Howard Engel - A City Called July

“Did you have any hint that this was going on?”

“Mr. Cooperman, look around you. Does it look like my life gets mixed up with stocks and bonds much? Sid pays the rent on this place and keeps my books straight. I’m a non-starter in the world of high finance. Surprise, surprise. My life is framed by Sid at one end saying ‘Go to it little brother! Have fun,’ and at the other by my dealer saying ‘Can’t you work any faster? I bust my ass getting you a show and what thanks do I get?’ Between these extremes I manage to have a pretty good life.”

“Where do you show your stuff? Not locally.”

“I actually did have a show here about ten years ago. Nobody knew what to make of me. Only sold one piece and that was to an American. When you came in I thought you were from Frank Munby, my dealer He has connections with the big commercial galleries in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. The stuff I do usually ends up there. Ever since he arranged for big shows in London and New York, the Toronto gallery can’t get enough of me. Munby phones twice a day to see if he can catch me going to the can or knocking off for a beer. ‘You keep your buns moving, boy,’ he says, ‘and I’ll make you as big as Takis or Jones.’ Hell, I shouldn’t complain. He got me that show in New York and you wouldn’t believe the press we got. But that’s not what you came to talk about, is it?”

Having shut himself off from his favourite topic, it took him a minute to remember the topic at hand. He blinked a bit, like a golfer swatting tall grass, going through the motions of looking for a lost ball.

“Larry,” I said. “Your other brother.”

“Right! Yes, good old unreliable Larry. He went missing on July 3rd. I saw him the weekend before. As far as I could tell he wasn’t taking leave of us. He tried to impress Sid as usual with his inside information and kidded me about all this.” Nathan was carefully tearing off the oval beer label as he spoke. The object seemed to be to get it all without ripping it or leaving a white residue on the bottle. “Sid bellowed at both of us the way he usually did. Big brother stuff, very old country. Larry didn’t slip me any secret messages. He didn’t anticipate his going by giving me my birthday present early. He didn’t make any statements full of double entendres. No hits, no runs, no misses. Just Larry, with his jaw set tight when he talked about my work. Larry doesn’t approve of what I do. It’s funny, but Sid, with no education to speak of, understands me better. When I got a Canada Council grant it really fazed Larry, he couldn’t understand why anybody’d give a dime to me for these glorified plaster pies. He just doesn’t understand what I’m all about.”

“Have you any idea where he might have gone? Is there a place he might hole up until this blows over?”

“Come on! What do you take me for? I’m not going to play those cards. He’s flesh of my flesh and all that.”

“Routine question, that’s all. No offence intended. Did he travel much in the last few years?”

“Now you think you’re getting clever, eh? Sure he travelled. Winters in Miami Beach. We’ve got a duplex down there. You can get the address from the cops or from Ruth. He went to Phoenix a couple of times. Do you want to hear about the places he went skiing?” I would have looked sillier with a pencil in my hand taking all this down. As it was, I felt silly enough. Nathan wasn’t through with me yet: “… In 1981 he spent some time near Arles in the south of France. He travelled to West Berlin on business that year, and was in London twice in 1982. He stayed at the Dorchester …” I thought of shutting him up, but you never know about these things. Sometimes the first thing you find in a haystack is the needle. “He went to Scotland one time. Can’t remember where. Some cranny or is it a corrie north of Edinburgh. Went hunting with some MP he tried to butter up. Did I tell you about his two weeks in China?” He went on with his Cook’s tour for a few more minutes then finally stopped.

“What about around town? What were his haunts?”

“He was always going to B’nai Brith meetings as far as I could tell. Tell you one thing: I never once saw him in an art gallery. You can have that for nothing.” I put it down in my head with all the other nothing I’d heard. I slipped him a little silence to prime him. He didn’t need it. He was still working his joke and didn’t look like he was going to run out of places. “His office is on Queen Street across from the post office. He was a member- hell he was treasurer! — of the shul. He had regular habits. And you know what? I think he’s a son of a bitch leaving those kids of his to face this alone. That’s what I think. He’s got the backbone of an amoeba.”

“Who drives the silver Audi?“ I asked, trying to move on to new territory.

“The silver …? Oh, you mean Pia Morley. She’s Sid’s girl-friend.”

“‘Girl-friend?’ That sounds like he’s borrowing the family car on Saturday night. Can you be more specific? This isn’t for a newspaper. Just background.”

“Okay, Pia’s his live-in pal. Since they invented palimony, I guess that pal is an okay legal status, right?” He pronounced Pia to rhyme with Hi-yeh. “She’s divorced too, has been around, I’m told, and they’ve been together since a few years after Debbie flew the coop.”

“Was she friendly with your brother?”

“Pia and Larry? How should I know? They were friendly enough. Nothing special. But you’re asking the wrong guy. I’m not all that fast on the uptake. Relationships are things you have to put down on paper for me to see. My God, I mean I just don’t notice.”

“If there was something, I couldn’t count on you to tell me about it, could I?”

“I suppose not.”

“How is Larry’s disappearance affecting your family?”

“Shit, Mr. Cooperman, you ask dumb questions sometimes. Personally, I’d like to climb into a hole in a Henry Moore and pull it in after me. Ruth’s on Valium, with a doctor and Debbie standing by twenty-four hours a day. The kids want to see their Daddy. What would you tell them, smart guy? Daddy’s a crook? Daddy’s stolen a lot of money and run off with it, but be good and maybe if you say your prayers he’ll send you a postcard.” Nathan Geller drank off the last of his bottle of beer, gasped and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. I got up to go. Agreeing with him about the questions, I couldn’t find any better ones. So I thought I’d save my next visit until I had something to stick to him. I said my goodbyes and started for the stairs. He called after me, “Cooperman? Let me give you some advice: don’t mess with Pia. She doesn’t fool around, and she has some friends who have a habit of not liking the people she doesn’t like. Now if you’ll get out of here, I can go back to work.”

So I got out and I suppose he went back to work.

I parked my car in the usual place behind the office and climbed out into the sunshine. It was really doing it today. Even the mossy backs of these ancient St. Andrew Street buildings looked like they were giving up the last ounces of a century’s accumulated moisture to those perpendicular rays. On my way up the sloping alley, I saw weeds trying to make a go of it against the brick wall of the Standard Bank Building. The weeds would be more successful than the bank. It closed down before I was born.

The glare on the pavement made me squint as I opened the outside door to the office. I tried to imagine the street with a rampart of snow over the curbs and ice on the sidewalk I should complain to the janitor about. It didn’t stop the sweat from running down the inside of my shirt. The hall and the stairs to the office were cooler. Old buildings, I thought, as I unlocked my door.