Getting Away With Murder

TWENTY-ONE

As a good citizen normally, I would have let the salesmen in on what I had found in the lot out back, and then I would have telephoned 911 to inform the authorities. But I did neither one. I didn’t know how long I could keep my client’s name out of an investigation. Technically, I wasn’t being a good Boy Scout, but any investigation that didn’t trip over Abe Wise’s name in the first half-hour wasn’t going anywhere with or without me. I knew that I would tell Pete Staziak as soon as I ethically could, but there is an unwritten law about snitching on your employer. Even when he’s the biggest crook in the country. Especially when he has just received your invoice.

I got back to my car without walking by the show windows. To anyone keeping track of my movements, and who knows, it could happen, I must have looked as guilty as hell as I crossed and recrossed Niagara Street.

In the Olds, I began rehearsing a speech to be addressed to Abe Wise. It reviewed the circumstances of my coming to work for him and went on to ask how he hoped to get away first with the murder of Ed Neustadt and then with the stabbing of Gordon Shaw. He would deny it, of course, and I would … what? Resign? Hello, Cooperman! Resigning isn’t an option. Remember? “We’re not talking ‘ifs’ here,” he said that night.

So, what was I going to do? Sit tight? Keep on looking for people who wanted to see Abe’s blood on the floor? It seemed a little distant and abstract for me. I needed to talk to somebody. Where was Anna when I needed her? Off hobnobbing with her fellow historians for the whole damned weekend. This was leading nowhere. Cooperman, don’t whine! Gordon Shaw is dead, not you. You don’t even come into this. Not directly. You went to see Shaw earlier this week and again today. The post mortem examination will show that he was dead some time before your second visit to the showroom. Again I could see Shaw’s eyes. They already had the dead look. He could have been killed a short time after he left his office. A call comes in: “Will you show me that Alfa Romeo in your yard? Give me a personal demonstration?”

I parked the Olds behind the Murray Hotel and went in for a haircut. It wouldn’t hurt being seen downtown and nowhere near Niagara Street. There were two men waiting for Bill Hall’s chair. I picked up a magazine and waited.

* * *

On Chestnut Street there is a phone booth that can hardly be seen from St. Andrew. It was from there that I called 911 and told the dispatcher where to look for Shaw. I didn’t hang around to chat, but even slinking guiltily back to my office, I felt better than I had been feeling. And to hell with Wise! I wasn’t snitching on him, just telling the cops where to find the cold meat. When the phone began to ring as soon as I got behind my desk, I wondered how they had traced me so fast. But it wasn’t a call-back from 911, it was Victoria Armstrong saying that Mickey was on his way over to pick me up. I tried to ask her what was up, but she said she didn’t know.

“Mickey was waiting for me in the Volvo this time. It was parked in front of the Russell House or the Sniper’s Roost, as I liked to call it. I asked Mickey the same question I asked his wife. “Mr. Wise doesn’t send out press releases. He just told me to fetch you.” I liked the word ‘fetch’; it implied a return to where he picked me up. But I wasn’t thinking too clearly. We drove in silence out of the city and over the route I’d first travelled last Monday morning. It was prettier with the sun shining on the farms. Once or twice, I caught a glimpse of the old canal. The snow was in retreat.

Victoria was waiting at the door when we arrived. She took my coat and shrugged when I asked with a look if she knew any more about what was going on. She was wearing one of her dark peasanty woollen skirts. When I was ushered into Wise’s august presence it was into the same room where our first interview had taken place. The pine hutch, the big partners desk, the arrow-backed chairs and the little terracotta figures that pre-dated Columbus.

Wise was sitting when I came in, but quickly got up and came towards me with a wide smile and an outstretched hand. “Thank you for coming at such short notice, Mr. Cooperman.” We shook hands and he kept walking past me to the liquor cabinet. “Will you take a drink at this time of day?” He made a Scotch and water for himself and a rye and ginger ale for me. I wondered where he found that out. “I’ve read your report, Mr. Cooperman. A very impressive piece of work, given the short time I’ve given you.”

