Howard Engel - The Cooperman Variation

“I could make a good case for your being an aggrieved character. If Dermot was murdered, you’d stand high among the suspects.”

“Me! Look, Benny. You don’t understand how it was. I was Dermot’s friend. I mean, he told me about his life: his time with Casals in Prades, his classes with Rostropovich in Moscow, his tiff with Von Karajan. All that stuff. But even more important, I got to do that work- before, I mean. I recorded him, did all the editing and mastering. Nobody , not Bob, not Rankin, not even Dermot Keogh himself can take that away from me.”

“I hear what you’re saying.”

“I did the work. You couldn’t buy that from me. So not being remembered in the will doesn’t bug me all that seriously. I still got those crazy phone calls from him late at night, and he’d tell me what was going down. Yeah, he’d tell me how Bob was ripping him off in small ways and we’d laugh at that, because Dermot didn’t care that Bob was getting his laundry done in Mississauga and charging him for a forty-mile drive. He told me that he charged him for going to buy his special unsalted, raw cashew nuts and arrowroot biscuits in Oshawa and charging him the mileage.”

“Wait a minute, I don’t get this. How could he charge back the mileage?”

“It happened like this. Dermot lent Bob the money to buy that house in Cabbagetown. He lent him the cash . Bob was supposed to be paid for the odd jobs he did for Dermot, so Dermot got him to keep track and mark off these expenses against the total loan. Of course he was paying him for the work he did in Dermot’s studio, over at 18 Clarence Square, you know, in the corner, south of King, off Spadina?”

“No, I’ve never been there.”

“Well, nothing’s been changed. It’s still there. All of Dermot’s Canadian and American recordings are there. So is all of Dermot’s recording equipment.”

“Has the estate been paying rent on that place?”

“Rent? Hell no. It was Dermot’s. They only have to pay the taxes, water, sewage-that sort of stuff.”

“I’ll remember that.” I took a sip from a new draft set in front of me. “So, you brought Bob Foley into Dermot Keogh’s world four years ago, and that effectively pulled your plug.”

“Yeah, you could say it like that. But, like I told you, Dermot and I still kept in touch.”

“Right. Now, was it Bob who brought Ray Devlin into Dermot’s affairs?”

“No, I think Ray was always working for Dermot, doing contracts and what have you, all the legal stuff that an entertainer needs. Not the management stuff. He looked after most of that himself or delegated it to Bob. Early on, he had a guy in New York, but Dermot got rid of him. Yeah, Dermot was always complaining to me that he could never get Ray on the phone when he needed him. It pissed him off royally. Or as Dermot would have said, it ‘peeved’ him.”

“Did he ever mention the creation of a palliative care unit to you?”

“How did you hear about that?”

“He did, then?”

“Sure. Dermot was always a health nut in theory, but he really never looked after himself. He loved to eat and drink and, you know, fool around. But, the year before he died, early in the new year, Dermot’s father got sick. I mean really sick. Dermot knew that he was dying, and he did die about a year later. That’s when he started talking to me about setting up a unit that would deal humanely with hopeless cases. That’s the way he was. He hated to see anything suffer. He was always bringing home stray cats to Clarence Square, and I had to tell him that the cat hair was no good for the computer equipment. ‘Screw the equipment,’ he’d say. That was Dermot.”

I paused, hoping that Jesse would continue without prompting. He looked at his watch, took another swallow and picked up the story.

“The last time I talked to Dermot, he woke me up at three in the morning to tell me as a surprise that the unit was a reality. He said it was fully provided for. His old man was still alive then, so I thought good on Dermot. But nothing came of it. Not while Dermot was alive, not after his father died and then not even when Dermot’s will was read. Something’s funny, I used to say to myself. You know what I mean, Benny?”

I told him that I thought I did. Together we walked over to the other table and joined the other technicians. We downed a few rounds before they had to return to their assignments. I was left with my share of the tab and sat there trying to get a time sequence straight in my head.

I had something on my mind and I thought Chuck Pepper was the one to fix it. I called him from the pay phone near the front of the pub.

“Pepper.” His voice on the phone sounded the way a cop’s voice ought to. I trusted that voice.

“Chuck, it’s Cooperman. How’s it going?” I’m sure he could hear and recognize the din behind me. Still, he didn’t say anything. Sykes or Boyd would have.

“The forensic people want you to join up, Benny. Your suggestions on the Foley case paid off. Far too much cigarette ash for the number of butts and packages. They even went further: they say the ash was new; it wasn’t mixed in with floor dust enough for it to have been an accumulation over time. I reckon that makes you a happy camper, Benny?”

“What’s it got to do with me? I was just being helpful. But, while we’re on the subject of forensics, what about the glasses in the kitchen and the yellow rubber gloves?”

“You hit a nerve there too. They aren’t as happy about that; think they should have thought of it themselves. There’s one good print inside the glove. But they don’t have much to compare it with. It wasn’t Foley’s. Not his ex-wife’s either.”

“Could you do me a favour, Chuck?”

“What else have I ever done for you?”

“I need to know-no, wait a minute- you need to know the combination of the lock that Jack and Jim had cut off the locker in Vanessa Moss’s office. I’ve been bugging Jack about it since I first met him a week ago and he still hasn’t found out, or if he has, he hasn’t told me. But then, I’ve been made Out of Bounds by the Chief. You heard about that, I suppose?”

“Yeah, Jack called me. The Chief put his head in the microwave. Nothing he could do about it. But what’s this about locks?”

“I’ve got a half-baked idea, Chuck. But if it turns out to be better than that, it could be important, and I don’t want to be connected with it any more than I have to. You want a clean chain of evidence, and I don’t want to foul it for you.”

“I’ll call Jack about it. I won’t mention your name. I’ll say the half-baked idea was all mine.” I heard a blurred sound. Chuck left the line for a moment. When he came back, he asked if I could meet him for breakfast in the morning. We arranged a spot near my hotel, and we both went back to work.

I got no flack from Security when I returned to NTC. I was whizzed through like I was wearing Commander Dunkery’s own identity card. Vanessa was standing in her office with the door open, looking down onto University Avenue. An amateur gunman could have got off a few rounds at her without stepping far from the elevator.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” I said, closing the doors behind me. “You can’t go on exposing yourself to danger.”

“Benny, you really still believe that I’m in danger?”

“Of course I do.”

“I survived four days in L.A. without getting shot, didn’t I?”

“Renata was killed right here in Toronto. In L.A. you get killed breathing the air. I could have gunned you down from the elevator without getting out, Vanessa. Maybe I’m being dramatic, but-”