Death of a Sunday Writer (13 page)

“All right.”

“You will?”

“Certainly. I don't want you to think the agency is unethical.”

“The agency?”

“I'm going to carry on the detective agency.”

Fruitman giggled. “That's just a front. Trimble was no bloodhound.”

“He worked at it occasionally. Anyway, I'll make sure no one sees your name.”

“Leave me right out of those records?”

Lucy considered telling Fruitman about the impossibility of ever constructing a coherent narrative out of the few scraps she had found so far on the computer. “I promise you that nothing the public is allowed to see will contain a recognisable reference to you. I'll call you “X” if necessary. How's that?”

Fruitman grinned. “That's great. Then I could read about myself. X. Great. Or call me Fleishman. You sure you believe I paid the bet?”

“Who's Fleishman?”

“He's a prick. Always trying to find out what I'm betting on. Now, that bet...”

“Will you stop trying to give me money?'

Fruitman looked unsatisfied again. “Can I do anything else for you?”

Lucy saw that he did not believe they had a deal unless he gave something in exchange. “Perhaps something. First, give me your word that you paid David.”

Fruitman looked at her for several seconds. “That's it? My word?” He paused again. “Then you have it, lady. My word.”

“How?”

“How?”

“How did you pay him. Like that?” she pointed to his pocket. Fruitman looked where she was pointing. “Right. Yeah. Five bills.”

“Where? Where did you pay him?”

“Right here. Over the desk.”

“What did he do with them?”

Fruitman thought about this. “He put them in his pocket.”

“When was this?”

“The next day. In my lunch break. Then I went down to the Y for a little workout.”

“What day was that?”

“The sixth. Yeah, the sixth.”

“And he would have paid Cowan the same day.”

“Or the next. No longer.”

“What would have happended if David hadn't paid Cowan.”

“Here we go again. Mrs. Brenner, your cousin has been Cowan's drop for a long time. They have a very solid relationship. He would have paid.”

“Thank you, Mr. Fruitman. Now, where can I find Mr. Cowan?” Fruitman gathered his jacket around him and leaned back in his chair. “Why?”

“I want to talk to him.”

“I don't know.”

“Yes you do. Why won't you tell me? Are you afraid of him?”

“Here we go again. No, I'm not afraid of him. I just don't want anything to do with him. I dealt with your cousin. That's good enough for me. I don't want to know who he dealt with.”

“But you know it's Mr. Cowan.”

“That's what your cousin said. But I don't know
where he operates from, or anything like that.”

“All right. I'll have to try somebody else.”

Fruitman didn't move. “We've got a deal, though, eh? You've given me your word. I've done the same. Right?”

“You've got my word. And good luck.”

Gradually the tension left him. He stood up, disjointedly. “I don't need luck. I have your word, right? Your word? Thanks, though. If I hear of anyone needing a bloodhound, I'll refer them. Thanks.”

Lucy called Jack Brighton. She had a perfect excuse for her first look at the bookie. “I've got David's bookie's name. It's Cowan. Can you find out where his office is?”

Brighton laughed. “I'll see if anyone knows his place of business and call you back.”

He called within an hour. “Go to the Ulysses Diner and ask for Ivor Cowan.”

“Where is it?”

“On Queen, on the south side, east of Spadina.”

“Why, I could walk there. What sort of person is he?”

“He's a bookie-type person. I've never met him. They tell me he's there in the afternoons.”

That evening, Johnny Comstock took Lucy to dinner at Le Paradis, to talk about David Trimble. They talked about her cousin for as long as it took to eat the paté, then they shared some information about each other. Comstock tried to give her some idea of what it was like to be addicted to horses — it was the only thing he had in common with Trimble — and how lucky he felt in being able to live as he did. “I was married once,” he said, “But it broke up for the same reason that I probably won't get married again. I move around a lot, mostly between here and Kentucky, with rest stops in Florida. But I'm always working. I like travelling, but I don't do it for fun. My wife objected that we never went anywhere she wanted to go. We did, actually, but not because she wanted to go there. Fact is, if you found me looking thoughtful on a junk on the Yellow River it would be because I was wondering who won the Belmont. That's a horse race. It got her down eventually. We broke up without too much blood spilled, though.”

