The Cooperman Variation

NINE

When Vanessa barged in twenty minutes later, she found me at my desk, reading up on the latest pocket biographies of her NTC colleagues supplied by Sally. She stood mutely over me, so that I could, if I was up on such things, identify her perfume, or imagine her wrath, which could be something biblical when she needed it. “Where were you for the last three hours?”

“Doing my duty with the officers investigating Renata’s death.”

“That’s right! And the fact that I’m still standing here, instead of lying dead in the morgue, doesn’t bother you at all, I suppose?”

“Well, if you want to give me credit for it, sure, go ahead, but, Vanessa, even murderers take time out. Maybe our guy has a day job just like you and me.” I could see her eyes darkening and a squall coming, but suddenly it subsided. A lot of her bite was straight histrionics, worked out in advance with the weight of the audience figured into the total effect. It was all calculated to within a centimetre of where she wanted it to be.

“Would you like to tell me where you went after the reception, Vanessa? Through the Khyber Pass and back?”

“Now, Benny, don’t you start. I had a bad enough time with Ted. He wants to split up Entertainment into three independent sections with me at the top.”

“Well?”

“Well, that’s like inviting me to leave. He wants me out of here, Benny. How many times do I have to tell you? He does; they all do.”

“I don’t see …”

“Look, once it’s divided among three hungry underlings, what is there for me to do? All I can do is sit on policy and keep my hands off the all-over good of the department. I won’t let him do this to me.”

“But, Vanessa, aren’t the sections we saw at yesterday’s meeting independent?”

“God no! I keep them all on short leads. They all do exactly what I say or they’re out of here. He wants to tie and gag me. Under Ted’s arrangement, I wouldn’t be able to veto anything. I couldn’t make a suggestion and have it taken seriously. I’d never see a pilot or meet a producer. I’d be making sure that their pension-plan contributions were being deducted properly. Damn it, Benny, I’d rather be shot at than reduced to a cipher. I’d much rather clean out the fridge.”

“Okay, okay. Simmer down. Catch your breath. Let’s take things one at a time. What do you have to do for the rest of this afternoon?”

“Let me think. Oh, yes, I’ve got to go over to Studio Three where they’re shooting a pilot I’m interested in. Then I should send another thunderbolt to Eric Carter. You remember, the Christmas show you saw in production yesterday? I just saw what that butterball turkey he’s cooking is going to cost. I’ll have to stop there again on my way home.”

“Vanessa, remember that fellow who was here that first day? Hy Newman?”

“Yesterday. What about him?”

“Why don’t you get him to do a lot of your running around for you? He’s an experienced producer. You could make him your personal emissary or something. Eric Carter wouldn’t be able to fool him about his wasteful ways.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Benny! Newman went out with the A-line, the cha-cha-cha and canasta.”

“Yes, but he’s been in this business since geese first went barefoot.”

“You let me look after Entertainment, you look after me! You hear?”

“Yup. You want me tagging along with you?”

“That’s what I’m paying you for.” While she was talking, she was winnowing the phone messages and faxes with a deft hand. “Oh, by the way, thanks for the 222s.”

“The what?” Here she lifted up a fresh package I’d never seen before.

“The Frosst 222s. You know how I depend on those things.”

“Vanessa, I bought you some aspirin yesterday. I didn’t get you any 222s.”

“Well, I wonder …? They were on my desk. Funny. Oh, never mind. The main thing is that I’ve got them.”

I jumped up and grabbed at her arm. A blue telephone message slip floated to the carpet. “Vanessa, let me see them!”

“What? The 222s? Whatever for?”

“You don’t know where they came from. That’s reason enough. Get them and put them in-in-” Here I reached for a big manila envelope. “-in here.”

“Benny! what sort of melodrama are you acting out?”

“Trust me, Vanessa. I just want to be on the safe side.”

Instead of accompanying my client on her lateafternoon rounds, I took a taxi to 52 Division with my manila envelope of questionable medicine. The driver didn’t seem to understand the need for speed, and I lacked the courage to tell him to hurry.

Boyd was sitting in Sykes’s chair wearing a bright yellow straw hat. He was reading a computer monitor. He looked up and gave me a friendly grin, then returned to the screen for another two minutes. I moved my weight from shoe to shoe. At last he squeaked his chair away from the screen. I explained what I had found and he said that he’d see that somebody had a look at the vial. “Who touched it besides Ms. Moss?”

