by Howard Engel
“Do you know who it was?” I asked.
“We’ve got a pretty good idea, but no positive ID yet.” I nodded at that and then Pete nodded and we both sat and thought about naming the dead man. Once you name a dead man, there’s no way to take it back. When you hear the bad news, you may not believe it, but the words have deadly magic in them and you already begin to see the world without the named person.
“Are you telling, or do I have to wait until I read about it in tomorrow’s Beacon?”
“The body was wearing clothes that had this in the pockets.” Pete took a plastic-wrapped wallet out of his coat pocket and put it in the middle of the table. Through the plastic, I could see worn leather, plastic credit-card holders and underneath a ring of keys.
“May I?” I asked looking at Pete, who inclined his head ever so slightly. I opened the plastic bag and took out the wallet. I didn’t want to open it, but I had to know. Chances are that the dead man was someone I’d never met. Hell, I’d only been working the case for a few days. I hadn’t even met the principals yet. The name in the wallet read Alexander Pastor. I’d had a conversation about that name with Alex Pásztory, the guy from …
Then it hit me, just the way I’ve just described. I said it over again to myself: The dead man is Alex Pásztory, the man from Environment Front. The second-last smoker in Grantham, the man who spotted Dr. Carswell at the Turkey Roost, the man who interrupted himself after saying, “I’m off to meet the AV,” was dead. The second date on his tombstone was now available to the carver. I remembered the leather patches on his sleeves and the tobacco burns in his old sweater. I could suddenly see Pásztory’s lopsided grin, like he was making some ironic comment on his own murder.
“You pretty sure it’s Pásztory?” Pete dug into a pocket and handed me a photograph. It looked like a failed likeness of the man I’d talked to at the Turkey Roost, discarded by an apprentice sculptor in wax.
“It’s a Polaroid I had taken. Is this the guy you know?”
“Wish I could say it wasn’t. It’s him, all right. How did he get it?”
“I’m no expert on that, and the lab hasn’t even taken delivery of the remains yet, but, to me, it looked like he had taken a single shot in the pump. I’d say it was from close up too.”
“Poor bugger! He was a nice fellow. You ever run across him?”
“Only in his letters to the editor. And those articles. He was always beating the drum, wasn’t he?”
“Who’s going to beat it now?”
“Aw, come on, Benny. You’ll never survive in this racket if you’re going to be a bleeding heart. You gotta see it as just another file, just another number.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen the way they tie tags on the big toes of some of my best clients when they put them in a drawer at the morgue. Different numbers, different filing system.”
“You mind if I sample this drink you’re wasting?”
“Help yourself.” Pete glanced around the room to see whether there were any spies from the NRP or any local peace officers in sight. The coast must have been clear, because he had the glass in his hand and returned to the table before I could take in the fact that he was breaking the rules. Of course, I only found the body. I didn’t have to stand by while it was being dug out of the tunnel. I didn’t have to scrub off Pásztory’s face so that the mud and clay wouldn’t get in the way of the Polaroid flash.
“Thanks,” Pete said. “That picture won’t be good enough to get a positive ID, but it will do until we can get to Environment Front’s office in the morning.” He was looking at my glass again, but keeping his hands clear. “Benny, if you were sniffing up the same tree as Pastor, I’d take a holiday. I’m not joking around. This was no case of manslaughter followed by a cover-up. This was murder in a neat, professional package.” He underlined what he was saying by holding onto my eyes with his while he was talking. “Is there anything more I should know about this?”
“Look, Pete, I don’t have anything but suspicions. By now, you’re going to have the same suspicions. I’ve been working on this file since Tuesday. So far I’ve only been doing research. I haven’t even met all the characters yet. I’ve been going sideways three steps and backwards two steps for every half-step I move forward. I haven’t been able to get very close. The only thing I know is that there is a lot of money involved. Maybe finding Pásztory will blow the lid off. Maybe it will all have to come out into the open now.”
“Yeah, maybe getting himself killed like this is going to accomplish more than all those pieces for the paper and those damned letters to the editor. Funny, eh?”
“Yeah, funny.”
Pete and I talked for another ten minutes. I tried to quiz him about how Pásztory’s death, and more particularly where it had taken place, was going to be received downtown. Pete pulled his big head closer to his collar and shook his head. “Nobody’s going to thank me for tonight’s work, Benny. It opens the lid on a can of dead bait and I can already smell it all over town.”
“I thought you might say something like that. What are you going to do?”
“Hell, I’ll just write it up and treat it like any other homicide. In cases like this, you have to go through the book without skipping. If I skip a line, they’ll nail me and say it was all my fault. No, Benny, when I write this up, it’s going to be a model in procedure.”
We got up after I settled the check with Des. Staziak and I started for the door together, when Des called attention to a tangle of weeds adhering to Pete’s left trouser leg, above his muddy boots.
“You got some weeds wrapped around your cuff, sir!” Pete looked down, holding his leg at an awkward angle to see it better. I saw that a scrap of bindweed was making itself at home on his pant leg. With it, an old friend, I helped Pete remove the bindweed and the familiar long pods of Dame’s Rocket. It was a nice note on which to end the evening. I went home to bed.
