by Howard Engel
“That’s right.” I tried to feel in my pockets for anything that might, in a pinch, be used as a weapon.
“My name’s Alder. Jesse Alder. I’m one of the techs here at NTC. So’s Ross.”
“Yeah, Ross Totton, Mr. Cooperman. Glad to meet you.” They both fumbled to take my hand, which I delivered as soon as I could drop my car keys back in my pocket.
“We heard that you were here, sort of working for Ms. Moss and all. And we just wanted to buy you a beer and tell you what’s going down around here.”
“There’s a pub around the corner, if you’ve got a few minutes. Sort of a technicians’ hangout.”
“Where did you say you heard about me?”
“There’s not much going on at the network that we don’t hear about. We thought you might need an introduction to the characters you’re going to bump into.”
“Fill you in, bring you up to speed, that sort of thing,” Totton added.
“Wouldn’t that tend to prejudice me?”
The men looked at one another, then grinned back at me, nodding vigorously. Unopposed, they led the way to the Rex, a busy pub on the ground floor of an old hotel building not far from where we were standing. It was a lot like the old Harding House back in Grantham, with waiters balancing trayfuls of draft beer and giving change in a sustained balletic feat to the music of conversation and heavy metal. Alder and Totton led the way to a table in back, far from all but the most unrelenting beat of the music. There were four others already seated there, to whom I was introduced. I didn’t catch more than their first names. Like Jesse and Ross, they were all technicians at NTC. Jimmy, who looked the most senior, called the waiter, who set down a tray of brimming glasses in my honour. Over the rim of my first glass, I asked Jesse a question: “Why are you doing this?”
“You seem like a nice guy.”
“Come on. Or I’m out of here.”
“We all liked Renata. She was a sweetheart to work with and didn’t pass the guff she got from the twentieth floor on to us. She was a pro and all the techs knew that.”
For the next hour and a bit, the boys took turns in telling me everything they knew about NTC except why. This was a view from below stairs, as it were. This was broadcasting beginning with the roots and underpinnings. There was no room here for the airy-fairy shenanigans I had been seeing since I arrived in Toronto. The boys knew which of the producers were worth their pay and which they had been covering up for. Some had the sensitivity to do the job, others had only their ambitions. While I was there, Ross Totton took out his pipe and fired it up a few times. He was the only pipe smoker I’ve met who spent more time smoking his pipe than cleaning it. I liked the smell of his tobacco. Two other technicians joined us and listened in. Three of the earlier members of the group left together after consulting their watches. The newcomers added to my store of information.
“They can’t get rid of Ken Trebitsch because he’s been collecting personal information on everybody he’s ever worked for. He knows where the dirt is. He has a couple of junior producers collecting it. Talk about an enemies list. Trebitsch’s looks like a roll of fax paper.”
“Besides, his sister’s married to a cousin of the prime minister.”
“Yeah, and that’s not the only sweetheart deal around. Your boss makes big demands on outside producers before she’ll let them do a pilot. Talk about kickbacks!”
“But that’s normal in Entertainment. Life is short there. You have to make your bundle before the axe falls.”
“That’s right, but in the meantime she has lots of money to spend outside the network. That’s why there are so many Moss-watchers.”
“Have you met David Simbrow? The Moss-boss? Vice-president of Programming? He’s so stupid he couldn’t get work selling raffle tickets. But his father’s in the provincial cabinet.”
“And Ted Thornhill, the CEO, doesn’t know what to do about it. How can he reorganize Entertainment without booting Simbrow out?”
“Did you know that we’re doing more ‘sustained’ programs than ever before?”
“What are they?”
“When you can’t get the advertising, you underwrite them and hope nobody notices. It’s only a step away from lowering the advertising rates.”
“Have you met Philip Rankin yet?” I said that I’d had the pleasure. “Proper gentleman, isn’t he? Well, he couldn’t produce fleas in a zoo. Jesse and Ross and lots of us used to save his bacon regularly. That was a long time before Bob Foley came along.”
