, but scary. When the gun came out from under the pillow, it did nothing for my ability to concentrate. After she had pressed the muzzle into my groin, I tried to get it away from her, tossing the bedclothes around, and she fought, biting and kicking, until I’d thrown it across the room. She tried to retrieve it, but I held on to her. I’ve got scratches on my back to show that she didn’t like being handled this way.

When I’d showered and dressed, I found that she’d thrown a blanket and pillow on a couch for me. The bedroom door was closed.

At one point in the afternoon, the producer Eric Carter joined us just long enough to gloat over the fact that his Christmas show was in the can, on time and less than fifty thousand dollars over budget, which was almost like being under budget, judging from his grin. Vanessa took the news soberly and sent him off with some scripts for series pilots to look at over the weekend. Was that a way to say thanks in television land? I wasn’t sure.

While Vanessa dictated a string of letters to Sally, I went digging in the kitchen for something to eat. I found a brownish orange and half a lemon, nearly turned to stone. I tried these with boiling water and some sugar cubes and promised to treat myself better next week.

“Oh, Mr. Cooperman!” The voice came as a surprise as I strolled the corridor away from the Men’s. I looked behind me. At first the hall looked empty of all but the usual traffic on the blue broadloom-people with letters to photocopy, coffee mugs to return and reports to rewrite-then I saw an arm waving from an open doorway. As I walked back towards it, I tried to recall the fruity voice that hailed me. The answer came a moment before my eyes confirmed my guess. It was Philip Rankin, Music Department. Puffy face, like a fish drowning in air. One of the people trying to get Vanessa to leave NTC. I nearly laughed out loud as I tried to imagine him holding a shotgun.

“You’ve had a merry thought,” he said, waving me into the darkish room. I was surprised that my face was so legible.

“Just surprised that you remembered my name, that’s all.” Rankin’s office was one of the larger kind, with a door leading to a receptionist or secretary, the usual way of gaining entrance to this holy of holies. But Rankin kept his private door open from time to time to catch the traffic coming and going. I couldn’t make myself believe that he was on the lookout for me particularly.

“Take it as a compliment, dear boy. They don’t come around that often that you can ignore them. Accept them, grapple them to your heart and cherish them. But, be on your guard, my dear fellow. These corridors are crowded with spies and deceivers. Take care.” He placed a canny finger alongside his nose.

“I thought a ‘merry thought’ was a wishbone.”

“I’m serious, Mr. Cooperman. This place is as packed with false friends as a piñata.”

“Why would anyone bother? In the short time I’ve been here I’ve learned that the executive assistant is the lowest form of life.”

“Nevertheless. You are close to a hotly contested area.”

“Entertainment?”

“Exactly! The world revolves. Things are happening.”

“I haven’t heard that Vanessa Moss has been eclipsed. When was that announced? Her name was still on her door ten minutes ago.”

“While you are right to question the accuracy of what I’ve just said, I fear that the truth-that she’s not been sacked yet-is a mere quibble. But that doesn’t mean the blades are not being sharpened, my boy. The wagons have been circled, and the wagonmaster has a bee in his bonnet about that woman. Well, it’s only a matter of time.”

“I like your openness. It’s good to know where we stand.”

“You see, it’s only the commercial interests that have saved her this week. The CEO is trying to gauge the reception of our unloading that baggage with the murder thing still unresolved.”

“Are you saying that the advertisers are calling the shots? That NTC is run by snake-oil salesmen?”

“Oh dear! What a low opinion you must have of the medium, Mr. Cooperman. What I meant to say is that they are still trying to see if she fits their definition of a liability. If she’s not a liability-and that has to include all of the publicity she’s garnered both for herself and the network-can she be described as an asset? I think not.”

He must have read an uncomplimentary expression on my face.

“You know, Mr. Cooperman, we have a book of advertising standards that spells out the rules for acceptable commercials. Toilet tissue, for instance, must stress absorbency and softness, but without showing the product near anything made of porcelain. I think snake oil is banned no matter what the approach. We have recently gone in for brand-name companies taking a high-toned institutional approach. ‘The following concert by the late Dermot Keogh was recorded in Madrid with the support of the Morgan Armstrong Corporation and Bix-a-bix Cereal Products.’”

