A City Called July (23 page)

A high beam of light caught the corner of the construction hut; I got out of sight as a dark Cadillac drove to the gate and stopped its engine. I heard the rattle of chain and a moment later, footsteps. I peered around the corner carefully and saw Sid Geller about to enter the shed.

Once more at the window, I could see Bolduc smiling, still on his knees but quickly getting to his feet. They shook hands. I wanted to hear what they were saying, but I couldn’t. Was Bolduc about to report on what he knew about the column down in the excavation? It would make sense, but there was no way of telling until it happened. I watched their expressions. Bolduc had said something about Nathan’s death. Sid nodded heavily acknowledging the greatness of the loss. That seemed right. But Sid wasn’t there to exchange chit-chat. He didn’t seem to be dipping into family memories of the good old days. He was soon on his hands and knees, pulling out the case of beer from under the box where Bolduc had hidden it a few minutes earlier. Sid was on his feet now and he was not friendly. He was shouting at the old man. I could hear the force of his tirade through the window without being able to make out separate words. I decided not to be backward about coming forward. At least that way I’d get to hear what was going on. I came around to the door of the shed. “Anybody home?” I shouted in an innocent voice. Both men looked around. Sid’s right hand remained stuck in the air in the midst of a gesture as he turned.

“Who the hell is that? Is that you, Cooperman? That’s all I need.” Bolduc was forgotten for a moment while Sid’s heavy eyebrows met in a frown that had nothing to do with Bolduc’s beer consumption. “What brings you out at this time of night? You following me or something?” Luc Bolduc looked relieved by my timing and let a half-grin slide across his face as he stepped past his boss to the door and waved a flashlight at the two of us by way of explanation: urgent business on the site. Sid didn’t pay any attention as the old man left. He motioned me to a nail keg and I sat down. He moved his compact no-neck frame into a battered swivel chair with yellow foam rubber sticking out of the seat. Instead of answering him, I flashed my Player’s and he shook his head. I lit one for myself and stared at the clean black shoes of my host. Sid Geller took one of his own homemade-looking cigarettes from a pocket, and tapped it against the top of a messy desk to tamp down the tobacco. Once lit, he didn’t bother taking the cigarette from his lips to get rid of the ash, he simply blew out of the corner of his mouth until the ash vanished.

“I haven’t been following you,” I admitted rather lamely, and added “I haven’t been following anybody,” as though that made me an innocent man. I’d been wrong about my interruption; it hadn’t got me closer to the action, it’d stopped it. Now I was into something else. Whether I could turn it to account remained to be seen.

“Cooperman, you’re an oddball. I can’t get a make on you. Whenever I look around you’re underfoot. It’s only because I got a lot of respect for Rabbi Meltzer that I give you the time of day.” He was looking at me like I was expected to explain myself in a topic sentence and a tight paragraph. I just shrugged.

“You’re visiting the fire-hall site pretty late to see much activity,” I said. Geller pulled at his earlobe and thought for a moment.

“For what it’s worth, I’m just checking up on the old man. He’s alcoholic and he’s been hitting the booze again.”

“You feel responsible?”

“Hell, no! I paid to have him dried out half a dozen times. I’m not his goddamned keeper.”

“But you’ve known him for a long time.”

“Yeah, too long. Luc was with me at the very start. Showed me the ropes. But it’s been downhill for him for the last fifteen years.

“I heard he was dry.”

“Yeah, I thought so too. He knows what I told him would happen if I caught him drinking himself silly again. He thinks he’s got some God-given right to make me feel guilty about not making him a partner. Somewhere in that thick skull, he’s got the idea that I cheated him. I don’t know where he gets the idea. It’s not from Alex. He knows the score.”

“Is he disappointed that Alex didn’t make more of himself?” Sid looked at the rolled blueprints standing up in a metal-topped cardboard bin.

“Why would he be disappointed in Alex? Alex was one of the fastest juniors in the league. He’s a good kid. Hell, I wish I had a kid like that. Alex is all right. I see what you mean, though. He’s not a world-beater these last few years.”

“Did the old man have ambitions for him?”

“Look, I’ve known Luc for twenty years, and I’ll be damned if I know what’s going on in that head of his. He knows that for all the noise I make about his drinking and wandering off the job, I’ll never really let him go. He’s part of all this. Hell, the yard wouldn’t be the same without him. He’s part of me and my life. It’s his name, for God’s sake. What am I going to do about it?” I shrugged, which was the expected answer.

