Ransom Game (9 page)

“Nobody likes Ashland,” I said, thinking out loud.

“Look, I don't hate anyone. But Ashland is the one who could make me change. He was too soft for this business, you know, not hard enough. Then when they had us, he started to whine. That doesn't help anyone.”

“What do you know about Johnny and Muriel Falkirk?” That one stopped him for a minute. He smiled.

“That's a good-looking woman.”

“What do you know about her?”

“She was Eddie Milano's girl. That's not a secret, except to Mrs. Milano. Milano's a respectable married family man. He goes to church. Supports the charity drives. All that stuff. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. He goes deep under. He's got investments in Las Vegas. He gets income from Miami, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Up here he's just a motel owner with an interest in horse racing and the tourist business at the Falls. Nobody has a sheet on him. He's too smart for that.”

“Why did he split with Muriel?”

“Search me. Could be a dozen reasons. Why does anyone split up? It's chemistry. I don't know anything about chemistry. I stick to simple stuff like beer. I know that Milano has powerful friends. If he wanted to, he could crush Johnny like a gnat.”

“Maybe he did.”

“Yeah, maybe he did.”

Something moved on the other end of the couch I was sitting on. I'd seen it before, but had taken it for a rolledup ball of socks. The socks stretched and became a young puppy. It lolled, turned belly up, showing a light underside, whimpered and curled up into socks again.

“And you really haven't had any contact with him?'

“I told Jennifer I would have nothing further to do with that life. I gave her my word. She's the greatest.” I smiled approval. “You'll never guess who she is. She's Jennifer Bryant, the daughter of the crown prosecutor. How do you like that? She was only little when I went to prison. I met her when I got out on parole. I had a job fixing boats. Didn't even know who she was for a long time. And when I found out, it didn't matter. She knew who I was right along. With her father and all, I guess a shrink would make something out of it. I'm just glad it happened.” He tended to flatten his
d
s and turned them into
t
s, but apart from that his English was unaccented.

“Have you been in touch with Johnny?” I repeated.

“No. I'm through with all that.”

“I know, but sometimes the past isn't through with us. Has anyone else been to see you? Have you noticed strangers hanging around, clicks on the telephone, that sort of thing?”

“Forgive my saying so, Mr. Cooperman, but you sound like a television show.”

“Tell that to the parole board. I think you know more about this than you're saying.” I just tried that on him to see what the reaction would be. I could see nothing special, so I began making “I'm about to leave” noises. Then I thought of Muriel and asked to use the phone. It was in the kitchen: dark stained woodwork and cracked tile above a vinyl counter. I let it ring for about two minutes before giving up. Without thinking I was adding up the time since she'd slipped me the envelope.

When I came back, Jennifer was on the scene again. I said something about the farm and this sort of weather and Knudsen responded with something equally deathless. Jennifer was holding the brother to the puppy on the couch. I said goodbye to Knudsen, who didn't budge from his chair and followed Jennifer to the door. Her hair smelled of apples. She had her face pressed against the glass of the door as I went down the frozen path to my car. I had the feeling as I backed out of the lane that I had learned more than I knew I'd learned. I also realized that the itch at the back of my knee wouldn't leave me alone until I'd paid an unscheduled call on Muriel Falkirk.

ELEVEN

The illuminated dial of my watch showed 9:37. It doesn't deal in things like a quarter to or half past. With the moon down, the night looked blacker than when I'd started out. At Power Gorge, I could just make out the darker shape of the hydroelectric development, where a Niagara of water fell through a series of ten pipes to the benefit of all of us good citizens. It wasn't much to see at night, and, come to think of it, it wasn't much to look at in daylight either.

Lake Street was one of the streets that followed the lines first laid down by the earliest surveyors in Grantham. It formed one side of a parallelogram made by criss-crossing concession roads and side roads. Things worked this way on the edges of the township, but in the centre, where the city was, the old Indian trails, the Eleven Mile Creek and some discarded canals got in the way. Only once in a while, like here on Lake Street, did the streets run ruler-straight.

