Ransom Game (14 page)

“You're just a little protective of the boss.”

“And she pays me very well. Look, I get off about eight. If this snow-flurry doesn't develop into a blizzard, I could drive into town and meet you around nine, say, in the lounge at the Beaumont Hotel?”

“Sounds fine.”

“All right. Until nine, then? Goodbye.”

I let myself be pulled out into the weather, which caught hold of my coat like a pool-room bouncer and yanked me into an eddy of blowing snow under the
porte cochère
. The Olds was where I had left it. It hadn't turned into a pumpkin, but it was wearing a white dinner-jacket.

It took me five minutes to clear the snow from the windshield, after a struggle to get the motor going. I decided to ignore the hairpin turns I'd driven over on my arrival. I wasn't that suicidal. I turned left at the bottom of the Warren drive and pieced my way along the straight but unplowed road for a couple of miles until the road was intersected by a highway. From there on the normal hazards of winter driving prevailed, and as the snow came blasting at me from a single point ahead, I could picture my mother and father sipping cocktails beside a Miami pool.

SEVENTEEN

On the way back into town, I stopped at a pay phone and tried to reach Savas. He was out, so I left my name. Savas is a good man, but he's never around when you need him. On the other hand, I always seem to be around whenever he decides to upgrade my eating habits, aided and abetted by Staziak, his partner. It's no use my telling them that I like all my bad habits. I've got professional countermen and short order cooks feeding me, and I eat three times a day, more if I want.

By the time I'd reached St. Andrew Street, the snow had stopped. Storekeepers on both sides of the street were cleaning it away from their stores, sweeping it across the sidewalk and into the gutter. The merchants of St. Andrew Street were all getting older. They looked like my father, and he was retired. Their stores had come to look like them. I parked illegally in front of the Regional Police Headquarters, scribbled a note to Savas and delivered it to the man in blue at the desk. He looked at the name and told me the sergeant had just returned. He pointed the direction.

Pete Staziak was leaning in the doorway to Chris Savas's office. He was tall, in a three-quarter-length winter coat and a green tyrolean hat, a size too small, perched on top of his large head. We were once in the same chemistry class, and I was in a school play with his sister.

“Ben,” he said, “I keep missing you. Chris said this morning that you were a regular visitor. How come I don't rate with you any more?”

“It's your personality, Pete. You just don't have it the way Chris does.”

“Yeah, you're right. I'll always be Watson to Chris's Holmes. Whatcha got, Ben?”

“Are you working the Muriel Falkirk case with Chris?”

“Sure, we even go to the john together. What's a partner for, Ben? You wanted to know about the booze that she'd been drinking? We have a report on it now, and it looks like she was drinking top-grade booze: Crown Royal.”

“Still no sign of the bottle?”

“Nope.”

“I wonder whether you still have the keys to her apartment?”

“We got keys. What's on your mind?' He had inched his way from the door-frame to the inside of Savas's office with its metal furniture and view of the parking lot. He kept his shoulder to the wall as though he knew something about the contractor that I didn't.

“Well, I'd like to borrow those suits we think belonged to Johnny Rosa for half an hour. I want to check out the labels.”

“You think they were Muriel's? Benny, your mind gets cuter every day. You know I can't let you have evidence. Ben, what's the matter with you?”

“Does that mean you'll talk to Chris about it?”

“What do you think in means?”

“I think you learned about answering a question from me. It's a cheap trick.
I
don't even do it any more.” At this moment Savas strode back into his office, adjusting his belt. As soon as he'd frowned his greeting, a messenger in blushing acne and blue uniform handed Chris a folded newspaper, like a marathon runner passing on the baton. Chris opened it.

“We're getting ink,” he said. I caught the headline: WOMAN'S BODY FOUND IN BATH. The story gave most of the details, adding for the prurient that the body was fully clad. I was glad to see that they'd left my name out of it. There was nothing new in the story but I read without skipping because it's strange to see your life turned into those simple declarative sentences. They get the details right, but somehow miss the bigger meaning.

