Dead and Buried

TWENTY-SEVEN

Monday came, and with a keen sense that I had to talk to Norman Caine, who, I was guessing, packed his plans to wander the long, warm beaches of a special island, along with the big wedding cake, the long dresses and the flower girl. If he was still in town, he was probably at a hotel with his bride. In Grantham, there is only one hotel that beckons to special family events among the well-todo: the Stephenson House, which is partly owned by a friend named Linda Kiriakis. I telephoned the front desk.

“Stephenson House. Good-morning.”

“Good-morning. Is that you Stavros?”

“No, it’s Renos. Who is speaking please?”

“Renos, it’s Benny Cooperman. I was just checking up on the newly-weds. I hope that they haven’t been bothered over the weekend.” I was using a voice that pulses with concern and worry. I hadn’t lost the gift.

“They’ve had a quiet time, Mr. Cooperman. Nobody goes in. Nobody goes out. Like it should be with newlyweds, right? Your friend Bill Palmer from the paper wanted to know if they were staying here. I had my orders, so I told him they weren’t expected. Stavros took up breakfast half an hour ago.”

“Well, you might get some out-of-town papers now that the weekend’s over. I hope you can manage the security.”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Cooperman. Slowly, slowly, we are getting our security in apple-pie order. Okay, I gotta get the other phone.”

“Just checking, Renos. I’ll be talking to you. Goodbye.”

I hated to do it, but I couldn’t think of a shorter way. I drove over to the hotel, parked myself in the lobby and moved about from the coffee shop to the bar and back to the lobby again. It’s what a private investigator does best: wait. I waited through the rest of the morning and into the afternoon.

I was doing a crossword puzzle in an out-of-town paper, when I caught sight of my quarry heading for the tobacconist like a man possessed. He bought four packs of my brand and a pack of menthols. He was learning about married life and had a way to go. I let him pocket his change and get a cigarette alight before walking over to him. It looked like his first smoke in some time.

“Mr. Caine, congratulations on your marriage!”

“Oh,” he said looking back to see who had recognized him behind a pair of sunglasses, “it’s you. Thanks a lot. It’s not what we’d planned, but it’s just as legal. Nice running into you.”

“It wasn’t a coincidence, Mr. Caine. I’ve been waiting for you. I think we’d better have a talk. Ross Forbes is in custody. I think we should talk before they let him out.” Caine grinned at me, but it was without warmth.

“Why would I want to talk to you at all, Mister … Cooperman, isn’t it?”

“I think you know my name. Let’s try to be as honest as we can with one another, starting with the little things. Like Sherry knowing that Anna was going to be out of town and would miss being part of the wedding party. That must have put a crimp in her plans when she thought she’d have to get another maid of honour. But you’d just heard the news from someone who heard it from me: one of those hoods who picked O’Mara and me up at the Harding House last Thursday night. I didn’t want them bothering Anna, so I made that up. But they reported back to you. That’s how I know you tried to-Hell, it was more than an attempt! You did effectively snatch both O’Mara and me and take us to Port Richmond. Were you planning to leave us at the bottom of the harbour?”

“Cooperman, I haven’t got time for this. I’ve got to get back. I don’t want to waste my breath answering these groundless questions.”

“Have it your way, Caine. I’ve already talked to some of the others. You may end up in the prisoner’s dock alone, if the others are prepared to give evidence on the other side.”

“You’re bluffing!”

“Maybe I am, but you won’t find out standing in the draught. I suggest we sit down someplace.”

“I’ve got to get back.” His eyes moved in the direction of the elevator.

“On Thursday you were willing to risk prison to talk to me. That’s putting the most harmless construction on that episode. Now you haven’t got ten minutes.” I tried on a rather theatrical laugh and turned away.

“Look, Cooperman, I guess we can talk in the bar for a minute. I’ll have to make a phonecall, that’s all.” He walked over to the house phone and picked it up. I backed away, leaving him lots of room for explanations. It took longer that I thought it would, then he was standing looking at me again. He still resembled a big teddy bear. He was very good at disguising his well-known ambition. “You still want to talk?” he asked. We both started making our way into the bar.

