Howard Engel - The Cooperman Variation

Vic took a moment, with his face close to the camera, to pay a solemn fifteen-second tribute to the late Bob Foley, a friend to all and a brother to everyone on the show. Then, without a wasted second, he grinned to the camera and announced that he would be right back. When he returned after what seemed to me an endless stream of commercials, he talked to a young actress who had just played a young man in a movie. On the face of it, it was unlikely casting. The conversation didn’t touch on playing a particular character, it lingered on the cross-dressing aspect. I yawned and switched off the set. I’d given my pint for today, I thought, and picked up the paper.

It was sometime after that when I dimmed my light and discovered the problems of the bed and the bedding. The bedding made a good first impression: it was white and wrinkleless, smelling of Bounce, but on closer acquaintance, it proved to be sleep-resistant. I could make no lasting impression in the pillows, punch them as I might. At least the moving shadows on the ceiling were a distraction. If I got any sleep, they probably paved the way.

Thursday

I was in the office before Sally Jackson had changed out of her walking shoes into her sitting-behind-a-desk shoes. She wasn’t particularly happy to see me. She told me that Ms. Moss never appeared before ten, as though this were a natural phenomenon comparable to the tidal bore on the Bay of Fundy.

“By the way, Mr. Cooperman, you had a call a few minutes ago.” She handed me a blue slip that was covered with numbers.

“What kind of call is this?” I said aloud, although I hadn’t meant to.

“Overseas. Would you like me to get it for you?” I nodded vigorously and handed back the paper. In under a minute she said my name. I picked up and said “Hello” without much conviction.

“Benny? Is that you?”

“Anna! Where are you? How’d you find me?”

“Rapolano Terme. It’s near Siena in Tuscany. I checked your answering service and then had a chat with Frank. He gave me your Toronto numbers.”

“I thought you’d be in Paris by now. How’s the weather?”

“Glorious. We’re pushing the season a little, but at least we’re ahead of the crowds.”

“‘We,’ who’s ‘we’? You’re not on a tour.”

“Oh, I met Andrew Moser on the plane when I was bumped up to First. He’s a mushroom grower from California. He’s been sort of looking after me.”

“Nice,” I said through my teeth.

“I’d forgotten how charming some wealthy men can be.”

“Nice. Are you seeing your fill of the galleries?”

“More than that. Andy loves food and we’ve been on a food orgy, on a high level, you understand. We’ve run down a few great spots. It’s like Bloor Street in Toronto. This place is a famous spa, although I haven’t taken more than a sample of the waters.”

“Nice. When will you leave for Paris?”

“My first lecture’s not until Monday, the twelfth, in the old place I told you about on the rue d’Ulm. Remember?”

“I miss you.”

“I’ll be home in a couple of weeks. You can tell me what you’re up to in Toronto when I see you.”

“Right. I’ll be talking to you.” Anna said goodbye, and I started wondering what that was all about. Was it an announcement of some kind? It would be a little after lunch-time in Italy. I wondered whether she’d eaten yet or whether her mushroom millionaire had left her waiting at the hotel. Maybe he was planning a late supper that evening in some out-of-the-way hilltop village. How do I know he’s a millionaire? Is this my day-dream or yours? I thought about the morning coffee I hadn’t had yet. Sally was at the door. It took me a moment to recross the Atlantic. I squeezed the bridge of my nose to force my concentration.

“Do you know where Vanessa’s staying right now, Sally? Since the murder, I mean.”

“If Ms. Moss wants you to know, I’m sure she’ll tell you, Mr. Cooperman. I have instructions not to tell anyone.”

“Good point,” I said, and began sifting through some pages in front of me on my desk, like I was busy at something. When I looked at them, actually focusing, I saw that they were the rundowns I’d asked for yesterday.

On top was a name and phone number: Frances Scerri. Ah, yes: Vanessa’s sister. The one she’s not on speaking terms with. I put it in my pocket. Under that I found a hierarchical chart that divided the page into several boxes. The first box on the left had Chairman written at the top. His name was Hampton Fisher, and he was NTC’s controlling shareholder, owning forty-two per cent of the A shares. Hampton Fisher and I had never met, but I had known his wife, Peggy O’Toole, the movie star, about ten years ago when she was making Ice Bridge in Niagara Falls. I got to know her fairly well, now I come to think of it, but her standoffish, germ-fearing husband so rarely came out in public he was being accused of being Howard Hughes back from the dead. He had surrounded himself with flunkies in Niagara Falls, rented a whole floor at the Colonel John Butler Hotel, and watched people’s comings and goings through a series of TV monitors. If he and Peggy had had any children, I never heard about it. Yet they stayed married, which was an improvement on Hughes. Fisher had not scrimped and saved to make his fortune, nor had he beat his way to the top pushing less dedicated entrepreneurs out of his way. He was born into a successful newspaper family. It was his grandfather who’d done all the pushing and shoving. Hamp simply inherited it all when his father died. For that reason, many tried to write off Hamp Fisher. He was easy to put down: the drinking water he had flown in from California, the thermometer he carried at all times, his peculiar diets. All this gave reporters from opposition papers a field day whenever he threatened to take over another group of dailies. To tell the truth, Fisher had weeded and trimmed his garden of papers, pruning the unproductive ones and fertilizing the promising. His grandfather would have been proud of him. More recently, having put the papers in a holding company, he had been buying up television stations and setting up the newest of our TV networks. I guess it beat collecting stamps.

Two lines had been drawn from the Chairman box. The top one ran to a box marked Board of Directors . On it, I would find that the members, friendly outsiders, plus the chairman and the president, owned another twenty-six per cent of the A shares. The names of the friendly outsiders didn’t light up my sky at once, but on a second reading I recognized the name Ted Thornhill. Hell, I’d even met him! He was the guy who made a guest appearance at the signing of the Dermot Keogh Hall contracts, the man who’d arrived with his own photographer. He was the president and general manager, the chief executive officer of the whole shebang. Not only did his name appear in a list of the Board of Directors, but it appeared just below it in a box all his own, joined by a line to the Chairman box. A vertical line ran down from the President, General Manager amp; CEO box to a horizontal line from which depended several boxes: Finance, Programming, Advertising amp; Sales, News . All of these were vice-presidents. Again, the names here meant nothing to me.

I tried to remember what I once knew about shares in limited corporations. The A shares were voting shares, the preferred shares held by a few insiders. The B shares were publicly traded. The insiders were allowed to own only five per cent of the B shares, according to what my paper said. That left twenty-seven per cent of the remaining B shares widely owned in small batches. I put this page away for future reference after checking to see that Vanessa’s name turned up in a box of its own directly under David L. Simbrow, the vice-president of programming. She was designated Head of Entertainment . Her name had been inserted where that of Nathan Green had been removed.