A City Called July

by Howard Engel

  It took about eight minutes to drive across the canal bridge and find Burgoyne Boulevard. It took longer to make it to 222. I counted at least three police cars and about fifteen other cars blocking the street. A crowd of people were standing on the lawn listening to a cop with a bull-horn telling them to go back to their houses. It was like walking into a scene in the movies. Usually it’s staged in front of a jail with one of the mob waving a rope suggestively. But this was no mob. No ordinary mob, I mean. I recognized Mr. and Mrs. Sokolov, the Wagners, the Epsteins, the Shapiros and even Mort and Cindi Katz. None of them were carrying ropes, but they looked mad and frustrated. I could see blood in many eyes, and for a minute I couldn’t be sure whether the cops standing on the Geller porch, in the driveway and about six feet away from the mob were sufficiently intimidating. They all looked serious, and sweat was standing out on the forehead of the cop nearest Rose and me as we pushed our way into the front rank. From here I could recognize other faces. Some were from the Jewish community, but not all. There was Doug Spiers and Michael Rainsbury, neither of whom had ever been inside the shul as far as I knew, and Tobi and Frank McLure along with the Helmsels and Digbys. It was a show for everybody, and as I thought that, I saw a microphone pass under my nose at the end of a familiar arm. It was Wally Skeat, late of the Niagara Falls TV Station. I hadn’t even heard he’d moved back to Grantham. But nobody consults me about these things any more. The whole world comes apart and reassembles without a whisper to me about what it has in mind. Wally didn’t see me. He kept looking over my shoulder, and when I turned I was looking into the bright lights of a truck with a camera crew on top leaning over the railings at us. To me it seemed that the timing was unfortunate. The cop with the bullhorn shouted something at the truck and once again told the crowd to disperse. Somebody lobbed a cabbage at the Geller porch, but it was such a lazy, defeated pitch that I knew that the forces of law and order had triumphed again. The crowd buzzed and turned retreating towards the tangle of cars. The camera truck followed, hurrying them up. The news media chased the event out of sight The cops breathed a sigh of collective relief, and the top cop passed the bullhorn to a junior man who carried it around like a newly won badge of authority.

  We joined the huddle to hear what we could of the post-mortem.

  “What set this thing off?” I asked, trying to separate us from the disassembling hoard, and at the same time get them talking louder.

  “You’re Cooperman, right?” asked a uniform with a red head sticking out the collar. “I’ve seen you with the sergeant.”

  “This is Mr. Geller’s secretary. She sent in the alarm.”

  “Her and half a dozen others. Geller had good neighbours. Nobody likes seeing property threatened. On that they stick together.”

  “What started the fuss?” I asked again. The policeman looked at the departing mob.

  “I guess it was the paper. It could have been on the noon news too. I don’t know about that.” Another cop confirmed that he had heard the whole story on the radio. Whether the paper had the scoop or not was something for the likes of Wally Skeat to argue.

  “Who’s the officer in charge?”

  “That’s Chalice.” The red-headed cop hoisted his thumb in Chalice’s direction. “He’s good, isn’t he? I think he likes it. I wouldn’t give three cents to be holding a bull-horn when a crowd really decides to get ugly. Give me cruiser duty any day.”

  Ruth Geller, who must have slipped out of the house without anyone noticing, came into sight and grabbed Chalice by the arm. “We can’t go on living like this,” she said. “Anything could have happened. What about my kids?” The rest got louder and shriller without making more sense. Chalice was talking to her, his voice low but steady. Ruth nodded to the tune of his words until she caught sight of Rose Craig standing near me. “Rose!” she called, tears overflowing. “Thank God for you, Rose. You are such a friend.” They were hugging and crying in that way women have. I didn’t hear what they said, they were both talking at the same time.

