The Whole Megillah (6 page)

We parted. He started down the stairs. I walked to the back room and climbed down the rear stairs just in time to see Lowther walking through the door and out into the street with his paper. I waited thirty seconds and followed, crossing the street at the intersection.

From the north side of Bloor, I could see him working his way through the heavy pedestrian traffic around the Brunswick House. A jazz group was playing in the upper space called Albert's Hall. Lowther got through the crowd without having to take to the pavement. He crossed to my side of Bloor. At the corner of Bloor and Walmer, he ducked into a doughnut store and came out with a white paper bag. I followed him up Walmer, which twisted in an ‘S' curve to a small park islanded in the middle of the road. From a bench with an old man feeding the pigeons, I watched Lowther go into the condominium where Honour Griffin lived. I checked inside the front door a few minutes after Lowther had passed through: there was no name remotely like Lowther's on the directory. I rang the bell beside Honour's name and heard Lowther's voice ask ‘Yes?' before I returned to the park bench and the pigeons.

Lowther was still looking for the megillah. Did that clear him of the murder? I wasn't sure. Although the murder may have occurred because Moore interrupted an attempted theft, I wondered who would have tried to steal a book that had already been stolen?

 

 

 

Chapter Seven

 

That night, Anna and I dined quietly in a place she knew on Harbord. It was an Italian restaurant called Porretta's. On the wall were prints by Salvador Dali of dissolving landscapes and watches--puns in paint that take a lot of looking at.

‘But you're not giving up?' Anna asked. It was more a statement than a question. ‘Nobody's paying you for the work you're doing.'

‘Moore gave me a little to get started on.'

‘You're not facing it, Benny. Your client is dead.'

‘This fellow Lowther might hire me. He wants the megillah bad enough. I could see it in his face. And then there's Dalton. He might drop a few bucks my way. He can afford them.'

‘The point is, can you afford to go on putting your neck on the line on the chance that somebody's going to pay you?' She tilted her head and quizzed me over the top of her dark-rimmed reading glasses.

‘Anna, to be honest with you, I feel I owe it to Moore to give this some of my own time.'

‘But you told me you weren't even sure he was being straight with you!'

‘I know, I know. I'm a tangle of contradictions. Tell me about it. If I could change my spots, Anna, I would have a long time ago. What can I tell you? I feel a debt. It won't go away, so I'm working it out. Maybe that will make me feel better. This is very good spaghetti,' I added, just to change the subject.

‘I'll never figure you out, Cooperman. But I'll keep on trying.' Anna was looking lovely sitting there across the table from me. She was in a dark blue dress with hardly any make-up. After a while I got her talking about the lecture she was going to give the following afternoon. I listened and asked a few questions, but I couldn't keep my mind wholly on the development of the American constitution. Anna was one of the good things that had happened to me, and I'll never figure out how it happened.

When I got home a couple of hours later, I was interrupted in my gerbil feeding by the telephone. ‘Cooperman? Is that you?' I was about to say that Dr. Cooperman was out of town, when I recognized Lowther's voice. He confirmed my guess and continued. ‘I've decided to put you on the payroll,' he said. ‘But I don't want you getting involved with the police.'

‘You want me to stay away from them? I usually try to when I can.'

‘Don't misinterpret me, please. What I mean is don't make their investigation any more complicated than it already is. The principle of too many cooks, if you follow me.'

‘Sure, I get you. What do you want me to concentrate on?' I was sure of what he was going to say, but I wanted to hear him say it.

‘The book, damn it! Find the Gerson Soncino Megillah and you won't have to worry about your next job. Not for a long time.'

‘Clients aren't as long lived as they used to be, Mr. Lowther.'

‘Don't you worry about me. You find the megillah! You follow me?'

‘I read you loud and clear. Over and out, unless you want to arrange another meeting?'

‘I'll catch you when I want you, Cooperman. Find that damned book!'

