Dead and Buried

EIGHTEEN

The sun was going down over the city. In fact, except where you got an east-west street running straight to the horizon which wasn’t often in downtown Grantham, it had gone down already. I found the car, dusty from blowing leaves and neglect, behind my office. As I opened the door and sat down behind the wheel, I remembered the warning contained in my personal copy of the Desiderata. Had anybody ever been blown up in his car in this town? I tried to remember. I wasn’t sure what to expect as a follow-up, when it became plain that I didn’t know how to mind my own business. I thought of Alex Pásztory and turned the key in the ignition. The motor caught, and for a minute drowned out the racket of the textile mill on the edge of the canal below me. I turned the car in the limited space, then climbed up the narrow alley to join the one-way traffic of St. Andrew Street.

It was still light enough so that I didn’t have to turn my headlights on as I headed towards Junkin Street for a return visit. Kids were playing in a great heap of leaves at the corner of Geneva when I began looking for a parking place. I left the car on Geneva nearer St. Patrick than Junkin and walked back the block to the O’Mara house. I couldn’t see anyone behind me, but what did I know? If I was following me, I’d keep out of sight too. Except for the school kids jumping in the leaves below the black trunks of the old maples, the neighbourhood was quiet as I walked up the steps and knocked on the door.

“He ain’t here!” Mrs. O’Mara was again playing protective games. I pointed out the car in the driveway and her defence broke down. I was glad her boy Rory was out peddling dope to school kids or whatever he did to amuse himself between meals. Against very little opposition, I pushed the door open the rest of the way and she retreated ahead of me. A flushing sound from the back of the house told me that there were at least three of us present. In a moment, O’Mara arrived upon the scene with a blue towel in his hands.

“You again!” he said, throwing me a look that tried to make me feel guilty of breaking our bargain. “I told you, Mr. Cooperman, that I can’t go around blabbing all day just because Irma Dowden wants to waste her insurance money on a rent-a-cop! I want nothin’ to do with you. You already got me more heat than I want.”

“There’s going to be more heat from now on, Mr. O’Mara, not less. And it won’t be coming from me. I saw what you’ve been hauling for the City Yard to the fort. All of that’s going to come out before long. Now we both know what was in those oil drums.” O’Mara’s expression changed. He sent his wife out to get some beer from the kitchen.

“Shit, Cooperman, I don’t want Dora knowing about this. Where’d you leave your tact and good manners, eh?”

“I can listen anywhere you say, Brian. It’s your call.”

He thought about that. He was just about to speak when Dora arrived back with two unopened bottles, no glasses and a rusty opener. I think she was beginning to like me. “What about the Men’s Beverage Room at the Harding House on James at King, say, seven-thirty?”

“How do I know you’ll be there?” I asked, getting a lot of foam in my mouth from the warm beer.

“I’ll meet you. I’m tellin’ you I’ll be there, okay?”

“If you let me down, I’ll come looking for you up the hill, Brian.”

“Yeah, I figured you might. I’ll be there like I said. After supper. Seven-thirty.”

I took a polite deep swig of the beer in my hand, smiled at Dora and bowed out of the house. I wasn’t used to threatening people. I never thought I’d be any good at it. In this case, I was pretty sure that he would show up, unless Dora tied him to the television set and had Rory lock the door.

Nobody had thought to slash my tires. The car started, and I treated myself to a good meal at the Diana Sweets. They had vegetable soup and a sandwich on special, with coffee thrown in. I tried to kill the hour or so I had in hand with a bum-flattened copy of the Beacon I’d found in my booth. I worked my way through it from the front page to the obituaries. It is always a lift to read the obits and discover that I’m still numbered among the living. After I got my change from the cashier, I wandered up St. Andrew, bought a fresh pack of cigarettes before I discovered that I had most of the present package unsmoked in my pocket. I selected a cigarette, like they say in books, and rounded the corner of James Street.

The Men’s Beverage Room at the Harding House was a throwback to less enlightened days when the sexes were separated for the purpose of drinking. The room next door was set aside for “Ladies and Escorts.” It was a fancier room, its walls were decorated and its floor got swept more regularly than in the Men’s. I was sitting at a round table for two with my back to the service bar at about twenty-five after seven. I was so sure O’Mara would show, I’d ordered the waiter to cover the table with draft beer so that now it looked like the other tables in the dim, smoky room. The beer was cold and I sipped one while watching the waiter move in and around the tables, dropping glasses, removing empties and giving change. He looked like a ballet dancer with an apron full of silver instead of a tutu.

I’d been there long enough to start worrying what I’d do with all this draft beer in case O’Mara didn’t show up. Pubs don’t stock the equivalent of doggy bags for customers who order more than they can swallow. This problem was developing nicely when O’Mara pulled out the chair opposite me and sat down. He was wearing a quilted hunting jacket over a plaid shirt. The cap he was wearing had been made for a sportscar driver, but it was a close enough equivalent of the traditional working-class cloth cap to pass if you didn’t look too closely. It’s funny about clothes and class. I’ll have to think about that some time.