“It’s just an interim report. It doesn’t include the fact, for instance, that Gordon Shaw was murdered this morning sometime. He was the car dealer who was pressing charges against your son. You remember that Hart bought a Triumph sports car from Shaw.” I could hear the mounting anger in my voice, so I was glad when Wise broke in.

“A Triumph! You think this is about a Triumph, Mr. Cooperman? How naïve you are. But you are right to tell me. Of course, you think I’m behind it. Well, maybe I am and maybe I’m not. But we both know that Hart is involved in this and I don’t want to see any harm come to that boy!”

“That boy is nearly forty. The sooner you understand that, the sooner you’ll begin getting through to Hart.”

“I warned you last time about your free advice for troubled families. Let’s hear no more of it. I insist!”

“Why didn’t you wait until I was asleep before calling this meeting?”

“Cooperman, I’ve no time for your hurt feelings. Now shut up and listen to what I have to say.” I sat down in a chair near the liquor cabinet next to a particularly ugly Central American mask. My sitting reminded Wise that he had been left standing in the middle of the room. He pulled a chair towards me, leaving tracks in the broadloom.

“I want you to continue on this assignment. I need my head examined for this decision, but you’re the best available. Keep at it. I also want to know what you can discover about Julie’s new suitor, Santerre. I understand that you met him last night. How did he strike you?”

“That whole crowd is out of my league, Mr. Wise. I don’t understand the gaudy talk. I don’t know what they are on about to be honest. They have enough cocaine when they need it. You may know where they got it.”

“Was Julie …? Was she …?” We both got to our feet.

“I didn’t see her, Mr. Wise. But you know, better than most of us, the stuff is around for people who know who to ask.” Wise rubbed his forehead with a white handkerchief, thinking. I don’t know how long I stood there waiting for him to look up. When he did: “Phil Green will drive you back to town, Mr. Cooperman. I have a job for Mickey to do this afternoon. I hope that I needn’t remind you that it would be in your interest not to involve me in the investigation into this terrible murder of Mr. Shaw.”

“Then why remind me?”

There was a knock at the door, and I heard Victoria’s voice informing Wise that the car was just coming around to the back door. He repeated the message to me, while I was thinking of all the things I would like to put to my client before he again slipped out of reach.

“Good-afternoon, Mr. Cooperman,” he said. I didn’t see him say it, since it was addressed to my back as I was being hurried through the door in the rear. I was a back-door kind of fellow, I thought. I had the feeling that I was being frog-marched away from the facts, being returned to a life in black and white after a delicious flirtation with Technicolor.

Back home again, I soaked in a tub for half an hour, hoping that the phone would ring with some good news. It didn’t. My only consolation for the whole day was the contents of the envelope that Phil Green handed me as I got out of the car. It contained a fat cheque.

Friday-night dinner at my parents’ went off as usual. I ate an over-broiled steak that had been cooked fifteen minutes per side because Ma puts them into the broiler frozen solid. I treated myself to a movie afterwards. I was still anxious, both about the murder and about my meeting with Wise. I base this on the fact that I ate two Kit Kat chocolate bars before the feature was well started.

The Saturday paper brought the news of the discovery of Gordon Shaw’s body behind his sports car showroom on Niagara Street. Pete Staziak was in charge of the investigation and he said that he had several leads which he was following up and when there were developments he would keep the public informed. The story mentioned details of Shaw’s education, marital status, and a few of the cups and trophies he had won in races and rallies in the Niagara district during the last ten years or so.

Other news in the papers looked peculiar and irrelevant, like news from a distant country. European events were on the front page of the Beacon while The Globe’s dealt with domestic matters that formerly stayed in the closet. I went through both papers without skipping, eating up everything from the ads to the editorials. I needed all this as a spring tonic to get me up and moving again. I was spread out with the papers on the rug when the phone rang. I felt a stitch in my hip as I got up to answer it. I was feeling my years.

