A City Called July (26 page)

“We didn’t talk about that. He was telling me about growing up in the east end of London and how hard it was to get out of there. He sounded like the autobiography of Charlie Chaplin. I could practically hear that theme from
Limelight
or was it
City Lights
where he eats the flower?”

“Who ate the flower? The
Times
critic?”

“In the movie: Charlie and the blind girl. Aren’t you listening? I was telling you Clyde or Trevor had a terrible time getting out of the east end. His father wanted him to run a barrow in Petticoat Lane. But he couldn’t wait to escape the smell of cooked cabbage and post-war rationing. At first he was talking down his nose at me like I was a housewife from the sticks, the next minute he’s telling me he eats smoked salmon in private, like it’s against the law or something. What is it, Benny, you can’t be a critic and Jewish too? Anyway, I thought he was kind of cute. Especially when I told him I’d never heard of him. He thought I was trying to pull his leg. But why should I? Have you ever heard of him?”

“Me? I’ve never heard of anybody. Just Mrs. Nussbaum and Minerva Pious.”

“Well, I think he kind of liked me. The way he opened up like that. Once he got started, there was no shutting him up.”

“Who else did you talk to?”

“I didn’t hear where Larry Geller is hiding, if that’s what you mean. I heard that the kids are living in Toronto with a relative. They should all pack up and make a new start someplace.”

“You’ve known those girls all their lives practically, haven’t you?”

“The Kaufman girls? Sure. I remember their birthday parties and their first long dresses. I remember the way they used to scrap when they were teenagers. You wouldn’t believe two pretty kids could quarrel like that. At each other’s throats over boys or records or clothes. Honestly. You boys didn’t fight like that. And they say girls are easier than boys. I don’t believe it.”

“You mean they disliked one another?”

“I mean their father, Morris, was a good furrier but a lousy social worker. He made trouble between the girls without even trying. Morris is a sweet man, but he doesn’t have your father’s sense. Morris never had sense, so he had a noisy house. And when his wife died, that Pearl from Chicago, I think, it didn’t help. He needed a resident psychologist to sort the three of them out. Sigmund Freud would have thrown up his hands.”

“Sam and I used to fight, and we turned out all right.”

“So who’s saying the Kaufman girls didn’t turn out? I just said they used to fight a lot. Like you and your brother.”

“Somebody should write a book on how to be a sibling. I think Sam and I needed lessons.”

“You? You’d never read it anyway. Mysteries is all you ever read.”

“I’m working on Dostoyevsky. I’m coming along.”

“You started
Crime and Punishment
when I started
Anthony Adverse,
ten, fifteen years ago.”

“I get interrupted. I have to make a living, Ma.”

“Let’s not get into
that
on a nice day like this.”

I gave my mother a peck on the cheek and went up to the room my mother still called “the boys’ room” to get some summer clothes from a bottom drawer. I put them in a shopping bag, gave Ma another peck on leaving, then beetled back to Martha’s place. It was decidedly hot out. I could feel the sun burning through my shirt warming my shoulders. The backs of my knees began to itch with the heat. The sun stood out on the hood of the Olds in spite of the accumulated grime of the city. As I walked up to Martha’s front door I saw ants busy with their hills between the cracks in the sidewalk. A whole safari of them was making its way from the smudge that used to be another insect. I thought of a wasp I’d killed on the screen of my hotel room a year ago. The buzz annoyed me, so I killed it. My mind is a whole graveyard of tombstones like that: the lake trout I caught but didn’t eat, the bugs on the windshield of the car, the snake on the railway tracks when I was a kid. I don’t know what it is. Sometimes I think I’m too sentimental to be in this business. Take Kogan, for instance, and his pal Wally. To most people in this town they’re no better than the wasp or the snake. They walk around demonstrating to people that you don’t have to work for a living; just hold out your hand and the Lord will provide. Granted that He supplies infrequently and when He does it is either Old Sailor or 9-Lives. Kogan and Geller have a lot in common. Both are on the take, but Kogan at least waits for the hand-out. You have the option of ignoring his outstretched hand. Geller doesn’t take chances. He doesn’t put out his hand at all. It’s in your pocket without your knowing about it. It’s easy to think that the difference between them is one of imagination, with Geller getting higher marks for having thought up the bigger scam. But I don’t keep score like that. Kogan never hurt people, never picked up a quarter that hadn’t been abandoned or offered without strings attached. Besides, I liked Kogan.

