“Oh, sure. I’ve seen him around for years. What’s he got up to?”
“Old Wally’s been a good friend of mine for a lot of years. We used to do a lot of drinking together.”
“I’ll bet. What’s he got into?”
“Wally-I call him Wally: his right name’s Bamfylde. How j’ah like that? Bamfylde! Hot shit. Isn’t that sumpin’?”
“What are you worried about, Kogan? You came here to tell me something, didn’t you?” The answer to that question had to wait for one of Dr. Bushmill’s patients to pass us on her way down the stairs. I watched her go, bouncing down each step a little light on her left foot. Corns. Maybe.
“Estelle Kramer,” Kogan announced when the air-brake settled the door back in place.
“What?”
“That was Estelle Kramer. You know Otto Kramer’s wife? Butcher on James Street?”
“What’s she got to do with this?”
“Not a thing. Just practising. In my position you have to know people. Can’t depend on looks alone. Otto’s given Wally and me a Christmas bird more than once. Stringy, you know, but tasty.”
“Kogan. Go to hell! You’re never going to come to the point and I’m going back to my office where I can get rid of the cramp in my shin.” I got up and went limping back behind my desk. I didn’t slam the door, but I felt like it. In a minute he was standing like Samson between the pillars in my doorway again.
“Wally’s got a lot more class than you think, Mr. Cooperman.”
“What makes you think I’ve thought about it?” I was doodling the names of the people I’d been talking to up at the Gellers’ place on a block of yellow legal-sized foolscap. I could still see Kogan holding up the doorframe.
“He could be in a lot of trouble. And you don’t even give a damn.”
“Sure I give a damn. But his pal won’t tell me what it’s all about. He’s waiting for me to read all about it in my Christmas stocking or something. His old buddy won’t give me any hints. He wants me to work it out like Sherlock Holmes from the nicks on your Adam’s apple.”
“Okay, I understand. I just had to be sure I came to the right place. I gotta be careful like. Wally’s the only buddy I ever had. The best pal I could want. Now he’s nowhere.”
“How do you mean, ‘nowhere’?”
“We had a shack behind Maple Street. Wally used to have a popcorn wagon back there, but the kids smashed it all to smithereens. But we had a decent kip: blankets and a sleeping-bag. It beat sleeping in doorways. Even sleeping here in the hall along by the bathroom. You should get that toilet fixed. It runs all night.”
“I’ll mention it to the landlord. He’ll appreciate that.”
“Don’t mention it. I mean, sure, tell him. By ‘don’t mention it’ I meant ‘you’re welcome.’”
“Kogan, do you think you can stay on the subject of your pal for a minute without a side-trip? Try it. We are talking about your pal Wally Bamfylde Moore. Get on with it.”
“Well, it’s just he ain’t been around for a couple o’ days. He’s gone. Like that Geller guy on Queen Street. Only Wally didn’t have more than maybe twenty-five dollars tops.”
“Maybe he’s found another kip? Maybe he’s found a nice park bench to sleep on during these warm nights. He’ll turn up.
“Cooperman, you’re a shit-heel. You know what that is? You’re a real poop-and-scoop artist, that’s what you are. I told you Wally and me’ve been together. You know what that means? I know Wally, and I know what he’s going to do from Monday to Sunday. He’s a shrewd character, but habit-ridden. You know what I mean? He sometimes sleeps near his pitch, but he tells me first.”
“I’m sorry, Kogan. I didn’t mean to be flip. I apologize.” Kogan made a pass at his nose with his fingers, squeezed the bridge of his nose like a bank president, then blinked trying to pick up the thread of the story again. “Kogan, what’s your first name? I can’t keep calling you Kogan.”
“Give me a minute,” he said, squinting hard. “Victor.”
“The hell it is.”
“I seen it in print that way. Anyway, I been Kogan too long to argue. Just don’t call me Victor, you hear?”
“Where did you see Wally last?”
“We tucked into some 9-Lives on Tuesday night.”
“Did he say anything about going off? Did you have a fight?”
“Certainly not. And I checked the hospitals and the lock-up. Wally didn’t get hit by a milk truck, and he didn’t get pinched.”
“Did he say anything about where he was going or what he intended to do the next day?”
“Well, you finally got down to it. You finally asked. I thought I’d be a fine old bone before you asked that one.” Kogan’s old wallet of a face creased into a map of smiles. “He told me he was going to see the wife of a Queen Street lawyer.”
“He what?”
“I knew that’d get you. He told me he was going to see this woman over on Mortgage Hill. I forgot the name until I saw it in tonight’s paper.”
“Tell me this again slowly.”
“I don’t usually chew my cabbage twice. He said he wanted to see this Mrs. Geller. Said they had business.” Kogan now had all my attention and he knew it. He played the scene like an actor building up the momentum leading to the curtain line. “He said we were havin’ our last can of cat food. And that’s when he showed me the bottle he’d bought. It wasn’t his favourite, Old Sailor, it was Gordon’s gin. Where’d he get that kind of money? That’s what got me scared, Mr. Cooperman. Where’s Wally and is he all right?”
I took Wally’s pal Kogan with me around the corner to the United for a coffee and a square meal. He had the coffee. I had the square meal. I nearly had to bust his arm to get him to accept coffee. He sat on the edge of the stool like he was afraid of breaking it and pretended not to notice the dirty looks I was getting from the waitress, who had “Nicole” stitched on her breast. It wasn’t Nicole. Nicole had left the United a year ago. “Nicole” went with the uniform the way a glass of water went with the menu. For the next twenty minutes I pumped Kogan about his friend: where he did his panhandling, what his habits were, and in that time I picked up about two minutes of valuable information. Wally’s favourite stamping ground was right in front of the Loftus Building at the Queenston Road end of St. Andrew Street, across from the closed-off block where the new fire hall was being built. To me it didn’t look like the best pickings in town, but Kogan put me wise to the stream of workers coming to and from the building site as well as the shifts going to and from Etherington’s Empire Carpet Works. Together we went around to the liquor store where it didn’t take long to locate the guy who’d sold Wally his bottle of gin. The fellow remembered him because Wally’d given him a fifty-dollar bill to change, flicked ashes on his change machine, and asked for a receipt. And all because he’d been on the Liquor Control Board list of those whose money was no good for about twenty years. Then the rules changed.
Kogan had given me the only break I’d had in this case. His pal had been paid by Ruth Geller for something. What was it and did it have anything to do with the fact that he was nowhere to be seen? My stomach told me that there was a strong possibility that his disappearance had directly followed from something that Wally had seen and reported to Ruth. I’d have to question her about that. In the meantime I was happy to be helping the little guy. It made me feel like I was a real taxpayer instead of someone who only had aspirations to be one. Before we separated, I got Kogan to promise to keep his eyes open and to be sure to drop in to see me as soon as he heard from Wally.
When I got back to the office, I found the door standing open. I didn’t remember leaving it that way. I was in the midst of giving myself a sermon on forgetfulness when I saw that the office had a visitor.
“Mr. Cooperman? I suppose you’re Mr. Cooperman. It’s silly even to ask, isn’t it?” The speaker was a woman in her thirties, about five feet six and not at all hard to look at with her large eyes and pouting mouth. I recognized the brunette hair from the time I’d seen it drive into the Bolduc yard in her silver Audi.