by Howard Engel
“If there was something, I couldn’t count on you to tell me about it, could I?”
“I suppose not.”
“How is Larry’s disappearance affecting your family?”
“Shit, Mr. Cooperman, you ask dumb questions sometimes. Personally, I’d like to climb into a hole in a Henry Moore and pull it in after me. Ruth’s on Valium, with a doctor and Debbie standing by twenty-four hours a day. The kids want to see their Daddy. What would you tell them, smart guy? Daddy’s a crook? Daddy’s stolen a lot of money and run off with it, but be good and maybe if you say your prayers he’ll send you a postcard.” Nathan Geller drank off the last of his bottle of beer, gasped and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. I got up to go. Agreeing with him about the questions, I couldn’t find any better ones. So I thought I’d save my next visit until I had something to stick to him. I said my goodbyes and started for the stairs. He called after me, “Cooperman? Let me give you some advice: don’t mess with Pia. She doesn’t fool around, and she has some friends who have a habit of not liking the people she doesn’t like. Now if you’ll get out of here, I can go back to work.”
So I got out and I suppose he went back to work.
FIVE
I parked my car in the usual place behind the office and climbed out into the sunshine. It was really doing it today. Even the mossy backs of these ancient St. Andrew Street buildings looked like they were giving up the last ounces of a century’s accumulated moisture to those perpendicular rays. On my way up the sloping alley, I saw weeds trying to make a go of it against the brick wall of the Standard Bank Building. The weeds would be more successful than the bank. It closed down before I was born.
The glare on the pavement made me squint as I opened the outside door to the office. I tried to imagine the street with a rampart of snow over the curbs and ice on the sidewalk I should complain to the janitor about. It didn’t stop the sweat from running down the inside of my shirt. The hall and the stairs to the office were cooler. Old buildings, I thought, as I unlocked my door.
I went through my mail without finding anything of interest, then got busy on the telephone. Pete Staziak couldn’t let me have the key to Larry Geller’s Queen Street office. It wasn’t right for the public cops to go around helping out the private cops even though, as I pointed out to him over the telephone, the private sector had once or twice …
“Don’t give me any of that nail polish, Benny. When have you done anything for me when it didn’t get you off some hook or other? You’re like that goddamned bird that cleans out the teeth of the mud-loving crocks in the bayou down south. Show me once where what you did for me and Savas …”
“I told you about Kogan, didn’t I?”
“Big deal, so we pull a drunk out of a doorway so he doesn’t freeze to death. Besides it was your doorway he was freezing in, wasn’t it?”
“It was next door. Okay, I’ll bother Geller’s wife for a key, knowing how much you’d love to get me on a B and E.”
“Ah, now you’re talking. You could loid the lock, set off the alarm and we could waltz around all night together. You know Rose Craig?”
“Never heard of her.”
“Geller’s secretary. She’s got keys. What’s more she’s still trying to deal with the traffic in there. Which means she has more guts than brains, if you ask me. I don’t see any harm in you snooping around there, as long as I don’t have to wait until Christmas to find out if you discovered anything.”
“You’re always the first to know, Pete.”
“Only when Shelley’s pregnant, Benny. With you, I’m always playing guessing games. I’m at the foot of your Must Be Told list. But I got faith in human nature, that’s what I got. So, go to it. Go up there and uncover all the clues we poor working stiffs have overlooked because of our superficial and hidebound ways.”
“I’m getting to recognize that line coming, Pete. Get off my back. I’m only trying to make a living. What do you want from me?”
“Damn it, Benny, I just told you, practically told you, to use my name with the secretary. What more do you want, a seeing-eye dog?”
It was a short walk from the office to Queen Street. On it I passed two banks that were in business and one that had become a restaurant. It was one of those places where they serve a vegetable fuzz of shoots on top of everything and you need a PhD to understand the menu. The fish-and-chips truck parked at the corner of St. Andrew and Queen was closer to my style. I bought a cone of French fries, doused them with malt vinegar and salt and began spearing them into my mouth. Kogan, the rubby, was asking for handouts near the chips wagon. He was looking elegant in a reclaimed crested blue blazer and grey flannel trousers held up with a few rounds of butcher string.
