Getting Away With Murder

TEN

I hadn’t been back in my office long when the phone rang. It was Wise’s second wife, Lily, although I didn’t catch on right away.

“You’re doing some work for my husband?”

“Who is this? I work for a lot of husbands in my line, lady. Are you going to help me out with a name or do you want me to recite a list of my active files.”

“A comedian! I always said Abe can pick them! Look, Mr. Comedian, I’m Lilian Wise. Does that mean anything to you?”

“Sure it does, Mrs. Wise. What can I do for you?”

“Still making jokes! I’ll save my laugh for later. I heard that it’s you who wants to talk to me.”

“That’s right, Mrs. Wise. When can I see you?”

“You’re getting expenses, so I’ll let you buy me lunch.”

“Great! Where shall I meet you?”

“There’s a little place I like on Wellington. Just a little north of Church Street. I forget the name.”

“I know the place. What time?” She told me to meet her at twelve-thirty and to make the reservation. It took me a while to remember the name of the place, but I located the phone number and made the reservation. That left me an hour and a half before our meeting. To kill the time, I called the car dealer who was holding Hart Wise’s bad cheque.

“Yeah?”

“Is this Gordon Sawchuck?”

“Shaw. I do business under the name of Shaw. Who the hell is this?” I told him and he agreed to see me after lunch. My social calendar was quickly filling up. I should get a gold medal from Wise for attention to duty, or at least be allowed to go on living.

To fill the rest of the time before lunch, I returned to Diana Sweets where I tried to make a list of what I knew about the assembled threats against the life of my client. I chewed on my pencil for a long ten minutes. Frustrated, I turned to the crossword in yesterday’s Beacon and the better part of the time flew by like a breeze.

I’d left myself time for a bookstore browse on my way to the restaurant. I was looking for fiction about far-away places. But this idea was frustrated too.

“Okay, Mr. Cooperman. What do you want to know?” Mickey was standing in the doorway of a store next to Diana Sweets. He grabbed my arm as I walked by him and held on to it like I might try running across the street into the one-way traffic.

“Oh, it’s you, Mickey. You had me worried for a minute.”

“You were right the first time. I want to talk to you.” He pulled me into Helliwell Lane and hustled me through the brick canyon to where it opened up into a nest of trendy cafés and restaurants. From there it was a short push on my arm until I was forced to his car, parked illegally at the intersection with Brogan Street. “This will do fine,” he said, opening the door and shovelling me into the passenger side. He walked around to his side and got in too.

“Is this a new conversation or a continuation of the last one, Mickey?”

“You better stop this horse-shit, Cooperman. I’ve got a short fuse where you’re concerned. Leave the funny lines to the talk shows.”

“That seems to be the consensus. This morning, anyway.”

He lit a cigarette with a pocket lighter and breathed the smoke in my face. He thought it might annoy me, but it was the best thing that had happened to me so far today.

“Okay,” I said, popping a Halls into my mouth, just to keep me sane, “where do we go from here?”

“You’re the one with the mouth. Ask your questions.” Wise had obviously had a quiet word with Mickey and he was sticking me with his resentment. I guess it’s natural. I tried to think of some questions related to the investigation. It was harder than I thought.

“Mickey, where did you come into the picture?”

“I met Mr. Wise through some people he used to deal with in the States, I used to live in Buffalo, but I have relatives on both sides of the river. Part of my schooling was at a half-baked military school on the Chippawa Creek. They used to clobber us if you couldn’t bounce a dime on your new-made beds. A few of the kids and I started moving stuff across the Niagara River in a boat for this guy.”

“Above the falls?” I asked. He nodded. “That takes guts,” I said. “Lije Swift operates a speak down in St. David’s. He used to run a fast boat during Prohibition.”

“Thanks for the lesson in local history. Ain’t it colourful? Do you have questions to ask me or what?”

“So that means you’ve been with him for how long? Five years? Ten?”

“He bought me from the guy I was talking about eight years back. At first I just mixed in and helped out. There was another man doing what I do now.”

“What happened to him?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“So, when he left, you were slotted in?” He nodded again without elaboration. “There’s somebody, Mickey, who’s trying to kill your boss. It’s my job to find out who. He’s already tried a few times, but he’s only come close. Your boss is a very careful man. He looks under his bed at night and I suspect he lets you open up his mail.”

“So that’s the score,” he said, running a finger along the edge of his chin. “Why couldn’t we handle it inside? What do we need a peeper for?”

“Take that up with Wise. I tried asking him and got nowhere. My guess is that he wants a clean sweep of his whole life: business, private, past, present and future. You can’t do a clean job with an old broom.” I regretted the “old broom” as soon as it was out. Mickey winced, but kept his hands where they were.

“So that’s why you want to know about Cook? The guy before me. He met with an accident while on holiday abroad.”

“Panama?”

“Hey! Not bad. Yeah, those crazy hammerheads. But I still say I could have done a better job from inside with what I know about the operation.”

“I’m not making rules, Mickey, Wise is. I’m just trying to stay alive. This wasn’t my idea, remember?”

“So, somebody’s got Wise down for the chop.” His finger and thumb were working on the cleft at the point of his chin.

“Does that surprise you?” I asked. “Wise’s business tends to rub a lot of people the wrong way He must be on a few hit lists.” I was trying out an idea on him to see what his reaction might be.

Mickey Armstrong thought for a minute, his knuckles now were exploring the back of his right ear. “The cops want him, sure. Feds, provincials, locals. The Americans want him too. But I don’t think they want him dead. He’s no angel, but he doesn’t pull the heads off dogs and cats either. He’s living where they can see him. He’s smart, but he ain’t stealing the widow’s mite yet. They know that. They know he plays by the rules. And his games are all covered by legit operations, like his import-export business.”

