The Midnight Boat to Palermo and Other Stories

by Rosemary Aubert

  At home, the wife was starting to wonder why I liked the gym so much. I told her I was getting hooked on being in shape. She said she was beginning to miss me. Next day, I tried to sneak out of the house without her asking any questions.

  There had been a time when I’d crawled out of bed at two in the morning in order to work some filthy undercover job that could only be done in the middle of the night. Of course, those had been winter nights, and I’d frozen my butt sitting surveillance in the frigid reaches of a suburban parking lot or on the icy fringes of Lake Ontario where the wind blew across the water to turn my breath to ice on my beard.

  Scott caught me and asked, “Where the heck are you off to?”

  “Nowhere…”

  Except it wasn’t nowhere. It was the gym. And my big new case. Watching the cleaning lady work out without paying the tab.

  “I think I got that thief you’re after,” I told Denise. But I didn’t tell her who. I’d worked homicide long enough to know how important motive was. Until I could figure out why the cleaner was working out so hard, I didn’t want to blow her cover. I didn’t have to figure out why she was working secretly. Every minute on those machines cost. The gym, dozy as it was, wasn’t cheap. I’d have saved a few C-notes if I’d taken Denise up on the two-for she’d offered when I signed up.

  Just about every day, I watched that cleaner steal a few minutes on the bike, a few minutes on the treadmill, a couple of bounces on the orange ball, even one or two stealthy laps around the track with free weights in both hands. It even seemed to me that I was starting to see some improvement. She wasn’t sweating anymore. And she wasn’t huffing and puffing, either. She even seemed to be doing a better job of the cleaning. Sometimes in order to stay on a machine, she dusted so hard and so long that she polished the darn thing to a glow.

  This went on for about three weeks. A couple of times, Denise asked me how my “investigation” was going. I told her I’d have something for her soon.

  But it wasn’t until one morning when I finally found myself alone in the gym with the cleaning lady that I got the one piece of information I wanted. Like with so many times in my real cases, all I had to do was ask.

  I saw her circling the track. I trotted up beside her. I said, “I see you working out here all the time when you think nobody’s looking. Why?”

  She staggered and stopped. She got a look of fear on her face that I hadn’t seen in a long time. People aren’t afraid of cops anymore. Maybe she was older than I thought.

  “Don’t get me in trouble,” she said. “Please, I need this job….”

  “You don’t need to be working out to be able to be a cleaner,” I said. I tried to sound gruff but I guess the months off the force were starting to take their toll. Anyway, I knew I didn’t care about the gym losing a few bucks. I wanted to know what she was up to.

  “I’m scared,” she said.

  I laughed but when I saw she wasn’t joking, I said, “Scared of what? Of the people in this gym?”

  She gave me a look like I was a lunatic. “Not actually,” she said. I could see she was no longer scared of me.

  Without thinking about it, I started to run, gently, like old men do, and she started to trot beside me, as if this was one more chance to get free workout time. “I hear things all day long,” she said.

  “What things?”

  “About all those gangstas in the apartment buildings around here.” She made a sweeping gesture with her hand. It didn’t stop her stride. “I live around here myself. I don’t wanna be some sort of sittin’ duck. They come after me, I’m gonna run….”

  With that, she spurted ahead of me.

  It took me a whole lap around the track to catch up with her again.

  I couldn’t believe how fast she could sprint. I couldn’t believe how fast I could sprint.

  But in the half minute it took me to get back to her, I figured out a plan. A way to keep both her and Denise out of trouble. And a way to make myself feel that I was just a little more than a washed-out cop with nothing to do but tread rubber.

  “You know the names of any of those gangstas?” I asked.

  “’Course I don’t,” she said. “You’re a cop, ain’t you? Why do you think I’d know anybody’s name?”

  “Because I know that people aren’t usually scared enough of strangers to do something about it.”

