Ransom Game (16 page)

“Look, this would be a lot simpler if I could see you for a few minutes. Could I come over right now? It would really help.” I didn't get an answer right away. Maybe she had to go out. Maybe she had to get dressed. I admit it, I was asking a lot on short notice. Then I said that, and she said to come over right away. I wrote out the address, which was on lower Queen Street past the YMCA and the law offices, just a short walk from Montecello Park.

For a minute, I thought I caught the glimpse of a Mustang running a few cars behind me. I couldn't get the colour. There must be thousands of Mustangs on the road tonight. I'd better try to get Frank and Vito off my mind. Of all the possible candidates for Muriel's murderer I could think of, nobody wore that tag better than Vito and Frank.

I parked a few houses past where I was going and walked back without seeing a blue Mustang show up in the streetlights. The park looked dark and cold. The verandahs along the street were dark, except for a couple with illuminated doctors' shingles. I found the number I was looking for attached to a round white pillar, one of a pair which supported a porch with a classical pediment. A black mailbox with the silhouette of a Scottie dog did some damage to this traditional package.

The woman who met me at the door was wearing a dark blue corduroy skirt and a white blouse. She was a little taller than me, but I was used to that. Her figure, as I judged it retreating along a corridor to a den or study, was tidy. I could believe that she could face a roomful of thirty teenagers and tell them about Julius Caesar or William Wordsworth without losing control. Her face was a calming combination of good straight features, good skin and a high forehead. She wore her brown hair brushed back from her brow and it tumbled straight down past her ears and ended abruptly at a sharp line. Her eyes were hazel and nicely spaced. I tried to picture her smoking a cigar on St. Andrew Street at fifteen.

“You're Mr. Cooperman? I'm Kate O'Neil. Will's out right now, so maybe we should get right down to your reason for coming. I did a lot of crazy things when I was young, Mr. Cooperman, and my husband knows all about them. He wasn't a choirboy either, so we get along. We drink a lot of coffee and we go to our AA meetings regularly. I've been sober now for nearly five years. I've been working steadily for three years and have had two promotions. So, you see I'm putting some distance between the person I am today and the girl I was when I knew those people at the club. Would you like a cup of coffee, since I mentioned it? I make a very good cup.” I nodded and followed her into the bright kitchen. The coffee was on a back burner, looking black and strong. A red clock told me that I'd better hustle if I wanted to get to the Beaumont Hotel by nine. Kate O'Neil poured the coffee with a steady hand into a blue-and-white mug. It took a lot of cream to lighten it. We nodded over the mugs and she did her best to help me ask my questions, beginning with a big smile which didn't darken at the corners the way some do.

“You asked about Johnny Rosa? Yes, I knew him for nearly a year … through a good friend of mine.”

“Russ Warren?”

“Yes. Russ was, I guess, more than a good friend. I was precocious, anyway, for those days. Russ was the first man I ever loved and the first that really loved me. I nearly died when he was killed. Even though he wasn't with me any longer, it nearly killed me. I knew that he would go violently. That was his way, wasn't it: fast cars, all that drinking and living? He lived at too great a speed to last. Trouble and early death were written all over his face.”

“What was troubling him?”

“I didn't know in those days, but since then I've been thinking about it. I've read a lot of psychology, Mr. Cooperman: Freud, Jung, and even Reich. I don't know what you think of such things, but I'm certain that Russ harboured some unnatural affection for his sister. I think that he loved her more strongly than a brother normally should. I say
should
. I know that
ought
and
should
have no place in this kind of talk. What happens, happens. Poor Russ couldn't handle it, and in the end, it killed him.”

“I see,” I said. “What about Johnny Rosa?” Her face darkened.

