“Benny, I want to say how …”
“Forget it.” Pia got up from the couch, and I put down my nearly untouched drink. “Look, Pia, I think I know that you live a fairly complicated life, and that there are parts of it that you don’t want anybody going into. Things you don’t want Sid to find out about. I understand about that. I’m not here to make things difficult for you either domestically or in business. But to find out about Larry’s disappearance and Nathan’s murder, I have to ask tough questions.”
“I think I understand. I’ll try to help, if I can.”
“Well, at least that makes two of us.” We moved towards the door of the penthouse. In a minute I’d be in the elevator on my way back to the street. I wanted to make these last few questions count. “Pia, am I right in thinking that Sid knows nothing about Tony Pritchett’s part in the Niagara-on-the-Lake highway plan?”
“Right now he doesn’t. I don’t think we intended to keep him in the dark indefinitely.”
“Why wasn’t he involved in that part of the planning?”
“Because he’s so up-front, so straightforward. He doesn’t realize that we needed Tony to get the proposal underwritten. Once the tenders are chosen and we have the go-ahead, then it doesn’t matter any more. But Sid wouldn’t have gone along if he suspected that Tony Pritchett and his connections were involved. To Sid, Tony’s a crook, a mobster, a character in a Mafia movie. He doesn’t understand that in his business investments, Pritchett’s as honest as any other investor. He doesn’t need to use pressure tactics or strong-arm methods.”
“That’s why I got an engraved invitation to that meeting at the gun club.” Pia lowered her eyes. I got angry with myself. Here I was trying to score debating points instead of digging out as much information as possible. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to take cheap shots,” I said, and she smiled.
“I guess some of Tony’s boys are slow learners. But Glenn tried to make it up to you. Against my advice, remember.”
“Was Larry involved in this business with Pritchett?”
“No. As far as I know he doesn’t even know Tony. And he and Glenn didn’t get along. They were chalk and cheese. No, I think that’s a dead end.”
“Okay. I think I’ve just run dry. If I think of anything else …”
“Just call me.”
For a fairly short visit, I thought as I went down in the elevator, I’d learned quite a lot. Furthermore, I was already looking forward to my next meeting with Pia Morley.
TWENTY-TWO
“Benny, is that you?”
“You were expecting maybe Minerva Pious?” I’d let myself into the town house with my own key. Ma was in the rec room watching TV. Next to reading, it was her favourite occupation.
“You’re too young to remember the Fred Allen show. Who’re you trying to kid? Your father went down to the club to play cards. I hope you’ve eaten?”
“I had a bite downtown,” I lied. Ma hated surprises, especially at mealtimes.
“Was it yesterday I saw you? At the shiva? It’s getting so I can’t keep the days straight in my head any more. She has a nice house that Debbie.”
“Kind of big for one person.”
“It’s all she’s got. No kids, no husband. You want to take away the house too, Benny?” I sat down in the mate to the leather chair Ma was sitting in. I tried to keep my eyes off the TV. When I get hooked, I’ll watch anything that moves. My only defence is total abstinence.
Ma was wearing a green housecoat over her night things. Her day wasn’t properly started yet. Her morning mug of coffee was sitting coldly on the coffee-table.
“Did you talk to anybody at the shiva?” I asked.
“Nobody in particular. It was nice to see Morris Kaufman again. He’s got old since the last time I saw him. He used to be such a handsome man. Funny the way men get littler. Oh, I did talk to that Englishman from the newspaper who was there. He was with The New York Times. Clyde his name was. Or Trevor. Something English like that.”
“Yeah, he was the one who admired Nathan’s sculptures.”
“We didn’t talk about that. He was telling me about growing up in the east end of London and how hard it was to get out of there. He sounded like the autobiography of Charlie Chaplin. I could practically hear that theme from Limelight or was it City Lights where he eats the flower?”
“Who ate the flower? The Times critic?”