  She stopped, stood in front of me. “So what you gonna do? You gonna tell Denise I been sneakin’ if I don’t rat on people that live in my building?”

  “I’m not that thick,” I said, “but I think you’ve got a good thing going here.”

  “You mean this stupid job?”

  “No. I mean the working out.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been watching you for weeks. When you first started, you could hardly lift ten pounds. Now you can run around the track faster than me.”

  She gave me a look. “That ain’t saying nothing,” she spat out.

  “Look,” I said, ignoring her display of contempt, “I’m going to make you a deal.”

  “I don’t make deals with cops.”

  “I’m not a cop.”

  Both of us waited for a second. I was waiting for the hurt of my own words to hit me. I don’t what she was waiting for. But nothing happened until she finally said, “What deal?”

  “I’ll make you a legit member of the gym. You can come here when you’re off duty and work out whenever you want. With your own card.”

  “How you gonna do that?”

  “I’m going to give Denise three hundred dollars. When she says the two-for deal she offers is for spouses only, I’m going to tell her that either she gives me the deal or I’m off her investigation. If she goes for it, obviously the stealing of time stops.”

  “You’d do that? You’d spend three hundred dollars for me to have my own card?” She thought about it for a minute. “What do I have to do?” she asked.

  “You have to write a couple of names on a piece of paper. You have to leave that piece of paper on the floor near the locker of one of those young cops you heard talking about the gangstas. Like it was a piece of garbage you left behind when you were sweeping the men’s locker room. You think you could do that?”

  She didn’t answer. There was a sound at the door and a few of the young cops themselves came in before they headed for a day at court. The receptionist came in, too. She started taking cards and writing names in her book. The cleaning lady found her rag and her feather duster. I took my place on the treadmill.

  I had a feeling things were starting to look up. Like it wasn’t a waste of time to come to the gym after all. Like things might take a turn for the better for the young cops on the gang case, for Denise, for the cleaning lady, even for my sweet wife, Scott. After all, a husband in shape might not be such a bad thing.

  I looked at my old flat feet, realizing it wasn’t that hard to see them down there anymore. I got the treadmill up to quite a speed. I walked and walked. Walking on that mill suddenly reminded me of something I hadn’t done in a good long time.

  It reminded me of walking the beat.

  SHAVING WITH OCCAM’S RAZOR

  On the way to the morgue I nearly got hit at Wellesley. I was late for forensic class for the third time in five weeks. Not my fault. A heavy day at the office, three parolees facing suspension for suspected drug dealing—I was thinking about work when I ran out of the subway and almost collided with an incoming eastbound bus.

  I tore along Yonge, hung a right at Grosvenor, remembered we weren’t meeting at the Centre for Forensics like we usually did. Field trip. I zipped back to Yonge, shot down a block and skidded to a halt in front of the coroner’s building on Grenville.

  So I wasn’t in the mood for sarcasm when I was finally buzzed through, managed to locate the lecture hall, opened the door, walked in and found myself standing beside the instructor at the front of a room full of my fellow classmates, all of whom were staring at me as if I were some sort of sp
ecimen.

  “We’re waiting for you, madam. You’re late,” the instructor announced, dramatically eyeing his watch. I’d never seen the guy before in my life, but already I knew he was a retired cop. The attitude. The Metropolitan Toronto Police seal emblazoned on the face of the watch.

  “Not as late as most of the people in this building,” I answered.

  The class sniggered. The ex-cop looked shocked. Good.

  Of course the only seat left was in the front row, right smack in front of him.

  “How many times has this man been shot?” he asked me, before my bottom even touched the chair. I suppose he thought he was tricking me. Silly man. I haven’t spent the last ten years as a parole officer for nothing. Manipulative people like crooks and cops always ask quick questions hoping to throw people off guard.

  I glanced up at the screen behind him. Projected there, in x-ray, was the outline of what appeared to be an adult male. The poor guy was a piece of Swiss cheese—a couple dozen holes in him, fanned across his torso.