“You didn’t think I was coming, I’ll bet,” he said, lifting the nearest beer to his mouth.

“I wasn’t making bets either way. I just know we’ve still got lots to talk about. For instance, if you have the bad luck to get hit by a big truck, you get you pelvis crushed, not your chest. You don’t get your spine damaged where Jack’s was. So that means the story of Jack being on his feet when the truck hit him is made of rhubarb, Brian.” O’Mara was studying my face, looking for what was going on inside, I guess. He put his first empty glass down hard on the red Formica top of the table. “Another thing, Brian: if a Freightliner nudged me with all of its weight, I’d end up pinned against the wall I was standing against. I wouldn’t slide under the truck. Not unless the truck was in gear and there was somebody behind the wheel to put it in reverse.”

“You’re crazy if you think that!”

“Yeah, then I’m crazy then. And you and the other witnesses weren’t paid off to dummy up and say what they were told to say at the inquest. Maybe Rory paid his own way to hockey camp. What do you take me for, Brian? Some kind of idiot who can’t count his feet? O’Mara, if you can’t tell talk from bullshit, stay away from me. And when they find you in a ditch along Old Number Eight because you knew too much, I’ll laugh my head off.” I pretended that I was getting up. We both thought about Pásztory without saying his name out loud.

“Sit down, Mr. Cooperman,” he said. “I didn’t know you were into this this deep. I gotta be careful, you understand?”

“Nobody ever rubbed out anybody who shared a secret with enough other people, Brian. Right now, you’re hot. With Pásztory out of the way and what he’d been digging up about Jack Dowden’s death probably in their hands, you’re on deck, kid. Don’t neglect your life insurance.”

“Okay, I’ll level with you. Is that what you want?”

“It’s your only hope.” O’Mara nodded sadly. He cold see I had a point. “To begin with,” I asked, trying not to waste the opportunity, “what did you really see up there?”

“Nothin’. We didn’t see nothin’ movin’. He didn’t scream. Jack was under the cab of the tractor. You could see he was done for. We pulled him out and Puisans ran to get the doctor.”

“Carswell.”

“Yeah, he’d been waiting to have breakfast with Mr. Caine, but Caine didn’t show up.”

“When did he come on the scene?”

“Caine? Oh, he didn’t get there until around ten-thirty, which was late for him. By then the ambulance had gone and the cops were all over the yard like a tent, takin’ pictures and measuring stuff.”

“Who put you up to the testimony you gave?”

“Webster. He was in charge of the yard, chief dispatcher. He checked everything in and out from the office at the front of the yard.”

“Keep going.”

“He ran the place, made up our cards. What more is there to say?”

“Find it.”

“He said it would be best if we got our stories straight. He said anybody could see it was an accident, so where’s the harm in saying so.”

“So, you were just doing your duty?”

“Come off it, Cooperman! I’m tellin’ you what I’m tellin’ you.”

“You’re just beginning. Keep going; it gets easier.”

“Webster was the guy we had to deal with, so what were we goin’ to tell him? Webster was callin’ the shots. We just said what he told us to say.”

“So he knows where the bodies are buried, eh?”

“Knew, Cooperman, knew. Webster ain’t with us any more. He got the Big C and he died just after the Civic Holiday in August. So, go ask him some questions.”

O’Mara emptied another glass of beer and started on a third. I’d got to within a swallow of the end of my first. For me, that wasn’t bad. The cold of the coming winter crept along my bones as I picked up the second draft. Maybe I was coming down with something.

“So, although you admit to no inside knowledge about it, you’re saying that the Kinross brass might have had a good reason for arranging an accident for Jack Dowden.”

“You said that, not me!”

“Would you swear that there’s nothing to what I’ve said?”

“Well, you know, anything’s possible.”

“That’s right. Unfortunately, it isn’t proof of anything. Now tell me about the fort.”

“You were in my mirror all the way from the City yard. I could have blown the whistle on you.”

“But you didn’t. That’s why I didn’t come blundering in the front door right after you.” O’Mara nodded. He’d been thinking about that. He finished another glass, still looking as uncomfortable as when he had sat down. He was sitting like his back hurt and it was driving him crazy.

“What kind of garbage are you getting from the city and why are you burying it there?”

There, I’d said it. I’d asked the big question. All O’Mara had to do was hit me on the nose or answer. He compromised by wetting his lips with his grey tongue. He had another half-draft and put the glass down again. Soon he was moving the glass around his end of the table, breaking up the wet rings of condensation and spilled beer. At last he lifted his eyes and looked me in the eye.

“The city has these cross-walk lights,” he said. “The boxes that control the lights are full of PCBs. When they wear out or get broken, they have to go somewhere. There are other things, too, other toxic garbage. The city gets us to dump it like we get rid of a lot of other stuff.”

“But that other stuff doesn’t all get buried in the new earthworks of Fort Mississauga.”

