The Memory Book (17 page)

The old man’s eyes twinkled as he licked his lips. The paper-thin skin of his head was transparent. His right arm hung limply over the arm of his wheelchair.

“Why is the university a good place to have an illegal drug business?” I asked.

While we watched him, Wilf thought for a minute, his eyes on the traffic down below. “I’ll tell you,” he said. “As you know, the major trade in drugs is done in the great American cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago. Smaller, but still significant, is the steady traffic up here, but the big money is down in the States.” So far he hadn’t added to my knowledge, but I wasn’t going to blast him
for that yet. He had stated his theme. Now he was going to enlarge on it. “The police do a lot of undercover work, looking for illicit dealers. In some cities, they have even become dealers themselves, I’m sorry to say. But, with a little intelligence, the dealers manage to stonewall most legitimate undercover operatives.” He took a breath and looked like he was about to tell me more when he said, “Where is this friend of yours? Toronto? York?”

“Simcoe College, University of Toronto.”

His eyes widened.

“You
know
that place?”

“If I did once, I don’t any more.” For a minute the conversation was sidetracked to the peculiarities of my hospitalization. Then we returned to the main theme.

“The suspicion is that the labs at Simcoe College are being used to manufacture drugs. You’d be looking for a common street drug that can be made in a lab. Doesn’t need fancy equipment. But you’ve got to be careful or you’ll be walking around with a drug-induced case of Parkinson’s. Whoever’s behind the operation at Simcoe has buffaloed the best efforts of the campus police.”

I nodded, a buzz beginning in my head. “Have they had any luck?”

“From what I hear, they catch the small operators, but can’t get close to the people who are manufacturing the narcotics.”

“It shouldn’t be hard to locate a lab that’s being used to make dope. If you need a lab, don’t you have to requisition
it? Don’t names appear on forms? Isn’t anybody keeping records?”

“Ask the police. Now, tell me what you know. First of all, what are we talking about? Heroin? Cocaine? You won’t find them in a campus lab except under controlled conditions. Crack? LSD? Ecstasy?”

“Ecstasy. Let’s go with Ecstasy.”

“Good bet. There, the traders, the young students being picked up, are not informing on the manufacturers, who keep well out of sight.”

“So, it’s a major problem?”

“The manufacturers will get picked up one of these days and there will be a hiatus.”

“Just a pause? Not an end to the trade?”

“Mr. Cooperman, I’m too old to be an optimist. It’s human nature you’re dealing with, a notoriously unstable substance. Young people have been rebelling against the forbidden since Adam was a farmer. What are you going to do?” Wilf Carton went on looking out the window and then turned to look at me again. “If I live to be two hundred, I’ll never understand the back streets of human nature, Mr. Cooperman. In the contest between Wordsworth and Robespierre, the Frenchman wins every time.”

We continued to look out of the window. I couldn’t explain this sudden fascination with the tiny cars and trucks down below. Maybe it was because their life went on without any awareness that we were watching. It might have been the fact that we knew something that they would learn later on. Whatever it was, the sight of
moving traffic held us like a scene of life on another planet. The cars, the slow-moving figures, all looked foreign, irrelevant to our lives. After five minutes, the picture grew depressing.

I went back to my bed, intrigued by the conversation I’d just had. At the edge of my consciousness was the image of that television blonde with the two braids buttressing her invisible ears. Like a puppy worrying a new pair of socks, my mind kept coming back to it. Where was the key to unlock that fugitive fragment?

I didn’t feel as tired as I had earlier, but I didn’t have energy for challenge. For a minute or two, I fought the good fight, but in the end my moth-eaten character gave way. I let myself feel the pillow under my head and closed my eyes.

It was moving on toward late afternoon when I woke up. I played a hand or two of gin rummy with my roommate, Jerry, just to be friendly, and he took me for fifty cents. I never play cards if I can help it, but Dagmar had phoned to say that she couldn’t visit Jerry today. He was a decent fellow and that overrode my dislike of card-playing.

The less said about dinner, the better. Somebody told me that the closer you get to being discharged, the worse the food tastes. I can believe that.

“Mr. Cooperman?” It was a complete stranger staring down at me as I was courting a post-prandial nap before seriously going to sleep. My visitor was an Indian from India. A few of the specialists I’d seen walking through
the corridors were Indian. I wondered whether my pulse had developed irregularities I hadn’t been told about.

