The Cooperman Variation

TWENTY-FIVE

I arrived back at the ROYC main dock, towed by a police launch that had been alerted by the duty commodore of the club. My erratic thrashing around, my many attempts to sail directly against the wind, finally attracted attention. If ever a fine boat hung its head, Sir Edward did. The police corporal at the controls of the launch that towed me back to the club had never heard of Sykes or Boyd. Later, Jack Sykes told me that they had had a helicopter circling above the Sir Edward Coke all the time. I never heard it. It’s one of those stories you’d like to believe.

They never found Devlin’s body. He was gone. Maybe he got to the life preserver and made it to the American side of the lake. Maybe he is now searching titles in a Rochester registry office. In a pig’s eye. He was gone in another way: gone not meaning simply not here. And I couldn’t make myself feel good about it.

Someone rescued my street clothes from the cabin of the yacht. I remember glimpses of ROYC members fussing over me as though I were Robinson Crusoe thrown up on Centre Island. A woman with blue hair gave me half a sandwich. A shot of rye was administered; I never found out who paid for it. I recall trying to explain that I was unharmed, that it was the other guy who could use some help. But by now it was dark and far too late to launch a search-and-rescue operation. So all of this unsolicited energy for good deeds centred on me. I fell asleep on the ferry, and the taxi left me at the New Beijing Inn without my being fully aware of the fact. The rest of the night was divided equally between unruffled sleep and nightmares of a nautical nature that I don’t want to go into right now.

Friday

When I awoke, the sun was stealing the colours from my bedclothes, and the bed was not quite fixed firmly to the floor. The phone was ringing. I don’t know when the ringing started. It was Vanessa. “Benny, Sergeant Sykes just called me and told me all about it. What a narrow escape!”

“Thanks. What time is it?”

“Time you started looking for another job, Benny. I don’t need protecting any more. You’re fired!” I thought that there would be more, but she’d left the line. I was fired, and she’d hung up.

I pulled myself from the bed and into the shower. My body felt tender all over. A few bruises had appeared where I don’t remember hitting myself. My face in the steamy mirror looked wraith-like. I tidied it as well as I could and took the elevator down to the ground to find something to eat.

Sykes and Boyd were waiting for me in the Open Kitchen. Pepper was late, by the look of it. He arrived after I’d got down my first swallow of morning coffee. We sat staring at one another. I crunched dry white toast. Orange juice helped. So did a second cup of coffee.

“Are you going to tell us about this or what, Benny?” Sykes asked. “We tried to discourage you from getting involved with this thing, but you didn’t listen. Now it’s time to pay the consequences. Spill your guts, or we will spill them for you.”

“Jack, I wouldn’t hold out on you. Just let me wake up a little, okay?”

“Sure, take all the time you need, just so long as you’re talking in ten seconds.”

“Where do you want me to start? I’m not sure where the beginning is. Where a guy like Devlin steps off the curb into a set-up like this is more a matter for a shrink. He had a screw loose, that’s certain.”

“Save the theorizing. We’ll settle for a few gory details.”

“Okay, okay. The basic scam was this: Devlin and his pals tried to suppress the last will and testament of Dermot Keogh, late of this parish.”

“What? What are you talking about? All through this case we keep bumping into Keogh’s will. That’s what set up the Dermot Keogh Hall. That’s what Devlin was administering.”

“That was Keogh’s second-last will, and as such, it doesn’t count. The will that set up the concert hall, that put Devlin and Foley and Rankin in the business of managing Keogh’s estate, was superseded by a later will, which they tried to bury.”

“Take your time, Benny. We’re listening. When did all this take place?”

“Dermot made the first will-well, it may not have actually been his first, but it is the first one that involves us-while he was pals with Devlin, Foley and Rankin. It set them up in good style forever. Only trouble was, Raymond spoiled things. He got Dermot peeved at him trying to research Dermot’s past: visited his sick father, asked him to paint for him a portrait of the artist as a young man. Guess who became angry at him and went off and made a new will? Ed Patel was the lawyer who drew it up. He’s in hospital in Bracebridge and unaware that the earlier will is the one probated. Renata Sartori was a witness to this will. So was Alma Orchard, Patel’s long-time secretary. Both of these women were murdered to keep them quiet. Dermot was killed too, so that he couldn’t make more trouble and to get the estate established. Only a few people knew about the new will.”