“Nobody that I know of,” I said. “Not me, anyway.”

“Well, that’s a good start.” He loaded the envelope and its contents into a plastic freezer bag, typed information on a stick-on label and attached it. He did this carefully and without comment. Then he made a note on his calendar.

“Jack taking the rest of the day off?” I asked, to fill in the silence.

“Naw, he got a call from College Street, the Chief’s office. Probably has to explain his expenses. It happens. What can I say?”

“Well, I hope they don’t deduct it from his take-home pay. You want to talk about this now?” I asked. Boyd looked at the freezer bag.

“Naw, it’ll keep. No sense talking until we find out whether there’s anything to talk about. It may end up being the usual aspirin-caffeine-codeine concoction. If it is, we can talk about old movies or how the Jays are shaping up.”

I could see Boyd was right. Cops in Toronto are bound to remain calm in every situation. Grantham cops tend to be less worn down by the rigours of the work. The result is that they get excited on one occasion and are oystercalm on the next. It’s harder to figure. So, I made my retreat past the desk sergeant and the glass-brick walls to the outside world, where the warm spring day continued to give delight to all who stopped to notice it. Not many.

As I decided what to do next, one of those new Volkswagens pulled away from the curb. Its green matched the young leaves on the trees in a playground across the street, where swings, slides, climbers and sandpiles waited for the ringing of a bell. The Volkswagen was still in sight as I rounded the corner on University Avenue and headed south.

When I got within sight of the big NTC owl, I began to hunch down mentally, ready for the renewed onslaught of Security. I was wondering whether Vanessa might let me do my business from the New Beijing Inn and thus avoid running the gauntlet here every time I wanted in or out. I had just nerved myself to the ordeal, when two men in wool jackets moved in on me. “Mr. Cooperman?” It was the tall, curly-headed one who spoke. “Mr. Benny Cooperman?”

“That’s right.” I tried to feel in my pockets for anything that might, in a pinch, be used as a weapon.

“My name’s Alder. Jesse Alder. I’m one of the techs here at NTC. So’s Ross.”

“Yeah, Ross Totton, Mr. Cooperman. Glad to meet you.” They both fumbled to take my hand, which I delivered as soon as I could drop my car keys back in my pocket.

“We heard that you were here, sort of working for Ms. Moss and all. And we just wanted to buy you a beer and tell you what’s going down around here.”

“There’s a pub around the corner, if you’ve got a few minutes. Sort of a technicians’ hangout.”

“Where did you say you heard about me?”

“There’s not much going on at the network that we don’t hear about. We thought you might need an introduction to the characters you’re going to bump into.”

“Fill you in, bring you up to speed, that sort of thing,” Totton added.

“Wouldn’t that tend to prejudice me?”

The men looked at one another, then grinned back at me, nodding vigorously. Unopposed, they led the way to the Rex, a busy pub on the ground floor of an old hotel building not far from where we were standing. It was a lot like the old Harding House back in Grantham, with waiters balancing trayfuls of draft beer and giving change in a sustained balletic feat to the music of conversation and heavy metal. Alder and Totton led the way to a table in back, far from all but the most unrelenting beat of the music. There were four others already seated there, to whom I was introduced. I didn’t catch more than their first names. Like Jesse and Ross, they were all technicians at NTC. Jimmy, who looked the most senior, called the waiter, who set down a tray of brimming glasses in my honour. Over the rim of my first glass, I asked Jesse a question: “Why are you doing this?”

“You seem like a nice guy.”

“Come on. Or I’m out of here.”

“We all liked Renata. She was a sweetheart to work with and didn’t pass the guff she got from the twentieth floor on to us. She was a pro and all the techs knew that.”

For the next hour and a bit, the boys took turns in telling me everything they knew about NTC except why. This was a view from below stairs, as it were. This was broadcasting beginning with the roots and underpinnings. There was no room here for the airy-fairy shenanigans I had been seeing since I arrived in Toronto. The boys knew which of the producers were worth their pay and which they had been covering up for. Some had the sensitivity to do the job, others had only their ambitions. While I was there, Ross Totton took out his pipe and fired it up a few times. He was the only pipe smoker I’ve met who spent more time smoking his pipe than cleaning it. I liked the smell of his tobacco. Two other technicians joined us and listened in. Three of the earlier members of the group left together after consulting their watches. The newcomers added to my store of information.

