Ransom Game (27 page)

TWENTY-NINE

I grabbed a sandwich at the United on my way back to the office telling myself that in the long run a steady diet is better than the sort of Greek feast we had at Savas's cousin's cousin's place. Although, I must admit, I missed my mother's unique cooking. When she takes a chicken out of the soup pot and then roasts it, I get sensations along my backbone that make it feel like a xylophone. Well, at least I could look forward to her return from Miami in a few days. And in a couple of weeks it wouldn't even be February any more.

Once back at the office, I put in a call to Thomas Avery, old George Warren's executive assistant, only to discover that he was now a vice-president who didn't come into the office except for board meetings. The young man I was talking to led me to believe that the board met every time there was a total eclipse. I fought him to get Avery's home number, but he told me they don't give out that kind of information. He wasn't impressed when I told him that I was Manfred B. Curtis from the
Wall Street Journal
. He even shared a little homily with me about rules that are set up for the public applying equally to the press. I should have told him I'd order a general audit if he didn't give me the number, but then I would have had to have been John Watson from the Taxation Branch. I think I do the Taxation Branch pretty well.

I phoned Savas with my problem and he told me to get lost. Pete Staziak was out, so I came down to the only resource man left on my list: Barney Reynolds, of the
Beacon
. It took me two calls to locate him in the beverage room at the Harding House. I could hardly hear him above the din.

“Yeah?”

“It's Benny Cooperman.”

“Benny? How are you?”

“In the pink, Barney. How's the boy?”

“They got me doing chits and weddings again. Like I was summer relief. Bastards!”

“What happened?”

“Foster must have recognized my anonymous note in the suggestion box about firing everybody with a college degree. I thought he'd go for it, but he's one of these drop-out snobs, you know what I mean? He didn't finish high school but he's taken in by these guys with their journalism degrees. Bastards!”

Barney had been with the
Beacon
when it still ran on coal oil, or at least I kidded him about his length of tenure. He once told me, in his beer, that he had seen three city editors die in office. For a while, they gave the chair to him, but his habits of life did not repay a position of administrative responsibility.

“Barney, I need your help.”

“Name it.”

“George Warren had an assistant named Thomas James Avery.”

“Yeah, I remember. Another old school tie.”

“Do you know where to reach him? They made him a vice-president when the old man died, sort of a pay-off for services rendered, I guess. Do you know where he hangs out?”

“Try the Mallet Club. They'd know. That's my best shot away from the office.” Barney kept a ready reference file written down one wall by his office phone. If you could read it, it would show you how to phone anywhere in the world through a network of direct lines and government and business switchboards. His crowning achievement came during a revolution in a certain South American state (a series of illnesses and holidays made him the
Beacon
's man in San Hermano) where the rising military dictator promised him an interview and ended up stealing his tape recorder. I tried to think of a way to warn Barney about the RCMP, but I remembered that he owed me for the time he needed a secret place for an exclusive interview and I lent him my room at the hotel. The interview went on all night, and in the morning I had to clean up the room, throwing out two empty bottles of Seagram's VO, and half a pair of panties.

I thanked Barney and listened to him go on about how they'd cut to ribbons a nice human interest piece he'd done on Johnny Rosa. “I bet they'd rather have the stupid copy written by the computers. Bastards!” I hung up and slipped into my coat.

The Mallet Club stood in the best-looking old building in Grantham, right at the end of King Street. It was one of those clubs that had never rejoiced to the happy sounds of a bar mitzvah. Nor had any of its members ever attended one. Nor had any of the bartenders, stewards, or waiters. At least that's what my father told me. And he was right about Henry Ford.

I walked in behind a man in a black homburg with a white scarf neatly tucked into his dark overcoat.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Macaulay,” said the butler, or whatever he was. “Nice to see the cold easing off.”

“Afternoon, Gerald. Spring can't come too fast for me. Next year we'll definitely go south.” Gerald busily took Mr. Macaulay's things all the while examining me minutely.

“May I help you, sir?” he said brightly, but with a warning in his voice.