  “Once. He’s been shot only once,” I said, settling into the chair and shrugging off my jacket.

  “Why, you’re right…” The ex-cop’s eyes locked into mine for a second. Nice gray eyes. Wary. Wise. The kind that have seen just about everything—or think they have. Right now they were registering surprise again. I smiled. He addressed the rest of the class. “Here we see the typical pattern produced by the impact from a single shotgun shell….”

  There was a click from somewhere behind me and a new image flicked onto the screen. It was another adult male body, this time a schematic outline. Beside each part of the body was a tidy list of the types of evidence the forensic scientist looked for: strands of hair, the characteristic indentations produced by a person’s teeth, fingerprints…

  Beside me and behind me, I heard the frantic scratching of people taking notes. I was the only corrections person in the forensic class. The rest was divided just about fifty-fifty. Half were cops trying to improve their chances for promotion. The other half were mystery writers trying to improve their chances for publication.

  I didn’t bother taking notes. It was obvious to me what sort of evidence would be looked for—plus we’d been studying it all term. “Forget your pen?” the instructor asked sweetly.

  “No, sir,” I replied, and I winked.

  He blushed. Cops blush all the time. Cry, too. No wonder, considering.

  I felt like crying myself when I caught the next slide. It showed the body of a man who couldn’t be older than about twenty. He was spread out on a white table. His arms and legs were thin, but still muscular. His thick long auburn hair formed a pool under his head. There was a Y-shaped cut on his chest, one of the beginning steps of an autopsy. In death, his face didn’t have any real expression on it, but I couldn’t help seeing sorrow there. Inset into the slide was another picture. It showed a small square, sewed together with crooked stitches from two dirty pieces of cloth and attached to what looked like an old shoelace.

  “Anybody want to venture a guess as to what this might be?” the instructor asked, using a pointer to lightly tap the square on the screen.

  I had an idea, but I kept my mouth shut. I’d had about all the attention I cared to have for one night, thank you.

  “Valuables—” I heard one of the cops in the class whisper.

  “Yes,” the instructor replied. “This is the body of a homeless street person. Tied to his underwear we found—as we often find—a small satchel containing the sum total of his remaining worldly goods.”

  There was another click, another slide—showing the little squares of cloth separated to reveal the contents—two shining wedding rings, a woman’s and a man’s.

  Seeing this, the writers scribbled faster. The cops didn’t bother. There’s a million stories in the city morgue, and enough people already who think they can tell them.

  “Now, class,” the instructor said, “it’s your turn. I need a volunteer.” Onto the screen came a strange picture. It showed the slender body of what appeared to be an elderly male seated in an easy chair. Over his head was a plastic bag from a well-known supermarket, its logo accidentally looking like a screwed-up human face. The bag was tightened around the man’s neck with a rope. One of his arms was bound with the same sort of rope; the other hung limp and free, dangling over the arm of the chair. “I want a volunteer to analyze this scene for me—tell me what happened here—”

  Behind me I heard the embarrassed scrunching down into seats of people who didn’t want to be called on. I didn’t scrunch down. I didn’t think the instructor had the nerve to call on me again. Anyway, I didn’t care one way or the other. I knew what the slide showed.

  He waited. Nobody volunteered. I looked up. Those gray eyes were on me. When I didn’t look away, he handed me his pointer. “Tell us—” he said. I thought he seemed pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to.

  I stood, took the pointer from his hand, turned to face the class. In my best case-presentation voice I said, “Though this is an apparent homicide, what we’re looking at here is not really a murder scene—”

  I shot the instructor a glance. For the first time, I saw traces of a genuine smile on his mouth.

  “Please continue,” he said.

  I nodded. “First and foremost, there’s no sign of struggle—no clothing in disarray, no furniture displaced—” I used the pointer to show a table beside the chair in which the victim sat. It was covered with little knick-knacks—all in a row. “No scratches on the body, no blood….”

