A Victim Must Be Found

by Howard Engel

  “I knew that. I’m pretty good on voices. Your ears must have been burning, I was just talking to someone about you.”

  “Look, Mr. Cooperman, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t bandy my name around like it was an old pingpong ball. I should think a reputable detective would know better.”

  “Detective’s the wrong word, Mrs. MacCulloch. I’m an investigator, just like it says in the yellow pages. You get to be a detective by wearing brass buttons and a badge first. And speaking of buttons, you’ve lost one from your jacket.”

  “Oh, damn! I’m glad I’m not sitting in my slip. Mr. Cooperman. How did you know that? I’ll never match it. Double damn!”

  I had not imagined that she’d still be wearing the same jacket, but I didn’t mind having a reputation for X-ray vision over the telephone. Her response sounded innocent enough. I would have liked to have warned her about where the button was found, but I was sure that Chris would recognize true innocence but might get confused by her response if I warned her. So, I dropped the button. “What can I do for you, Mrs. MacCulloch?”

  “I thought we’d got to first names. It doesn’t matter. I wanted to know if you intend to drop the investigation now that Pambos is dead. Poor Pambos.”

  “Are you offering me honest work, Mrs. Mac-Culloch?”

  “Why no! No, I was just asking. My husband and I have no secrets from one another, Mr. Cooperman. He told me about your visit. I could shoot you for letting me ramble on in your car and at the club the other day. You should have told me about that absurd list.”

  “If I stopped every flow of free information, I might not make the rent, Mrs. MacCulloch. You can’t say I led you on.”

  “Well, let’s shut up about that for now. Why would anyone want to kill poor Pambos?”

  “Are you going to miss him?”

  “Mr. Cooperman, I’m more discriminating than that. Pambos made me wish there was a table with a white tablecloth between us at all times. He had that headwaiter manner.”

  “When did you start collecting paintings?”

  “Finished with Pambos already? You must be able to think of more to ask me about him than that. Oh, well, I’m my own favourite subject, so let’s talk about me. I don’t mind. But, you have to understand that Peter’s the real collector. I dabble the way poor Pambos did. I watch Peter at auctions, but I don’t bid. I’ve just learned about pictures from watching people. I watch the prices and the look on people’s faces.”

  “Faces like that of Jonah Abraham?”

  “The very face I was thinking of. I must never talk to you fresh from the shower. You are an amazing man, even if you aren’t a drinker.”

  “You have a picture he admires, I think.”

  “Admires’? He practically begged me to put a price on it. I rather like the idea of a millionaire wanting something that I won’t let him have. It’s almost medieval. Like something in an opera.”

  “Did Arthur Tallon help you in your art education? He seems to have been running classes around town. Were you in on any of them?”

  “Arthur was very sweet, yes.” Here she paused while I could hear her lighting a fresh cigarette. She coughed and then went on. “He always let me know when some particularly nice pieces were coming up for auction in town or across the lake in Toronto. That’s how I got the Lamb Jonah wants.”

  “Too bad Lamb didn’t live to see the fancy prices people are paying for his pictures.” I heard a laugh at the other end and quickly reviewed what I’d said for hidden witticisms. I didn’t find any. The laugh was repeated.

  “Lamb? Dead? What are you talking about? He’s as alive as I am!”

  “I thought all painters were dead. Where is he keeping himself these days?”

  “Oh, he’s not social. He keeps to himself. He drinks and recites Shakespeare from the balcony. The neighbours call the police. Happens all the time. He doesn’t go to openings.”

  “That’s how I’ve missed him. Where does he live?”

  “The last I heard he was living with a woman on Facer Street in the North End. Wentworth Apartments, I think. But, Benny, if I may call you Benny once more, be careful! Watch him! He’ll rob you blind if he’s sober, and never turn your back on him if he’s drunk!”

  “Charming!” I said.

  Instead of taking the car in to have the snow tires removed, which was item number one on my own personal list, I drove the Olds out Pacer Street to the Wentworth Apartments. It gave me the opportunity to see my favourite street sign announcing “Elberta Street.” For some reason a misprint in cast iron was funnier than one on paper. But, maybe the joke was on me. What do I know about given names? I know some people make a study of them, noticing which names are in and which are out of fashion. Information like that I have to get from women like Martha Tracy. Women make a study of names. There’s an endless fascination there somewhere, but it escapes me.