Chris's face looked weary as he threw himself into his noisy swivel chair. He sighed at a dirty, coffee-stained mug on a pile of file folders.

“Afternoon tea's over, Benny. You missed it.”

“I had mine up at the Warren place, thanks. They do a nice tea up there, I'll say that for them.” I watched the eyes in both their faces widen.

“So that's the league you're playing in. Nice going. Your client's successor, Benny? Gotta hustle, eh?”

Pete gave me a look and said lamely, “You want some coffee? We always got coffee.”

“Never mind. I got the car running outside. Mrs. Jarman's had a phone call from somebody who claims to be Johnny, and she thinks that it probably is.”

Savas was looking sheepish now. I thought I'd get out before I started losing again, and left them standing there.

The car was still where I'd put it and I hadn't been given a ticket. I headed west, across the High Level bridge with its clear view of the Eleven Mile Creek at the point where it becomes the First Welland Canal. The shift was changing down below at the foundry, a huge red brick shed with a chimney that worried the provincial pollution critics. My only stop before the station was at Binder's Drug Store for some cigarettes.

I recognized Bill Ashland sitting on the end of one of the waiting-room pews. He was wearing a business suit, and didn't have a rolled-up mattress with him or two baskets of eggs like a couple of his neighbours across the room. Twenty years hadn't dulled my recollection of the smell of the place. They must be using the same oil on the floors now as when my father used to show me the newly-hatched chicks in crates, ready for the Toronto night train. The pictures of a train crossing the Rocky Mountains were no longer the only wall ornaments and the telegraph noises were gone, but the echo was the same.

Ashland's buff coat, furry hat, and paisley muffler were folded neatly next to him. It must have been the first three-piece suit in the place since Mr. DePue, the station agent, retired. Ashland brought a pair of quarterback shoulders to this outfit and the rest of his frame didn't make them conspicuous. His face was flat and hard, with a pair of unlikely gold-framed glasses sitting on top of his broken nose. He'd taken his hair to the beauty parlour and had brought it away with a thousand clusters of blond curls. I guess he thought that his Zorba moustache and massive chin protected him from wisecracks. His eyes were piggy and gray, a little too close together to get him far in the banking business. He didn't look up at me when I came in through the puddle of salty water and melting snow that hung around the door like porridge on a spoon. As I settled into the space beside his coat, he lowered his
Toronto Life
and inspected me like I'd just flaked off the ceiling.

“You're Cooperman, are you?” His smile revealed some gaudy dentistry leaning heavily on the precious metals.

“Sure I am. Thanks for coming,”

“I don't have all day, Mr. Cooperman, so, if you'll state your business …”

“Sure. First, it would help if you filled me in on how you were first brought into the Warren scheme.”

“You don't want much for nothing, do you?”

“With private investigators, Mr. Ashland, it's like doctors. It's routine with us. We don't care whose feet are in the stirrups. I personally get no thrill from asking a lot of questions. As a matter of fact, I'd just as soon be down south right now.”

“What do I get out of it if you do all the asking and I do all the answering?”

“Don't ask me. But the technique gets results.” He looked dubious, so I added: “How can you tell for sure I'm not going to drop the missing piece right in your lap? You can't know for sure, that's why you can afford to take the chance. Besides, you've nothing to lose by telling me how you got involved in the first place.”

Ashland pulled on the corner of his moustache with his right hand, thought for a while, then said, “I was living with Knudsen in the Norton Apartments, and Todd was always dropping by. I was spending lots of money, had a steady flow of chicks. It was a crazy time. We once got through ten cases of beer on a weekend. There was always some girl wrapped in a bedsheet on her way to the bathroom. You could smell the action when you got off the elevator. One day Rolf brought Johnny around. He fitted in. He liked to groove a bit, play a little cards. He went in for very young stuff, and I used to think he'd get the apartment raided. But in spite of the girls' school uniforms, they could out-curse a stevedore with a backache.” He took out a fine slender cigar and lit it with a disposable French lighter.

“How did Johnny bring you into the scam?”