“They can’t get rid of Ken Trebitsch because he’s been collecting personal information on everybody he’s ever worked for. He knows where the dirt is. He has a couple of junior producers collecting it. Talk about an enemies list. Trebitsch’s looks like a roll of fax paper.”

“Besides, his sister’s married to a cousin of the prime minister.”

“Yeah, and that’s not the only sweetheart deal around. Your boss makes big demands on outside producers before she’ll let them do a pilot. Talk about kickbacks!”

“But that’s normal in Entertainment. Life is short there. You have to make your bundle before the axe falls.”

“That’s right, but in the meantime she has lots of money to spend outside the network. That’s why there are so many Moss-watchers.”

“Have you met David Simbrow? The Moss-boss? Vice-president of Programming? He’s so stupid he couldn’t get work selling raffle tickets. But his father’s in the provincial cabinet.”

“And Ted Thornhill, the CEO, doesn’t know what to do about it. How can he reorganize Entertainment without booting Simbrow out?”

“Did you know that we’re doing more ‘sustained’ programs than ever before?”

“What are they?”

“When you can’t get the advertising, you underwrite them and hope nobody notices. It’s only a step away from lowering the advertising rates.”

“Have you met Philip Rankin yet?” I said that I’d had the pleasure. “Proper gentleman, isn’t he? Well, he couldn’t produce fleas in a zoo. Jesse and Ross and lots of us used to save his bacon regularly. That was a long time before Bob Foley came along.”

I tried to get them to continue talking about Bob Foley, but all attempts died on the vine.

“You see, Benny, Bob was never really one of us. We got tired of his stories about the Great Man. You know, Dermot Keogh. Bob talked as if we never worked with headliners more than once, twice a year. The brutal fact is that between us we know just about everybody. Hell! I’ve stuck a mike up Anne Murray’s shirt more times than … you know? That stuff doesn’t mean anything. We do it all the time. How many times have you arranged the lights for the Queen, Ron? See what I mean? I had coffee with the prime minister one time, killing time between appointments. So why would we suddenly get excited about Bob becoming Dermot Keogh’s gofer?”

“He had us up to a summer place in Muskoka one time. He was trying to lord it over us like he invented the place.”

“Yeah,” agreed Ross. “Remember how he treated that Paki lawyer? I just wanted to fade into the woods.”

“That’s right. And he’d tear up and down the roads on that borrowed chopper.”

“Didn’t mind that so much. I like choppers.”

“The Moss tried to call the Provincial Police on him.”

“Jesse, is Vanessa Moss doing her job?”

He thought about it, pulling at his earlobe and watching the flickering images on the TV set high above the bar. “Is she doing her job? Hell, Mr. Cooperman, nobody can do that job. It’d be like trying to agree on guidelines for an orgy.”

“That’s the truth,” Ross Totton offered. “She’ll last another season, then they’ll find someone else. That’s the way of the beast.”

I figured that besides enjoying the beer I’d had, I’d been given a backgrounder to the network I couldn’t have found elsewhere. In the end, I thanked the boys and tried not to trip over my feet on my way out of the Rex.

* * *

At 5:30 P.M., I sat in the bar at the Hilton hotel, a few short blocks from NTC. It was a generous bar of dark mahogany, with gleaming brass in all the right places. The crowd was hard to figure. The customers were welldressed frequenters of steakhouses, dapper account executives buttering up clients from Calgary or Edmonton with a taste of the real Toronto, before heading off to the hockey game and who knows what else.

Sally Jackson came in wearing her high-heeled walking-out shoes, which made her just an inch taller than me. “Sorry I kept you,” she said, finding her centre of gravity on the tall bar stool.

“What can I get you?” I tried to read her mood. Why had she decided to join me?

“Is the season well enough advanced to order gin and tonic?”

“Sure.” I passed the order along and sipped at my rye and water. The ice had melted. For five minutes or so, until her drink came, I tried to make small talk. I discovered that she knew little about the Blue Jays’ recent performances at the SkyDome and less about the delayed Stanley Cup playoffs. In general, her eye was more often on the door or the mirror over the bar than it was on me. Even the bartender gave her a look that, in my reading of it, said, “This dame ain’t gonna run a long tab.” I tried to think of how I could make things easier for Sally.

