Howard Engel - The Cooperman Variation

The evening air hit my face like a slap in the eye, and the figure of speech knows what it’s talking about. I tried opening the eye and it took in a fuzzy image of the traffic on University Avenue and of the monument to something or other in the middle of the boulevard. I hadn’t been blinded. So I needn’t seek medical help right away. Judging from what I’d been reading in the papers, they wouldn’t get around to treating my eye for six or seven hours at the handy array of emergency departments in nearby hospitals.

“May I get you a taxi?” It was Barbara, now puttputting after me from the hotel.

“Thanks, but I think I need to clear my head.”

“Sure?”

“Yeah. I’m really okay. I’m just out of practice.”

“Well, I think they’re giving a course in barroom brawling at George Brown College. They might let you go directly into the second-year program.”

“Thanks a lot!”

“Well, if I can’t be of further help, I’ve got to get back to the paper. See you.” She backed her chair up, executed a deft turn and headed off down the street.

I wandered back to Bay Street and the New Beijing Inn. With my wonky vision, the city looked like a badly executed set for a low-budget movie. The panhandler, reaching for loose change, had exaggerated colours on his face as I passed his dark form leaning on the corner of the bus terminal. There seemed to be faces on the windshields coming towards me as I crossed the street. Their eyes followed me home.

“I’ve got to get back to the paper,” she’d said. Barbara Turnbull, my rescuer. How did I know that the paper was a newspaper and that the paper in question was the Star? The answer didn’t hit me right away, but I assigned part of my head to work on it.

The night clerk scarcely lowered his Chinese newspaper as I rounded his desk on my way to the elevator. I shut out the outside world when I snapped the various locks behind me. Eight floors should distance me from irate estranged husbands and all other physically demonstrative creatures. Looking out the window and without checking my watch, I tried to calculate the time of day. The sunset was reflected in the windows of the office building opposite my hotel. I hadn’t intended to fall asleep, but, without any direction on my part, that’s what happened. Dozing, I made a better showing in the fist-fight my subconscious dreamed up for me than I had earlier. In the future, I’ll confine all my scraps to the Beijing Inn. The Hilton’s bad news when it comes to mixing it up with the Marquess of Queensberry’s rules.

It was the ring of the telephone that brought me around. I was lying aslant the bed, still fully dressed even to my shoes. I could feel the strength of my heartbeat in my right eye. There was a throbbing in my head that wouldn’t go away until I lifted the phone from its cradle.

“Benny?”

“Yeah? Who wants him?”

“Benny, I’ve got to see you.” It was Vanessa. For once she sounded scared. I hadn’t heard it in her voice when she first hired me, and I hadn’t noted it any time after. Fear puts humanity back into the most outrageous people. I liked Vanessa Moss sounding just a little as though she was caught up in the tangles of her own life. Fear was the right sensation for her to be feeling. It kept her human. Unless, of course, it was all fakery, acting for my benefit. If it was that, it sounded like she deserved an A in the course.

“Where are you?”

“Belmont Avenue. Number 365. You know where that is?”

“Don’t worry; I’ll find it.”

“What did the cops say about the 222s?”

“I haven’t got their report yet. Make sure you don’t dip into anything you can’t personally vouch for.”

“Okay, okay!” she said with irritation.

“Vanessa, does Barbara Turnbull work for the Star?”

“Yes. She’s been covering the murder investigation, and the network hasn’t ’scaped whipping. Why do you ask?”

“Tell you when I get there. I’ll see you in twenty minutes.” I hung up and took a quick shower. While under the water, I heard the phone ring again, but I thought I could live with an unanswered phone once in a while.

Forty minutes later I was leaning on the bell at 365 Belmont, a small, quiet street just off Yonge. There was still the purplish afterglow of dusk hanging about. The dark hadn’t taken hold of the night completely. An unwashed elderly red Volvo was parked across the street. For a moment, it looked as though there was someone inside. Since when are rusty Volvos the unmarked cars of choice used by the boys in blue? I tried to brace myself for whatever surprise Vanessa had in store for me. I could hear footsteps in the hall as the light above the door went on. She didn’t ask who was there, which, in the circumstances, might have been a good idea.

“Why didn’t you ask who it was?”

“Through the door? But I wasn’t expecting anybody but you.”

“And who was Renata expecting?”

“Oh, Benny! I see what you mean.” Her fingers momentarily tightened on the edge of the door, before throwing it open.

She was wearing a blue dressing gown; her hair had been brushed one hundred times. It glowed in a soft way that I had never seen before on Vanessa or on anyone else outside the movies. It certainly was not the Stella of the Grantham Collegiate Institute and Vocational School or the Vanessa of the National Television Corporation. “What happened to your eye?”

“It’s all included in the service, Vanessa.”

“Seriously, Benny. Have you been in a fight? I don’t think I’m paying you to get involved in barroom brawls.”

“You should have spelled that out back in Grantham. Anyway, this barroom brawl couldn’t be helped. I was collecting information.” She stood aside so that I could move past her through the hallway and into the tiny house. There were stairs leading up to a second floor, where lights were burning. In fact, the whole house was ablaze with electric light. She followed me into the hall at the foot of the stairs, then led the way into a living-room, which suited the Vanessa I knew as well as this new hairstyle.

“This house belongs to a friend, Benny. The cops said I could go home, but I’m still too upset to go back there. The owner of this house is travelling in Tuscany, so she let me have it until my place gets back to normal. Nice, isn’t it?”

“Why is everybody travelling in Tuscany this year?” I was thinking of the fair Anna Abraham and her mushroom millionaire. Vanessa didn’t bother with my question.

The living-room was done up in off-white walls and hangings with chrome and glass furniture, and expensive architectural magazines on the glass-topped coffee table. Lighting in the room was provided by three halogen lamps slung low over the backs of the couches and chairs. Large watercolours of lighthouses and wharves with lots of clouds showing broke up the walls with a calculated effect. It wouldn’t have been my mother’s way of doing a room. I suppose it told a lot about Vanessa’s friend, but I didn’t have time to decode the message.

“Vanessa, when you called, you said you had to see me in a hurry. Okay, what’s up?”

“I was going crazy, Benny. Too many people know I’m here. I tried to keep this place a secret, but I keep telling people. I can’t help myself. I don’t think it’s safe any more. Besides that, I feel so lonely on my own.” If she was frightened, why didn’t she pay more attention to whom she opened her door? Vanessa was determined to prove a paradox. Or was it just another one of her games?

“Nobody’s ever told me about the chill factor of raw fear before. I’m cold all the time.” She hugged herself to illustrate the chill. The gesture also pushed some cleavage through the top of her dressing gown. It was this part of the gesture that told on me, a mammal from the cradle.