“I hope you’re right.” Fred had repeated the story as I’d first heart it; so it must be common knowledge. In my business a little confirmation is a big help in taking the next step.
“Oh, I am,” Fred was saying. “I know I am. You see, it’s not just breeding, it’s the military training. Mr. Caine was in Central America with the Americans for a year as a volunteer. Before that, he was in the Canadian Forces. You can’t beat military training, Mr. Cooperman. It cuts out fuzzy thinking. They all had it, you know: the Commander, of course; Miss Biddy in the Canadian Women’s Army Corps; even Mr. Ross held a commission at one time and he had all those military academies one after the other.”
“They sound like dangerous people to know.” I said it as a joke, but Fred pondered it seriously. There was no trace of a smile on his face when he answered.
“I wouldn’t want to cross them. I’ll say that. But they all work like Trojans. They expect as much from the people around them. Still, I see what you mean. Medes and Persians, eh?”
“Pardon?”
“‘According to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not.’ They, as a family, are rather rigid once they’ve settled on a question.”
“Inflexible?” I asked.
“Well,” he hedged, “a close cousin, I’d say. You know I’ve been with them for many years. I don’t want to bore you on that score, but I know that there will be a pension for me when it’s time for me to go. There’s nothing written down, mind. But, I know. It’s their way of doing business. You can’t find many examples of that these days, Mr. Cooperman. There was a time …” Here he headed off into one of his sketches of contemporary practices that made business seem knowable even for people like me. I felt like I could pick up the Report on Business in the Globe and Mail and understand every word. Of course he’d missed things that had been going on during the last twenty years, but it wasn’t my job to put him straight.
“Here’s something I think might interest you, Mr. Cooperman.” He handed me a framed photograph showing a very young Murdo Forbes standing beside a middle-aged, lean man with ones lens of his glasses frosted over. Sandy MacCallum, even in a black-andwhite picture, looked like a man in a brown suit. I could see him getting along with the man at my elbow. The Commander, seen some years before he had earned that rank, looked like a man on the make. He still had hungry lines on his face, which had not widened to the familiar patrician face of the present. His features were as good as a look into his antecedents. You could see from his eyes how much the moment recorded in the photograph meant to him. For MacCallum it was just another photograph. I handed the picture back to Fred. “Nice,” I said, “nice.” After McAuliffe handed me a picture showing the Grantham Hunt, all mounted up wearing hunting pink jackets and drinking stirrup cups in the front yard of the MacCallum house on Church Street, even I thought that it was time to get back to work on the company books.
On the front door of the Phidias office, a marvel in glass and boards stripped from the last of our old barns, I noticed the little decal that told me that security at Phidias was being handled by my rival in the private investigation business in town, Howard Dover. When I got a chance to call Howard, I did. Since Howard knew that I wasn’t interested in the rent-a-cop business, we got along reasonably well. By the end of our conversation he’d told me several interesting things:
“Working for Phidias, Benny, is like working for Jack Benny. They’re so cheap they’ll skin a mouse to sell its pelt; they’ll have the hide off a cockroach, I’m tellin’ you.” In addition to this, I learned that the man on duty downstairs that night was named Boris Jurik and that he was reasonably dim in spite of having been on the job for a year and a half.
Later in the day, on my way back from the bathroom, a sudden voice behind me made me check to see if I’d forgotten to zip up. “Hey! Cooperman!” It was Ross Forbes. I stopped and turned around as he caught up to me. I got the feeling that this might be the end of my intimate association with Phidias Manufacturing. And just when I was getting used to Fred’s informal course on local history. “Will you come back with me to my office, please?” He didn’t say it like it was really a question. I wondered if I’d ever willingly accepted that tone of voice. I doubted it.
“Sure,” I said. “What’s up?” There was no answer, so I kept a half a step behind Forbes and followed him into one of the big corner offices. Its carpet was deeper, its furniture newer and with a designer’s imprint on the glass and blond wood. There was also a better view over the city from here. How had he arranged that?
Standing in the deep plush in the middle of the room were the shoes of Norman Caine. The face a little over five feet above them was not smiling, but I recognized it from I’m still not sure where.
“Is this Mr. Cooperman?” He looked at Forbes for his answer. Maybe my word wasn’t good enough. Forbes nodded.
“Mr. Cooperman, Mr. Norman Caine,” he said. “Mr. Caine is in charge of Kinross Disposals, a subsidiary of this company. He wants a word with you.” From the way Caine was looking through me, I was wondering whether I had disappeared without knowing it. His failure to make contact reminded me of somebody. Of course, it was the Commander.
Apart from his slight stature, Norman Caine looked like he could be a formidable antagonist. But had to work hard to make his cherubic face frown. There was a fuzzy, boyish quality about him that his tweedy jacket accentuated. His hands were joined by a length of yellow pencil. “Mr. Cooperman,” he began, “is it true that you are looking up material for Teddie Forbes?” I fielded that question fairly well, I thought. Forbes bobbed his head as I explained. I think I did a better job on Caine than I had done to date. I had mastered the phrases that Jim Colling had given me and to them had added fresh lines of patter from Fred McAuliffe. Caine didn’t look convinced for a minute. I came to the end of the speech:
“Anything wrong with that?” Caine levelled his pencil at me.
“What do you know about a man named Alex Pásztory?” Ah-ha, this was no casual encounter.
“Well, I used to read his stuff in the Beacon. But I have a low tolerance for stuff about pollution, so I make a poor advocate for a pure environment. I’m for it, you understand, but I’m no fanatic. I may get to the barricades, but I won’t be among the first, if you know what I mean.”
“Have you ever talked to him, face to face?”
“Sure. Pásztory’s an old drinking friend of mine. I’ve known him for years. I don’t lumber him with my transom gazing and he keeps his acid rain to himself. What’s wrong? Is it wrong to know Alex all of a sudden?” I don’t usually think fast on my feet, but from my memory of the figure sitting opposite me at the Turkey Roost, I thought that I was making a reasonable invention. I was sure that he knew that I had seen him at the restaurant.
“Did you know he was found dead at Fort Mississauga on Thursday night?”
“Sure. I read it in the weekend papers. I’m sorry he’s dead. He was a funny guy. My big brother used to date his sister. So what? Is it a crime to have known him?” I’d thought of showing shock at the news of his death, but decided that I couldn’t play it in the round. As it was, I’m not sure either Caine or Forbes was buying my act.
“He was found murdered, Cooperman,” Caine said. “And I think you know more about it than you’re saying.”
“Great! You think I killed him? I didn’t even know he was found at Fort Mississauga until you said so. That wasn’t in the paper. So right now I’d say you know more about this than I do.” That was a bad move; I’d put Caine on the defensive. I tried to think what I could do about it. “Alex always said it would be our smoking that got us in the end. He said we were the last of a happy breed of men.” What I’d added was irrelevant, but it seemed to oil the troubled waters. For half a second mortality was contemplated in the blond office, then Caine was right back in there reaching for my jugular vein.