The Cooperman Variation

SEVEN

A hotel bed may be the ideal place for many things in this life, but sleep isn’t one of them. At least not in the New Beijing Inn. The traffic on Bay is slow to die, and it gets started again about the time the early edition of The Globe and Mail hits the street. Nearby construction also gets up with the pigeons and sparrows, most of which were camped outside my window.

I had ended my first day in Toronto by having dinner in the Treasure House, a downstairs Chinese restaurant that Sykes suggested, not far from the bus terminal on Bay. The steamed rice was good for a stomach that didn’t travel well or often. It was a friendly enough place and bargains were pasted up along the walls in Chinese characters. I got the idea that if you could read the language, you could dine for next to nothing. But I was on expenses, so I didn’t let it worry me. From there, it was a short walk back to the hotel. A small crowd had gathered outside the Chinese Baptist church just off Dundas. I walked closer. While there were several Chinese faces, most of them were non-Asian. It seemed a strange time for worship-it was pushing 9:45 P.M. When I saw the coffee urn in the hands of one of the women, I knew that I’d blundered into an AA meeting. I continued on the gohome trail. Every step seemed to be taking me farther away from the bright lights and wicked deeds of the Ontario capital. Two hours before midnight and Silver City was letting me down.

I bought a paper and a TV Guide and spent some time in my room watching the NTC late-evening shows. Spread out with my paper on the bed, with the TV blaring, I felt as though the colour was draining out of my life and finding a new home through some electronic transfusion in the box. Everybody on the tube seemed to be having one hell of a fine time. Even Vic Vernon, the talkshow host, was in good form. He was interviewing a diplomat just back from Albania, while a strongman from a circus was having a cinder block broken on his chest through the agency of a blonde, leopard-skinned bodybeautiful with a sledgehammer.

Vic took a moment, with his face close to the camera, to pay a solemn fifteen-second tribute to the late Bob Foley, a friend to all and a brother to everyone on the show. Then, without a wasted second, he grinned to the camera and announced that he would be right back. When he returned after what seemed to me an endless stream of commercials, he talked to a young actress who had just played a young man in a movie. On the face of it, it was unlikely casting. The conversation didn’t touch on playing a particular character, it lingered on the cross-dressing aspect. I yawned and switched off the set. I’d given my pint for today, I thought, and picked up the paper.

It was sometime after that when I dimmed my light and discovered the problems of the bed and the bedding. The bedding made a good first impression: it was white and wrinkleless, smelling of Bounce, but on closer acquaintance, it proved to be sleep-resistant. I could make no lasting impression in the pillows, punch them as I might. At least the moving shadows on the ceiling were a distraction. If I got any sleep, they probably paved the way.

Thursday

I was in the office before Sally Jackson had changed out of her walking shoes into her sitting-behind-a-desk shoes. She wasn’t particularly happy to see me. She told me that Ms. Moss never appeared before ten, as though this were a natural phenomenon comparable to the tidal bore on the Bay of Fundy.

“By the way, Mr. Cooperman, you had a call a few minutes ago.” She handed me a blue slip that was covered with numbers.

“What kind of call is this?” I said aloud, although I hadn’t meant to.

“Overseas. Would you like me to get it for you?” I nodded vigorously and handed back the paper. In under a minute she said my name. I picked up and said “Hello” without much conviction.

“Benny? Is that you?”

“Anna! Where are you? How’d you find me?”

“Rapolano Terme. It’s near Siena in Tuscany. I checked your answering service and then had a chat with Frank. He gave me your Toronto numbers.”

“I thought you’d be in Paris by now. How’s the weather?”

“Glorious. We’re pushing the season a little, but at least we’re ahead of the crowds.”

“‘We,’ who’s ‘we’? You’re not on a tour.”

“Oh, I met Andrew Moser on the plane when I was bumped up to First. He’s a mushroom grower from California. He’s been sort of looking after me.”

“Nice,” I said through my teeth.

“I’d forgotten how charming some wealthy men can be.”

“Nice. Are you seeing your fill of the galleries?”

“More than that. Andy loves food and we’ve been on a food orgy, on a high level, you understand. We’ve run down a few great spots. It’s like Bloor Street in Toronto. This place is a famous spa, although I haven’t taken more than a sample of the waters.”

“Nice. When will you leave for Paris?”

“My first lecture’s not until Monday, the twelfth, in the old place I told you about on the rue d’Ulm. Remember?”

