Getting Away With Murder

FOURTEEN

The next morning I hoped that things would look better. The view from my window was not reassuring: more dull, cold weather. But the car across the street had become a steadying sign of continuity. Today was linked to yesterday and the rude awakening of the morning before that by that black Toyota. I recognized that there was a time when I had never heard of Abram Wise. That had become, in my imagination, a golden time, something to be likened to the Garden of Eden.

Anna had left hot, fresh coffee on the counter for me. I showered, shaved and dressed thinking of it. While actually drinking the coffee, I started thinking about Ed Neustadt and his Old Testament sense of justice and fair play. But Pete had suggested more than that. He spoke of a kind of craziness, some sort of sadistic fascination. That was getting me a long way from who was trying to kill Abe Wise, but I couldn’t get rid of the notion that it was important.

How could the case of a hard cop, recently dead, have anything to do with my job? If Neustadt had been the threat, then he had been rubbed out. From my point of view as a hireling of Abe Wise, the threat was over and my time as a minion of this arch-crook was about to be terminated. If I was being careful before, now I would have to be doubly careful, because Wise might find it easier to pay me off with a bullet behind the ear rather than with negotiable paper.

With the night-time hours I’d put in yesterday and the day before, I thought I would open the office late on this, the third day of the job. As a matter of fact, I’d decided to finish the pot of coffee and read McStu’s book from cover to cover. And that is what I did.

The story began as the Second World War came to an end. Sergeant Joseph Tatarski was demobilized with the called-up men in his regiment at Camp Niagara, a few miles from here. After being away from home for most of the war, Joe returned to his wife, Anastasia, his daughters, Margaret and Mary, and young son Freddy. All went well until Joe surprised a burglar one night in 1946. There was a fight and Joe was hit over the head and killed. The burglar escaped, leaving a sack of silver-plated wedding presents behind. The investigating officer, young Corporal Ed Neustadt, made a routine report to his sergeant.

Five years later, the burglary was, amazingly, repeated with a similar tragic ending. This time Anastasia, Joe Tatarski’s widow was beaten to death with a table lamp while the household was apparently sleeping. Once again Ed Neustadt, now a sergeant, was in charge of the investigation. McStu suggests, short of inviting a writ for libel, that Neustadt approached this second murder with what he already knew about the first in mind. Picking his words carefully, McStu paints a picture of a policeman discovering that in the earlier case he’d been played for a sap by young Mary Tatarski. The two burglaries ending in two murders were just too convenient except in McStu’s fiction. Neustadt was able to show that the signs of a break-in were a sham and quickly arrested Mary, then a young mother with no husband to stand up for her. Mary was put on trial, early in the new year, 1952, for the murder of her mother. The Crown was able to show a history of conflict and bad feeling that had existed in the house since the father’s death. This was exacerbated when Mary found herself pregnant and in due course gave birth to a baby girl. When the older girl, Margaret, moved away, things got worse. Mary was a wild young woman who had friends who were allowed more liberty than the old-fashioned Anastasia allowed her. Neighbours testified to having heard running arguments, as well as the baby’s cries, coming through the walls of the house. Counsel for Mary stated that the defendant had taken sleeping pills after the most recent noisy confrontation and that she was asleep when the crime occurred. The Crown, through the testimony of an expert, was successful in proving that the pills could just as well have been taken after the murder had been committed. They had apparently been taken in sufficient quantifies to suggest that Mary intended to take her own life.

The trial was short. Although the jury recommended mercy, the judge pronounced the sentence of death. The appeal, which was based on the circumstantial nature of much of the evidence, was rejected, and a few minutes after midnight on Thursday, December 18, 1952, Mary Tatarski walked to the gallows. She was the second-last woman hanged in Canada. It was typical of her bad luck that she couldn’t have contrived to be the last, which would at least have put her in the record books. She was only twenty-two.

On the face of it and judging by today’s standards, the sentence and the punishment were barbaric. But stranger things happened in the 1950s. Other celebrated cases were reopened and retried, sometimes with a change in the verdict. A few years ago Donald Marshall, a young Micmac Indian from near Sydney, Nova Scotia, was freed after spending eleven years behind bars for a murder he had no part in. Certainly there were always activists, like Duncan Harvey locally, who were interested in rehearing the Tatarski case. Edwin Neustadt called them “pinko subversives” and “bleeding hearts.” He fought all their efforts to reopen the investigation. I was beginning to get a fix on the late former deputy chief. He was a charmer, all right. The world was divided into two kinds of people: good guys and bad guys. There was no crossing over, no grey areas, no special cases. I guess, for a policeman, it would simplify things. But what about people like Wise? He has never been convicted of breaking a city by-law. He gives to charity, supports the arts, helps pay for Tannhauser whether he can sit through it or not. Lots of business people today operate in grey areas where the law can’t touch them. Such people would be shocked if you called them crooks. This was the realm of white-collar crime that someone of Neustadt’s frame of mind would have a hard time dealing with. Subtlety and ambiguity are hard to judge on a scale from zero to ten. It’s hard to get a fix on the bottom line. I suddenly imagined Neustadt’s tombstone with the following epitaph engraved upon it:

Never indicted

I was saved from more speculation by a blast from the telephone. Picking it up, I heard a voice with a rasp in a high register. “Mr. Cooperman?” the voice began. It didn’t sound familiar. It was a woman, but beyond that, I was stumped.