“You seem a little nervous, Sally. If this wasn’t a good idea, just say the word.”

“To tell you the truth, Benny-may I call you that? — this is the first time I’ve been out with a man since I left Gordon.” She was fiddling with the plastic wrapping from a pack of Benson amp; Hedges. She stopped short of taking one out and lighting it.

“Life can’t stand still,” I suggested. “When we can’t go back, we have to move on.”

“You don’t understand, Benny. I left Gordon for my good friend Crystal Schild. I’ve been living with her for three months now.”

“Oh,” I said, clearing my throat and swallowing hard.

“Does that shock you?”

“Me? Of course not. There’s a lot of it going … Some of my best …”

“There, I did embarrass you. I’m sorry. I keep forgetting that you come from Grantham. Here in Toronto-”

“Look, dear Sally, Grantham’s not that backward. We’ve got the railroad; the bus service is going fine; we’ve got cable TV and even the World Wide Web has come along to show us what we’re missing. There’s not much going on in the world that could shock somebody on St. Andrew Street in Grantham today.”

“What about you? You look a little pink around the ears.”

“Well, I’ll admit, it was a little unexpected. I was unprepared. I mean it hadn’t entered my mind.” Part of my mind, the most primitive and least defensible part, was pondering whether this constituted getting a drink under false pretenses.

“Well, now you know. And now you know why I have to be so careful around that place.”

“Who else knows, and why is it such a big secret? And why are you telling me? Why, only this morning I thought that the sight of my bleeding corpse wouldn’t spoil your day. Now you volunteer this. How come?”

“I don’t know. You’ve got a good face. I hate the way Vanessa orders you around. Maybe it was the sweet way you tried to make peace this afternoon. I don’t know.”

I still wasn’t sure I trusted her, but, at least, she’d put up an unusual defence against the moves I had been plotting for later in the evening. She reminded me of my basically predatory nature, which I try to control, and of Anna, whose absence I was feeling in my bones.

“I assume that Vanessa knows nothing of this?” I asked.

“As far as she’s concerned, I don’t exist except as a source of coffee and treachery. I don’t think she worries much about people’s sexuality. She uses her own charms to manoeuvre men-she’s a past-master at that, as you may know-but apart from that, she’s not very observant about people and where they’re coming from. She divides the world into two groups: those who can help her and those who want help from her.”

“Is there anyone at NTC who knows?”

“Nate, Nate Green knew I was going through hell living with Gordon. He was a dear, sympathetic man, even when his own health started to preoccupy him. Unless he told somebody, then you’re the only one, apart from one or two of the women there that I trust.”

“Why don’t you want it to get out? I can think of several reasons but what are yours?”

“Benny, I just want to get on with my job. From where you sit, it might not look like much, but it’s all I’ve got right now, except Crystal. I don’t need complications.”

“But they can’t fire you for what isn’t any of their business, can they?”

“No, not any more, but it wouldn’t endear me to some of them either. Three years ago, a man got shunted around because it was thought there were too many gays in his department. Because of some idiot’s idea that a ‘quota system’ was needed in Audience Relations, he was sent back to writing local news and weather.” She paused long enough for me to register her point, and then took the first sip of her drink.

The bar was beginning to fill up. It hadn’t looked particularly empty when I came in, but now the contrast showed. Little silver bowls of peanuts, olives and shrimp chips had appeared. The bartender was talking to an elderly man in a string tie at the other end of the bar. I drew a happy face with my finger in the wet ring where my glass had been sitting.

“Did anybody come looking for Vanessa while I was out this afternoon, Sally?”

“Only about three or four hundred came in raising hell.”

“What?”

“I mean it was business as usual around there. You’ve seen it, but you haven’t seen the traffic when it gets bad. Multiply Hy Newman by fifty and you’ll begin to get an idea of my job.”

“You feel sorry for Hy, don’t you?” She stared into her glass. Droplets of moisture forced their way through cloudy condensation on the sides.

“Hy was part of NTC from the beginning. Now he can’t get past Reception most days. Security has his picture and orders not to let him in.”

“Does he run amok? Does he threaten people? What’s the problem?”

“Hy reminds most of them where they were when Hy was the best producer of big shows that the network had ever seen. He hired some of them and promoted others. Hy’s the sort of person who makes up for all the times we fail, or don’t measure up to who we should be.”

“You take this very personally, don’t you, Sally?”

