by Howard Engel
“One of the busboys remembered that a man and a woman got out of the car. It’s a small lot, takes maybe half a dozen cars, tops. The back door of the scullery, since you know the word, overlooks the lot. The woman was not much more than a girl, really. Much younger than he was. He didn’t really get a good look at her. She maybe had fuzzy blond curls. He was dark with a moustache and dark glasses. But since nobody remembers seeing them in the restaurant, maybe the busboy was thinking of two other people.”
“Or they walked right through and out the front door.”
“Any way you like it, Benny.”
“Thanks, Jack.”
“Hey, are you really feeling better?”
“I can still tie my shoes and scrub my neck. They don’t make me wear Depends at night. Why?”
“Oh, I’m just glad you’re getting along.”
“I’d feel a lot better if I knew who broke into my office in Grantham and went through my files.”
“Yeah, we heard about that. Your pal Savas phoned me. Police work would be a lot easier if the hoodlums stayed within departmental boundaries. The way it is now, if a hoodlum is working in the next jurisdiction you might never hear about it.”
“Yeah, I can think of a couple of examples.”
I heard him sucking air through his teeth. At length, he added: “See you, Benny, so long. Keep your feet dry.”
“Hey! One more question.”
“What?”
“Last time we talked, you mentioned something about that college. I should have pressed you on that, but I didn’t. What’s going on over there?”
“Benny, you remember that movie Chinatown?”
“That’s a long time ago. What about it?”
“In the movie, Chinatown in Los Angeles represents everything that is chaotic about this business, everything that doesn’t play by the rules, that can’t be figured or brought to book. For us here in this town, Simcoe College is Chinatown.”
“Can’t be as bad as that. They’re just kids, after all.”
“It’s not just the kids, Benny. It’s like Chinatown, I tell you.”
“Hey! One more thing.”
“Who do you think you are, Benny? Columbo? You’re hounding me like I was a suspect.”
“I need to tell you something. Something I think I’ve remembered. You want me to save it for later?”
“Okay, spill it.”
“I was in Toronto working a case …”
“We figured that much. You’re all finished at the dentist’s.”
“… and I think I may have been working for the daughter of Stella— You know her as Vanessa Moss.”
“Her again! How does the daughter figure?”
“She’s a student. She knows about me through her crazy mother. I may have come to Toronto to do some work for her.”
“Since when are kids hiring private investigators? She give you a piece of her allowance?”
“My crystal’s getting murky, Jack. I don’t know more than what I’ve told you. Just remember I levelled with you.”
“Sure, sure, sure. All I need are more clues from the Cracked Head Ward. See you.” And he was gone.
I held on to the phone for a minute. The experience of phoning had been reborn in me. If I went at it fast and didn’t think about it, I could call anybody.
Who was the girl in my car? The man was a car thief at least, but who was his companion? Was she there by choice or under duress? If the latter, it could have been Rose. Okay, why didn’t she yell or run for it? Why did she play along? If the girl was part of the scam, then she might have been a witness to the murder, maybe an accessory. If Rose knew what had just happened to me and that poor professor, she wouldn’t have gone along with the heavy without a murmur. Either this was a different woman or she didn’t see me get clobbered. She trusted the guy at some point: she led me to him. Maybe he was about to get rid of her. I didn’t like that.
Why would the staff allow anybody to park behind the restaurant and then walk out without ordering anything? Maybe they were good customers? Maybe the driver at least was well known to the maître d’?
I wandered down the hall looking for something to drink. My worries had brought on a thirst, and I could find only a juice dispenser that had run out of paper cups. The elevator down the corridor went ping, admitting new people to the floor. For the first time, but not the last, I wondered who they might be. I found a cup in my room and retraced my steps to the cooler. There I had a brief exchange with the former diplomat about the problems he was having in his end-game. While I nodded at what he said, only half listening, my mind went back to my conversation with Sykes. Why would my villain park his car behind a place where he or the girl were well known? Obviously, he wouldn’t. But then, why not simply park the car on the street? After all, it was stolen. He could have left it anywhere. With me in the Dumpster, maybe dead or dying, the heavy had no reason to ditch the car right away. No doubt he had a car of his own somewhere nearby. But there was no reason I could see for bringing Barberian’s Steak House into the plan at all. Unless it had something to do with the girl. It might have been part of the story he had been telling her.
So, what have we? Our villain was playing a double game. He was stringing the girl along, letting her think he had the run of the city, knew all the nifty places where he could park without paying, giving the impression of sophistication and mastery in small matters. All this to impress the girl? Maybe. Maybe it came as second nature to this particular villain. He liked to appear at ease in the big world. But what were the chances of his really knowing the restaurant? Slim. Very slim. He wouldn’t take either her or his hot car anywhere near where he was known. That was enough reasoning for the moment.
From my position by the cooler, I could see into the dining room, where the diplomat was working his wheelchair close to a table by a window. He managed to remove the chair that was tucked under the table and slide his wheelchair into the spot it had occupied. He was getting good at manoeuvring that thing. The light filtering down on his face from the street gave a smoothing effect to his weathered features. The tableau of the old man by the window reminded me of one of those Dutch paintings you see in museums.