“That’s right. Who is this?”

“I’m calling from the office of the Registrar, Ontario Provincial Police.”

“Uh-huh. What can I do for you?”

“I’m looking at a list of recent complaints against you,” she said. “You are well aware of the fact that the Registrar takes a dim view of licensees bringing this office into bad repute. If there is a repetition of the complaints we have been getting, we may have to convene the licensing committee.”

“This sounds a lot like a threat. My licence isn’t due to be renewed for a year. And why are you calling me at home to tell me this? I have an office.”

“All licences are subject to review, Mr. Cooperman. It’s a question of maintaining standards.”

I told her to put what she had told me in writing. They hate doing that. I’ve used the ploy before and it always works like a charm. I would have liked to suggest that she give the name of my client to the active departments of her OPP office, but it seemed both futile and disloyal, so I kept my mouth shut.

I tried to imagine where the complaints were coming from. The names Shaw and York quickly came to mind. I was getting in the way of a profitable scam and they, quite rightly, resented it. There’s nothing in the rule book that says that the bad guys can’t enlist the help of the law. After all, wasn’t I going to be paid off in money earned in all sorts of ways I didn’t want to know about?

I was just beginning to think about lunch, when there was a knock on the door. When I got there, I saw two familiar faces. “Are we going for a ride? Have I been summoned?” I said to one of them. “I thought you preferred the early morning, Mickey.” I backed away from the door to allow Mickey and Victoria Armstrong to come in. Victoria’s eyes ran fingers over all my dusty surfaces.

“I was just checking up on you. Cooperman. You didn’t go to your office in the middle of the week, so I wanted to see if you were being cute with me. Phil Green’s taking the afternoon off. He has to go to the dentist. So, I’m the guy with the short straw. You met my wife the other night, right?” Victoria and I shook hands and momentarily achieved eye contact.

“I just came along in case there’s a chance to do some shopping,” she said. “Mickey’s schedule makes for a rough marriage, Mr. Cooperman. Mr. Wise treats us well, but he often forgets that Mickey needs time off.”

She was dark and tidy-looking, with large brown eyes and nice skin. Her heavy wool skirt and brown boots told me about the weather outside and the pastels of her blouse and sweater told of the spring we were expecting every hour.

“I was thinking of lunch,” I said. “Any takers?” The Armstrongs looked at each other and then Mickey grinned.

“I guess we have to eat somewhere. And you’re on expenses.”

“Aren’t you? Or is this bodyguarding included in normal duties?”

We didn’t go to the Di, or to the Wellington Court, but to the restaurant downstairs, which was now called Beit al Din, a Middle Eastern place with travel posters showing off the beauties of Lebanon: vistas of crusader castles, glimpsed through Gothic arches, the cliffs of the Beirut seafront. I had been keeping an eye on this place ever since the Hungarian restaurant that it displaced closed down. The location had seen half a dozen unsuccessful attempts at exotic cuisine. This was the first to survive for more than a year. A waitress, who echoed what Paulette must have looked like in her bosomy prime, gave us a big smile and seated us near the back. Neither Mickey nor I could make head or tail of the menu, so Victoria ordered for all of us.

“Are you always called Victoria?” I asked. “It seems such a formal name.”

“Believe it or not, I was named after Queen Victoria. My father wanted only the best for me. Before I met Mickey, my friends called me Vicky, but the combination of Mickey and Vicky was too much. And Mickey refuses to go back to Mike or Michael. When I was in high school I envied a girl with the same last name as me. She was called Lally Tate. Isn’t that marvellous? Wouldn’t you die to be Lally Tate? Are you always called Benny?”

“I hate to admit it, but I can’t get anybody to make it just Ben. I can live with anything, even Benjamin, but I’m hoping one day to meet somebody who’ll take a shine to just Ben.”

“I’ll try it on,” Victoria said just as the plates began to arrive. First there was a beige-coloured paste called “hummus” which went well with the flat pita bread, then came some vegetable salads with rice and tomatoes, followed by pieces of grilled chicken on skewers. There was some eggplant too. When I asked what that was, she gave me a name that sounded like a sneeze.

“Where did you learn about this stuff?” I asked her. Victoria threw her head back and laughed.

“I may have been born here, Ben, but I have lived all over the place. There’s a place in Old Greenwich, north of New York, where I used to live, with the same menu. There are dozens of places like this in Toronto and New York. My first husband was a broker and, because of his clients, he enjoyed all the varieties of Middle and Far Eastern cooking. Do you know the cookbooks by Madhur Jaffrey?”

