Getting Away With Murder

TWENTY-FOUR

The last man in the world I expected to see was standing in front of my desk. He looked terrible. His shock of fair hair no longer made his face look fresh and pink. Whitey York was grey and bloodless as he tried to catch his breath after his climb up my twenty-eight steps. His camel-hair coat was unbuttoned and stained along one side. His necktie was askew and his shirt looked dirty. A pong came off him like he’d been taking lessons from Kogan, the former panhandler who was now my landlord. He was in serious condition, so I got up and helped him into a chair.

“You know about Gord?” he said, still out of breath. I nodded my head. When had that happened? It was hard keeping track of the days. It was before that terrible weekend: Friday. Yes, Wise was still among the living on Friday. York looked like he had been in hiding since Friday.

“Could you use a shot,” I said. He shook his head and waved his hand in an ambiguous gesture.

“No!” he said. “I don’t need any more than I’ve already had.” Good, I thought. I’d have had to ask Frank Bushmill to lend me some of his Irish. My file drawers were empty. “Cooperman, what should I do? I can’t go home. I don’t want to be murdered.”

“Hey, hold on! Hold on! Who do you think is trying to kill you?”

“They got Gord Shaw. I’m next.”

“What makes you think that? Wise is dead. You know about that?”

“Do you think that it’s over then? His boys might … You know. I’m scared, Cooperman. I don’t care who knows it.”

“Look, Whitey, Shaw was involved with other people besides you, wasn’t he? Why do you think it was Wise?”

I had my own ideas about this, but I wanted to hear it from York himself. “It was a scam,” he said. “Biggest thing I’ve ever been involved in.”

“It was about a car, wasn’t it? But not that old Triumph. That was just a come-on. Right?” York nodded his head, letting it fall on his chest at the end, as though he’d just run a mile in under three minutes.

“Yeah. Yeah. You got that right. The kid was in on it, of course. The whole scheme turned on the father-son relationship.”

“You better tell me about it.”

“You ever hear of the 1964 Alfa Romeo Giulia 160 °Canguro?”

“Can’t say I have. But you would have guessed that already.”

“The Canguro never went into production. There were a couple of prototypes, but that’s all. The last of these test models was destroyed in 1970. Except for a few spare parts, the Canguro no longer exists.”

“I’m listening. Go on.”

“Don’t look at me as though I’m the expert. Shaw told me all this. When a car is rare, Mr. Cooperman, it fetches a very high price. When it is extinct, you can write your own ticket. This one car is worth a couple of Renoirs, a van Gogh, a Rembrandt. Shaw knew where the only Canguro in the world is under wraps in a garage in Southampton, England. He needed operating money to get it fixed up. The three of us were partners. Hart was the link to the money we needed.”

“Which is more than the cost of a TR2, even an antique TR2, right?”

“That’s it. We were using the Triumph as bait.”

“So, on the surface it looked like you were going to press charges against Hart for the bad cheque, but really the three of you were counting on the old man buying you off.”

“I told Shaw not to talk to Wise directly. I told him to let me handle it. But he was that sure …”

“And it cost him his life. Now if you’d been the contact … Well, who knows?”

“Shaw kept saying that when we had the Alfa here, we could pay back our debts. We could make it all right after we had the car.”

“Where did you spend the weekend?”

“I have a married sister in Guelph. I didn’t think he’d find me there. Then I read about his murder. I don’t know where I stand.”

“Have you talked to Hart?”

“I tried to, but he hung up on me. What the hell am I going to do, Mr. Cooperman?”

“Well, it’s my guess that you are in no immediate danger except maybe from Hart. Wise’s death has stirred up the mud at the bottom of the pond. It won’t clear overnight. You can go home and take a shower. That’s my free advice, go home and take a shower.”

Whitey York pulled himself out of the chair, gave me a hunted look and left the door wide open. I could hear him clumping on the stairs. I nearly sent him down the fire escape in back, but I don’t think I could have done it with a straight face.

I was about to shut the office and call it a day when Frank Bushmill stopped in to greet me.

“Stately, plump Benny Cooperman,” he said. “Where have you been keeping yourself? Has anyone else been shooting holes in your walls?” I told him, without going into detail. He nodded sagely, looking stately and plump himself.

“And have you run into any exciting corns or bunions since we last talked?”