  “Benny drove me over while I called the police.” I made out the words but the sense was obscure. Ruth looked over at me and tried on a smile for size. It didn’t fit and the colour was wrong. I took advantage of it, though, and ambled over to join the ladies just as the policeman moved off to other duties near one of the cruisers. I was standing on a crushed tomato.

  SIX

  After picking up three green garbage bags full of dead oranges, cabbages and other missiles, Rose and I were invited into the house for coffee. Nathan Geller was in the living-room putting a square of cardboard over a window that had been broken. Ruth Geller looked like a zombie; she walked around the living-room touching the corners of tables and lamp-shades. I thought she was going to fall on the floor and melt. With a fragile smile at the corners of her mouth, she seemed to be listening in to a stereo station on Mars. Her sister hovered over her like a protective, stronger other self. Although we had been asked in for coffee, no one in fact made a movement in the direction of the kitchen. Nathan was working on his window; the task seemed to occupy him totally. Work was liberating. Debbie made an attempt to make Rose Craig comfortable, although I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Ruth kept glancing from the window and Nathan to the stairs, whose broadloomed steps led to the second floor. Nobody noticed when I went into the kitchen to put the kettle on.

  A few minutes later, Rose sat with her heavily tweeded knees close together balancing her cup and saucer, watching Nathan now applying masking tape to the spider-lines of a cracked window-pane. He took a professional pride in his work, and kept commenting on each step as though we were a film crew watching and recording the artist at work. “That’s good enough for the moment. I’ll try to get a man to come around to replace both panes in the morning.” Then he took the measurements and made a notation on the inside of a package of cigarettes.

  From upstairs I heard the voice of a child calling. Ruth bounded up the stairs without a word. A few minutes later, two kids, a boy and his older sister, appeared with a strange woman and their mother, each carrying a suitcase. Debbie, Ruth and Nathan rallied long enough to try to make the send-off look like an event. They hugged and kissed the children, tried to make a flourish of it, but they weren’t up to it and the kids didn’t want it.

  “I’ve got to have my bike,” the little girl said with a serious expression. “I need it tomorrow, Mommy.”

  “We’ll see, dear.”

  “I need it.”

  This was my first opportunity to see a fair piece of the family together acting like a family. I watched the aunt and uncle help bundle the kids off in a car with the woman who was later identified as an unmarried cousin of I never did figure out whom.

  With the kids out of the house, a source of tension was removed. Debbie lit a cigarette with her butane lighter, and I cadged a light for a Player’s off the same flame. Rose rattled her empty cup in her saucer as she got up to return the coffee things to the kitchen. “Leave it,” Ruth ordered, but didn’t take any notice of Rose continuing her mission anyway. Nobody said anything except in hoarse whispers. If Larry Geller had been laid out on trestles in front of the fireplace with his hands crossed over his chest, the atmosphere couldn’t have been more funereal. We smoked in silence. Rose returned to her place on the chintz-covered chair behind the coffee-table. Ruth huddled in a narrow occasional chair. Her painted smile was peeling away. Nathan pulled out a rounded stone from between the pillows of the loveseat in front of the windows. When she saw it, Ruth began to cry.

  By now I was feeling like the fifth shoe under a bridal bed. If I’d been looking at this scene through a transom or a keyhole I couldn’t have felt more like a voyeur. The room itself seemed to be crawling away from the patched window. In a way it didn’t seem like the room I’d been in the day before. Somehow a pile of broken glass glinting on broadloom and masking tape on painted woodwork completed the work the mob tried to do. “Safe as houses,” the Welsh say. This house seemed as safe as a c
ircus tent in a hurricane.

  “Your wrist, Nathan. Look!” Debbie crossed to where Nathan’s bare arms had been dangling between his knees as he sat on the edge of the loveseat. He raised first one arm then the other. A twisted line of darkening blood snaked down his long left arm. He raised it like a surgeon scrubbing up, and then began to lick it.

  “Don’t!” Ruth cried, suddenly coming to life. “I’ll get something.” But Debbie was already binding his wrist with a handkerchief.

