A Victim Must Be Found

by Howard Engel

  “Have you got an aspirin?” I was suddenly becoming absorbed by my own problems. I should never drink on the job. I tried to remember where I’d got the drinks, and then I remembered the charming Mrs. MacCulloch. Favell must have seen something on my face; he interrupted his telling me off and stopped himself.

  “What?”

  “I need something for my head. Have you got any aspirin?”

  “Oh, er, yes. I’ll get them.” He began to move in the direction of what I took to be an executive washroom, when, for some reason, I continued asking questions. When will I learn not to provoke my benefactors until after the benefits have begun to take effect?

  “Then you’re not going to surrender any of the pictures belonging to the Tallon collection without a fight?”

  “I’ve said all I intend to say. I’ve just got off the phone talking to somebody else you’ve been bothering. You can go straight to hell for all I care. Is that clear? I’m nobody’s fool, Cooperman.” He opened his mouth to continue the tirade and I was bracing myself for more of the same, when he stopped abruptly. He saw that I was not arguing with him. In fact, I was sitting in the chrome and black leather chair with my head in my hands. I couldn’t see Favell, but I felt him near me trying to think.

  “Aspirin,” he said at last “Yes, I’ll be right back” I heard the door to his bathroom open. The pain in my head was getting worse. If I didn’t know that I didn’t suffer from migraines, I’d swear that this was a migraine. The light slipping between my fingers was blinding. Footsteps from a new direction came into the office.

  “Mr. Miles is here to see you, Mr. Favell.” It was the secretary. I straightened up and screwed on a smile. “Oh,” she said. “What have you done with Mr. Favell?” she asked suspiciously.

  “He’s in the toilet getting an aspirin.”

  She rolled her eyes. “It’s those two-hour lunches,” she said. “Honestly!”

  A man stood in the doorway. “Alex? Where are you?”

  “I’m afraid he’s nursing a headache in the bathroom,” the secretary said, trying to make eye contact with the visitor. She moved off after pausing near the door to the bathroom. She decided not to knock and left me and Paddy Miles staring at one another.

  Miles was a long thin drink of water with thick dark hair, a high forehead and smiling eyes. The suit he was wearing looked older than mine, but its provenance was better. What is there to making a suit that they know on Savile Row in London that they can’t learn on Spadina Avenue in Toronto?

  “He’ll be out in a minute,” I said, offering him the remaining half of the room. “You’re Paddy Miles, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said drawing out the “s” until it broke. “And you?”

  “Benny Cooperman.”

  Miles’s face cracked into a thousand lines. He suddenly looked very friendly and about ten years older than he had a second before. “Oh, you’re the fellow doing some private investigating for Pambos Kiriakis. Somebody should give Pambos a big gold medal. Once we have that list of his we can start winding up this estate” Favell came out of the bathroom. He looked at me and then at Miles, who had assumed a knowing, sympathetic look on his lean face.

  “What the devil are you looking at?” he said, rather loudly and without disguising his anger.

  “I just wanted to show sympathy, Alex. Thought you might be interested in a hair of the dog.”

  “Hair of the dog?” he asked, not understanding any of this. He shouted for his secretary through the closed door of his sanctum sanctorum “Miss Bertolli! Get me MacLeod in Detroit on my private line. Mr. Cooperman, I looked everywhere. I’m out of aspirin, I’m afraid. ‘Hair of the dog,’ Paddy, what are you raving about?”

  “Sorry, Alex. I’m afraid I was confused by Mr. Cooperman, here.” The “here” sounded a little condescending. I felt a little like a specimen in a bottle. Favell glared at me. It was a crowded office, and I was being blamed.

  “Look, Mr. Cooperman,” he said, “if you were sent to spy on me by that little creep, Kiriakis, you can tell him from me he’s finished as far as I’m concerned. That goddamned Turk’s not fit to wait on tables in a greasy spoon.” I reared up in protest, but it didn’t stop him.

  “And what are you fit for, Mr. Favell?”

  “Me? We’re talking about that snooping bastard, that other snooping bastard!”

