by Howard Engel
NINETEEN
Breakfast came on a tray. I think it was the first time that had happened since I had measles or whooping cough. Not only were there things like croissants and jam along with excellent coffee, there was even a carnation standing up in a tall vase. I wondered whether the flower was supposed to go with my jacket. I knew it wouldn’t pass on St. Andrew Street, so I left it in the vase. But it was a nice thought, one that suggested the isolation between this house and the city I lived in. In Grantham only a mortician would wear a flower in his lapel for everyday wear. A politician would sport one only during an election campaign.
After eating my way through the little curls of furrowed butter and rolls, all the way to the Royal Danish pattern on the china in fact, I dealt with my teeth and headed for the shower in a bathroom that overwhelmed me with white terrycloth. The shower stall was huge, with jets of water coming at me from at least three directions. The shampoo came in a plastic bottle. When I squirted a blob of shiny blue shampoo into my palm, it squirted right back into the bottle the moment I released pressure on the container, rejecting me and all I stood for. It knew a fake when one came along. On the same rack as I found the shampoo, I discovered a conditioner and a special rinse all in the same matching plastic bottles. I don’t think I ever did so much reading in the shower before in my whole life.
When I came out of the bathroom, my clothes had been brushed and my shoes polished. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me, I muttered as I wondered where the elves were hiding.
The first familiar face I saw belonged to Vince, whom I hadn’t seen since my first visit to see Abraham. He knocked softly at my door and gave me the Toronto paper and a note from our boss. I put that away in my unadorned jacket and asked if I could call a taxi. Vince winced slightly. He told me that a car was ready to take me to town whenever I was ready to go.
Back in the real world, where coffee comes with cream in plastic containers and where the counter of the United Cigar Store is real because I’m leaning on it, I made a few calls from the pay telephone. First, I dealt with the car. The Motor League would tow it and take it to the garage where new tires would be added if, as I thought, the others were past repair. I telephoned the garage and warned them what was coming and asked if I could collect the car before eleven o’clock. I got an argument and after a few hot exchanges, I told them I’d pick it up around noon. Then I had words with Staff Sergeant Chris Savas about the recent harassment I had undergone. He gave me his sympathy and suggested I go back to school and become a teacher and thus get out of his hair for ever. I told him I had no taste for the work. The hours were too rigid for the likes of me.
“Benny, we’ve had a few calls about you in the last couple of days.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Citizens making inquiries about your status.”
“Uh-huh. Any complaints?”
“Nothing specific. But the tone is usually critical even if there are no charges. I took one of the calls myself. Staziak got the second one. They just want us to know that you are making a nuisance of yourself and that certain bigger-than-average tax payers are just making friendly inquiries.”
“Why are you telling me all this, Chris? I know you aren’t going to tell me who called. But I can guess.”
“I’m just tellin’ you. There are more ways than one to slash your tires. I hope they weren’t new.”
“The front ones had less than five thousand miles on them.”
“That’s rough. I don’t think I’ve got a thousand miles left in my front tires. You should have taken my car.”
“Thanks, I’ll remember next time,” I said. “Chris, what’s happening with Pambos? Did the post-mortem tell you anything?”
“It might have, but it sure as hell isn’t going to tell you anything. Back off, Cooperman. I mean that.”
“Has Mattie Lent turned up? The girlfriend?”
“Where did you …? Damn it, Benny!”
“Okay. Forget it. I was just asking en passant, as they say. But I’m willing to put down good money that says she hasn’t come forward.”
“Think we’ll find her in a ditch, eh? Well, we’ll get her in time. What do you know about it anyway?”
“Me? Nothing. I’m looking for a list that got lost, remember? I leave murder to the homicide fellows. Where do I get off telling the cops what to do?”
“Benny, put down the goddamned fiddle and talk straight. What do you know about Mathilde Lent?”
