The Cooperman Variation

TWENTY-THREE

We were back in the Second Cup across from the police station on Dundas Street. We had coffee and biscotti in front of us and nobody was talking. The café was nearly full of people coming from or going to a show at the art gallery across the street. They looked bright and motivated, which was more than I was feeling. Jack, Jim and Chuck sat looking at me to see if I dared chew a biscotti under their gaze without talking first. I chanced it and they all pounced at once.

“Benny, you’ve got to-”

“Cooperman, we know what you’re up to-”

“Damn it, Benny, what the hell are you messing about in?”

I shrugged to show my complete ignorance of what they were talking about and picked up my coffee. “Wherever I go in this town, somebody’s always leaning on me. What’s the matter with you guys? I’ve just agreed to do three things that may get me killed and all you want is for me to spill my guts out.”

“Who’s going to kill you? Outside this room, I mean?”

“Ken Trebitsch, head of News at NTC, one swell suspect, has just invited me to have a friendly beer with him.

Philip Rankin wants to show me around Dermot Keogh’s old studio down on Clarence Square. He says he has something ‘most particular’ he wants to discuss with me. And to top it off, Ray Devlin, the legal whiz, has just invited me for a sail aboard his yacht tomorrow.”

“How are these invitations dangerous?” Boyd wanted to know.

“All of these invitations are out of character; that makes them highly suspicious. Devlin doesn’t go sailing with sharpies from Grantham, not when they fail to make one hundred and sixty thousand a year. I’m not in his social group. Rankin has no reason to be nice to me. And Trebitsch even admits that the meeting is just another way to get from me what he’s wanted all along.”

“What’s that?”

“The sight of my tail lights heading for the nearest road out of here. He’ll settle for that. Maybe he’d like to see a little blood. I don’t know him well enough to guess.”

“Where are you meeting him and when?”

“In about fifteen minutes,” I said, with a glance at my watch. “At the James Joyce Irish Pub on Bloor Street.”

“I’ll go along,” said Chuck Pepper. “Trebitsch doesn’t know me. And he knows you guys too well. Remember the trial involving Whatshername? That nurse? NTC News was all over that one.” Both Sykes and Boyd looked at one another. That case was not one of their scrapbook cases.

“When are you meeting Devlin?”

“The ROYC ferry dock at the foot of Spadina at six tomorrow night.”

“He say there would be others coming?”

“Yeah, but I won’t be surprised to find myself alone on his slow boat to China.”

“I’d like to wire you before you talk to these guys. You ever worn a wire, Benny?”

“There’s no time. I have to meet Trebitsch right now.”

“Okay, Jim and I’ll head down to Clarence Square now and try to set something up. What’s the number?”

“Eighteen.”

“You won’t see us, Benny, but we’ll be there. Someplace.”

“This is too much like the movies. The ones where the point man gets hit.”

“It could be the breaking of this case. Rankin, Trebitsch or Devlin. You could take all of them, Benny. If there’s a fight, I mean. They’re in worse shape than you are.”

“Good. At least I’m not meeting them together.” Our gang was adjourned after that, with Chuck heading out the door before the rest of us.

I took a taxi to Bloor and Spadina and walked west. A young woman was interviewing a panhandler sitting on a milk crate in a doorway. He looked like he’d been interviewed before; his answers to her questions were well expressed. I tried to look through the clear sections of the frosted glass that covered the windows of the James Joyce Irish Pub. I walked in. To my right stood amps and microphone stands and stools on a rudimentary stage in a window alcove. It was a set-up for some music group who were nowhere in sight. Clearly visible in a seat at the far end of the bar sat Chuck Pepper, with his jacket removed and the sleeves of his shirt rolled up above the elbow. I’m not sure whether the tattoo visible on his left forearm was from the police academy or not. The blond head of a Guinness in front of him had everything under control. Chuck’s upper lip looked like a milk ad. I looked around for Trebitsch or one of his boys, but I couldn’t find them. I ordered a draft of Smithwicks, which sounded suitably Irish, and carried it to a table near a window. To pass the time, I started watching the people passing outside. I divided them into men and women, getting five men to every four women. Then I tried checking men with hats against men without them. Most men didn’t wear them. By the time I was checking skirts and dresses against pants and shorts, I saw Ken Trebitsch step out of a navy blue BMW driven by someone who drove off, while Trebitsch came into the gloom of the pub. He didn’t take long to find me. Then he didn’t waste words.

“Why are the city police letting you meddle around in their investigation?”

“How can they stop me? I’m not corrupting their crime scenes. I’m not strong-arming their suspects. Even when the chief of police gets word of me, and he warns his men about me, I still manage to find things out and put your back up.”

“You think that was me?”

“You’d be my first guess.” Trebitsch didn’t like to feel so transparent. He looked around for a waitress, and found her hard to get, reminding me of Marlowe. I enjoyed watching him flounder; it annoyed him and his image of himself surrounded by yes-men. At last attention was finally paid to this man and he ordered a Coors Lite. “Why do I put your back up? You’re not the only suspect in this murder who works for NTC. How is it that you imagine yourself their best bet?”

