by Anna Porter
“Did Paul talk much about his own father?”
“Not much. But he said he was beaten a lot as a child. And it was what he’d needed. He deserved it. They say it passes from parent to child and on through the generations.” She sighed. “I’m glad Arthur won’t have children. I think he learned how to inflict pain too well. In Mexico when we first moved there he continued the games he’d played with cats.”
“What games?” Judith asked, but she could already imagine and wasn’t sure she wanted to have the answer.
“Killing games, with sticks and fire and knives. Mutilating games. The object was to allow the cat to live as long as possible in agony.”
“Perhaps we should start back now,” Miki said. “You’re cold.”
Judith hadn’t noticed she’d been shivering, but she was glad of the pause. As they walked around the Octagon, she asked Eva about Paul’s family and rehearsed the two versions of the story she had already heard. “In one version, his father was a poor vineyard worker who could barely afford a meal for his family. He died young of a heart condition—the same one Paul himself had when he died. His mother served meals—when they could afford to eat—on hand-carved wooden plates. In the other version, his father was a genteel bourgeois who lived in a mansion and hired tutors to teach his son to play his Stradivarius. In this version, Paul went to a private school in Vienna once he turned 12, and the family spent summers in Italy. Brenda says his parents died in a concentration camp during the war.”
“I heard both versions,” Eva said. “In the beginning, only the one with the private school, but when he had a bit to drink he’d talk about the other version. I thought he had such a lively fantasy life, and why not? Too much reality is bad for a man’s soul. All day he lived by reason and logic, that’s how he built his fortune. At night, let him have his anguish and his desires, let him make up any past he wanted. Tell you one thing, though, I never heard him play the violin.”
“Maybe you should go to Hungary, Mrs. Hayes,” Miki suggested.
“Oh yes,” Eva agreed. “That would certainly tell you about his parents. You’d find out what his demons were...”
Mumu squatted down for a dump at the corner of Le Nôtre’s bust, then began to pull Miki toward the hotel.
“Just before he died, I heard him say ‘Sorry’ three times.”
“Oh?” asked Eva with curiosity. “Really? And did he elaborate?”
“No. He didn’t have time.”
“Let’s hope he meant Arthur,” Eva said. “There is a lot of room there for ‘sorry’s.”
“What was it that finally made up your mind to leave him?” Judith asked. “I mean, why then? Why not sooner?”
Eva sighed. “I’d hoped Arthur might have told you about that night. Did he show you his arm?”
“I saw a scar, if that’s what you mean.”
“Runs from his wrist to his shoulder blade. Arthur would dress up in my clothes to irritate his father. First few times he was punished as usual, with a belt. That last time Paul went crazy. He burned him with a flaming piece of wood from the fireplace. He sat on the boy’s head and held him down while he poked at his bare arm...” She choked. She bent over, holding tight onto Miki’s arm. Judith thought she was weeping. Miki gave Judith an angry glance and motioned with his chin for her to leave them alone.
“I’m all right,” Eva said. Her breath came in painful gasps. “Did you see this?” she asked, raising her head, taking off the glasses and holding her face up to Judith. There were tears running down her cheeks. Eva put a tentative finger to her right cheek where the scar ran from the corner of her mouth up to an opaque blue eye.
“Yes,” Judith said quietly.
“Of all that I may ever have done in my life, I’m proudest of this scar,” Eva said. “It was the first time, the only time, I stood up for my son. That night. I tried to pull Paul away from Arthur. Paul struck me with the hot poker across the face. You wonder why he let me go? Though he loved me still. And I, God help me, have always loved him—always will. But if that boy blackmailed him now and then, more power to him. He deserved every dollar he got.”
Twenty-Five
JUDITH NEVER DISCOVERED what entrecôte bouchère aux herbes was. Eva didn’t want to have dinner. Nor did she think she had anything to add to the earlier interview. She was exhausted and she wished to rest her lungs and the rest of her body. Miki, now attired in a splendid maroon velvet jacket, gray pants, and glossy evening shoes with black satin bows, came to Judith’s room to inform her that they had decided not to continue for today. If Judith would stay in Paris for another day or two, they could cover the cost incurred, but tonight Eva was going to “repose.”
Judith argued that she had to be home because of her children, an idea quite foreign to Miki—“surely the nanny would accommodate”—who confessed he’d never indulged in children and considered them extraneous to the discussion. “She was, you could see for yourself, exhausted,” he told her. “These are subjects she would rather not discuss. Don’t you see? She is unwell. Because she does not like to consult with doctors, we cannot tell how serious her illnesses are. But we know she must rest.”
“She did invite me here to talk,” Judith protested. “I can hardly be blamed for what she chose to tell me. And it is rather a long way from Toronto if all I am allowed is four, five hours.”
“Quite. Quite,” Miki agreed. “But you must not judge by the quantity of time. It’s quality that counts, don’t you see?”
He offered to take her to the airport in the morning, and to compensate with opera tickets for tonight. He could arrange for the escort.