“Ah, Benny. You don’t know the half of it. The practice of medicine, even below the knee, continues to be rewarding, but my private life is a burden. I don’t want to go into that. I feel a little like the philandering surgeon that Oliver St. John Gogarty commented on: I made my reputation with my knife and lost it with my fork. I see myself as the arch mender, if you’ll excuse the horrible pun.” He went on in that vein for a few minutes, with all sorts of references flying high and wide, well beyond my fielding skills. He always had nice things to say about Anna and I appreciated him for those.

Then Chris Savas was there standing in a pool of water from rain dripping from his raincoat and holding an umbrella that had been blown inside out by the wind. He looked awkward standing there until I remembered how seldom he had climbed the stairs to my office. After introductions and a few pleasantries which again required a Dublin scholar to understand them, Frank tried out his Greek on Chris. There must be more kinds of Greek than one because both of them looked bewildered by what the other added to the three or four exchanges, and then they gave up and returned to English, where I tried to join them. As it turned out, Frank knew the island of Cyprus from some years ago and so I was again excluded from the conversation while unfamiliar place names filled the empty hallway between our offices. In the end, Frank begged off further palaver, said good-night, and went down the stairs and into the chilly night.

“Is Dr Bushmill a good friend, Benny?” Frank asked when the street door closed.

“He’s taken a few lumps on the head on my behalf since I’ve known him. Yes, he’s a good friend. He’s also trying to become my university.”

“Whenever you can find him sober after hours.”

“Oh, you know about Frank, do you?”

“I live in this town, Benny, and Frank isn’t inconspicuous.”

“He’s a damn good friend, Chris. I wish he could be less of a pain to himself.”

“And St. Patrick’s Day is coming. He’s taking the short road to the cemetery if you ask me.”

“What brings you to my consulting rooms?”

“Pete’s been filling me in about Wise and Neustadt. I thought that maybe we should talk after all.”

He pulled up a chair, one of the leftovers from my father’s store, and I pulled my swivel chair around so that the desk didn’t come between us. It was my training in amateur theatre that suggested this approach.

“Did you know Wise?” I asked.

“Knew? Who knew Abe Wise? He was always a mystery man. The only time he was arrested was before you were in long pants. My very first partner, dear old Michael Prescott, had the pleasure of bringing him in with a bag of illegal goodies one night on Louisa Street. It was his first collar, Benny. He told me about it one night on Lake Street when he’d been shot up and I was trying to keep him talking until the ambulance arrived. Michael-we never called him Mike-was a lot older than me; he would have been well away into his retirement now if-”

“If he hadn’t died in the line of duty?”

“Michael? Dead? Not a chance. He’s still running a resort up on Lake Muskoka. Still plays squash every morning like he’s forty. Still collects Toby mugs. Still dresses like a kid. No, Benny, Michael quit Niagara Regional when Neustadt got too much for him.”

“When was that?”

Nineteen seventy-nine.”

“No, I mean when he arrested Wise.”

“That was in nineteen fifty-two.”

“The year of the Tatarski case.”

“Yeah. This happened about a week into her trial.”

“Pete told me that Neustadt turned Wise loose. Is that right?”

“Yeah. And after Michael had worked so hard. He’d been watching the kid, see. Saw him go into the house and was waiting for him when he came out with the loot. He was feeling like a real cop when he brought him into the station. Michael said that Neustadt questioned the kid for half the night. Then he asked Michael to step into the interrogation room with them. Wise was sitting with his head down on the table and Ed came over to Michael saying that he thought that since the stolen goods had been recovered and since the lad-he called him a lad- had been only playing at breaking and entering and since … He went on and on with his ‘sinces.’ Michael could see what was coming, so he was ready for it. I mean, hell, Ed was a sergeant, for Christ’s sake, and Michael was still on probation …”

“So he let Wise walk.”

“Yeah. And that was the last time Abe Wise was in a police station.”

“He tried to make Michael Prescott believe that he had caught Wise taking his first step on a road of crime and this was the moment to reclaim him. Is that it?”

“That was his version.”

“But Prescott didn’t buy that?”

“Hell no! That kid had been in and out more windows than Peter Pan, for Christ’s sake! That’s what Michael said. He had been watching him.”

“That fits with what his first wife told me. Do you know why he let Wise walk? Did your friend?”

“I used to drag it out every couple of years, usually when I’d had a run-in with Ed. Never could figure it.”