I tried to get them to continue talking about Bob Foley, but all attempts died on the vine.
“You see, Benny, Bob was never really one of us. We got tired of his stories about the Great Man. You know, Dermot Keogh. Bob talked as if we never worked with headliners more than once, twice a year. The brutal fact is that between us we know just about everybody. Hell! I’ve stuck a mike up Anne Murray’s shirt more times than … you know? That stuff doesn’t mean anything. We do it all the time. How many times have you arranged the lights for the Queen, Ron? See what I mean? I had coffee with the prime minister one time, killing time between appointments. So why would we suddenly get excited about Bob becoming Dermot Keogh’s gofer?”
“He had us up to a summer place in Muskoka one time. He was trying to lord it over us like he invented the place.”
“Yeah,” agreed Ross. “Remember how he treated that Paki lawyer? I just wanted to fade into the woods.”
“That’s right. And he’d tear up and down the roads on that borrowed chopper.”
“Didn’t mind that so much. I like choppers.”
“The Moss tried to call the Provincial Police on him.”
“Jesse, is Vanessa Moss doing her job?”
He thought about it, pulling at his earlobe and watching the flickering images on the TV set high above the bar. “Is she doing her job? Hell, Mr. Cooperman, nobody can do that job. It’d be like trying to agree on guidelines for an orgy.”
“That’s the truth,” Ross Totton offered. “She’ll last another season, then they’ll find someone else. That’s the way of the beast.”
I figured that besides enjoying the beer I’d had, I’d been given a backgrounder to the network I couldn’t have found elsewhere. In the end, I thanked the boys and tried not to trip over my feet on my way out of the Rex.
* * *
At 5:30 P.M., I sat in the bar at the Hilton hotel, a few short blocks from NTC. It was a generous bar of dark mahogany, with gleaming brass in all the right places. The crowd was hard to figure. The customers were welldressed frequenters of steakhouses, dapper account executives buttering up clients from Calgary or Edmonton with a taste of the real Toronto, before heading off to the hockey game and who knows what else.
Sally Jackson came in wearing her high-heeled walking-out shoes, which made her just an inch taller than me. “Sorry I kept you,” she said, finding her centre of gravity on the tall bar stool.
“What can I get you?” I tried to read her mood. Why had she decided to join me?
“Is the season well enough advanced to order gin and tonic?”
“Sure.” I passed the order along and sipped at my rye and water. The ice had melted. For five minutes or so, until her drink came, I tried to make small talk. I discovered that she knew little about the Blue Jays’ recent performances at the SkyDome and less about the delayed Stanley Cup playoffs. In general, her eye was more often on the door or the mirror over the bar than it was on me. Even the bartender gave her a look that, in my reading of it, said, “This dame ain’t gonna run a long tab.” I tried to think of how I could make things easier for Sally.
“You seem a little nervous, Sally. If this wasn’t a good idea, just say the word.”
“To tell you the truth, Benny—may I call you that?— this is the first time I’ve been out with a man since I left Gordon.” She was fiddling with the plastic wrapping from a pack of Benson & Hedges. She stopped short of taking one out and lighting it.
“Life can’t st
and still,” I suggested. “When we can’t go back, we have to move on.”
“You don’t understand, Benny. I left Gordon for my good friend Crystal Schild. I’ve been living with her for three months now.”
“Oh,” I said, clearing my throat and swallowing hard.
“Does that shock you?”
“Me? Of course not. There’s a lot of it going … Some of my best …”
“There, I did embarrass you. I’m sorry. I keep forgetting that you come from Grantham. Here in Toronto—”
“Look, dear Sally, Grantham’s not that backward. We’ve got the railroad; the bus service is going fine; we’ve got cable TV and even the World Wide Web has come along to show us what we’re missing. There’s not much going on in the world that could shock somebody on St. Andrew Street in Grantham today.”
“What about you? You look a little pink around the ears.”
