“Okay, okay. Simmer down. Catch your breath. Let’s take things one at a time. What do you have to do for the rest of this afternoon?”
“Let me think. Oh, yes, I’ve got to go over to Studio Three where they’re shooting a pilot I’m interested in. Then I should send another thunderbolt to Eric Carter. You remember, the Christmas show you saw in production yesterday? I just saw what that butterball turkey he’s cooking is going to cost. I’ll have to stop there again on my way home.”
“Vanessa, remember that fellow who was here that first day? Hy Newman?”
“Yesterday. What about him?”
“Why don’t you get him to do a lot of your running around for you? He’s an experienced producer. You could make him your personal emissary or something. Eric Carter wouldn’t be able to fool him about his wasteful ways.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Benny! Newman went out with the A-line, the cha-cha-cha and canasta.”
“Yes, but he’s been in this business since geese first went barefoot.”
“You let me look after Entertainment, you look after me! You hear?”
“Yup. You want me tagging along with you?”
“That’s what I’m paying you for.” While she was talking, she was winnowing the phone messages and faxes with a deft hand. “Oh, by the way, thanks for the 222s.”
“The what?” Here she lifted up a fresh package I’d never seen before.
“The Frosst 222s. You know how I depend on those things.”
“Vanessa, I bought you some aspirin yesterday. I didn’t get you any 222s.”
“Well, I wonder …? They were on my desk. Funny. Oh, never mind. The main thing is that I’ve got them.”
I jumped up and grabbed at her arm. A blue telephone message slip floated to the carpet. “Vanessa, let me see them!”
“What? The 222s? Whatever for?”
“You don’t know where they came from. That’s reason enough. Get them and put them in-in-” Here I reached for a big manila envelope. “-in here.”
“Benny! what sort of melodrama are you acting out?”
“Trust me, Vanessa. I just want to be on the safe side.”
Instead of accompanying my client on her lateafternoon rounds, I took a taxi to 52 Division with my manila envelope of questionable medicine. The driver didn’t seem to understand the need for speed, and I lacked the courage to tell him to hurry.
Boyd was sitting in Sykes’s chair wearing a bright yellow straw hat. He was reading a computer monitor. He looked up and gave me a friendly grin, then returned to the screen for another two minutes. I moved my weight from shoe to shoe. At last he squeaked his chair away from the screen. I explained what I had found and he said that he’d see that somebody had a look at the vial. “Who touched it besides Ms. Moss?”
“Nobody that I know of,” I said. “Not me, anyway.”
“Well, that’s a good start.” He loaded the envelope and its contents into a plastic freezer bag, typed information on a stick-on label and attached it. He did this carefully and without comment. Then he made a note on his calendar.
“Jack taking the rest of the day off?” I asked, to fill in the silence.
“Naw, he got a call from College Street, the Chief’s office. Probably has to explain his expenses. It happens. What can I say?”
“Well, I hope they don’t deduct it from his take-home pay. You want to talk about this now?” I asked. Boyd looked at the freezer bag.
“Naw, it’ll keep. No sense talking until we find out whether there’s anything to talk about. It may end up being the usual aspirin-caffeine-codeine concoction. If it is, we can talk about old movies or how the Jays are shaping up.”
I could see Boyd was right. Cops in Toronto are bound to remain calm in every situation. Grantham cops tend to be less worn down by the rigours of the work. The result is that they get excited on one occasion and are oystercalm on the next. It’s harder to figure. So, I made my retreat past the desk sergeant and the glass-brick walls to the outside world, where the warm spring day continued to give delight to all who stopped to notice it. Not many.
As I decided what to do next, one of those new Volkswagens pulled away from the curb. Its green matched the young leaves on the trees in a playground across the street, where swings, slides, climbers and sandpiles waited for the ringing of a bell. The Volkswagen was still in sight as I rounded the corner on University Avenue and headed south.
When I got within sight of the big NTC owl, I began to hunch down mentally, ready for the renewed onslaught of Security. I was wondering whether Vanessa might let me do my business from the New Beijing Inn and thus avoid running the gauntlet here every time I wanted in or out. I had just nerved myself to the ordeal, when two men in wool jackets moved in on me. “Mr. Cooperman?” It was the tall, curly-headed one who spoke. “Mr. Benny Cooperman?”
“That’s right.” I tried to feel in my pockets for anything that might, in a pinch, be used as a weapon.
“My name’s Alder. Jesse Alder. I’m one of the techs here at NTC. So’s Ross.”
“Yeah, Ross Totton, Mr. Cooperman. Glad to meet you.” They both fumbled to take my hand, which I delivered as soon as I could drop my car keys back in my pocket.
“We heard that you were here, sort of working for Ms. Moss and all. And we just wanted to buy you a beer and tell you what’s going down around here.”
“There’s a pub around the corner, if you’ve got a few minutes. Sort of a technicians’ hangout.”
“Where did you say you heard about me?”
“There’s not much going on at the network that we don’t hear about. We thought you might need an introduction to the characters you’re going to bump into.”
“Fill you in, bring you up to speed, that sort of thing,” Totton added.
“Wouldn’t that tend to prejudice me?”
The men looked at one another, then grinned back at me, nodding vigorously. Unopposed, they led the way to the Rex, a busy pub on the ground floor of an old hotel building not far from where we were standing. It was a lot like the old Harding House back in Grantham, with waiters balancing trayfuls of draft beer and giving change in a sustained balletic feat to the music of conversation and heavy metal. Alder and Totton led the way to a table in back, far from all but the most unrelenting beat of the music. There were four others already seated there, to whom I was introduced. I didn’t catch more than their first names. Like Jesse and Ross, they were all technicians at NTC. Jimmy, who looked the most senior, called the waiter, who set down a tray of brimming glasses in my honour. Over the rim of my first glass, I asked Jesse a question: “Why are you doing this?”
“You seem like a nice guy.”
“Come on. Or I’m out of here.”
“We all liked Renata. She was a sweetheart to work with and didn’t pass the guff she got from the twentieth floor on to us. She was a pro and all the techs knew that.”
For the next hour and a bit, the boys took turns in telling me everything they knew about NTC except why. This was a view from below stairs, as it were. This was broadcasting beginning with the roots and underpinnings. There was no room here for the airy-fairy shenanigans I had been seeing since I arrived in Toronto. The boys knew which of the producers were worth their pay and which they had been covering up for. Some had the sensitivity to do the job, others had only their ambitions. While I was there, Ross Totton took out his pipe and fired it up a few times. He was the only pipe smoker I’ve met who spent more time smoking his pipe than cleaning it. I liked the smell of his tobacco. Two other technicians joined us and listened in. Three of the earlier members of the group left together after consulting their watches. The newcomers added to my store of information.
“They can’t get rid of Ken Trebitsch because he’s been collecting personal information on everybody he’s ever worked for. He knows where the dirt is. He has a couple of junior producers collecting it. Talk about an enemies list. Trebitsch’s looks like a roll of fax paper.”