I spent the night tossing and turning and running into fragments of dreams in which I was being chased through the Metro Police Black Museum by an assortment of recent acquaintances. I upturned a glass display case of murder weapons, with tags still attached to each item, in order to get away from Dalton. Three booksellers were chasing me through a prison corridor at the end of which a hanging rope dangled. When I turned, Honour Griffin was leering at me over the barrel of a blue steel automatic. The mysterious Aaron Kurian appeared from time to time, wearing a number of faces. Once I took him for Tony Moore, who was carrying Exhibit A for the Crown, a rusty hunting knife. When I woke up, it was in a tangle of sheets and a sweat. I made myself some instant coffee, the only kind I could find, and took a shower.

Half an hour later, I was drinking some real coffee at the Cinnaroll Gourmet, where three women were independently working on literary projects of some kind. I recognized the proprietor of Book City, who was taking his morning tea with a colleague from the store. A curlybearded man I'd seen on Harbord Street was reading the Globe by himself in a corner, while a big blond man, going grey and dressed as though he had just returned from a safari to Tobora or somewhere west of Mombassa, was drinking café au fait and chatting amiably to a baby in a stroller parked beside him. To the waiter, he referred to the child as ‘the young gentleman.' I wanted to lean over to him and tell him my good news. I wanted to tell everybody in the place my good news. I had just run into Aaron Kurian on Bloor Street. This was my lucky day!

It happened like this. I was taking my morning walk, trying to find a new way to get to Bloor Street that I hadn't tried yet. When I came out at the corner where the Bloor Super Save offers twenty-four hour service in fruit and vegetables, I saw Mary the bag lady across the street in conversation with a lean man with a goatee, who looked not at all out of place next to Mary in her tattered sweater. I crossed Bloor and had almost reached Spadina when it hit me. Richard had described Kurian as an old goat. The man talking to Mary had a goat-like look to him. I decided to put off my need for coffee long enough to check this fellow out. I crossed back to the north side of Bloor and came back to the Super Save, where I had a clear view of the two. They were laughing at something. Then Mary began prodding him with her finger in the chest, bringing home some homily about poverty and godliness, probably. The goateed man nodded gravely and gave her a hug. I'd never seen any body hug a saint before, and Mary looked overwhelmed too. As the old goat moved away from her, she began singing some new complaint and gesticulating and shaking her head in a--for her--good-humoured way. The goat-beard turned and waved to her, then made his way along Bloor Street to the Brunswick House at the end of the block. He went in and disappeared up the stairs. Richard had said that Kurian liked to stay in beat-up hotels. The Brunswick was an old hotel that had retired from the housing side of the business to concentrate on the potables in its various beverage rooms. There were no drinks to be had at this hour, so the man, who might be Kurian, had other business at the Brunswick House. Could he be living there? I thought of the possibilities while I sipped my coffee.

There was nothing so formal as a registration desk at the Brunswick. I asked a waiter about who I should see and he shrugged ignorance. The pub wasn't officially open yet, so he was not required to be nice to anyone. I tried the man at the bar, who was polishing draught beer spouts. ‘We don't rent rooms these days,' he said. ‘No profit in it.'

‘I'm not looking for a room for myself,' I explained. ‘I'm looking for the man who is renting one of them.' The polishing stopped for a fraction of a second, which indicated both knowledge and caution to a nose like mine.

‘Yes?' he said, ‘And who might you be?'

‘A friend of his,' I said. ‘A cousin of his mother's,' I added. The pol ishing continued, but his raised eyebrow told me that the man I was looking for was on a floor above.

‘Top of the stairs?' I suggested agreeably.

‘Second door on your right. Third floor,' he said, and forgot all about me.

Considering the trouble Kurian went to to hide his identity and keep his tracks covered, I'd been able to find him very easily, I thought to myself as I went up the linoleum-covered stairs to the third floor. Then it hit me that I could be wrong. I was sailing on a hunch. When was the last time I'd seen a hunch introduced as testimony in court? I found the right door anyway, and knocked.

‘Yes?' said the voice on the other side of the door.

‘Mr. Kurian?'

‘Yes. Who is this?'