In turn, Lucy released the information that she was married, but would not be for much longer, that she lived in Longborough, but planned to move to Toronto, and that she intended to make something of Trimble's detective agency.

“You're on a roll, aren't you?” he said, by way of summing up what she had told him. He explained further. “You're going for it,” he said.

Lucy still wasn't sure what he was talking about.

“You feel like taking some chances,” he said.

“I suppose that's right.”

“It suits you. Makes you give off sparks.”

Then Lucy knew that the evening was as much about that as about Trimble. More. Until then, it was the farthest thing from her thoughts. It was true that she hadn't fled when The Trog landed on her, but that had been a challenge handed to her by fate, and otherwise life had been a matter of surviving Geoffrey, not looking for more problems. She felt the weight of Comstock's admiration pleasurably, and echoed it so that later, in the entrance to Trimble's apartment block, when he kissed her goodnight, she had been thinking for so long, the last hour at least, that he might do that, and wondering how she should respond, how she could get exactly the right message across, that when the moment came she panicked and gave him a quick feverish peck and ran away.

The next morning Peter Tse called in to see her. “You want me to come with you to the bookie?”

“Whatever for? At three o'clock in the afternoon? What can happen? If anything does, you know where I am.”

“I thought you might not know the best way to get there. You don't know this end of town too well. I didn't plan to be your bodyguard.”

The Ulysses Diner was a fairly new restaurant and bar, decorated to look like an eatery from the twenties, with some neon, a lot of chrome, and curves instead of edges. The bar counter was on the left side of the room and, beyond it, a row of high-backed booths offered privacy along the wall.

At three o'clock the room was almost empty; only one of the booths was occupied, but when Lucy started to walk towards it the waiter stopped her. “Lots of free tables over here, ma'am,” he said.

“I want to speak to Mr. Cowan. Is that him?”

The waiter looked at her and back at the man in the booth who was taking no notice of them.

“Ask him,” Lucy said. “Tell him Trimble sent me.”

“Trimble's dead,” the waiter pointed out.

“Yes, well, tell Mr. Cowan I'm his cousin.”

The waiter looked at her sceptically, wondering how to best serve Cowan. He looked back, and the man in the booth was looking at them now, so the waiter walked back and whispered deferentially to him. The man nodded and the waiter beckoned her forward.

Ivor Cowan was a tiny, elderly man dressed in a black suit, a white shirt, and a pink, almost patternless, tie. He reminded Lucy of a retired chicken-farmer she knew in Kingston, scrubbed and dressed for church.

“Sit down, Miss..?”

“Brenner. Mrs. Thank you for letting me talk to you.”

“I'm a bit crowded today, Mrs. Brenner. Can you be
quick?” A waiter appeared and showed Cowan a slip of paper. Cowan nodded, and the waiter returned to a phone, spoke briefly and hung up.

“Was that a bet?” Lucy asked.

“It was a message from the lady who cleans my apartment. She's sick. Now, how can I help you?”

“My cousin, David Trimble...”

“Ah, yes. I knew David. Lovely man. I hear you're taking over his office?”

“That's right.”

“And writing a memoir?”

“I'm thinking of it. How did you know?”

“Word gets around. David recorded his own life story, I hear.”

“A lot of it.”

“All the people he knew, things like that?”

“Yes.”

“Mine, for instance? Wouldn't be there. No. I hardly knew him.” He looked regretful at the likelihood of being left out.

“I don't remember the names. Did he put bets on with you?”

“That in the memoirs? He was a bit fanciful at times, was David.”

“He passed on bets, didn't he?”

“I imagine.”

“Quite big ones, some of them.”

