The Whole Megillah (2 page)

 

 

Chapter Two

 

I was wrong about Tony Moore. He hadn't forgotten our conversation in Book City. I was just relaxing with the Globe and Mail after seeing my brother's family out the door when he called. I hadn't even fed the gerbils yet. What was going on here? At home, people let the ball roll to a stop before they hit it again.

‘Yeah, I remember our conversation. You said you might know of some work I might do while I'm visiting Toronto. I don't know, Mr. Moore, it sounds unlikely that I'd be any help. I don't know the territory. And I'll be going home in less than a month. There's not a whole lot of investigating that gets tied up and finished in four weeks.'

‘Will you let me buy you lunch? That's not asking much, is it?'

I was feeling hungry what with last-minute packing and running around, there wasn't much of a breakfast served at 330 Brunswick Avenue that morning--so I decided to be reasonable. He told me to meet him at a Hungarian restaurant on Bloor Street called Country Style. In Grantham there was an Armenian family that had successfully run an Italian restaurant for the last twenty years and a few Greek places that had never heard of stuffed vine leaves or feta cheese. There used to be a place called Bagels where I could never buy anything but a muffin. So I was a little worried about getting involved with strange food. But I said I would let him buy my lunch and I didn't change my mind just because he hadn't picked a place where a simple chopped egg sandwich wouldn't look out of place. Frankly, I'm glad I let him talk me into it; during the next month, I was to spend a considerable amount of time eating my way through their excellent menu.

This time, Tony Moore was wearing long pants and had a clean shirt on. He began to look like the picture that Sam had painted of him: a respectable and reputable book dealer with friends in high and low places. I ordered a wiener schnitzel.

When we got to coffee, it was time to pay for my free lunch. Up until that time, he had been entertaining me with stories about Martin Lyster, the mercurial dealer who'd died in Grantham a year or so ago. With the arrival of a Canadian coffee for me and one of those whitetopped things named after a brand of cloistered friars for him, Moore's anecdotes ran thin, and I tried to show him that I was now prepared to hear his commercial message. I leaned closer to the edge of the table. At the table next to me, a man removed a chicken bone from his mouth with his fingers and placed it at the edge of his plate.

‘I take it that you know precious little about book collecting, Mr. Cooperman?'

‘Next to nothing,' I admitted, looking up at one of several paintings on the wall depicting a secluded cabin beside a mountain stream.

‘Then you'll not have heard of the Hebrew books that were printed in Italy about the time Columbus discovered America?' I shook my head and he went on talking, although I saw his face fall a millimetre or two. ‘First in Rome and then for a moment in Naples, Brescia, Ortona, and elsewhere, Hebrew scholars were able to feel free enough of the usual persecution to print books. Most of them were Bibles. The one I want to talk to you about is the Gerson Soncino Megillah.'

I shifted in my chair, redistributing my weight for what was beginning to look like a long story.

‘The Gerson Soncino Megillah is a codex--that is to say, a book, not a scroll--printed from an early copy, perhaps the earliest copy, of the Book of Esther. A megillah is usually a small scroll, analogous to the big ones you see in synagogues.'

‘Funny, I didn't even think you were Jewish!' I said.

‘As a matter of fact, I'm not. But I know a lot about Jewish books. I've helped build a few temple collections. I get calls from Jewish libraries who want me to authenticate some of the stuff they've bought or been left. But never mind about that. The Gerson Soncino Megillah is a very rare, very beautiful, very expensive book. I don't know of another copy. There's a fragment in Rotterdam, but it's less than half a dozen pages. No, this copy is unique in the book world. Not only are its covers studded with precious gems, it is decorated with hand-coloured initials and pictures. In this it's like the older hand-written books before printing came along.'

‘We're talking about a lot of money. Is that right?'

‘Right. More than a quarter of a million dollars. Probably another hundred thousand on top of that.'

‘What's happened to it?'

Moore grinned, showing tea-stained teeth and a shred or two of goulash. ‘You're as sharp as Coop said you were! Yes, it has been stolen.'

‘How could a thief hope to sell something like that? Wouldn't any dealer recognize it?'

‘Most would, but this is a profession with depths as well as peaks, Mr. Cooperman.'

‘Benny. Please call me Benny. When was it taken and where was it stolen from?'

‘Last Saturday night. The third of August, sometime after midnight from my home on Albany Avenue. The back door was kicked in and the only thing taken was, the Gerson, from its box on my desk.'

‘Who knew you had the book?'

‘Every dealer and collector in North America. There was a lot of pressure for me to sell it. There were earlier attempts at getting the Gerson, but I managed to hide it well enough so that they couldn't find it. There were two earlier break-ins. One through a side window and another forced the front door.'

‘Why wasn't the book in its hiding place on the night it was taken?'

‘I'm afraid I'd been showing it off to a friend of mine that afternoon. The break-in occurred while I was asleep in another part of the house. I'm a notoriously deep sleeper. I once slept through an earthquake in Mexico City.'

‘Of course the police were brought in?'

‘Of course.'

‘Then what do you want an out-of-town private investigator playing around with this for? I'd say you are in good hands. The cops can put a lot of men on a case like this. It's right up their street. It's not like a murder with the papers and TV sticking their tape recorders in front of them all the time. Nobody gets all that excited about a missing book. And that gives the cops elbow room so they can get on with the job of finding it.'

‘Are you saying you're not interested in taking the case?'

‘I'm trying to save you some money, Mr. Moore. I know borscht about the world of book collectors and fine editions and all that stuff. I wouldn't know a megillah from a first edition of a Superman comic.'

‘
Action Comics
, June 1938.'

