The guy on my left was weedy in a silver-studded black leather jacket. His head was shaved to the scalp and he wore an earring in one ear. A dark blue tattoo of a scimitar on his wrist made his skin appear unnaturally white. He was chewing gum. I was guessing that it was gum.
It wasn’t as long a drive as the skinhead promised. Maybe it seemed shorter because of his advertisement. Maybe the situation was making me edit out the irrelevancies. Things like time were the first to go. This was tragedy pure and simple roughed in with a black brush.
Anyhow, the motor died after a time and the bodies on each side of me shifted. Were we in a quiet corner of a hardwood bush? I could picture a patch of skinny saplings stretching up towards the grey sky. I had seen this scene in the movies a dozen times. As good a place for it as any, I thought and shrugged. There were four of them. Would the driver come out to watch? Or would he stay in the car, already planning to cop a plea: “But, Your Honour, I was in the car! I was behind the wheel! I didn’t see nothing!”
Once out of the car, the frosty bush vanished. I took a deep breath. I wasn’t standing on the margin of a woodlot with snow still lingering under the trees. I wasn’t going to be buried under a snowdrift with last year’s blackened leaves covering my remains. Not now anyway.
The car was parked behind a dark house that seemed to rise out of the chilly mist that clung to the ground. I could hear the frost cracking wood far away. Closer I could see the rooftops of other houses. Everywhere I looked, my imagined rural details were replaced by an urban reality: telephone poles, curbs, asphalt, fire hydrants. “At least gunshots are out!” I thought. Other nasty ways to go came into my head, as I was prodded towards a back door.
A light was shining through an open doorway half-blocked by a female figure standing between us and the light. “You were gone long enough,” she said to no one in particular. I was grateful for the light and for this feminine presence. They both seemed to stand between me and a sudden change of state. “He’s in a hell of a temper, Mick,” she said. “He wants this over and done with.”
I swallowed hard. Again I was pushed forward. “I’m going. I’m going!” I said.
TWO
“Come in! Come in, Mr. Cooperman! Come in!” The voice was gruff, impatient and elderly. It came from somewhere behind the woman in the doorway, who quickly moved to one side. I heard a whispered instruction from the figure that was silhouetted against the light, and the woman retreated back through a hallway out of sight.
“Mickey, get his coat!” the man ordered, and Mickey and the other three of my conductors all reached at once to remove my outer clothing. Once divested, I followed the figure in front of me as he moved through a high narrow hallway, made a turn, passed a glimpse of a kitchen, and entered a large, high-ceilinged, well-appointed room. I was grateful that I was no longer being prodded from behind. In fact, the sinister shapes had almost all been eclipsed by the warmth of the house, the radiance of oil paintings on the walls and the heavy deep red draperies covering the front windows. The only scary things in the room were little brown statuettes mounted on stands or on small tables; primitive terracotta figurines: votive idols, fetish figures? Who knows? In the indirect electric light and the changing glow of the fire, they looked evil.
“Come in!” he repeated. The voice was gruff, as I said, but there was now an attempt to sound amiable about it, like a cobra trying to sound like an English butler in the movies. I moved forward into the room, while I tried to take in my host and our surroundings all at once. When he finally faced me, the light from a green glass lamp-shade gave me a distorted first glimpse. I was looking at a bald-headed little man with a large mouth and almost Tartar eyes. They were smiling as he moved about the room trying to find the right chair for his early-morning visitor. He was tanned to the jutting tops of his ears, dressed formally for this early hour, with a white shirt and a knotted tie pushed so tight it made me wince. His blazer was blue and sported a crest woven in gold thread on the breast pocket. A mounted terracotta mask of a scowling monster stood next to a gold pen and marble ink stand. I pass on these impressions as they occurred to me, in no particular order and with the room itself competing with the man for my attention.
“Sit down,” the man said in a friendly way, although I felt the invisible hands of his minions pushing me down by the shoulders into an arrow-backed chair not far from the big partners desk in the middle of the room. He extended a hand with two rings flashing gold. There was an abundance of black hair extending from his starched shirt-cuffs to his fingers. I’d seen his watch in a Tiffany’s ad in the Toronto paper. He retreated behind the desk when I rejected his greeting and sat down.
“My name is Abram Wise, Mr. Cooperman. You may have heard of me …”
The voice went on, the mouth continued to move, but I could only hear the name “Abram Wise” booming back and forth between the hemispheres of my brain. I would have been less overwhelmed if he’d said “I am Count Dracula,” or “I am Al Capone.” Heard of him? Is there anybody in this country who hasn’t heard of Abe Wise? Even Time magazine called him the biggest crook in North America who’s never been in prison. I blinked and tuned in again to what he was saying.
“… I won’t apologize for the manner of this meeting. There’s no excuse for it that you would accept. So, let’s forget about it.” I looked him in the eye trying to withhold any promise of absolution in my expression. No sense throwing away the few weapons in my possession. For a moment he seemed to be having trouble finding a place to put the hand I had not taken in mine. He was having a new experience and he wasn’t liking it.
“Mr. Cooperman, let me assure you right off the bat that you are in no danger here. I can guess that you’ve been imagining all sorts of things.” If that was his idea of how to break the ice, he should try being awakened in the pre-dawn by a bunch of murderous-looking hoods sometime. I make him a gift of it. He was now staring at the assorted rings on his tufted fingers. He was still feeling rejected. “My men do as they are told. They don’t ask questions. My methods may be crude, but they get results, which is what I’m really interested in.”
There was a muffled knock at the door. It was the woman I’d glimpsed on my way in. “We’ll have some tea, Victoria. You’ll have some tea with me, Mr. Cooperman?” It almost sounded like an invitation. And when he added: “since you’re here,” I could no longer keep a straight face without blowing my nose. I nodded assent and heard the door close behind me. Wise sat back, as though the woman’s departure signalled the beginning of a new chapter in our relationship. He was playing at building an alliance between us against a hostile world behind my chair. He even attempted a smile. It sat awkwardly on his mouth, but became his eyes well enough.
“Mr. Cooperman, I’ve heard a lot about you. I know about the pictures you located for Arthur Tallon’s Contemporary Gallery. I remember about that Larry Geller business a few years ago, and your part in the murder in the sauna investigation-”
“Why not cut out the flattery, Mr. Wise, and come to the point.”
“I’ve got a job for you.”
“I have office hours, Mr. Wise. Most people do business with me without scaring me to death beforehand.”
“Yes, I understand. But there was a certain urgency in this case.”
“Everybody’s case is urgent. There are no other kinds.”
“Are your other clients about to be murdered?” he asked, and I could feel my back coming away from the chair. He could see that he had finally succeeded in impressing me.