“Well, I’ll admit, it was a little unexpected. I was unprepared. I mean it hadn’t entered my mind.” Part of my mind, the most primitive and least defensible part, was pondering whether this constituted getting a drink under false pretenses.
“Well, now you know. And now you know why I have to be so careful around that place.”
“Who else knows, and why is it such a big secret? And why are you telling me? Why, only this morning I thought that the sight of my bleeding corpse wouldn’t spoil your day. Now you volunteer this. How come?”
“I don’t know. You’ve got a good face. I hate the way Vanessa orders you around. Maybe it was the sweet way you tried to make peace this afternoon. I don’t know.”
I still wasn’t sure I trusted her, but, at least, she’d put up an unusual defence against the moves I had been plotting for later in the evening. She reminded me of my basically predatory nature, which I try to control, and of Anna, whose absence I was feeling in my bones.
“I assume that Vanessa knows nothing of this?” I asked.
“As far as she’s concerned, I don’t exist except as a source of coffee and treachery. I don’t think she worries much about people’s sexuality. She uses her own charms to manoeuvre men—she’s a past-master at that, as you may know—but apart from that, she’s not very observant about people and where they’re coming from. She divides the world into two groups: those who can help her and those who want help from her.”
“Is there anyone at NTC who knows?”
“Nate, Nate Green knew I was going through hell living with Gordon. He was a dear, sympathetic man, even when his own health started to preoccupy him. Unless he told somebody, then you’re the only one, apart from one or two of the women there that I trust.”
“Why don’t you want it to get out? I can think of several reasons but what are yours?”
“Benny, I just want to get on with my job. From where you sit, it might not look like much, but it’s all I’ve got right now, except Crystal. I don’t need complications.”
“But they can’t fire you for what isn’t any of their business, can they?”
“No, not any more, but it wouldn’t endear me to some of them either. Three years ago, a man got shunted around because it was thought there were too many gays in his department. Because of some idiot’s idea that a ‘quota system’ was needed in Audience Relations, he was sent back to writing local news and weather.” She paused long enough for me to register her point, and then took the first sip of her drink.
The bar was beginning to fill up. It hadn’t looked particularly empty when I came in, but now the contrast showed. Little silver bowls of peanuts, olives and shrimp chips had appeared. The bartender was talking to an elderly man in a string tie at the other end of the bar. I drew a happy face with my finger in the wet ring where my glass had been sitting.
“Did anybody come looking for Vanessa while I was out this afternoon, Sally?”
“Only about three or four hundred came in raising hell.”
“What?”
“I mean it was business as usual around there. You’ve seen it, but you haven’t seen the traffic when it gets bad. Multiply Hy Newman by fifty and you’ll begin to get an idea of my job.”
“You feel sorry for Hy, don’t you?” She stared into her glass. Droplets of moisture forced their way through cloudy condensation on the sides.
“Hy was part of NTC from the beginning. Now he can’t get past Reception most days. Security has his picture and orders not to let him in.”
“Does he run amok? Does he threaten people? What’s the problem?”
“Hy reminds most of them where they were when Hy was the best producer of big shows that the network had ever seen. He hired some of them and promoted others. Hy’s the sort of person who makes up for all the times we fail, or don’t measure up to who we should be.”
“You take this very personally, don’t you, Sally?”
“Benny, somebody has to.” I quite liked Sally then. And I believed her. There must be a lot of people on the payroll who aren’t trying to make the worst programs possible, people who feel a responsibility to the public, who are aware of the lightweights they have been delivering over the years.
“What brings you to NTC, Benny? You’re not a broadcaster.” I considered telling Sally the truth and then I took another sip of my drink.
“I know Vanessa from a long time ago. She’s in a bind and I’m trying to help her. I suggested that she get Hy Newman to sort out some of her production muddles for her.”
“That was a great idea!”
“She didn’t think so.”
“Give her a day or two. I’ve seen her take suggestions of mine a couple of days after she told me to mind my business. It is a good idea, Benny. So, she found you in Grantham at loose ends?” I could see she was pumping me, but I didn’t see the harm. I could use it to reinforce my cover story.
