Howard Engel - The Cooperman Variation

“Is he married?”

“Technically. He’s been separated from his wife for over ten years. She left him a year after the accident; moved to Julian, California; opened a second-hand bookstore.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Barry did some legal work for Vanessa, and Raymond took me out twice, before I married Gordon. I’ve been a Raymond Devlin watcher for years. He tried to get me up to his cottage once, but I out-foxed him.”

“At the meeting, this morning, I met Philip Rankin and Ken Trebitsch. Where would you place them on Vanessa’s enemies list?”

“That’s hard to say. I haven’t had much contact-”

“This could be important, Sally. Renata was murdered, remember.” Sally’s mouth stood open for a few seconds. Some sort of mental process was going on behind her well-shaped brows. “Tell me,” I said quietly.

“Like the rest of the people in that boardroom, Ken and Philip are ambitious. Both would like to add some of the clout Entertainment has to their own empires. Entertainment has the squeeze on prime time. They both want a bigger share. Ken, at least, isn’t subtle about how he goes about things. If he likes the apple on your desk, he’ll grab it. If you catch him at it, he was ‘only fooling.’ Philip’s not as easy to read. While Dermot Keogh was alive, Philip Rankin was a somebody, as they say in the muffler commercials. Recently, he’s had to work harder, do more scouting around to find talent. Dermot’s death really shook Philip. He hasn’t got over it yet, I think. Whenever I overhear him talking, he’s telling stories about the old days. He shared Dermot’s passion for antique cars and rare wines. The only thing that Dermot collected that Philip disapproved of was motorcycles.”

“I can’t picture a cellist on a chopper.”

“Neither could Philip. Thought it was too dangerous. Also, he didn’t run after women the way Dermot did. He just didn’t have the looks or the glamour for it. But you should have heard his eulogy at Dermot’s funeral. There wasn’t a dry eye in the church.”

“Does everybody call him ‘Philip’? Isn’t he ‘Phil’ to anyone?”

“Philip’s rather particular about his name. Actually, he has a string of initials he uses in writing, plus his degrees, both the earned and the honorary ones. Plain Philip Rankin is as simple as it gets. The whole name is something like Philip Ross Gardiner Rankin, F.R.C.O., D.M., R.A.M., R.C.M. Shall I keep going?”

“Was part of his value to NTC his closeness to Keogh?”

“Naturally. Philip could get around him, get him to agree to do the promotion necessary to ballyhoo his shows. Dermot believed that the programs sold themselves, that his name sold them. He hated to appear to be pushing or giving a sales pitch. You could never catch him bragging, although he was on first-name terms with all of the greats of the musical world. Philip once said that he dropped in on him, this must have been five or six years ago, and the Three Tenors were making salad in the kitchen. Dermot was boiling potatoes. Apart from his playing in public, he was really rather shy without Hector to lean on.”

“Hector?”

“That’s what he called his cello. It was a Stradivarius, I think.”

“What happened to Hector?”

“I guess it was swallowed up into the estate. Ask Philip, he’d know. He’s one of the trustees of the foundation.”

“Is Philip Rankin all that approachable?”

“Are you kidding? If it has anything to do with Dermot Keogh, his door will open wide.”

“Great!”

A beefy man with a brown moustache, suit and hair sat down on Sally’s other side. At first she didn’t see him and then she turned, unpleased by what she saw.

“I thought I might find you here,” he said, with just the suggestion of a Scottish accent.

“Gordon! What are you doing here? Have you been following me again?”

“I need to talk to you, Sally. I’ve got to.”

“Gordon, this is neither the time nor the place. Remember what the judge said. You have to keep to what he says. Especially ‘watching or besetting.’ Section 381, Gordon. You know that.” I may have been imagining it, but now I could sense heather in Sally’s voice too. Nervously, she introduced us. Jackson looked at me with a face so troubled it could not even muster an unfriendly glare. We didn’t shake hands.

“I said I needed to talk-”

“Not now , Gordon. I’ll join you in the lobby in five minutes.”

“What I’ve got to say can’t wait five minutes. I was outside your office all afternoon. You don’t know the-” Again she cut him off.

“Not here, Gordon. Are you listening? In the lobby. Five minutes.” Gordon Jackson got to his feet. For a second, I thought he was going to do as he’d been told. But, as soon as he had gained his balance, he grabbed at Sally’s arm, pulled her off the stool so that it fell over into me and then down to the carpet and rolled into a startled waiter.

“Gordon, you can’t-!”

“Hey! Watch it!” My efforts at mending things between the Jacksons were foolish and badly executed. I reached out and tugged at his lapels, trying to get him away from the struggling Sally. He couldn’t punch me- he was too close-but I could see it in his eyes. Meanwhile Sally started moaning. I don’t think he’d hurt her, but the pain was real nonetheless. The farther away I got him from his wife, the greater were his opportunities for striking out. He missed me twice but landed a good one on his third try. I ended up sprawled next to the fallen stool, with a flailing sort of wonderment in my brain: This can’t be happening! Not to me!

Suddenly, I couldn’t see anything but legs. My view of everything was cut off by a crowd of my fellow tipplers. I heard Sally still crying out, and by the time I got up and pulled a few bodies out of my way, I could see them leaving the bar together. Sally was walking on her own, but Gordon was holding her arm behind her back. As I caught up to them, I called out Sally’s name. When I’d cleared the bar entrance, still coming along as fast as I could, Gordon turned and let me walk into the fist on the end of his extended right hand. I went down again to the carpet in an explosion of colours and stayed there.

There have been a few times in my career when I have had to pick myself up off the floor. Ignominiously is the word that Frank Bushmill adds to my telling of these tales. An educated man, he should know. I merely pass the word on, as I remembered it, lying there, thinking of those other times. This time I reached up and found a warm hand and grabbed it. It remained calm while I pulled myself up on it. I held on with a good strong grip. I was on my knees, rising almost into the lap of a woman with wheels. It was a motorized wheelchair she was sitting in. She had curly red hair, was wearing plaid slacks and was grinning at me.

“I missed the beginning,” she said. “Could you push the replay button?”

“There were three of them, right?”

“Oh, at least. Your nose isn’t bleeding. I don’t see any loose teeth. But your eye, your poor eye.”

“Who are you?” I asked, loosening my grip on her and starting to brush the carpet fuzz from my jacket.

“Barbara,” she said. “Barbara Turnbull.”

“Well, Barbara, thanks. Did you get his licence number?”

The remarkable thing was that nothing was spilled. No blood on the rug, no fallen drinks weltering in their own ice cubes. No broken furniture. Nothing. And, apart from having to meet the gaze of the manager and the assistant manager, a florid face and a grey one, I was in fairly good shape, thanks to Barbara Turnbull. She watched me as I scanned the room for my former poise and sense of purpose. A woman with a green dragon clasp on her dress offered me tissue from her purse. A tall young man with a Walkman plugged into his ears held out my fallen keys, notebook and pencil. The assistant manager presented my bar bill. It only took a zip-zip of my credit card and I was free to leave. The whole incident had been quietly encapsulated, purged and forgotten by the hotel regulars as quickly as a chewed olive pit. My right eye felt better when I kept it shut.