“Chris, I don’t know a damned thing and what I suspect isn’t of much interest. But I promise, if I run into anything like a hard fact, I’ll send it your way. Pambos was a good friend and I want to see his killer caught as much as you do.”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe Phin Lawder and that crazy sister of his did him in. They still own part of the Stephenson House. It’s been in their family for generations.”
“Yeah, well, the blood isn’t what it once was, Benny. She’s in a home and Phin isn’t capable of much more than pulling a cork these days. We checked him out for the night of the murder. He was drinking with two leading citizens and your pal Kogan, the panhandler, back of Gilmore’s Hardware. Dead end.”
“Have you got a line on his ex?”
“Oh, she’s not anywhere near this. Linda’s not even living in town as far as I know. They made a clean break a few years ago.”
“But you’re checking every avenue that might unmask the killer, right?”
“Cooperman. You go right to hell and get off my back!”
After hanging up on Niagara Regional’s finest, and he is, I rejoined my cold coffee on the green marble counter. I was about to complain that they were out of croissants and that there were no flowers on the counter, when Bill Palmer and Barney Reynolds came in and took a booth. They gave me a friendly greeting, so I took my cold coffee in their direction. After the usual complaints from Barney about the paper, the town and society in general, I got to ask Bill a few more questions that I was wondering about. “Any breaks in the Kiriakis murder?”
“Nothing. The cops aren’t saying a thing. I got to talk to Ted Lansky in the Coroner’s office. He said there wasn’t anything special about what killed him. He was stabbed and the knife that did the job was still in the wound. Nice and tidy, he says.”
“Tidy for him,” said Barney. “He doesn’t have to try to get a new lead on it for tomorrow morning.”
“Barney,” Bill said, “neither do you.”
“Yeah, well, I could be, if I wasn’t trying to rewrite the stuff for City and Vicinity. They tell me to edit this stuff that comes in from the boondocks. Edit it, for God’s sake, I bloody well have to translate it!” We commiserated with Barney for a few minutes while he told us about how he’d been undermined by yet another journalism school graduate. “Still wet behind the ears and he’s telling me where to put my hyphens!” When this familiar line began to grow tedious, I changed the subject back to where I wanted it.
“Bill, Pambos didn’t have any family other than his former wife, is that right?”
“Yup. He lost one brother in Cyprus the way I told you, and the other one was killed off by the mob up around Malham. The famous Malham torso case, remember? Geez! Now they’re all dead, all three of them, dead under fifty. That’s bad luck!”
“Is it?” I wondered out loud. “The first died in a political scrum. According to you, the Brits set up the Greeks and the Turks were waiting for them. That sounds like dirty pool to me. I can understand the second brother going anti-social after that. What had authority ever done for him?”
“You’re digging too deep, Benny, and too long ago. Cyprus is over and done with.”
“The hell it is!” said Barney. “You send me out there, and I’ll send back some stories that would send these kids back to school. They never saw a shot fired in anger except at a hockey game.” Bill ignored Barney for the moment and shook his head in the affirmative. He’d weighed what I’d said while Barney went on about what he’d done i
n Stanleyville back in the 1960s.
“Yeah. You could be right. If I lost a brother to politics, I might not end up a choirboy. But what about Pambos? There wasn’t anything bent about him. He was a sweet guy …”
“Who was hung up on paintings, tin soldiers and Napoleon,” I concluded his thought for him.
“Aw, Benny, you can’t use that against him.”
“I’m not even trying to. What I mean is that we all react in our own way. One brother fell in with bad company, the other had a thing about improving himself, becoming a success, collecting things.”
“He had a great collection of old toys, Benny,” Barney added. “You ever see all those trick banks and stuff?” From here on the conversation got away from what was on my mind and closer to what was on Barney’s. For the fiftieth time we heard how Barney rowed across the Congo from Brazzaville to Léopoldville, now Kinshasa, with an exclusive interview. We both congratulated Barney and then we got up to leave the United. Bill let Barney walk ahead of him towards the cashier. He turned back to me.