“Hello?”

“Benny? Pete. What are you doing?”

“I’m goofing off while Anna is spending the weekend with visiting historians up at Secord. And I’ve been reading in the papers all about my friend Pete Staziak and his latest investigation.”

“Tell you a little secret, Benny. I get help from the public. You couldn’t guess how many anonymous tips cross my desk.”

“You got a description from the salesmen?”

“Why can’t you play by the rules?”

“Sometimes, Pete, you stumble across things and you can’t wait, or get involved right then. It’s a nasty part of my business.”

“Until you lose your damned licence, Benny!”

“Sorry, Pete. Would you rather I just tiptoed away?”

“Isn’t that what you did?” he said, letting his anger show in his voice. Before I could respond, he had caught his breath and came back at me on a totally new tack. “How are you anyway, Benny?”

“I feel pretty good, considering.”

“Considering. Oh, you’ve heard, then?”

“What? I was hoping that my client, Abram Wise, might call me to answer some of the questions he keeps sidestepping whenever I see him.”

“He’s not going to phone, Benny.”

“You always were a pessimist, Pete?’

“Benny, he’s not going to call, he’s not going to write and he’s not gong to fax anybody any more The spring will come at last, Benny, but not for Abe Wise. He’s finished buttoning and unbuttoning forever. Do you get my meaning, Benny?”

“I don’t like this, Pete. I haven’t even cashed his cheque yet. Will the bank honour it, or is everything on hold?”

“Slow down. You aren’t denying that you were working for Abe Wise?”

“I’m not ashamed of work, Pete. I didn’t like the threats he gave me to take the job, but once he had my attention, he treated me fair enough. What is it you are telling me?”

“What you’ve already guessed. Your client is, even as we speak, being moved downtown where he is going to a new address in a refrigerator drawer. Wise is booked to have a post mortem first thing Monday morning. Any other questions?”

“When did all this happen? I was over there yesterday! Friday. He didn’t just sicken and die, right?”

“Right. He took a nine-millimetre slug between the eyes. That is if the piece that was on the floor did the shooting, which is the handiest possibility.”

“How did you learn about me?”

“Not from you, damn it! You might have mentioned the fact when I was talking to you on Tuesday. The housekeeper, Victoria Armstrong, gave me a list of the people in and out for the last couple of days. Not informing the authorities is getting to be a habit with you, Benny. Watch it!”

“Are you in charge of the case?”

“Until I hear I ain’t, I am. You think we should have a little talk?”

“I was just going to suggest it. Pete, does this mean we’re in the middle of a gang war?”

“If you’re lumping in the Shaw murder, you could have a point. Shaw’s not too clean when you take a close look. This we don’t need, Benny. Remember when that guy got it in the tower overlooking Niagara Falls? That was a real bloodbath. Emptied a lot of files around here. But this time, I don’t know. We got the smoking gun, but there are no prints on it.”

“When do you want to see me?”

“Gimme an hour, hour and a half, to go through some stuff. Then you better come up here to the house. You been here, right, so you can find your way. See you, Benny.” He hung up and I held onto the stinging receiver for another ten seconds or so before I put it down. Damn it! I thought, what next?

I made a single wrong turn on my way to the Wise house, but it was enough to make me later than I’d intended. There were three cop cars parked in front and Pete’s own car around back. Inside, Victoria took my coat, just like old times. Her eyes were red. She looked like she’d been through a Cuisinart, the way her hair was all over the place. I saw uniforms and lab-coated forensic people going about their business. Pete stood by the big partners desk surrounded by yellow plastic tape inviting me to stay clear of the Crime Scene. Pete was talking to Mickey and one of the uniforms. He gave me a short grin of recognition when he saw me standing beyond the tape. After a few minutes he climbed over the plastic and came towards me, passed me and went on, past a view of a big, well-equipped kitchen, to a large TV room I hadn’t seen before. It too was a show-off location for little brown clay figures, paintings and wall-hangings. Victoria was there with Phil and Sidney. Syl had been taken downtown, I was told later, for questioning about an unrelated matter. Victoria slipped me a smile, but there was worry written in her brown eyes.

