“Why not make it a shower? There’s room for two.”
“I’m talking about cleanliness and all you can think of is more sex. No wonder you keep the blonde in there. If she wasn’t a figment of your warped imagination, I’d call the cops on you. And there are a few women’s groups that should be informed too. I think you should be seeing somebody about this. If Freud were alive …” Anna delayed her tub for several minutes with a dissertation on my mind and what the world of psychiatry was missing. I thought again about making things more permanent with Anna. There was a natural male reluctance in me. Anna had pointed it out a few times. She said I was addicted to having the blonde in the closet. As a figure of speech for my wild bachelor years, the blonde was carrying a lot of dark meaning, most of it Anna’s. But who am I to interfere with her illusions about me? I decided that this was a bad time to talk about the blonde coming out of the closet and leaving town. Abram Wise and his boys had a lot to answer for. Was I just turning to Wise as an excuse for continuing in the old established, make-it-up-as-we-goalong ways, or was I really worried about Wise and what he might do to Anna? I was worried.
“Before you head for the bathtub, Anna, will you scratch my back?” Anna moved around and pulled herself up on the pillows. She caught me in a straight look.
“Can’t get her to do it, eh?” she said. “It figures. Roll over.”
NINE
I called the Upper Canadian Bank and got nowhere trying to talk to the Bill MacLeod who was dealing with Hart Wise’s antique-car problems. By pretending that I knew more than I did, I fooled him into letting slip a few names, and details new to me. Crumbs from head table, really; but that’s what my job is: picking up crumbs and trying to get them to say something.
I telephoned the secret number that Wise had given me, partly to show him that I was on the job and also to show him that I was penetrating beneath the skin of his family life. Maybe he would have second thoughts about our early-morning meeting. Maybe he’d tell me to go to hell. I was hoping he would, as a matter of fact. I was getting tired of running into Mickey Armstrong every time I looked up from my coffee cup.
“Who the hell gave you this number?” he shouted at me. Good, I thought, now I’ll be cut loose and returned to civilian life.
“You did, Mr. Wise. Yesterday morning. This is Benny. Benny Cooperman. Remember in the very early morning?”
“All right. All right! What’s your problem? This better be good.”
“What can you tell me about Hart and his antique Triumph?”
“Are you telling me that Hart’s behind this plot to kill me? I don’t believe it!”
“I’m not saying anything of the kind. I’m just trying to find my way in a family I’d scarcely heard of when I went to bed last night. Are you having second thoughts?”
“No, damn it! I’ve got too much riding on this. You want to know about Hart’s car?”
“The antique Triumph-”
“The TR2. I know the machine. It’s the 1954 model. A peach of a car. Reminds me of the Morgan I once wanted and couldn’t afford. What do you want to know about it?”
“I want to know how the car became a headache. The bank won’t tell me anything. They are bothering Paulette about it. How has it soured things between you and your son?”
“Hart fell in love with the car and bought it from a dealer without checking on his bank balance. He wrote a bad cheque. The dealer went to his lawyer, the lawyer saw that this was a chance to involve me, so he served a writ on Hart. I have friends in this town, Mr. Cooperman. That’s how I found out about it. Knowledge is my armour. Of course Hart was furious. He didn’t want me to know anything about the business. He wanted to handle it himself. It was a stupid mistake, but the lawyer’s trying to make a federal case of it. They’re getting at me through Hart, but the boy thinks I’m interfering in his life again. As a father, I can’t do anything right. I tried to give him the money to cover the overdraft, but that only made things worse. He won’t make himself admit that he’s being used as a pawn to get at me.”
“Are you and Hart on speaking terms?” He thought a moment before answering.
“I try to remain on cordial terms with both my children.”
“But that’s easier said than done.”
“Some day, Mr. Cooperman, you’ll have children.”
“These children-not mine, but yours-are well into their thirties, Mr. Wise. They have left home, have formed attachments, I suppose, and even bounce the occasional cheque. Maybe it’s time you stopped treating them like children?”
“I hired you as an investigator, Cooperman, not a sob-sister! When I want your advice about matters other than my life and death, I’ll send Mickey around to tell you. In the meantime, stick to your damned job!”
“Speaking of Mickey, I want to talk to him. I’m not having an easy time getting his ear.”
“I’m beginning to wonder whether your services weren’t over-sold, Mr. Cooperman. But, I’ll have a word with Mickey. I trust him as I trust few others. He’s a good man, and more enterprising than most. Is that all?”
“Tell me about your will. Who gets your money?”
“My visible assets and as many of the invisible ones that survive probate go to Hart and Julie in equal shares.
In the event of the death of either, the remaining child inherits everything. There are some fairly sizeable gifts to institutions, charities and people close to me, but the bulk of it goes to Hart and Julie. Is there anything else you need?”
“I can’t think of anything. Oh, yes, Lily won’t talk to me.”
“I hear what you’re saying. I’ll look after it. I can’t promise anything with Lily. Never could. If there’s nothing else, I’ve got to go. It’s a busy, day and there’s a funeral I have to attend.”
“Would that be the one for the former deputy police chief? I wouldn’t have guessed that you were all that close.”
“We weren’t, my friend. But having an unsavoury reputation has this peculiar advantage. When I turn up at Neustadt’s funeral, everybody will think he was a bigger son of a bitch than he was, which is going some.”
“I guess you crossed swords more than once?”
“Once was enough! Now, I don’t have time to banter with you, Cooperman. Goodbye!” I got my ear away from the phone just in time to save my eardrum from rough use. I was glad that I wasn’t in daily contact with Abe Wise. I don’t think I could take it.
I knew when I bought it that I should have spent some time seriously looking at McKenzie Stewart’s new book. As the only living author of my acquaintance within a hundred miles or even a thousand, he was bound to run into me sooner or later. Sooner, if I hadn’t read his book. That’s the way the laws of probability work around here. I was right. He was coming out of Christopher’s Smoke Shop with a couple of foreign newspapers under his arm and a fresh pouch of pipe tobacco, which he was tearing open with complete absorption.
“Ah, Benny!” he said, putting a big brown hand on my shoulder. “How are things in the world of crime?”
“McStu!” I said. “I just bought your new book this morning,” I lied. McStu, when he wasn’t writing crime novels, was teaching English or Creative Writing at Secord University up on the Escarpment. He also travelled a lot lecturing on black writers.
“Thank God somebody bought it!” he said emphatically. “It might as well be you. I told them that nobody’s going to buy that book, Benny. Nobody.”
“But it’s a local story, isn’t it?”
“Well, we’ll sell a few around Grantham. But Grantham isn’t the world. My U.S. publisher wasn’t interested. My English publisher said he’d skip this one. So all I’ve got to look to are Canadian sales. What did you think of it?”
“I … I’ve just started it,” I said, stammering. “The beginning is great!” I said as enthusiastically as I could.