Howard Engel - The Cooperman Variation

“Who’s with her?” I asked.

“Thornhill was waiting for her. They’ve been in there ever since she arrived.”

“Is she going then?”

“Benny, she hasn’t had a second to tell me anything. It’s been non-stop since she walked in the door. Philip Rankin’s there, of course. He’s always been ‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary.’ He watches to see how his garden grows and grows. Wants Music to become NTC Recordings, Benny. A whole division under him. Oh, and Ken Trebitsch is in there now. Wouldn’t you guess? He’ll come out with pie all over his face even if he gets only another thirty minutes of prime.”

The thought that Vanessa had been dumped opened a leak in my system. I could feel myself deflating like a party balloon that has been lost behind some furniture. I hadn’t realized the extent of my partiality for Vanessa’s empire. Maybe last Thursday night meant more to me than I suspected. In spite of the obvious ways in which I’d seen her manipulate people, ways that seemed crude as well as self-serving, I’d been pulled in with the other suckers. I was a consumer of Vanessa’s magnetism, and I hadn’t suspected it until that moment.

Suddenly she was there. With Trebitsch, Rankin and Thornhill. She was radiant; Ken Trebitsch was glum. Like he’d been run over by a campaign bus. Even the three flunkies he travelled the corridors with were glum. Stella had beaten them! Rankin sputtered like a beached flounder. Thornhill looked confused. His little eyes strained to find focus. No wonder: he couldn’t figure out what had just happened to him. I wouldn’t hear the details until later, but their faces couldn’t have told me more.

“Thank you, Ted. I appreciate your help on this. Good morning, Mr. Cooperman. So nice of you to drop by.”

Her face was tanned, and Armani was keeping his side of the bargain. She looked younger, more poised and healthier than when I last saw her only four days ago. Thornhill and Trebitsch shook my hand without emotion when Vanessa reintroduced us, then headed off in other directions, neither daring to speak to the other as they went. She was secure enough of her position to wave the visitors on their way, as though it was she who’d called the meeting. After they’d gone, she collected some message slips from Sally on her way back into her private office.

“Benny,” Sally said, breaking in on my sudden infatuation with my client’s presence, even in her absence. “Here’s a copy of that will you were asking about.” I must have had a stupid look on my face as I stared at the closed door to Vanessa’s private office, because Sally repeated what she’d just said. I said some calming words to myself and cleared my throat.

“Thanks, Sally, I won’t keep it long.” I retreated to an unoccupied corner and sat in the mock shade of one of those indoor trees with trunks that look as if they’ve been woven from the trunks of three or four smaller trees. The leaves were narrow and pointed and didn’t really give any shade. The lighting in the office banished shadows of all kinds. I sat down on the edge of the window ledge.

The will was long and complicated. It had been drawn up by Raymond Devlin on the kind of paper that is made from royal bedsheets. After a number of small bequests, including the gift of his cello to the University of Toronto’s Hart House collection of stringed instruments, the bulk of the estate was divided among several trusts. There were sections on the setting up of the Plevna Foundation. Both Bob Foley and Philip Rankin were named to it. Its direction and the direction of the rest of the will were left in the capable hands of the sole executor, Raymond Devlin. The will was dated March second, three years ago. It was witnessed by two women, whose names appeared again with affidavits that they had indeed witnessed the signing of the will I was holding. I looked at the scrawled signature of Dermot Keogh in all the places where his signature was supposed to appear. The bottom of each page was initialled. It looked as legal as hell. I couldn’t argue with it. But, there was nothing about a palliative care unit on any of its fifteen pages. Nor had he disposed of his collection of motorcycles. That left me something to chew on.

It was nearly five when Vanessa finally sent for me. She was seated behind her desk, but got up and walked around the desk to greet me with a double bussing until my cheeks shone with gratitude and pleasure. “Benny, you know, I often thought of you during the weekend. You mustn’t let it go to your head, but you were missed.” She sat on one of the couches that flanked a glass-topped coffee table and indicated that I was to join her. I did. “Now, tell me what you’ve been doing while I was on the coast.”

I gave a fair rendering of my activities as far as seemed best. I held back a few things that I thought she shouldn’t know about just then. I didn’t want to hamper my own investigation by having too many people know as much as I did.

“You’ve been busy,” she acknowledged.

“So have you, Vanessa. I’m all admiration.”

“I was playing dirty pool in L.A., Benny. I got Warners and the others to sign contracts with a clause that lets them off the hook if I’m suddenly no longer head of Entertainment. They didn’t like it, but they could see that that would give them the power to go on dealing with me for a while. Nobody down there wants to break in a new head right now.”

“Is that legal?”

“They signed it, so it’s legal. Irregular but solid enough to put them off trying to break it.”

“What’s next?”

“I need to clean off this desk. It’ll take me a few minutes.”

“So, you don’t need me for the next half-hour?”

“Benny, I’m Vanessa Moss, and I don’t need anyone. I survived a coup right here in this office ten minutes ago, and I was terrific! You should have seen me! Oh, Benny, I was good!”

“That translates as follows: you can spare me for thirty minutes. I read you. Over and out.”

“Cooperman, you have a leaden soul. It will never rise. Scram. But I want your trim ass back here in an hour. Then we’ll celebrate.”

I wasn’t sure where I was going, but where I ended up was the Rex pub around the corner on Queen Street. I didn’t know whether the blaring TV would help me think or not, but the idea of a cold glass of beer had been growing within me, and I was happy to see its reality being set down at a table in front of me. Before I’d finished the first cool draft, there was a hand on my shoulder. It belonged to Jesse Alder, the technician I’d met the other day.

“You want to join us? There’s a gang of us at our regular table in the back. You’re welcome any time, Mr. Cooperman.”

“Thanks, Jesse, I’d like that. But first, I want to talk to you for a minute. You mind?”

“No, go ahead. I’m on break. My time is your time.” Jesse sat down facing me.

“The other day when I was here with you, I asked about Bob Foley. You know that I’m a private investigator and that I’m trying to keep Vanessa Moss from getting killed the way Renata Sartori was.”

“Sure. I know. Everybody knows.”

“What I wanted to ask you is why did everybody at the table dummy up when I brought up Foley’s name?”

“He has never been popular with the guys, Benny.”

“I guessed that much. And his sudden rise under the banner of Dermot Keogh didn’t add to his popularity, did it? But there’s something else. I feel it itching the backs of my knees. My knees tell me when I’m close to something. Never fails.”

“Just a minute.” Jesse got up, revisited his table long enough to retrieve a glass of beer and return in less than twenty seconds. He took a long drink before he spoke. “Look, before Bob Foley came along, I did all the gofering for Dermot. We were friends over at the CBC long before Bob got out of Ryerson with his Radio and TV Arts degree. I’m talking about the ten years before I introduced Dermot to Bob four years ago. I mastered all of the recordings he made in Toronto except for maybe half a dozen that Bob did. I liked Dermot a lot, but I couldn’t go at his pace any more. Nobody could. And my back was giving me trouble. So I introduced him to Bob, who is really a good technician. He’s got a good ear and he’s learned to read music. The boys know this, and they think it’s unfair that Bob should have figured so big in Dermot’s will, and I got left out altogether.”