“My name is Benny Cooperman, and I’m doing some work on the Chester Yates case.” The first part of my statement didn’t move him much, but the second part caught all his attention.
“What Chester Yates case? I don’t know any Chester Yates.”
“He was one of your patients, Doctor. You saw him last just before he died.”
“Who are you?”
“I told you. My name’s Cooperman.” His foxy nose took on a pinched look. The mouth that in repose imitated a sneer opened slightly. His eyes began to shift about behind his glasses.
“Who the hell sent you here?”
“Nobody.”
“Who are you working for?” He looked scared.
“I’m a private investigator, and …”
“Don’t give me that garbage. Just turn around and walk away from here.” He was sweating now, and it wasn’t from the work on the pump valve. I’d touched a nerve. “Stop following me. Do you hear me?” He began to raise his voice. I tried to shrug and calm him down.
“Look, Doctor, don’t get excited. I only want to …”
“Get off my land. Get away from me!” He was shouting and the cords in his neck stood out white against his reddening face. I tried again to calm him down with a reassuring gesture.
“I only want to ask you a couple of questions. That’s all. Just a couple of questions.”
He backed up against the workbench and quickly shot a look to his right and left. He grabbed a blue cylindrical tank about a foot long with one hand and a thing that looked like a bent coat hanger with the other. The one struck a spark and at once the other came alive with a flame about a mile long. He lunged at me with it, singeing the arm of my coat as I lifted it to protect my eyes. “Hey, what are you trying to do?”
“Get out of here, do you hear me?”
“I’m going, I’m going.” I backed to the open front of the shed, then turned and started for my car.
“Stop following me, do you hear! Do you hear? Leave me alone.” I think he may have continued in that vein, but I missed it as I dashed the hundred yards or so to the Olds. My last sight of Dr. Zekerman, as I backed down his lane at fifty miles an hour, was of an irate gesticulating madman, brandishing a propane torch which nearly singed my baby-blue eyes. If that was standard practice for a shrink in these parts, I’m going to take all my future business to a chiropractor. And right then it looked like I was going to have a lot of business. I hadn’t had a headache like that since I fell in the dark on top of another private dick working for the other side in the same divorce case. Dr. Zekerman from where I sat, speeding back to town, looked like he was damaged and should see somebody about it and fast.
SEVEN
Back in town I did something I seldom do: I had a couple of belts of rye and a beer chaser at the hotel. Then I went upstairs to my room and nearly brought it all up again. To hell with putting my nose where it wasn’t wanted. On Monday, for sure, I was going over to see my cousin Melvyn. What I needed on a hot spring day was a cool morning searching titles at the registry office. Title searchers live a long time and hardly ever lose their sight to a propane flame. I lay back on my bed, looking up at the ceiling thinking of my resolution, when the phone rang. I grabbed it mostly to stop it making such a racket. It was Mrs. Yates.
“Mr. Cooperman? I’m sorry to bother you on a weekend, but I didn’t want you to think I didn’t appreciate what you have been doing. Mr. Ward was a little harsh with you on the telephone yesterday, and I’m sorry. We’ve all been under a great deal of pressure as you’ll appreciate.” Her voice sounded washed out, almost like she was reciting a chant.
“Mr. Ward’s word for what I’ve done is ‘harassment,’ Mrs. Yates. I know you’ve been through the wringer these last three days and you’re not in the clear yet. What I want to know, Mrs. Yates, is do you want me to go on harassing you? Are you satisfied to hear that your husband wasn’t seeing another woman, but going to see a psychiatrist?”
“Chester is dead, Mr. Cooperman.”
“Mrs. Yates, you know what you asked me to do?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I did that. I was with your husband up to an hour before his death. I can tell you that his afternoon appointment was not with the Water Board as it said on his deck calendar; he went to see Dr. Andrew Zekerman. The name mean anything to you?”
“No.” She said it breathlessly.
“He’s a psychiatrist, across from the Hotel Dieu Hospital on Ontario Street. I’ve been to see the shrink; and found out that he’s scared of something. He thinks he’s being followed. I’d like to find out why. Believe me, it’s not my imagination, Mrs. Yates. You didn’t see his face when I mentioned your husband’s name.”
“But I still don’t see …”
“Mrs. Yates, two hours before your husband died, he ordered a ten-speed bike for himself. You can check at MacLeish’s sporting goods if you don’t believe me.”
“I see.” She didn’t sound as though she did, but I took her at her word. I waited for a minute.
“Can you tell me, Mrs. Yates, who would want to see your husband out of the way? Who would profit by his death? Did he have any enemies? Don’t tell me now. I want you to think about it and let me know later on. May I suggest that we keep what I’ve said under your hat until I can find something that a court of law would recognize as proof? That is if you want to keep me busy, because frankly I don’t think we’ve got enough right now to go to the police with. If you want me to drop everything right where it is, just say so. I can take a hint. But to tell you the truth, Mrs. Yates, I’ll take it better from you than from that stuffed-shirt Ward.”
“Bill Ward? But how …? Oh, on the telephone. Yes, I understand, Mr. Cooperman. Please, Mr. Cooperman, if Chester was killed and you can find out who killed him, I’ll be eternally grateful. If it’s a matter of money …”
“I didn’t say anything about money, although I could use another two hundred. But I can wait until you get back on your feet again. Take it easy. And let me know if you think of anything that might help to shed some light around here.”
“Yes, I promise. Goodbye.” I heard the click, but listened to the dead line hum for a minute before I replaced the receiver. I was back in business. I might get burned to a crisp after all, but at least I wasn’t going to have to be nice to that bastard cousin of mine, Melvyn.
EIGHT
I won’t bore you with the rest of my weekend. One of us is enough. I could tell you about the trip to the laundromat, about how I nearly nailed the sock thief in the drier, how I pan-handled on James Street for dimes to see me through the second load after the change machine jammed. There’s a lot I’m going to leave out by jumping from Saturday afternoon and landing in Victoria Lawn in time for Chester’s obsequies on Monday.
Funerals make me nervous. I don’t care whose they are. I watched them bury Churchill and Kennedy and Martin Luther King and the other Kennedy on television, where you could see that even when you’re dead it helps to have money to bring the right tone and taste to the send-off. I skipped the church service. That’s another thing that gives me the willies. Ever since I was a kid, churches and me have kept our distance from one another. I kept thinking that because of my religion they might have to have the place reconstructed or something. I was in a religious play once. I was just a teenager, and the play was Good Friday by the English poet laureate, John Masefield. It was all about the trial of Jesus, and I played an old geezer who kept breaking through the crowd and pleading with Pilate to spare the life of this upright man, Jesus. And the crowd kept laughing at me and throwing me offstage and calling me a madman. That was a little of the old Masefield irony there in that part about me being mad. Anyway, while I was offstage, the director had me join in with the crowd shouting “Crucify him! Crucify!” It was a schizo situation, and I wonder how I got out of it alive and not even converted.