“Frank, I feel like I’m in a room without windows or doors. The walls are like polished granite, like on tombstones, and there aren’t even inscriptions to get a finger-hold in.”
“This Geller business! Families,” he muttered. “They close ranks to the world. But I’d like to hear what they’re after saying among themselves. I warrant that would bear hearing. I gather they’ve made themselves into clams whenever you showed up?”
“Sure. And now that the story’s public property, it’ll be hard to see them on anything but television from now on.” I took a sip of drink and Frank poured himself another.
“If you ask me, Benny, that fellow must have had some haunt or other to do his mischief in. The paper said they found nothing in his office. Ergo, he had another office. Some spot where he could leave papers that wouldn’t be traced back to him. Maybe he had a girlfriend. He could have left his copybook at her place.” Frank began pulling at his necktie to give him better circulation near the thinking parts. “A girl-friend! I like that. She could be the key to the whole business, my lad.”
“Geller was a homebody. Regular habits, no playing around.”
“There you are. A clever bandit, that’s what he is. Never a false step; never a sudden move. Very tricky indeed, is your Mr. Larry Geller.” There was no stopping him now. He elaborated on his theory for the next five minutes, By the time I’d reached the midway mark of my drink I was getting to like the idea. If Geller could fool all his clients, why not the rest of his kith and kin? It was a point to work on. It was the beginning of a finger-hold in the granite face. If I finished the drink, I’d have figured out the bugger’s hiding place, only to find it empty when the sober light of dawn came in my window.
When I left Frank he hardly noticed. He was spinning a fine web of intrigue over the whole case. He remembered a case in Dublin in the 1890s where a doctor was discovered to have been living a bigamous life with two profitable practices. I tried to imagine Geller doing that within the greater Grantham area. Dublin must be a lot bigger, I couldn’t see Geller getting away with an act like that for more than forty-five minutes around here. I wondered whether the Dublin doctor took off for the same reasons Geller did. What did I know about Geller anyway? I’d talked to Rabbi Meltzer and Mr. Tepperman about him. I’d interviewed his family. But what did I know? Was he the type to have a girl-friend on the side, someone to share the money with down south? I didn’t know him that well. I tried to parade the images I could remember of him grinning and shaking hands at a wedding. I could see him slapping Mort Slater’s back at his boy’s bar mitzvah. I could see him at a head table sitting near the rabbi and the president of the shul waiting for the kiddush to be said and keeping his eyes on the twisted loaf of challah waiting to be sliced. I had to admit it to myself. I was still crawling up slippery sides of smooth granite. The only thing I knew for sure was printed on my driver’s licence.
SEVEN
Old Man Bolduc, Alex’s father, was hoeing in the small backyard on Nelson Street. He was ruddy with short-cropped grey hair. His dark green shirt looked too hot for the day and too big for his frame. The two-inch belt that held up heavy industrial trousers was working on a new hole burned about a foot from the trailing end. The toes of his yellow work-boots peeked out from under his rolled cuffs. The sun shone on the skeleton of a canoe, and through its ribs green shoots were reaching up into the light. Near it, a rusted oil drum was crammed with old lath with chunks of plaster adhering to the wood. The grass in front of the unpainted porch was sparse and defeated, the walk cracked and uneven.
“Mr. Bolduc, is Alex home?” The old man didn’t look up. I repeated myself and the hoe stopped in mid-air as he turned to give me the once-over. His eyes were a watery blue that looked like they were seeing through wet doughnuts.
“Who wants see Alex?” The hoe was far enough off the ground for me to give him a straight answer. I told him I was an old friend from school. At that he softened, seemed to get even shorter and shrugged in the direction of the pink flamingo on the aluminum screen door. “It’s his house. He lets me live here. He’s in dere. Go ahead, knock.” I did and waited.
I hadn’t seen Alex Bolduc since I’d last been to the Grainger Park Lacrosse Box. There he’d been electric. As a hockey fan, I didn’t quite approve of this primitive approach to my favourite sport. Screened in, the players ran up and down the box like they were on skates, and the ball whistled through the air and moved from stick to stick with such precision that it must have been guided by remote control from up in the broadcasting booth. But lacrosse doesn’t attract the ink that hockey gets. So, it was on ice that Alex became a local hero. The papers watched him for a few seasons and then bounced rumours back and forth about which of the National League teams he was going to. Alex turned whatever he did into something between athletics and ballet.
At school, Alex used to make the announcements for the sports department at the end of the weekly assembly. He spoke in a voice that was down-to-earth, shy and precise all at once. He was one of the people you remembered from school-days. And now I could hear him coming to the door of his bungalow.
He looked sleepy and puffy. His unshaven face looked at me through the screen with suspicion. “Yes? What is it?”
“Alex, I’m Benny Cooperman. I was at the Collegiate with you. I remember you were on the hockey team and played lacrosse for the city.” I could feel that my knowing who he was wasn’t helping him figure out who I was. He let a suggestion of a smile work away at the left side of his mouth. It gave him pleasure to be reminded about those days.
“Come in,” he said, showing me no sign of recognition, but holding the door open so that I could get into the house under his arm. The front room was furnished in a matching wine living-room suite. The rug was a round hooked one and it covered linoleum that imitated the lines of a hardwood floor. The TV set was running. “Make yourself comfortable.” I found the couch. The ancient springs let me slide down through the pillow so that I was sitting scarcely two inches off the floor. With my back to the light I could see Alex better. “I remember you,” he said, pulling out a package of cigarettes and waving them in my direction. I leaned over and took one, lighted it and his, then settled back into the wine-dark couch again. “You used to be in plays. Right? You went on and became a doctor, right?”
“That’s Sam, my brother. But I was in plays too. We both were. Did you see The Merchant of Venice?”
“Sure. You were Shylock.”
“No, that was Sam. I was Old Gobbo.”
“Who? I don’t …”
“It’s the character part. Some funny lines. An old clown.”
“That’s right, you grabbed the hair on the back of your son’s head and said what a beard he’s grown.”
“I was supposed to be blind. That’s right. You remember.”
Alex had relaxed completely, and soon we were doing “Whatever happened to” games, taking turns and finding out that Mary Taaffe had married Bill Inkle and Fred Cameron was practically running the Canadian Armed Forces in Ottawa. Finally, I purposely let myself run out of gas so that I could get on with the business of my visit. I told him what I’d been doing since I graduated and that led through my professional snooping to the present snoop.