The bar at the Stephenson House on a slack Monday afternoon was not a hive of activity. The bartender was polishing glasses while conferring with the solitary waiter over the Friday stock closings in the business section of the Globe and Mail. There were no customers. As soon as we came in, the paper disappeared behind the bar and the waiter came smiling in our direction. Caine ordered a Campari and soda. The waiter nodded as though this was a normal drink instead of something almost unheard of in any of the other water holes in and around Grantham. The Stephenson House was an echo of the outside world in the centre of rye-and-water drinkers. Actually, I took mine with ginger ale, when I took it at all. By the time the waiter returned with our drinks, I was breathing the smoke of a Player’s at the dark panelling of the wall, waiting for Caine to break the ice and knowing that he was waiting for me to do the same thing.

He looked sallow under a fine fuzz of neglect on his chin. He looked like a senior executive, junior grade, on a holiday. If he’d worn shorts, I wouldn’t have been surprised. “Okay,” he said, slightly more breathlessly than I was expecting, “let’s talk.” The word “talk” seemed to stab between the radar whorls emanating from both of us. He sat up straight in his chair, like I was going to strap him down and play electrician.

“You can assume for a start,” I said, smoothly, I hoped, “that I know a good deal. That will save time.”

“You’re working for Dowden’s widow. That’s no secret any more.” I let that fly over my head without comment. So what if he knows. If he was using this as ammunition against me, he didn’t have much. He was bluffing at least as much as I was. I had to remember that. “I don’t think you know as much as you let on, Mr. Cooperman.”

“I see you’re a poker player. That’s good. Let’s start with Dowden’s death. How much do I know there? I know you faked the accident. You got Carswell to help you get away once you put the body under the truck. Yes, I know he wasn’t killed on the Kinross property. You took him there in his own truck. Hell, without even spreading the mess to Niagara-on-the-Lake, I can get you into a lot of trouble.”

“You’re not even a policeman, Cooperman. What is this, some kind of shakedown?”

“That would simplify things, wouldn’t it? Just another palm held out regularly. The trouble is, I’m not in the blackmail business. And whether I do anything or not, you know you’re in a lot of trouble. The Commander’s death has pulled the tower you’ve been building down about your ears. Take the oil drums buried at the fort to begin with. We both know they don’t contain oil. A couple of years ago you might have got away with it; now anybody who can read knows what PCBs and dioxins are.”

“I think I can stonewall you, Cooperman. Anything you say against me goes double for Ross Forbes. He’s got more to gain in this than I have. And he’s the one they’ve arrested. Your friends downtown won’t like having to let Ross go when you bring me in. And who says you can make your accusations stick?”

“What about Alex Pásztory? Are you going to claim that as a misdemeanor?”

“You can’t touch me for Pásztory!” He said this loudly enough for me to form some hope that I might be able to move him with something else. He tried to distance himself from Pásztory, like Pásztory was the only dirty thing we were talking about. Why was this special? Why was he presenting the fact that he had nothing to do with Pásztory’s death as the one clean thing in his life?

“Everybody knows there was bad blood between you ever since he began writing those articles in the paper last spring. It would have been very inconvenient for him to have passed on to the cops what he found at the fort. I think Pásztory’s got a long reach, Caine.”

“Sherry and I were watching a play at the Shaw Festival theatre that Thursday, Cooperman. I was seen by hundreds of people.”

“You seem to know more about this than has appeared in the paper, Caine. As far as I know no time of death has been reported. Wouldn’t it be funny if it turns out to be the exact time you were watching the play? But then you know, it’s hard to establish the time of death as precisely as they do in books and on television. Your alibi may not have been worth the price of admission.”

Caine realized that he’d fumbled now and his face was getting rosy with anger. That was good for me. An angry man is careless, and God knows I needed every scrap of carelessness I could find.

“What do you want, Cooperman? What’s the bottom line for you?”

All of the questions in the back of my mind began coming out at once. To Caine, I must have looked like hooked carp. I tried to organize myself, impose some order and chronology on the confused and cloudy past. I thought, I should get back to Dowden. It began with Dowden. Begin there.

“I want to know what happened to Dowden at the fort that morning.”

“You don’t want much, do you?”

“I think it will all come out anyway. If you tell me now, it won’t look so bad on your record later on.”