“I think I’m beginning to see some light. It’s the only thing that makes it make sense.”

“What’s that?”

“We know that Wise was working that part of town: Welland Avenue and north of there. Suppose, just suppose for a minute, that Wise also broke into the Tatarski house. Russell Avenue. It’s in the same part of town.”

“Hey, what are you saying?”

“I’m not saying anything, I’m supposing, thinking out loud.” I tried to focus again before speaking. “Wise goes into the Tatarski house. Unfortunately, Mary’s mother hears him. She comes downstairs, there’s a struggle, and she’s killed. It’s murder while a robbery is in progress. Neustadt isn’t the first cop on the scene, but he is called in. Came running, I’ll bet, because he had been in that house before.”

“So, when Michael Prescott collars young Wise, Neustadt says nothing about what he suspects, or even what he forced Wise to admit. Mary Tatarski’s trial is going on.” Chris stared out my window with his fingers coming together under his chin. I let him think for a second. “Well, well, well!” he said.

“Yeah. Does he call up the Crown prosecutor and say ‘Let the girl go, I’ve got the real killer,’ or does he let the kid walk?”

“Neustadt was the chief Crown witness. He headed the whole investigation. He would have had to admit he’d read all of the evidence wrong. His whole career was riding on this trial and his handling of this case.”

Savas blew some air between his teeth. It wasn’t quite a whistle. “Well, well,” he said.

“What do you think, Chris?”

“Benny, I’ve been a cop all my working life. If you’d said that about anybody at Niagara Regional except Ed, I’d have hit you so hard you wouldn’t be able to stand until Christmas. But Neustadt …”

“But Neustadt …” We didn’t speak for a couple of minutes.

“It makes sense, Benny. I never would have thought … You see, Ed was the first man on the scene when the Tatarski house was robbed five years earlier. Did you know that? He let the girl walk that time. Old Ed wasn’t going to be played for a sap twice. Two break-ins stretched the plausible.”

“He saw the second break-in as a copycat of the first, the real break-in. It made a believable story. It covered the known facts or I’ve misread McStu’s book.”

“Neustadt had this tenacious streak in him. He wouldn’t let go.”

“So, there was an understanding between Wise and Neustadt. A deal had been agreed to, even if they didn’t put it into words. Wise would walk and keep his mouth shut. And the trial would move on just the way it was planned.”

“You know, Benny, there are no living witnesses. They’re all dead: the Tatarski girl, the mother, Ed, and Wise.”

“Yeah, we won’t be able to prove a thing without digging out your former partner from Lake Muskoka. What you just told me is officially hearsay. But it has the ring of truth.”

“I guess it doesn’t change diddly.”

“You know, Chris, Wise hated Neustadt for that. He was at the funeral, you know. I’ve never seen such hate. You knew Wise when you came on the force yourself?”

“He made a career of staying away from the bright lights. Except when there was a charity ball or two hundred of our best citizens in tuxedos dressed to the nines for some reason. I saw him a few times, was part of a couple of campaigns to try to nail him for something. Hell, if they could only get Al Capone for tax evasion, I thought we might get Wise for spitting on the sidewalk. But we never could. The part of his life that we can see is-was-exemplary.”

“And Neustadt, Chris. Did he support the schemes to bag Wise?”

“Ed could be a stickler for boxing in a suspect. If there was an escape hatch visible, he would try to cool things down until we really had him in the bag.” Chris scratched his belly at the belt-line and considered what he had just heard. “I hadn’t thought about it, but you’re right: while Ed was gung-ho for all kinds of villains, he kind of soft-pedalled Wise.”

“Sure. Know why? Because a tacit blackmail situation had been established.”

“What do you mean ‘tacit blackmail situation’?”

“After he was allowed to walk, after Mary Tatarski was allowed to hang, Wise had Ed Neustadt in his pocket.”

“You mean Ed was paying Wise off all those years?”

“No. As far as I know they never met again. But this secret was lying there between them. If Ed pursued Wise too closely, then Wise could tell what he knew. Wise had Ed Neustadt’s career in the palms of his hairy hands. Neither one of them probably noticed it at first. Wise had some growing and maturing in crime to undergo before his threat ripened.”

“But Ed Neustadt gave Abe Wise a fresh start. What did he have to complain about?”

“What does a fresh start mean in a community that will take an innocent woman and hang her?”