“Yes, I'm trying to find an old friend, Tom Avery. I've just arrived in town, and I was hoping to catch him before I have to catch my plane. Plane was re-routed here because of the weather. Don't know why. I do hope I can find Avery. It will be the only thing to go right since this beastly day started.” Both Gerald and Mr. Macaulay eyed me suspiciously. I thought I'd pronounced all the words flawlessly.

“You are a friend of Mr. Avery's, young man?” Mr. Macaulay asked.

“Yes, sir. I'd hate missing him. But, I suppose it can't be helped. Pity.” They were quiet for a moment, and then Mr. Macaulay said: “You'll find him in the Private Patients' Pavilion at the General Hospital. He'll be cheered up seeing you. Give some of the rest of us a chance to catch our breath.” He seemed to like what he'd said, so he repeated it. Gerald and I laughed politely. I thanked them both and bowed my way out of the halls I might never tread again. On my way down the steps, I passed

Dr. Adelstein. He opened the door and walked in to a greeting by Gerald. The door closed and I missed the rest.

Rooms in the Private Patients' Pavilion had been built for more gracious living and dying than was currently going on. The original wooden doors had been taken out and replaced with wider ones that sat in a white metal frame. The life-support systems and all the other plumbing that had been added over the years as an afterthought were plainly not the idea of the original architect, who must have believed that patients would get well from being wheeled on and off the screened-in balconies. I had no trouble locating Tom Avery. I found out from the nursing station that Mr. Avery was a pet, a favourite with all the nurses. Pretending I was his brother from New York, I discovered that he had been admitted with complications arising from adenocarcinoma in the head of his pancreas. When I asked what his chances were, the nurse smiled brightly, which was her way of shaking her head slowly in the negative.

He hardly made a bump in the high bed. He looked dead already, only his eyelids flickered when I stood in the light at the foot of the bed.

“Mr. Avery? How are you? I'm a friend of Gloria Jarman. She and Bob send their very best. Is there anything they can do for you? Just name it, they said. Anything.”

He looked at me from behind his purplish skin that had burned up every ounce of fat. I don't know whether he believed me or not. I don't think he cared. A gray stubble caught the light on his trembling chin. I didn't like looking at him, but I couldn't see how to look away.

“You know Gloria?” His voice was a whisper. I had to move closer to him and the tubes running in and out of him. I didn't like the smell. He continued in a spider-web croak: “How do you know her?”

“I work for her. I'm a private detective. I'm trying to find out who killed her father. I'm pretty sure now that it was murder.”

He didn't answer for a minute. Then: “You think George was killed? Why? You have proof? That's serious.” He couldn't talk for long, and each burst of speech came with his normal exhaling of spent air.

“He called you late on the afternoon before he died, right?”

“You know that?”

“Yes. And that he asked you to check on Jarman's holdings and finances and wanted to hear from you before morning. He needed the information by nine that night, he said.”

“It's a long time ago.”

“Yes, but you remember it like yesterday, don't you?”

“Are you doing this for Gloria?” His blinking eyes lay deep in his skull and they held me with the strength of a hospital orderly.

“She's paying me. But maybe it's not Gloria I'm doing this for. I don't like to see people pushed around and murdered because it suits them. If George Warren was murdered, I want to find out about it. Other people you don't know have been killed too. It's time the killing stopped, Mr. Avery. I know that you'd like to help it stop.”

“You ever write speeches? That used to be half my job. Trying to make them talk English and not get the company sued.”

“What did you find out about Jarman? Did you talk to Mr. Warren that night?”

“I found out that over the years since Mr. Jarman joined Archon Corporation, he had slowly but steadily been increasing his holdings. He was never a poor man, but to start with he wasn't stock rich. But we know that he became stock wealthy over a short time. What I told George that night was that Jarman's had become the largest block of stock apart from his own. He got control of small groups of shares whenever they came up. He did it quietly and without trumpets and drums. Together with Gloria's share—she was a lovely girl. I remember—”

“I know, Mr. Avery. This is important.”