“Do you know what set him off this last time?”

“No more than I know why it didn’t rain today. You can’t tell with him. And he knows that he’s got more than his job to worry about. He’s got health problems. It’s going to kill him if he doesn’t stop.” I didn’t say anything. I was trying to add up what Sid was saying and match it with what I already knew. Sid noticed the pause and filled it. “Look, Cooperman, I’m sorry about this afternoon. I was edgy after the funeral. If I said anything … I’m sorry. You rub my girl-friend the wrong way. But Ruth told me you’d been a help to her.” He cocked his head to one side awkwardly and smiled. “I’m not the most sensitive guy around, you know what I mean? I call a lot of shots in a day, and I don’t call them all right. I know you got your job to do, and I guess it’s dirty work. Ruth and Debbie say you haven’t been making a pest of yourself. And I’m glad you came to the funeral.” He looked at the floor and over at Bolduc’s cache of beer. “You want a beer?”

“No thanks.”

“Come on, split one with you.” He reached for the beer and brought out two bottles. He used one to pry off the cap of the other. He handed me the frothing open bottle and returned the other.

It was quiet in the hut, sipping from the bottle and passing it back and forth. Sid Geller wiped off his mouth with a run of knuckles after each sip. He didn’t bother to clean the rim of the beer bottle with his hand. “I’ve enjoyed talking to your friend, Pia, this last week,” I said to Sid Geller. It seemed a good idea; the sort of talk for a construction shed. “You’re a lucky guy.” Geller closed his eyes and lowered his head slowly shaking it from side to side.

“She’s a pain in the neck half the time, but the rest of the time it’s … I don’t even know how to describe it, it’s so good.” He looked at me with the broadest grin I’d seen on him since I walked in on him four days ago.

“You’re a lucky guy,” I repeated, trying to put on a look that would inspire confidence. I didn’t know what Pia could tell me about the missing Larry Geller, but I didn’t think I’d mind hearing about Pia Morley even if it had nothing at all to do with the case.

“She’s got the loudest laugh of anybody I know, and I know some wild types. She can handle all of them. Buck Corelli takes bottle caps off with his teeth, but for her he’s running out and buying pantyhose ’cause she’s got a run in the pair she’s wearing. Hell, she can drink any three men under the table.”

“She get that from her last husband? Glenn Bagot?” Sid took the bottle between his thumb and forefinger and finished it off. He reached into Luc Bolduc’s carton and fished out another. He had the top off before I could lodge a protest with my embassy and he gave me first swig. You can’t be fairer than that. I took a sip and passed the beer to him. He gulped down a third of what was left. He looked like he was trying to let the answer to my question bubble up to the surface.

“Glenn’s got a lot of class, but he’s a prissy son of a bitch. He doesn’t like you. I’ll tell you that for nothing. He gets his guts from his family connections. I mean he’ll go anywhere, walk into board meetings, visit cabinet ministers without writing or phoning.” He paused for the length of a thought, then added, “She’s a lot like that. Nothing scares her. I saw her light into a guy on her street once for hitting his own kid. Now I got a lot of brass, but I probably would have kept on going. She’s got the right stuff. With Glenn, now, he’s more a back-stairs type. He gets in there, if you know what I mean, but he doesn’t make as much noise doing it as Pia does.”

“She sounds like she would get along with Tony Pritchett.” I threw in the name Alex Bolduc had mentioned to see what would happen. I’d already been thrown out of a house by Sid. This might be my chance to get thrown out of a shed.

“Pritchett? We both keep as far away from him as we can. He may be trying to look like a modern businessman these days, but he’s got some nasty habits that die hard. I wouldn’t want to bump into him or his boys after dark.”

“Yeah, Gordon and Geoff can cut up rough when they want to.”

“Sure, and they’re the tame ones. No, we steer clear of that bunch. I got enough problems just coping with the games City Hall thinks up for me. Look at those plans up there on the table. It took weeks to get each of those signatures. Nobody’ll just let me get on with the projects. That’s the only thing I’m good at.”

“How well known is it that you and Glenn Bagot have put in a bid on that Niagara-on-the-Lake highway project?”