“How about it? Got any change? I was in the war, mister. Not your war; your dad’s war. Help a fella out.”
“Hello, Kogan. How’s it going?”
“Huh? Oh, hell it’s you, Mr. Cooperman. Nice day eh?” I gave him a warm quarter from the change I’d just collected from the purchase of my lunch. “Thanks,” he said, and I continued down Queen Street.
Outside the office of the Beacon, in one of the handy honour-boxes, I could see the headline through the plastic window: LAWYER DEFRAUDS LOCALS. That tore it. I’d had all the head start I was going to get. Now it was every man for himself. I fed the machine some silver and it clicked open when I pulled the handle. I read the top paragraphs in each of the three stories linked to the headline. The picture of Larry Geller looked at least ten years old. He didn’t look a bit ashamed of himself. I folded the paper in half and tucked it under my arm.
Geller’s office was in the Hamilton Building, about half-way down the first block on the west side of Queen. The shadow of the post office nearly darkened the entrance, which was formed by four glass doors, all but one locked. The elevator entrance was cut into a wall of solid native limestone, or so it looked. I pushed the button for the fourth floor.
I couldn’t miss Geller’s office; it was the one with a crowd of seven or eight people in front of the door with uniformly grim expressions on their faces.
“She won’t let anybody in,” a middle-aged woman, one of a group of three, volunteered. This verdict was confirmed by grunts of agreement from the others. An elderly man, flanked by what I took to be his lawyer, stood first in line at the door. Another old couple, rather formally dressed, hovered near the elevator doors. “She threw everybody out just a minute ago,” said the first woman again. “She’s cracking under the strain, if you ask me.” I wanted to try the door myself, but there didn’t appear to be any reason to believe that these people were part of a plot to keep me from visiting Geller’s office.
“She’ll have to come out for lunch, won’t she?” said the elderly man to his lawyer, who didn’t jump to give his opinion.
“And what a temper she has!” said a woman with a voice like the ping from a cracked crystal vase.
“Just stay calm, Mr. Friedman,” the lawyer whispered into the hearing aid on Mr. Friedman’s chest. “It’s not the end of the world.”
“Easy for you to talk,” Mr. Friedman said, moving his arms in exasperation. “You’re making money just standing here.”
“You should have stood up to her, Doris. I would have backed you up.” This from the woman with ghostly face-powder all over the front of her face.
“I wonder,” I asked looking at no one in particular, “if she’s read the story in the paper.”
“Paper? You mean the Beacon?” asked one of the ladies.
“Sure. It’s got the whole story, with pictures.”
All of them squeezed into one elevator car and were out of sight within twenty seconds, and I was alone in front of Larry Geller’s office door. “The coast is clear!” I shouted through the door. “They’ve all gone. I chased them all away. Open up and I’ll show you your boss’s picture in tonight’s paper.” For a second or two I heard nothing except the sound of the thought process itself maybe, then a chair squeaked and a voice near the
door asked:
“Who are you anyway?”
“I’m not the paperboy, but I’ve got a copy.”
“If this is a trick …”
“Cross my heart. Look, my name’s Cooperman. I’m an investigator working with the Jewish community of Grantham. I’ve talked to Ruth Geller, and she knows I’m here.” She didn’t know, but I would pass the word along when I saw her again. The spring lock snapped open on the other side of the door. I turned the knob and walked in.
Rose Craig stood before me like she thought I was the leader of a mob come to break the door down. It took her a minute to see that I was alone, then she stopped glaring and took her hands from her hips. I squeezed past her into the office. She grabbed the paper from under my arm and threw it down on the receptionist’s desk with the headline staring up at the ceiling.
Geller’s secretary was a compact, well-proportioned redhead in a green blouse and tweed skirt. She looked like she’d been tossed in a blanket: she was nervous, twitchy and sloppy. White underwear showed through where too many buttons were unfastened on her blouse, a cigarette dangled from her lips as her head moved up and down the columns, spilling ash over her impressive bosom. Her hands were small and puffy, with short, none-too-clean fingernails. Newsprint was coming off on her red palms. She looked up at me and shot a glance over her shoulder. “They’ve been driving me crazy,” she said. “I couldn’t take it any more. You say you’ve talked to Ruth? That’s supposed to make it all right your being here. Let me tell you, Mr. Cooperman, not even Ruth is a complete friend. She has her own interests in this too. There are no friends. Not even me. If I don’t get paid on Friday, I’ll be looking for a new job on Monday.”