“I knew Renata. We go back a long way. I knew she was staying at Vanessa’s house while she was away. I also talked to her on the day she died.”

“Okay, I revise my opinion. Frankly, I didn’t know that. So, you see, I haven’t dug a deep trench into you yet. If you knew that Renata was in the house, not Vanessa, then you’re unlikely to be accused of trying to kill Vanessa. We all know she had enemies, and you were one of them, but you wouldn’t shoot the wrong woman.”

“I didn’t shoot anybody. Yes, I want Vanessa out of Entertainment. I want a bigger share of the time she controls. She won’t compromise because she can generate sweetheart deals for every second of that time. Her successor, who is already waiting in the wings, will cut me more slack. Look, even Vanessa knows her time here is finished. Why is she fighting it?”

“Why do you take it so personally?”

“Because it’s my fucking life. I’m ambitious. That’s not a crime in television.”

“What did you talk to Renata about?”

“She started in about some huge conspiracy. Couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Something to do with Dermot Keogh. I was taking another call and being briefed by one of my people while I was on the phone. Frankly, I never listened to Renata with both ears. She was great, don’t get me wrong, but she was more fun to be with than to listen to. There was a physical dimension. Ask anybody. But that day she was upset. I got that part of the message. Now, tell me when you’ll be returning to Grantham. I’m looking forward to that event. You know that.”

“Why do you want that so bad?”

“The longer you stick around NTC, Mr. Cooperman, the longer Vanessa will keep her job. You bring a whole ambience of unsettled mayhem with you wherever you go. Ted Thornhill’s terrified of you. I know this. Once you’re gone, things will return to normal and Vanessa Moss will leave.”

“I was hired to protect Vanessa. She’ll turn me loose as soon as she’s convinced she’s in no further danger. I think that might be sometime before the weekend.”

“Can you be more precise?”

“I’d like to be out of here by Friday.”

“This is Wednesday.”

“Yes, it usually follows Tuesday. But why are you so worried? There’s something more, Mr. Trebitsch; something you’ve left out. How have I been stamping on your corns?” Trebitsch stared into his beer for a moment, then looked up.

“The first thing I ever sold to this network was an interview with a gravedigger who’d grown disenchanted with his profession. It proved to be a great hit. The guy was really funny. People remembered me as the producer.”

“Well?”

“The interview was a fake. The gravedigger was a struggling filmmaker who’d never held a shovel or dug a grave. That didn’t matter. The item made me. But it continues to haunt me and could unmake me. I’ve never faked anything since, but that four-minute item-we allowed longer items in those days-gives me nightmares. Vanessa knows the truth about that piece. She watched me edit it. She could expose me at any moment.”

“You underestimate her. If she wanted your scalp, she wouldn’t dig up your past. In News, you’re your own worst enemy. ‘The Trebitsch Look’ gets in the way of the stories. Back off on the personal signature, and your stock will go up. Not only here but in California.”

“Who have you been talking to?”

“Never mind, but hear this: Winkler of Warner Brothers is watching you and you keep spoiling the picture. Were you on Lake Muskoka when Dermot Keogh drowned?”

“No. I have a place up there, but Phil Rankin warned me that Dermot had suddenly taken a dislike to all NTC types, Renata Sartori excepted, of course. So, I stayed clear of him. So did Phil, Ray and others. It was too early in the season: April.”

“Why was Raymond Devlin lumped in with you NTC types?”

“He was chief NTC counsel in the CRTC hearings that year.”

“What’s that?”

“Canadian Radio-Television Commission. They supervise and grant licences to broadcasters. They could theoretically pull the plug on all or any of us. But they don’t, no matter how badly we misbehave. That’s the way socalled ‘arm’s length’ politically appointed bodies operate in this country.”

“So Dermot spent that last summer well away from all you broadcasters?”

“The lake held other attractions. Hamp Fisher and his wife, the movie star Peggy O’Toole, had started coming up there. And there were other points of interest.” He smiled at the memory, whatever it was. I tried to imagine his sort of “interest.” Then I examined my watch.

“I’ve got to go. I hope I’ve told you what you wanted to hear.”

“Hey! You haven’t told me about Winkler at Warners!”

“More news, less personality. That’s the ticket.” I could almost see his lips repeating my invented comment. I could see that I might have a future in this business.

“Goodbye, Cooperman. Remember, what I told you was said in confidence.”

“Look, Trebitsch, if I didn’t respect confidences, I wouldn’t stay in business a week. It’s a habit. But I have to find things out in order to find things out. So long.” I got up, and left it to Ken Trebitsch to pay for my beer.

There was a taxi hovering near Ye Olde Brunswick House across the street. I grabbed it, and the driver whisked me down to King and Spadina. It was a neighbourhood of ancient sock factories and seed warehouses. The old garment district was just north of King. Here, traffic caught its breath for the ramps of the Gardiner Expressway at the last-chance gas station. In the middle of all this, I found a lush, green patch: old trees with wooden seats running around the trunks and park benches. On the north side stood a solid wall of townhouses going back to the 1870s, the remnant of a square that once boxed in the park. Number eighteen was the easternmost of the houses. It looked as though it had once had a bigger building to lean against, but that had been bulldozed away, leaving the exposed, windowless flank to the elements.