“What about his business partners and competitors?”

“Everybody likes him. He doesn’t screw around with them. He leaves the heavy jobs to his key men. They take the heat if there’s a problem. They are hard guys and they get paid for solving problems without a fuss. Wise delivers on what he says he’s going to do. He keeps his word and he’s proud of it. There’s no bullshit with Wise. What you see is what you get.”

“I thought you said they hate his guts?”

“Mr. Wise is a hard businessman. He cuts no slack. You have to know what you’re doing to do business with him. But, given that, he keeps his word.”

“What about Hamilton harbour? Are the people there mad at him?”

“Shit! They’re just trying to cover their asses, that’s all. Wise gets no joy from embarrassing anybody. He doesn’t go for the blackmail lark. The Hamilton heavies have already fallen into place. There’s no sweat in Hamilton. Everybody’s on side.”

“That brings us to his family. From what I hear, there’s not much love lost. I’ve talked to his first wife.”

“Paulette? I sometimes think she’s the best of the bunch. Sure, she hates his guts until there’s somebody else coming against him. Then she’s a mother hen and the Texas Rangers rolled into one. I guess you saw that, if you talked to her?”

“She tries to protect their kid, Hart. From what I hear he could do with fewer people looking out for him.”

“He’ll never take a fall on his own as long as either one of his parents is alive. The sun shines right out of his ass. Hart is the biggest bastard I ever met, and every time he screws up Wise buys his way out. So Hart goes on messing his bed. Bigger messes. Bigger beds.”

“He could buy a fleet of sports cars with the money coming to him in Wise’s will.”

“He could buy a big chunk of the factories in England and Italy where they make them too. So what?”

“Is Hart our man? He needs the money.”

Mickey squeezed the butt of his cigarette and popped it out the window. “All I know is that I never let that one get behind me.”

“Thanks. And the girl?”

“Julie’s a lot of fun until you cross her. Wise is too cool a dude to forget that. She knows how to use a gun. Did you know that?’ She shoots with the experts.”

“So far there’s only one shot, and it missed. If she’s such a hot shot with a gun, that tends to put her in the clear.”

“Maybe she was trying to warn him, or give him a scare?”

“Could be. But whoever put that shot across his desk knew what he was doing. The slug landed in the hutch in the room where we first talked.” Mickey whistled and made a face. It didn’t mean anything in particular, just that he was processing the information. I expected a “Please wait” sign to flash across his forehead.

“Cooperman, I can’t figure you out. You said you wanted to ask me a few questions, but you’ve said more than I have. Why are you being so free and easy with the information? How do you know I’m not the bad guy? Maybe I’ve got reasons of my own for puffing Wise away for good.”

“I’ve thought of that, Mickey. It wouldn’t be the first time that a big hood was removed to make way for new blood. I guess I’m taking a chance on you. Have to start somewhere. You and Paulette seem to be firm ground. But that’s instinct talking, not my head. If my head worked better than the itch I get at the back of my knees, I might be in some safer line of work. Why don’t you do me a favour and have another cigarette?”

Mickey grinned a genuine grin and reached into his pocket. When the cigarette was going, he gave me a welcome puff in the face. “Tell me, who is there besides Dave Rogers that Wise trusts?”

“Well, there’s me. Only he just gives me the gist of things. The only time I ever had a real heart-to-heart with him was the time I found out there was somebody on the other side of the door he didn’t want to talk to in a hurry. He tells some tall tales, you know. I sometimes think that he makes up a lot of what he says. Imagine that! Him! Abe Wise!”

“Give me a for-instance.”

“Like the time he told me that he once got away with murder. I don’t mean recently in a business way, but a face-to-face sort of thing. He usually boasts that he’s never harmed a fly. That’s why he’s survived in the rackets so long. But he told me he killed and got away clear. Another time he said that he had won a sports-car rally when he was in his twenties. Hell, when he was in his twenties, he couldn’t afford to belong to the clubs that run those rallies. I know that because another time he told me how hard up he was when he was just getting started. Used to make his money with a hammer and chisel working the better-off neighbourhoods for hidden jewellery and cash. I checked out some of those neighbourhoods. Hell, if they looked good to him, he was starting below the bottom. He doesn’t look like a burglar today, does he?”

“I think you like the guy, Mickey.”

“He treats me okay. I got no complaints. He’s always behaved decent to Victoria and me. Never made a fuss when she came to live with me in the house after we got married. I think he’s a little soft on the two of us.”

“You can’t say the same about his feelings for that cop who died this week.”

“Neustadt? He hated that crooked cop. If Wise was ever moved to kill anybody, it would have been that son of a bitch!”

“Why him more than the next cop?”

“Something between the two of them. He never told me. You better ask him next time you come up to the house.”

“I’ll remember that. One more thing: what’s behind Wise’s office? I couldn’t see in the dark.”

“Just the garage. It’s a big one. Fits six cars.”

“Thanks, Mickey. You’ve been a big help.” I couldn’t stop myself shrugging after I said this. “But, you understand, it’s too early to know for sure. If you want to help keep Abe Wise alive, beef up your security at the house. Break up his routines, rearrange his schedules at the last moment.”

“I know my job, Mr. Cooperman!”

I caught the last gasp of smoke in my hungry lungs and opened the door. On parting, we each nodded politely, like we were passing in the street and weren’t sure of the other’s name.