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A Victim Must be Found
A Benny Cooperman Mystery
By Howard Engel OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 1988 Howard Engel
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1699-5
CHAPTER 1
It is only a couple of days from the 28th of March to the beginning of April, yet there seems to be a lost month in there this year that I'm only starting to account for. I'm sure that there is no perceptible difference in the temperature today and what it was last Monday, but Monday appears to be already backing into the clouds of history. Last week I heard that the United Cigar Store on St Andrew Street is closing down, that Ella Beames, my friend at the library, is being retired and after ten years I've had to leave my room at the City House. Everything is in flux with a vengeance. It's all I can do to keep my head above water.
It would be easier if change could be blamed on someone. Maybe municipalities should elect an ombudsman on the understanding that on leaving office he'll become the public whipping boy for a year, the person to blame for everything from ingrown toe-nails to the untimely death of a good friend. Life would be simpler that way. All you have to do is find the right person.
Of course I wasn't thinking of any of this last Monday. On Monday, last week and a thousand years ago, I had other things on my mind.
I was surrounded by boxes. They rose around me like ungainly towers of cardboard. In one of them were my cuff links and my toothbrush. In another I had a list of all my belongings and a key for finding each object in its numbered box. "If I had this to do again ..." was the half-formed thought that kept kicking me in the ear. But moving again was out. I was sure of that much. I had given up the simplicity and familiarity of my old room at the City House on King Street. If I had to do it all over again I would keep the master list on my person and put the numbers on the sides of the boxes and not the top. As it was, I couldn't see a single number, they were all hidden by the boxes on top, and the top box stood above my sight line.
I sat in the middle of this mess, trying to get a handle on it. At least the room had a carpet. I'd never owned a carpet before. I thought, one day I might even own a tree. For the last hour, ever since the moving man had taken his tip and my last cigarette, I'd been trying to put some order in my life by moving the packed boxes from one wall to another. Whenever I opened one of the cartons, it was the wrong one. What was I going to do with LPs when I couldn't locate the stereo? I needed a place to put the records. It was on my "must buy" list, wherever that was.
I stood on a chair and looked down on the number of the top box. It didn't mean anything to me. I raised the flaps and saw the buff colour of office files. That box wasn't even supposed to come here. I tried to readjust the lid. I was getting good at closing cardboard cartons. At first I had a devil of a time getting the flaps to lock. It was like trying to tie a reef knot and always coming up with a granny. It took a long time to sort out the over and under technique of getting the tops to hold. Naturally, the mover could do it blindfolded. Further, he demonstrated an assortment of skills: sliding heavy objects through tight corners with a blanket and even getting one awkward package through the window off the fire escape.
I reached for a cigarette and remembered the departing mover. He'd taken the last in the pack, but had let me know it wasn't his usual brand. He had also let me know that he didn't think much of my new apartment. Looking around at the towers of cardboard, I was inclined to agree with him. The place wasn't huge. It was a lot bigger than my room at the City House, but it didn't present a vista of rooms melting away through vast corridors to the vanishing point. It was a room for sleeping, sitting and eating. There was a kitchenette behind a curtain and a three-piece bathroom. Outside the window on one side was a schoolyard with a metal geodesic structure for the kids to climb on at recess. From the other windows I could see a streetscape of parked cars and damp trees. What had started as a Scotch mist had degenerated into a cold, wet drizzle. The window-panes of the apartment shook in the wind. Parallel rain tracks were diverted by the blasts as they moved down the soot-stained glass.
I pinned a note on my door for the telephone man and left both my apartment door and the downstairs door unlocked. It was time to buy cigarettes and to rethink a few things.
The wind blowing across Court Street wasn't exactly strong, but it cut into me. It made the fierce winter we'd just come through a lot closer than the calendar indicated. Last week we were forgetting our jackets and rolling down the car windows. And now the puddles looked like they'd freeze if the thermometer dropped a notch. In the corners of the alley, the detritus of the winter was still showing; the pile of garbage that had collected in the snowdrifts during February still clung to the walls and gutters. Fragmented newspaper pulp and scraps of plastic wrap stuck to the brick. The wet chill made my feet feel the thinness of my shoes as I hurried to the United Cigar Store for a cup of coffee.