“That’s right. Who are you?”

“My name is Abul Moussuf. I’m a friend of Steve Mapesbury. Over at the university. We talked together, you and I, many, many days ago.” He was losing steam, seeing no signs of recognition from my bewildered face. His was the chubby, dimpled face of a boy, promoted to the summit of his six-foot frame. “Remember, we talked about Steve in my lab a few months ago. You came to see me.”

“You’re Boolie, right?”

His face opened up and the sun came out. “That’s what my friends call me, yes.” He smiled at this break in the clouds. “You remember now, yes?”

“No. I don’t remember. That’s why I’m here.”

He went on to explain how he tracked me down. Not hard for a trained scientist. “But I am
so sorry
for your trouble. It was a dreadful thing to have happened. I didn’t know.”

“But perhaps not quite as dreadful as what has happened to your friend. When did you last see Steve Mapesbury?”

“Not since your Easter, Mr. Cooperman.”

“Call me Benny.”

“Benny. Yes, and, please, call me Boolie. Everybody calls me Boolie.”

“You’re from Kashmir.”

“Yes, but I have been living abroad for so many years now that I can hardly remember it sometimes. And at other times it seems so real, I feel I could reach out and touch a familiar tree or stone. It’s very beautiful: the mountains, the rivers, the Vale of Kashmir, the tempo of life. It’s good for the heart, I think.”

“Where is your friend?”

“I do not know. We have mislaid ourselves.”

“Was Steve mixed up in the drug business going on over there?”

“I would not care to say.”

“Look, Boolie, I’m not a policeman. I’m just looking for information. I want to find him before somebody tries to kill him. Hell! He may be dead already for all I know.”

Boolie was watching me, trying to decide whether or not to trust me. At least that was my guess. He had the sort of face that can hide nothing.

“I worked closely with Steve,” he finally said, “when I first joined the department. We were good friends, shared digs and an office. But for the past year I’ve been busy on other things, loaded with work. Whenever I saw Steve, I thought, He doesn’t look well. Something’s not right. But I didn’t get a chance to follow up on my good intentions. Damn it all to hell! You see, my vibes are from Kashmir and from England. I don’t know where the line is drawn that lets one ask questions of a once-good friend who is being evasive. He’s a good man, but he’s been hard-pressed. The life of a scientist isn’t easy, Mr. Cooperman, and there are temptations.”

“Did Steve give in to those temptations, Boolie?”

“I wish I knew. One of his daughters was sick in the winter. Something expensive.”

“Wasn’t he covered by insurance?”

“Nowadays there is coverage and
coverage.
There are always expenses with illness, and the health-care blanket that is supposed to cover one is getting smaller year by year.”

“Do you think he compromised his principles?”

“I know he put his savings into a down payment. That’s not a compromise. I could always tell when mortgage payments became due. He never had pocket money. Not for a long time, and then suddenly he did. He paid me back what he owed me. I hoped that he’d got lucky somehow. I didn’t even guess. Then he started looking terrible, like a character in Shakespeare gone off the rails. I should have tried to help him. I should have tried harder.” Boolie’s face looked as though it was going to melt. He was crying.

I sat up in bed and threw my feet to the floor.

“But, Boolie, you lent him money. You were a big help to him.”

“That’s very kind of you to say, but, no, I could have done more. It was an omission on my part, a serious omission.”

It took me a few minutes to calm Boolie down. He sat on my bed, while I threw the rest of my clothes on. My roommate poked his head in the door and seeing Boolie’s
tears, wheeled himself to a neutral corner. I passed Boolie the box of tissue that stood handy.

“Boolie, I’m trying to draw up a cast of characters surrounding Steve. Who were his friends and who were his enemies?”

“As far as I know, Mr. Cooperman—”

“Call me Benny, please.”

“As far as I know, he was being hounded by the police. They were breathing down Steve’s shirt collar.”

“How did they know what Steve was up to?”

Boolie shrugged.

I thought a moment: “Who else is after Steve?”