“I miss you.”

“I’ll be home in a couple of weeks. You can tell me what you’re up to in Toronto when I see you.”

“Right. I’ll be talking to you.” Anna said goodbye, and I started wondering what that was all about. Was it an announcement of some kind? It would be a little after lunch-time in Italy. I wondered whether she’d eaten yet or whether her mushroom millionaire had left her waiting at the hotel. Maybe he was planning a late supper that evening in some out-of-the-way hilltop village. How do I know he’s a millionaire? Is this my day-dream or yours? I thought about the morning coffee I hadn’t had yet. Sally was at the door. It took me a moment to recross the Atlantic. I squeezed the bridge of my nose to force my concentration.

“Do you know where Vanessa’s staying right now, Sally? Since the murder, I mean.”

“If Ms. Moss wants you to know, I’m sure she’ll tell you, Mr. Cooperman. I have instructions not to tell anyone.”

“Good point,” I said, and began sifting through some pages in front of me on my desk, like I was busy at something. When I looked at them, actually focusing, I saw that they were the rundowns I’d asked for yesterday.

On top was a name and phone number: Frances Scerri. Ah, yes: Vanessa’s sister. The one she’s not on speaking terms with. I put it in my pocket. Under that I found a hierarchical chart that divided the page into several boxes. The first box on the left had Chairman written at the top. His name was Hampton Fisher, and he was NTC’s controlling shareholder, owning forty-two per cent of the A shares. Hampton Fisher and I had never met, but I had known his wife, Peggy O’Toole, the movie star, about ten years ago when she was making Ice Bridge in Niagara Falls. I got to know her fairly well, now I come to think of it, but her standoffish, germ-fearing husband so rarely came out in public he was being accused of being Howard Hughes back from the dead. He had surrounded himself with flunkies in Niagara Falls, rented a whole floor at the Colonel John Butler Hotel, and watched people’s comings and goings through a series of TV monitors. If he and Peggy had had any children, I never heard about it. Yet they stayed married, which was an improvement on Hughes. Fisher had not scrimped and saved to make his fortune, nor had he beat his way to the top pushing less dedicated entrepreneurs out of his way. He was born into a successful newspaper family. It was his grandfather who’d done all the pushing and shoving. Hamp simply inherited it all when his father died. For that reason, many tried to write off Hamp Fisher. He was easy to put down: the drinking water he had flown in from California, the thermometer he carried at all times, his peculiar diets. All this gave reporters from opposition papers a field day whenever he threatened to take over another group of dailies. To tell the truth, Fisher had weeded and trimmed his garden of papers, pruning the unproductive ones and fertilizing the promising. His grandfather would have been proud of him. More recently, having put the papers in a holding company, he had been buying up television stations and setting up the newest of our TV networks. I guess it beat collecting stamps.

Two lines had been drawn from the Chairman box. The top one ran to a box marked Board of Directors. On it, I would find that the members, friendly outsiders, plus the chairman and the president, owned another twenty-six per cent of the A shares. The names of the friendly outsiders didn’t light up my sky at once, but on a second reading I recognized the name Ted Thornhill. Hell, I’d even met him! He was the guy who made a guest appearance at the signing of the Dermot Keogh Hall contracts, the man who’d arrived with his own photographer. He was the president and general manager, the chief executive officer of the whole shebang. Not only did his name appear in a list of the Board of Directors, but it appeared just below it in a box all his own, joined by a line to the Chairman box. A vertical line ran down from the President, General Manager amp; CEO box to a horizontal line from which depended several boxes: Finance, Programming, Advertising amp; Sales, News. All of these were vice-presidents. Again, the names here meant nothing to me.

I tried to remember what I once knew about shares in limited corporations. The A shares were voting shares, the preferred shares held by a few insiders. The B shares were publicly traded. The insiders were allowed to own only five per cent of the B shares, according to what my paper said. That left twenty-seven per cent of the remaining B shares widely owned in small batches. I put this page away for future reference after checking to see that Vanessa’s name turned up in a box of its own directly under David L. Simbrow, the vice-president of programming. She was designated Head of Entertainment. Her name had been inserted where that of Nathan Green had been removed.

I called out to Sally, “What happened to Nate Green, Sally? Where did he fit into the frame of things?” Sally looked at me for a good deal longer than I thought necessary to prepare an answer.