The United wasn't the same. For the last couple of months I'd been hearing that they were going to close it down. I took my usual place at the dark marbletop counter and accepted the coffee as my due when Irene slid a cup in my direction with neither a greeting nor a glance. I was part of her day and needed no more recognition than another full ashtray or empty ketchup bottle. I sipped in silence, thinking of my boxes.
"Benny? Can I talk to you?" I turned around and it was Pambos Kiriakis moving in on me from five stools away. I said hello to the little guy and took my coat off the stool next to me. Shoving his coffee mug along the green marble counter, he left a wet trail of heavily creamed coffee behind him. He frowned at that. I wondered whether that was because he used to be a waiter. Anyway, he let Irene do the honours with her damp cloth. A nod from him initiated another fill-up from her Silex, a smile brought a handful of plastic cream containers.
The first time I met Pambos Kiriakis, he was flipping steaks in the steakhouse which briefly occupied the store under my new apartment. It had been a launderette and a typewriter repair store before that. Now it was having a fling as a Mexican restaurant specializing in refried beans. Death was written on its menu. I didn't give it another three months before it gave up the ghost. Where do people get the idea that you can make a buck from refried beans in Grantham, Ontario? I tried to think of other sure-fire misses: a store specializing in coloured paper-clips, a boutique dealing in designer luggage, a head shop, a rare-book store.
Since he took off his white apron and chef's bonnet, I'd seen very little of Pambos except at the United or at Diana Sweets, where most of the town filters the news of the day. It's a sort of community dialysis. Sitting in a booth at the Di, I can see all of the kids I went to high school with and half of my teachers. Here deals are made and contracts are signed. I've seen a couple leaning across a table so close that their heads touched as they held hands over a banana split. Later I saw the same couple working on a separation agreement. I knew it was a separation agreement, because the boy had asked me to follow his young wife when she was supposed to be going to her choir practice. But that was in the days when there was a buck to be made in divorce work. Right now an honest private investigator has a hard time not reading the want ads. It's the nearest thing to being unemployed in the whole Niagara Peninsula.
I'd heard that Pambos had done well. I remembered that he was managing the Stephenson House, a small exclusive hotel overlooking the old canal. "Benny, I think I need your help. I mean, I think I need your professional help. Can you sit a minute?"
"Sure, Pambos. What's on your mind?"
The little guy stroked his chin, reaching for a place to begin and not finding it. I tried to make it easier for him. "I just moved into that apartment over the steak-house where you used to work," I said. "It's a Mexican place now."
"Yeah, Tacos Heaven. It's run by a Hungarian from Niagara Falls. I give it three more weeks before it's empty again." He was still groping for a starting place. He took a stab. "You still do private investigations, don't you, Benny?"
"Specialty of the house."
"That's what I thought. I should have come to your office, Benny, but seeing as how I saw you sitting here by yourself, I thought, what the hell? What can he do to me?" I gave him a grin to show that he wasn't stepping on my corns. He smiled too, but then asked in a quieter voice:
"You want me to wait and come to the office, Benny? I can take a hint."
"Pambos, if you want to talk to me about it here in the privacy of the United Cigar Store, that's your privilege. What can I do for you?"
"It's a question of stolen property."
"Pambos, I'm not a fence. I'm an investigator."
"I know that! I'm just having trouble getting the story started. Something that belongs to me is missing. It's not where it should be."
"You're talking about an expensive object?"
"I want to talk to you about a list." He looked into my face like I was about to tell him he'd won the lottery. If he saw a shadow pass over my features it was a brief recollection of my own list in one of the twenty or so boxes in my apartment.
"What sort of list?"
"A piece of paper. It was in my office and now it's gone."
"I take it this list is valuable, eh?" I always try to let my clients see into the workings of a professional investigator's mind. Little scraps of deduction or expert knowledge always help. I once tried to get an intimate grasp of the map of the city so I could without looking recall that Binder's Drug Store is right next to the wooden building with a barbershop on the ground floor. On the other side's a gas station. But I was always mixing up Chestnut Street with Maple and Hillcrest with Glenridge. Pambos was looking at me.
"It is and it isn't," he said. "To some it would have value, but it's not valuable in a general way. I mean, it's not money or stocks. It's just a list of names." We both took a sip of coffee. I couldn't help imagining Pambos's list in the last of the boxes at my place, in the bottom. I thought of trying to put off the rest of the interview until after I'd moved in and gone back to my office on St Andrew Street. But I didn't. I did something that's routine with me, in this case I meant it.