“There’s a man, part of a supervisory group that has been trying to create a uniformity in the teaching of science subjects. At first, it was to set high standards of professionalism, but it became more of a second set of campus police. He gave students from Southeast Asia a hard time, and set the RCMP on a grad student from Iraq. He hated the way Steve was friendly with his students, had coffee with them on campus, and went with them to a pub after classes. Steve was a popular teacher, and there were those who resented his easygoing manner with his students.”

“Who was this vigilante?”

“Yes, that is the right name for him and his like. They despise the very best that a teacher can give. If Dr. Samson wasn’t so well liked and well respected, they would have even tried to topple
him.
They distrust anybody
who makes learning fun. They stopped one teacher from taking a class outside.”

“Who are these people?”

“The worst of the lot is Nesbitt. George W. Nesbitt. He singled out Steve and gave him a hard time, starting long before his decline.”

“Okay. Now, besides you, who are his allies and friends?”

“For the last few years at least, his mentor has been Parker Samson. He’s the head of the biochemistry department.”

“Steve’s wife mentioned him. I tried to get him, but he’s a busy man.”

“Parker’s a lot like Steve. They are older and younger versions of one another. Parker helped Steve get this appointment at the university. He was on the board that interviewed Steve and a few other candidates. Like Steve, he’s down-to-earth. Gets along with the undergrads.”

“Does he know Steve’s family?”

“I don’t think so. I never saw him at their house. And I used to be there quite a lot. I know he’s worried about Steve’s disappearance. He has talked to me about it.”

“Boolie, may I ask you something?”

“But of course!”

“Where did Simcoe College come from in the first place?”

“Simcoe College was founded by three prospectors who made their fortunes in the hard-rock mining country in northern Ontario. All of them came from towns and
farms near Lake Simcoe, in what people tell me they call Cottage Country. One unique thing about Simcoe College is that it has no church affiliation. Some of the older colleges were set up by one church or another: St. Mike’s by the Catholics, Knox by the Presbyterians, and so on. Simcoe has as little to do with the overall university government as it can. And the university people enjoy this arm’s-length connection. You understand?”

We talked for another ten minutes or so. Then I remembered that coffee could be found around the corner behind the nursing station. I’d found it there on one of my exploratory rambles. Boolie followed me and made himself comfortable in a chair far too small to contain him. We drank two cups of coffee, sitting at the big table by the windows. I enjoyed his company until I was found by one of my nurses, who dragged me off for a urine sample.

TWENTY-ONE

My long talk with Boolie Moussuf had put the skin of reality over the people I had been talking to over the telephone. Steve Mapesbury was as elusive as ever, but at least now he had weight and dimensions. And that, as the old history books used to say, was a Good Thing.

The best place to begin the account of what happened next is probably with an early morning phone call I got from Professor Parker Samson. It came right after my rejection of hot cereal. The nurses tried to persuade me, but I stuck to my guns; I wasn’t going to throw away a lifetime’s worth of abhorrence just because I had lost my memory. Somehow, all my likes and dislikes—in people as well as in food—had escaped intact after my injury. I wasn’t even tempted.

“Mr. Cooperman? Glad I’ve finally got through to you there. How
are
you getting on?” Professor Parker Samson identified himself and told me that he had a few minutes before an appointment to help me in my inquiries. I thanked him and tried to remember the questions I’d been asking everybody.

“When did you see Dr. Mapesbury last?”

“Oh, that would have been several months ago. We grabbed a bite of lunch one day at the Faculty Club.”

“Was he worried about anything at that time?”

“The usual things with Steve: family, money, mortgage, that sort of thing, getting a front tooth fixed. He was worried about missing his classes. But I have some slack in my budget; I was able to patch his absence with a couple of clever Ph.D. candidates.”

“Was he at all worried about the police?”

“Oh, you know about that. Yes, he thought that the police were gunning for him.”

“And was he right? Drugs are serious. Wouldn’t you cut them some slack if they’re trying to run down drug pushers?”

“I don’t give a good goddamn whether a student smokes a joint now and again. It’s all part of growing up. Part of the university experience. I know I did it. I don’t care who knows it. I didn’t turn to a life of crime and I didn’t flunk my courses. If you ask me, and you
are
asking, I think that the experience made me a more rounded person in the end. You see what I mean? The people who are overzealous in cracking down on drugs this week will be asking for loyalty oaths next week. They’re the next thought police.”