“Mr. Green died three months ago, Mr. Cooperman. Cancer of the oesophagus. Very sad.” As soon as she’d said it, I remembered Vanessa telling me on our first official outing together. Meanwhile, Sally had gone back to her reading, once she’d passed on her news. Again I abruptly pulled her attention away from the copy of Billboard she was clipping.

“But Ms. Moss has been here for a year, more or less. What department was Mr. Green moved to?” I was plainly annoying Sally now, and she slapped down the paper on top of a stack of out-of-town newspapers.

“He had several titles: first he was vice-president of Arts and Entertainment for a time, switched to become a senior assistant to Mr. Thornhill, then he was made vicepresident of Arts and Sciences. That was his title at the time of his death.”

“I see. Who’s the vice-president of Arts and Sciences right now, Sally?”

“There isn’t one. I don’t expect there will be.”

“So, it was created for Green and died with him?”

“That’s one opinion, Mr. Cooperman.”

“Do you have another?”

“The charter of the National Television Corporation has always insisted that we have a mandate to keep the arts and sciences within our purview. Some think that we have been lax in this area. Having a vice-president in charge tended to defuse that criticism.”

“So, the ailing Nate Green helped quell the charge of programming for the lowest common denominator.”

“Mr. Cooperman,” she said, colouring just a little, “we program to a wide popular audience, not to the lowest common denominator.”

“You believe that?” I asked, but was destined not to get an answer, for at this moment Vanessa Moss thundered into the room banging down a full briefcase on the broadloom. Once again, she was beautifully turned out, thanks to her friend at Holt’s. This morning she wore a navy pinstripe with a white collar open at the throat and pointing down towards the sort of cleavage that should never be worn by applicants for junior positions at NTC. Boards are notoriously puritanical.

“Where the hell have you been?” There could be no mistake about who she meant.

“I could be dead and buried by now and you wouldn’t know about it until you saw the noon news. Come on, Benny. Get with the program!” I told her that I’d spent the late afternoon with Sykes and his partner, examining the scene of the crime and checking over what measures they had taken to see that no harm comes to her. “And?” she demanded.

“And, yes, the cops have taken steps. They are tailing you day and night. I might have checked in with you, but you didn’t leave me with an address or phone number. They also told me you were in Niagara Falls the day before yesterday, not Niagara-on-the-Lake. Funny how they get these things wrong, isn’t it?” She lowered her guns, and tried to smooth things over.

“I can explain about that. It was a secret meeting with the Shaw Festival artistic director. He suggested we not be seen too close to his present employers.”

“But you failed to tell me the truth, innocent as it appears to be.”

“Coffee?”

I nodded. Sally got up to go fetch. “By the way, Sally, did you get the things I asked you to get for Mr. Cooperman?”

“They were waiting for me on my desk when I got here an hour ago, Vanessa.”

“Good,” Vanessa said through her teeth, without looking up, and Sally stalked out on her morning mission, her trade journals left unattended on her desk. Vanessa began sorting through the newly arrived paper in her IN box. “The daily hell,” she announced. So, after frowning for five minutes, I started telling her about my meetings with Sykes and Boyd. When I stopped talking, she said, “They think I did it. They still think I did it!”

“Not necessarily, Vanessa. Sure, they’re watching you, but that’s at least partly to see that what happened to Renata doesn’t happen to you too. To tell you the truth, I don’t think Sykes himself knows what he thinks happened. All he’s doing is hedging his bets. That’s the best he can do. He’s also making sure that Bob Foley’s suicide is properly gone into. Foley may have been pissed off at the Vic Vernon people, but even Vic Vernon doesn’t drive everybody to suicide. What do you know about him?”

“Vic’s an egomaniacal-”

“Not Vernon. You told me about him already. I mean Foley.”

“Bob? I don’t know. He was a good technician. One of the best, so I understand. I don’t deal directly with the grips, riggers, lighting and sound people, Benny. The job just won’t let me. I know that there are cameramen, and I recognize most of them, but that’s out of my realm. Bob Foley I know by reputation. He was good at what he did. So good that Dermot Keogh got him to do all of his last Canadian recordings. Wouldn’t work with anybody else.”

“Yesterday in the car you mentioned a foundation. Raymond Devlin spoke of it too.”

“Oh, yes. Bob was one of the trustees of Dermot’s foundation. Under Dermot’s will, Raymond set up the Plevna Foundation. Don’t ask me what Plevna means. The foundation basically establishes bursaries for brilliant but poor music scholars, and thinks up new ways to spend Dermot’s posthumous earnings, which are considerable.”