  Facer Street, on the northern side of the old canal, never had class. Not even when steamships were running up and down carrying the produce of the western provinces out to the St. Lawrence and the Atlantic did Facer Street reap any joy from what was going on under its nose. And now that the canal has moved to another setting altogether, and even the scar left by the old canal cut is now more or less buried under suburban streets, Facer Street has lost even the promise of happier days. The street runs straight for the most part, making only one big curve before it gives up at a railway siding. There are a few warehouses along one side and a messy run of frame houses along the other. Aluminum doors with flamingos decorate the houses that have been cared for. The others stood peeling under a hot sun, as I parked the car a few houses down from the apartment building.

  A three-storey structure of red brick, the apartment’s appearance among a row of frame bungalows caused less sensation than you might imagine. The general state of dilapidation that began in the makeshift porches and rough fences was continued in brick that needed repointing and windows that needed reglazing. In one apartment a generous portion of aluminum foil applied to the picture windows blocked out the sun completely. Inside the front door, the lobby smelled of stale beer. To the right of the door, the metal frame of what was once a directory of tenants hung from one hinge. Little white letters in plastic clung to the corners like confetti. A pile of a former tenant’s belongings was stacked against the front inside wall. Battered lampshades and a floor lamp leaned over a carton of magazines and newspapers. A piece of Danish modern furniture from the 1950s, minus one of its four legs, rested as well as it could against the cardboard carton. When I pressed the elevator button, I smelled urine by the emergency exit’s stairs.

  “Hey, Mister, lend me a buck!” It was the boldest of three kids ranging from nine to maybe thirteen. They looked at me not with expectation but already getting ready for the blow or the hard words that would follow their leader’s request. It was the smallest who spoke in front of his taller friends. Before I could answer, a woman opened a door.

  “Get out of here, you kids! Blast off! Beat it!”

  “Aw, screw off!” said the youngest.

  “You don’t live here. I’ll call the police like last time! I’ll tell your mother, Alvin. I know who you are. Now go on home!” The woman lifted her ample arm to show that her threat had fire and vinegar in it. The kids didn’t wait for an exit line, they left in a tight group laughing through the front door. “And what do you want?” It took me a moment to realize you meant me.

  “I’m looking for Wallace Lamb’s apartment.” She looked like I’d cracked a joke. I didn’t know how to top it.

  “Him? You gotta be kidding. You from a collection agency?”

  “Not exactly. Is he here or not?”

  “Look, I could tell you he died, or went off with a registered nurse, but you’d find out anyway, so who’re we kidding?” I wasn’t sure what I was nodding to, but I nodded. “He don’t have nothin’ worth repossessing if you ask me. All they got is that colour TV and that’s it.” I tried my testy look and got th
e apartment number, just like in that old play: the third floor, back.

  I could hear the sound of the television as I rang the bell to the right of the door-jamb. I tried to look pleasant at the beady lens in the middle of the door. It must have worked; the door was opened by another large, middleaged woman in a housedress like the kind my father used to sell in his store.

  “Yeah, well, what do you want?” she asked, blowing the ash from the end of her cigarette in my direction. I could see her trying to place me. I wasn’t carrying a clipboard or any papers that might need signing. That was a mark in my favour. “You hear those kids? Running around up and down the stairs? I told Shirley (she’s the super’s wife) that our rent includes a little protection from stuff like that. I didn’t mince words with her, I told her straight out.” I found myself nodding again. I tried to concentrate on her eyes. They were her good features. They were bright blue, surrounded by forgotten mascara. The rest of her looked like it was about to ripple or shake. She might be the only woman in town who had never read a magazine article on anorexia nervosa. “Damned kids, breaking everything in sight. You from Welfare?” For a moment I weighed the advantages of letting her think I was, but it seemed a temporary gain easily disproved. I just grinned and let her make whatever she wanted to out of it. “If you are, it’s about time. He’s not getting any better, you know. Come on in and see for yourself.”

