A City Called July (7 page)

“No. There’s a few hundred in petty cash. Damn it all, Mr. Cooperman, I’m so confused. What’s going to happen to me?”

“You’re going to get your picture in the paper, and you’re going to get an unlisted phone number for a year. Do you have a friend or relative who’ll put you up for a few days? It’s just until you can move from wherever you’re living.”

“Move? I just moved into that apartment!”

“Well, you’re going to have night visitors for a month, and nasty telephone calls for longer than that. You won’t be in any actual danger …”

“Danger!”

“Right, you won’t be, but people want to get something to ease the frustration. Remember we’re dealing with the friends and relatives of the people he cheated. You won’t have to worry about the people themselves, I don’t think, just the kin, who’ll tend to be younger and more hot-headed than is actually necessary. The cops’ll help you if you get threatened. Best to disappear for a while; that’s what they’ll tell you.”

“Damn it. I don’t need this. You know?”

“Nobody does. All you can do is get through it without skinning your knees. Low profile, that’s the ticket. Try not to talk to the paper, try to avoid photographers. Get yourself a lawyer you can depend upon.”

“Lawyer?”

“Just in the background. Nobody’s going to try to say you did it. Geller got away with a lot of money; a lot of people are cross at him; and they may think you know more than you do. It wouldn’t hurt to keep a diary about what’s happening to aid your memory if this ever comes to court.” It was part of my standard speech to clients. Now I was giving away free legal advice.

“I swear I don’t know a thing about any of this. You’ve got to believe me, Mr. Cooperman.”

“I believe you. But will they?”

“All I did was the normal legal work. I typed the wills, deeds and mortgages. I billed the clients. I kept the loose-leaf law reports up to date. I passed on messages to Ruth that he left for me. I don’t know anything. Honest.”

“I still believe you. What about a man named Kaplan? Did you know him?”

“He’s a farmer, isn’t he? Sure, he came here, but I don’t know what they talked about. I never do unless there’s some letter or minutes of agreement that Mr. Geller wants typed. With a lot of them, he typed his own notes. I heard him do it, but you won’t find them in the files. I’ve looked.”

“He must have done his bookkeeping somewhere else. Did he own or rent any other property that you know of?”

“This is the office. This is where he did his work. I mean he usually took an attaché case home with him. Why’d’ you think he must have had a second office?”

“He had a second life, didn’t he? All he’d need was a room someplace where his records couldn’t be traced back to him. He could have rented it under a false name.”

“In a town this size, are you kidding?”

“All right, forget it. It was just a notion. How much time did he spend in the office anyway? You know the routines of other legal eagles. How does Geller stack up?”

“He used to get here early. That’s one thing I’ll say for him. I used to get in by a quarter to nine and he was already dictating into his machine.”

“Often?”

“Oh, a couple or three times a week. Then he’d take long lunches. But most of them do that. You can check his desk calendar to see the people he met. Only that’s at the police station. A Sergeant Staziak has it.”

“Did he work late usually?”

“Sometimes. He’d stay on after I went home and then in the morning there’d be a batch of tapes for me to type up. But there were times when he didn’t come back from lunch at all. Or he’d come back and then go right out again saying he wouldn’t be back.”

“Was he going home, do you know?”

“I just work here, Mr. Cooperman,” she said. “I’m not clairvoyant.”

Rose had been doing some unobtrusive personal tidying while we talked. I noticed without noticing when she’d done it, that she had detected and remedied the unfastened buttons on her blouse. “Would you mind if I had a look at the private office, Miss Craig?” She put down the paper and waved me through.

There was nothing special about Geller s inner sanctum. The desk was uncluttered dark wood with a high-backed swivel chair behind it. On the wall I recognized diplomas, citations and photographs with Geller shaking hands with various dignitaries. The desk was arranged so that the morning light fell on the faces of his clients. A photograph of Ruth and the kids sat in a silver frame next to a brass calendar with the date reading Thursday, July 7th. Rose Craig, who was standing in the doorway, saw that I was eyeing the wall of filing cabinets. “There’s nothing doing in there,” she said, like a mind-reader. “I told you, I checked.”

“What used to be here?” I asked, examining a round patch on the dusty mahogany that showed less dust than the rest.

“That? It was a trophy or something he’d won when he was at law school. He told me a million times what it was, and I’ll be damned if I can remember. It had something to do with winning a prize at Osgoode Hall. He was very proud of it.”

