“Well, Mr. C., how do you think that went?” It was Barry Bosco.
“I’m no judge, you know. I’m off my turf. But if appearances are anything to go by-”
“Mr. C., in television appearances are everything to go by.”
“Mr. Cooperman! Good to see you!” It was Ray Devlin. “Still guarding Vanessa’s lovely backside, are you? Think we have assassins among us?”
“You never can tell, Mr. Devlin. You looked mighty fine up there,” I said, inclining my head in the direction of the microphone-bedecked podium.
“I’ll have to get used to doing this sort of thing, won’t I, Barry? Not much like talking to a jury, I can tell you.”
“Will you be personally supervising the building of the hall, Mr. Devlin?”
“Please call me Raymond. I’d like that. And you’re …” Here Barry helped out with a full reintroduction. This time Devlin took it all in. “So, it’s Ben, is that right?” I nodded. “And as to the building of the hall, I intend to keep my distance from the builder’s people- give them a free hand once we are all agreed on the direction of the project. You know the local architect’s a direct descendant of one of the architects of the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. I didn’t know that until today. No, I will keep my distance this summer. I can be reached on my boat in Toronto harbour or up on Lake Muskoka if I’m needed. And heaven help anybody who bothers me unnecessarily.”
“You’re quite a sailor, I hear.”
“Oh, I like to knock about in boats, you know. Are you a sailor at all, Ben?”
“Only in a small way.” I quickly reviewed my knowledge of canoes and rowboats at Camp Northern Pine. And wasn’t the phrase “mess about in boats”? I was losing confidence in Devlin’s abilities as a sailor before I’d even seen him in his commodore’s cap.
“Well, you must come out with us one day, when your duties here will allow it.”
“I’d like that,” I said, grinning broadly, I suspect.
“Do you know Muskoka?”
“I was there over the weekend. I went to pay a visit to an old colleague of yours in hospital in Bracebridge.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. You might have run into Ed Patel on the lake. Unfortunately, he’s in a bad way just now. He loves talking about Lawrence of Arabia and about Dermot Keogh. We had a very interesting chat. Even now he’s a mine of information.”
“Bit of a bore on Lawrence.”
“Maybe, but illuminating on Keogh. He seems to think that Mr. Keogh left his motorcycles to a British collector. But I could find no reference to that in Keogh’s will. Funny, isn’t it?”
“Ed must be far gone at this stage. I wouldn’t credit too much of what he says from now on.”
“He also spoke of a palliative care unit that Keogh was going to have set up. Did you ever hear about that?”
“You didn’t know Dermot, did you, Ben? Well, Dermot had a new scheme every ten minutes. He had a wonderfully fertile mind. He took a lot of time from the people closest to him. He was a great one for delegating jobs. Right and left. Tote that barge. Lift that bale! That was Dermot.”
“I see, you think Ed Patel’s reference to a palliative care unit was just one of those flights of fancy?”
“Wonderful idea, great scheme, but he just didn’t have time enough to bring it off. We often talked about it.”
“You were a great friend of his right to the last?”
“May I be bold enough to say that I felt like a brother towards the man? He often asked my advice in areas well beyond my capacity as his legal counsel.”
“Ed Patel was his lawyer too, wasn’t he? I’m not at all clear about that.”
“Ed was a small-town country lawyer. He did small local favours for Dermot. Things where a local knowledge is an advantage. For instance, there was an easement for a road crossing Dermot’s property on the lake. Ran right through the house! Ed took care of it. No man better. I’d have tried to make a federal case of it and made a mess, I’m sure. Ed’s well liked up there, Ben.”
Vanessa hove into view. I could see her taking in the conversation between me and Devlin. She weighed it and fixed it somewhere in her memory for later use. It was part of her system. I was beginning to understand her more and more.
Meanwhile the conversations of other NTC people and reporters raged around us:
“… He can get Leo any time he wants. Day or night …”
“… I’m going on his boat this weekend. Then it’s off to Thailand …”
“… Power goes to my head like fast food. It’s not good for me …”
“… Everybody in town’s playing up this murder thing. Our News isn’t on top of it. Trebitsch is sitting on his hands. It’s like that Palango thing last year.”
“Yes, that was an unnecessary scandal. Less said about it the better.”
“Save us from necessary ones too, old boy.”
“Say, isn’t that Hy Newman over there?”
“You’ve got to be kidding. Where? My God! Yes, it is. Hy Newman!”
I followed the direction of their gaze and recognized Hy Newman, the burned-out producer that Vanessa had banned from the building. He’d got in somehow and was cleaning up one side of the buffet with efficient ease. Next to him stood a little man with fuzzy salt-and-pepper hair exploding out of an impressive dome. He looked as though he was wearing a pair of party glasses, the kind that come with large plastic noses attached. On closer inspection, I could see that the nose was his. He was working hard on the smoked salmon.
I was nearly derailed on my way to the buffet by a tall woman in a black suit making her way to another woman. I skipped out of the way.
“Trish Jackson, how are you?”
“How are you, Bev? Tell me, how did the date go?” Trish looked like a lawyer. She was beautifully turned out in a cool grey suit in which she could reargue Magna Carta and have it come out any way she wanted.
“I told you I was taking a chance dating somebody who said ‘very unique.’ It compromised my standards. He knew that if he said ‘between you and I,’ he’d never get laid.”
“You came down equally hard on ‘good’ and ‘well,’ I remember.”
“That’s right, but he split all his infinitives, which is very with it at the moment.”
“How does he stand on ‘hopefully’?”
“Trish, I led him down that path, but he wouldn’t bite. He confuses ‘loan’ and ‘lend’ and ‘lay’ and ‘lie’ too, but that’s cute and he’s putting it on. But I think he’s on to me. He’s starting to sound like Henry James. I’d better watch my step.”
Devlin allowed his eyes to farm the crowd. In the end, I was left to my own devices as Devlin and Bosco began talking about a case I’d never heard of. Bosco saw my distress at being excluded, but did nothing about it. He wasn’t much better than his colleague Cavanaugh, the one who gave him his alibi for the night of the murder. They both knew where the money was coming from.
Vanessa was over by the buffet, three reporters away from Newman. I joined her. “Benny, are you carrying any aspirin?” I had a secure vial in my pocket and handed it over. She swallowed two with the aid of some white wine. “What do you think of all this?”
“It reminds me of the part of Alice in Wonderland where Alice shouts ‘You’re nothing but a pack of cards!’ Remember that?”
“No. Beatrix Potter was never my thing.” I decided not to correct her. She was, after all, still paying the bills. What works for Bosco and Cavanaugh rubs off on me. But does it stop me criticizing? Not a bit. Corruption, thy name is pay-day.
“You know, Vanessa, the cops want to talk to you again.”
“Benny, now that this is over, I don’t give a damn. Today was a special sort of hell, but I weathered it. And look! Everybody’s still talking! Who’d have guessed?”
A tap between my shoulder blades proved not to be the tip of a silenced Walther, but the knuckles of Ken Trebitsch’s right hand. I turned and saw what he was wearing as his public face for the occasion. “Look, Cooperman-”