“Have you found much?” I asked nodding in general at the inner office.
“What do you mean?” She opened her green eyes with new-born innocence. I liked her for that. If my business ever begins to take off, I’ll try to remember Rose Craig. It would be nice to be protected by her “What do you mean?” for a change.
“Come on, Rose, you’ve been tossing the place, same as I would in your spot.” She eyed me thoughtfully, taking the cigarette out of her mouth and babysitting it in an ashtray on the corner of the beige desk. It was her luck that a fleck of tobacco stuck to her lower lip. She didn’t take her eyes off me. She stood just far enough away from me so that she could go through all the illustrated steps in a karate manual if I got out of line.
“If that lot got in here, there wouldn’t be anything left intact within three minutes.”
“What they’re looking for won’t be found in neatly kept files. You know that better than anybody.” She smiled at me in spite of herself, but savaged the cigarette in the crowded ashtray like she was killing a spider with it. “He must have had a wonderful memory, your boss, or maybe a carefully kept code system. He could have done it on slips of paper and made it look like laundry lists. What have you found?”
She eyed me evenly. “That would be telling, wouldn’t it?”
“Okay, play coy. I’m not one of those you have to worry about. Geller doesn’t owe me six cents. Now that the story’s public property you’re going to have lots of opportunity to meet new people and develop interpersonal skills. Tell you what, you should get a security company in here to guard the office. You’ll need six men in three shifts around the clock. Get them from Niagara Security. They won’t cheat you. Probably you’ll get a fair rate on the junior men. You must have an office operations budget. Don’t tell me he cleaned that out too?”
“No. There’s a few hundred in petty cash. Damn it all, Mr. Cooperman, I’m so confused. What’s going to happen to me?”
“You’re going to get your picture in the paper, and you’re going to get an unlisted phone number for a year. Do you have a friend or relative who’ll put you up for a few days? It’s just until you can move from wherever you’re living.”
“Move? I just moved into that apartment!”
“Well, you’re going to have night visitors for a month, and nasty telephone calls for longer than that. You won’t be in any actual danger …”
“Danger!”
“Right, you won’t be, but people want to get something to ease the frustration. Remember we’re dealing with the friends and relatives of the people he cheated. You won’t have to worry about the people themselves, I don’t think, just the kin, who’ll tend to be younger and more hot-headed than is actually necessary. The cops’ll help you if you get threatened. Best to disappear for a while; that’s what they’ll tell you.”
“Damn it. I don’t need this. You know?”
“Nobody does. All you can do is get through it without skinning your knees. Low profile, that’s the ticket. Try not to talk to the paper, try to avoid photographers. Get yourself a lawyer you can depend upon.”
“Lawyer?”
“Just in the background. Nobody’s going to try to say you did it. Geller got away with a lot of money; a lot of people are cross at him; and they may think you know more than you do. It wouldn’t hurt to keep a diary about what’s happening to aid your memory if this ever comes to court.” It was part of my standard speech to clients. Now I was giving away free legal advice.
“I swear I don’t know a thing about any of this. You’ve got to believe me, Mr. Cooperman.”
“I believe you. But will they?”
“All I did was the normal legal work. I typed the wills, deeds and mortgages. I billed the clients. I kept the loose-leaf law reports up to date. I passed on messages to Ruth that he left for me. I don’t know anything. Honest.”
“I still believe you. What about a man named Kaplan? Did you know him?”
“He’s a farmer, isn’t he? Sure, he came here, but I don’t know what they talked about. I never do unless there’s some letter or minutes of agreement that Mr. Geller wants typed. With a lot of them, he typed his own notes. I heard him do it, but you won’t find them in the files. I’ve looked.”
“He must have done his bookkeeping somewhere else. Did he own or rent any other property that you know of?”
