Ransom Game (6 page)

“The Warren Residence.” No movie butler could improve on it.

“Could I speak with Mrs. Jarman, please?”

“Whom may I say is calling?” the
whom
was a reproach, and I'd scarcely said anything yet.

“This is Benjamin Cooperman. I would like to speak to Mrs. Jarman on a private matter.”

“I am Helen Blackwood, Mrs. Jarman's private secretary, Mr. Cooperman. Could you please be a little more specific about the nature of your business?”

“Yes, Miss Blackwood, I intend to be more specific, but with Mrs. Jarman. Is she there?”

“Mr. Cooperman, I handle all of Mrs. Jarman's affairs …”

“I'll bet you do. Now, would you ask her to take the call. I have affairs of my own and I have to look after them myself.” There was a moment of silence at her end of the line, followed by a sigh and then the “clunk” of the phone being placed on wood. It was the sound of solid, old, expensive wood. I played a tattoo with my fingers on the oak veneer of my desk and waited for about a minute. Then I heard the sound of another phone being lifted.

“Is this Mr. Cooperman?” It was another voice. This one spoke of private schools and not knowing how to make interesting casseroles out of left-overs.

“I'm afraid it is, Mrs. Jarman.”

“Why were you rude to poor Blackwood? You should see her face. What do you want, please? I hope you aren't rude to everybody.”

“My mother says I'm gentility itself. Are you alone? Can you talk?”

“That depends. State your business, Mr. Cooperman. I'm right in the middle of painting something, and I don't want it to dry out on me. What is it?”

“I'm a private investigator, Mrs. Jarman …”

“Oh, dear!”

“… and I've been trying to track down Johnny Rosa, who, as you may know, has skipped parole and may intend to bother you. That's just a hunch on my part. But if he does, I would like to know about it. It may help to locate the missing ransom money and clear up a number of loose ends from six years ago. I'm just riding a hunch, but if I'm right, and you call me, we may be able to clear up the whole business without bringing in the police. They tend to be hard on the lawn and burn holes in your chintz among other things.”

“I think it's highly unlikely that I should get a call from that man. So unlikely, Mr. Cooperman, that I promise to contact you. Is that good enough, or would you like me to sign an affidavit?” She was having a good time playing with me and I let her get away with it. If she were with me, I might pull the old forelock. When she'd done I reminded her of the drying painting and gave her my number. She hung up, and then I said goodbye to Blackwood on the extension. I heard her suck in some air just before the click.

SIX

I went across the street to the United for a sandwich. The sun was getting lower, but it had to get full marks for trying this afternoon. The sidewalks were dry and the shoppers moving along them with bones a little less chilled than during the previous few days. The United was almost deserted, except for the boys at the magazine rack. I took my place at the green marble counter and waited to be noticed. Notice was a glass of water banged down in your vicinity by the waitress. It was a minimal kind of reassurance that I was visible and existed. Some days, that was a big boost; others, it was just a glass of water.

I ordered a chopped-egg sandwich, a glass of milk and some vanilla ice cream. It was an ordinary day; I ordered my ordinary lunch. The girl brought it and we exchanged nods. She wasn't being talkative this afternoon. I read through the menu for something to do, noting the price increases on all items since the printer had returned the three-colour job a few months ago. It was very depressing; a lot of things are depressing.

Back upstairs to the groaning of the heating-pipes in my office. They sounded like a midget with a mallet was working them over behind the filing cabinet. All the frost had disappeared from the windows now and I still hadn't had to turn on the overhead light. I wished that I could find a compromise between the intolerable weather outside and the overheated weather inside. I think the name of the compromise is Miami. I decided not to think any further in that direction and distracted myself by dialing the number of the foundry. Lithwick answered and passed me to his Miss Mann again. I wondered about Lithwick. He wasn't really taking hold these days. Miss Mann, the redoubtable Miss Mann, was doing all the brainy work. I told her I was the Taxation Branch, and was surprised when she still thought of me kindly as John Watson.

“Were you able to find the information, Miss Mann?”