“Together they were bigger than George. And George hadn't seen it happen. Nobody saw it happen, because he kept what they call a low profile, did it through small companies that were owned by other companies, where Jarman's name was registered as R. Hallam Jarman. Pretty feeble, eh? But he must have thought he wouldn't be found out. Well, George did. But getting rich isn't a crime yet, is it? Jarman's always had a nose for money, for the drift of the market. Uncanny man. George couldn't stand Jarman when he was on the make. Old George saw him coming. But after the kidnapping, he went soft on Jarman, took him in, let him marry Gloria. It was Russ's death too. They didn't get on, but he thought the world of his son, thought he was the salt of the earth, but never would have said it to the lad's face where it might have done some good.”

Just then, a nurse came in. She looked at me with friendly suspicion, and announced that she was doing a routine check for vital signs. Avery made a joke about giving her a cigar if she found any. Then he asked the girl: “Was your mother May Ingram?” The nurse nodded with surprise. Avery tried to put her at ease by adding, “I know your whole family. You've got the Ingram look. What's your name?” I took that as a cue to leave, but before I'd cleared the door, Avery called after me: “Remember me to Gloria. I always was fond of her. Tell her that when I get out of here I'm going to come up and look at her pictures. Might even buy one. Tell her that.” Then he chuckled like he'd made a big joke. “When I get out of here,” he repeated, in case I'd missed it. I joined him in his joke. I guess it's what they call having the last laugh.

THIRTY

On a piece of paper in front of me, I wrote down the names of all the people I'd run into since Muriel Falkirk found her way to my front door. I'd met most of the owners of the names, but a few, like old George Warren and Johnny Rosa, had escaped me. In prying open a foam plastic container of coffee, which I'd brought back to the office more for comfort than taste, I managed to spill an ounce or two on top of my faded green desk blotter. In trying to prevent a flood I got most of it on the names I was working on. The coffee did in the ink and names began running into names in a very thought-provoking way. Could Muriel Falkirk have had an affair with old George Warren? Could Tom Avery have anything to do with Bill Ashland? Gloria's name suffered worst. The ink from it began to dissolve the names of people she'd never met, people she might not even know existed.

There was a tap at the door. My heart sank, it sounded like Muriel coming back to haunt me. I hadn't heard any steps coming up the stairs, but I put that down to my absorption in my list and its lake of drowned names.

“Come in,” I shouted in a friendly voice, although I thought it came out sounding sharp and unwelcoming, the proper way to welcome a ghost. But it wasn't Muriel either alive or dead; it was Helen Blackwood, bundled up in a beige coat, camelhair and very nicely cut. Her cheeks were bright from the cold street and the steep climb. I came around the desk and gave her a peck on her icy cheek before she got the door closed.

“Am I disturbing you?” she asked, smiling.

“I just spilled some coffee, but otherwise everything's under control. What brings you to the city?”

“You. I just wanted to see where you work.” She shucked the coat and came out in a slate gray dress, wool by the look of it, with a Liberty scarf tied at the throat. Her eyes began taking in the centre of operations while I piled her coat above mine on the coat rack. I could see that she was having difficulty getting on to my system: in it the items with the earliest dates are found toward the bottom of any pile. Recent items are invariably on top. She drew a long dust-probing finger along a pile of files near the window.

“It's not very big, is it?”

“I'm out a lot. It's big enough. I keep the details in my head,” I added. She nodded, and began to look restless after a visit of less than five minutes. I felt ashamed that my life should exhaust interest after so short a time, and was relieved when Frank Bushmill poked his head through the door. He was about to poke it back after seeing that I had company, but I called him in and introduced them.

“Frank's always shoving good books my way. Trying to improve my mind.”

“Nothing's the matter with your mind, Benny. I sometimes think, Miss, that Benny sprang fully-formed from the brow of Dr. Seuss.” He cocked his head impishly like the bog man was. “It's only pretending to learning that gets you in trouble in this world. At Trinity I once met a woman who claimed to have read
Ben Hur
in the original Latin. Now can you beat that?” We both smiled. It was the kind of thing Frank was always saying, and I was always smiling at. One day, it would all be revealed to me. “Well, my children, I must be leaving. Just looked in on Benny to see that he was still alive. He does the same service for me. Miss Blackwood, pleasure to have met you.” And he was gone.