  She led the way into the apartment. I heard the noise of a daytime television program. It was a game show and the host’s voice rippled with the fun of the diabolical games he had in store, while the audience roared with delight. “Well, since you can’t take the Cadillac home with you, what about putting your other five thousand on twin Triumph sportscars!” The audience clapped and cheered and the contestant lost her bankroll when she couldn’t remember the world famous American president with the initials “F.D.R.”

  “We got company, Wally! Wally? Can chew turn that rotten thing off?”

  “Go drown yourself, woman. Do something useful for a change.”

  “Watch your mouth, Wally. We got company. You did say Welfare, didn’t you?”

  “No, you did,” I said, looking at the back of an overstuffed chair facing the TV. The top of the head that had its back to me was a faded red, like weak tea. He reacted to my confession at once:

  “Ha! She’s tone deaf when it comes to money.” The man in the chair got up and stared at me. “You don’t look like money at all,” he said. “Not city money or any other kind.”

  It’s hard to assess someone who is giving me the same treatment at the same time, but I tried. What I saw standing in front of a large colour TV screen was a man in his late fifties or early sixties. He wore his dying red hair over his forehead in bangs, like he was an extra in Henry V. It was a wide brow with penetrating eyes below wild eyebrows. The face, which narrowed rapidly from the nose down, was unshaven. The pale red was deepest under his nose, where he may have recognized a moustache, but it all looked like meat for the razor to me. His glasses were framed with a plastic that echoed the rusty colour above and below it and were mended with adhesive tape where the right temple met the frame. He looked like he needed watching. If I had been carrying a bankroll, my right hand would have automatically checked to see that it was still on my hip. Lamb tilted his head to one side, to get me from a slightly different angle, then smiled a one-sided smile and indicated a chair. “Sit down. What’s your pitch?”

  I tried to picture Lamb standing in front of “Breakfast in Ayton” with a palette and brushes. It didn’t work. He looked like he’d be more at home standing on the sawdust of a carnival pitch. There was something beat-up and used in his appearance, as though he’d spent time in jail or the prizefighting ring. I thought of the metal furniture in Chris Savas’s office. He was wearing dirty corduroy trousers and a plaid shirt of flannel. I sat in the chair next to his. It too faced the television set, so I had to turn to keep Wallace Lamb in view. I hoped he’d turn off the television set; I’m very susceptible, especially to junk programs like the one now playing. I tried to think of where to begin.

  “Pambos Kiriakis told me that Arthur Tallon gave him a list of your pictures that were out on loan. Kiriakis wanted to see a few before making up his mind to the one he wanted to buy. Then, Tallon died, the list disappeared and now Kiriakis has been murdered.” Lamb moved his jaw, like he had a cud in his mouth that he kept moving from cheek to cheek.

  “‘Murder’s out of tune, and sweet revenge grows harsh.’ You’re not the police. Where do you come in? Is it money after all?”

  “There’s quite a bit tied up in those pictures. Tallon’s estate can’t be settled until a proper inventory can be made. Pictures belonging to the estate have to be located and identified.”

  “I charge big money for authenticating. I don’t get a cent for the bloody canvases. They’re all bought and paid for.”

  “I don’t think that’s the angle they’re worried about. They know a genuine Lamb when they see one. It’s more a question of proof of ownership.” Lamb’s cud changed sides. He was looking for another crevice he could get a foothold in.

  “Kiriakis, eh? Murdered. ‘To be too busy is some danger.’ How do you come into this and who the hell are you, anyway?”

  “My name’s Cooperman. Benny Cooperman. I’m a private investigator. Kiriakis hired me to find that list.”

  Wallace Lamb snorted at my profession and turned to the large woman framed in the kitchen doorway. “Just as I thought, Ivy: he’s a lousy sleuth! Money-grubbing, not bestowing. Whatever happened to Lady Bountiful?”

  “Wally, turn the bloody sound down!”

  “Ivy, shut up!” He turned back to me, as Ivy moved out of sight into the kitchen. “What are you paying for information?”

  “That depends on what you have to sell.” Ivy reappeared and turned down the TV a little herself. She used the opportunity to take another look at me. She blocked the whole of the screen.