“So, it’s not surprising, then, that it’s gone?”

“Oh, he’d take it with him all right.”

“Do you know whether he kept up with Eddie Lazarus or Morrie Freeland? They were pals of his from law school.”

“Mr. Lazarus doesn’t live here in town. I think he has a practice in the Falls. I could check. Mr. Freeland’s office is on the next floor to this. He’s with Beamish and White. Mr. Geller never called him, but sometimes Mr. Freeland would put his head in the door. They went out to eat together last winter sometime.”

I was half-way to the door of the outer office when the phone rang. I knew it couldn’t be for me, but I didn’t hurry away to let Rose answer it without a witness. From the look of her, she didn’t want me to hurry away either. It was one of those calls full of exclamations and cries of “You’re kidding!” and “What?” that convey absolutely no information to the casual listener When she hung up, she looked right at me as though in whatever game she was playing I was “it.”

“There’s a gang over at the Geller house throwing things and tearing up the place!”

“Did she call the cops?”

“I don’t know. Shouldn’t we do something?”

“Yeah, put in a call to the cops while I collect my car. I’ll be back in two minutes. Meet me outside.” And I was off.

I don’t know why I reacted that way. It was clearly a dab of vindictive violence levelled at Geller’s house and family because Geller himself had so successfully fled the scene. So why was I getting involved? I guess I thought it might put me somewhere close to a word or phrase uttered in the heat of the moment that might give me a clue about where this investigation was going next. The Olds, parked in my father’s old spot behind my office on St. Andrew Street, started up and I backed out of the alley without sending more than half a dozen slow pedestrians to the hospital. Because of the one-way system it took me longer to get from my office back to Geller’s office by car than I could have covered the direct route on my hands and knees. Rose Craig was waiting outside the office looking the wrong way for me on Queen Street. I honked. She crossed the street, got in and swung the door closed behind her, smelling of Chanel No. 5.

It took about eight minutes to drive across the canal bridge and find Burgoyne Boulevard. It took longer to make it to 222. I counted at least three police cars and about fifteen other cars blocking the street. A crowd of people were standing on the lawn listening to a cop with a bull-horn telling them to go back to their houses. It was like walking into a scene in the movies. Usually it’s staged in front of a jail with one of the mob waving a rope suggestively. But this was no mob. No ordinary mob, I mean. I recognized Mr. and Mrs. Sokolov, the Wagners, the Epsteins, the Shapiros and even Mort and Cindi Katz. None of them were carrying ropes, but they looked mad and frustrated. I could see blood in many eyes, and for a minute I couldn’t be sure whether the cops standing on the Geller porch, in the driveway and about six feet away from the mob were sufficiently intimidating. They all looked serious, and sweat was standing out on the forehead of the cop nearest Rose and me as we pushed our way into the front rank. From here I could recognize other faces. Some were from the Jewish community, but not all. There was Doug Spiers and Michael Rainsbury, neither of whom had ever been inside the shul as far as I knew, and Tobi and Frank McLure along with the Helmsels and Digbys. It was a show for everybody, and as I thought that, I saw a microphone pass under my nose at the end of a familiar arm. It was Wally Skeat, late of the Niagara Falls TV Station. I hadn’t even heard he’d moved back to Grantham. But nobody consults me about these things any more. The whole world comes apart and reassembles without a whisper to me about what it has in mind. Wally didn’t see me. He kept looking over my shoulder, and when I turned I was looking into the bright lights of a truck with a camera crew on top leaning over the railings at us. To me it seemed that the timing was unfortunate. The cop with the bullhorn shouted something at the truck and once again told the crowd to disperse. Somebody lobbed a cabbage at the Geller porch, but it was such a lazy, defeated pitch that I knew that the forces of law and order had triumphed again. The crowd buzzed and turned retreating towards the tangle of cars. The camera truck followed, hurrying them up. The news media chased the event out of sight The cops breathed a sigh of collective relief, and the top cop passed the bullhorn to a junior man who carried it around like a newly won badge of authority.

We joined the huddle to hear what we could of the post-mortem.

“What set this thing off?” I asked, trying to separate us from the disassembling hoard, and at the same time get them talking louder.

“You’re Cooperman, right?” asked a uniform with a red head sticking out the collar. “I’ve seen you with the sergeant.”

“This is Mr. Geller’s secretary. She sent in the alarm.”