“Nobody knows about that, Cooperman. You don’t and I don’t. It’s up to Queen’s Park in Toronto. I’m holding my breath until I hear who’s been awarded the contract. I think we made the best offer, but you never know. This stuff about my brother Label isn’t helping. Believe me it isn’t helping.”

“But this isn’t your first government contract? There’ve been others.”

“Sure. But that was small-time stuff compared to this. A lot of those jobs were so small they didn’t even ask for tenders. We got them because we were closest and didn’t have to learn how to read blueprints.” Sid was quiet for a minute, looking at me like he was trying to read my thoughts. Then he changed the subject. “I wonder where the son of a bitch went?”

“Nathan said he was down in Daytona Beach.”

“Not
him.
I mean Luc. You think he was drunk when he left?”

“He looked like he could take care of himself. What was he doing here anyway?”

“He promised me he was through with booze, so I told him to keep an eye on our sites here in town. He does his rounds like a watchman. It takes him hours to do it, because he doesn’t drive a car any more.”

I began to get the feeling that as I was running out of questions, Sid Geller was beginning to think of some, like how did I happen to pay this social call at this time of night. I declined his offer of a third beer, and I got up and brushed myself off. We made our courteous farewells and I headed back towards my car. Waiting for me under my windshield-wiper was a bright yellow parking ticket.

As I got into the car and started it up, I thought, when I considered what might be waiting for me, I wasn’t so unlucky after all. Sure, I had returned five hundred dollars of Glenn Bagot’s money. It might have distracted me from the affairs of the Geller family. I was even saved from searching titles for properties along the right-of-way of the new highway. Maybe I should be getting into the act and begin to look out for my old age. Information about that right of-way must be worth something on the Rialto. I thought about that as I drove along Geneva to Church and then down Church as far as Ontario Street. With me thoughts like that don’t get very far. I have an instinct about making money that keeps me poor. It goes against the grain of my nature even to seek out the gas stations where there’s a gas war going on. I can’t remember saving a nickel on a coupon or taking advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime money-saving ground-floor offer in the tons of junk mail I get every day. If I wasn’t going to take on a deal where I could get, at a fraction of the cost in stores, a genuine reproduction of a Shaker night-table, how was I going to get involved speculating in farm property. I sometimes think you have to have brains to be a crook. In my line of work, I just get by on what I have.

Coming around the corner of Montecello Park for the second time in not so many hours, I saw three familiar faces and what went with them sitting on a park bench not far from the bandstand. It was dark, but I was sure of the faces. I made an illegal U-turn and parked the Olds. I got out and started walking towards the bench. The two bums, Blasko and his gangling friend, took off when they heard me. Luc Bolduc slumped down on the bench.

“Mr. Bolduc, are you all right?”

“Eh? All right? Sure I’m all right. Havin’ little talk dat’s all. Breakin’ no law I know, mister.” He said this trying to straighten up and open one or other of his eyes. He got the left one to open half-way and then both eyes were looking at me, watery, washed out, but wide awake. “Oh, it’s you. I got nothin’ to say to you and dat’s fer sure.”

“Come on. I’ll give you a lift the rest of the way home.”

“Some udder time. I don’t trust nobody. Wanna stay alive, me.”

“I was just talking to Mr. Geller. He’s mad at you for drinking. But he’s had a few of your beers and he’s not so hot at you any more. I’m not hot at you at all. If you want the lift, the car’s leaving.” I started back to the Olds, hoping that he’d follow. I didn’t have a plan for what I’d do if his independence was made of sterner stuff than I was prepared for. For a long time, I heard nothing coming from behind me. I had my hand on the door when he called out: “Okay, hey, you wid the Oldsmobile. You’ll drive me to Nelson Street?”

I got in on my side and leaned over to unlock the door on the passenger’s side. I tried to remember who was the last passenger I’d had in the car. I sometimes go for months without unlocking that door. Then I remembered that it was Alex, Luc’s own son.

Luc Bolduc got in and sat as close to the door as he could. I felt like I was driving home my brother’s baby-sitter instead of an old goat who was my father’s age. “You take me straight to Nelson Street, hokay?” I nodded as I again passed the intersection of Ontario and Welland. I headed north out of the area of old mansions turned into doctors’ offices to the industrial north end.