by Howard Engel
CATH:
But, according to the bank’s rules and guidelines and traditional practice under similar circumstances …
CLARE:
An agreement had been entered into. Mr. Ramsden was not present.
CATH:
But the money in the box didn’t belong to Mr. Ramsden, did it?
CLARE:
I …! You see, Mr. Ramsden’s instructions to me were … The woman was not in her right … I was within my powers not to let Miss Oldridge … Sorry, I’m making a muddle of this. I don’t want to spoil your tape. I believe that I chiefly explained to Miss Oldridge the agreement as it had been set up and as it existed.
Clarence was now looking flustered and confused. There was a shine on his forehead. The interview broke off a few moments later.
“That’s all there is on this tape, Benny. You want to see any of the others?”
“No thanks, Robin.” I walked with Robin and watched him put the tapes back in Cath’s bottom drawer. He accompanied me to the door, but I thought I might drop in on Orv Wishart for a few minutes and explained as much to Robin, who made some remark about my cousin soon becoming his supervisor and walked back into the TV part of the building. I went up the stairs.
Orv got out of his big chair when I came into his office. “Benny! I didn’t think I’d be seeing you again so soon!” He kicked the open door closed as he shook my hand warmly and returned it to me numb. The pain quickly moved up to my shoulder. “Sit down! Sit down! Can I get you some coffee?”
“Yes you may,” I said, recalling the proper use of “can” and “may” from my school days. I took a chair and moved it closer to the desk. Orv went out of the room to delegate someone to prepare the refreshment. Through the open doorway I could see men and women running back and forth with wire-service copy from one office to the next. When Orv returned, he again closed the big white door behind him.
“It won’t be a moment,” he said, taking that huge chair, which gasped at his weight. He let the chair swing around, so that I could catch a glimpse of the statue of the canal-builder through the window. He caught me looking and said: “Harlan Ravenswood’s father once told me that his father had met William Hamilton Merritt, the canal-builder.”
“Really?”
“He was cracking walnuts with a fire-poker. Funny how a thing like that makes history come alive.”
When the coffee came, I let a moment go by and then spoke: “I’ve seen the letter that Harlan Ravenswood wrote to Egerton Garsington.”
“What?”
“The police have it now. I suggest that you call Detective-Sergeant Savas and tell him about your interest in it. That way it won’t get back to the old lady. That’s who you’re trying to protect, isn’t it?”
“Wait a minute! This is going too fast! Where did you see this letter?”
“Ramsden’s house. The cops asked me to assist them in searching the place for hidden documents.”
“You bastard! They wouldn’t have known there were any hidden papers if you hadn’t told them!” Orv was literally getting red under the collar. Even in his involuntary actions he couldn’t resist a cliché.
“The cops won’t pass it around. Would you rather have some collector of rare letters get his hands on it? If I hadn’t found it, it would have been sold off with the household furnishings. This way, you’ll get a chance to give the cops a context to put it in. And, by the way,” I added, to distance me from his temper, “I found other letters just as interesting. Ramsden had the bite on several of our fellow citizens.” He seemed to be settling down; enough to drink some coffee anyway.
“You came here to tell me this? Why?”
“I hoped I could prompt you to tell me the rest of it. I’ve read the letter, Orv.”
Orv began shaking his head. “Sorry,” he said, “it’s not my secret. I gave a promise. Figure it out as well as you can. You won’t be able to say that I helped. I don’t want innocent people hurt.”
“Is that it? You don’t want them hurt? I thought there might be an opportunity here for someone.”
“I think you’ve said what you came to say, Benny, and now you’ve said it, I have a station to run.” He had managed to tease a hurt smile onto his face, but he wasn’t going to win an award with it.
“Will you answer a couple of questions that are unrelated to the letter?”
“That depends. Let’s hear them.”
“What can you tell me about the relations between Ramsden and the family?”
“They were terrible. Chalk and cheese on every subject. He thought that we’re all Reds. It made him mad when the Ravenswoods wouldn’t support him or any of his policies. Now, as you know, the family hardly counts as socialists. Hell, in the States they’d be Republicans, even conservative Republicans.”