“Right. We dump a lot of the liquid-the metallic stuff-into the lake from there. It’s the perfect spot and nobody even guesses we have a pipe going into the lake. And that close to the river, if they spotted our stuff, they’d think it came from up the river someplace.”

“So the fort’s the main dumping spot?”

“Yeah, but we also store stuff there. Stuff that’s too hot to keep in the yard. We sometimes rig a pig there if we’re selling fuel oil over the river.”

“Pig? What are you talking about?”

“It’s an inflatable plastic bag, about the size of a swimming-pool liner. You fill it up with toxic garbage after sticking it into an empty tank of a big tanker, then you fill up the rest with regular bunker C, stove oil, domestic fuel oil or diesel fuel oil. It doesn’t matter, as long as you’ve got a buyer on the other side. You know the scam from the papers last spring. They nearly put us out of business. We had to keep our noses clean for a while because they tightened up the border inspection on the few points they didn’t close down.”

“So this pig would get your PCBs through customs?”

“Yeah. Once on the other side, we would break the pig with steel rods and let the two substances mix.”

“It would have served you right if the damned stuff exploded.”

“Hey, Cooperman, I was just following orders. Besides, PCBs are very stable and don’t combine with anything at low temperatures. Like, they’re inert.”

“Gee, I wonder what all the fuss is about! Have you ever heard of dioxin? Did Jack Dowden ever mention TCDD? There’s a whole alphabet soup of garbage you’ve been chauffeuring around the countryside! Didn’t it ever bother you? Damn it, O’Mara, your grandchildren could be born with their belly-buttons where their chins should be. You should read up on this stuff you’re messing with.”

“Kinross has always treated me right, Cooperman. I’ll say that for them.”

“Well, you can’t make a separate peace with them. We’re all drinking out of the same trough. Same trough Webster was drinking from. I’ll bet Kinross sent a big wreath to the funeral. They’ll do as much for you.” I let him think about that for a moment, while I went back over the list of questions I had stored in my head. When I found a new line of inquiry, I interrupted his drinking again. “The fort’s only been available for a year and a few months. What did you do before that?”

“There was the old Hydro fill near Niagara Falls. That landfill is full of stuff. There’s another twenty or thirty drums under the ornamental floral clock on the Niagara Parkway. The place is dotted with dumping sites. You want me to draw you a map?”

“Why are the hands of the clock in the Kinross yard?”

“A truck from Sangallo left it there. Sangallo has been keeping the damn thing going for the tourists to see.”

“I get it. You even have to set out the plants and water them.”

“That’s Sangallo. We don’t want strangers digging under the petunias, if you know what I mean.” We were steadily progressing through the beer on the table. He was doing better than I was, and I was reaping the rewards.

“Tell me about Sangallo,” I asked, picking up my third glass. “I know the head man’s Harold Grier.”

“Yeah, Grier is the front man all right, but there’s somebody else.”

“Like who?”

“I don’t know, but I get the feeling-it’s just a feeling-that Grier’s fronting for-maybe it’s the mob, I don’t know. What I’m saying is that Grier may sign the cheques, but I think there’s somebody standing behind his chair.”

“You mean like Phidias is behind Kinross?”

“Naw, that’s all in the open. This is more secret like.”

“So you mean that this other element is working at the fort too?”

“I thought you were listening. Sangallo is the whole show in Niagara-on-the-Lake. We just drive and deliver.”

“I thought Sangallo did historical restorations.”

“Yeah, like an iceberg floats on the top of the water without blue ice underneath going down maybe a couple of hundred feet.” O’Mara wiped his mouth on the cuff of his right sleeve and, at the same time, shifted his haunches. “I’ve got to get rid of some of this beer,” he said getting up. “You want chips when I come back, Mr. Cooperman?” His chair squawked against the tile floor and I watched him weave his way through the clutter of tables to the john at the far end of the room.

He was still holding things back, O’Mara, but he had moved his lines of defendable territory from our earlier talk. If he would help, maybe the Jack Dowden case could be reopened. If he wouldn’t come forward himself to be a witness, at least he might be able to point me in the right direction so I could find some proof myself.

The balance of the beer on the red-topped Formica was now tipped in favour of the empty glasses. The waiter danced over, removed the empties and without asking replaced them with amber reinforcements. I put a few bills in the waiter’s hand and he dipped into his apron for some change. When I gave him a tip, it was pocketed silently.

O’Mara was taking his time in the men’s room. I’d noticed other renters of the Harding House beer going to and coming from the toilet, some of them ignoring the suggestion of the management that clothing should be adjusted before leaving the room with all the porcelain fixtures. At last, I got up and walked between the tables myself. I was developing a need of my own, but it was less than serious. Mainly, I was beginning to worry about my friend O’Mara.

He wasn’t in the john. He wasn’t standing at either of the urinals, and the only occupied cubicle produced a stranger after I waited two minutes. O’Mara was gone.