Howard Engel - The Cooperman Variation

“So, there’ve been no new developments? No pills you can’t account for? No threats, shotguns or frightening phone calls?”

“Not in that way. No. But I’m scared, Benny. And that’s real enough. I’m still getting used to the idea that maybe my 222s were drugged or poisoned in some way.”

I tried not to look too relieved. She’d hold that against me. From what she said, after announcing that she was trying to organize a cup of coffee for me, I gathered that she had been living here since soon after the police finished questioning her about the murder at her house. I followed her into the kitchen, where she squinted at the places where coffee might spring from. I found a kettle and plugged it in after filling it from a tap that gave me a choice of every kind of water but tidal. While that was coming to the boil, I found the instant in a cupboard. I took two mugs, brown and browner. Vanessa watched me pour out the instant powder like she’d never seen coffee made before.

“Vanessa, have you given my phone number to anyone?”

“Of course not! You mean at your hotel? No, I’d never do that. Maybe it was one of your police friends.”

“I don’t remember giving it to them either. Did you call me back after we talked the first time tonight?”

“No. I’d have remembered that. Are you sure I can’t give you anything for your eye?”

“Such as?”

“There’s a steak in the freezer, but I don’t think it will do any good until it thaws. I’ll take it out.” She did that, laying a slab of meat on the counter with a clunk.

“When your office door is locked, Vanessa, who has access?”

“In theory, nobody. In practice, there are a few keys about. Ted has a set. I suppose Security has another. Why?”

“I was thinking of the used shotgun shells found in your locker. Who else knew the combination to your locker?”

“Nobody had access.”

“Are you sure you didn’t have it written down someplace just in case you forgot it? I know I have a combination pasted to the bottom of a stapler in my office in Grantham. Usually, I remember it, but I’ve had to fall back on the stapler solution from time to time.”

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with my memory, Benny.”

“Before I leave, remind me to get the combination from you.”

“But the cops cut it off!”

“I still want to check it out.” By now I could fill both mugs with boiling water and stir up the powder.

Seated again in the living-room, sipping coffee, we pulled at a few more of the strands hanging from this bird’s nest of a puzzle. Most of it was repetition. I did what I could to reassure her that the villains hadn’t traced her here, that her enemies were not gathering on the porch and that I was on the job. It seemed to calm her, which was good, because both nervousness and fear are contagious.

“What happened this afternoon?”

“I think Thornhill intends to carve up the department.”

“You told me that already. I thought he was just playing with the idea.”

“You can’t trust that son of a bitch for five minutes. He’s famous for turning the vaguest, the filmiest of ideas into boilerplate with no further discussion.”

“Maybe he’ll turn it back the other way round just as fast?”

“Dream on. He wants my guts for garters, and I can’t figure out how to keep what I have. It’s only this murder thing that might slow him down. He knows that everybody’s watching. I don’t think he wants a shake-up in Entertainment until I stop being the Victim of the Week.” She had argued around in a circle. I was about to point that out when I noticed it had a mild calming influence. So I left it alone. “You were going to tell me about Barbara Turnbull, from the Star.”

“I just ran into her.”

“Don’t tell her a thing about me or about the department. You can’t trust newspaper people.”

“I haven’t lost my grip yet.” I didn’t bother telling her of the incident in the lobby of the Hilton, or that my relationship with reporter Turnbull did not involve Vanessa or NTC. She might not know how to take it.

Vanessa leaned back against the eggshell white of the wall, flattening her body, trying to make a smaller target. When the wall failed to enclose her, she shifted her weight and came over to the couch where I was sitting. She moved slowly, giving me a sense of her perfume, and sat next to me. I wondered where George, the car jockey and computer animator, was at this time of night. When she started to get close, I let her. Anything to calm her down. It’s funny, I mean, I’d always been attracted by Stella Seco, even though I’d put it on hold for a dozen years or so. Now that she was Vanessa and my employer, I thought of what she needed before consulting my own usually healthy appetite. I thought of Anna, off in Tuscany. I thought of all she meant to me. I thought of Tuscany and the peanut-grower from California. Mushrooms. What the hell?

She had allowed her dressing gown to fall open both at the neck and again lower down, so that there was a fair amount of Vanessa on display and in the most beguiling way. I decided that what she wanted was a hug. Where’s the disloyalty in that? It was the least I could do. We all need hugs from time to time. Especially when we’re scared. Possibly good-looking women don’t get their fair share. Men are easily discouraged in a face-to-face encounter with the object of their desires. A pretty face, in spite of a come-hither look in those beautiful eyes, often has the effect of forcing a strategic retreat on the timorous seducer. So, I didn’t get either flustered or my hopes up. It was, as I said on my way in, all part of the service. While I was still seeing myself in terms of the steadfast little sentry at the door, the hug developed into something more serious, and the brave sentry could hardly abandon his musket at a time like this. Besides, the steak for my eye was still thawing in the kitchen.

Friday

Staff Sergeant Jack Sykes shook his head sadly. He fussed with paper on his desk.

“You’ve made some powerful asshole mad at you, Benny.”

“What are you talking about? I told you, I walked into a door. It can happen to anybody. You can hardly see it.”

“It’s not the eye I’m talking about, Benny. It’s your making free with the division offices and your fraternization with two of its finest officers.”

“Somebody’s been on the blower, Benny,” Boyd added, just to make me feel good, “and he or she’s been complaining.”

“For crying out loud, I don’t even know anybody in Toronto. I’ve only been here since Wednesday.” Now he was nodding, agreeing with me, as though that made a difference.

“I know. I know. But I have my orders. I’m sorry, but I can’t have you dropping in here any more.”

“What do you mean?” I was leaning over Jack’s desk, trying to keep my eyes off the word FRAUD, written on the open edge of the Toronto phone book. The last one said VICE. He just couldn’t help swiping things. He was also busy trying not to look me straight in the eye. Jim Boyd was sitting off to one side, attempting to look neutral, still wearing that silly summer hat. He, too, was not big on eye contact.

“I shouldn’t even be seen talking to you. That’s how bad it is. The way I see it is that somebody in NTC has raised a stink about you being so close to the investigation, and you working for one of the leading suspects in the case. You haven’t been passing out your professional cards down there, have you?”

“Vanessa Moss is the only person who knows. Except-”

“Except for all the part-time snoops that run around like laboratory mice from office to office, telling tales out of school. One of them thinks he can pick up the phone and complain. I don’t like getting pressure from College Street, which just happens to be the source of most of my headaches, but in this case, I have to agree the Chief’s got a point.”