by Howard Engel
I reread my report, hoping that the killer’s name would jump out at me like a piece of toast from a badly adjusted toaster. It didn’t.
There must be some way to match my sudden good luck with action. Reading my own prose didn’t exactly ring with clanging claymores. I wasn’t storming the barricades. I could see who was answering the phone at Wise’s secret number, but I thought better of it. The last thing in the world I wanted was to step on the heels of Pete’s investigation. I’d have to give Mickey and the boys a wide berth for a day or two. Just in case Pete was nearby.
One thing I knew I’d have to get was some idea of the timetable. Who saw Wise and when? Pete had it, or had been working on it, but I couldn’t pester him. I was involved enough in the story, so that I knew Pete would get back to me before too long. But I also knew that I was nowhere near the scene of the crime during the likely hours.
He’d told me that Julie had seen him last. It had been a busy morning. Hart, Julie and others had come over to talk to him. The last one had brought one of Wise’s old guns with a silencer attached. The gun was recovered at the scene. Pete said there were no prints. There hardly ever are on the grips of handguns. It was the silencer that intrigued me. The killer had carried it away. Why? Silencers aren’t items you can buy over the counter. They have to be made. Maybe the workmanship could be traced. That was an idea. I could easily see the reason for the silencer: it gave the murderer the chance to get away undetected.
The Three Stooges, with Mickey Armstrong thrown in, were excellent bodyguards. Their security was pretty good. At least that’s what Wise thought. In practice, they were less good than advertised. Once a pizza was introduced among them, they became side-tracked like errant Ninja turtles. They took their breakfast seriously too. Mickey told me they were a good team except when they were eating. The clear message was that the boys weren’t on the job and that the murderer was counting on this.
This review was interrupted by the phone ringing away at the ends of the earth. I didn’t catch it until the third ring, even though I was sitting within easy reach. I’d been far away in my thoughts. It was Hart. He was excited and hard to understand. I tried to calm him down, expressed my sympathy and heard from the horse’s mouth some of the hearsay I’d got from Paulette. Paulette was a good witness. After a few minutes of rambling through reports of his last few meetings with his father, he got on to the very last one, which was what I wanted to hear.
“It was early, you see. He was always at his best then. I gave him a cheque for the car. At first he wouldn’t take it.”
“You mean the sports car that you bought from Shaw?”
“Yeah. The Triumph. He covered my bad cheque and now that I had the money, I wanted to pay him back.”
“May I ask where you got the money?”
“I unloaded a few things I didn’t need any more. And I moved. I was paying too much where I was living. The sublet gave me some cash in hand.”
“And Paulette?”
“Sure. She helped. Anyway, in the end he accepted the money and we got to talking about my future. For the first time ever, he was listening instead of telling me what he wanted me to do. It was okay. Then, he had to go because there were other people waiting. We started to shake hands and then he brought up Shaw and Whitey York and how they were trying to shake him down. I got mad and he became the monster he had always been again. That was my last view of him.”
“He had a thing about control.”
“Yeah. He governed by moral terror when I lived at home.”
“I still don’t like the way this bounces,” I said, shaking my head at the window opposite me. “Shaw and York are trying to get at your father through your bum cheque, right?”
“If you say so.”
“So why was Shaw killed?”
“Yeah, I read about that! I guess he was not a team kind of guy. What do you want me to say, Cooperman?”
“One thing is sure: he wasn’t killed over a debt as small as the one you’re talking about. Your dad could have bought ten Triumphs if he wanted to and put it down for petty cash.”
“A slight exaggeration. But, I get your point. A guy like Shaw could have had lots of enemies. Lots of quasisatisfied customers.”
“Okay. Back to the morning your dad was killed. Who did you see on your way in and on your way out?”
“Nobody special. Victoria was in the kitchen baking a pie. Mickey was cleaning his boots on a newspaper, also in the kitchen. The other fellows were out of sight, in the other house, I guess.”
“Did you see any strange cars in front or in back?”
“No. And there were no cars parked anywhere near the house as far as I can remember. Wait a minute! There was a Chrysler Le Baron, now that I think of it. Parked just outside the crescent where the house is.”
“Colour?”
“Red, I think. Sort of burgundy red.”
“Old or new?”
“Newish, although it had one eye bashed in.”
“A broken headlight? Remember which side?”
“Right side, I think. Yes it was. Why? Do you know whose it was?”
I told him that it sounded familiar but that was all, then thanked him for his help and told him that I might be getting in touch again fairly soon. I had to cut off the conversation, because he began to go into the whole thing again from the beginning like a television rerun. And I had a job to do for a change: I had to try to place that car.
TWENTY-THREE
With Chris Savas back on the job at Niagara Regional, and after a two-week vacation to Cyprus, I suspected that I might find both him and Pete Staziak at the little café run by a cousin of Chris’s. It was on Academy Street near the bus terminal, which was becoming an uninterrupted asphalt wilderness with a few old houses standing like brick icebergs in the sea. One of these was the home of the Spitfire. I don’t know why Chris’s cousin called it that, but that was what it said on the plastic sign, next to the familiar red-and-white Coke symbol.
When I got there, the place was deserted and I felt strange, like I’d walked into the women’s john by mistake. The cousin tried to place me but failed. His welcome was cordial but lacking the warmth I had seen on my earlier visits with Savas. I took a small table near the back and ordered a kebab of chicken. I somehow guessed that they wouldn’t stock my usual chopped-egg sandwiches. I had taken about three bites of the chicken-filled pita, when Chris and Pete walked in. Not only the cousin but the cousin’s wife were all over Chris like a rash inside of ten seconds. The warmth of the greeting spilled over on Pete Staziak. Even in Greek it made him smile. I nibbled my kebab with the bits of salad that had been thrown in with it. Two tables were pushed together and coats were collected. Pete was the first to spot me. He alerted Chris and soon I was included in the bubble of friendliness and moved plate, fork, body and napkin to their table.