‘My name is Bushmill,' I said, borrowing the name of the chiropodist friend whose office is next door to mine in Grantham. ‘Frank Bushmill. I'd like to talk to you about a rare Hebrew book printed in Italy about the time of Columbus. I'm acting for a collector.'

‘Where did you get my name?'

‘You underestimate your reputation, Mr. Kurian.' There was a pause. I thought I saw a shadow pass near the bottom of the door.

The door was opened with a certain arrogance by the goat-bearded man who might have been in his sixties. He blinked watery blue eyes at me and gave me a nod. He was wearing brown corduroy trousers and an old Irish sweater with a blue knobbly elbow protruding from the left sleeve. He stepped back from the door; I followed him into the room. The air was thick with the smell of pipe tobacco, and there were flecks of it on his ancient sweater. The room was small and chilly for the time of year. If there was no profit in renting rooms, at least they were keeping the expenses down.

Kurian offered me a chair and sat on the edge of the bed himself His head was large and long, but the lines around his eyes showed that he knew about the funny side of life.

‘Well, Mr. Bushmill,' he said. ‘That's a good name.' I must have given him a blank look because he went on to explain that it was his favourite drink. ‘I'll not say no to a drop of Jameson's or Paddy either. I enjoy a drop, I'll say that much for myself.' I still didn't follow him, but I pretended that he was a great fellow with a wonderful wit and grinned my appreciation. ‘May I give you a dram of your own this early in the morning?' I smiled again. He darted off the bed and pulled a bottle from a battered bureau. He dumped the toothbrush into the sink, rinsed the single glass, and handed it to me.

‘
Slainte
,' said Kurian.

‘
Le chiam
,' I responded. I sipped and passed the glass to Kurian. We passed it back and forth a few times. The whiskey was a jolt at this hour--or, if I'm honest, at any hour--and I was feeling quite warm when the glass stood empty.

‘Bushmill,' he said, musing. ‘Is that a West Country name at all?'

‘Kurian,' I answered him. ‘That's not a Dublin name?' He smiled and showed a blue tooth on the top left.

‘Well, you have me there,' he said. ‘Kurian's the fellow I bought out. I took his stock and name. I found the stock excellent and have no complaints about the name. I was born Michael Brennan. I suspect that you are as Irish as I'm Armenian, Mr. Bushmill. What's the game, sir?'

‘For the present, Bushmill will do for a name. It belongs to a good friend, who won't miss it. And as for you, Kurian's as good a name as Brennan.'

‘Exactly, Mr. Bushmill. Will you join me in another?'

‘Gladly, when we've talked a little business.'

‘You say you have a client? How high is he willing to bid? This has become an auction, you see. What's his high card, sir?'

‘You make no bones about having possession, then?'

‘Why should I? I should tell you that I've been offered three hundred and fifty-thousand, which is a fair price, a fair price.'

‘May I ask you how you came by the book?'

‘Why, from its owner, of course. How else?'

‘And when was that?' I asked, without answering his question.

‘Last Wednesday, I think. Yes, it was Wednesday. The day it rained all day.'

‘My client doubts whether you can prove title.'

‘Prove title? How are you?' he said scornfully. ‘I wouldn't waste my time. What I can prove is possession, and that's as good an argument as I'll give you. Can the British Museum prove title to the Elgin Marbles? Can the Berlin Museum prove title to the head of Queen Nefertiti? Title be damned!'

‘Then the megillah can never officially be brought out of the dark.'

‘And why not?' said Kurian with a twinkle. ‘There's brass in it, and where there's brass there'll be compromise.'

‘Can I see it?'

‘ "May" would be a better word--for more than one reason. And would you know what you're looking at if you had it sitting in your lap, sir?'

‘I know when it was printed and who printed it. I know about the hand-coloured illuminated initials. I know a little about paper and moveable type.'

‘Better and better! But, bejesus, you don't convince me yet.'

‘I don't have to. You're right. But what you don't know is how hot the book has become since you got it. You probably know that Moore is dead. Murdered. People who kill once may kill again. There are plenty of people who want what you say you have.'

‘Impressive! Very good. Well, my boy, I'll tell you, I'd be a fool to keep an item like that under my mattress.'