“You know, Benny, I was over there and covered that Guenyeli business. I mean, I ploughed through all that British red tape trying to find out what really happened. In the end I got as clear a picture of what happened as anybody. Hell, I was a bloody expert on the incident. That’s what they called shootings in the street and bombs going off: incidents.” He took the cigarette I gave him when he discovered that his package was empty. We both lit our cigarettes from his butane lighter. “It was a major story. Nine Greeks were killed. All that. And the British were sitting on it even tighter than usual. But finally, I got to the boy whose brain-child the whole operation was. He was a major who’d been in Palestine and then went on half-pay until the emergency in Cyprus started to heat up. Of course, I was never able to use his name, but I was able to write a few good stories about it.”
“Yes,” I said, thinking he was about to get lost in his nostalgia.
“Well, when I first knew Pambos, he was very interested in all of the things I’d found out about the incident. He badgered me all the time about the details. In the end, I think he knew as much about it as Tim Bell or me. The point I’m making is,” he said, “you’re right about how that event got to both the surviving brothers in their own way. In a way, Pambos tried to collect it. Funny, isn’t it?”
“Uh-huh. Who’s Bell?”
“Oh, Bell was the galloping major. See you.”
I watched him join Barney at the cashier. He bought a package of cigarettes, while I wondered why all majors were galloping majors. I didn’t get anywhere with the thought, but I’m still working on it.
Half an hour later, I was standing on the doorstep of Dirk and Gertrude Bouts’s house on Queen Street again. When she came to the door, she peered through a crack. “Mrs. Bouts?” I said, with a false lift in my voice. “Remember me, I’m Benny Cooperman.” She opened the door an inch wider.
“Yes, Mr. Cooperman. I remember you very well.” She stopped there so that I’d have to pick up the momentum.
“I wanted to thank you for all your help.” She swallowed the bait and allowed the door to swing open the rest of the way. “Yes,” I went on, “you were a big help.”
“Then they know who killed him?” she said with a kind of hope or relief. “Come into the living-room.” I followed her to the big, bright room with the baby lying on the blanket in his playpen and minding his own business. I greeted Willum by name and got a smile from his mother for my memory. We both sat down, with a corner of the playpen between us.
“Not exactly,” I said, answering her earlier question. “The police are still looking for the killer.”
“Then, why …?” She was suspicious again.
“Please take it easy, Mrs. Bouts. They’ll get the murderer in time. The Niagara Regional Police are among the best in the country. Like the Mounties, they get their man or woman.”
Gertrude Bouts flinched slightly at my choice of a moment for equal recognition of the sexes “Do they think that a woman is involved, Mr. Cooperman?”
“Oh, yes. They know that Mattie Lent was involved with Pambos. They don’t know to what degree she was mixed up in his death, but they’ll sort that out. The fact that she’s gone missing is suggestive, don’t you think?”
“Not necessarily,” she said, drawing the words out slowly as she slipped on a sweater that was lying on the chair. ‘There are many reasons why a young girl moves on. They don’t all kill people.”
“Of course. In fact a few of them get killed themselves.” I got a smile for my pains.
“Exactly, exactly,” she said, playing with the hem of her skirt. “Oh, but that’s a terrible thought. I won’t be able to sleep tonight. Would you like some tea or coffee?” she asked smoothly, looking like she was going to get up. I smiled and followed her into the kitchen, which was yellow and cluttered.
“Mrs. Bouts, may I take you into my confidence?”
“But of course, if you want to.”
“Well, I am not a great believer in the story of Mattie’s disappearance.”
“No!” She forgot that the water was overflowing the kettle as she stood at the sink. “Why would you say that?”
“Because I think you know where she is.”
“No! Don’t say that even as a joke. I know nothing about her.”