“Three murders! Is that what you’re saying?” Chuck Pepper looked stunned.

“More than three. Bob Foley was killed too, because he was getting out of hand. He planted the spent shotgun shells in Vanessa’s locker. He thought it would confuse things. That undermined Devlin’s plan. Foley was turning into a liability. Loose cannon rolling across the gun deck. His petty crimes, such as keeping Keogh’s Jaguar and motorcycle collection, threatened to expose the bigger deception.”

“Correct me if I was hearing things, but did you just say that Dermot Keogh was murdered?”

“I said that.”

“Who killed Keogh?”

“Foley, under orders from Devlin. He monkeyed with the regulator of Keogh’s aqualung after they picked up the equipment at McCordick Brothers’ Marina. Renata was there, as well as Hampton Fisher and some strangers. Nobody’d suspect Foley because he was always tuning up the gear. That was the only killing last year. For a few months it looked like Renata was going to be a team player. She kept quiet about the suppression of the new will for nearly a year. But the conspirators could see that she wasn’t going to stay bought. At any time she could go public with her story. She had a new boyfriend; she could easily tell him. Ray killed Renata and Alma Orchard the same day. He drove up north, collected the shotgun from Patel’s place, where he’d seen it many times hanging over the fireplace. He took shells from there too. He dropped in on Alma, Patel’s legal secretary, surprising her on her way to a church bake sale and thumped her on the back of her head. He removed her clean clothes, put her in the tub and added the radio to the bathwater.”

“Nasty touch,” said Boyd. Sykes just made a face.

“Then he went through Patel’s office using her keys. That’s when he destroyed copies of the new will. He returned the keys and drove home to Toronto.

“That same night, Monday, the fifteenth, he shot Renata. She was about to spill her guts to Barry Bosco, her boyfriend. While he headed north again, to return the gun, Foley came in and took the spent shells. For him, it was easy to get into Vanessa’s office. He used a bolt cutter to remove Vanessa’s lock on her locker. When he’d put the evidence inside, he snapped on his own lock, thinking that nobody would check the combination of a cut-off lock.”

“Still harping on that damned lock!”

“Things remained calm for a while. First, everybody was convinced that it was Vanessa who’d been murdered. That suited Devlin fine. Later, the idea that Renata had been an accidental victim suited him just as well. Everything was coming up roses, until Foley walked off the Vic Vernon show. He was showing an independence above his station. That worried Devlin. It drew attention to Foley’s powers under Dermot’s will. When you test the fingerprint you found on the rubber glove in Foley’s kitchen with one of Devlin’s, I think you’ll get a match.”

“What did Trebitsch have to do in all this?”

“Not much. He didn’t kill anybody. He’s basically a busybody; has to know what’s going on. Insecure, you know?”

“What about Philip Rankin? How deeply involved was he?”

“He kept his mouth shut about suppressing the later will. He made the most of his Keogh connections at the network. But I don’t think he had the guts to kill anybody. But he knew that the killing was part of the plan. He was guilty of keeping his mouth shut, of conspiracy, of fraud and of being an accessory to one, two, three, four murders. Take your pick. He may not have known the details, but he collected all the benefits, including a cello named Hector.”

“Rankin was stabbed all right. We established that much before you left. But, Benny, there wasn’t a knife found at the scene. Not a knife, blade, shiv, nothing that could have made that single, deep, deadly wound in Rankin’s chest. I’m not talking about a tiny weapon: this one had to be at least a foot long.”

“Yeah,” said Jim Boyd. “And our searches haven’t turned it up. We’ve been into every sewer and gutter in the neighbourhood. We’ve been behind billboards and in empty warehouses: no murder weapon. Nothing like what we’re looking for at Devlin’s home or office.”