“How did that happen? Dermot was a well-known, world-famous celebrity; Foley a fine, but obscure, technician. Wasn’t there some social and economic distance between them?”

“Dermot was many things, Benny, some of them maddening, but he was not a snob. He and Foley, in the course of their recording work for the last two years of his life, grew close to one another. Dermot attended Foley’s father’s funeral. Foley had keys to Dermot’s downtown studio. He drives Dermot’s old Jaguar. I heard-this is hearsay, because I didn’t get it first-hand- that Foley once complained that working with Dermot included walking his dog, staying up all night and moving furniture from Toronto to Dermot’s summer place. Dermot loved the diamond in the rough, Benny. He introduced me to amateurish ivory carvers with no talent, a virtuoso bubblegum artist and a charming panhandler who made his home at the corner of Bloor and Walmer Road. Outside, on the street.”

“How old was Foley?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Ask the cops,” she said, unbuttoning her jacket. Here I was treated to what every male in my class at Grantham Collegiate Institute and Vocational School would have killed to see: a little more of Stella Seco than Stella noticed was on display. When she saw my expression, she made an adjustment, clucking her tongue. “Benny, won’t you ever grow up?”

“If taking you for granted, Vanessa, is mature behaviour, then I hope to stay in short pants forever.”

“I suppose that’s very sweet, but from over here it’s boring.”

There was something calculated about Vanessa’s sudden unbuttoning of her jacket. She knew the effect it would have on me. Was she trying to change the subject?

“What does Vanessa Moss have planned for today?” She looked at an electronic appointment book and snapped it shut after a few seconds’ study.

“Yesterday, you met the junior executives trying to boot me from my Entertainment throne. This morning, you’ll meet the senior executives equally dedicated to the same noble purpose.”

“How is it you manage to make all these people mad at you?”

“I don’t take shit, Benny. Not from incompetents below me or above me without making damned sure everybody knows about it. I chose to come into broadcasting a long time ago. In my way, I care about it. I’m not going to carry the can for those bastards who can’t see higher than the bottom line. That’s my answer. You’ll have to get Sally drunk some night and pump her for her version. Sally’s separated, by the way. Do you think you can melt such frosty, unmalleable clay? I’d like to see it, but not on my time. You hear?” I loved the way Vanessa could make a subversive suggestion and, a moment later, accuse you of thinking it up on your own.

The meeting of top executives took place in the boardroom at the end of the corridor on the twenty-first floor. It was a big room that tried to look impressive. Until you recognized the sober-faced portraits on the wall as set decorations from everything from Martha O’Malley’s Children and The Bartletts of Oak Street to The Blue Team and Northern Cross, you might have been taken in. The books on the beautiful dark wood shelves were more studio cast-offs. Fake books. Just the spines showed. My respect for this bunch was quickly going downhill. The centre of the table, which was an amazing bit of woodcraft, was reserved for the CEO of NTC. The table must have been built here from a kit of some kind. It certainly didn’t come through any of the doors I’d seen. Ted Thornhill, too, would have had difficulty getting through some doors. But here he could be sure that there were no living or inanimate obstacles between him and his high-backed black leather chair. Apart from the abundance of Ted Thornhill and his pink, wagging chins, I could see that he moved with a certain balletic grace. When he stood, it was with a boxer’s firm stance; when he sat, it was an act of will, not the passive subsidence of oneeighth of a ton of flesh and bone.

He was soon surrounded by his fellow board members and the vice-presidents. As head of Entertainment, Vanessa almost counted as a vice-president, but not quite. Except for me and a stenographer in Yves Saint-Laurent glasses, Vanessa was the lowest life form present. All the others carried voting stock totalling just over a quarter of the voting shares. But this didn’t look like that kind of board meeting. None of the four women present had had their hair done for the occasion. Only Thornhill sported a boutonnière and it looked like a leftover from an earlier event. Once more, Vanessa tried to introduce me to her colleagues and no one looked up. Papers were exchanged across the table. The steno distributed photocopied pages all round. Even I got a set. I wondered whether all boards were like this.

When it came to Vanessa’s turn at bat, she described her fall line-up of programs: which of the old ones were coming back and on what terms, what new series were coming and from which production house. “We’ve finally rung the knell on The Newton Street Mob. After three years of decline, I’ve washed my hands of it.”

