Getting Away With Murder

NINETEEN

Anna was away early: signs of her after-breakfast cleaning around the sink were in evidence. A half-pot of coffee was inviting me to start the day. There was a container of bran for me to pour on top of my Harvest Crunch.

In the shower I thought about all of the characters I had met the night before. It was a peep-hole into another world, a world that my father should know a lot about, if he had ever read a fashion magazine. But he hadn’t. His knowledge of women’s ready-to-wear came not from Vogue or Women’s Wear Daily, but from his pals the manufacturers along Spadina Avenue in Toronto. Every other Wednesday, he drove to the provincial capital to buy stock and play a few hands of gin rummy with his cronies. After a corned beef sandwich at Shopsowitz’s Deli, he would visit the factories and have a shot of schnapps in a showroom before a few more hands of cards. This was the world of fashion as he knew it. To him it was all merchandise. It could have been men’s wear or hats as far as he was concerned.

At least Pa knew more about the business than I did, I thought, while I was rinsing the shampoo out of my hair. It had fed us and clothed us for over twenty years. He had sent Sam through university and medical school. He would have anted up for me to go to college too if I’d had the inclination. He made a good living for a high-school drop-out and knew as much about the fashion business as he had to know in order to be a success. In a place like this, that wasn’t much. Me, all I knew about the business was how to make coat and suit boxes from the pile of flat cardboard Pa kept under the coat rack. Sam and I both got our first taste of the commercial world making tops and bottoms for a penny each on lazy Sunday afternoons while Pa was going over his accounts or drawing up an ad for the Beacon.

I was no reader of Vogue either. Anna was and she had told me that Morna McGuire was not just a model, but a supermodel, which meant that she could make good her boast that she wouldn’t get out of bed for less than ten thousand dollars.

After cleaning my teeth a second time to get the bran out, I walked to the office. My service had messages from Dave Rogers and Major Colin Patrick for me. Both of them would talk to me, one at eleven and the other at noon. I put in time working on my interim report for Wise.

Once again I was sitting face to face with Dave Rogers. Only this time we were perched on bales of rusted eighth-inch wire in his yard off North Street. The sign outside read “C. Rogers amp; Sons: Steel Fabricators.” Earlier, we had been walking up and down the aisles or paths that led through the canyons of metal heaps. It was filled with every sort of metal imaginable, except maybe lead for toy soldiers. But who knows? Along the right-hand side of the path through the rusty forest were bales of wire: bright red copper, green, older copper, oxidized steel hoops looking like great balls of knitting wool gone off a little in the rain. On Dave’s side were stacked shoulder-high piles of H-beams. In and out of the pile three or four feral cats wove their way looking for vermin. Dave picked a place to perch. He lit up a cigarette and I found a final Halls at the end of a package.

“I told Wise I’d talk to you once. I didn’t say I’d have you for lunch and dinner too. Are you going to phone up every time you run into a problem? What kind of detective are you?”

“We’re talking about your childhood friend’s life here, Mr. Rogers.”

“Call me Dave for Christ’s sake and let’s get through with this.”

“Tell me about Neustadt.” He wasn’t in a hurry to give me a pat answer. I could afford to wait.

“He wouldn’t tell you?” I shook my head.

“He told me a few little things,” I said, “but nothing important. Why was Abe so glad to see the last of that cop? Why did he practically dance on his grave at the funeral?”

“You saw that? I can believe it; I can believe it.”

“Good for you. Now, let me have the truth.”

“Abe, you know, is a self-made man. Nobody gave him a handout. Nobody handed him a family legacy. Abe’s proud of that. But that cop, Neustadt, gave him a break when he was still a kid. Neustadt gave him a second chance when he was pinched with a pillowcase full of silver knives and forks. They had him dead to rights, but Neustadt turned him loose. Anybody else and Neustadt would be remembered with honour and thanks. Ha! Not Abe Wise! Wise hated that. He thought the bum was soft. He couldn’t find a good thing to say about him. Can you beat that?”

“It still doesn’t explain the intensity, Dave. All that happened back just after the war. How much baggage are you still carrying around from the fifties? Not much, I’ll bet.”

“Oh, I always thought that Neustadt had him on the carpet for a while, gave him a bad time, scared the shit out of him, then let him go.”

“I guess … I guess. Still …”

“Who is it you’re going to hate if you’re Abe Wise? Somebody who shafted you or somebody who gave you a break?”

“He ever talk about it?”

“He hit that dud note a lot at the time, but after that he never mentioned it again. It was Abe on the ropes, Abe down for the count He wanted the earth to open up and swallow that cop. It embarrassed him.”

“But is it believable that he’d hate the man who let him go?”

“Not you, not me, but Abe? What good is a self-made man if he had help?”

“He could have had one of his boys put him in his place.”

“I’ll bet he thought about it. Boy, I’ll bet he did.” Dave put his butt out on the top of an I-beam and we both got up. There was a rusty stain on the back of his coat and, I noticed later, on the seat of my trousers. We walked in silence, thinking.