  “Hey, hold on, Alex! Mr. Cooperman’s only trying to help.” Miles tried, but it didn’t begin to dampen Favell’s anger, which I was very happy to see demonstrated in such an obvious way. Where did it come from, I wondered. Who had been ruffling Favell’s fine feathers before I came on the scene?

  “Look, Mr. Favell,” I said, trying to see if I could bother him some more, “maybe Pambos Kiriakis isn’t the sort of fellow who rubs shoulders with you at the Mallet Club or gets his name in the social register, but he doesn’t steal pictures from a dead man, which puts him higher in my personal ‘Blue Book’ than a few others I could name.”

  “Going to bat for the little Turk, are you? I guess you guys stick together.” I expected that the next salvo would have a fleeting reference to Our Crowd, but Paddy Miles cut him off.

  “Alex, for God’s sake! He’s only doing his job!”

  “Well, let him do it someplace else. There’s no law that says I have to talk to him. He’s not even sober. He just walked in here demanding aspirin!”

  “Mr. Cooperman, if that’s true, perhaps you should abandon this meeting and try to reschedule one later on.” Miles was trying to help, but Favell was not in the mood for it.

  “In a pig’s eye! Drunk or sober, I don’t have to say a word to any investigator, public or private, unless he serves me with papers.”

  “Alex!”

  “Just get rid of him. Show the little shit out the door and off the property!”

  “Alex!” The secretary came in.

  “I’ve got Mr. MacLeod’s secretary in Detroit, Mr. Favell.” Funny how her voice sounded like it was recorded on a balmy day without any ruckus going on in her boss’s office. She sounded as calm and as matter of fact as an usher saying “Side aisles, please.” I couldn’t make out Favell, unless he really had come back from a liquid lunch ten minutes ahead of me. I only came to ask a few questions, not foreclose on his mortgage.

  “Right, Miss Bertolli. I’ll be right there.” He sounded confused. He meant to say that he would take the phone. He went around to the side of his desk, which put the world in order for him. From there, with the flow charts on the wall and the view down into the yard on the familiar side, he grew a little calmer. His eyes even began to sparkle as an idea came to him. When he spoke, I got a good look at the gold inlays on the right side of his mouth. What well-insured villain gave Favell a left hook, I wondered.

  “You think your friend Mr. Kiriakis is blameless, don’t you? Well, you’ll find out that things are a little more complicated than that. His hands aren’t so spotless. You should do a little more digging, a little honest research, before you come in here with your accusations. Before you start shooting your mouth off about something you’re totally ignorant about.”

  “Hold your horses,” I protested. “I never made any accusations. I’m looking for information. I didn’t come to start the Third World War. But I see the welcome I get, Mr. Favell. Maybe that tells me more than the red carpet treatment, As for being drunk, it’s just not true. I had a drink with Mary MacCulloch half an hour ago at the golf club. Now tell me why Kiriakis’s motives are so dishonest. He blew the whistle on you, didn’t he? That sounds honest from here.”

  I liked the effect I’d made when I dropped Mary MacCulloch’s name into the conversation. Favell and Miles looked at one another like I’d been giving her the third degree with a rubber hose and she’d broken, naming Favell and Miles as her partners in crime. It only lasted a second, but there was no missing it. I was surprised that Favell shared the moment with Miles. I thought, up to then, that Paddy Miles was on the side of the angels. He was one of the
people representing the injured party, wasn’t he? Arthur Tallon was the owner of the strayed or stolen paintings. At least his estate was. And Paddy Miles was as involved in trying to get the pictures back as I was. Wasn’t he? I thought I’d better ask a question.

  “Mr. Miles, do you have any reason to distrust Pambos Kiriakis’s attempt to round up the missing pictures belonging to your late employer? Do you know who would have taken the list of names that he asked me to try to recover?” Paddy Miles wet his lips with a nervous tongue.

  “Tell him, Paddy, tell him. Educate the man!”