“You say that so smugly. Like we weren’t talking about lives. My life, for instance?” I couldn’t tell whether this was the cut-off point or a preamble to further confidences. I was betting heavily on the latter.

“Come on, let’s get it over with. Dowden was killed at the fort. I’ve seen the dispatcher’s log. I know that Carswell came and went before he arrived for your breakfast meeting. Earlier, Dowden came in and drove his truck to the fort. What happened at the fort?”

“You talked to Carswell?”

“Forget Carswell, damn it! He’ll break in half if the cops raise their voices at him. He’ll dump you if he has to save himself. You can depend on that. And don’t forget O’Mara. The cops are watching his house, so you won’t have another chance to reinforce his silence. Once O’Mara talks, you’re cooked.”

Caine’s eyes moved around the room, looking for an answer that wasn’t written on any of the empty tables. “The medical evidence, Norm. It never would stand up to a serious police investigation. Come on! I thought you were a realist. The game’s over. There’s no sense to the cover-up any more.” Caine glanced up at me from the floor where his eyes had become fixed for the last few moments.

“Okay,” he said. “It happened at the fort! But what does that prove? It was still an accident wherever it happened. It was just more convenient not to have the cops wandering around the fort just then. The tunnels had just been started, but it wouldn’t take a smart cop long to see that it didn’t have anything to do with the archaeological dig.”

“There had to be more than that. Dowden was crushed in the chest area, that’s not consistent with injuries received standing up or walking away from the truck. He was on his knees. Were you behind the wheel?”

“I’m not saying anything else about that. You’re right as far as you went. I hope that makes you happy.”

“You think I enjoy this, Mr. Caine? I can think of lots of things I’d rather be doing. So, let’s just try to get through this as painlessly as possible. Who else was out at the fort and saw the accident?”

“Just-nobody. Nobody saw it but me. So you’ll have to take my word. I hope you don’t think that’s intended to be funny.”

“It’ll have to do for now; I can’t prove you’re lying. But I know you’re covering up for somebody. If they lay a murder charge against you, Mr. Caine, we’ll see how loyal you’re prepared to be. I suggest that it stops just this side of formal charge of murder.”

“I say the police can make just as good a case against Ross. I already told you that.”

“But with you, Caine, they get extras. They get Kinross. You’re the chief executive officer. They’ll say you made all the decisions about the planting and dumping of toxic waste. They’ll be able to draw a line that leads from Dowden and his knowing too much to Norman Caine. They’ll draw another line, this time running from Pásztory to Norman Caine. Dr. Carswell told you I came to see him. That put you on your guard. After more than a year, Jack Dowden was coming back to haunt you. Then Carswell saw me talking to Alex Pásztory. That was breathing too close. I was lighting a match and looking down a gas-filled barrel and you were in there.

“O’Mara will talk, you know. We can get the other witnesses to come back to tell the truth. Carswell is scared. Unreliable.”

“They only know about the yard. They can’t talk about what happened at the fort. So where’s your case?”

“The cops aren’t greedy, Caine. If they can get you for intimidating witnesses, failing to report an accident, leaving the scene of an accident, giving false information. Oh, if they want, they can cut very deeply into the early years of your marriage.”

“Christ, Cooperman! Shut up, damn you!”

“Sore spot, eh? Sorry. I was forgetting that you are on your honeymoon.”

“Look, I’m an ambitious kind of guy, right? I want to get ahead. And I’ve damn well done it! I’ve got Kinross and the holding company right in the palm of my hand. I’ve got the votes I need to get on the board of directors and-”

“You’re forgetting that the death of the Commander spoils those chances. At least you didn’t have a reason for killing him. You’re right there. The cops won’t have too much trouble bringing Ross to court on the evidence they have already. And as for the business, do you think that the city will renew its contract with Kinross after all this?”

“Who else is there?”

“I’ll bet the Environment Front people will have the answer to that one. And of course the city doesn’t have to worry. All blame will be attached to Kinross. That’s in the contract. So Paul Renner in the Sanitation Department can officially say you are beneath contempt, but never quite look you in the eye while saying it. Your bringing him into it won’t help, because legally they’re in the clear and the dioxins and PCBs are all on your head.”