“We better turn here. There’s nothing up that way but railroad tracks my old man bought when they got rid of the streetcars. Could never sell ’em; too much cement attached.”

“You hear how Neustadt died?”

“Yeah, it was an accident in his driveway.”

“His car settled from a hydraulic jack onto his chest.”

“Jesus! That’s tough.”

“How does a hydraulic jack come down on you, Dave? Neustadt would have had to have ten-foot arms to turn that trick on himself. And they don’t release on their own.”

“Jesus!”

“Would Abe have done that, Dave? Just to be free of him?” Dave thought about that while we came down the aisle towards the yard hut. At last he shook his head:

“Naw. You couldn’t get me to believe that. Abe’s not the type. Look, he’s been in the rackets for nearly fifty years. He’s made his bundle over and over again. He’s been into every crooked kind of business you can think of. But, and I say ‘but,’ not once in all that time did he even a personal score. He had a lot of guys sore at him and Abe as mad at them. But not once did he ever turn it into a hit. It’s not his way.”

“Maybe one of the boys thought he was doing Abe a favour. Especially if Abe still sounded off at Neustadt. Ever see that movie Becket? Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole? O’Toole’s the king, you see, and Burton’s a bishop. And Burton’s handing O’Toole a lot of grief because he doesn’t want church law to give way to civil law. Finally, when the king’s had it up to here, he shouts out: ‘Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?’ Now he later claims that he didn’t mean it, that he was just shooting his mouth off, but four knights heard him say it and they rode out of town and did the job expecting a handsome reward. They didn’t get it.”

“Mickey wouldn’t go off half-cocked like that. And he’d never let any of the boys under him get out of hand. No, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree there, Cooperman. You want some coffee? I think there’s some fresh-made in the pot.”

We entered the shed and Dave Rogers poured coffee from a cracked Silex into a pair of blue enamel cups.

“You know,” Dave said, “when you think of us, Abe and me, it takes a lot of explaining. I’ve always played it straight down the line and Abe, well, Abe never did see the line, if you know what I mean. Take the case of Julie and Bernie.”

“Who?”

“Abe’s daughter and my middle son, Bernie. Bernie was Julie’s second husband. After she left that painter she married to get away from Abe. I thought that Julie and Bernie would get along fine. He had everything the painter lacked … but that wasn’t enough. She wanted more, and this fellow Long she married next, he couldn’t give it to her either. Now she’s playing with a French magazine publisher, who needs Abe’s money. Funny, eh?”

“I don’t think I follow you, Dave. How do Julie’s bad marriages figure in this?”

“Normally, you’d think there’d have been some friction. Pressure on me, pressure on Bernie. But no. Abe didn’t get involved. Our friendship was just as solid after the divorce as it was before Julie and Bernie stood under the khupe together. Isn’t that a remarkable thing?”

“I guess so,” I said.

“It’s like Abe’s got everything organized into separate boxes. And the Julie and Bernie box doesn’t get confused with the old Dave Rottman box, which is one of his older boxes. Funny.”

“I see what you mean.”

“Like his criminal activities don’t get in the way of his going to the opera ball. He even goes to the Policemen’s Ball! How do you like that?”

Together we sipped coffee while looking out the window at school kids coming down North Street. It must have been noon hour and I had an appointment again for lunch. I told Dave I had to go, and he lifted his huge bulk from the grip of a swivel armchair and walked me to the car. He was almost friendly.

The Sally Ann worked out of several offices and a church in Grantham. There were listings under Family Services, Correctional and Justice, and Hostel at locations on Church, Lake and Niagara streets. When I began my search for the Sally Ann officer who had recited Neustadt’s eulogy, I took a stab at the top number and was quickly shifted about until I was talking to Major Colin Patrick. I’d agreed to pick him up at the Corps, which turned out to be a church with a tin roof not far from Shaw’s antique-car lot on Niagara. As he waited for me on the front steps of the church, talking to another officer, I remembered his ruddy face from the funeral. In their navy blue uniforms with red tabs at the collar, the men looked striking against the wooden door of the church. I kept the motor running and watched the puffs of conversation across the street. After three minutes by the car clock, they shook hands and parted. No salutes. Patrick, who had seen me at the curb, came right over and got in the front seat. We shook hands and he buckled up.

“I haven’t got more than forty or fifty minutes, Mr. Cooperman. There’s a place down the street where we can go, if you don’t mind sandwiches.” He gave me directions and I found a parking space behind Paul’s Open Kitchen. Inside, Paul and two assistants were handling the noon-hour traffic. The major ordered a bowl of soup and a tuna sandwich on brown. I joined him in the soup and ordered my usual chopped egg on white with a glass of milk. The milk came in a carton.

“Now, I’m not clear what this is all about, Mr. Cooperman. Perhaps, to save time, you can tell me what it is you want.” I told him, without mentioning my client, that I was looking into the Tatarski case, which didn’t seem to surprise him. I told him that I was aware of Deputy Chief Neustadt’s letter to the Beacon and that I was examining all aspects of the case.

