Howard Engel: A City Called July

“I should explain, Mr. Cooperman, that Debbie is both my sister and my sister-in-law, or I should say former sister-in-law. She was divorced from Larry’s brother Sid … How long is it, Deb? It’s nearly ten years, isn’t it?”

“Ten years, on the nail. Is all of this information important, Mr. Cooperman? Would you like us both to give you a character sketch, or do you pick up that sort of thing from the neighbours?”

“When I can’t get it from the servants,” I said, not much liking the sister.

“Servants?” the sister snorted. “He must mean Bessie. She’s the cleaning woman, Mr. Cooperman, and she comes every Thursday at nine in the morning. Ruth’ll give you her address and phone number so you won’t cut into time she’s being paid for.”

“Deb …!” Ruth Geller said with a whisper of warning in her voice. “It doesn’t make things easier.”

“Sorry, Ruthie. I forgot I was here to lend moral support, not moral outrage. I’ve got my wires crossed. I’m sorry, Mr. Cooperman. This hasn’t been easy for any of us.”

“I understand that. And I’m sorry that I’m here at all. If it helps to blast away at me, feel free. I’m well paid to take verbal abuse.”

Debbie, the sister, was standing with her arms stretched behind her touching an imitation antique table. The light coming through the curtains sent flattering shadows along the topography of her figure. She was taller than her sister, a little fuller, but not so that you missed the sculptured cheekbones or the large dark eyes they set off. “You see, Mr. Cooperman, first we heard that Larry was missing, and then we heard what he is supposed to have done. That’s two shocks for the price of one.”

“Then you know the worst?”

“The worst?” Ruth said with surprise in her voice, and as she said it her hands inexplicably covered her ears.

“I mean, Sergeant Staziak has explained the magnitude of what has happened?”

Debbie abandoned the table and sat in a large wingchair where she could watch both her sister and me. She found a cigarette in a package of Menthols on a coffee-table and flicked it alight with a silver butane lighter. “Please come to the point of your visit, Mr. Cooperman,” she said. “We’ll forgive you a tactful approach. What is it you want to know? I suppose we’d better help if we can, although I don’t like it. We want the bastard’s hide as much as his creditors do.”

“Please, Deb!” It was more than a warning this time. Her voice had hurt in it, and signs that the breaking point wasn’t far over the next hill. I held out my package of Player’s to Ruth. I wanted to do some genuine human act of sympathy before we got to the questions. Ruth shook her head. “We don’t smoke. I mean I don’t. I don’t have to answer for Larry any more.” I put the pack of cigarettes away quickly. I wondered what else I would do that would remind Ruth of her missing husband. “Mr. Cooperman,” she said at length, “you know I’ll be happy to try to help you any way I can.”

Ruth relaxed a little after this speech; her sister pulled menthol-tasting smoke through her cigarette, sending it off towards the sheer curtains, where, according to my mother, it would turn them yellow. I tried reaching for a point of departure, a logical opening question. “Can you give me some idea of the time sequence, Mrs. Geller? When did you see your husband last?”

“Not counting dreams, he means,” said Debbie. “Remember the boy being interrogated in that old story? ‘When did you see your father last?’ That bit?” Ruth didn’t answer her sister’s question; she was trying to answer mine.

“He got up and went to work on Wednesday, two weeks ago today. He didn’t take anything with him at the time, just his usual briefcase. He must have come back or been taking things over a period of time, because when I started looking, he’d taken several of his suits and most of his shirts and socks. He hadn’t said anything about what time he was coming home.” Ruth looked up at me trying to find the solution to the mystery written on my face. She continued, “He came and went as he pleased these last few months. Wednesday wasn’t unusual.”

“Could you go into that, please?”

“Well, Mr. Cooperman, in the old days you could set a clock by my husband. He was never late. He never forgot a birthday or an anniversary. A man of regular habits. For years he used to come at night and I’d make dinner or we’d go out to a show, or we’d just stay home and watch television. He read stories to Sarah and Paul. We were a real family.”

“But that pattern changed? He didn’t come home so often, was less regular in his habits? Could you describe these last few months?”

Ruth was staring at an orange plastic truck under a chair across the room. “I’d get a call in the middle of one of my afternoon soaps: ‘He’s not coming home for dinner. Give his love to the children.’ That would be Rose Craig, his secretary. That’d happen three or four times a week beginning around the end of March. For the last couple of weeks before he disappeared, he didn’t even get her to call, and never called himself. Not once. But I just thought it was business, you know? I knew he was busy.”

“Do you know of any business problems?”

“No. We never talked about the office.”

“Did you ever suspect that he might not be working?”

“A woman, you mean? Sure, I thought about it. I worried a lot about it, but by the middle of June I was so sick and tired of everything that it would have been a relief to know that it was another woman.”

“If it’s the Jewish community you represent, Mr. Cooperman,” Debbie said, butting her cigarette in an ashtray, “you are certainly giving them their money’s worth. Is there a corner of our lives that you are going to skip over, or will you have to await further instructions?”

I tried to ignore the question and Ruth went on as though there had been no interruption. “I tried to organize our lives so that it would work without Larry. I mean, since I couldn’t depend on him, I had to plan without him. I bought a little Honda to run around in. Second hand, but it meant I wasn’t trapped in the house waiting for him all the time. I hadn’t driven since I was in high school, but I kept up my licence. You never forget.”

“Mrs. Geller, has he ever acted like this before? Were there similar but shorter incidents in the past? Maybe a couple of days?”

“No. I told you the way it was,” she said, glancing towards her sister to see if she had anything to add. Debbie shook her head. Ruth looked up at me again. “He was universally liked and respected in this city, Mr. Cooperman. It must be an illness, mustn’t it? I mean a man doesn’t just abandon his family after all these years.”

“I wish I could answer that, Mrs. Geller, but I can’t.”

“Mr. Cooperman’s not in that line of work, Ruthie. He just wants dates and facts. Isn’t that right, Mr. Cooperman?”

“When I can get them, yes, facts are very helpful. Most of the time you have to deal with the shadow of a fact or the footprint where a fact used to be.” She was trying to get my goat for some reason and I couldn’t figure out why. I could tell that they both were nervous. But that wasn’t unexpected. I would have been surprised if they hadn’t been. I felt like I was walking over the grave of some dark family secret and they were holding their breath waiting for me to look down. The trouble is in this business you walk over so many graves that your feet stop noticing shallow depressions after a while. “And what about these recent allegations about fraud? Was that a total surprise?”

“Well, I …”

“Let me try this one, Ruthie. Mr. Cooperman, how would you feel if everything you touched had slime on it? The chair you’re sitting in is probably stolen goods. Ruth doesn’t know what’s going to happen to her. The house, thank God, is in her name, so at least she’ll have a roof over her head. But there’s no telling where Larry’s creditors will stop. And can you blame them? Widows, old people: how can you not feel sorry for them? The trouble is that Ruth has nothing but the house and some insurance in the clear. What’s going to happen to her and the kids is not the question uppermost in their minds. Nor should it be.” Debbie was reddening around the well-defined cheek bones as she spoke. She folded her arms across her chest as though she suddenly felt scantily clad on a public platform. Ruth was nodding agreement behind her sister. “As for the surprise, Ruthie, tell him about that.”