“You’ve really been through this, Cooperman. I apologize. You work for your money. It’s not all bashing around in the petunias with my esteemed father-in-law.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Damn it all Cooperman, what do you want me to say? That Environment Front is doing a grand job? That we in business are grateful for their interest? That’s all bull. I’m in business to stay in business. That’s the bottom line for me. Those people are trying to put me out of work, put my whole payroll out on the street. And damn it, I’m not doing anything new! Everybody’s doing what we are. So why am I the only villain? And as for the people who get so excited about a few buried drums of chemicals and go into orbit at the loss of the rain forests down in South America, tell them they’re going to have to give up their plastic bags and spray cans and packaging. You’ll see those bleeding hearts turn to stone! Oh, you can count on that.”

“What about the kids you and Sherry plan to have? Don’t they mean anything?”

“Come on, Cooperman! Join the real world! I want to give them the best that I can, and that means position and the money to keep it up. They’ll be long gone before your beloved ozone layer disappears.”

“So you’re abandoning your grandchildren and their children? If you don’t see them, they don’t count. Is that it?”

“Look, Cooperman, we could go on like this, back and forth all day, and I still wouldn’t be convinced. From my office, the world is a rough place. You show you’re soft and you’re gone by Thursday! Every fraction of a cent I can pare from expenses is not only legitimate but the difference between sinking or floating. If I clean up Kinross, the city will enter into a deal with Millgate-Falkner or one of the others. They don’t care what we do with the rubbish; they don’t want to know about it. Everybody has a bottom line. I didn’t invent it.”

“Why did you pick O’Mara and me up?”

“That wasn’t exactly my idea. I’ve got partners.”

“Partners? Oh, not with Kinross but with Sangallo Restorations?”

“Yeah. We didn’t have much choice there.”

“That would be my old friend, Anthony Horne Pritchett. Well, well. There aren’t many pies he hasn’t a finger in. What was it he had in mind?”

“He was just going to scare you. He has a boat in the harbour down at Port Richmond. I don’t know. He said he wasn’t going to do away with you in case your records showed that you were working on our street. That would be bad for both of us, Pritchett and me.”

“So, if he was all that concerned about me and O’Mara, both potential witnesses in a case against you, why did he ice Pásztory, who could have given him just as much trouble?”

“How should I know? Do you think Pritchett phones me and keeps me informed? He’s always been a monolith. There are no handholds on him. I pass that along for nothing.”

“Yeah, I always found him lubricious in my dealings with him in the past.” I was glad that I could work that word in. Maybe it was the rye giving me courage.

“The cops think that Pásztory was finished by a professional. What’s your opinion?”

“Look, Cooperman, opinions are chicken-shit. They won’t buy paper to wrap fish in.”

“I haven’t taken your little billet-doux to the cops yet. They might take it seriously,” I said. He looked at his watch, like I was boring him. “Go placidly amid the noise and haste,” I quoted. “Do you think they’ll buy that as Pritchett’s style, Mr. Caine?”

“Shove it, Cooperman!”

“Doesn’t sound like him, does it? I never did get the pronunciation of Desiderata right. My tongue keeps tripping over the Latin. Or is it Greek?”

“Okay, you’ve had your little joke. Now get off my back.”

“Remarkable things they’re doing with lasers these days in Toronto at the Forensic Centre. They can find fingerprints just about everywhere. There are lots of tricks they can do with a bit of paper like the one we’re talking about.”

“Don’t push too hard, Cooperman. I’ve already told you plenty. The note? You say it’s a threat. I say it’s calligraphy. You won’t ride far on that whatever the forensic people say.”

“Still no comment on Pásztory?”

“I’m expected upstairs. I can’t waste any more time shooting the breeze with you.” Were we running out of gas in our conversation or was he avoiding that particular question? My money was on the latter. The latter is always a good bet. That’s why I’m still working for a living.

Norman Caine finished his Campari in a gulp, which didn’t look right with that kind of drink, and then he was on his feet. “Before you go, Mr. Caine, will you tell me this: Is there still a dimension in this I haven’t discovered yet? I’m only asking.”

“In a word, yes. Good-afternoon, Mr. Cooperman.” And he walked out of the bar towards the elevator and pushed the button.