“Benny, somebody has to.” I quite liked Sally then. And I believed her. There must be a lot of people on the payroll who aren’t trying to make the worst programs possible, people who feel a responsibility to the public, who are aware of the lightweights they have been delivering over the years.

“What brings you to NTC, Benny? You’re not a broadcaster.” I considered telling Sally the truth and then I took another sip of my drink.

“I know Vanessa from a long time ago. She’s in a bind and I’m trying to help her. I suggested that she get Hy Newman to sort out some of her production muddles for her.”

“That was a great idea!”

“She didn’t think so.”

“Give her a day or two. I’ve seen her take suggestions of mine a couple of days after she told me to mind my business. It is a good idea, Benny. So, she found you in Grantham at loose ends?” I could see she was pumping me, but I didn’t see the harm. I could use it to reinforce my cover story.

“Yes, I was just waiting around to go on a European holiday. She got me at the right moment. Tell me, Sally, did you know Renata Sartori at all?” I watched the reaction to the question in her eyes. She was suddenly guarded. I’d lost yards by trying to get too much too soon.

“Not … too well, Benny. She’d worked here for a long time, but it’s a busy place. We used to have coffee together occasionally. I liked her. She did my income-tax returns for two or three years until I started doing them myself. She was clever with figures. She could have been a certified accountant if she troubled to take the exam. She did the books for a lot of people around the network.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Well, she was so good at it.”

New people were filling up the empty spaces behind me, crowding the bar and raising the din, so that it was becoming harder to hear Sally without leaning close, which I didn’t mind a bit.

“Getting back to Renata: did she really look all that much like Vanessa?”

“Well, they weren’t dead ringers. From the back they could pass for one another: same height, proportions, hair colour and length, but from the front, Vanessa has finer features. Renata had brown eyes and used heavier makeup. I guess in the dark it might be hard to tell them apart. The papers said she was wearing a dressing gown of Vanessa’s. The murderer would have an expectation of seeing Vanessa answer her own front door.”

“Didn’t she have a man in her life? A lawyer?”

“Renata had been seeing Barry Bosco. He’s with Raymond Devlin’s firm. But I don’t know that it was a burning passionate affair. It may have been. Don’t get me wrong. I just don’t know the details. She didn’t talk about him at all when we had lunch that last time. They went out together; that’s all I know for a fact. He had a sports car as well as other cars and she liked that. I don’t know whether Barry felt as casual about Renata.”

“How do you happen to know Bosco?”

“He’s a fraternity brother of Gordon’s. He was on the fringe of a crowd I used to know better than I do now.” She sipped her drink thoughtfully. “Barry is hard to figure. He has all the charm in the world, but he can’t be pinned down on anything. He’s a strange sort of lawyer, now that I think of it. He hates to sign things. Can you imagine it? A lawyer who hates to put his name on the dotted line. Raymond is just the opposite. He’ll get you to sign a contract just for coming in to keep an appointment. I’ve never seen anyone who was so paper-bound. Well, you saw him in good form yesterday, Benny. He probably gets the kid who cuts his grass to sign a contract. He had kids of his own: they died in a car accident when they were teenagers. But when they were eight and six, Ray made them draw up wills!”

“Is he married?”

“Technically. He’s been separated from his wife for over ten years. She left him a year after the accident; moved to Julian, California; opened a second-hand bookstore.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Barry did some legal work for Vanessa, and Raymond took me out twice, before I married Gordon. I’ve been a Raymond Devlin watcher for years. He tried to get me up to his cottage once, but I out-foxed him.”

“At the meeting, this morning, I met Philip Rankin and Ken Trebitsch. Where would you place them on Vanessa’s enemies list?”

“That’s hard to say. I haven’t had much contact-”

“This could be important, Sally. Renata was murdered, remember.” Sally’s mouth stood open for a few seconds. Some sort of mental process was going on behind her well-shaped brows. “Tell me,” I said quietly.

“Like the rest of the people in that boardroom, Ken and Philip are ambitious. Both would like to add some of the clout Entertainment has to their own empires. Entertainment has the squeeze on prime time. They both want a bigger share. Ken, at least, isn’t subtle about how he goes about things. If he likes the apple on your desk, he’ll grab it. If you catch him at it, he was ‘only fooling.’ Philip’s not as easy to read. While Dermot Keogh was alive, Philip Rankin was a somebody, as they say in the muffler commercials. Recently, he’s had to work harder, do more scouting around to find talent. Dermot’s death really shook Philip. He hasn’t got over it yet, I think. Whenever I overhear him talking, he’s telling stories about the old days. He shared Dermot’s passion for antique cars and rare wines. The only thing that Dermot collected that Philip disapproved of was motorcycles.”