“Johnny was all right. He was a lot of laughs. He was the right man for the mood of the time. But later Johnny seemed to force the pace when we were trying to settle down a little. I didn't like Johnny's girl either. No. That's not strictly true. I liked her at first. She looked like she could be a calming influence on Johnny. I mean, she wasn't knocked out every time Johnny drained a glass of straight scotch at one go. She could do that and so could I. But then, she started paying more attention to Russ than to Johnny, and I didn't like that. She ended up taking him away from me. We were both children, of course. I guess it's ridiculous to talk about it in such melodramatic terms, I mean it's rather novelettish in adults, isn't it? But children! Oh, I loathed that girl. I haven't thought about her for years now. See how you bring it all back? Sorry. I didn't mean that. I used to think that if Russ had stayed with me, it wouldn't have happened. His being killed I mean. But I know, I really do know that it would have had to happen sometime. That was Russ.” She paused. “Is this the sort of thing you wanted to know? I'm sorry for running on and on. I've just not thought about those days for such a long time. I don't even think I asked you why you wanted to know all this.”

There was only one other thing I wanted to know, and I had a feeling in my gut that I wouldn't like the answer. But I was getting paid by a dead woman to ask these questions, so I asked it.

“Do you remember the name of the girl?”

“The girl?” She looked surprised. I think we'd both dropped a stitch in the silence that followed Kate's long monologue. “The girl? You mean Johnny's girl. Of course I remember her name. She's Helen Blackwood and she works for Russ's sister as a private secretary.”

NINETEEN

I parked the Olds in the crowded lot behind the Beaumont and wove my way from the parking attendant, who wanted to know how long I was planning to stay before I'd even arrived, to the dimly lit entrance to The Snug, the main lounge of the hotel, one of the few licensed places in town where it was un-chic to ask for draft beer. There had been a half-hearted attempt on the designer's part to make the room look like an Irish pub, but he had been waylaid on his path by helpful suggestions from several uninformed quarters about the true nature of the Irish pub.

Helen Blackwood was sitting at a table for two in a dark corner. She was wearing a soft print dress. Her hair, though pulled back, didn't look as though it impeded her eyes from blinking anymore. There was even a trace of make-up on her lips and cheeks. She smiled at me as I came across the floor, struggling out of my heavy coat.

“I've already ordered a drink,” she said, pointing to a partly finished whisky sour. “I hope you don't mind.” She was sporting earrings and a gold chain around her neck. I noted the effect, but I couldn't figure out why she was turning on the charm in my direction. In spite of all I've overheard when my mother gets talking to her cronies over the teacups, I have a fairly level-headed view of myself, and none of the persons I am are the sort you wear tiny pearl earrings for. Maybe this was just an extension of her job: “Blackwood, be a dear and see what the Cooperman fellow really thinks.” I wouldn't put it past Gloria to use her in this way; at the same time, I could see Blackwood keeping the interests of the Jarmans and Warrens uppermost in her mind. I wondered when she'd last done something special for herself. I sat down opposite her in the management's idea of an Irish chair; she was seated on a padded banquette which followed the contours of the room from the mock-Irish bar to the mock-Irish turf fire. I liked the idea of getting to know the real Helen Blackwood if she still existed under “Blackwood” and all the other poses.

“You've become a rye drinker?”

“You really are a detective.”

“Sometimes I just get lucky. Today my luck took me to Jack Cowan and Kate O'Neil, Kate Rodman to you.”

“Yes, you have been busy. My compliments.”

“You hadn't tried to hush any of this up. It was all there for the asking.” She was rubbing her finger around the rim of her glass. Not being an expensive wine glass, it made no sound. I think she was blushing behind her make-up, but I am only guessing. Her slight shoulders seemed to hunch together.

“My chequered past would take a lot of hushing. I don't make that kind of money.”

“Have you run into people who offered to try?”

“For a price, yes.” She smiled a brief smile over her glass. “I guess I wasn't interesting enough to gain their full attention.”

“I see,” I said, trying to show my best bedside manner. “How did you meet Johnny in the first place?”