  “If you’re out to find information, it’s going to cost you,” she said, putting a heavy arm to the back of her head as though she was looking for a stray or errant tress, but none had escaped the tight-fitting hairnet which imprisoned all her mouse-brown curls. “We didn’t invite you here, so you better show us the colour of your money.”

  “Ivy, bugger off!” Ivy held her ground and her tongue. “That list that Tallon gave Kiriakis made a lot of people sore, eh? What’s your name again?” I told him. This time it may have sunk in.

  “I’ve talked to a few of the people on the list. Names Pambos thought important enough to remember. They had access to his office and possibly knew where he kept it. One thing I’ll say for them, Mr. Lamb: they’re all great fans of yours.”

  “Fans? Oh, I’ve got plenty of fans. In 19 … I can’t remember the year, what’s his name, the governor-general? He bought twenty paintings from me at ten dollars each. They say he’s a great patron of the arts. I say he knew a bargain when he saw one. Tallon had sawdust where his brains should have been, but his heart was as sound as a good oak hull.”

  “You knew him a long time.”

  “I never knew where I stood with him, but I could always touch him for a few dollars even if I didn’t have any canvases to peddle.” Ivy moved from the television set, letting a blast of colour into the room, and came to rest behind Wallace Lamb’s chair.

  “He got them pictures dirt cheap, if you ask me,” she offered.

  “We didn’t ask, Ivy. He wasn’t as fair to me as a bank—he wasn’t any damned computer for one thing— but he gave me a fair price if I worried away at him. He was a gentleman, you know, and had that way of letting money and talk of money embarrass him. He’d go beetred if you tried to haggle. Like if I puked on his old school tie or unzipped in front of his lady friends. So, I’d have to settle or try it again later. He was a hard man to get around. Maybe it was because he was so damned honest.”

  “Breeding has its advantages.”

  “Ivy, why don’t you get us a beer
?” Lamb looked like he was trying to mine my face for the money he was sure was there somewhere. All it needed was to find the right words, the right angle. He had to try to guess what it was that he had that I wanted badly enough to pay for it. Ivy moved back into the kitchen where I heard a refrigerator door open and close.

  “Wally?” she called.

  “What do you know about the missing list?”

  “Wally, we’re all out of beer!”

  “That woman’s a great extravagance. An Ivy I can ill afford. ‘As creeping ivy clings to wood and stone, and hides the ruin that it feeds upon.’” For a moment he looked regretfully in the direction of the kitchen, then sighed. “You’re paying, I hope?” he asked.

  “If there’s any money going, I’ll see that you get some. Right now it looks like all people hope to get out of this are a few pictures with your name on them. That’s not much for you to look forward to.”

  “Look, my friend, I’m finished with painting, washed up. I can’t hold a brush any more, not even with both hands.” He watched as I nodded sympathetically. “Can you let me have twenty bucks on account?” he asked. “I’ll see you get it back.” I temporized by feeling for my cigarettes. I found the package and offered it to Lamb, who shook his head. “Those guys who do it with their feet have it all over me now. And it hurts. You think I can sit in Hump Slaughter’s auction room and listen to the bidding on my stuff? You see, when I was good, I was bloody great! I was right up there with the big ones. Trouble is, I didn’t die young.”

  “Wally, is that guy still there?”

  “Put a sock in it, precious! We’re talking!” He leaned over and turned the sound down a notch lower. Now the neighbours had no reason to complain.

  “How did you meet Pambos Kiriakis?” I asked, just trying to join together fragments of what I knew.

  “I saw him at openings. I could tell from his clothes that he wasn’t one of the well-heeled buying type, so I knew he was there to look. I liked that. I’d been in his shoes myself. Tallon introduced us and later told me he was a chef at a steakhouse and that he had a small perfect drawing by Lawren Harris. We started to talk and that was it. I had an interest in antiques at one time. That was another thing. He knew the Early Canadian stuff and he swotted up on information from the library so he could keep up with me. He was a funny guy for things like that. Tenacious. Once he got an idea in his head, he was driven. Hound of Heaven after him. Sorry he got himself killed.”