Getting Away With Murder

FOUR

“My father was in junk, Mr. Cooperman. I’m in steel and my kids, Jerry and Bernie, are in the fabrication business. It’s all the same: same yard, same office, same books, same people working there. Just the names get changed, like there are innocent parties to be protected.”

Dave Rogers was fat. That’s the only word for him. He had jowls like a hound and his belly kept the rest of him a foot and a half away from the table we were sharing. I suspected that under all that jelly there were the remains of youthful muscles gone to grass, muscles that used to be able to shift loads of steel about the yard.

“The old man started with rags, bones and bottles like every other junk collector in the 1920s. Then he moved to lead pipe and copper wire and other metals. By the time I came along it was scrap metal not junk. Now Jerry is doing special jobs with I-beams and H-beams for bridge companies. He’s got a few government highway contracts. In a couple of years the boys’ll be right up there with the big guys like Bolduc. Me? I’m semi-retired. I take things easy: I go to the track, travel, spend the winters in Arizona. Just got back. I don’t go to Florida no more. That’s too violent down there. It scares the piss out of me, some of the things I’ve seen.”

Judging by the nests of broken capillaries on his nose and cheeks, I thought Dave Rogers had better start looking after himself right here in Ontario, never mind Florida. High blood pressure was shouting at me from the moment I saw him biting into an egg roll. Still, he wore an ancient windbreaker with markings of some long-dead hockey team. My impression that he had been fit once was reinforced by that, even though it had been years since that open zipper fastened any higher than his crotch. A pink-and-blue necktie was displayed over his midsection like an oversized tongue that had abandoned itself to lunacy. At the upper end, the loosened knot tried to define the impossible: Dave Rogers’s neck.

“When I first met Abe, we were both in school. Grade Four! We learned all about Columbus together. It made a big impression on Abe. It didn’t show at the time, but later on, he became quite an authority on statues and pots that come from down in Central and South America. Abe can tell you whether a pot was Inca or Aztec or Mayan as fast as I can tell a chopstick from a fork.” Dave shook his head, smiling while he chewed. With his jowls in movement, it was quite a sight. “Abe was always smart,” he said, touching a large knuckle to his forehead twice. “He always took his cover serious. You know what I mean? He didn’t fool around. He said he was an expert on pre-Columbian art, so he became one. Nothing fake about his expertise; nothing fake about his collection either.”

“What moved him into a life of crime?” I asked. “Was it the Depression?”

“It was the fifties. We were born before the war, but we grew up in the forties and fifties. They were boom years and there weren’t too many restrictions on free enterprise. Even in the scrap business, we had to use a little muscle once in a while. My old man kept two sets of books. Hell, everybody kept two sets. Abe used to work in my old man’s yard once in a while just to keep me company. He watched the way the business was organized. He didn’t break his back loading trucks when he could help it. He was knocking off burglaries before he was buying shaving cream. I went with him one time. I didn’t believe the stories he was telling about the stuff that was stashed away in those old homes up on Welland Avenue. He said he did places off Ontario Street and over on Mortgage Hill too. But I went into one house with him.”

“What did you get?”

“Scared shitless! That’s what I got. Breaking and entering is too real for my system. I didn’t like it that one time and it’s lasted me ever since. Abe was different. He didn’t have any nerves in those days. He walked into a house and went through all the drawers like it was his own place and he was looking for his lost car keys. He found a box of jewellery that time. It was a tortoise-shell box. Ain’t that funny? I can still see it! There were some valuable pieces. Abe could tell the good stuff from the fake, which he didn’t bother with.”

“You never went back with him?”

“Not me! Anyway, he soon stopped doing break-ins. The cops were getting more squad cars back then. There were more cops around and they kept a good lookout. That was in the days when they still rattled doorknobs along St. Andrew Street to see if anybody’d knocked off a store. That’s a long time ago, Mr. Cooperman.”

“I thought you said Abe was fearless? What was he afraid of?”

“Some old woman got herself killed by a burglar over on Russell Avenue. The cops kept their eyes open after that. The paper was crying for law and order. In those days it sounded original. That’s when Abe quit doing houses.”

“Didn’t he do them again when the heat died down?”

“Naw. By then he’d discovered the weed. He called it ‘the weed of crime.’ You ever listen to the old Shadow program? I guess you’re too young.”

“You’re talking about marijuana, right?”

“It became big in the sixties. You couldn’t have had the sixties without it. The sixties ran on marijuana. That’s no secret. Abe got some retired farmer with a bad memory to rent him a field or two. That’s where he really got into gear. He had taken four or five crops off those fields before they busted the farmer. And he didn’t say anything. I mean, even if he wanted to snitch, he was too old and senile, he couldn’t do much damage. Stopped Abe’s operation, that’s all. But, by that time, he had other people sticking their necks out for him and he was learning about the import-export business.”

“And after that he never looked back. Am I right?”