  “It’s just a scratch,” she said with some colour returning to her face. Nathan looked embarrassed.

  “I hate the sight of blood,” he said “Especially my own.” His bum joke brought a laugh which cracked the mood down the centre.

  “Nathan, you idiot!” Ruth said. “Here we are with the mob at the door and all you can do is make jokes.”

  “Well, the mob’s gone at least. And the house is watertight for tonight. Shouldn’t you get out of here for a few days, Ruth?”

  “What and have every stick of furniture stolen or smashed? Don’t be silly, Nathan. Somebody’s got to stick and stay. It’s my home. If the cops can’t protect the place with people living in it, think of what a mob could do to it empty.”

  “Good point, I guess,” said Nathan. Rose sipped her coffee, which like mine was chilly.

  “Will this find a corner in your report, Mr. Cooperman?” Debbie asked, returning to that annoying note she kept hitting on the first visit.

  “Mrs. Geller, I’m not writing a report. I’m not here to judge you people. I’m here now because Rose Craig and I thought you might need help.”

  “I called the police,” Rose added. Debbie shrugged and slumped into the long couch under a large painting of a woman in a hoop skirt playing a cello beside another at a spinet. The women were lush in their velvets and satins. Debbie Geller was wearing a large shapeless white sweater over blue jeans. All in all, she had a good face: a high forehead and clear eyes, focused on the patched window.

  “You’re a son of a bitch, Mr. Cooperman, whatever you say. If this was my house, I’d show you your way out faster than I can think of my own name. Ever get the feeling that you’re not liked, not wanted?”

  “Sure, it goes with the territory. Look, I’m as sensitive as the next guy, but my business is your business as long as the community is paying the shot. I know that doesn’t give me special privileges, and my nose gets slammed in the door often enough for me to wonder if I maybe shouldn’t open up a ladies’ ready-to-wear like my old man did. But as long as I’m taking people’s money as an investigator, I’ll have to go on getting my nose slammed. At least it’s better than getting shot at in a big city. Here at least you sometimes get asked in for a cup of tea or coffee.”

  “You’re the strangest man.”

  “I’m just out to make a living.”

  “But your being here is tantamount to an accusation that my sister was involved in this dirty business with her husband.”

  “It’s happened before.”

  “Not with Ruthie, it hasn’t. I mean, God, just look at her.”

  “Sure. I’m as susceptible as the next man to appearances. What would you have me do? I can’t flash his picture to every airline ticket agent in the country.”

  “Well, you could try asking the local ones, at least.”

  “The cops have done all of that, I can’t compete with the cops. I’m a one-man band.”

  “Elastic band and broken. Sorry. I just don’t trust people, I guess. I m not used to strangers.”

  “Look, in your place, I wouldn’t want me around either. What would you do in my position?”

  “I know that’s not meant as a trick question, Mr. Cooperman, but I can’t help you. Maybe you should leave it to the police and Interpol.”

  “Maybe I should. I didn’t bid on this case, you know.”

  “Don’t you ever think of the cunning it took to pull off what Larry did? Don’t you ever get a sneaking admiration for the criminals you go after?”

  “Mrs. Geller, I’m just a beat-up divorce peeper. Except for a few odd cases, I’ve never been on a case where anybody got much of what they were looking for. Most of the time they were so worried about being found out, they didn’t have time to enjoy their ill-gotten gains. That’s the truth. So, I don’t imagine that I’m ever going to become jealous of some poor guy who has to hide under a false name and run around frightened of his own shadow. Now, from what I know about your brother-in-law, he was a smart man. Maybe you imagine him having the horse-laugh on the rest of us. But I doubt it. Every time a phone rings, he shudders. Every time there’s a knock on the door, he gets sweaty palms. But, you’ll tell me he has all that money. Well, I wonder. How much of it can be flashed in public without getting people suspicious? If it’s in securities, the cops will find him; if it’s in cash, he has to take a chance every time he crosses a border.”