“Mr. Cooperman?”
I turned to see a new and unfamiliar face. He stood over six feet tall, was reed-thin, and wore his long mousecoloured hair in a ponytail. He told me his name, which I promptly filed in my list of forgotten names. I smiled back at him and, encouraged, he went on to explain that he was a social worker attached to my case. He led me into his office, which was just across the hall. (Did he lie in wait here, like a spider waiting for its prey, and then leap out at victims as they passed?) When we were seated in his tiny office, he reviewed my file, which he had attached to a clipboard. The books on his walls were those of his profession.
“You’re making good progress here, Mr. Cooperman.”
“What else have I got to do? When are you going to let me go home?”
“Ha! Most people want to know how long they can stay. Are you in a hurry to leave us?”
“Mr.—, I’m sorry, I can’t hold on to names any more.”
“Martin. Stan Martin.”
“Well, Mr. Martin, I can’t run my life from a hospital bed. Do you know how long it’s going to be?”
“You’ve got a long way to go before we can start thinking of your release date.”
“Is this a hospital or a parole board? I don’t believe this!”
“What floor are we on?”
“What?”
“What floor? This floor. What’s its number?”
“What’s that matter? The fifth or tenth. I don’t know.”
“You don’t know because numbers, figures, confuse you. They don’t stay in your mind any more. That’s why you were given a Memory Book.”
“Oh, you were in on that?”
“That’s no secret. Standard practice. Everybody with your sort of injury gets a Memory Book. I hope you didn’t think you were
our test case?”
“Maybe I did. Even in hell, some people think they’re special.”
He looked at me for a long minute, trying to find my baseline, I guess, then picked up his papers again. “Your memory is still a problem. It’s going to get better, but it isn’t better yet, is it? Do numbers or names confuse you more? Do you remember my name? Any of your nurses’ names? What about your therapists? Or should we switch to street names? Does Yonge Street cross Bloor? Does Bloor cross St. George? Does St. George cross St. Clair?”
“That’s a cheap shot and you know it. You know I don’t live in Toronto. I … I … Okay, I’ll concede: I have a way to go.”
“Good. We want to work with you, Mr. Cooperman. We want to put you back in touch with what you’ve lost. As far as possible. We have some useful stratagems, based on a few years’ practice.” He paused for a moment, reading from the clipboard balanced on his knee. “Have you noticed yourself confusing ordinary, everyday objects?”
“That clipboard must tell you that I do. Yes, I confess. I’ve stood in front of the toilet with my toothbrush poised and I’ve addressed the sink in a similarly inappropriate way. But my slate’s clear on the oranges-and-apples charge. I haven’t seen any, so I couldn’t confuse them.” I was beginning to sound like Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny. All I needed was a couple of ball bearings.
He nodded sagely in the manner of all medical and paramedical people. “Why haven’t you been doing your therapy, Mr. C? There are three therapists waiting for you every morning.”
“The Ghost of Christmas Past and his two friends?”
“Why aren’t you going down to the gym, Mr. Cooperman?”
“Until a little while ago, I didn’t know you had one. Do you have a pool as well?”
“Not what you’d call a pool, Mr. Cooperman. A pool for special needs.”
“Damn it! You guys have a tidy phrase to cover everything! This isn’t a conversation, it’s a rub-down with feathers.”
“Just stop beating your skull against the wall. You’ve had a bang on the head. You’ve had memory loss. Your life is going to be different from now on. Those are facts. We can’t change them. It’s time to get used to the facts and begin the return journey. We can’t take you all the way, but we can give you a start. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s make a start.”
“The gym’s a good place to get your muscle tone back, Mr. Cooperman. Try it out; you’ll be glad you did.”
“Thanks.”
“ Where do you stand on OT?”
“Sorry. What’s OT?”
“Occupational therapy. They work with you, helping to create strategies for making your life easier. That’s where you work out practical solutions to solve your problems. We had a patient who could never recognize his own toothbrush in a glass with the brushes belonging to the others in his family. We got him one with a white dot on the handle. Not all strategies are as simple as that, but most of them are. The people at OT have met difficulties similar to yours, so they can anticipate some of your problems.”
“Sounds like I’m going back to school.”
“Would you like to get back to Grantham?”
“As fast as possible.”
“But you have family here, too, don’t you?”
“Sam, my brother, works here. My parents come into Toronto to see me when they can. I don’t know what I want, except to get out of here as quickly as possible.”
“They are not admitting new patients in Grantham General—we checked—because beds are scarce there too. The best strategy for you is to keep going to your classes—speech, OT, and gym. That’s the fastest road out of here, Mr. Cooperman.”
“Fine. What can I do to help get myself in shape?”
“Just keep going to your regular classes every day.”
“I’ll try to do that. Tell me, is there any restricted access for visitors who might want to see me? Are some visitors being turned back by the desk or downstairs?”