“I think you know everything about her.” She looked at me with steady eyes. She no longer was going to make tea or coffee. And we’d never determined which it was she’d intended to make. She stood there and I knew I had to make my next words count. “When I came here yesterday, you told me a lot about Mattie.”
“That’s right. We were friends.”
“But you told me things that only Mattie would have known. You told me about the town in Austria where she came from, what valley it’s in …”
“That’s right. It’s a well-known valley for skiing.”
“For someone who hasn’t been there, you seem to know a great deal about it. I thought something was wrong when I talked to you last. You appeared to be worried, but you hadn’t really done anything about Mattie.”
“What could I do? I didn’t know anything about Mr. Kiriakis. You told me he was dead. And that was only yesterday.”
“You could have gone to the police after I left. But you didn’t. Why wouldn’t you report Mattie missing if you were friends?”
“But she’s hardly missing yet! It’s only a few days.”
“If Willum went missing, you wouldn’t wait days or minutes before reporting it. You’d be on the phone in seconds. No, there’s only one reason why you didn’t report Mattie missing.”
“I don’t want to listen to this.”
“You didn’t report her missing because she isn’t missing, Mrs. Bouts. You know where she is.”
“Me?”
“And there’s something else. Mrs. Bouts, you told me all about Mattie’s home in Schruns. Have you ever been there?”
“Why, no, I just heard Mattie talk about it. And I saw her pictures.”
“Black-and-white pictures, Mrs. Bouts, but you described the village houses and church to me in colour.”
“Mattie must have …”
“You told me about the white and green houses, the green dome of the church. The pictures upstairs, even the postcards, are in black and white.” Gertrude Bouts put her fingers m her mouth and didn’t seem to notice she was doing it. She made a throaty noise but I couldn’t make out any words. “No, no, I think there’s a simple explanation here, Mrs. Bouts, something that explains everything. And you know what it is as well as I do.” She shook her head from side to side. “The reason you know so much about Mattie, Mrs. Bouts, is because you are Mattie Lent. It’s the only way it makes sense.”
“Me? You’re being ridiculous! What are you saying? I have my feelings, Mr. Cooperman.”
“You and Mattie Lent are the same person. That’s why you didn’t want the police looking for Mattie.”
“I have finished tal
king to you. I have nothing further to say.”
“I know, I know. I’m just going. But I want you to know that I understand. I’m not blaming you. You invented Gertrude Bouts because you were living with Dirk as his wife. You want to protect your parents at home in Austria, so you pretend that you, Mattie, are the tenant of the Bouts. To anyone on Queen Street, you’re the wife of Dirk and the mother of Willum, and to the folks at home, you’re still Mattie, up on the second floor. It seemed an innocent enough deception at first. Who could be hurt by it? You only did it out of the most generous motives, to prevent your parents, who, I understand, are both elderly and ailing, from being hurt in their old-fashioned ways. Where’s the harm? And then when your sister, Greta, came for a visit, you got away with it neatly. I haven’t called Greta at the UN, but I could if I have to. Did you tell her that Gertrude Bouts was in hospital? How did you explain her absence downstairs to your sister?”
“I am not opening my mouth.”
“That’s right, Mattie. Don’t say anything. You see, I’m not here to give you away. I only want to know what Mattie knows about Pambos Kiriakis’s death and anything else about him that might shed some light in that direction.”
“I see.”
“I’m not in the pay of the police. I have no direct line to the Kirchplatz in Schruns. I only want some information that might help find your friend Pambos’s murderer. You owe that to him, Mattie.”
“But if you come, others will come. I’ll never have any peace.”
“They may come, but they won’t come through me. Others may catch on to your Austrian accent under your excellent imitation of Dirk’s Dutch. But Dutch and Austrian aren’t the same and your voice helped give you away. You’ll have to watch that.”
“Will you go if I tell you?”
“Cross my heart.” She sat down on a sturdy kitchen chair and I found its mate.