“In the movie: Charlie and the blind girl. Aren’t you listening? I was telling you Clyde or Trevor had a terrible time getting out of the east end. His father wanted him to run a barrow in Petticoat Lane. But he couldn’t wait to escape the smell of cooked cabbage and post-war rationing. At first he was talking down his nose at me like I was a housewife from the sticks, the next minute he’s telling me he eats smoked salmon in private, like it’s against the law or something. What is it, Benny, you can’t be a critic and Jewish too? Anyway, I thought he was kind of cute. Especially when I told him I’d never heard of him. He thought I was trying to pull his leg. But why should I? Have you ever heard of him?”
“Me? I’ve never heard of anybody. Just Mrs. Nussbaum and Minerva Pious.”
“Well, I think he kind of liked me. The way he opened up like that. Once he got started, there was no shutting him up.”
“Who else did you talk to?”
“I didn’t hear where Larry Geller is hiding, if that’s what you mean. I heard that the kids are living in Toronto with a relative. They should all pack up and make a new start someplace.”
“You’ve known those girls all their lives practically, haven’t you?”
“The Kaufman girls? Sure. I remember their birthday parties and their first long dresses. I remember the way they used to scrap when they were teenagers. You wouldn’t believe two pretty kids could quarrel like that. At each other’s throats over boys or records or clothes. Honestly. You boys didn’t fight like that. And they say girls are easier than boys. I don’t believe it.”
“You mean they disliked one another?”
“I mean their father, Morris, was a good furrier but a lousy social worker. He made trouble between the girls without even trying. Morris is a sweet man, but he doesn’t have your father’s sense. Morris never had sense, so he had a noisy house. And when his wife died, that Pearl from Chicago, I think, it didn’t help. He needed a resident psychologist to sort the three of them out. Sigmund Freud would have thrown up his hands.”
“Sam and I used to fight, and we turned out all right.”
“So who’s saying the Kaufman girls didn’t turn out? I just said they used to fight a lot. Like you and your brother.”
“Somebody should write a book on how to be a sibling. I think Sam and I needed lessons.”
“You? You’d never read it anyway. Mysteries is all you ever read.”
“I’m working on Dostoyevsky. I’m coming along.”
“You started Crime and Punishment when I started Anthony Adverse, ten, fifteen years ago.”
“I get interrupted. I have to make a living, Ma.”
“Let’s not get into that on a nice day like this.”
I gave my mother a peck on the cheek and went up to the room my mother still called “the boys’ room” to get some summer clothes from a bottom drawer. I put them in a shopping bag, gave Ma another peck on leaving, then beetled back to Martha’s place. It was decidedly hot out. I could feel the sun burning through my shirt warming my shoulders. The backs of my knees began to itch with the heat. The sun stood out on the hood of the Olds in spite of the accumulated grime of the city. As I walked up to Martha’s front door I saw ants busy with their hills between the cracks in the sidewalk. A whole safari of them was making its way from the smudge that used to be another insect. I thought of a wasp I’d killed on the screen of my hotel room a year ago. The buzz annoyed me, so I killed it. My mind is a whole graveyard of tombstones like that: the lake trout I caught but didn’t eat, the bugs on the windshield of the car, the snake on the railway tracks when I was a kid. I don’t know what it is. Sometimes I think I’m too sentimental to be in this business. Take Kogan, for instance, and his pal Wally. To most people in this town they’re no better than the wasp or the snake. They walk around demonstrating to people that you don’t have to work for a living; just hold out your hand and the Lord will provide. Granted that He supplies infrequently and when He does it is either Old Sailor or 9-Lives. Kogan and Geller have a lot in common. Both are on the take, but Kogan at least waits for the hand-out. You have the option of ignoring his outstretched hand. Geller doesn’t take chances. He doesn’t put out his hand at all. It’s in your pocket without your knowing about it. It’s easy to think that the difference between them is one of imagination, with Geller getting higher marks for having thought up the bigger scam. But I don’t keep score like that. Kogan never hurt people, never picked up a quarter that hadn’t been abandoned or offered without strings attached. Besides, I liked Kogan.