“One weekend around the middle of May, we'd had a marathon drunk and were all shagged out with no beer in the place and no food, and not one of us had a dime in his jeans. We finished the last beer by taking turns drinking a shot-glass-full each. If we hadn't been bombed out of our minds already, we could have got stoned all over again. I think that Todd had to go out around six, and Knudsen was taking one of the chicks home or for a walk, I can't remember. So that left Johnny and me. We were just talking. First it was about this young chick he'd seen, and then it was something else, and before I realized it, we were talking about snatching this girl I'd only read about in the papers. Johnny knew all the details, and it looked like it couldn't miss. I'd never been involved with the law in my life, I mean nothing was ever proved, but, I mean, how many times do you get a chance to grab half a million dollars over a weekend? We figured heavy traffic would reduce the chances of getting caught, so it was planned for the long weekend. Johnny said she'd be at the lake and there she was.”

“Did Johnny ever say why he'd picked this girl?”

“What was there to tell? She was the daughter of the richest man in town, one of the richest men in North America. It was a natural.”

“He didn't tell you where he got all his information, did he?”

“Johnny just swatted it up. He was a whiz at things like that. He used to be a good people-reader. He would watch a guy and then after a time say something that knocked him out of the chair. I remember one time …”

“Sure. You were in the first car, the one that took the girl, you and Knudsen, him driving? Right?”

“He tell you that?”

“What are you so jumpy about? I don't have a tape recorder. What you need is a new head looking for the details that got lost somehow.” He caught me in those piggy eyes, and then he began to split. It started slowly, then it was like he was in the confession box and I had my ear to the grille.

“Yeah, well Johnny, Todd, and I were waiting in the cottage when they came up the dock. I grabbed Miss Warren; Todd grabbed her boyfriend. Johnny stood by giving orders and help as it was needed. I knew that it didn't matter about the screaming, because we'd checked that out, but just the same I was glad when I got a gag fixed. The sleeping bag was a great idea. It kept her from kicking and scratching. First thing, I got her head covered so that she couldn't see any of our faces. She fought every inch of the way and it took both Johnny and I to do most of it. Meanwhile, Todd had hit Jarman, the boyfriend, and started tying him up. I put a long piece of nylon rope around the sleeping bag, and when I was ready, Johnny went out and whistled for Knudsen to bring the car around. Johnny and I carried her to the back seat of the car and we set out, Rolf and I.”

“Could she have heard your voices during any of this?”

“Johnny was the only one who said anything. He didn't say much, just the few commands, and then the whistle.”

“Would you recognize Johnny's voice if you heard it on the telephone?”

“Not necessarily. It wasn't that special. It was the way he had of talking that made him special, not the voice.”

“Okay. Todd says that you shot your mouth off about the snatch.”

“Todd's full of it, the black bastard; I kept as quiet as the rest of them. Some people have to have somebody to hang things on. I think our friends in the building could sense that something funny had happened. We were quiet for days afterward. We didn't party it up. Nobody drank any beer, the girls wandered off home. It was a real drag. I know how my father must have felt. He was in the war. After that, nothing back home ever caught his whole attention again. I'm glad he didn't live to see me go on trial.” Then his face grew angry. “Damn Todd, and damn the others! Any of us could have shot off our mouths. It didn't have to be me. If Johnny Rosa wanted professionals, he should have paid for them.”

A train was due, and people were moving out to the platform with suitcases and magazines. I remembered the black front of an old locomotive emerging from a shroud of its own steam. I knew that I would lose another of life's cherished illusions when a diesel puffed in on Track One.

Ashland saw that I'd been distracted, and grabbed me by the coat. “You got me here to listen as well as talk. Seems like I'm the only talker so far.”

“All right. You know that Johnny Rosa's gone. Maybe you don't know that the car he was driving has been found abandoned near the canal and that there were bloodstains inside on the seat. It's not just a parole violation inquiry any more. It looks like murder. And I would say that your name might be high on the list of suspects. He got you involved in the Warren affair. He took the money without sharing with you. You've got a record. I'd say they'll be talking to you before the week's out. They won't wait until his body floats out into Lake Ontario and comes up in the spring.”