I found the address Muriel Falkirk had given me. It was a brick-fronted three-storey apartment building. You couldn't honestly say it was ugly, it was most of all forgettable. I parked the car in front, locked it, and went through the heavy glass door leading to the lobby. On one of the black and white speckled walls a group of bells and mail-boxes were arranged. I tried her bell, clearing my throat so that I would sound like me when she called through on the intercom. No answer. I tried again. I looked at my watch: 10:08. My mother was always reminding me that I should pay more attention to time. Of course, she meant not that it was ten o'clock not nine, but rather that “Benny, you're not getting any younger. Why not settle down with a nice girl. It's time.” Sure. Who's arguing? I got ambitions, the same as anybody else.

I pushed Muriel's bell again. Still no answer. But now I could hear someone coming down the stairs. An old lady in leaf-green slacks and a paisley blouse under a fluffy, white imitation fur jacket opened the inside door from her side. She had a Siamese cat on a red leash. The cat smelled my trouser cuffs, but the woman left me alone. She took her cat and her blue hair and upswept rhinestone glasses out the front door. I caught the inside door before it clicked and went up the stairs to the second floor, where the corridor looked too clean and too bare. Muriel's apartment was at the back. I knocked on her door and waited. Nothing. I knocked again with no response. I was beginning to get that feeling I used to get when Nick and Nora Charles or Mr. and Mrs. North used to knock at the suspect's door and get no answer. I tried the knob. The door was open. Part of me decided that it was time to take back my overdue library books and declined to have anything further to do with this business. The apartment was quiet. I went in. I began to breathe more easily when I saw that the lights had been left on. She must have gone down to the laundry room or out for a quart of milk, I thought. Something mundane and sensible like getting new heels put on or having your hair cut. I called out, “Muriel?” No answer.

I was now in the living-room, which had wall-to-wall broadloom in a colour like old mushrooms. The furniture all matched, and reminded me of the ads that offer a room full of furniture for less than a thousand dollars. The drapes, which were drawn over the windows, were of the same material as the chairs. A game of cards was laid out on a coffee table, a half-filled glass of amber-coloured liquid stood beside it. Smelled like Canadian rye, but you could fool me. An ashtray full of butts completed the decor, except for the pictures. About them, the less said the better. I went on exploring. The bedroom was messy, the bed unmade. A small suitcase lay open and sprawled on the floor beside the pleated ruffle that enclosed the lower part of the bed. I recognized Muriel's scent in a bunch of perfume bottles on a vanity table under a mirror. I didn't much like the strange face that looked out at me from it. I should have taken my hat off when I came in. I did now, but it didn't help. In the closet, I found her fur coat, and a couple of cloth coats, and the whole registry of skirts, dresses, robes, negligees, nightgowns, and about thirty pairs of shoes. If the coat was here, she must be down in the laundry room; certainly, she hadn't gone far.

The only other room, besides the kitchen, which in an apartment like this you could search in a fraction of a second, was the bathroom, and I almost left without peeking in there. I guess I must have thought that when Muriel walked in the front door with a hamper full of neatly folded linen on her hip, I could shout in my defence that at least I hadn't violated the sanctity of the bathroom. Whatever else I might be guilty of, I was free of that. But I could hear a tap dripping with loud drops. I couldn't resist. I opened the bathroom door, and there was Muriel with her head face clown under a foot of water in the bath.

I found myself sitting on the white and black tiled floor of the bathroom with a yellow towel clutched in my hand. It was damp and clammy. From where I sat, I could see only the end of one of Muriel's legs poking up over the edge of the pastel blue tub. It didn't move. After I had caught up with my breathing, I came over to the tub on my hands and knees. Slowly, I lifted my head. It was all so quiet. The only sound came from regular fat gouts of water dropping from the shower head. They hit the water where Muriel's hair had fanned out on the surface. She was fully dressed, except for her shoes. One had slipped into the tub, where the polish was beginning to discolour the water. The other was near my knee on the bath mat. The water was cold but not icy. The back of her neck felt slightly warm. The pattern of her underwear showed through where her flowered dress was sodden. Only the back of the skirt remained dry near the hem. Elsewhere, even above the waterline, it had become wet. On the hand of the arm bent behind her, was the big green ring. Somehow I got up, found the door and the telephone. I was still holding the towel. I used it to hold the phone as I dialed the number of the Regional Police.