“I can’t picture a cellist on a chopper.”

“Neither could Philip. Thought it was too dangerous. Also, he didn’t run after women the way Dermot did. He just didn’t have the looks or the glamour for it. But you should have heard his eulogy at Dermot’s funeral. There wasn’t a dry eye in the church.”

“Does everybody call him ‘Philip’? Isn’t he ‘Phil’ to anyone?”

“Philip’s rather particular about his name. Actually, he has a string of initials he uses in writing, plus his degrees, both the earned and the honorary ones. Plain Philip Rankin is as simple as it gets. The whole name is something like Philip Ross Gardiner Rankin, F.R.C.O., D.M., R.A.M., R.C.M. Shall I keep going?”

“Was part of his value to NTC his closeness to Keogh?”

“Naturally. Philip could get around him, get him to agree to do the promotion necessary to ballyhoo his shows. Dermot believed that the programs sold themselves, that his name sold them. He hated to appear to be pushing or giving a sales pitch. You could never catch him bragging, although he was on first-name terms with all of the greats of the musical world. Philip once said that he dropped in on him, this must have been five or six years ago, and the Three Tenors were making salad in the kitchen. Dermot was boiling potatoes. Apart from his playing in public, he was really rather shy without Hector to lean on.”

“Hector?”

“That’s what he called his cello. It was a Stradivarius, I think.”

“What happened to Hector?”

“I guess it was swallowed up into the estate. Ask Philip, he’d know. He’s one of the trustees of the foundation.”

“Is Philip Rankin all that approachable?”

“Are you kidding? If it has anything to do with Dermot Keogh, his door will open wide.”

“Great!”

A beefy man with a brown moustache, suit and hair sat down on Sally’s other side. At first she didn’t see him and then she turned, unpleased by what she saw.

“I thought I might find you here,” he said, with just the suggestion of a Scottish accent.

“Gordon! What are you doing here? Have you been following me again?”

“I need to talk to you, Sally. I’ve got to.”

“Gordon, this is neither the time nor the place. Remember what the judge said. You have to keep to what he says. Especially ‘watching or besetting.’ Section 381, Gordon. You know that.” I may have been imagining it, but now I could sense heather in Sally’s voice too. Nervously, she introduced us. Jackson looked at me with a face so troubled it could not even muster an unfriendly glare. We didn’t shake hands.

“I said I needed to talk-”

“Not now, Gordon. I’ll join you in the lobby in five minutes.”

“What I’ve got to say can’t wait five minutes. I was outside your office all afternoon. You don’t know the-” Again she cut him off.

“Not here, Gordon. Are you listening? In the lobby. Five minutes.” Gordon Jackson got to his feet. For a second, I thought he was going to do as he’d been told. But, as soon as he had gained his balance, he grabbed at Sally’s arm, pulled her off the stool so that it fell over into me and then down to the carpet and rolled into a startled waiter.

“Gordon, you can’t-!”

“Hey! Watch it!” My efforts at mending things between the Jacksons were foolish and badly executed. I reached out and tugged at his lapels, trying to get him away from the struggling Sally. He couldn’t punch me- he was too close-but I could see it in his eyes. Meanwhile Sally started moaning. I don’t think he’d hurt her, but the pain was real nonetheless. The farther away I got him from his wife, the greater were his opportunities for striking out. He missed me twice but landed a good one on his third try. I ended up sprawled next to the fallen stool, with a flailing sort of wonderment in my brain: This can’t be happening! Not to me!

Suddenly, I couldn’t see anything but legs. My view of everything was cut off by a crowd of my fellow tipplers. I heard Sally still crying out, and by the time I got up and pulled a few bodies out of my way, I could see them leaving the bar together. Sally was walking on her own, but Gordon was holding her arm behind her back. As I caught up to them, I called out Sally’s name. When I’d cleared the bar entrance, still coming along as fast as I could, Gordon turned and let me walk into the fist on the end of his extended right hand. I went down again to the carpet in an explosion of colours and stayed there.