“Yes, I was just waiting around to go on a European holiday. She got me at the right moment. Tell me, Sally, did you know Renata Sartori at all?” I watched the reaction to the question in her eyes. She was suddenly guarded. I’d lost yards by trying to get too much too soon.
“Not … too well, Benny. She’d worked here for a long time, but it’s a busy place. We used to have coffee together occasionally. I liked her. She did my income-tax returns for two or three years until I started doing them myself. She was clever with figures. She could have been a certified accountant if she troubled to take the exam. She did the books for a lot of people around the network.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Well, she was so good at it.”
New people were filling up the empty spaces behind me, crowding the bar and raising the din, so that it was becoming harder to hear Sally without leaning close, which I didn’t mind a bit.
“Getting back to Renata: did she really look all that much like Vanessa?”
“Well, they weren’t dead ringers. From the back they could pass for one another: same height, proportions, hair colour and length, but from the front, Vanessa has finer features. Renata had brown eyes and used heavier makeup. I guess in the dark it might be hard to tell them apart. The papers said she was wearing a dressing gown of Vanessa’s. The murderer would have an expectation of seeing Vanessa answer her own front door.”
“Didn’t she have a man in her life? A lawyer?”
“Renata had been seeing Barry Bosco. He’s with Raymond Devlin’s firm. But I don’t know that it was a burning passionate affair. It may have been. Don’t get me wrong. I just don’t know the details. She didn’t talk about him at all when we had lunch that last time. They went out together; that’s all I know for a fact. He had a sports car as well as other cars and she liked that. I don’t know whether Barry felt as casual about Renata.”
“How do you happen to know Bosco?”
“He’s a fraternity brother of Gordon’s. He was on the fringe of a crowd I used to know better than I do now.” She sipped her drink thoughtfully. “Barry is hard to figure. He has all the charm in the world, but he can’t be pinned down on anything. He’s a
strange sort of lawyer, now that I think of it. He hates to sign things. Can you imagine it? A lawyer who hates to put his name on the dotted line. Raymond is just the opposite. He’ll get you to sign a contract just for coming in to keep an appointment. I’ve never seen anyone who was so paper-bound. Well, you saw him in good form yesterday, Benny. He probably gets the kid who cuts his grass to sign a contract. He had kids of his own: they died in a car accident when they were teenagers. But when they were eight and six, Ray made them draw up wills!”
“Is he married?”
“Technically. He’s been separated from his wife for over ten years. She left him a year after the accident; moved to Julian, California; opened a second-hand bookstore.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Barry did some legal work for Vanessa, and Raymond took me out twice, before I married Gordon. I’ve been a Raymond Devlin watcher for years. He tried to get me up to his cottage once, but I out-foxed him.”
“At the meeting, this morning, I met Philip Rankin and Ken Trebitsch. Where would you place them on Vanessa’s enemies list?”
“That’s hard to say. I haven’t had much contact—”
“This could be important, Sally. Renata was murdered, remember.” Sally’s mouth stood open for a few seconds. Some sort of mental process was going on behind her well-shaped brows. “Tell me,” I said quietly.
“Like the rest of the people in that boardroom, Ken and Philip are ambitious. Both would like to add some of the clout Entertainment has to their own empires. Entertainment has the squeeze on prime time. They both want a bigger share. Ken, at least, isn’t subtle about how he goes about things. If he likes the apple on your desk, he’ll grab it. If you catch him at it, he was ‘only fooling.’ Philip’s not as easy to read. While Dermot Keogh was alive, Philip Rankin was a somebody, as they say in the muffler commercials. Recently, he’s had to work harder, do more scouting around to find talent. Dermot’s death really shook Philip. He hasn’t got over it yet, I think. Whenever I overhear him talking, he’s telling stories about the old days. He shared Dermot’s passion for antique cars and rare wines. The only thing that Dermot collected that Philip disapproved of was motorcycles.”