“That’s right. It wasn’t at the scene and it wasn’t in the vicinity. Nor did we get reports of somebody running down the street with a bloody knife in his hand.”

“I’d heard that Keogh was very strict about having sharp objects in his studio,” I said. “But I went over it in a dream last night. In my sleep I went through the room with a fine-toothed comb.”

“It’s your time. What did you come up with?”

“The murder weapon.”

“Don’t kid, Benny. Nobody likes a kidder.”

“That’s right,” said Chuck Pepper.

“Tell us about this dream.”

“Who’s buying breakfast?”

“I am,” all the others said together.

When we had all had our coffee cups refilled and finished off what was left of toast, bacon or egg on our plates, I took another deep breath and got back into the story. “You remember that studio room on the ground floor. It was crowded with stuff. Well, last night in this dream, I let my closed eyes wander over the whole room. You know, the way a camera scans a room in the movies when there’s some point to be made by a slow pan across the set?”

“Sure, I know the movies,” Jack said. “Get on with it.”

“Well, from one end to the other, there was nothing that could have killed Rankin, unless you pushed the piano over on him. And that’s what unlocked it: the idea that a musical instrument could be used in such a sinister way. Then, in my sleep, I saw Hector-”

“Hector who, damn it?”

“Hector was the name Dermot Keogh gave to his Strad. You know, his cello.”

“What about Hector, then?”

“Cellos don’t sit on the floor, Jack. They are supported by a peg or pin at the bottom. Some early instruments don’t have them. Keogh’s Strad did.”

“When are you going to finish? Next Tuesday?”

“I remembered that Keogh’s Strad was supposed to have gone to the University of Toronto’s Hart House Collection of old stringed instruments. Under Keogh’s will, the one that Devlin and the others were using as their magic carpet. If it was supposed to go to the university, why was it still in Dermot’s studio a year later? Then I could see, Rankin was as greedy about Strads as Foley was about motorcycles. Devlin couldn’t handle that. And when he overheard that Rankin wanted to meet me at Dermot’s studio to tell me something, Devlin got homicidally angry again.”

“Are you saying that Rankin was stabbed with a Stradivarius, Benny?”

“That’s what I said. You can check for blood on the retracted pin. But don’t let your forensic people cut it open or carve it up. Then there won’t be anything for the university or whoever its new owner is.”

“Christ, Cooperman, you’re breaking my heart!”

“Where did you get this from, Benny?” Jim asked.

“I remembered Bob Foley’s shed, back of his house. He had been doing some metalwork not long before he was killed. On the bench was a rubber ring, a ferrule, the sort of thing you put on the cello’s pin, the strut-thingy, the leg it stands on so it won’t slip. Foley had sharpened the end to a sharp point, then covered it with the usual rubber tip.”

“Why?”

“Maybe he didn’t want to be alone in Keogh’s weaponless studio with people like Devlin around. How Devlin found out about it, we’ll never know.”

“Maybe Foley and Devlin had been planning to get rid of Rankin for quite a spell,” said Chuck, who had been quiet for some time.

“How do you know for a fact that Devlin didn’t remove the spent shells from the scene of Renata’s murder by himself? Why bring Foley into it?” Jack was looking just a little like a well-fed cat just then.

“We know that Foley hid the shells where they would be found so that blame would fall on Vanessa. That had nothing to do with Devlin’s plan of killing Renata and letting you think that she was killed in error. So, if Foley was involved in disposing of the shells, it’s a safe bet that he removed them from the scene.”

“You once said you had a witness to this.”

“That’s right. I have, but we don’t need him. We’ve got a case without him.”

“What have you left out?” Jim Boyd wanted to know.

“Lots of things, but from what I’ve said, you can see all the big pieces.”

“Does that wrap things up, Benny?” Sykes wanted to know.

“Probably not. But it’s as close as I can get to it right now. Detecting’s a hit-and-miss operation the way I work it. I don’t have the staff to be methodical. Maybe there will be a clearer picture up ahead somewhere.”

“If you guys are finished with your breakfast,” Chuck Pepper observed, “I reckon it’s nearly time to start thinking about lunch. Anybody second that?”