Martha wasn’t home from work yet, so I boiled two eggs without scorching the bottoms and toasted some bread. I cracked the eggs and mashed them with some bottled mayonnaise, added salt and pepper and I was as good as restored to health. I put the works on a plate, and brought it to the enamel-topped table. I poured a glass of milk from the blue carton in the refrigerator. Meanwhile my mind was guttering on aspects of this Larry Geller business. This was Tuesday. For six days I’d been playing around with the case and not making friends or influencing people while I was doing it. I could have gone down to Daytona Beach on Nathan’s suggestion. I might not have turned up Larry Geller, but I could have got some sun and maybe even some swimming. Everybody I know gets to go to Florida for one reason or another. This time I could have written the whole trip off as a business expense, but some still small voice inside me doesn’t like the way it bounces, so I tell Nathan to shove it, and stay in Martha’s back room. At least in Daytona Beach I’d be able to retire to my own hotel room. Still, small voices should bother other private investigators once in a while.

Back in my car, I headed down across the old canal instead of across the high-level bridge. I parked near the short bridge and sat in the car looking at the three colours of water running under the span. There was the green water from the creek, brown from the pollution works in Papertown and a white scum that held the two other streams apart. It was like Neapolitan ice-cream designed by a madman with a perverse sense of humour. Above the water-line, the red-brick foundry was belching out dark smoke from the tin smoke-stack. The smoke was blowing under the high-level bridge and getting lost among its dark girders.

Ruth Geller was not expecting me. In fact I wasn’t sure myself how I got there. I’d been mooning about for over an hour without any clear direction. My mental processes, if they can be called that, were keeping their thoughts to themselves. I was just the driver. I parked the car at this still exclusive address on Burgoyne Boulevard. As far as I could see, property values hadn’t plummeted. There were no “For Sale” signs visible on the surrounding front lawns. No additional windows had been broken at number 222 nor was there an accumulation of rotten fruit on the lawn.

“Mr. Cooperman! This is a surprise.” Ruth Geller looked honestly taken aback as she saw me standing at her front door. I’d rung the bell twice and was just wondering about a third strike and out when I heard steps approaching the door. “What brings you to this neighbourhood today? Don’t answer that; I just remembered. You never sleep. Will you come in? I was just going to make some tea.” I followed Ruth through the lush hall with the deep-pile broadloom to the immaculate white kitchen. She had more white gadgets than a hardware store. The stove and sink were hard to locate. I finally found them in an island in the middle of the room. The stove was so integrated into the rest of the decor that you practically had to leave a kettle showing just to keep your bearings. Gummed fruit stickers and magnetic letters dotted the refrigerator with spots of colour that the designer hadn’t called for. It was the sort of kitchen where one dirty cup on the counter embarrassed all the clean dishes wherever they were hiding in their knobless cupboards. “I’ll put the kettle on,” Ruth said, and pushed something that looked like it would transport both of us to the command deck of the USS Enterprise. “I hope you don’t mind decaffeinated tea? I’ve had to give the real stuff up because I’m not sleeping very well these days.” I nodded approval and she found a box of cookies and put some on a plate. Her milk was from a carton of two percent just like Martha’s.

“I should have telephoned first,” I apologized. “The fact is I didn’t know I was coming here. I just ended up parked outside your front door.”

“You looked a little lost when I opened the door. I thought it was just my surprise.” In spite of the welcome mat and her smile, Ruth was edgy. Her hands trembled.

“There are a couple of things I remembered I hadn’t cleared up.”

“Sure. A couple of things. There are more than a couple of things I’d like cleared up. Like ‘What the hell are my kids going to do for a father when they get home?’”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to get you started. The kettle’s boiling. That’s a fast kettle.” She ignored my diversion but got up to make the tea. I was surprised to see that decaffeinated tea came in bags just like nature’s own. I’d expected a pale blue powder.

She made the tea and we sipped in silence only broken by the munching I was doing on a cookie. It had almonds in it. They had almonds in them, as I found out on further exploration. After a few angels flew by, I picked up the dropped thread again. “Mrs. Geller, do you remember on the telephone last Friday, I asked you about a man named Wally Moore?”