I told her that I hadn’t run across them. Then she started in on traditional Jewish cooking and I found I knew as little about that as I did about the food we were eating. “I eat simply,” I said. “Soup, a sandwich. Basic fare. That’s me. Were you always interested in food?”

“I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t. The kitchen is the heart of a home, for me anyway. I’ve always loved to cook.” That seemed to stop further conversation in the food line so we ate in silence for a few minutes.

“How did you two get together?” I asked, wondering what kind of answer I might get. They both answered at the same time.

“Victoria came to cook for-”

“Mickey was working-” We all laughed, attracting the attention of the waitress, who smiled at our pleasure.

“Mr. Wise had business in Old Greenwich, and when he heard …” Victoria looked at Mickey for help.

“Victoria’s husband was in a boating accident. They never found him.”

“I’m sorry,” I said inadequately.

“So, I came to Grantham to live,” she said, and added, taking Mickey’s hand in hers, “and I haven’t regretted it.” Mickey moved in the direction of a blush, but he strangled it at birth.

“I dug that slug out of the hutch in Mr. Wise’s office, Benny,” Mickey said, biting into a round, brown meatless meatball. “It was a smallish bullet like a.32.”

“Is the glass in that room anything special?”

“Antique, like the rest of the house. But, I see what you mean: it wasn’t bullet-proof, just ordinary window glass.”

“Wise talked to me of two attempts on his life: the shot and then the steering on the Volvo. Were there other attempts that you know about?”

“We watch him pretty well,” Mickey said. “Victoria does all the cooking in the house. Next door, the boys manage on their own. Fast food, mostly pizza.”

“Give them their due, Mickey. They fry up a storm for breakfast.”

“When they’re not filling their faces, they’re a good team.”

“I didn’t get a very good look at where exactly the house is in relation to the rest of the nearby houses. Do you have a good view of traffic in and out?”

“That’s why Wise picked that place. Dorset Crescent is a dead-end street. No through traffic. There’s always a lookout checking who’s coming and going.”

“Mr. Wise is pretty strict about the lookout, Ben,” Victoria said. The mail gets delivered next door, where one of the boys sorts it and checks odd-looking parcels.”

“There’s no way a letter bomb could get through to Mr. Wise,” Mickey added. “And if anything came to his uptown office, they’d catch it there.”

“Tell me about uptown, Mickey.”

“The legit operation. Wisechoice Import and Export.”

“Gotcha. You were talking about security?”

“He doesn’t even use the Volvo all that much. But if he uses any of the cars, that’s the one he likes to drive.”

“So, whoever it is, it’s someone who knows Mr. Wise very well,” Victoria said, echoing the thought percolating in my head.

Soon the bouncy waitress brought coffee served in little brass ewers. Victoria caught me admiring the bounciness and we both smiled. The coffee inside the ewers was sweet and thick. I liked it. The meal was rounded off with some cake made of puff pastry with green pistachios bathing in honey. I liked that too. Anna would have enjoyed the meal. I promised myself to suggest the Beit al Din the next time it was my turn to be inventive.

“Was there a special reason you wanted to see me again, Mickey? So soon after our chat in your car?”

“Mostly I just wanted to get out of the house. He’s been hell to live with since that cop’s funeral yesterday. He tore my head off six or seven times. I was glad Phil got an abscess.”

“What is the link between Wise and Neustadt? That’s what I want to know.”

“It’s just cops and crooks. Nothing strange about that,” Mickey said.

“No, there’s something more. I’ll be damned if I know what it is.”

“The deputy chief could never make a charge stick against Mr. Wise,” Victoria put in. “He says that all the time. But why would that make Mr. Wise angry? I see what you mean, Ben.”

“It’s a puzzlement, all right. Mickey, was Mr. Wise upset about Neustadt before his death?”

“Mr. Wise hated that cop’s guts. He hasn’t talked about it lately, but after Neustadt’s accident, you couldn’t shut him up.”

“I can vouch for that,” Victoria said.

“If Wise felt that bad about Neustadt, Mickey, he could have done something about it. Would you know about that?”

Mickey took a moment to answer, sipping his coffee. “I’m his regular link with his usual people. But, he has a phone in his office and one by his bed. He knows people who do that sort of work. Beyond that, I can’t say.”

I couldn’t quite get over this sudden glasnost in the air between me and Mickey. Maybe his wife had softened him. I guess it made better sense keeping an eye on me from across a table. It beat sitting in a chilly car or trying to keep out of the wind on St. Andrew Street. From my point of view, I didn’t mind sitting opposite them. It’s easier to study faces close up. And Victoria’s face, which I hardly had noticed that early Monday morning, was beginning to grow on me. She was attractive in a more subtle way than the waitress, and concealed her age very well. She had a style of dressing all her own. Sort of arts-and-crafts school. I doubted whether Julie had been giving her fashion tips.

When they said goodbye, I thought that it was at last time to go to work.