Fortunately, Judith fell asleep and didn’t wake up till seven the next morning when breakfast arrived courtesy of Mrs. Zimmerman.
When she called to say goodbye, Eva seemed quite revived. “You must find his killer,” she told Judith. “Someone at dinner that night. One of those people knows something. Also try his rabbi. Let me know how you fare. Perhaps we’ll see you again? That would be all right, if you wished. After you’ve been to Hungary. When you have more of the answers.”
Miki came to the room to help direct the bellman with her suitcase. He was as bright as the first time she saw him. “A pleasure taking care of such a lovely woman,” he said. The car, a white Silver Cloud, came with its own driver in blue tunic and cap. “I never did learn how to drive,” Miki apologized. “No opportunities, really.” Halfway to Orly he handed her a thick envelope, with “Hôtel Meurice” engraved in blue script on the top left-hand corner.
“I can’t accept this,” Judith protested firmly, thinking it was reimbursement for her Paris flight.
When she tried to give it back, he asked: “Don’t you think you should open it first?” He watched with exaggerated interest while she slit it open with her index finger.
Airplane tickets from Montreal to Budapest. She pulled them out, stared at them, then at Miki. “Come on,” he said impatiently. “You haven’t finished looking. It’s not an Easter-egg hunt.”
Next to the tickets there was a voucher for a rental car and prepaid confirmed reservations for March 10 to 15 for a hotel called the Park, in Eger. Judith looked even more puzzled.
“I thought a clever woman of your profession,” said Miki, “would have worked it out by now. Surely you’d want to go to Eger if you could. Chances are your magazine won’t send you. For us, the expense is so negligible, it’s worth it. Only obligation on your part is to tell us what you discover about Zimmerman.”
When she checked in at the Air France counter she discovered that an unknown benefactor had upgraded her ticket to first class.
Twenty-Six
STAFF SERGEANT LEVINE returned from Bermuda with several little plastic bags whose contents he delivered to the chief pathologist on Yan’s staff. It had been a long time, Levine told David, since he’d had as much fun as he’d had with the police department in St. George. While they had seemed rather formal and uncooperative when Parr first tried to enlist
their help, they turned out in numbers to accompany Levine for his complete run-through of the XJ-S.
Rather than get openly involved in Toronto’s murder investigation, they had waited till Brenda Zimmerman drove the car to Fulton’s Spa, as she did most days for her morning dancercise class, then they towed it away. This gave Levine and the lab man he had brought along a full two hours to crawl and scrape around inside the car.
They knew her routine, the hours she kept, her friends, and, very usefully, her habit of parking illegally rather than expending the extra effort to reach the lot at the back of the building. “Mrs. Zimmerman considers herself royalty,” Staff Sergeant Graham of the Bermuda constabulary explained with a wink. “She isn’t governed by the same rules and regulations as us lesser mortals. And while I don’t wish to speak ill of the bereaved, if she kept her liquor consumption under control she’d not have to bother with quite so much dancercise.” Graham was the first black man Levine had ever met with a Highland Scots accent.
For several years they had resisted the temptation to tow her car off, simply accepting the promptly paid fines delivered by young Geoff, the chauffeur. But Graham admitted he had always wanted to tow the Jaguar, and when the others went back to the station, he stayed behind to see Brenda’s face. Her expression of disbelief and consternation, he later reported, had been worth the wait.
She had flung herself back into the building, hair flying, eyes wild. The green Cadillac appeared about ten minutes later, young Geoff running around to open the door, standing by as she bounced into the car, running again to the driver’s seat and tearing off at 20 miles over the speed limit toward the police station. Mrs. Zimmerman was furious and didn’t care who knew it. She stormed in, demanding to see the captain. She didn’t believe they didn’t have captains in Bermuda. (“That’s what comes from watching too much Yankee TV,” Graham remarked to Levine. “At least she’s not asking for a white man.” He guffawed.) Finally she had no choice but to settle for Graham, who insisted she fill out all the required forms and pay the towing charge before he released the car.
That gave Levine and his teammate the extra half-hour to put the XJ-S back exactly the way they had found it. A vision in perfection. There was no question both the right side and front windowpanes had been replaced. They had snipped off some varnish from the elegant wood around the passenger side of the car for analysis. They found faint stains on the leather interior and a splatter of dark spots on the ceiling, which Levine was convinced were blood. Most important, they discovered a hole about the size of a bullet in the leather padding of the right-hand door.
“Careless, that,” Levine remarked with the enjoyment of an explorer who has just come upon some Inca gold.
“When does Mrs. Zimmerman come back to Toronto?” David asked.
“She may never,” Levine said. “I saw the house and, if I were her, I’d never leave it. Specially as she can imagine what nasty questions are being asked in Toronto.”
The lab report confirmed Levine’s guess. The splatters were human blood, mixed with Lysol, Ajax, Fine Furniture Polish, Leatherette, and an unidentified acid-base lightener that had made them almost invisible. The hole in the door had been thoroughly cleansed, difficult to establish what kind of bullet had entered it. The angle suggested the shot had come from above. The lab didn’t rule out that it had been a hollow-point copper-jacketed Remington-Peters, but it would take time to be so precise.