“You told Christopher Hodges that he was fired? I don’t believe it!” This from the dark man with a moustache sitting next to Thornhill. He liked to quarrel with everybody.

“That’s your scenario, Ken, not mine. I made him a low offer and he declined to accept it. There was no blood on the floor. As a newsman, you should get your facts straight.”

And so it went, on and on. Vanessa kept her mouth shut unless she was addressed by name. One fellow kept chirping up that in cases like this-I forget what “this” was-justice must not simply be done, but it must be seen to be done. I figured him for the idiot son of a wealthy family. Thornhill’s skill in handling a meeting was on a par with Vanessa’s, only, if anything, Vanessa allowed a little more expression. Nobody tested Thornhill’s loyalty to the firm. Nobody was shocked when he referred to a program carried on a rival network. I remembered that at Vanessa’s meeting, one of her underlings saw such a reference as a heresy. After hearing his comments on the reports of several of his vice-presidents, I could see Vanessa’s point about Thornhill being a beancounter and not from show business or broadcasting. His closest approach to greasepaint came from sitting in an aisle seat two rows away from the orchestra pit. When I think about it now, he seemed like a good interim head, but not an enterprising, go-ahead sort of leader. Hamp Fisher could do better than this conservative heavyweight.

I asked Vanessa in a whisper who the fellow called Ken was. He seemed to be the only one in the room who wasn’t a yes-man.

“That’s Ken Trebitsch, VP of News. That’s the most powerful job. He pushes the rest of us around. Especially Entertainment. He’s always trying to steal time from us for news specials. Then we never get the time back again. He’s practically the only real broadcaster in the room. No, that’s unfair, I’m forgetting Philip Rankin over there.” She indicated a sloping chin I’d hardly noticed across the table. Philip Rankin wore a dark bird’s nest of a wig, cut to look fashionably silky and shaggy, a conservative grey suit and an unlined, slightly bewildered face.

“What’s his department?”

“Music. He’s head of all music heard on the network.”

“That can’t be a lot,” I offered.

“More than you think. He’s head of the large recording division of NTC: NTC Music, NTC–CDs. It’s a vital and growing department, Benny, trying to struggle on with a structure that is hopelessly outdated. There will have to be big changes here, but whether Philip is the man to inaugurate them is a matter for debate.”

“You said he’s an old-timer?”

“He came here from CBC Radio, where they do a lot of music programming and recording. He built up that whole department. Now he-well, you saw that Christmas show yesterday? He’s ultimately in charge of all of that.”

“Why didn’t his name come up then?” I asked.

“Because we were in the studio; Philip never goes near the studio if he can help it. Do you collect CDs, Benny? Philip started NTC in the recording business in a small way about four years ago. Now, we’re right up there with the top labels.” A look from Thornhill ended our conversation.

I wasn’t getting much out of this meeting. I’m not even reporting on it very well: so much of it flew over my head. Thornhill managed to keep a regal distance from his vice-presidents. The vice-president of Programming, Vanessa’s immediate boss, seemed like a cipher. He had nothing to say and let Vanessa do his talking for him.

When the meeting broke up, I followed Vanessa and the others into an adjoining room, where plates of yellow and orange cheese were laid out like a corpse on a white tablecloth. Two or three bottles of domestic and Californian wine stood at attention, daring anyone under the rank of vice-president to pour a glass in front of his betters. A few other senior executives, who were not at the meeting, were allowed in to take some light refreshment. Soon the room was crowded with beaming faces and the noise level was raised high enough to endanger good crystal. Luckily, there was none around, just heavy-duty glass that probably had come with the cheese and the toothpicks. Philip Rankin came over to say hello to Vanessa, who introduced me as her assistant. He grinned as though he and Vanessa were sharing a joke about the length of my stay on the payroll. Ken Trebitsch joined us. I noticed grey in his black hair, and the fine moustache sheltered a very youthful smile, spoiled only by dark, hooded eyes.

“I was thinking of you yesterday, Ken,” Vanessa said. We all tried to look intrigued. “I saw on the news that our one-time CBC colleague, Bert Russell, has set up a digital communications empire in Pasadena.”

“I heard about that. He was always a whirlwind. Of course, Bert was treated miserably by the CBC when they got rid of him. Remember, Philip?”