“I went to a house party with an older girl I knew. She asked me to tag along. Johnny was there. We sat on the stairs most of the night talking. He had a way with him, Johnny did. He wasn't good-looking, he was short and sort of ugly, really, but he had an electricity about him. You felt that you'd get a shock if you touched him, and you wanted to touch him. He asked me to tell him about myself. To me, that was wonderful. Nobody'd ever asked me about me before. He got in touch with me the next night. I don't think he knew how young I was. Maybe he did, but didn't care. I learned to drink that week. Johnny taught me to drink Scotch. I drank it until after Russ was killed, then I stopped drinking altogether for about a year. Now I drink a proper lady's drink. Will you have something?”

“I've not much of a head for drinking, frankly. I get dizzy. A friend in the Regional Police says I was born two drinks below par. I don't play golf either, so I'm not sure whether that's good or bad. Maybe I'll have what you're drinking. Or is it exclusively a lady's drink?”

“Oh, it's unisex as far as that goes. You're a funny man.”

“What makes me a funny man?”

“Well, you bluster so, and put up such a noisy show, when you're really rather shy and unworldly.”

“I could say that about you too,” I said. She thought a moment and then admitted the possibility. I think she took it as a compliment. At least, I think that was when we stopped jousting with one another.

“Did Johnny strike you as a criminal in those days?”

“All I knew was that he was lots of fun, and that he liked me and that he took me seriously. I think I wanted to be taken seriously more than anything else. He used to bring me things that I knew, vaguely, hadn't come from over the counter. He took me to the races, and we met some of his friends. When he was with them, he seemed exactly like them; when he was with me, he wasn't like that at all. He had a chameleon-like quality, I guess. When he was with Russ Warren, you'd have picked him out as the son of a millionaire, not Russ. He was one of those people that should have been born rich. He sensed that, and went to prison for trying to change it.” Her glass was empty, and I was able to mime our order to the waiter without his actually having to cross the floor and speak to us.

“Do you think that the Warren money went to Johnny's head?

“It might have been that, but I don't think that's why he got involved in the kidnapping.”

“Why then?”

“I don't know. But I'm sure it wasn't just for the money.”

“Had he and Russ had a falling out before Russ's death?”

“I don't think so. Johnny could sense that I was moving towards Russ. He didn't say anything. He wasn't the sort to let a miserable woman come between friends. He was
macho
in that way, as well as in a number of others. By then he may even have been relieved to get rid of me. I was jail-bait, remember.”

“Did you feel differently about Russ, after Johnny?” She thought about that one for a moment. The waiter, in the meantime, had arrived with our drinks and a tray of assorted food: meatballs on toothpicks, pink shrimp and sausages wrapped in a crust. Helen Blackwood tried the shrimp. I helped myself to a handful of peanuts that were already at the table.

“Johnny Rosa occupies a special place in my life, Mr. Cooperman. Every girl had a Johnny Rosa at one time in her early life. But Russ was special too. He didn't seem to give a damn about conventions or about his family name or any of the things he was supposed to care about. I think he belonged to the golf club, not so much because it was hard to get into, as you might know, Mr.— may I call you Ben?—or because it was expected of him, but because it offered him more opportunities to cut up and have fun. He once mixed up the keys to all the golf carts; it took them hours to sort them out. That was a typical Russ Warren trick. He loved to see the fat, wealthy WASP customers getting red in the face about the delay, but too far gone in their degeneration to swing a bag of clubs over their shoulders and get on with the game. It sounds silly the way I describe it, but Russ got eloquent on the subject whenever he got smashed.”

“Was that often?”

“Regularly. Russ was a drunk. I loved him with all my sixteen-year-old heart, but I can't escape that one. There was something bothering him that he couldn't talk about.”

“He got along with Gloria?”

“But not with many others. He and his father hadn't spoken for about a year before the accident, the result of one of his pranks. Mr. Warren hated the inability of his son to value the family's achievement and imitate it. Not only couldn't poor Russ make it on Bay Street in Toronto, he couldn't leave the secretaries alone. It is rare that a son of a board member gets fired, but Russ did. Several times. Mr. Warren didn't have enough subsidiaries or cowed flunkies to accommodate his randy son. Russ couldn't even sit in an office and collect his pay.”

“I guess some rich people can't take being the inheritors of the easy life. You got away from Gloria pretty quickly. Was that on purpose?”