Squirrels jumped back and forth in the high branches. Their nests were clots of dark leaves. There were two roofed structures under the trees, both red-topped: a bandstand, looking like a puff pastry with a dome perched on six arches, and a large Victorian pavilion, which Ned Evans used in his summer staging of plays by Shakespeare. He told me that it had been built on the unfinished foundations of the home of the son of the chief canal entrepreneur from the mid-nineteenth century. The son died young and the foundations were eventually used to support this whimsical fretwork structure. Underneath were indifferently serviced rest-rooms which were usually locked except when not needed. I’d been in Ned’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, so this was familiar territory.
I circled the area near the bandstand. The grass was starting to get a high summer sheen. It was damp underfoot. Park benches were occupied by mothers with baby buggies, couples and singles. People were taking time-honoured shortcuts across the park on the wide paths and paved sidewalks. Around one of the park benches signs of the police investigation were still in evidence. A string with waving pieces of masking tape dangling encircled the bench; a fairy ring, twenty feet across. The bench was about the same distance again from Ontario Street. At night it wouldn’t have taken two people long to take the body out of a car and leave it to be discovered. And at night you could get away without anyone asking silly questions. I went through the roped-off area and like I expected, didn’t find anything. I sat down on the bench to catch my breath. A squirrel came by, wafting its grey tail in the air, another panhandler like poor Wally. And I was fresh out of nuts.
Two heads had been watching me around the corner of the pavilion. At first I thought it was a couple of kids. Whenever I looked up in that direction, I could see either one head or both out of the corner of my eye. Then, I thought that Gordon, Geoff and Len had caught up with me again, but they wouldn’t have played such a foxy game of it. I wanted to get a good look at them and it took me a minute to figure out how. I got up, put the bandstand between me and the pavilion and headed towards Ontario Street. I didn’t dare turn around to see if they’d followed. Once across Ontario, I crossed the street and sauntered up College Street. As soon as I thought I was out of their sight, I turned on what speed was available, ran to the end of College, cut up Yates, and came back in the direction of the park along Norris. This put me near the Lake Street end of the park with a clear view of the other side of the pavilion.
As I walked towards the pavilion I got my first sight of my quarry walking side by side from the bandstand towards the white lattice arches of the rose garden. One was a bearded beanpole of a man in a navy turtleneck sweater and dark trousers with a tattered denim vest over his shoulders. The other was a short, wide figure with a baseball cap and the flapping remains of someone else’s three-piece suit. I’d seen the short fellow before. The beanpole was a stranger. They went on to the corner of the park where Duke Street intersects Lake. That’s when I sat down to catch my breath. I didn’t have to follow them any further. When I wanted them, I could enlist Kogan’s aid. It was about time he gave me more than an inverted headache.
Back on St. Andrew Street I scouted for Kogan. He wasn’t at his usual Queen Street stand by the Stop Me and Buy French-fried potatoes truck and he wasn’t resting in the shade of the bank on the other corner. I walked down Queen Street and up to Larry Geller’s office. The place was closed. There was a legal notice in the window about the situation. “Would all creditors with legitimate claims please consult Ms. Joyce See of Bernstein, Carley, Grella and See …” Nice to be able to put a face to a public notice.
From there I scouted the Harding House, the Russell House, the Murray and even my own hotel, the City House. I felt silly dropping around to my place after being away, but darting in and out was different from sleeping there at night. I’d been awakened from a deep sleep too many times at night in the past. With Martha Tracy’s help, for the time being at least, I had things under control. But there was no Kogan to be found, not even loitering in doorways along the shady side of St. Andrew Street.
I saw Pia Morley’s Audi parked across from the Radio Lunch. I couldn’t imagine her trying to tuck her long slender legs under the Arborite counter in there. Maybe she was planning another visit, just to warn me, in case I’d missed the point of her earlier visit and had forgotten all about my trip to the old lodge on the edge of the abandoned canal.
But when I got to the office it was Kogan who was waiting for me, not the attractive Mrs. Morley.
“Don’t you do no work here any more, Mr. Cooperman?”
“I’ve been trying to neglect it. I’ve been looking for you though.”
“Small world. Great minds and all that.”
“Kogan, I want you to do something for me.” Kogan looked dubious and I told him about the two characters from the park. I described them and suggested that I wouldn’t be surprised if they knew something about Wally Moore’s death. He knew the short guy in the baseball cap at once and thought he’d seen the bearded beanpole.
“The short guy’s a Hungarian named Blasko. He’s decent enough. Don’t think I’ll have any trouble finding them.” He looked at me under the brim of his fedora. “Do you think you can let me have something on account, Mr. Cooperman?”
“On account of what?”
“On account of me being an operative in your employ.”
“Kogan, you’ve got more chutzpah than six deadbeats in Vegas with somebody else’s wallet. Get out of here before I throw you downstairs. Who’s Wally Moore in the first place, your friend or mine?”
“Okay, chief, I’m going, I’m going.”
SEVENTEEN
Debbie Geller lived in the biggest house on Francis Street, which was not much of a street apart from her place. It was too close to Welland Avenue’s heavy traffic ever to be a posh address, and the rest of the pebble-dash and frame houses with either open or closed-in verandas were closer to the beau ideal of the neighbourhood than Debbie’s overgrown Victorian monstrosity. The house sat crookedly on the street as though the street came by after the house had settled. The little bungalows running down the street made a rather smug comment about the proper way for a house to address the street it lived on. Debbie’s place was brick with elaborate wood trimming around the gables, porch and windows. On the left side, as I faced it, a tower ran two and a half storeys above the regular roof, looking like an octagonal bell with fancy round windows near the top, a widow’s walk and large gabled windows below that. The garden in front was kept from running off by a wrought-iron fence with pagoda-like red stone posts. On the front steps rested a blue plastic pail full of water and a sponge and towel.
I’d just come from Nathan Geller’s funeral in the small Jewish cemetery off Queenston Road. It was an orthodox service with the near relatives helping to fill in the grave by taking turns. I made sure I pocketed my borrowed yarmulka as I followed the small crowd back towards the parked cars. I saw my Ma and Pa, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to them. Debbie and Ruth stood close together. Sid stood farther away near the rabbi.
It was around three-thirty, still a rather dull Monday, with a chilly wind following from the cemetery as I washed my hands at the pail before going into the house of mourning. Wisely they had decided not to hold the shiva at Ruth’s. Recent associations would have prevented Nathan getting a fair send-off in that setting. You can’t throw stones through the windows on one day and then drop in to partake of the funeral-baked meats the next.
The crowd divided itself into family, arty types from out-of-town, and local friends of the family. The out-of-towners looked a little cowed at a shiva, but quickly found that there was plenty to drink. The locals, family and friends alike, descended on the refreshment table and consumed quantities of smoked meat, rye bread, pickles, potato salad, herring, smoked salmon and, for the old-timers, baked carp. A smoked turkey had been sliced and laid out, but I couldn’t get close. I saw a couple of hired hands with trays, but I was always too far away. Eating after a funeral is serious business. It’s a reaffirmation that the living are still living and the dead are out there beyond the pail and sponge on the porch. A tweedy arm reached under my nose and pulled back with a pickle. When I turned, I saw Pete Staziak taking a bite.