Orv had been demonstrating with his cup as he spoke. He now paused to drink from it and return it to its saucer. “Harlan always had friends in high places. Blame it on his class, his education, his—It was certainly more than money, although there was plenty of that. He called federal cabinet ministers by their first names and premiers would join him for fishing up at Go Home Bay, let their hair down and dig worms. That drove Ramsden mad! Ramsden with all his noisy flag-waving and ‘Up the Empire!’ nonsense appeared silly and beside the point when you’re watching the prime minister select a trout fly.”
“If he hated the family so much, why was he just blackmailing Harlan? Why didn’t he use what he knew to disgrace the family name?”
Orv chuckled at that and scratched his chin. “I don’t think he could get anybody to use it. I bet he tried. I know he tried to get to Gladys more than once. But the staff has always had orders where Ramsden is concerned. In general, he went away happy getting his mite first from Harlan and then, after Harlan passed on, from me. I think that Clarence Temperley, the bank manager who took over from Edge Garsington, kept an eye on Ramsden. They had a few deals together, and Clare had enough common sense for both of them. Not that I’d call Clare as sound a man as Edge had been. Clare always was a man to catch the nearest way, if you know what I mean.”
“Do you think that Temperley might have seen the letter we were talking about in Edge Garsington’s files when he took over at the bank?”
“I hadn’t thought of that! Certainly he and Ramsden were always pretty close. Temperley must have been one of the few people who liked Ramsden. Harlan always called Ramsden ‘Thoroughly Rotten Ramsden!’” He laughed thinking about it.
“Temperley wasn’t Ramsden’s only helping-hand, was he? Didn’t he have other people going to bat for him?”
“Well, he had dealings with all sorts of unsavoury people. There was a Toronto printer who got into the headlines. Nasty piece of work he was. Luckily, they put him away. I think he’s on a funny-farm someplace.”
“Anyone else?”
“You knew that he was Steve Morella’s brother-in-law, didn’t you?”
“Steve Morella as in ‘Frenchie’s Fries’? I don’t think I knew that. They married sisters? Is that it?”
“The Rudloe sisters from near Welland. Ramsden lost his wife in a car crash on the Burlington Skyway about two years ago. It was a year after that that Morella divorced Sue Ellen. If you want the details of that, you’ll have to go to Morella or to Julian Newby. He handled the divorce from Morella’s end. That drunk, Rupert McLay, handled it for Sue Ellen.”
“But before the death and the divorce, Ramsden and Morella were chummy?”
“I wouldn’t choose that word, Benny. Morella was starting as the newspaper on the bottom of the birdcage in this town. He knew nobody and nobody wanted to know him. I’m not going to make any excuses for it. That’s just the way it was back then. From Morella’s position, Ramsden seemed to stand for the steady old-time values. So, they were close for quite a time. But never chummy. Morella’s a bright fellow, so it didn’t take him long to see what a strange fake Ramsden was. So, he put some distance between them. There was the marriage connection and I think they had
a few joint business deals, but Morella’s name never appeared on Ramsden’s petitions to deport the Chinese students up at Secord or to drive McKenzie Stewart away from his teaching post because of his odd lifestyle.”
“What’s odd about it? Shacking up in this day and age isn’t enough to get your name in the papers.”
“There are a few bigots around who objected to McStu’s colour.”
“I forgot about them. They won’t go away, will they?”
“Don’t I wish. Next question.”
“Does Ramsden have any connection with Julian Newby?”
“Not that I know of. They’re both members of the local bar association. But even Rupe belongs to that! Newby’s Morella’s chief legal adviser in all of his business dealings. When Ramsden’s involved with Steve Morella, then Newby might get a Ramsden aftertaste. What I’m trying to say is—”
A phonecall put an end to our conversation. As he replaced the receiver, he explained that he was wanted in an important meeting. His almost painless handshake unaccountably reminded me of Julian Newby. I found my way down the curved white staircase and out into the street. The momentary reminder of Newby stayed with me as I turned my feet in the direction of my office. We’d had lunch at his club a week ago. I hadn’t been able to tell him that I had screwed up my tailing of Cath Bracken—or had it screwed up for me. I had to officially resign from our contract. I was also curious to know how he was faring in the aftermath of finding Ramsden’s body. There were lots of things to think about on a working day.
