Howard Engel - The Cooperman Variation

“She was living, without benefit of clergy, with Barry Bosco, a lawyer, until she decided that she’d had enough of him. We got that much from Bosco himself. I gather that it was mutual.”

“Sure it was. Now tell me how come Vanessa Moss is your prime suspect and not Barry Bosco?” Sykes smiled at Boyd like I’d just delivered the straight line they were waiting for.

“Bosco was giving a speech to the Junior Chamber of Commerce in Orillia at ten that night. Twenty-six young businessmen say he was there. He’s not much of a speaker, I gather.”

“Let me repeat the question. Lake Muskoka’s farther away from Silver City than Orillia. Or it was the last time I looked.”

“Look, Benny,” Sykes said in an even voice, “if we were satisfied with our suspicions, your client wouldn’t be driving all over town in that Range Rover of hers. If we were sure, she wouldn’t have gone to see you in Grantham yesterday on her way to Niagara Falls. We’re watching her, sure, but that’s all we’re doing right now: just watching.”

I hate it when clients lie to me. I can live with it, but I don’t like it. Vanessa told me she was going to Niagaraon-the-Lake to see the head of the Shaw Festival. That’s a fair hike from the city of Niagara Falls. Either Vanessa was fibbing, or these guys should take a refresher course in geography. I decided not to say anything lest they haul Vanessa’s sweet ass to Dundas Street to answer some more questions.

I got up and headed for the front hall, stepping over the plaid blanket. “What were the lights like when you got here on Monday night?”

“It wasn’t me or Jim. We weren’t on the case until the next morning. But, if you believe what was passed on to us, the house was dark except for a light in the bathroom upstairs, a light over the bed, a lamp in the downstairs living-room and the hall light up there.”

“What about the porch light? I saw one coming in.”

“It wasn’t on.”

“Have you been here after dark?”

“Yeah. The hall light was behind her all right. The only light coming in was from the streetlight down the street. And that’s not enough to see bugger-all.”

“So? What are you saying?”

“What I’m saying is that the physical evidence here isn’t at variance with the mistaken-identity story. That version is consistent with the facts as far as we know them.”

“‘Consistent.’ That’s one of those hedging words you hear a lot of these days. What about the wounds? I’ve only heard that she took both barrels of a shotgun in the face at close range.”

“That’s it. She was dressed for bed and wearing one of Moss’s dressing gowns.” I thought about that and hoped that Sykes and Boyd didn’t see my involuntary twitch when an image of the crime in progress shot through my brain. I felt a dry retch coming too. I fought to control it, thinking of Las Vegas, for no reason I can explain.

“Okay. So it is possible that the murderer shot the wrong woman?” I tried to look Sykes in the eye.

“That’s one interpretation. One line of thinking, yeah, sure.”

“The other is that Moss did it herself, hoping that all of you remembered the same old movie,” I said.

“That’s one other line, yeah. We’ve got others.”

“Such as?”

“I thought the lady was paying you to find out about that sort of thing?”

“I never pass the free lunch, Jack. You never know when you’re going to be hungry next.” The detectives exchanged a glance. They were feeling superior and safe. Just where I wanted them. “Okay,” I continued, “so there are aspects that you aren’t ready to talk about. That’s fair. I can live with that.” I wasn’t happy about it, but what could I do? Argue? I thought that maybe they weren’t that far ahead of me in the investigation, and this “other line” thing simply created a wholly imaginary lead suggesting that all systems were go and that these two were on top of every aspect of the case.

A buzz sounded close by. Both cops reached for their cellphones. It was Sykes who was being summoned. Boyd put his set away slowly, as though this wasn’t the first time. He checked the pager on his belt.

“Yeah!” Sykes said, and then he repeated it a few times with different inflections before folding up his phone and putting it away. Both Boyd and I were looking at him. “The mystery begins to thicken,” he said with a grin. After a suitable dramatic pause, he announced: “They just discovered the body of Robert Foley of NTC in his Sackville Street house, stone dead, it would seem, from an overdose of sleeping pills and strong drink. You knew this guy?” he said, giving me the eye again.

“He’s a senior technician on the Vic Vernon late-night talk show. Last night he walked off the set saying, ‘I don’t need this shit.’”

“Looks like he didn’t need any.” I didn’t laugh and Boyd only showed a few teeth to be friendly. “The office just let me know because of the NTC tie-in. At the moment, they’re treating it for what it looks like. Or maybe you think it’s some kind of fancy murder, Benny?”

“Look, Jack, my life’s complicated enough right now without trying to match the plots of movies and TV series. If you’ll settle for suicide, that’s good enough for me.”

“Who’s looking into it?” Boyd wanted to know. Me too, although I tried not to show it.

Sykes mentioned two names. Boyd winced. Sykes answered him with a shrug. I gathered that this was not the A team. “I’m going to call in and get a parallel investigation going. With everything else going on, this should get the ‘suspicious sudden death’ treatment. I want another team from Homicide checking this out.”

“Those guys you mentioned?” I asked. “They’re as bad as that, eh?” I didn’t get an answer.

“Are you all done here, Benny?” Sykes wanted to know. “You want to check out the second and third floors?”

I didn’t, but now I was determined that I would go through every drawer and turn up all the mattresses, just to show them. It took the next twenty minutes or so, and when I’d finished, I didn’t have anything I didn’t have when I got up that morning. If it was a moral victory, I was surprised how low I’d sink to collect one.

A hotel bed may be the ideal place for many things in this life, but sleep isn’t one of them. At least not in the New Beijing Inn. The traffic on Bay is slow to die, and it gets started again about the time the early edition of The Globe and Mail hits the street. Nearby construction also gets up with the pigeons and sparrows, most of which were camped outside my window.

I had ended my first day in Toronto by having dinner in the Treasure House, a downstairs Chinese restaurant that Sykes suggested, not far from the bus terminal on Bay. The steamed rice was good for a stomach that didn’t travel well or often. It was a friendly enough place and bargains were pasted up along the walls in Chinese characters. I got the idea that if you could read the language, you could dine for next to nothing. But I was on expenses, so I didn’t let it worry me. From there, it was a short walk back to the hotel. A small crowd had gathered outside the Chinese Baptist church just off Dundas. I walked closer. While there were several Chinese faces, most of them were non-Asian. It seemed a strange time for worship-it was pushing 9:45 P.M. When I saw the coffee urn in the hands of one of the women, I knew that I’d blundered into an AA meeting. I continued on the gohome trail. Every step seemed to be taking me farther away from the bright lights and wicked deeds of the Ontario capital. Two hours before midnight and Silver City was letting me down.

I bought a paper and a TV Guide and spent some time in my room watching the NTC late-evening shows. Spread out with my paper on the bed, with the TV blaring, I felt as though the colour was draining out of my life and finding a new home through some electronic transfusion in the box. Everybody on the tube seemed to be having one hell of a fine time. Even Vic Vernon, the talkshow host, was in good form. He was interviewing a diplomat just back from Albania, while a strongman from a circus was having a cinder block broken on his chest through the agency of a blonde, leopard-skinned bodybeautiful with a sledgehammer.