“Of course. Just a moment. There: John Rosa came to work here on the seventeenth of November last year. He worked regular eight-hour shifts with no overtime until the nineteenth of January. No absenteeism, only the usual time off at Christmas and New Year's Day. His foreman was Joe Strobel. I'll spell that for you.” She did that. “If you want to talk to him this week, let me see, yes, you will have to catch him when he comes off at four in the afternoon, or at eight in the morning, when he goes in. Next week, yes, he works from four in the afternoon until midnight. Am I speaking too rapidly, Mr. Watson?”

“Not at all. Thanks. I'll look you up to say thanks in person when I come down there.”

“I don't work shifts, Mr. Watson, I'm here from nine to five and not on weekends. If I can help the Branch in any other way, please call me. You have only to ask. Goodbye.” Now was that a come on or was that a come on?

I knew that I couldn't think about Miss Mann or the foundry now. I had to put Johnny Rosa, Muriel Falkirk and all those people out of my mind for a half hour. I'd been postponing my next move for a couple of days, and I couldn't put it off any longer.

Before she left for Florida, my mother made me promise that I would take care of her house plants while she was gone. It was a chore she would not delegate to a neighbour, and when she heard me suggest that, she looked at me as though I'd wondered if anyone in our family ever ate their young. I'd still managed to ignore her injunction about daily visits to water the plants and throw them a little friendly talk as I plied between them with my watering can. Even in a condominium, I found it difficult talking to plants. On their own, I didn't mind plants: they helped fill a house with greenery; but the moment I thought of them as standing there in their pots on their stems waiting to hear me say something bright, they were transformed utterly into pushy, fleshy, grasping things that should find a horror movie to haunt. I buttoned up my overcoat again, pulled my hat about my ears and headed down the dirty stairs, gritting my teeth until my fillings went sour.

The automobile factory was changing shifts as I drove along Ontario Street. The narrow road led straight as ten, jack, queen, king, ace between the steaming plant on one side and its parking lot on the other. Cars were trying to force their way from the lot into the solid line of stalled traffic, and I felt like I was trapped inside one of those plastic puzzles, a numbered square moved from space to space by a frustrated player. In the end, I forced my way through the snarl and beat past the greasy chin of the fastfood traps on either side of the road beyond the factory. In another minute I'd cleared the overpass leading to the Toronto–Niagara highway and was pulling into my father's parking space in front of Unit 57. I tried to imagine living in a unit after having an honest roof of a real house overhead for twenty years. Nobody'd ever say that a man's unit was his castle.

Inside, the sun was spreading muted gloom through the sheer tangerine curtains on to the tangerine couch and the tangerine broadloom The Dresden china was standing at attention in the rear of the china cabinet, waiting to do its stuff again as it did in 1938, 1945, 1957, and 1967. I could hear the familiar tinkle of the crystal wine goblets as I took each step. I took a Coke from the double refrigerator and strangled my index finger pulling off the tab. The kitchen looked neat but dusty, and on the window sills the ivy was looking thirsty. In the living-room the rubber plant stretched out its shiny leaves to me. The dieffenbachias looked terrible. I went to the kitchen sink and filled a pail with warm water. It was one of those taps that glide around and pivot according to its own rules. The ivy seemed to respond at once to my first aid. I mumbled something at it, and swore when I dripped on the ledge. I filled the large pot of the dieffenbachias and had to go back for more water.

“I'll be right back,” I called behind me as I went. I finished up by telling the big guys a few of the snappy poolroom stories I'd picked up. Real knee-slappers. We were getting on famously, if a little one-sidedly, when the double chime of the doorbell sounded its tin-eared summons. Probably the paper-boy inquiring about when my parents would be back from down south. “This will only take a minute, fellas.” As I walked through the kitchen, I should have looked more closely at the blue mass outside my mother's cute Swiss-chalet curtains. It's easy to say that now. When I opened the front door, I found myself looking into the muzzles of two nasty-looking automatics. The boys in the blue Mustang had got it moving again. There it was parked at the sidewalk not ten yards away.

