“That translates as follows: you can spare me for thirty minutes. I read you. Over and out.”
“Cooperman, you have a leaden soul. It will never rise. Scram. But I want your trim ass back here in an hour. Then we’ll celebrate.”
I wasn’t sure where I was going, but where I ended up was the Rex pub around the corner on Queen Street. I didn’t know whether the blaring TV would help me think or not, but the idea of a cold glass of beer had been growing within me, and I was happy to see its reality being set down at a table in front of me. Before I’d finished the first cool draft, there was a hand on my shoulder. It belonged to Jesse Alder, the technician I’d met the other day.
“You want to join us? There’s a gang of us at our regular table in the back. You’re welcome any time, Mr. Cooperman.”
“Thanks, Jesse, I’d like that. But first, I want to talk to you for a minute. You mind?”
“No, go ahead. I’m on break. My time is your time.” Jesse sat down facing me.
“The other day when I was here with you, I asked about Bob Foley. You know that I’m a private investigator and that I’m trying to keep Vanessa Moss from getting killed the way Renata Sartori was.”
“Sure. I know. Everybody knows.”
“What I wanted to ask you is why did everybody at the table dummy up when I brought up Foley’s name?”
“He has never been popular with the guys, Benny.”
“I guessed that much. And his sudden rise under the banner of Dermot Keogh didn’t add to his popularity, did it? But there’s something else. I feel it itching the backs of my knees. My knees tell me when I’m close to something. Never fails.”
“Just a minute.” Jesse got up, revisited his table long enough to retrieve a glass of beer and return in less than twenty seconds. He took a long drink before he spoke. “Look, before Bob Foley came along, I did all the gofering for Dermot. We were friends over at the CBC long before Bob got out of Ryerson with his Radio and TV Arts degree. I’m talking about the ten years before I introduced Dermot to Bob four years ago. I mastered all of the recordings he made in Toronto except for maybe half a dozen that Bob did. I liked Dermot a lot, but I couldn’t go at his pace any more. Nobody could. And my back was giving me trouble. So I introduced him to Bob, who is really a good technician. He’s got a good ear and he’s learned to read music. The boys know this, and they think it’s unfair that Bob should have figured so big in Dermot’s will, and I got left out altogether.”
“I could make a good case for your being an aggrieved character. If Dermot was murdered, you’d stand high among the suspects.”
“Me! Look, Benny. You don’t understand how it was. I was Dermot’s friend. I mean, he told me about his life: his time with Casals in Prades, his classes with Rostropovich in Moscow, his tiff with Von Karajan. All that stuff. But even more important, I got to do that work- before, I mean. I recorded him, did all the editing and mastering. Nobody, not Bob, not Rankin, not even Dermot Keogh himself can take that away from me.”
“I hear what you’re saying.”
“I did the work. You couldn’t buy that from me. So not being remembered in the will doesn’t bug me all that seriously. I still got those crazy phone calls from him late at night, and he’d tell me what was going down. Yeah, he’d tell me how Bob was ripping him off in small ways and we’d laugh at that, because Dermot didn’t care that Bob was getting his laundry done in Mississauga and charging him for a forty-mile drive. He told me that he charged him for going to buy his special unsalted, raw cashew nuts and arrowroot biscuits in Oshawa and charging him the mileage.”
“Wait a minute, I don’t get this. How could he charge back the mileage?”
“It happened like this. Dermot lent Bob the money to buy that house in Cabbagetown. He lent him the cash. Bob was supposed to be paid for the odd jobs he did for Dermot, so Dermot got him to keep track and mark off these expenses against the total loan. Of course he was paying him for the work he did in Dermot’s studio, over at 18 Clarence Square, you know, in the corner, south of King, off Spadina?”
“No, I’ve never been there.”
“Well, nothing’s been changed. It’s still there. All of Dermot’s Canadian and American recordings are there. So is all of Dermot’s recording equipment.”
“Has the estate been paying rent on that place?”
“Rent? Hell no. It was Dermot’s. They only have to pay the taxes, water, sewage-that sort of stuff.”
“I’ll remember that.” I took a sip from a new draft set in front of me. “So, you brought Bob Foley into Dermot Keogh’s world four years ago, and that effectively pulled your plug.”
“Yeah, you could say it like that. But, like I told you, Dermot and I still kept in touch.”
“Right. Now, was it Bob who brought Ray Devlin into Dermot’s affairs?”
“No, I think Ray was always working for Dermot, doing contracts and what have you, all the legal stuff that an entertainer needs. Not the management stuff. He looked after most of that himself or delegated it to Bob. Early on, he had a guy in New York, but Dermot got rid of him. Yeah, Dermot was always complaining to me that he could never get Ray on the phone when he needed him. It pissed him off royally. Or as Dermot would have said, it ‘peeved’ him.”
“Did he ever mention the creation of a palliative care unit to you?”
“How did you hear about that?”
“He did, then?”
“Sure. Dermot was always a health nut in theory, but he really never looked after himself. He loved to eat and drink and, you know, fool around. But, the year before he died, early in the new year, Dermot’s father got sick. I mean really sick. Dermot knew that he was dying, and he did die about a year later. That’s when he started talking to me about setting up a unit that would deal humanely with hopeless cases. That’s the way he was. He hated to see anything suffer. He was always bringing home stray cats to Clarence Square, and I had to tell him that the cat hair was no good for the computer equipment. ‘Screw the equipment,’ he’d say. That was Dermot.”
I paused, hoping that Jesse would continue without prompting. He looked at his watch, took another swallow and picked up the story.
“The last time I talked to Dermot, he woke me up at three in the morning to tell me as a surprise that the unit was a reality. He said it was fully provided for. His old man was still alive then, so I thought good on Dermot. But nothing came of it. Not while Dermot was alive, not after his father died and then not even when Dermot’s will was read. Something’s funny, I used to say to myself. You know what I mean, Benny?”
I told him that I thought I did. Together we walked over to the other table and joined the other technicians. We downed a few rounds before they had to return to their assignments. I was left with my share of the tab and sat there trying to get a time sequence straight in my head.
TWENTY
I had something on my mind and I thought Chuck Pepper was the one to fix it. I called him from the pay phone near the front of the pub.
“Pepper.” His voice on the phone sounded the way a cop’s voice ought to. I trusted that voice.
“Chuck, it’s Cooperman. How’s it going?” I’m sure he could hear and recognize the din behind me. Still, he didn’t say anything. Sykes or Boyd would have.
“The forensic people want you to join up, Benny. Your suggestions on the Foley case paid off. Far too much cigarette ash for the number of butts and packages. They even went further: they say the ash was new; it wasn’t mixed in with floor dust enough for it to have been an accumulation over time. I reckon that makes you a happy camper, Benny?”
“What’s it got to do with me? I was just being helpful. But, while we’re on the subject of forensics, what about the glasses in the kitchen and the yellow rubber gloves?”