“You know everybody?” Pete asked, waving his hand in the direction of those sitting down and not excluding Mickey and the uniform who had followed us into the room. “Remember Corporal Kyle, Benny? He ran you in once on a B and E.”

“Thanks for the memory, Sergeant,” I said through my teeth. “Hello, Corporal. Good to see you.”

Pete asked a few questions of each of the people in the room and then fired some at me. They had to do with times and dates. He was still trying to get the background, who was where, and who could observe whom and when. I found out that Wise slept in a room above the familiar office and that Mickey and Victoria shared a room on the third floor at the back. There were several spare rooms reserved for special guests as well as rooms for both Hart and Julie on the second floor. It was early days in the investigation. Just the same, Pete looked like he had been up all night.

“Let’s get out of here for a few minutes,” Pete said to me after about twenty minutes of this. “I’m out of cigarettes.”

“Great! That’s one thing the suburbs do well. Hundreds of places wherever you look.” He took another three minutes whispering to Kyle in the kitchen before we finally headed out the door.

“Okay, we’ll take my car.” We got in and even after driving around for ten minutes, we hadn’t seen anything that looked like it might sell tobacco. After another five minutes of turning and twisting, Staziak spotted a 7 Eleven store not far from the Forks Road.

“Abe Wise died before his work was finished,” I said, as Pete fumbled with the car door.

“How do you mean?”

“Well, there’s a lot of room for improvement in the location of tobacco outlets around here. Wasn’t tobacco one of his rackets?”

“See what you mean. I don’t think it was a major interest of his for at least a year. I’ll be right back.” I watched him move away from the car and into the store with its bright red-and-blue plastic soft-drink signs outside. The trees brushed naked branches against the dusty galvanized roof. A girl coming out of the store with a silvery bag of potato chips pulled up her collar as she walked to a car stuffed with kids.

When Pete Staziak got back and had lighted his first smoke in a long while-by the look of him-I knew that he was ready with questions for me. I filled him in on how I had won the opportunity to work for Abram Wise in the first place and then told him how I’d seen him last on Friday. He was interested in my telling him the reason why I was hired and I told Pete I’d send a free sample of my report writing to his office.

“Well?” he asked when I wound down.

“Well, what?”

“What direction does your report point?”

“Read it yourself, Pete. I can’t see any illumination in it. In fact, a lot of it is padding, just to fill up some paper. If you’re asking if I know who killed Wise, I don’t. I don’t have any idea. It could have come from a number of directions. My favourite theory is one that has both Wise and your Ed Neustadt murdered by the same person.”

“What! Come on, Benny! What are you talking about? Neustadt was not much more popular than Wise in official circles, but give me a break!”

“You’re asking and I’m telling, Pete. That’s the way I see it. If you’re talking proof here, I’m not your man.”

“Benny, Abram Wise was one of the kingpins of organized crime. You can compare him to Tony Pritchett of the English mob and not get much change back.”

“Yeah, I guess so. And since it’s a crook lying on the carpet-”

“I told you, he’s been taken to get our post mortem blue-plate special. Only the best.”

“-you aren’t too concerned about who iced him. Right?”

“That’s as cynical a statement as I’ve ever heard, Benny.”

“It was a question. If you think the killer is also a crook, don’t you think you’ve got your work cut out for you?”

“We treat all serious crimes seriously, Benny. We’ll give it our best shot just as we always do.” I’m not one hundred per cent sure why I sniped at Pete in that way. Maybe I hoped it would get him to share his findings with me, just to show that the boys in blue were on the job.