“You knew Dermot Keogh well. I’d forgotten that. I know people in Grantham who have all of his recordings.”

“Yes, dear boy. And he keeps on selling. Luckily, we have a great deal of him on tape and on compact discs. His reputation will not stop growing for another ten years.”

“I remember one summer, up at Dittrick Lake, I was staying with friends and he was giving a radio concert. Warm night. Stars. We turned the radio up loud inside the cottage and listened to the music on the patio where we could look out over the lake. The house became a kind of sounding board for his cello, so that we felt that we were right there at the concert. I’ll never forget that.” It hadn’t actually been Keogh I’d heard, but the adapted anecdote fit the situation.

“That would have been the summer before last. There were no concerts last summer, of course.”

“You said that there are half a dozen biographies about him in the works. Why aren’t you writing one of them? You knew him better than anybody.”

“Too sadly true. I don’t think I’m ready to ride his coattails into the New York Times best-seller list, thank you very much. I’ll not repay his friendship in that way. Why, during his lifetime, someone approached his father-old Michael was still alive then-asking him all sorts of questions about Dermot’s childhood. When he heard about it, Dermot was fit to be tied. ‘If you want to know about me,’ he said, ‘ask me!’ Oh, that wasn’t a good day to be close to him. No, indeed!”

“Was he unforgiving?”

“He was generosity itself in most things. I’ve never known a more liberal spirit. But, on the subject of his own life, especially of his past, he demanded and insisted on holding a tight rein on all the options.”

“A control freak?”

“Something of that. The real mystery is why would he bother. His life was as ordinary as could be. His father was a streetcar conductor and his mother was a kindergarten assistant in a private school. They were neither rich nor poor. Apart from his genius, he was a nobody. I think it was a matter of control for control’s sake. Ray should have known that.”

“Ray?”

“Oh, a friend of his. He went too far.” Rankin wet his lips with the end of his tongue before going on. I made a guess and I was right. He did change the subject. “Mr. Cooperman, it has come to my attention that your work here is at least partly a matter of security. Am I misinformed?”

“I’ve been trying to keep a low profile,” I said.

“Oh, yes, I can appreciate that, dear boy. Does that mean that we are all under suspicion? I just want to be clear about that.”

“Mr. Rankin, the detectives over at 52 Division are in charge of the list of suspects. As for me, I’m still trying to figure out who reports to whom around here and why nobody talks in the elevators.”

“In order to understand this place, Mr. Cooperman, I suggest you arrange a tour of the CIA facilities in Langley, Maryland. It will act as a primer for operatives in these corridors.”

“I’ll remember that. I always like to see the bad guys get punished in the last reel.”

“Oh, I can see that you are going to have a great success around here, Mr. Cooperman.”

* * *

Just after five o’clock, I picked up the information Vanessa had left for me, wished Sally a good weekend and headed out into the streets of Silver City without a care in the world.

For dinner, I wandered up to the Annex, and took my pick of the places that had survived my last stay in Toronto. There was the edge of audacity about my being in this neighbourhood: Sam, my older brother, lived here, and I saw him seldom enough that he would have insisted on my staying with him while I was in Toronto. Not that he enjoyed my company all that much, but he knew the right thing to do even when it killed him. I thought it might be better for me and my work to hold on to my independence and risk running into him on the street. But, avoiding Sam meant that I couldn’t call my parents in Grantham. I knew that Ma’s first question would be, “Have you called your brother, Sam, yet?” So, ignoring my brother was a double headache, one of those family kinds that nag at you whenever your mind clears of other things.

