Getting Away With Murder

SEVEN

In the Diana Sweets, between sips of coffee, I took the book out of my pocket. It looked like a novel, it was the right size for a novel, but it did say “true” on the back and on the front as well, when you really took a second look. Haste to the Gallows was a catchy title. I tried to get some idea of the contents from the back cover. A woman named Mary Tatarski was the subject of McStu’s nonfiction sabbatical. I’d seen the name somewhere recently. Yes, it was the case that Duncan Harvey, a local architect, was perennially trying to get revived. In the centre of the book was a block of black-and-white pictures: a pretty young face in a high-school year-book, a soldier in uniform, a confused-looking middle-aged woman with a kerchief covering her dark hair. There were others, but I was growing curious about the text. I started reading the first chapter and lost myself in it for some time until I felt that I was being observed. It was an uncomfortable feeling. I put the book away. Looking around the restaurant, I saw nothing unusual: lawyers were joking over coffee, storekeepers were unwinding after a bad half-hour with the bank manager. I thought saw a shadow pass across the window. For a moment, had a sense of relief when I saw that it was only Phil, one of Abe Wise’s hoods. Then I had to laugh. How quickly we adapt to any situation.

I drove through the double line of fast-food outlets and service stations to my parents’ town house off Ontario Street. It was the first house in the row and my father’s car was not parked in front. He must have been showing off his gin rummy prowess at the club. I could picture him, still smelling of talcum and a little pink from the sauna. I let myself in and found my mother watching television.

“Manny? Is that you?” Her eyes must have been temporarily blinded from looking at the screen.

“It’s only me,” I said, taking off my coat and hanging it over one of the dining-room chairs. “What’s up?” I asked.

“Up? What should be up at this time of day? I’ve got potatoes to peel, that’s what’s up. It’s a woman’s lot, Benny. But first I’ll watch the end of this program. I hope you’re not thinking of staying to dinner. I only have two steaks, one for your father and one for me. You should let me know when you’re in need of a home-cooked meal.”

“As a matter of fact, Ma, Anna is cooking for me tonight at the apartment.”

“Anna. Good! A girl that young needs all the practice she can get.”

“By the time she gets her second set of teeth, she’ll be able to boil an egg.”

“She’s still living with her father. I hear he has a French cook. Tell me you never eat snails, Benny.”

“Ma, it’s a big house and Anna has her own apartment in the back. And as for the snails, I’ve only seen the dining-room twice. Both times the table was covered with drawings from her father’s collection.”

“Why don’t you make us both a cup of tea?” I did that and when I returned to the orange living-room, Ma’s program was over and the set turned off. I put the tray down on a coffee-table.

“Be careful of my Chinese ginger pots, Benny. I love them better than my life.” Ma wasn’t exaggerating. Once, when Sam and I were still in pyjamas with feet in them, Grantham was hit by a small earthquake. Instead of carrying her two children out of the house, Ma took the ginger pots away from danger wrapped in a blanket. Sam says the blanket came from one of our cribs, but I think that that’s big-city cynicism showing.

“Ma, I’ve been thinking that it’s been a long time since you and Pa have had a holiday. Why don’t the two of you take off?”

“What have you been smoking, Benny? Just like that, we should go away! Why? Do you need the house? What are you thinking about?”

“I just thought that you could use a change of scene, that’s all. Is it a crime to wish you out of this cold weather? It’s been a long winter and you didn’t get away at all.”

“Except for the two weeks in Miami Beach.”

“Yeah.”

“And the week at Myrtle Beach.”

“I forgot about Myrtle Beach. Okay, you don’t need a vacation. I was just thinking that Pa looked a little frail when I saw him last week.”

“Frail? Manny frail? Why shouldn’t he be frail? He’s seventy years old, Benny. A lot of people his age have been dead for ten years.”

“That’s why I suggested that you both get away. Treat yourselves to a second honeymoon.”

“Are you coming up with the airline tickets?”

“I wish I could afford to send you on a trip around the world: London, Paris, Rome!”

“And as for a second honeymoon, the less you and Sam know about that part of our lives, the better I like it.”

“Don’t you just want to get out of Grantham when the winter won’t stop? It’s supposed to be spring, but where are the buds on the trees? Where are the crocuses?”

“How do you manage to boil a kettle and make cold tea, Benny?” I could see I wasn’t going to move my mother beyond the reach of Abe Wise’s influence. I could hope to do better when my father arrived. If he came down against the proposition, Ma would begin to see some virtue in it. I didn’t lose heart and I wasn’t surprised. I just had to make the attempt, that’s all. The price of a little peace of mind was cheap. It only took the effort. Half an hour later, when my father came in and draped his coat on another of the dining-room chairs, I put the idea of a southern holiday to him. He cocked his head as though I was going insane before his very eyes and said that he would think it over.

“What’s to think over, Manny? Money doesn’t grow on trees in Ontario.”

“I wouldn’t mind Palm Beach,” Pa said.

“You can’t get another day’s wear out of that white suit, Manny. Forget it. Besides, it’ll be spring in no time. I love a Canadian spring. It’s over so fast. You blink and it’s gone.”

“Why don’t you fly down to Arizona? They do a great spring in Arizona,” I said, selling the idea with as much conviction as I could muster.

“Paul Weinberg found a scorpion in his garage in Arizona. Are you trying to send us to our deaths?” The conversation drifted from the Arizona murder plot to other things.

“Boy, did I get a shock at the club this afternoon,” Pa said. It was his way of announcing the death of one of their contemporaries.

“Manny, I don’t want to hear about it!” Ma always tried to postpone the news. Maybe she thought she could breathe a moment of life into the dear departed by keeping at bay the specifics of who exactly had died.

“And he was only retired a few years.”

“I don’t want to know!”

“A better hand at poker you couldn’t wish for.”

“Are you talking about Dave Kaplanski?”

“I thought you didn’t want to know.”

“I don’t want to know if you’ll shut up about it. If you won’t shut up, then I’ve got a right to guess. Is it Louie Stein? He played poker. And I think he just came back from Florida. I thought that such a tan was criminal. Now he’s dead. That’s the way the world goes.”

“Sophie, what are you talking about? Lou Stein’s face told you every card in his hand. A poker player? Lou Stein couldn’t understand Snakes and Ladders! I’m talking about the old deputy police chief, Ed Neustadt, not Lou Stein. Lou’s been in his grave for six-seven months already.”

And so it went. I tried my best to save their lives in Palm Beach or Flagstaff, but to no avail. I looked at my watch, kissed them both and left them to their steaks. I was beginning to feel hungry, so I pointed the Olds in the direction of home.