“I’m sure you can, sir,” said the voice called Bill. A dark shape worked around the edge of the blinding light and came around behind me. I could feel my pockets being slapped, as a pair of expert hands worked me over.
“He’s clean,” said the voice, and the light dipped enough for me to catch sight of a dark blue police uniform standing behind it. I looked over my shoulder. The other man was a cop too. And I might have spent the evening watching television, or reading a good book, or even going to the movies.
“Turn around,” said the first cop, the one called Bill. “We’re going back into the house.” An arm prodded my shoulder, and I followed quietly.
I opened the back door, and turned on the lights in the kitchen. To the left there was a small breakfast nook with a round table. Bill motioned me to sit down. I sat. They placed themselves at the edge of the curved red leatherette bench, blocking my escape from both directions.
“Okay,” said the one that wasn’t Bill, “let’s hear who you are and what you think you’re doing here. But remember, we’ve got a pretty good idea about it ourselves, so try not to waste all of our time with a lot of made-up malarkey about getting the address mixed up. Give it to us straight, and it will go better for you.”
“Okay, here’s the story. It’s simple enough. I’m Ben Cooperman, I’m a private investigator. If you’ll let me reach into my pocket, I’ll show you my I.D.”
“Just don’t move suddenly. Take it easy.” I pulled out my wallet and handed it to the one not called Bill. Bill intercepted and looked through the wallet thoroughly.
“Right, Mr. Cooperman, let’s hear the whole thing from the beginning.”
“Fine,” I said, “fine.” I took a big breath and let them know I was going to start. Bill brought his notebook into play with a lazy motion, the other fellow was more deliberate.
“Okay, you think you’ve caught a burglar, right? Well, how many burglars carry a key to the house they’re burglaring? I know where I am and I can’t remember any law against conducting private business in a private house.”
“Don’t get excited,” said the one called Bill. “Take it easy. We haven’t said anything about burglary, have we? Don’t do our job for us. You were saying that you were what? Using a flashlight in order to save electricity.”
“In a private house a person can bang about in the dark if he wants to. It only becomes police business if I bother the neighbours.”
“Is this your house?” said the other one.
“No, it isn’t.”
“Whose house, then?”
“The owner of the house is Tom Twining of Griffiths and Dunlop, the real estate company.” They both wrote that down. The name tasted like artificial sweetener in my mouth. God help me.
“You were seen carrying a parcel into the house. Where is it now?”
“Look, I don’t see where you get off asking me these questions. You saw my ID. I’m a private investigator pursuing an investigation. How come you guys never followed me home before? Where did I get so popular all of a sudden?” Bill looked over at the other cop, whose neck was red around his collar, and who’d missed a few spots on his chin with this morning’s razor.
“Get it,” he said. The one who wasn’t Bill pulled his six foot length upright and disappeared. Bill looked at me, relaxing a little. He took off his cap and placed it in the middle of the table. His rusty-coloured hair was dark with sweat. My own armpits stuck to my sides. Then the other cop was back with the package. He swung his tall knees under the table and looked at me.
“Is this the package you brought into the house?”
“I didn’t say I’d brought a package into the house.” I felt like a politician caught telling the truth.
Bill began to tear the tape and pull off the paper. I watched in silence. At least the blue cardboard box came out without dribbling white powder on the table. From the box, Bill lifted a small, short-barrelled hand gun, about.32 caliber, with a dull blue look to it that I didn’t like one bit.
FIFTEEN
It was about an hour later by my wrist watch, but in time as measured by my lifespan I had moved forward by a year at least. I felt as though I had been hauled under a bright light and slapped a few times by a crew who knew how to do it without leaving bruises where they show.
They brought me into the Regional Police office from the parking lot through a side door, the kind you open by punching in a code on the handle, and left me to cool my heels on a wooden bench for a half hour or so. It was busy with men coming and going, half of them in uniform. I found a magazine and read some movie reviews of pictures I’d already forgotten. On the wall was a bulletin board with a few “Wanted” posters on it, like in the movies. Unlike the movies, there was a handmade notice that a second-hand camper was for sale. The bottom of the notice ended in a fringe of telephone numbers. Someone brought in a cardboard box full of coffee. I was offered one at normal cost as though I wasn’t about to be subjected to questioning in a Breaking and Entering matter. I thought of explaining that to the coffee man, as I fished out my quarter, but he didn’t look as though he gave a damn. I sipped my coffee after levering off the plastic cap. It was bad enough to replace the traditional third degree. But just then it was warm and wet, and that’s all I wanted.
When I was finished all but the last swallow, a cop in uniform came over to me and established eye contact, which I had begun to think had gone out of style since I’d been brought into the station.
“You Cooperman?” I nodded. He pointed down the corridor. “Fifth door on your right,” he said. I downed the last of the bitter coffee and moved in the direction he’d suggested.
It was a very office-like office, with all of the usual furnishings, except that most of them were made of gray metal, and looked like somebody regularly went at them with a ball-peen hammer. The light came from a hanging fluorescent fixture. I took one of the gray chairs. Beigecoloured files were stuck in a metal rack and others blossomed from a file drawer. The floor was covered with rubber tile, with rust marks from where the furniture used to be, and dark smears around the cold radiator under the window. On the wall I saw some photographs in plain black frames: on the firing line with target pistols, smiles and handshakes in front of a wooden shield with a lot of silver on it, and a class picture of thirty young faces at cop college. Dusty Venetian blinds divided a view of the floodlit court house into long uninteresting strips.
When my two cops came back, they brought a bonus with them, who introduced himself as Sergeant Savas. I finally found out that the other two were Bedrosian and Kyle. Kyle was the Bill of earlier in the evening. I never did find out what Bedrosian’s first name was. Savas looked like a hard man, but a busy man. At the moment he wasn’t very interested in me. I was glad of that. I wouldn’t ever want to be the centre of Sergeant Savas’ undivided attention. He flipped through a number of reports that I’m sure had nothing to do with me and then looked up. He was almost casual.
“We checked out the telephone number you say your client gave you. Turns out to be a Chinese restaurant on Niagara Street. Pay phone. We tried it about twenty minutes ago and didn’t get diddly. We checked on that name you gave us, Twining. That’s another bad joke. Two Tom Twinings in town, neither the owner or tenant of that house. He’s unknown at Griffiths and Dunlop. She probably found the name on a teabag. As for the gun, it’s not registered. And you know as well as I do that a peeper isn’t licenced to carry a piece since 1966, right? We’re running some checks on it to see whether there’s any priors on the weapon. Never can tell. If I were you, Mr. Cooperman, I’d reconsider telling us the name of the woman who bought your ticket to this hayride. What do you say?” I looked for a minute into his leathery face and those eyes like steel ball-bearings and tried to decide. The gun was a real surprise. She had two packages in her bag: one for show and one to go. Everything about the deal looked phoney, so probably the name she gave me was at the top of the let’s-pretend list. I’d have to check that out anyway. Might as well put the cops to work for me. I’m a tax-payer, or at least I hope to become one one of these days.