I nodded, then shrugged. “I can’t see how I’m going to help you, Mr. Wise.” I tried to look as serious and straightforward as I could. “I told you I don’t have a band of faithful followers who go out and do my jobs for me. That means that everything I do takes time-”
“You don’t have to worry about money. That’s taken care of.”
“Who’s talking money here? Look, Mr. Wise, I may be suffering from an inflated reputation. I’m only human. I can’t get blood from a stone. I can’t always get milk from the fridge. I’m limited. That’s what I’m trying to say.”
“Go on.”
“Apart from your reputation, I don’t know anything about your business. How am I going to discover who your associates are? Where am I going to learn who’s who in your life? None, or very little, of this is on the public record. You see what I mean? If I’m going to get a line on who’s trying to kill you, I’m going to have to get firsthand knowledge of everything you’ve ever done and everything you’re doing right now. Personally, if I were you, I wouldn’t want anybody, even me, knowing that much about my life.”
“I see the stories I’ve heard about you aren’t exaggerated. I like that.”
“Hello? Are you listening? Enough with the congratulations! Let’s be frank with each other. I won’t butter you up and you do me the same favour. The truth is our only friend, Mr. Wise. I don’t know who you’ve been talking to about me, but you’re going to see that I’m the wrong man for this job. That’s my professional opinion, no hype.”
Wise shook his head, as though he wanted to put whatever was in my head out of it. When he spoke, he was reading from a prepared text. “There’s a man in Grantham named Rogers. Dave Rogers. His name used to be Rottman, but he’s been Rogers now for forty years. We’re about the same age. Dave and I went to public school together. We did time at the Collegiate too. Why don’t you start with Dave. He can give you all you want to hear about me in the old days. When you’ve talked to Dave, let me know and we’ll take another step from there.”
He passed me a slip of paper with Rogers’ name, address and telephone number printed out for me. What kind of investigator did he think I was I couldn’t find a Dave Rogers in a town the size of Grantham?
“I’ve got another number for you,” he told me, getting up, indicating that it was time to end the conversation. “This is the number for me when you need it. I don’t want it to leave this room. I value my privacy.” He held out another, smaller, piece of paper. I took it from him, glanced at it and put it in my mouth and began to chew. When your head’s on the block, you might as well crack wise.
“Okay, now I can get in touch with you,” I said. “But I’m going to want to talk to people who’ve known you more recently. Rogers knows the older stuff. Who should I see about recent history?”
“I’ll think about that. You’ll probably have to talk to Paulette and Lily. I can’t see how you can avoid it. Yes,” he said, rubbing his large nose, “Paulette and Lily, if they’ll see you, of course. Give me a few hours to talk to them.”
“You want to tell me who they are?”
“My wives, Mr. Cooperman. My two wives. In tandem, of course. My matrimonial life has been a model of propriety, if you overlook the fact that they both ended in divorce. Paulette and Lily will help you to see Hart and Julie, my children. They wouldn’t give you the time of day if I asked them. May I wish you a safe trip home, Mr. Cooperman? Mickey will see that you get back safely. And remember, Mickey Armstrong or another of my associates will be near you at all times. I don’t want you to forget that. Good-morning.”
THREE
I’d awakened for the second time that Monday morning holding to the notion that I’d just escaped from a particularly realistic nightmare. God knows I’ve had enough of them. Usually they have all sorts of personal dangers in them. This one spread the dangers to Anna and my family with me not being able to do much about it. I tested my dream theory by pulling myself out of bed and looking down to the street through my rain-streaked window. No wonder my bare feet felt cold as I recognized the car from the nightmare. It was parked across the street and although I couldn’t see the driver, I was willing to guess that he had old acne scars on the back of his neck.
This time, when I got dressed, I shaved. When the hoods of the early morning thought to discourage my delaying tactics, I thought that they were just being practicaclass="underline" a well-turned-out corpse in a ditch or left in the trunk of an abandoned car doesn’t need a fresh shave. As I stood there looking at my chin in the mirror, I was suddenly aware of the luxury of time that had been given to me.
* * *
Installed in my favourite booth at the Diana Sweets and with breakfast and yesterday’s paper in front of me, I could again believe in the rationality of the world. The coffee was what I needed and the familiar golden surroundings of antique wood bandaged me from the evil that lay in wait for me outside.
Other people had problems too, the paper told me on every page. Good! I needed their troubles to buy back my own. I read an account of a hit-and-run case that had been on the front page for three days. The old man who had been tossed by a car through a plate-glass window had finally died and the police were no closer to finding the bastard who did it. A group of former patients of a psychiatrist named Clough were trying to get his licence since he had, they said, taken regular advantage of them in the sanctity of his consulting room over a period of seven years. The patients had all suppressed the memories of these assignations and had tumbled, if that is the word for it, to the fact that this was sex only when they saw similar cases described on television. I tried to imagine the dialogue as they consulted their diaries: “Twelveforty-five is out, I’m afraid, but eleven-fifteen is possible if you can fit me in.”
I was in a bad mood! On the bottom of the first page was an account of the accidental death of a former deputy chief of police and a tribute to him. I looked for the name: Neustadt. I remembered him slightly. The picture of the serious frowning face of a man in uniform was so old it was no help to me at all. I must ask Savas and Staziak about him. But I had no patience to read the details of how, where or when he had died.
My second cup of coffee lifted my spirits. So did an ad for McKenzie Stewart’s new book. I was a great fan of his detective, Dud Dickens. Haste to the Gallows was a good title. I’d pick up a copy as soon as I could. Elsewhere in the paper, I read a few captions, headings, the odd fragment, but I couldn’t focus on any more of the stories. I found myself staring at the obituaries-so much for the effects of good coffee-letting the names, dates and pieces of lives that had ended fill my head: Suddenly at Grantham General … in his 57th year … after a brave struggle … survived by … fondly remembered by … resting at … donations in lieu of flowers … followed by cremation …”
Back in my office, I punched in Dave Rogers’s number. I missed the trio of bald mannequins, leftovers from my father’s ladies’ ready-to-wear store, that I had finally cleared away to the basement. For years they had supervised my activities, covered indifferently with unbleached factory cotton in all the unnecessary places. Whenever I had a half-hour to kill, I rarely thought of all the stored junk that had accumulated in my office. Why didn’t I give in to the family curse and go into the shmate business? I had the window dummies for a start, my clients’ chairs were tubular items from an art deco renovation that my father ordered in the 1940s. There might even be some stock in the basement, where my brother, Sam, and I used to play while waiting for my father to close for the night. The phone kept ringing at the other end.
“Yeah?” I was surprised to hear a human voice. It took me a moment to return from my memories.