TWENTY-FOUR
The call I’d been dreading from Chris Savas was the only call that my answering service had to report. I’d had my forty-eight hours, now Chris wanted me to come in for a little chat. During our lunch on Sunday, I’d hoped that he would refer to this deadline, hoped he’d cancel it in the light of the stuff we’d dug up at Ramsden’s place. He was happy enough with what we’d found, all right. Maybe I should have brought it up at the time. I’m too much of the “sleeping dogs school” for my own good. How would I deal with Savas? I wasn’t sure. If I told him he’d be crazy to lock up Kogan, he’d probably do it just to spite me. Kogan was nobody. There wasn’t a body of concerned citizens who were going to protest about the violation of Kogan’s civil rights. If I told him nothing and stood my ground, he might get nasty in my direction. There were even fewer concerned citizens who’d worry about me. I took a chance, picked up the phone, curious to hear what I was going to say.
As luck would have it, Chris wasn’t in his office. I left my name and felt that my forthright intentions had earned me this temporary escape.
Since I was still holding the phone, I put in a call to Scarp Enterprises.
“M’yeah? Scarp. What can I do for you?”
“Martha?”
“That’s the name. Who wants her?”
“It’s Benny. I love your telephone technique, Martha, but I don’t understand it.”
“I didn’t ask to be the chief telephone answerer, Benny, since you ask. What can I do for you, you little imp? Lunch is out; I’m being taken out by someone of quality.”
“Who wants to pick your brains?”
“You’re a suspicious rascal! Of course he wants to pick my brains, but over a good lunch! Not at the places you frequent.”
“Martha, the last time we had lunch you said you didn’t have time to be wined and dined. But blame Benny if it makes you feel better.”
“What do you want this time, Benny? You want to take me to lunch tomorrow? I’ve got a last-minute cancellation.”
“I may be in the lock-up tomorrow lunch, Martha, if I don’t find out a few things.”
“A deft parry, you little beggar. I forget the name of the fellow doing the cooking in the lock-up these days. I don’t think he was a poisoner. What do you want to know?”
“What were the money and property arrangements when the Morellas split?”
“Ha! You don’t want much for nothing!” she said, nearly piercing my eardrum. “Let me think. From what I heard, Sue Ellen got a bigger chunk of everything than anybody’d expected. She has a cotton-candy mind, Benny. No head for figures. Morella’s loaded, right? But it’s all tied up in small companies with numbers instead of names. You’d need a licensed pilot to steer a course through his holdings. From what I hear, he wasn’t being all that cooperative, but somehow, she managed to dig up the names of most of his nearly invisible assets. She got a good share of these, adding a couple of million to what she would have gotten without the effort.”
“Work conquers everything,” I said. “That was the motto of our high school, only it was written in Latin.”
“Yeah, Sue Ellen went there too and she took the motto to heart.”
“Martha, where can I get all this stuff? I mean, where would it be recorded?”
“Try the files of the lawyers concerned. Who were they? Julian Newby’s one—”
“And Rupe McLay’s the other.”
“Well, you won’t get anywhere with Newby. You might as well try the other place, if you can find him above the table level.”
“Thanks. I’ll sweep out the drunk tank, while I’m at it. Martha, I want to thank—”
“Sure, Benny. Any time. B’bye.” And she was gone before I had completely rounded out my gratitude in words. I held on to the phone for a couple of seconds after the line went dead, in case Savas was trying to raise me. In the end, I replaced the receiver and sat back in my chair staring at it. Sometimes a silent phone can be a lot noisier than a ringing one.