  “Well,” he began, trying to dissociate himself from Favell’s hectoring. “While we were very happy to hear about Mr. Kiriakis’s list, which he says was given to him by Arthur Tallon, it is possible that he never had such a list at all. Arthur was erratic, God knows. I tried to keep books, but it was next to impossible. He may have made such a list, but again, he may not. It wasn’t like him to keep records of any kind. I found no other lists of items on loan among his papers. And, to tell the truth, I wasn’t surprised.”

  “So, if Tallon’s list didn’t exist, why did Pambos get me involved? Why did he manufacture a cock-and-bull story about a list that didn’t ever get written? You knew Tallon. Can you guess at Kiriakis’s motives?”

  “Bloody Turk’s as crooked as a bentwood chair!”

  “Quiet, Alex. You’re not making this any easier!”

  “Detroit’s waiting, Mr. Favell.”

  “To hell with Detroit! Tell him I’ll call in ten minutes!”

  Miles thought a moment or two before trying to answer. He looked at me in a way that tried to break through the flak that Favell was sending up at us. He looked grave but careful, measuring his words in a metric scale. “We only know about this list from Pambos Kiriakis, Mr. Cooperman. He is the only one who has seen it. If it was a fabrication, one obvious way to support it and give it life is to get an investigator involved. Since he’s paying you to find it, it must be missing. It must exist. You’re a sort of alibi. You stiffen his story. You give it starch.” He paused a moment, then added, “But we must always remember that he could be telling the truth. If he is, then what he has done in getting you involved would appear to be completely straightforward and logical.”

  “Bullshit! You can’t tell me you believe that, Paddy! That creep is out to feather his nest, or out to become the spoil-sport of the year.”

  “There’s something in what he says, Mr. Cooperman. He may be hoping that we will give him the pick of any paintings he recovers. I’m sure that George would want to reward him if he uncovers items belonging to the estate. And I would agree to it as both fair and just. But that’s not quite the same thing as saying that Kiriakis is without a profit motive in all this.”

  “That’s the wee Turk all over!”

  “And as I said, Mr. Cooperman,” Miles said, ignoring Favell, “we only have Kiriakis’s word for it that his marvellous list ever existed at all.”

  “Well, Cooperman, well?” Favell was grinning at me with the golden side of his mouth catching the light. “You’re looking a little greener now than when you walked in here. I don’t think it’s the drink. You better sit down.” I sat and looked at both of them. I tried to see whether I had a feeling that I was being used. I didn’t like it. It could have come from Favell’s smug look on that business-as-usual face of his, or from the sour pinch in my stomach. Paddy Miles stood by, letting me see that he was a sympathetic soul and that he was sorry that the facts were so unsettling. My head was beginning to spin again. I needed that aspirin.

  Although they didn’t look like Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, I got a picture of the two of them looking at me. It stayed with me and I can see it now. Favell and Paddy Miles, Ollie waving the short end of his tie at me and Stan on the edge of tears.

  FIVE

  On my way back to the car, I started wondering whether the time had not come for another word with my client. His list was looking less substantial than it had when I first heard about it while unpacking my goods above Tacos Heaven. I intended to drive back to the new apartment, but found myself parked in the old parking place behind the City House, my home of many years. It wasn’t the drink, and the headache had mostly gone. I was woolgathering, trying to find a solid place to put my feet in this business of Pambos’s list. I backed out and headed for Court Street. In time the car would learn the new way home. There was a corner parking space with my name on it against the schoolyard fence. You could still read the names of departed tenants on the wooden panel with the word “reserved” in block capitals.

  In the cupboard above the sink, I found some cans of soup left behind by A. Morris or P. Parretta or one of the other vanished former tenants. I read the instructions and looked for a can opener. I’d seen my mother doing this since I was just a youngster. She was very good at making soup. We often had green pea soup one day and mushroom the next. Of course, her chicken soup was her own. She would never serve canned soup with meat in it, although we did grow up on vegetable soup from Campbell’s quite innocently for many years. It was only brought into question when Campbell’s began to market something called “Vegetarian Vegetable.” I missed Ma’s cooking and was looking forward to recreating some of her dishes now that I was on my own for the first time in an apartment of my own with a stove. I poured the soup into a saucepan and added a can of tap-water. I turned the heat under the saucepan to high and gave the mixture a stir, not enough to break up the tiny cubes of carrots and potatoes, but just enough to combine the water with the contents of the can. I was doing this when the phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Who’s that? Is Phil there?” The woman had an English accent, from the north somewhere, but I couldn’t be sure.