“Her and half a dozen others. Geller had good neighbours. Nobody likes seeing property threatened. On that they stick together.”

“What started the fuss?” I asked again. The policeman looked at the departing mob.

“I guess it was the paper. It could have been on the noon news too. I don’t know about that.” Another cop confirmed that he had heard the whole story on the radio. Whether the paper had the scoop or not was something for the likes of Wally Skeat to argue.

“Who’s the officer in charge?”

“That’s Chalice.” The red-headed cop hoisted his thumb in Chalice’s direction. “He’s good, isn’t he? I think he likes it. I wouldn’t give three cents to be holding a bull-horn when a crowd really decides to get ugly. Give me cruiser duty any day.”

Ruth Geller, who must have slipped out of the house without anyone noticing, came into sight and grabbed Chalice by the arm. “We can’t go on living like this,” she said. “Anything could have happened. What about my kids?” The rest got louder and shriller without making more sense. Chalice was talking to her, his voice low but steady. Ruth nodded to the tune of his words until she caught sight of Rose Craig standing near me. “Rose!” she called, tears overflowing. “Thank God for you, Rose. You are such a friend.” They were hugging and crying in that way women have. I didn’t hear what they said, they were both talking at the same time.

“Benny drove me over while I called the police.” I made out the words but the sense was obscure. Ruth looked over at me and tried on a smile for size. It didn’t fit and the colour was wrong. I took advantage of it, though, and ambled over to join the ladies just as the policeman moved off to other duties near one of the cruisers. I was standing on a crushed tomato.

SIX

After picking up three green garbage bags full of dead oranges, cabbages and other missiles, Rose and I were invited into the house for coffee. Nathan Geller was in the living-room putting a square of cardboard over a window that had been broken. Ruth Geller looked like a zombie; she walked around the living-room touching the corners of tables and lamp-shades. I thought she was going to fall on the floor and melt. With a fragile smile at the corners of her mouth, she seemed to be listening in to a stereo station on Mars. Her sister hovered over her like a protective, stronger other self. Although we had been asked in for coffee, no one in fact made a movement in the direction of the kitchen. Nathan was working on his window; the task seemed to occupy him totally. Work was liberating. Debbie made an attempt to make Rose Craig comfortable, although I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Ruth kept glancing from the window and Nathan to the stairs, whose broadloomed steps led to the second floor. Nobody noticed when I went into the kitchen to put the kettle on.

A few minutes later, Rose sat with her heavily tweeded knees close together balancing her cup and saucer, watching Nathan now applying masking tape to the spider-lines of a cracked window-pane. He took a professional pride in his work, and kept commenting on each step as though we were a film crew watching and recording the artist at work. “That’s good enough for the moment. I’ll try to get a man to come around to replace both panes in the morning.” Then he took the measurements and made a notation on the inside of a package of cigarettes.

From upstairs I heard the voice of a child calling. Ruth bounded up the stairs without a word. A few minutes later, two kids, a boy and his older sister, appeared with a strange woman and their mother, each carrying a suitcase. Debbie, Ruth and Nathan rallied long enough to try to make the send-off look like an event. They hugged and kissed the children, tried to make a flourish of it, but they weren’t up to it and the kids didn’t want it.

“I’ve got to have my bike,” the little girl said with a serious expression. “I need it tomorrow, Mommy.”

“We’ll see, dear.”

“I
need
it.”

This was my first opportunity to see a fair piece of the family together acting like a family. I watched the aunt and uncle help bundle the kids off in a car with the woman who was later identified as an unmarried cousin of I never did figure out whom.

With the kids out of the house, a source of tension was removed. Debbie lit a cigarette with her butane lighter, and I cadged a light for a Player’s off the same flame. Rose rattled her empty cup in her saucer as she got up to return the coffee things to the kitchen. “Leave it,” Ruth ordered, but didn’t take any notice of Rose continuing her mission anyway. Nobody said anything except in hoarse whispers. If Larry Geller had been laid out on trestles in front of the fireplace with his hands crossed over his chest, the atmosphere couldn’t have been more funereal. We smoked in silence. Rose returned to her place on the chintz-covered chair behind the coffee-table. Ruth huddled in a narrow occasional chair. Her painted smile was peeling away. Nathan pulled out a rounded stone from between the pillows of the loveseat in front of the windows. When she saw it, Ruth began to cry.