I was still running away from the sound of my quiet phone as I moved east along St. Andrew Street. Snow from the sidewalks and the street had created a modest rampart in the gutter that made crossing the street hazardous except at intersections. I crossed over in front of the Lincoln Theatre. Christmas ornaments had been mounted on wires straddling the street. There was a lot of silver tinsel and coloured lights. The effect was as cheering as that of the plastic candy canes attached to the light standards. Either the decorations weren’t in the mood for Santa or I wasn’t. I couldn’t decide which.
The sound of “Away in a Manger” coming over a pair of stereo speakers mounted outside Frenchie’s Fries didn’t help improve my usual denial that the season was once again upon us. I could already taste the familiar depression, the last gasp of the old year and reheated turkey. The feeling comes with the denial that I too will have to make a list and check it twice. I never suspected that this annual sensation had anything to do with my being Jewish. I got the same feeling when it was time to wind up all activity and get down to doing my income tax. Both were interruptions of normal activities. Both were inevitable, both wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.
The plaque on the exhaust hood said: “FRENCHIE’S FRIES—No. 1.” You could see it through the glass. I went in and sat down at a pedestal stool at the counter. The place was half-full. I recognized merchants my father’s age sitting together in the centre and a group of kids from the high school trying to decide between ketchup and vinegar. Morella was standing behind the counter. His face had retained its youth although the blond hair had gone steel grey. He still wore it short and perhaps there was more forehead than there used to be. He was dressed in the standard white apron I’d first seen him in years ago. It was stained with oil.
“I know you,” he said as I glanced at the menu, “You’re Manny Cooperman’s boy. Are you the doctor or the other one?” He still smiled with all of his face, not just with the corners of his mouth.
“I’m the other one, Mr. Morella.” He lifted a container of steaming French fries out of a vat and turned them out into a large sieve for draining.
“You know my name. That’s remarkable. Around here people don’t even look at my face. l’m just a pair of hands dishing out fries.” To illustrate what he was saying, he dished out two orders and added gravy to one of them before delivering the plates to the two men seated at the other end of the counter. He talked to them for a few seconds then came back to t
he control centre of his frying vats. After he had filled another order, he returned to me.
“Your father’s a great gin rummy player. You know that, I suspect. But I don’t think he knows just how good he is. If he was a younger man, he could go anywhere, do anything with a pack of cards. It’s a kind of genius. We call him ‘the hammer’ because he won’t let up. He has an instinct for the jugular. It’s an odd combination in such a friendly man. What can I get you?”
“Let’s try the famous fries again. Are they still the same as they used to be at the corner of Queen and St. Andrew?”
“Ah! You remember the truck, do you? You know, I’ve still got that truck. Can’t make myself throw it away. And why should I? It made me my first dollar. In the end, it made me a millionaire. So I guess I can afford to give it room to rust in, eh? What can I get you to drink?”
“Coffee.” When he brought it, I said: “I don’t get this, Mr. Morella.”
“Steve, please.
“Steve.”
“What don’t you get?”
“Call me Benny. I don’t understand what you’re doing here in an apron, up to your elbows in cooking fat. Isn’t there a mountain of paperwork on the top floor of the Venezia Block waiting for your signature?”
“Let it wait! Let it wait! This is the important part of my job: talking to you, watching the faces, seeing what people eat and what they leave on their plates, seeing who comes in and who walks along the street to the next place.”
“I see, but—”
“Look, anybody can buy three, four, half a dozen freight cars of potatoes. I’ve got people working for me who can tell where I should go to get the best deal. But who have I got to tell me why I should buy them and who am I buying them for?”
“You like a hands-on approach. I can see that that does very well here. But what about your other outlets?”
“‘Outlets’: that’s the kind of word my hired help uses. It turns them all into rubber stamps. They’re all different, Benny. The one in Duluth isn’t the same as the two in New Orleans. The three in Montreal aren’t like the one that just opened in Paris. Each one has settled into its own community. But they all have my sign over the door.” Steve Morella brought a cold cup of coffee to the counter and continued to explain.