  “What about those famous numbered bank accounts in Switzerland?”

  “Mrs. Geller, your brother-in-law could have spent two million just setting up a deal like that. You’re talking big money, political money, exchequer and treasury money. Larry’s robbed a bunch of geriatrics in Grantham, Ontario. He’s in the Little League. He only hurt a bunch of old-timers. He didn’t knock off a bank or run over the premier’s dog. A case like this has a lot of local people hot about it, and the cops are going to do their best to find him. I’m going to do my best to find him. But it isn’t going to rate a column inch in Vancouver or Montreal. There aren’t any votes riding on Larry Geller.”

  “So what can you do? What can a single private investigator accomplish?”

  “Nothing, maybe. Maybe something better than that. Maybe I’ll figure some angle that nobody’s thought of before.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, like, maybe, and I’m just groping for an example you understand, maybe Larry Geller wasn’t in this all by himself. Maybe we should be looking for two people. That’s at least a different tack from the cops. And it might even pay off.”

  “I see. Some sort of confederate.”

  “That was just an example.” Ruth interrupted our little talk, drawing Debbie away from me, and I watched the sisters talking across the room.

  I could see that Debbie still didn’t trust me, and I guess she had good reason not to. I was more dangerous to them in the long run than the mob had been. At the very least I was out to catch up to the father of the two kids I’d just seen shunted off to a safe haven. Any help I could be to my clients wouldn’t help the Gellers at all. The best thing for them to do would be to sell up and get out of Grantham as fast as possible. Whenever the law caught up with Geller there was going to be more publicity and more newspaper headlines.

  “I’m sorry for your trouble,” I said without thinking. I don’t know where it came from, it just came. It was probably something I picked up from Frank Bushmill whose office is across the hall from mine. Frank would have the tact for a session like this if he were sober, which was seldom.

  Downtown an hour later, I ran into himself at the door to his consulting room. Frank is a chiropodist on his sign and a podiatrist in the phone book. Podiatrist is the metric term, I guess.

  “Hello, Benny. You look like you’ve seen Hamlet’s father. Have a look at your face in the mirror. You’ll swear it’s made of Irish linen.” He dragged me into the small toilet at the top of the stairs and made me face my face in the glass. He was right, I could read the tension of the last hour in my mouth and eyes, although, with Frank standing beside me, I couldn’t be dead sure the tension wasn’t something he generated. I was never fully relaxed with Frank around. It was well-known around town that Frank had an unhealthy appetite for strange flesh. I always had to be on guard in case it was mine.

  “I just came back from a mob scene outside the Geller place.”

  “Jayzus! The print’s not dry on the paper, and they’re out there like that, eh? Fat lot of hooligans! Hangin’s too good for them. Trying to get them out of the kip, wer
e they now?” Frank was sounding more Irish than usual. He must have been reading that Flann O’Brien fellow again. Frank was always at me to read this or that, and it seemed that every second book that he waved under my nose was by this Flann O’Brien. I managed to read some of the books he lent me, but I couldn’t make head or tail of the O’Brien ones. Frank had taken it into his head that I needed more education. Maybe for a chiropodist with a bent appetite I was ignorant, but when I finished at the collegiate I felt I had more education than I could manage. In none of my cases so far had I been able to put E=mc2 to any account. “Come into the office and we’ll have a quiet jar together. I’ve got an hour before my next patient. You can tell me all about it.” He led the way to his door then through it into the office smelling of chemicals barely covering the odour of troubled feet. A bottle with his own name on it was produced and in a moment we were both holding and clinking glasses. Frankly, I wanted to talk to somebody about the case. The drink I didn’t need. I never do.

  “Frank, I feel like I’m in a room without windows or doors. The walls are like polished granite, like on tombstones, and there aren’t even inscriptions to get a finger-hold in.”