After my pasta and Italian coffee at Via Oliveto, I wandered the bargain-book bins at Book City. I bought a book with maps of what is called “Cottage Country.” I tried to outfit my planned expedition, but beyond what I’ve said, my imagination let me down. I refused to believe that somewhere north of here I might find it difficult to buy certain things. I couldn’t imagine what they might be. I wasn’t going to the source of the Nile, after all. I had no need for gun bearers or cleft sticks. To be on the safe side, I bought a two-litre bottle of mineral water and some dried apricots. You never know. After walking along Bloor Street, past the poor of the city sitting in doorways begging the price of a night’s peace, whether that was a mickey of rye or shelter, I began to feel weary. In spite of them, I felt snug in the heart of the great city. I looked in the windows of the stores on both sides of the street, nearly gave in to a sudden urge to visit Sam a few doors up Brunswick Avenue, but contained it by walking through Book City again with a vagrant mind. Well, not completely vagrant. Part of it at least was back on Belmont Avenue, where I had spent the night waiting for a steak to thaw on the kitchen counter and learning that love play can include the handling of a loaded gun. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the covers of the books on view. I drank in the titles and authors’ names. They all made a good case for their claims on my attention. Recent memories and the unpurchased delights before me rendered me useless for planning ahead. Only my stomach twisted with guilt as I saw all I had yet to read outweigh the little I had. I bought a paperback biography of Dermot Keogh to still the inner voice. I’d lied to Rankin earlier about having read the book. I’d only flipped through the pages. Here was a way to make my fib come true.

Outside, I wandered past the hungry and homeless, paid the pavement tax when I could think fast enough and moved off.

“Any loose change, mister?”

“Sorry, I’ve run out.”

“There’s a guy in that car wants a word with you.”

“Huh?” A green car was parked at the curb.

“You heard me! Keep walkin’.” Before I could turn to get a better look at the source of these marching orders, I felt my arm grabbed hard and a push from the rear propelling me off the curb.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Shut up, Mr. Cooperman.” I’d been shoved into the back seat of a small car. It looked new enough and small enough to make this ridiculous. I’d been thrust tightly against the feet of a man already sitting in the back seat, when the man with his hand on my arm came into the car after me, slamming the door as the car moved out into traffic.

“What’s this all about?” I demanded, not knowing what to expect by way of an answer.

“I said, shut the fuck up! I’ll ask the questions.”

“Okay, I’m not hard to get along with. Ask.”

I tried to take inventory of my new-found playmates. There were three of them: the driver and the two beside me. None of them looked like he could take punishment from Mike Tyson on a good day. They didn’t look like Moose Malloy in Farewell, My Lovely. They didn’t look like dancers from The Phantom of the Opera either. They were youngish, with their hair short except on their faces, which were masked with carefully attended stubble beards.

“When are you going back where you belong, Cooperman?”

“As soon as I can. I’ve got business here, but I’d rather be fishing. Know what I mean?”

It was the driver who was doing the talking. He leaned over the gap between his seat and the passenger seat as he moved through the sluggish traffic. He was wearing a plaid shirt with a gold medallion hanging in the V opening. “It’s not that we don’t like your company around here. But your timing’s bad. You wanna try it again, later?”

“Yeah, in about another ten years,” added a voice from my left.

“Shut the fuck up, Sid!” said the man on my right. “Let Bernie do the talking.”

“The both of you shut up!” I leaned forward, and before I quite knew what I was doing, I reached out and made a snatch for the steering wheel. The two in the back seat grabbed me fast, but the driver turned the wheel to correct for the spin he thought I’d given it. But I’d never reached the wheel, and the car went careering into a car in the outside lane. There was a back-jolting shock as we stopped, the crunch of metal, the sound of a horn and some unexpurgated expletives from the other three men in the car. I collected a punch from my two neighbours. Then a horn or two from the rear brought the driver of the car with a newly folded fender out into the street to bang on Bernie’s window.

“Shit!” he said, opening his door. “I’ll deal with you later!” he added, turning to me.

Traffic was stopped and other motorists came to offer their versions of what had happened. Traffic on Bloor Street was backing up. There was a group of four or five pedestrians crowding our car when I said a polite “Excuse me” to my captors, pushed forward the passenger seat and took to the street. Apart from more expletives from the bearded trio in the green car, I didn’t hear another thing.