"Why don't you go to the police about it, Pambos? The cops have a great reputation for finding things."
Pambos's smile went in out of the rain. "Look, I got nothing against the cops. Some of my best friends are cops. You know Christophoros Savas? He comes from Cyprus, like me."
"Sure, I know Sergeant Savas. He's a good cop. Why don't you tell him about it?" I thought I'd found an out. In spite of the fact that I needed the business in a general way, what I needed right now was a few snappy stories to help lighten the load of moving-day confusion. I felt like I was a gymnast doing the splits. I was still more than half living at the City House and not safe and dry in my new home yet. I wasn't sure if I had a bed to sleep on for the night. I had the makings of a bed, but that was a mile short of comfort. I thought, what the hell, I might as well come clean. I told Pambos about my problem. He'd just started to give me the usual list of ten reasons why he couldn't go to the cops when I stopped him. He pulled at his chin again. It had been getting bluer as we'd been talking. Pambos needed to shave every half hour.
"Okay," he said. "Why don't we go back to your place? I can help you unpack and tell you about the rest of this stuff. What do you say? I'm very good at organizing things," he said with a touch of pride. "It's because I'm not sentimental. I got a lot of true sentiment in me, but I don't get sentimental, if you catch my meaning. There's a difference."
I paid the check and we went out into the chilly March weather. At least it had stopped raining.
CHAPTER 2
An hour later my bed was assembled and made up for the night, several of the boxes had been flattened and tied with twine, their contents given to the closets and cupboards of the apartment. Numbers for the remaining boxes were written clearly on four sides and the ever-important list of contents lay on the coffee-table in the middle of the room. Pambos and I sat in our sweaty shirtsleeves drinking the first cups of tea of the first day of the new regime.
Pambos Kiriakis was a little dishevelled, but he looked relaxed, balancing his saucer on his knee like an ancient spinster, and raising his cup to his lips.
"Pambos, I'll never be able to thank you for all this," I said. He brushed it aside with a broad gesture. "I'll never be able to repay your kindness." Here, the gesture was less sweeping. It felt feeble compared to the last sweeping movement of his hand. By this I saw that while I needn't try to thank him, there was a way to repay the kindness. I got up and returned from the kitchen counter with the teapot. "This list," I said, pouring Pambos another cup, "the one that was taken from your office. Tell me about it."
I sat down and eased myself into a situation that couldn't be altered. I had taken the case when I accepted Pambos's help with my boxes. It was one of those quid pro quo something or others you read about. Now that I was all attention and tuned to hear, Pambos began by looking at my ceiling and then out through the white inside shutters with brass catches. He cleared his throat. "Well, let me see. You suggested that I talk to Chris Savas about it. I can't. It's a delicate matter, you see." I smiled in spite of myself. Hell, who ever talks to a private investigator about things that aren't delicate? The cops would be surprised too to be brought in on a case of no delicacy whatsoever.
"Maybe the time for Savas will come later," I suggested, and he bought that for the time being. Pambos began looking lost again, so I reminded him. "The list," I prompted from where I was sitting on the corner of the bed.
"Yes. The names on the list aren't pulled out of the phonebook, Benny. Most of them, as a matter of fact, are unlisted. I'm talking about names that are well known from Grantham all the way to Toronto. I don't want to embarrass anybody. You know what I mean?" I nodded as I sipped tea.
"You can't get a new list?"
"No." He gave me a look that said I hadn't been listening. But I had. I put it down to Pambos knowing his story too well. He couldn't imagine that I didn't have all the tidy details tucked away already. I tried to look even more concentrated. I felt cross-eyed, but he didn't get up and walk out.
"You said back at the United that this list of yours would be valuable to some people but not to everybody. Can you explain?"
"Look, Benny, before we go on with this, I want to put things on a businesslike basis. You know what I mean?" This was my cue to make a grand gesture. But I held my hands on my teacup. Somewhere inside me a voice was saying "Remember your rent!" It was right, moving from the hotel had moved me into a whole new debt bracket.
"Is this going to be worth a hundred a day plus expenses, Pambos? You have to decide that."
"Well, Benny, I guess money is only money. You know I own a piece of the Stephenson House, don't you? I'm no millionaire, but I'm comfortable enough, if you know what I mean."
"Sure."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Victim Must be Found by Howard Engel. Copyright © 1988 Howard Engel. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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