“This is the office. This is where he did his work. I mean he usually took an attaché case home with him. Why’d’ you think he must have had a second office?”
“He had a second life, didn’t he? All he’d need was a room someplace where his records couldn’t be traced back to him. He could have rented it under a false name.”
“In a town this size, are you kidding?”
“All right, forget it. It was just a notion. How much time did he spend in the office anyway? You know the routines of other legal eagles. How does Geller stack up?”
“He used to get here early. That’s one thing I’ll say for him. I used to get in by a quarter to nine and he was already dictating into his machine.”
“Often?”
“Oh, a couple or three times a week. Then he’d take long lunches. But most of them do that. You can check his desk calendar to see the people he met. Only that’s at the police station. A Sergeant Staziak has it.”
“Did he work late usually?”
“Sometimes. He’d stay on after I went home and then in the morning there’d be a batch of tapes for me to type up. But there were times when he didn’t come back from lunch at all. Or he’d come back and then go right out again saying he wouldn’t be back.”
“Was he going home, do you know?”
“I just work here, Mr. Cooperman,” she said. “I’m not clairvoyant.”
Rose had been doing some unobtrusive personal tidying while we talked. I noticed without noticing when she’d done it, that she had detected and remedied the unfastened buttons on her blouse. “Would you mind if I had a look at the private office, Miss Craig?” She put down the paper and waved me through.
There was nothing special about Geller s inner sanctum. The desk was uncluttered dark wood with a high-backed swivel chair behind it. On the wall I recognized diplomas, citations and photographs with Geller shaking hands with various dignitaries. The desk was arra
nged so that the morning light fell on the faces of his clients. A photograph of Ruth and the kids sat in a silver frame next to a brass calendar with the date reading Thursday, July 7th. Rose Craig, who was standing in the doorway, saw that I was eyeing the wall of filing cabinets. “There’s nothing doing in there,” she said, like a mind-reader. “I told you, I checked.”
“What used to be here?” I asked, examining a round patch on the dusty mahogany that showed less dust than the rest.
“That? It was a trophy or something he’d won when he was at law school. He told me a million times what it was, and I’ll be damned if I can remember. It had something to do with winning a prize at Osgoode Hall. He was very proud of it.”
“So, it’s not surprising, then, that it’s gone?”
“Oh, he’d take it with him all right.”
“Do you know whether he kept up with Eddie Lazarus or Morrie Freeland? They were pals of his from law school.”
“Mr. Lazarus doesn’t live here in town. I think he has a practice in the Falls. I could check. Mr. Freeland’s office is on the next floor to this. He’s with Beamish and White. Mr. Geller never called him, but sometimes Mr. Freeland would put his head in the door. They went out to eat together last winter sometime.”
I was half-way to the door of the outer office when the phone rang. I knew it couldn’t be for me, but I didn’t hurry away to let Rose answer it without a witness. From the look of her, she didn’t want me to hurry away either. It was one of those calls full of exclamations and cries of “You’re kidding!” and “What?” that convey absolutely no information to the casual listener When she hung up, she looked right at me as though in whatever game she was playing I was “it.”
“There’s a gang over at the Geller house throwing things and tearing up the place!”
“Did she call the cops?”
“I don’t know. Shouldn’t we do something?”
“Yeah, put in a call to the cops while I collect my car. I’ll be back in two minutes. Meet me outside.” And I was off.
I don’t know why I reacted that way. It was clearly a dab of vindictive violence levelled at Geller’s house and family because Geller himself had so successfully fled the scene. So why was I getting involved? I guess I thought it might put me somewhere close to a word or phrase uttered in the heat of the moment that might give me a clue about where this investigation was going next. The Olds, parked in my father’s old spot behind my office on St. Andrew Street, started up and I backed out of the alley without sending more than half a dozen slow pedestrians to the hospital. Because of the one-way system it took me longer to get from my office back to Geller’s office by car than I could have covered the direct route on my hands and knees. Rose Craig was waiting outside the office looking the wrong way for me on Queen Street. I honked. She crossed the street, got in and swung the door closed behind her, smelling of Chanel No. 5.