Cowan said nothing. He took a small book from his pocket and flipped the pages. “Not with me.”

Lucy took a breath. “I think I should tell you first that I have deposited a copy of David's records with my solicitor with instructions that if anything happens to me he is to turn them over to the police.”

Cowan took a sip of his coffee and looked at her, concerned. “Do you have a weak heart, Mrs. Brenner? Something like that?”

“You know what I'm talking about. Did David always pay up?”

“He was the type of person who always paid up, I would think. A great guy. Now excuse me. If you need any help with the memoir, I'm often here.”

“Oh, the memoir is nothing much. Everything's in the ledger.”

“The ledger? He kept a ledger? Do you have it with you?”

“He kept it on a computer. I made a copy of that, too.”

“What does it say?”

“Everything. All the bets he made. Who with. Everything.”

“Names names, does it?”

“I found yours there.”

“Did you? And what do you plan to do with this ledger?”

Lucy took a deep breath. “Can I be honest?”

“Of course. Would you like a drink?”

“A spritzer.”

Cowan snapped his fingers, a gesture Lucy could not remember ever having seen before in Canada. “Bring us a spritzer,” he said to the waiter.

They waited for the drink to arrive, and Lucy to take a sip. “Nice,” she said.

The waiter said, “We only use imported wine.”

Cowan looked at the waiter as if he had suddenly taken all his clothes off, and he disappeared.

“I know David worked for your organisation.”

“I don't have an organisation, Mrs. Brenner. There's
just me and one or two helpers. And a few people like your cousin.”

“I have to take a chance on you. I'll make a deal with you. Before I do anything with this ledger, I'll take out any references to you. But I want some evidence of your good intentions. Who do you use to collect your debts?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I just want to meet everyone David knew.”

Now Cowan withdrew slightly, as if he had just realised he had been insulted. “Look, I'm busy, but I'll tell you this. Go to the police and you'll find out that I don't use collectors. If people don't pay, I forget about it.”

“No pay, no play, eh?”

“That's the idea.”

“Then it must have been another bookie.”

“What bets particularly concern you?”

“Well none, particularly, as long as he paid up.”

Cowan said, “You are a very silly woman. If I were another kind of bookie you might be in serious trouble. I don't know what you are up to but I think you are bluffing. I don't think there's any ledger. I think that you think that you've stumbled on to something.”

“Blue Jays 500 Fruitman on the sixth. Fruitman was in my office. He wants to be sure that David paid you. He's afraid that you'll send someone round to knee-cap him.”

“Fruitman said that?” Cowan's amusement and disbelief seemed genuine. “Elmer Fruitman said that? I'll pull his leg about that.” Then he took out his little book and flipped the pages. “All right. The Jays lost, and David paid. Look.” He showed her a small notation in his book. “T\Jays 500+2”. “That means I gave him two but the Jays lost by five, and that little tick means he paid. See?”

“And if he hadn't?”

Now Cowan looked angry. “I don't want to be bothered with this kind of rubbish, ma'am. I don't have any goons, and besides, nobody owes me anything. I made a bet, I won. I think you got what you came for.”

His manner convinced Lucy that she had been in serious breach of etiquette.” Sorry. If I find any reference to you I'll leave it out of the ledger and the memoirs, Mr. Cowan. I may not bother with any of it. But do you have any stories, anecdotes, that I could use?”

“If I think of anything, I'll write it down and send it to you.”

“I'll show you the memoir before I send it in.”

“That would be best.” He put out his hand. As Lucy was gathering herself, he added. “What now? Back to...?”

“Longborough. For the moment, I'm keeping David's office open.”

“The — er — business?”

“I'm going to carry on.”

Cowan was more polite than anyone else so far, but the expression of doubt on his face was clear.

“You don't think I should?”

“No, no. Of course not. I just had the impression that there wasn't all that much business there.”

“It's up to me to build it up, then, isn't it?”

“Won't it be a bit different from what you're used to?”

“I've never talked to a bookie before, either.”