‘Ha! You know your Superman! My father had a copy of that when he was a kid.'

‘That, too, is worth money.'

‘My mother threw it out, along with the first Batman.'

‘May 1939.
Detective Comics
.'

‘Mr. Moore, I'm trying to turn you down! You're not making it easy.'

‘Do both of us a favour and take the job,' he said. ‘I think that with you on the case, the thief will make a move. The book world is in a state of equilibrium, Benny. It's all balanced. If I make a move, they'll know about it in New York and London. When the thief makes his move, somebody like you'll be more likely hear about it before the cops will.'

‘I doubt that,' I said, taking another bite of rye bread. I saw his face cloud over with a frown, so I took a breath. ‘But I won't argue with you. After all, you're a pal of Sam's, aren't you?'

‘I don't want this to be a favour. I expect to pay you for what you do.'

Here I recited my rates to him, just in case the numbers might sober him. A lot of people like to tell their secrets to a private investigator just to get things off their chest. They don't really want you to do anything. The numbers usually bring them back to their senses. In that way we offer a kind of psychiatric service, for which the Ontario health insurance plan pays nothing.

When he simply nodded at the numbers and pulled out his chequebook, I felt backed into a corner: my time was about to be mortgaged. And all I could do about it was to sit there watching him write the cheque out, shake it in the air and hand it over.

 

 

Chapter Three

 

Anna Abraham and I sat at a counter on tall red stools in the rear of the Cinnaroll Gourmet Bakery and Deli, sipping
café au lait
. We had just come from a double bill at the Bloor Cinema, where we'd seen
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
and
The Bandwagon
. It was peculiar programming, but it suited this weird town. Anna particularly liked ‘The Girl Hunt' ballet at the end of the musical. She told me it had been written by Alan Jay Lerner, who wrote Brigadoon and My Fair Lady. I pass this along at no extra charge.

‘So what have you found out?' she asked.

‘The depth of my ignorance of the rare book business. That's about all. I went around Moore's place to see where the break-in occurred. A French window had one of its glass panels broken so that the thief could open up the door from the inside. It wasn't really a scene-of-the-crime location any more. It had all been cleaned up and the broken panel replaced. I tested the putty; it was fresh.'

‘You know there are excellent libraries at the university. You can find out what you need to know about rare books from the Robarts or the Thomas Fisher libraries. My friend Richard Glendon will be glad to help you out if you get in too deep.'

‘It's not so much the rare book part of this deal that bothers me as the ordinary things that go on in the book trade. It's not like ladies' ready-to-wear, is it?'

‘That's why it's so fascinating, Benny.'

‘My education always seems to be just beginning.'

‘Don't be silly, Benny. You know more than you think you do about almost everything. You keep on surprising me, for one. What do you make of your client?'

‘Moore? He's an elderly hippie, I think. I wouldn't be surprised to see him wearing a bandana around his head or flowers in his hair. He seems straight enough, as far as I can tell. You, by the way, are looking particularly good this evening.'

‘Thanks for the non sequitur. It's for things like that that I drag myself from hairdresser to hairdresser. And speaking of hairdressers, I think I've found somebody I'm going to try to take back to Grantham with me. He's a Spanish part-time actor with flashing eyes.'

‘I'm jealous as hell, but I still think you look wonderful.' She was, in fact, looking great in her summer candy-striped cotton dress and white sandals. I walked her back to the apartment she was subletting on Prince Arthur. It was a cool night with a bite of late summer muted under the shade of the high maples. Anna's hand brushed against mine and I caught it. We walked that way around the semi-circular approach to the front door. It was several hours later that the gerbils welcomed me home by running around the wire wheel in their cage.

For two days I read what I could about rare books, both at the Metro Library and at the university. It rained all day Wednesday and Thursday morning--the end of a dry spell. I wasn't unhappy to be indoors and missing the weather. There is something unfriendly about a strange house--too many empty rooms. I took to haunting the second floor at Book City: there was a round table where I could work quietly without getting the fish-eye from any of the staff. Whenever I felt guilty, I found a detective novel I'd missed and bought it, remembering to enter it in my list of expenses as ‘rent.' Among the things I discovered in my research was the fact that while the Gerson Soncino Megillah was obscure to me, and maybe most of the world, it was well known to collectors and other learned buffs. The books confirmed what Moore had told me, adding that the thing hadn't been seen since a sale in London in 1919. No wonder collectors were hungry to get their hands on Moore's copy.

After feeding the livestock and watering those plants that required a mid-week wetting, my third day on the job, I opened the
Globe and Mail
and promptly spilled coffee all over page six. It carried an account of the death of my client, Tony Moore:

 

 

Book
Dealer
Found
Slain

In
Annex
Home

 

 

Police are investigating the death of Anthony Blake Moore of Albany Avenue, Toronto, this morning, after his body was discovered by Roberta Koughnet, his cleaning woman, early yesterday. Detective Sergeant C.R. Pepper said that the death is being treated as a homicide and that a further statement would be made after a post mortem report from the Forensic Centre was in the hands of the Metro Police. Pepper also stated that a rifle from a collection owned by the deceased is being examined at the Forensic Centre...

 

The article went on to tell about the esteem in which Moore was held by the reading community, but shed no further light on his murder. There were no children and his wife, Honour, was described as ‘estranged.' I wondered whether or not I should tell the cops what I knew about Moore's last few days. I always try to stay on the good side of the law. The fact that I'm more often at odds with them is just bad luck. Nobody ever condemned my good intentions. As I put a fresh toiletpaper cylinder into the gerbil cage, I decided that the sooner I talked to the investigating officers, the better.