“Yes, axed from above. He didn’t suspect a thing until his keys wouldn’t open his door. And after all he’d done for the Corp. He must have reduced staffing there by thirty-five per cent during the years of budget cuts.”

“He was the best salesman for public broadcasting they ever had,” Ken observed.

“NTC invited him to take on just about any department he wanted five, six years ago, but he wouldn’t have it.”

“That’s how loyalty gets paid off.” They went around again, Ken and Philip Rankin exchanging comments on the ill-done-by Bert Russell. When it looked like he was about to run out of steam, Ken turned to Vanessa in a teacher-like way. “Did you ever know Bert Russell, Vanessa?”

“I introduced his name into this conversation not five minutes ago, Ken. Are you losing your memory?” There was an attempt at laughter, then Trebitsch wandered into another conversation group. Vanessa held on to me and engaged Philip Rankin in further chit-chat. “Philip, what’s Bob Foley’s death going to mean to your Plevna Foundation?”

“Why, nothing, dear girl. At least I don’t think so. I haven’t thought about it much. There were three trustees, now there are two. That’s all.”

“Philip’s on that Dermot Keogh foundation I was telling you about, Benny.”

“Oh, yes. The cellist. From what I hear, he was a remarkable man.”

“Understatement, Mr. Cooperman.” He grinned at me with the misty eyes of a true believer. “Everything about Dermot is an understatement. Apart from the two books about him that have already appeared, I know of three distinguished writers who are working separately on biographies. There are more of his CDs out now, since his death, than there were last year or the year before. Cutout limbo doesn’t exist for Dermot Keogh. People can’t get enough of him. Not since the death of the great Glenn Gould has there been such a musical phenomenon.”

“And you knew him well?”

“What? Goodness, did I know him? I brought him here to NTC. Oh, yes! We recorded a series of half a dozen shows and were committed to do another six. I met him at the CBC originally. In the Old Building. He was just twenty, but already reorganizing the music department there from the inside. A year later he made his break-out recording of the Bach Suites for Unaccompanied Cello. That sold a million copies worldwide in the first six weeks on the shelves. It went platinum within the next month. Oh, I could go on and on about Dermot, who was, along with his genius, a wonderful human being. I keep having to remind myself that I was privileged to be counted as one of his friends.”

“You must be excited about the building of Dermot Keogh Hall.”

“Indeed, I am. It will be a memorial worthy of its subject, Mr. Cooperman. And glory enough in it for all concerned.” It seemed to me I’d heard that phrase before.

“Were you around at the time of his death?”

“Me? Oh, not me. I detest swimming in cold water, and when I do swim, I stay on top. I could never understand these snorkellers and scuba-diving types. Seems unnatural somehow. Know what I mean?”

“I think I do. I stay away from most vigorous exercise. I want my body well rested when the crisis comes and I need all my physical resources at short notice.”

“Good man! That’s the spirit.” Philip Rankin grinned at me, showing a mouthful of teeth in need of urgent attention. It was the face of an adenoidal carp. The smile seemed warm enough, but I wasn’t quite buying his “Good man!” and his “wonderful human being.” I was going to have to pick up a little more about Keogh as I went on with my body-guarding responsibilities. It would help me bear the tedium, like a side bet made to keep an edge on my interest.

Meanwhile, the body I was supposed to be guarding was talking to Ted Thornhill himself, while the CEO of NTC chewed on a handful of crackers and cheddar.

“Well, are you still having fun with it, Vanessa?” he was saying through a fine mist of expelled cracker crumbs. Vanessa was holding a glass of white wine, which she tasted and abandoned on the edge of a table as she spoke.

“I love the pressure, Ted. I get off on the problems, and crow over the rewards. That doesn’t mean I’m not looking forward to getting away as soon as I can put a normal long weekend together.”

“Yes, you should, you know. What’s happened to you wasn’t in your contract. This murder thing is killing us in the papers. Naturally, they delight in all of our difficulties. Particularly that Turnbull woman at the Star, and of course our old friend Carver at the Globe. Are the police coming up with results, Vanessa? The sooner the murderer’s put away, the sooner we can read the papers again without wincing, eh?”

I heard my name being whispered a few inches away from my ear. It was Sally, the usually glum receptionist. Only now she was almost smiling. “You’re wanted, Mr. Cooperman,” she said.

“I am? Who wants me?” I tried not to look startled. Nobody knew I was here.

“The police,” she said, looking me straight in the eye for the first time.