  “This is a new line,” I said. “It was only put in today. This is the first call I’ve had, actually.” Her north of England accent prompted my “actually.” Just like in the movies. She said she was sorry for bothering me and hung up. I put down my end and went back to the stove, where a cloudy bunch of small bubbles was beginning to turn the soup from orangish-brown to beige. I let it boil for five minutes, then served myself on my new coffee-table, which, when you pulled at it, lifted up to dining-room table height. I don’t claim that the soup was as good as my mother makes, but it was familiar and on the right track.

  It was nearly seven when I came out on the street again. The sun had set about half an hour ago and fingers of frost were in the air. Nowhere could I see any sign of the relatively balmy afternoon. Did I see golfers this afternoon or had I imagined them? This was always a tricky part of the year. The car started and I backed out of my space, the headlights illuminated the wire of the fence and cut off any view into the empty schoolyard.

  I drove down King Street to Ontario and turned left. Ahead of me a battery of highway signs prompted me m several directions. I knew them all, but I was always bothered for newcomers whenever I faced this choice. I could feel the pressure of cars behind me, urging me to make up my mind already. I wondered whether within a city there might not be some calmer system of signalling choices to drivers than these screaming capital letters. I made my choice before the car behind me began honking me to action. I turned right, went past the park with its huge cenotaph commemorating the dead of two world wars and turned right again at the television station. Wally Skeat would be finishing up his half-hour with the evening news, weather and sports. I was tempted to stop, but I headed down Yates Street and turned into Stephenson Road, which wound down the bank of the muchdredged canal and came towards the bright—but bright within reason and with taste—lights of the Stephenson House.

  When I started out, when I put the key in the ignition of the car, I don’t think all of me knew where the hell I was going. There were questions that I wanted Pambos to answer, things that came out of my meetings with Mac-Culloch, Favell and Paddy Miles. It’s funny how a case begins to lose its abstract appearance after you’ve met a few of the characters involved. In their eyes you
can see how real it is, and the abstraction disappears like the exhaust of a Mack truck into the night air.

  I parked the car not in the lot in front of the colonial façade of the main building but around the back where the headlights interrupted an alley-cats’ crap game. A couple of pairs of green eyes stared at me in defiance, but most of the dark shapes scattered in all directions. Other eyes looked out at me from the shelter of a row of garbage cans. There was a moon, a few days past the first quarter. It glinted on the metal bars on the windows and the frame around the back door. There was no light coming from this side of the hotel, although I could hear a rumble of exhaust from the kitchen stoves and even a little dinner music from the front of the house. I tried the door; it was open. I invited myself in.

  It was a wide hallway leading to the kitchen of the hotel. I could hear voices raised in banter behind the closed double doors. The passage was lit by what came through the panels of wire-reinforced glass in the doors. A cart with empty garbage cans stood outside the kitchen. The hall smelt of the constant traffic of garbage-out and fresh produce-in. It was a heavy-duty location. On the floor I couldn’t even find a cigarette butt to hold up to Pambos as a sign that his boys were letting him down.

  I continued down the hall, turning left at the kitchen, and noticed that from here on the floor was covered in industrial carpet and the walls with wooden panelling. The hall ended at a single closed door with a window in it, like in a speakeasy in the movies. The window was closed. On the door, under the window, I read a discreet sign: C. Kiriakis, Private. “C”? What does the “C” stand for? I knocked and waited for the window to slide open. I expected to get the once over lightly from some beefy bodyguard, followed inside by a fast thorough search that made me feel like I was being measured for a pair of pants. Then I remembered that this was Pambos’s office, not some movie casino run by some Raymond Chandler kingpin of gambling and related vices. This was Grantham, Ontario, and I was looking for the guy I’d had coffee with a few hours earlier. It made me feel better. Thinking of Pambos added a few watts of light to this blind-alley corridor. I tried the door. It was open like the other one.