“I hope you know that McKenzie Stewart, the mystery writer, has just written a book on the case.”

“I’ve read it. What did you think?”

“Ed Neustadt didn’t come off very well. I think Stewart was looking for villains. It’s only natural. Terrible thing like that. If you can find a villain, then we all feel better, don’t we?”

“A kind of lightning rod for our bad feelings?”

“Exactly! Now, I knew Ed as well as anybody. I just buried him yesterday. He died a bitter, unhappy man. I tried to get him to see a psychologist that I know, but he wouldn’t. Poor Ed saw most of the things he’d loved and fought for disappear. He wasn’t one of these modern moral relativists. He wanted hard outlines, black and white. The grey areas drove him near crazy, sometimes.”

“He angered a few people over the years, I hear. Major Patrick, what was he like as a friend?”

“Ed? Well, let me see …” He took a bite of his sandwich, as though that was a thought-aiding process and began to chew like a thoughtful Holstein. “He liked camping. Liked doing the same thing year after year. He got terribly upset if our regular trailer park was full or our normal spot was taken. He’d grumble about that. He liked habits. Habits made him comfortable. Every fall he put on his storm windows and every spring he’d take them down again and stack them in his garage. Do you know anybody who still does that, Mr. Cooperman? He took a lot of pride in his cars over the years. Did a lot of the servicing of them himself. Rotated the tires, put in antifreeze, changed the oil. It was a mark of pride with him. But also habit. Take the accident. Ed must have been the only man in town under a car last Sunday. I remember the day: sunny, but cold. First Sunday in March. ‘Steal a march on spring,’ he used to say. Freddy Tait and I used to kid him about that, as much as you could ever kid Ed Neustadt. Freddy never made a dime off him, you know. He did all his own servicing. His only hobby, really.”

“Do you know anyone who hated him enough to kill him?”

“Well the Tatarski family for a start. And there were other people in other cases where Ed marched right through the evidence to where he wanted to go. Most of the Tatarskis have gone, you know. Margaret took her own life down around Sarnia. Her brother, Freddy, was raised in foster homes after Margaret died. He came back here, though. By this time he called himself Fred Tait. Made a success of himself.”

“You mean the Nuts amp;Bolts car repair garages? What was he like, Freddy Tatarski?” The major suspended his soup spoon in mid-air in front of his face, while he considered what to say. I’d eaten my sandwich first too.

“Outwardly, he was a great success, like I said. Chamber of Commerce, Businessman of the Year, school trustee. But I got to know him through his drinking. Freddy was an alcoholic. I got him to join AA. Freddy was all torn up inside. Well, who wouldn’t be after losing both parents that way and after that his sisters? Then he came to me about something else. He had his drinking stopped by then. It was his daughter, Drina, he came about. He caught himself touching her and he wanted help. He had taken a strap to her. Couple of times. Said if he didn’t hurt her, he might do something worse. Wouldn’t see a doctor about it. I did what I could. But the girl moved away. That was a problem that solved itself.”

“This Drina, she wasn’t his real daughter, right?”

“That’s how he’d brought her up, no different from his own.”

“Was he a religious man?”

“At heart he was, but if we waited on people getting religion, we’d sit idle with our arms folded. That would never do. When the Almighty comes around, you want Him to find you busy. That’s why Salvationists are always on the move, up and doing.”

“So Fred Tait was a drunk and then a child abuser? And he came to you for help when it got too much for him. I wonder why?”

“That doesn’t surprise an old Salvationist like me, Mr. Cooperman. We’re an army family. Third generation. Freddy wasn’t the first and he won’t be the last. At the Sally Ann we take life as it comes. We’ve seen it at its best and worst. Poor Freddy was neither of those: just a poor blighter who started going through the sausage machine before he was fairly weaned.”

“Where was Drina during all this?”

“She was very close to her stepfather. Used to run around his repair shop like a regular grease monkey when she was in her teens. Drina was a bright girl, did well in high school and went out of town to university. But she quit. Don’t know why. She was in Toronto and New York for a couple of years. She married down in the States. Freddy never told me the details, or I forgot. Her husband, let me see, I think he died young, and she came back to try university again. She was nearly finished her first year when Freddy got his bad news. Cancer. That’s what took him. Big man like that. He weighed less than a hundred pounds when I buried him two years ago.”

“What happened to the girl after that?”

“She nursed him for a year. Tried to cheer him up. She was a good practical nurse. After that, she went away again. Somewhere in the States, but I might be wrong there. Heard she’d remarried. She might have gone out west. No, that was somebody else. Drina was a strange girl. Very strange.”

“How do you mean?”

“Oh, I don’t think I can describe her. It was just a feeling I had about her. She reminded me a lot of her mother.”

“Freddy’s wife? Her stepmother?”

“No, Mr. Cooperman. Mary. Mary Tatarski. The one they hanged.”