Dave nodded and took a sip from a can of Coke. Classic, of course. Through the windows of the restaurant, I couldn’t see Mickey’s car, but I knew better than to think that he had found something more interesting to do. “What’s Abe up to these days?”

“What a limey who works for me calls ‘the lot.’ There ain’t anything he isn’t into. I’m talkin’ girlies, I’m talkin’ hard drugs, heroin, cocaine, crack. I’m talkin’ aliens, graft, protection, numbers and booze.”

“Tell me about the cigarettes.”

“That’s yesterday’s paper. Forget it. But bootlegging, he’s into in a big way.”

He took another sip from his Coke and another helping of fried rice from the big dish sitting between us. “You see, Mr. Cooperman,” he said, using my name for only the third time in half an hour, “Abe knows how to diversify. Mickey Armstrong is his right-hand-man. He coordinates all of the sections. There are some Bay Street lawyers in Toronto who get orders from Abe through Mickey.

“Take drugs for instance. For the last thirty years, Abe’s been bringing dope into Canada from the Pearl Islands in the Pacific off Panama. He’s got an operation in San Miguel that has to be seen to be believed. While the Horsemen are checkin’ out the Medellin cartels, and putting the diplomatic heat on the well-known Colombian exporters, Abe’s dealing easy as you please out of Panama!”

“The Pearl Islands belong to Panama?”

“Sure. They own the real estate. But the movers are all Colombian.”

I nodded, although I’m not sure I grasped all of the details or implications. I wanted to change the subject before my circuits overloaded.

“Tell me about Abe, himself. Is he a killer?”

“Abe? No! Not a face-to-face killer, except for- Yeah, I guess there have been a few times. He-” He broke off abruptly. “He has other people do for him and then only when there’s no other way. Abe likes to see himself as a family man. He treats what’s left of his family like they’re made from Czech glass. His mother lived well into her eighties. I don’t think Abe’s got a mean bone in his body. What I want to say is, he gets no kick from kicking ass, you know what I mean? He’d just as soon live and let live. He’s got an over-developed business sense. He’ll protect his interests when they’re threatened. I’ve seen it happen. When he has to, he’ll hit, hard, fast and smart, leaving no loose ends.”

“Tell me about his family, Mr. Rogers.”

“Call me Dave, for crying out loud. I get ‘mister’ at the bank.” I gave him leave to use my given name too. He was picking at his teeth now, with a toothpick he must have brought with him, since I didn’t see any on the table. “Family? He’s divorced two wives and has a pair of grown kids in their thirties. I don’t know which one hates him most. They’ll dance at his funeral, if you ask me.”

“Good! I think we’re beginning to get somewhere.”

“In his private life, Abe could never get it right. He was Mr. Know-all. You couldn’t tell him anything. And look where it’s got him. Nothing but a big zero! Now, I’m not usually the one to say ‘I told you so,’ but Abe and me have been dating girls since we were in our teens. I could never get that guy to listen to me about women or about kids. Now I’ve got three of the best kids in the world. You couldn’t want better. But they could have turned out as rotten and spoiled as Abe’s did.” At this point, Dave passed me a collection of pocket-weary photographs of his family. I looked, admired and handed them back. He examined the faces in the photographs before returning them to his pocket. “Yeah, they’re good kids.”

“I’m trying to get a sense of Abe’s history, Dave,” I said. “Could you go back to the beginning. Who was the first wife?”

“Paulette. Paulette Staples. Paulette was a waitress at the Di on St. Andrew Street. She worked at the Crystal and the Columbia too, but she was at the Di when Abe first saw her looking like Myrna Loy in the movies. She was a knockout. I mean she was really, you know, built … She … Anyway, Abe got her up the stump before he knew her last name. That was Hart. He was named after Abe’s dead father, the way we do. Hart’s always been a pain in the ass for Abe. He could never do anything right for his old man. He was the kinda kid who shouldn’t have had Abe Wise for a father. He was always putting his foot wrong, trying to get his old man’s attention and then falling on his butt. That was when he gave a damn, before he started feeling his wild oats. Then he did what he wanted and left it to Abe to pay his speeding fines and get him out of the lock-up. Hart’s got a bigger record than Abe has.”

“They hate one another?”

“Amounts to that. Abe can’t see where he went wrong with the kid and hates him for not being easier to raise. I think Paulette divorced Abe because he wouldn’t let Hart take a few falls for himself just to see what it feels like. She moved away to the States for a few years, somewhere in the Catskills, just so she didn’t have to see those two killing one another. She’s back now and still clucking and cooing over that rotten kid like she never left town.”

“And Hart?”

“Oh, he’s still in town. He’s got an apartment on Lake Street, near the Armouries.”

“What does he do for a living?”

“Are you joking or something? Nothing! That’s what he does. Oh, I guess you could say he bought and sold antique cars, but that was never a living.”

“You said there was a second marriage?”

