“I’m not sure. There are some low types who flex their muscles from time to time.”
“The boys live in the house next door. Abe owns two of the houses on Dorset Crescent.”
“I didn’t know that. Thanks. Does your daughter get along with him, Lily?”
“Julie has to be polled on that question fairly frequently, Mr. Cooperman. Sometimes she thinks that he is her own Teddy bear daddy, and at other times, she could gladly cut his throat.”
“Nobody’s tried using a knife yet. That’s a mark in her favour, although I hear she’s pretty good with a gun. What does Julie do for a living, Lily?”
“Nothing,” she said, taking out her irritation at me or the question on a piece of lettuce. “Julie is between marriages just now. Her current boyfriend is a mover and shaker in the fashion industry. Have you heard of Mode Magazine?”
“I haven’t, but that doesn’t mean anything. I’ll ask my father. He was in ladies’ ready-to-wear for over thirty years.”
“What a joy for you! But, Mr. Cooperman, we are not talking about the same thing. Monsieur Didier Santerre has never spent an afternoon on Spadina Avenue in Toronto, which is where, I’m guessing I admit, your father learned the shmate business. I mean no offence, Mr. Cooperman, it’s just that there are worlds of difference between Spadina Avenue and the Champs Elysées.”
“I begin to see,” I said. “But why don’t you start calling me Benny? I’ll feel better.”
“My late brother was a Benny, Mr. Cooperman. It’s not a name I like to use.”
“Try Ben or Benjamin. Anything you like. I feel peculiar calling you Lily while you’re still calling me mister.”
“Yes, I know a family where they call the cleaning woman Mrs. Tarnapol and she calls them Harry and Bernice. What odd times we live in, Mr. C.”
“That’s a little better. We were talking of high fashion.”
“You know, of course, that Julie’s best friend is Mona McGuire? You’ve heard of her at least?”
“That’s not a name I know.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself. Mona McGuire just happens to be the world’s most famous, and highest-paid, model. She’s a world-famous celebrity. She also happens to come from right here in Grantham.”
“Good for her and bully for us. What does this have to do with Julie’s relationship with her old man?”
“Julie would never introduce her friends to Abe! She’s deeply ashamed of her father, Mr. C. She doesn’t use the name Wise-”
“But I understand she spends his money.”
“No need to be offensive! She has a right to use Abe’s wealth. She is his only daughter.”
“We keep coming back to that. Does she spend any time here in town or is she off on the Champs Elysées?”
“She has an apartment on the Île St. Louis, but she still has a house here in Grantham. As a matter of fact, Mona and Didier spend time here as well. Morna’s family lives here and Morna’s still a relatively simple, unspoiled girl.”
“Not the sort who would try to shorten Abe Wise’s days, I’ll bet. What does this Santerre guy have to do with the magazine and the model?”
“I can’t imagine anyone so insulated, Mr. C. You really are a phenomenon.”
“Yeah, I hear that all the time. A magazine costs a pretty penny to put on the stands. Is it in good shape?”
“Advertisers are trampling one another trying to buy space. Didier is the publisher and founder. He is an important man of our times. Morna has been his protégée since she was fourteen.”
“Protégée. I like the sound of that. So, neither one of them is interested in any of Abe Wise’s big bucks?”
“Hardly, Mr. C.”
“And what is Julie’s attraction for Santerre and Morna McGuire? Is she a designer or something?”
“Julie has a flair for creating interest. People watch her. The columnists notice where she goes, what she does and, of course, what she wears.”
“I begin to understand, Lily. Do you think Hart would kill his father?” I said, trying a new direction.
“He might want to,” she said, without changing her expression, “but frankly I doubt if he has the guts.”
“Can you think of an enemy, from the present or the past who might want to see him dead?” She thought for a moment, while I finished off the last strand of linguine or fettuccine or whatever it was lying there alone on my plate.
“He’s led such a strange life. It’s hard to imagine where to start looking for enemies. But, apart from the general hurly-burly of a life in criminal circles, and a lot of people who would figuratively like to wring his neck, I can’t think of a solitary name. Nothing stands out.”
“Thank you for helping out, Lily.”
“I only hope I haven’t muddied the waters.”
“Oh, one thing: what do you know about a policeman named Neustadt?”
“He’s the one who just died, isn’t he? That was a strange sort of accident. Like falling up a flight of stairs. Abe used to talk about him. He thought that he wasn’t straight. There was something not quite right, crooked, maybe, about him. I’ve heard others say it too. I think he went a little off his head, didn’t he? I know that Abe hated his guts, that’s all. Abe used to brood about Ed Neustadt. I suppose it was mutual. Those things often are. I think he was funny about women.”
“How do you mean, ‘funny’?”
“I met him a few times at different functions when he was deputy chief or acting chief. A woman senses these things.”
“If Neustadt wasn’t already dead, I’d say I’d found the man trying to kill your ex-husband.”
“Maybe you have, Mr. C. Have you thought of that? When did he die? If Abe discovered that Neustadt was trying to kill him, he’d put out a contract on him pretty quick. Maybe, you aren’t the only one working on this case. Maybe Abe’s already taken care of it.”
“But why would he hire me?”
“Why as a cover, of course. Don’t you ever read mystery stories?”
TWELVE
Brighton Motors occupied the space where the old county jail used to stand on the east side of Niagara Street. I could still remember the forbidding grey building with dead ivy clinging to the high walls. Now the property was a used-car lot specializing in British and foreign cars. There was a showroom in front with an antique red MG in the window and a garage with a dusty black Jaguar on the hoist. Beyond was a lot-full of dodgy investments in metal and rubber with prices marked on the windshields in large digits. I walked past three idle salesmen on my way to the office. They were staring out the showroom windows watching the wind blow paper garbage into snowbanks sheltering in the shadows.
Shaw was sitting behind a desk that was even messier than mine was in the middle of a case. He was a bull-necked, squat man with short-cropped red hair, kept that way to try to hide the fact that his hair was rapidly making way for a better view of the top of his head. The shirt he was wearing was on its second day, and the knot in his orange-and-black striped tie was staying as far away from the open collar as it could. I was happy to have the cluttered desk sitting between us.
“So you’re Cooperman. I’ve been hearing about you.”
“Nothing actionable, I hope?”
“You changed the balance in the legal social register in this fair city. Putting Julian Newby away like that. The local fan hasn’t been hit with anything like that since that big toxic-waste trucking scandal. Hell! You were involved in that too!”
“We try to be useful. What is going on between you and Abe Wise’s son, Hart?”
“Ah! The old boy speaks through you, eh? I was wondering in what form he’d appear.” Shaw swivelled around in his chair so that he could really look me over. Before this I’d been given an oblique survey while his main attention was turned to the venetian blinds.
“That’s a fair assumption, based on what you know, Mr. Shaw, but not necessarily correct. I may have my own reasons for wanting to know about this. And Hart has a mother too, you know.”