The Cooperman Variations by Howard Engel Read Free Book Online Page B

saying is go write your book. I told you all I know about the case.” There was a long pause, while Sheldon tried to pin him to the line for another minute. Sykes held the phone away from his ear and sipped cold coffee from a cardboard container. When the dregs had gone, he interrupted his caller: “Sheldon, buy me lunch next week and I might remember something new, but right now your time is up. I got a desk full of problems and that’s what I’m being paid for … Sheldon! … Shut up, Sheldon! Call me at home … Mr. Zatz, here’s how it is: I’m busy Tuesday next week and Friday, but lunch is clear on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. I gotta go.” He banged down the phone and swivelled straight in his chair.
    “Never agree to sit on a panel with writers. They get your name and you never breathe an easy breath again.” Boyd sat down and I took the chair he’d left for me. I presented my warrant card to him, which he assessed, nodding. He passed it across the desk to Sykes, who let it sit there without picking it up. Sykes was a big man too, but he handled the belly weight better than his partner. His muscles hadn’t begun their migration towards fat yet and he looked like he could throw me across the room if I asked him to help with a little plotting problem I was having. There was a patch of red fuzz above his forehead where his hair should have been. It looked like a dying plant in a shining vase. He was wearing a blue suit that had been tailored by a computer program that misfired. His tie looked like an enlarged tongue lolling on the right side of his green shirt. I figured that he was colour-blind and living alone. He didn’t say anything for a moment as he settled his hands behind his neck and relaxed back in his chair. The chair wheezed like an expiring sea lion. I wondered why he’d bothered to take his hat off. Except for that, Sykes looked like a movie cop from the 1940s. Something out of Hammett or Chandler, Leonard or Ellroy.
    “So, you’re Cooperman,” he said at length, disappointing me with the clichéd introduction. Sheldon Zatz, whoever he was, was on to something in Sykes. You could fill up a lot of pages just describing the way he sat there drinking his cold coffee. I nodded and showed some teeth.
    “And you’re in charge of the Sartori case,” I said, moving things in the direction of my preoccupations.
    He said nothing, but he was running me through his assessment apparatus. I could imagine him sucking a toothpick. “Jim, this is the guy from Grantham that Chris Savas is always talking about.”
    “Yeah?”
    “He’s the one who does the Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade bit in Grantham. Population 1,280, right? No offence, Mr. Cooperman, but we’ve been getting whiffs of the legend from the Greek.”
    “Cypriot, not Greek, sergeant. He makes a good case for the difference.”
    “Whatever,” he said. “You worked these mean streets once before too, didn’t you? Something about a murder over a rare book?”
    “That was a few years ago.”
    “Yeah. Up in the Annex. I remember it now; you assembled all the suspects in a bookstore and pointed the guilty finger. Chuck Pepper told me about that. Right out of an Agatha Christie movie for television. You like private-eye movies, Mr. Cooperman?”
    “Sure. Doesn’t everybody?”
    “Savas told me you answer a question with a question. How is he? Has he made inspector yet?” For two minutes I brought them up to date about Chris Savas and his present status in the Niagara Regional Police. When I’d finished, Sykes shook his head as if I’d just asked him a question. “You know,” he said, “after all the shit going down in Grantham these days, I don’t know why a freelancer like yourself gets in his car and drives to Silver City looking for work. You know what I mean? When those tapes turned up under the false ceiling in the Medaglia case, after the place had been searched a dozen times, I mean, don’t you want to hide your head