  “But the man has a rope around his neck—” the instructor interrupted. His voice was challenging, like that of a coach.

  “Yes. But it’s the same rope that’s around his arm. Not just the same kind—the same piece.” I slid the pointer along the picture. The rope wrapped around the neck, then seemed to disappear behind the chair, but if you traced carefully, it wasn’t hard to figure out that it must loop behind the chair then back around the front—around the man’s right wrist. “What this person did,” I concluded, “was rig this rope in such a way that when he yanked his arm, it tightened around his neck….”

  The instructor was actually looking pleased now. But I wasn’t finished. “There are other reasons to believe this is a suicide,” I went on. “For starters, homicide is a much rarer occurrence than suicide. So, statistically, the chances of any questionable death being suicide are much higher than it being murder. Also, the victim is an elderly male. Traditionally, males handle being alone much more poorly that females. And though they don’t always turn to suicide, of course, they are far more likely to do so than some other segments of society….”

  “Thank you, that’s enough,” he said, taking the pointer from my hand. I couldn’t tell whether he was pleased or whether I’d gone too far. Maybe I embarrassed him. At least now he’d get off my back.

  “This is an elderly widower who had just learned he had cancer. He killed himself when he got the news. In this case—and in all cases,” he said, “it’s best to apply a principle referred to as ‘Occam’s razor’. Occam was a medieval philosopher dedicated to teaching that truth results from the observation of the physical world. He said that the simplest explanation of any phenomenon is almost invariably the truest. When I myself was studying, I was told, ‘When you hear hoof beats, think of horses, not zebras.’ I can offer no better advice.”

  With that, he adjourned the lecture. I knew what had to be coming next. He led us down a winding corridor and into a brightly-lit room that sparkled with white enamel, spotless tile, stainless steel. There were drains in the floor.

  “The morgue is part of the ministry of the Solicitor General of Ontario,” he told us, “and like all government offices, we work business hours. 8:30 to 4:30. No autopsies at night…”

  A sigh went around the group that was now huddled around the instructor. Relief from the cops. Disappointment from the writers.

  “But here in the autopsy room you can see the atmosphere in which
we work—and some of the tools of our trade.”

  Saws, scalpels, knives, picks, hoses. Microphones and tape recorders. He showed us the video room, where bodies were displayed for next of kin too squeamish to look directly at their loved ones. Scales for weighing dead livers and hearts, jars of organs ready for analysis when “office hours” resumed. A room for isolating bodies infested with insects—whose lifespan, he helpfully pointed out—gave a good clue as to the time of death.

  “There is a cycle of death that follows the seasons year after year,” he told us. “At New Year’s we see cases of people who’ve died accidentally because of alcohol—choking while asleep, for example. Late winter—early spring, we get people who’ve gone through the ice on their snowmobiles. Summer brings drownings. Autumn—early winter, carbon monoxide poisoning from furnaces and chimneys poorly maintained…”

  As he talked, he led us toward two tall steel doors. There could only be one thing behind them, but when he pulled on the handle and slowly opened them, I have to admit I was shocked.

  Because of the smell, which was not of putrefaction, which I would not have expected, or of preservative, which I would have expected. No. The huge refrigerator that held the bodies that were awaiting further action let loose a smell exactly like fresh meat.

  I gasped and stepped back. He noticed. A look almost of disappointment seemed to cross his face. I took a breath and stepped back up toward where he stood near the door.

  At that moment, he reached down, grasped a steel handle and yanked. Out slid a shelf, not inches from my waist.

  And on it lay the corpse of a woman my own age. She was tall and thin. Pretty. Her fair skin was just beginning to be wrinkled. Her blond hair was just a tiny bit tinged with gray. She was naked but her body was modestly covered with a sheet. “What happened?” I found myself asking, even though I knew it was a dumb question.

  This was the instructor’s opportunity for a smart answer. He could have easily got even with me for my own smartness.