At first we quizzed Savas about his holiday. There were no signs of a tan on his big meaty face, but his eyes, usually as cold as steel ball-bearings, danced with the pleasure of recalling it for us. “The island is still divided,” he said, draining a glass of something the proprietor-cousin had pressed on Chris. “There aren’t as many UN blue berets as when I was there last. My village is still lamenting the loss of its orchards on the other side of the mountain. They say that talks are going on, but that things will never get better.” Here Chris laughed. “They’ve been saying that since the Turks came the first time. When the Venetians came. When the English came.” Pete asked a few astute political questions and we all nodded at Chris’s answers.
Without our ordering from the menu, the proprietor brought a feast to the table—soft roast potatoes, hummus, and darkly roasted pieces of chicken, lamb and maybe even goat. As our faces became rosy with contentment and grease, Chris continued to tell stories about his trip, his family, and the adventures he’d had along the way. By the time the coffee came in brass ewers like the ones in the Lebanese restaurant below my apartment, Chris was beginning to sound ho
arse. I just sat there listening and chewing on a slice of lamb cooked “in the thieves’ style,” which turns out to be roasted with herbs and potatoes in a sealed container.
It wasn’t really until after we left the café that Pete had anything to say that had a special interest for me. I told him that I had been retained by Dave Rogers and that I was thus still interested in Abe Wise’s murder.
“Just as long as you stay out of my way, Benny. That’s all I ask.” He tried to give me a serious look, but the shine of grease on his face torpedoed the effect. I mentioned it and he went to work with his blue-and-white polka-dotted handkerchief. I told him that I intended to stay as far away from his investigation as possible. Then I gave him an example of the kinds of questions I would not be asking him. Sometimes that worked with Pete. This time it didn’t.
“I knew it! I knew it!” he yelled, blowing me off the curb into Academy Street.
“Stored information’s no use to you, Pete. Information only gets hot when it’s in movement. That’s when things begin to happen. Like when there’s an exchange.”
“Benny, you know what you’re shovelling? Besides, you don’t have anything to trade.”
“Easy on him, Pete,” Chris said, putting a big hand on his partner’s shoulder. “He has to make rent this month. And he never got paid when we put Julian Newby away, remember?”
“Okay, okay. We’ll entertain a few questions.” Chris rolled his eyes and dropped behind us where he could watch this process of reciprocity advance. I guess he didn’t like what he saw because he quickly caught up to us again.
“Hart Wise told me that he’d given his old man some money during their last meeting. Did you find a cheque with his name on it?” Pete looked at me like I was a stranger. He thought a minute, then shook his head.
“Why would the kid lie?” he asked both of us.
Chris shrugged. “Maybe he’s invented the story of a reconciliation just for our benefit. Maybe there was no cheque.”
“What do you know about Julie Long’s boyfriend?”
“Oh, that’s a good one. Didier Santerre is another of your fast operators. Only he does it in black tie. His magazine has been losing money steadily for the last three years. Hart Wise isn’t the only bad paper hanger in town, Benny. Santerre’s face is as well known in local banks as the Queen’s.”
“Hal” I said. “I thought so. Didier made a half-hearted attempt to pick up the check at the Patriot Volunteer the other night. And I’d already been tipped they had a sucker to pay. I thought he was trying to impress Julie. A guy with a bankroll doesn’t have to impress anybody. It’s the poor buggers who have to spend the money.”
“Sure, toilet paper’s cheaper by the case. But who do you know who buys it that way?”
“It’s bad luck to buy it by the case. You might drop dead while you’re still on your first roll.”
“Listen you two comedians, I didn’t come back to this cold climate to hear you bellyache. Besides, your example stinks. It’s a bad analogy if I ever heard one. This is my first day back, you guys, give me a break!”
We walked along in silence down the right-hand side of Academy. Ahead of us we could see the scaffolding around the Folk Arts Festival office at the top of the street. The building, the original “academy” for which the street was named, was the oldest secondary school in Ontario. City Council cherished it and kept property developers at bay. They had recently rejected a plan to have the old place sandblasted after discovering that the process would do serious damage. My reflections were interrupted when Pete slipped on a piece of ice. I caught his arm and we both went down. As we brushed one another off, ignoring Chris’s laughter, I asked:
“Did you ever hear back anything about Neustadt’s death, Pete?”
“You still trying to tie that to what happened to Wise?”
“I’m keeping an open mind, that’s all. Well?”
“There was nothing wrong with the jack, Benny. Somebody had to have turned the valve.”
“Maybe Neustadt hadn’t tightened it before he got under the car?”
“Nope. If the valve’s not turned off, you can’t hoist the car in the first place. The jack can’t suck and blow at the same time. Only it’s not air, it’s hydraulics, Benny. How the hell did you get onto this? You a closet engineer?”
“So, you are saying that you are considering his death murder?”
“Considering, Benny, but not flapping the news around. We’re keeping quiet until the monkey thinks he’s safe.”
“I’ll keep buttoned up too, Pete. By the way, was he lying on a creeper board with casters on it?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“I’ve been trying to imagine the scene. It got so real, I had to make sure I wasn’t inventing the evidence.”
By now we had come along Church Street to the front door of Niagara Regional. We stood for a while together, blowing hot vapour with a garlicky perfume at each other.
“Yeah,” said Savas, “I was away for that. Jesus! Not a nice way to go.”
“Did you know him well, Chris?” I asked.
“Benny, you don’t want to know about Ed Neustadt. You don’t want to know.”
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 1600 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.