“Yeah. Lilian Garnofsky. She was a teacher. Abe went from a pretty face to a pretty mind. Lily saw herself as an intellectual force in Grantham. She was a joiner, a fund-raiser, a convenor of conferences. She did all the Jewish organizations first, then moved on into politics and settled down at last with the arts.” Dave’s description of Lily lacked the admiration he had lavished on Paulette. I wondered why.

“I can tell you like her a whole lot.”

“Actually, Lily and I got along just fine. She used to kid me about my cigars and my rough edges, if you know what I mean. I used to kid her about forgetting who made the money she was spending like there was no tomorrow and how it was made. Lily hated that. I’d found her weak spot and she didn’t like that one bit!”

I tried some plum sauce on a piece of egg roll and swallowed it. Very tasty. I let my silence cue Dave Rogers for more talk about Lily. “She was always trying to improve Abe too, you know. Oh, yeah! She got him to give money to get the opera off the ground in Toronto. Abe didn’t mind launching a show or two, just so long as he didn’t have to sit through Swan Lake or Tannhauser. He hated dressing up like a waiter in a black tie.”

“When did they part company?”

“Lily and Abe parted more or less by agreement. Must have been eight-ten years ago now. She let her lawyers get rough with him. When he complained, she used to coo to him over the phone, then tell the lawyers to put on more heat. I was in her house and heard her do it more than once. She was good at it”

“What about the child?”

For a moment, Dave looked lost, then: “Oh, you mean Julie! I couldn’t think of who you meant at first. Julie must have been a child once, but I don’t remember. She was one of those little girls that becomes a woman at about five or six. I don’t think I ever saw her wearing clothes bought off the hook. Everything had to have Paris or New York labels. All Julie’s money went on her back. There are no two ways about that. Wait a minute! I’m a liar! She liked fast cars too. Like her brother. Julie had her mother’s instincts about spending money and both her parents’ indifference about where the money’d come from. She’s no tramp, Julie, at least not a cut-rate one. Let’s see, what else can I tell you? I knew her very well at one time. Oh, yeah! She has always had terrible luck with men. She marries ’em and throws ’em away. Abe pays all the bills. I don’t think she knows that she’s sharing this planet with a couple of billion other people. She only sees the people in the fashion magazines. That’s as real as she gets. I remember seeing her walk into a funeral-it was her grandmother’s, Abe’s mother’s- wearing thigh-high boots with mini-skirt, fur hat and a Colorado suntan, and coming up the aisle half an hour late on crutches from a skiing accident in Aspen.”

“Do you know why Abe asked you to talk to me?”

Dave thought a minute then tried out an answer. “When I get a call from Abe Wise to be nice to a friend of his, I start gushing rose-water, Benny. I can’t afford to act any different. He tells me to open up to you. Do I tell him he’s crazy like I should? No, I tell him I’ll look after you. And that’s what I’ve been trying to do. If you think I’ve been shitting you, just tell me where I’ve been holding back. Go ahead.”

“Don’t get your socks in a tangle! I’m just asking.”

“Abe and I go back a long way. But we’ve been bending away from each other right from the start. I don’t live the way he does. I couldn’t. I only hear from him when he needs a favour, or one of his kids has hurt him some way. Do I ever call him? Don’t hold your breath. He’s got a fine-mesh screen around his phone. You can’t get near him without going through all those damned people working for him.”

“I’m just about through. Just a couple more questions.”

“Sure. There’s always a couple more.”

“How well do you know his inner circle?”

“Some I don’t know at all. Others, like Mickey Armstrong, have been with Abe for years. Not only is he a good man in the office, Mickey’s like secret service. He’d step in front of any bullet aimed at Abe if he could. Maybe some of the others have different ambitions. I don’t know, so I can’t say. Mickey has a few hustles going for himself on the side. Abe encourages him.”

“Would you say that he’s surrounded by enemies?”

“Hell, Benny, the man’s a smart organizer of criminal activities and he’s lived that way for the last thirty years. How’s he going to get Time’s Man of the Year Award? It isn’t going to happen. He may have a lot of people on the payroll, but there aren’t any who would break step if Abe got hit by a truck. Abe’s in the business of making enemies. What can I tell you?”

“Can you get me phone numbers and addresses of the people we’ve been talking about?”

“Let me have your office number.” I wrote it out while I was trying to think of those important questions I hadn’t formed yet. Dave was rubbing his face with a skimpy paper napkin. I got rid of the egg-roll evidence on my face too.

“I want to thank you for-”

“Forget it. It was Abe I was doing the favour for. But he didn’t say I had to buy the lunch, Mr. Cooperman. I guess you’re getting expenses, eh?”

Dave got up and stretched. His coat swept the check off the table, blowing it in a gentle arc to the floor. He made no move to pick it up. I did. At his weight, he had to conserve his energy and save his heart. I watched him fight with his zipper just for old-time’s sake and followed him out into the fresh air. It was a degree warmer outside, but there was no hint of the coming spring in the grey, sunless afternoon. It was all pretty depressing.