SEVEN

One of the gunmen was the tall weedy guy with the felt hat I'd seen weeping into the stalled Mustang. He wore a muffler that looked like his mother had knitted it for him and a heavy dark blue trenchcoat with a zip-in lining for winter. His galoshes were unhooked and they played jinglebells when he walked. His face looked sad more than anything else. The other guy was a stout, hairy man in a pale blue imitation-leather jacket. His trousers shouted “checks” and “plastic.” His hair, worn long on his head but neatly barbered, was black and abundant. I could tell without looking that his knuckles were luxuriant and wouldn't have been surprised to find that after five o'clock his tongue produced a fine stubble. They both held their guns level with my trembling middle. I wanted to yell, but, under the circumstances, I invited them in.

The tall one made a fast circuit through the main floor then came back to me quick. “Where's the other guy?” He wasn't joking and he looked surprised and scared.

“What other guy? There isn't anybody here but me.” They looked at one another then back at me again.

“Come off it. Is he upstairs or down?”

“It's just the three of us,” I told him, and nodded to the hairy one like I was a neutral observer at my own interrogation.

“Cut out the crap, we heard you talking,” said the tall one, waving his gun around in a manner that achieved exactly what he intended.

“Oh, that. That wasn't talk. I was just muttering to myself.”

“Yeah? And I'm the man in the moon. I heard talk I know talk. I hear it all the time. Is he hiding upstairs or down? Talk fast!”

“Search the place if you want. You'll see I was telling the truth.” I tried out a careless shrug. I got it to go up, but for a second I thought I wasn't going to get it down again. The hairy one pointed his gun in the direction of the door to the recreation room.

“You go first,” he said. I did, and he nosed around in the finished basement, inspecting my father's glass-brick bar with the coloured lights behind, the cool-smelling laundry room, and even the bookshelves with all my mother's whodunits leaning against my brother's discarded medical books. I could see he liked my father's television set. I got good marks for that. But he didn't waste any more time than necessary down there. He wagged the gun and I headed back up the shag broadloom stairs to the living-room. A second later the other guy came down from the second floor. They shook their heads at one another.

“Is there some other way out of here?” I motioned toward the French doors, through which you could see a few rabbit and cat tracks, the yellow stain of a dog in the snow, but no footprints with shoes on. “Okay, friend, stop funning us. We want to know where your friend went. Sit down.” I sat on the tangerine loveseat. The hairy one sighed and put his gun away inside his jacket. I was right about his knuckles. He put them into another pocket and brought out a roll of Lifesavers. He took one and handed the roll to his pal, who made a mess of freeing a candy for himself. Me, he didn't offer.

“Okay,” he said, trying to make the simple fact sit up straight in his head, “you were talking to yourself. Nobody was with you. Nobody heard us outside. Check?”

“Check.” The tall one was inspecting the living-room, pointing his gun at the things that moved him particularly.

“Hey, that stuff in there's Dresden, you know that?” I tried a grin. He nodded, moving his jaw slowly as if in slow thought.

“I like this Chinese commode. This all your stuff?”

“No. This is my parents' place. They're away. I'm just watering a few plants.”

“They got nice taste, your parents. Very nice.” The hairy one, still standing in front of me, crunched his Lifesaver. After nodding approvingly at a couple of pictures, the tall one came back to his friend. The drooping automatic was smartly brought up to attention. I tried to grin seriously, to show that I was a decent living creature with thoughts and feelings of my own. I sat there for a minute watching the sad face of the tall one contort as a preamble to further talk, probably on a new subject. But it was the other who got started first.

“Listen, Mr. Cooperman. We got business with you,” the stout one said. “Vito and me, we gotta make sure there aren't any third parties hanging around, you know what I mean?” Vito nodded. He now put away his gun, but kept his hand on it inside the pocket of his coat. The knitted muffler remained tied lightly around his throat, like it had been put there before he was sent out to play with the big boys.

“You been asking a lot of questions around town, Mr. Cooperman, and we want to know what it's all about. Asking questions isn't a hobby, huh?” the stout one continued. “Why are you messing in this thing? Who you working for?”