“I honestly can’t recall that, Mr. Cooperman. But if you say so, I’ll believe you.”

“Wally was a bum, a vagrant, a panhandler, a regular feature on St. Andrew Street.”

“I still don’t …”

“He was a little guy, with a Charlie Chaplin bamboo cane, and he walked with his feet pointed in different directions.”

“I’m sorry. Wally doesn’t ring any bells. Is it important?”

“Yeah, it’s important. According to a witness he paid a call on you and you paid him off for information or silence or to keep off your grass. I don’t know why you paid him off, but we know that he came into money. For him, a fortune. And he said that you were the lady bountiful behind it.”

“Well, this man is just not telling you the truth. I pay a gardener. I paid the man who fixed the front window. Maybe he was trying to pull your leg, Mr. Cooperman. You look very serious just now, but you might be susceptible to the man’s blarney.”

“Wally isn’t pulling legs any more, Mrs. Geller. He’s on his way to a grave paid for by the city.”

“You mean he’s …”

“Yes, Ma’am. He’s dead. That’s why what we know about him is important. He could have made up the story, but he couldn’t have made up the money. Only you can shed light on this.”

“But I told you. I’ve never seen the man. I don’t know him and I never paid him off. I suppose I’m sorry that he’s dead. I want to be honest, so I shouldn’t pretend that I’m terribly upset.”

“He didn’t just die, Mrs. Geller. He was murdered.”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry I can’t help you. But I can’t see what it has to do with Larry’s leaving town.”

“He might have seen something he shouldn’t.”

“He might have seen them driving in the direction of the city limits.”

“Them? Who do you mean, them?”

“I meant Larry. I don’t know why I said them.”

“Mrs. Geller, you’ve just made a slip. You know something you haven’t told the police. You’d better tell me before anyone else gets hurt.”

“I’ve told you all I know. I haven’t any information I didn’t have last week when you came.”

“You’ve lost a brother-in-law since then.”

“Nathan? What has his death got to do with Larry? You’ve got me confused. Do you mean that it was a revenge killing by some … some …?”

“Former client of your husband? Could be. But my money’s on secrets. Nathan knew something about Larry, and it was worth the risk to make sure Nathan didn’t spread the news.”

“I didn’t think about that.” She was quiet for a minute. She looked at her decaffeinated tea growing chilly on the white counter. Her hands were trembling.

We were perched on chromium and white leather stools. All we needed was a bartender on the other side wiping out glasses and hanging them up to dry. What kind of secrets would Ruth tell a bartender after a couple of drinks? “It’s secrets that do it, Mrs. Geller. I’ve been telling everybody this week. Secrets lead down the long dark hall.”

“Are you still harping …? Damn it, Mr. Cooperman, I don’t know this man you’re talking about. I’ve tried to be up-front with the police, and they won’t tell me a thing. I’ve been straight with you, and you couldn’t find beets in a bowl of borscht.” She was leaning on her arms propped on the counter. Her head was held in the palms of both hands. I couldn’t see if she was crying. I thought that she might be. I felt a nickel worse than somebody who felt like two cents. But I felt like that when I arrived, so I didn’t pack up and leave.

“Mrs. Geller,” I said, trying to make my voice stand up as tall as a Mountie in a musical, “you know that Larry had plans to leave town. You know that he didn’t plan on leaving without company. Will you tell me now who he went away with?”

For a moment she didn’t move. Her eyes were shining when she looked at me with an expression that I tried to forget in a hurry. Her hand shot out and pulled open a drawer. It fished about among coupons like those in Ma’s kitchen drawer and came up with a photograph. At first I was disappointed. I’d been hoping for a hotel reservation or an airline schedule with a destination circled. I think you can’t improve on neat arrangements like those. But what Ruth was holding out to me was a colour photograph. Smiling Larry was holding his hands over the eyes of a woman. In spite of the covered features, I was sure from what I could see of the smile that the woman was Pia Morley. It was a party photograph and the light in Larry’s eyes was pink. “But Pia didn’t leave town, Ruth,” I said, forgetting to be formal in my inquiry.