TWELVE

It was about eleven o'clock. I was sitting in Staff-Sergeant Chris Savas's office waiting for him to get back from Muriel's apartment. I had been surprised how fast the cops got me out of there. They let me let them in and show them to the bathroom, then I was driven back downtown to the Regional Police Centre on Church Street to wait for Chris. Chris and I went back a few years together, and Pete Staziak and I play a little gin rummy from time to time.

From the window, I could look down on the police parking lot, with overhead mercury lights reflecting on the decaying snowpiles. Beyond that I could see the blue and pink neon sign of the City House where my room was. If I hadn't played the good citizen and phoned the cops about Muriel I'd be watching the late news after a long hot bath, with the prospect of the next chapter of a thriller before lights-out. Instead, here I was waiting for Savas to turn up and ask me the same questions he could ask me in the morning, when at least I could wash them down with a cup of coffee.

For the last hour, I'd had the feeling that I'd forgotten an appointment or that there was something I was neglecting. Then I thought of the letter with my name on it. It was still where I'd put it in my inside breast pocket. I tore it open a little more savagely than I intended. I knew I couldn't change anything. Speed would not help Muriel now.

Besides the money, there was a single piece of notepaper from the desk of an infrequent letter-writer. It said:

Dear Benny,

Sorry I had to run out on you this way. Here is another hundred dollars, which should square us as far as work goes. You're also welcome to anything in the apartment.

No need to get in touch. Don't worry. You've done all you were supposed to do. I might get in touch one of these days, but don't hold your breath.

God love you,

Muriel

So, she was running off and was interrupted before she got to slam the door. Poor Muriel. I slipped the five twenties into my wallet, thinking of that green ring of hers.

I looked at Chris Savas's desk. He was the best cop in town, but he was also the messiest. I could tell what he had eaten for lunch by the crumbs on his blotter; I could see that his desk calendar had got behind, and that he was giving himself notice of a meeting that had taken place three weeks ago. The big calendar on the wall announced that this was still January. Files were stacked all over the place: on top of the filing cabinet, behind the filing cabinet and on both sides of the filing cabinet. I was tempted to look, but I guess that he hadn't thought of putting any files inside the filing cabinet. I was thinking this and other uncharitable thoughts when he walked in on me.

Savas is a big man even for a cop. He has a face like a boiled ham and shoulders that could buttress a cathedral. His eyes are steely sharp but there are lines that show he laughs a lot. He hung up his coat and hat without looking at me. Only when he had settled in behind his desk and lit a cigarette, did our eyes meet.

“Okay, Benny, let's have it. I'm tired and I want to go home. Never mind the stuff about finding her. You already told that to Kyle and Bedrosian at the apartment. I want to know why you were there and what she was to you.”

“I told Kyle that too.”

“Yeah, I know. But humour me.”

“Okay, she hired me to find Johnny Rosa. He had been living with her since he got out of Kingston. He disappeared about a month ago, as if you didn't know.”

“Only vaguely, Benny, and from far off. I got other fish to fry too. Johnny Rosa was big news once, but today he's just another parole violation. Let the Mounties find him, if they can. Why were you visiting the lady at such an unbusinesslike hour, Benny?”

“I'm in an unbusinesslike business.” He got up from his chair and walked to the window. The mercury light came through the Venetian blinds and put stripes across his big face while he stood pulling his ear.

“And, before I forget it, how does all this mesh with the envelope you dropped off here earlier? I try to stay on top of things around here, but with you on the job I'm sliding all over the place.”

“There's a tie-in, all right. The stuff in the envelope is suspected bloodstains, which I chipped from the driver's seat of an old Volkswagen, towed into Steve's Garage out near Lock One on the canal. It's on the Lakeshore Road near Niagara.”