“Your firm handles Geller’s legal affairs?”
“Such as they are, we do. It’s mostly things going back to the old partnership.”
“Then you know about his property holdings?”
“The file stopped when it got to me. Full of dead ends, really. Just things Irving and Mr. Geller acquired, paid mortgages on and then sold or traded.”
“Traded?”
“There was a property on Woodland Avenue, an office building. Nothing huge. It was traded for six condominiums. Irving still owns his, but I understand that Mr. Geller sold his three.” She sipped her tea slowly, looking at me over the rim of the cup.
“Who bought the Woodland Avenue place?” I asked.
“It was Tom MacIntyre.”
“Who is?”
“Tom MacIntyre? Oh, Tom MacIntyre’s a lot of things. He’s been buying up most of unwanted Grantham, he drives a fast car, has a boat at Port Richmond, keeps an apartment in New York and is very cosy, in a business way, with Glenn Bagot.”
“Oh, I’ve heard about him. He’s connected with Larry Geller’s brother. The one who’s in construction. Sid. And Sid’s live-in friend used to be Mrs. Bagot.”
“You’ve forgotten to mention the connection with certain powerful names at Queen’s Park.”
“You mean he’s a bagman as well as driving a fast car? I don’t believe it.”
“Well, he grew up eating local peaches and drinking local wine. What can you expect?”
I got the exact address of the Woodland Avenue property from Joyce and found out where Tom MacIntyre hangs his hat in the daytime. It was still a good hour before closing time, so I walked into the solid marble temple in which he did business. His office was on the sixth floor behind a door marked McHugh amp; MacIntyre, Consultants. The secretary had never heard of a person without an appointment before, and so I introduced myself.
“You didn’t phone. Did you write him?” Her eyes were wide under her red bangs.
“No, you see I didn’t get up this morning knowing that I wanted to see him. I had breakfast and I still didn’t know I needed to see him. It came over me suddenly.”
“I’m afraid that Mr. MacIntyre doesn’t see people without appointments.”
“It’s a rule, I guess?”
“Oh, yes, sir. Never as long as I’ve been here.”
“I see. I like a place that stands by its rules. May I borrow that telephone book, just by your elbow, for a minute?”
“Oh, of course.” She handed it to me and I flipped to the yellow pages, stopping at Consultants. The girl was clever about keeping her sandwich out of sight. It didn’t go with the buff marble walls or the framed posters of ancient art shows that hung on them.
“Plummer and McCullough. Are they good?”
“I beg your pardon?” she said, looking up at me.
“Plummer and McCullough, Consultants,” I repeated with a smile. “They’re reputable? Sound, in a business way?” Her cheeks went hollow. “Or what about C.N. Geale, Consultants? I’ve heard only excellent things about them. Yes, Geale. It sounds like a name you can trust, doesn’t it?” She was sitting like a poker was sticking down the back of her white poplin blouse. She got up without bending the poker or making the chair squeak and asked if I would kindly wait for one moment. I promised.
A minute later she ushered me into the august presence of Tom MacIntyre, who looked me up and down then smiled. He was a man in his mid-thirties, I would guess, but the white hair totally fooled me. He was an albino, or an albino’s cousin. His pink eyes looked me over through thick lenses. Then he started to laugh.
“Well, you put the wind up Vicki, Mr. Cooperman. You took her in and more power to you. Will you have a drink?” He pulled a bottle from an open tray to the right of his desk and paused, waiting for instructions. The room was full of music. I could hear the sound of penny whistles, fiddles, pipes and a drum. They were busy doing a lilting jig tune in an enthusiastic but none too slavish way. He turned it down.
“That’s my brother’s group, The Far Darrig. This is their second album.”
“Nice, very nice.”
“And you’re drinking?”
“Ah, rye with water unless you have ginger ale.”
“I have, and I’ll give it to you as long as it’s rye you’re drinking. My arm wouldn’t bend if it was Jameson you wanted the ginger ale poured into. I also have some Black Bush, if you like.” I shook my head in the negative. He made a drink for me and poured an inch from a bottle marked Jameson into a glass with his fingerprints on it. The light coming through the large window framed his very impressive head. When we both had had a chance to take a sip of our drinks, he brought the conversation back to business again. “Mr. Cooperman, you are not looking for a consultant, whatever you told Vicki Daubney. She’s a wonderful typist, and she does usually take care of the tinkers. Are you a tinker, Mr. Cooperman?”
“I’m a private investigator, Mr. MacIntyre. I’ve been looking into some property once owned by Larry Geller.”
“Then it’s a tinker you are and no mistake. Good. I was getting bored sitting around here today. Larry Geller … ah! He’s the one who’s flown the coop. What did they say he got away with? A tidy sum, a tidy sum, to be sure. Here’s to enterprise, Mr. Cooperman. Enterprise and imagination.” We both drank to that; I didn’t know how to refuse a toast.
“I’m interested in 44 Woodland Avenue. What can you tell me about it?”
“Not very much. I own it and have since Geller splintered his partnership with what’s-his-name. Bernstein. It was a two-way real estate deal. No money passed. All very simple, honest and, I’m afraid, dull. Nothing spectacular there, Mr. Cooperman. A very dull property, on a dull street and filled with dull tenants who send in postdated cheques for a full year in advance. I even have a set from …” He stopped talking and looked at the tufts of white hair growing on his pink knuckles.
“You were saying?” MacIntyre got to his feet and stared down at the city from his window. From where I sat, the city could have been London or New York. It didn’t seem to interfere with his concentration that he was seeing the roof-tops of Grantham, Ontario. After a minute he turned back to look at me, with his arms leaning back on the window ledge.
“Well, you may be on to something after all.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, your quarry is, or was, a tenant of mine. Has been for several years.” I felt like I was running up a flight of stairs in a dream. “Small office,” he was saying when I was again able to tune in, “in the back, if I remember. Rents are cheaper in the rear. Silly of me not to have remembered sooner.”
It wasn’t behind a bookcase. It was a small office on Woodland Avenue. “The false wall,” I said out loud.
“I beg your pardon?” MacIntyre was splashing another ounce of Jameson into his glass. I was still sipping on my first rye and ginger ale.
“If Geller gave you a set of post-dated cheques for his rent, how would these cheques be honoured? Are you going to find those cheques bouncing?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Cooperman. I wasn’t thinking about that. Here we have stumbled upon a situation alive with possibilities, and all you can think of is whether I’m going to be out of pocket a few hundred dollars. You mustn’t imagine Geller’s office in terms of this place or even in terms of his Queen Street location. I’ve never been to Woodland Avenue to inspect it-I have people who do that for me-but from the outside I wouldn’t have high hopes about what I would find up there.”
“How exactly did he pay you? I mean was it through a company or what?”
“Look, Mr. Cooperman, my brother’s the brilliant member of the family. All I know how to do is make money. I’ll have to see the ledger.”
When he came back into the room, his face was looking like he’d just stepped out of a sauna. He’d been in the file room and I’d heard him speaking with Vicki. I wondered if she thought any better of me. “Here it is,” he said, opening an old-fashioned ledger on his desk. “We set it up in this book when the property was transferred. It’s been put on the computer, of course, but this is the original of the arrangement. His cheques were drawn on the Bank of Upper Canada. Never any problem with them. He paid his money and I assume he made use of the space.”