The carpeting had been completely replaced in the past few days, as had the window on the passenger side. In fact, no one had used the car on that side since the new carpet had been installed.
Again, Levine commented, whoever cleaned the car hadn’t had much experience covering up a murder. They had done a lousy job. David concurred. If only he could establish that Singer was blackmailing Zimmerman and if he could figure out why, that would make Zimmerman Singer’s killer: he would have had motive and opportunity.
***
In the afternoon, Joe Martelli called. He had finally cornered Melwyn Singer, in his apartment on East 49th Street. He hadn’t been to Florida for months. He had taken a few days off with his family to ease the pain of his father’s death. He had not been able to face the factory or the showroom, both built by Harvey. Zeydie, as he called his father, had been much loved by his family.
When Martelli asked why he hadn’t accompanied his mother to collect the body from Toronto, Melwyn said his mother wouldn’t tell him when she was going. She had insisted she would go alone. She hadn’t wanted him or her daughter-in-law along. Nor had she consulted him about her move to Israel.
Melwyn was a small, rotund, peaceable kind of guy, not the sort to stand in anyone’s way. Joe figured he might have felt a little hurt she hadn’t even asked for his advice. He also figured Melwyn wasn’t much used to this type of behavior from his mother. Overall, they had been a tight-knit family. The two small boys who wove in and out of the conversation would pipe up now and then to ask about Bubbie. She’d left for Tel Aviv last night. Said she’d call when she’d established herself in an apartment.
Melwyn said his parents had been very close, in a conventional sort of way. Affectionate, but formal. Martelli knew what he meant right away: it was the same with his parents, though they were Italian.
The only false note had been in Melwyn’s repeated assurance that there had been no noticeable changes in his father’s demeanor since last Christmas. Martelli was used to shifts in witnesses’ moods. There was no doubt Singer was hiding something, but Martelli had no authority yet to push.
“All that,” David said, “is about to change. We know how and where his father was killed. It’s now a question of establishing by whom and why. Shall I go through the proper channels to ask for assistance?”
“Only if you have a lot of time,” Martelli said. He was as disparaging about bureaucratic hassles as David. “I can go back and pretend I already have the authority. If that’s okay with you.”
It was. David told him about Levine’s day in Bermuda and, with some withholding in personal matters, of what he had learned from Deidre Thomas. He had already reported on his meeting with Mrs. Singer.
The more he thought about Gloria Singer, the more annoyed he became. He leaned back in his worn standard-issue black chair, stared out the grimy window at the indifferent view across the street. Not even a tree. A couple of cold pigeons pecking away at leftover crumbs outside the French delicatessen. “Joe,” he said at last, “does it ever occur to you that if your mind worked just a little quicker, or if you were prepared to bully people a little more, you’d be farther ahead in your career?”
“Often. Why?”
“I blew my chance with Gloria Singer, and it was the last one I’ll ever get. The department isn’t about to send me to Israel. She knew something and she didn’t want to tell me about it. She was frightened. That’s why she was so anxious to keep her family away from Toronto. And that’s why she was in such a hurry to get her ass over to Israel. She thought her own life was in danger.” He put his feet up on his desk. At times like this he wished he was still smoking a pipe. It used to help him think.
“It all ties into whatever they discovered in that place they went to before Christmas,” Martelli prompted.
“Eger,” David spelled it out. “Some obscure little town in the northeast of Hungary. Both Paul Zimmerman and Harvey Singer came from there. There is something they both knew that killed Singer, and may have killed them both.”
“And you think Mrs. Singer knew why Harvey was killed?” Martelli asked.
“And more than likely by whom as well.” David glared balefully at the cracked ceiling.
“Well, we got one more kick at the can. Can’t do it today, we’ve got our tenth murder of the year in Queens. Domestic, I hope. But I’ll get over to Melwyn’s tonight for sure. You guys in Toronto don’t know how good you have it, being able to puzzle over who did each one of them and why. Down here we’re just glad if we can pin it on somebody, then get on with th
e next bloody little number.” Martelli sounded wistful.
After David hung up, he continued his study of the pigeons. There were only four people, Arthur had told him, who ever drove that car: Paul and Brenda Zimmerman, Arthur now and then, and Geoff Aronson, the chauffeur. Ward had access, but not the keys.
Singer could have been blackmailing Zimmerman, and Zimmerman could have decided to kill him. Stupid to mess up his best car, but there’s no accounting for bad judgment. On the other hand, Michael Ward might have done it—on someone else’s command. Or Arthur—for his own reasons. The chauffeur? Unlikely. In theory, the car could have been stolen in order to murder Singer and implicate Zimmerman, but why then was the car shipped immediately to Bermuda? Brenda and Arthur were plausible suspects, but neither of them came from Eger, which had to be the link between Singer and Zimmerman.