“Dr. Cooperman has given us a list of suitable visitors. Want to see it?” He turned his clipboard around so that I could look. Seeing what was written there was another matter, which the social worker quickly recognized. He turned it around again and soon had rhymed off the names of the people I could remember seeing, going back for as long as I could remember: yesterday. Just before he put the clipboard away, I got him to add a few names:
Bill Brewer, Harry Hawk,
Old Uncle Tom Cobbley and all,
Old Uncle Tom Cobbley and all.
He did this without blinking.
SIXTEEN
The social worker took me down a few flights in the south elevator to the gym. There, he introduced me to the woman in charge, someone I vaguely remembered by the colourful turns of phrase she used. Generally, I avoided strenuous exercise when I could, but I looked forward to my classes with What’s-her-name.
I think I’ve already described the gym. If I haven’t, it was like most gyms: tall-ceilinged, sweaty, and full of people rolling on mats or pedalling stationary bikes. The patients concentrated on moving weights from one level to another, walking up and down short flights of steps, and raising their stricken limbs as far as they could.
“You get yourself together and bring your carcass down here tomorrow after breakfast. How does that grab you?”
“If I’m not snagged on the end of somebody’s needle.”
“We can throw a gaff at you just as easily down here, Mr. Cooperman. It’s part of our training. I’ll send somebody to collect you.”
“Great!”
I both liked and disliked the idea of being collected. It was a boost to my ego to be important enough for them to send a conductor after me, and at the same time, I was sad to see that I required so much looking after. Sometimes I could go for ten or fifteen minutes without running into one of my newly acquired infirmities. The next minute, I was tripping over them whatever I did. I was like a prisoner running to the end of his tether.
The next morning I woke up to something completely different.
“Mr. Cooperman?” It was the voice of a well-dressed young woman, as I saw when I rolled over in my bed, my refuge from the world.
“So, you want urine or blood? Today you’re in luck: I’ve got both in stock.” I was getting used to these assaults, even though I half-guessed that this was no doctor, nurse, or social worker. I was having her on.
“Neither. I’m not a nurse or doctor.”
“Well, that’s a relief. A novelty! How can I repay your indifference to my unique homemade vital fluids? Half of my kingdom? The whole thing? Well, take it, and the best of British luck to you.”
“I’m Sheila Kerzon.” The name sounded familiar. I knew I’d heard it recently. Her expression gave me the message that the name would mean something to me. I glanced at my Memory Book. After some page turning I was able to decipher her name.
I couldn’t disguise the sudden intake of air that made no secret of my surprise. She didn’t seem to notice the time delay. To meet someone neither related to me nor with a professional concern for my health was in itself a novelty. To meet someone who was attached to the world beyond the constant chirping of the elevator and the slow padding of stroke victims up and down the corridor was a delight I can hardly describe. To be suddenly in the presence of someone I had been thinking of for the last few days was like touching earth after a journey in space. She was part of that real world I had been sequestered from. She was looking at me as though she’d rather be in Philadelphia.
“Are you all right?” I asked. A funny question coming from a hospital bed. I sat up carefully, like I was made of spun glass, throwing my stockinged feet to the floor.
“Sure,” she said, then noticing my roommate working on his stamp collection in the other part of the room, she asked, “Is there some place we can talk?”
Jerry made a gesture that suggested that he was about to leave, and I grabbed my dressing gown and slippers. I grinned at Jerry, who didn’
t like to stutter before strangers.
“It’s okay, Jerry. A change of scene will do me good.” In the end, after a lot of “After you, my dear Alphonse,” we made for a small study next to the dining room. The distant smell of stale tobacco spoke of a more indulgent era. I took a chair near the window, so that the light through the pane would illuminate my visitor’s face.
Sheila was a pretty little thing, with big brown eyes that commanded and got attention. She was casually dressed, neither stylish nor student-like. Her skirt and sweater were black and she carried a dark cardigan. She wasn’t very tall, about my height, and her short skirt helped to show off her long legs. This served to distract me from seeing at once that her two upper front teeth were not her own. It was a good job, but in the bright glare they didn’t reflect the light like her own teeth did. In another setting, I might not have noticed. Her hair hung darkly, with the sunlight finding and showing off the highlights. I could see that she looked after herself. Both of her ears had been pierced for multiple studs—and there might have been another on a nostril—but her only ornament was an expensive wristwatch.
There was the usual awkward pause, after which I asked, “You’re Rose Moss’s roommate, right?”
“Well, yes. I am or I was. I don’t know. I’ve still got all of her stuff. Her mother hasn’t picked it up yet. Hoping for the best, I guess. Do you know where she is, Mr. Cooperman?”
“No. She hasn’t contacted me. She may not know where to find me. Is it common knowledge that I’m in here? I haven’t seen the papers,” I said, not telling her why.
“It was on TV and on the radio. About your losing your memory and all. You don’t look like you’ve lost your memory.”
“What does that look like?” I suppressed further comment, noting that my ego was unusually thin-skinned. She was blushing and examining the carpet. Why do I sound off like that? She pulled out a clean handkerchief and blew her nose.
“I’m sorry,” I said lamely. “I’m going stir-crazy in here.”
“No, I’m sorry for being insensitive. I came to see you because I need your help. I’ve been trying to find Rosie and I can’t. Will you help me? You were helping her. She told me.”