“One thing I forgot to tell you: the Registrar at the OPP has been after me in answer to some complaints that have been laid at my doorstep since Wise grabbed me from a warm bed.”

“So what? We all have problems. And I’m trying to run a murder investigation. Two murder investigations, damn it!”

“See if you can find out who sicced the OPP on me. It might lead into your investigation. Might not. Just an idea.”

“A rare commodity in a case like this, Benny.”

“Remember, somebody took a shot at me on Wednesday. He could have been practising, Pete.”

Staziak had been driving north along the newest part of the Welland Canal. The prospect was grey. Nothing was moving except for a few canvasback ducks rising from the still moving channel. The shipping season had opened officially, but there was no visible sign of it. Everybody was waiting for the hold of winter to snap.

“A very rare commodity,” Pete repeated, forgetting that at least a minute had gone by. “I better get back to the house, my friend.” So saying, he moved his Toyota back in the direction of the home of the late Abram Wise.

Back inside Wise’s TV room, now empty of the household staff, I learned from one of the uniforms that Sylvester Ryan was involved in some outstanding warrants related to smuggling and hijacking. He was in town being questioned, while Sergeant Staziak picked up the threads of his murder investigation. Once I came into the house with Pete, I was allowed to cross the plastic barrier into the murder room. As far as I could see, there was no secondary crime suggested by the evidence. No drawers were open, no sign of looting. The windows were shut. Just as you find in a mob hit, the gun was left on the scene.

“Where were Wise’s stooges when the shooting started?” I asked Pete, who had shoved his hat high up on his head instead of removing it altogether.

“According to Victoria, everybody was eating breakfast in the house next door when she found him lying on the floor behind his desk. Right here,” he added in case I couldn’t see the blood or the traces of a chalk line.

“Nobody heard a shot?”

“No-body!”

“Who saw him last?”

“Julie, Wise’s daughter, who looks like she might be in a lot of trouble. The only thing saving her right now is the fact that Victoria only ‘thinks’ the front and back doors were locked. They were ‘usually’ locked but she can’t swear they were this morning. There had been a heavy run of traffic in and out of the big room. Mickey says he was still breathing at eight-thirty this morning. That’s what Mrs. Long, the daughter, Julie, says too, but she has a highly peculiar sense of time among other things. So, say it’s eight-thirty this morning. That’ll probably be closer than we can get from the body in the fridge downtown, Benny. He was alive at eight-thirty, he was dead at nine-fifteen, nine-thirty. She, this Victoria, isn’t too clear about the time she found him, She called us on that phone and hers were the only prints we’ve got so far.”

“What about noise? A shot in here must have made a commotion.”

“If I fired off a piece in here, would it normally be heard next door? We tried it just before you got here. You can still smell cordite. Yes, an ordinary gun can be heard above the din of corn flakes, Rice Krispies and frying leftover pizza. Next question?”

“Did you find the silencer? If he wasn’t killed with a sound-muted weapon, he’s still walking around.”

“We’ve done one search and will do another in a few minutes. You still connect this to Ed Neustadt?”

“I don’t know. Both deaths are bizarre and one at least is premeditated. Did Mickey recognize the gun?”

“It was Wise’s, usually in the top right-hand drawer of his desk. He had a permit to keep it. Like everything else around here, it’s an antique.”

“Which doesn’t usually come with a silencer, right? Thing like that could have been flushed or popped down a drain.”

“In the movies, Benny. In the movies. In real life, a silencer is not something you can slip into your pocket. The silencers I’ve seen have all been handmade. Fancy tool or gun-making equipment. Works like the muffler on your car.”

“Not my car, or the shot would have been heard.”

“We’re looking for a cylinder about eighteen inches long and about two and a half inches in diameter. Seen anything like that?” He gave me a grim smile that told me that this was among the more trivial problems he had to deal with. “Just the kind of mess the boys love most. At least we won’t have to dig up the whole backyard.”

“Why?”

“Christ, Benny, leave us some joy!”