The house had a Georgian feel to it: fanlight over the door, fluted brass doorknob. The entrance looked like one on a poster I once saw of front doors of Dublin. I banged on the black woodwork. When nothing happened, I tried the huge knob. It turned. I stepped into a hall that was big enough to accommodate the walking sticks of all the elected members of the 1890 House of Commons. White stairs led up to a second floor that looked dark and uninviting. The hall leading into the back of the ground floor looked more promising.

It was a huge room, originally the kitchen of the house. An old-fashioned sink and drip board in heavy porcelain dominated the side of the room with a window. But stuffed chairs, overstuffed couches, recording machines, loudspeakers the size of boxcars, racks and racks of recording tape, and cans of film formed the focus of the studio. A double door, such as you find in a radio studio, cut off the room from the rest of the house. A wall of sound-absorbing tiles had been built against the back wall, killing noises from King Street, which backed on the property. The studio was also littered with paper: paper on desks, paper on chairs and couches. A stack of magazines overflowed against a table leg upon which half a dozen film scripts, no two lying parallel, had been scattered. They say that there is such a thing as the genius of a particular room: the room where Bach composed or where Robert Louis Stevenson wrote carries something of the essence of its owner through time. Although Dermot Keogh had been gone a year, his personality and quirks were etched on everything in the room, from the battered upright piano, a bench so broken and dangerous that it might have belonged to Glenn Gould, to the open cello case carelessly left open on a couch. The cello itself rested against a heavy music stand, the base of which was buried in music manuscripts.

“Mr. Rankin?” I called out over deadly silence. My voice sounded as crisp as a rifle shot. But there was no answer. I looked at my watch. I was on time. “Mr. Rankin!” I shouted again. Again, no answer.

Quickly I made the rounds of the rest of the place. It was plain to see that the house was not now lived in, nor had it been inhabited for a good long time. In one room, long regimental photographs on ancient wallpaper showed that the room had not been used since shortly after the First World War. The front room, which looked out on the park, had been more recently used. The walls had been painted over embossed wallpaper. Bookshelves had been rigged on the right and left of a marble fireplace. A lone peacock feather sat in a corner with a portrait of the solemn, bearded founder of the Salvation Army. (He was identified in small print at the bottom.)

The third floor was full of rooms, all of them empty, except for a pile of warped cardboard backings that photographs had once been pasted to. Now the photographs were curled into shapes like giant pasta shells. I tried to straighten one of them out, and it broke with my effort. It was a picture of a curly-headed bus driver leaning from the window of his rustic bus, holding a rose in his smiling teeth.

I returned to the studio and made a better search. To one side of the piano, under an old drafting table, I found Philip Rankin. His stillness suited the quiet of the studio. When I turned him over, I could see a bloodstain on the front of his shirt. I thought it was odd that the smell of a gunshot wasn’t still hanging about in this airless room. But there was no hint of powder in the air. I poured myself a glass of cloudy water. The pipes groaned at the intrusion.

Rankin had been alive half an hour ago, according to his face. His fingers were still flexible and lividity had only just started, as I could see through his shirt. The little blood that surrounded the wound was hardly sticky yet. Stepping back, and holding on to the piano for support, I could see where he’d been dragged. He must have been standing or sitting in one of the few chairs that weren’t burdened with papers. I lifted the cushion. There was blood on the other side, and more under it on the chair.

No murder weapon was in sight. If it hadn’t been a gun, and the lack of the right smell convinced me that it hadn’t, then Rankin had been stabbed. But then I remembered what I’d heard about Dermot Keogh: he hated sharp objects. A quick look in the drawers under the shelves near the sink showed nothing sharper than a pencil or a cake of rosin.

“Well, well, what have we here?” It was Jack Sykes, with Jim a step or two behind him. “Your pal Rankin stand you up?”

“Not exactly,” I said. I hadn’t heard them come in. Neither had the murder victim heard the murderer, I thought. A possibility.

“What’s the matter, Benny? You look like you need to sit down.”

“Yeah, you’re as white as the walls,” added Jim. “Sit down.”

“Can’t,” I said. “Can’t foul the murder scene.” Their surprise was noted and I pointed to the body under the drafting table. Jim quickly got busy on his cellphone, while Jack examined the body. I tried to stay out of the way. I had to excuse myself and run up the stairs to the bathroom when Jack lifted the body again to look at the mortal wound. Rankin’s toupée had slipped to one side, adding a dimension something like the unkindest cut of all. By the time I came downstairs, cops of all sizes, shapes and ranks had appeared. I gave my statement to two different officers before I was allowed to leave.

When I got back to the New Beijing Inn, I reached for soap, a washcloth and the shower. Shortly after that, I was in a deep sleep, more like oblivion than a real snooze. And that’s the way I stayed for the next hour and a half.