FOURTEEN
The next morning, Friday, I had to get ready for a court appearance in Toronto. It had nothing to do with Kinross or Phidias and, as such, it was a welcome change for me. I enjoyed cleaning current work out of my briefcase and filling it with Fermor vs Tutunjian. The Queen Elizabeth Way was crowded, but traffic moved steadily until the beginning of the Gardiner Expressway, where cement baffles reduced the number of lanes temporarily. In going over the bumpy bridge across the Humber, I got a good look at the CN Tower. It set a challenging mark for developers to shoot at. The tower seemed to be saying, “I dare you!’ to the powers within the Queen City. There was a new bridge over the railway lands at Spadina. From here I got a good view of the SkyDome, the fancy new stadium with its retractable roof. It spread an impressive curve over the vanished shunting yards that used to separate the waterfront from the rest of the city. The Dome, according to the papers, has displaced the centre of gravity in the city southward, making a serious traffic problem possible. For instance, I nearly had to mortgage my Olds to get a parking space within an easy hike of the Provincial Court Building across from Osgoode Hall. At least that historic site hadn’t been turned into a parking lot. It still looked like the calmest place in town with its Greek columns and the expanse of lawn surrounded by a high ornamental iron fence. I caught a glimpse of the wide, ornate gates, which had been built to keep cattle from wandering into the precincts of the courthouse in the middle years of the last century. It was hard to imagine that as I looked for a way to cross Queen Street.
While I was waiting to do my bit in the case of Fermor vs Tutunjian, I put in a call to the Royal Archaeological Museum of Ontario and had a brief chat with the head of the North American section, a Dr. Walter Graves. From him I learned that the man in charge of the Niagara-onthe-Lake dig was Dr. John Roppa. From Roppa I heard that there hadn’t been any archaeological work going on at the fort since a week after Labour Day. All of the digging, he told me, was confined to small sites near the wall of the fort proper and a narrow trench on the west side (which I had missed). When I asked him about the large-
scale earth-moving equipment, he said that that had to do with Sangallo’s restoration of the earthworks. “That’s tourism,” he said. “It’s only of marginal interest to us in that Sangallo will be following plans that were discovered at Fort York in Toronto.”
“Is that right?” I responded, hoping I was priming him for further disclosures.
“Perhaps you’ve heard of the Ridout Papers, Mr. Cooperman? The plans were found among them, undisturbed for the past—”
“I’d like to hear about that sometime, Dr. Roppa. I really would.”
“Yes, well I was looking through my log-book only yesterday and found—”
“Dr. Roppa do you keep a daily log on all your jobs?”
“Oh, yes. In fact the Ridout papers came to light when—”
“And that includes the dig at Fort Mississauga?”
“It’s normal procedure. If we didn’t we’d quickly lose track of where we were. You see—”
“Excuse me, Doctor, but I wonder if you could look something up for me. I’m looking for a break in the routine at the fort, an unusual event, a departure, something like that about fifteen months ago.”
“I see,” he said, drawing out the vowel as he thought. “That would have been fairly soon after we started. Hmmmm.”
“Dr. Roppa, I didn’t mean you should look it up right now. I don’t expect you have your logs sitting right in front of you. Even I’m not that organized. But, if you could give me a call—” Now it was his opportunity to interrupt me.
“Oh, Mr. Cooperman, I’m a great believer in staying on top of things. You can’t let things get out of hand, you know. Look what happened to Schlieman at Hissarlik!” I didn’t catch his allusion, but I got the sense of it.
“Dr. Roppa, I don’t expect that you’ll be able to—” Again he chopped me off with enthusiasm.
“I am looking at the logs of twenty-three years in the field as I’m talking to you. A year and a quarter ago, let’s see, a break in the daily routine. Let’s see …” This was followed by a silence that was punctuated from time to time with remarks the doctor was addressing to his own thought processes and not to me. They were grunts that ran from deep in the bass clef to squeals high in the treble upon discovering half-forgotten treasures. “I don’t seem to be doing very well, Mr. Cooperman. Nothing in the spring that was out of the normal routine. But, I’ll keep trying.”
“No need to take time, right now, Dr. Roppa. I understand that you’re a busy man and—”
“Who told you that, I wonder? Oh, just a minute! Here’s something! But you wouldn’t call that a break in the routine probably.”
“What was it?”
“Here’s a reference to a visit by the head man. Yes, I remember now, fine old gentleman it was.”
“Could you be more specific?”
“We were visited by—where is it—ah! Murdo Forbes, who was the chairman of Phidias Manufacturing. I remember he came out to watch us one morning.”
“So, Murdo Forbes, the Commander, came to see the dig?”
“Yes, as I said, a fine old gentleman. Actually, for an old-timer, he was there bright and early. He was trying to smooth over some damage his workmen had done to the parging on the fort. Let me see if I can find it. Yes, here it is:
Work delay while giving a tour to Commander Murdo Forbes (RCN, Ret.) C of B Phidias Man’f’ing. Inspected slight damage caused by equipment. Parging damage slight, showing healthy red brick underneath. Whole site inspected. He knows a great deal about local history. Took me to local hotel for coffee and further talk about our findings. Bone fragments found yesterday definitely not human. Possibly canine …
“It goes on from there, Mr. Cooperman, but I’ve gone past the break in our routine. We were able to accomplish very little that day until well into the morning. Is that the sort of thing you’re looking for?”
“That’s just what I wanted, Doctor. What was the date on that entry?”
“Ah, that’s marked July 13, 1989. It’s from Book One for this assignment, in case you need the text. I’ll leave it to you to remember; my mind’s rather too full of things like that. I suspect it’s old age creeping up on me. What do you think?”
“Well, I’m sure—” I don’t know what I was going to say. I was prepared to make it short, because my case was due to be called at any moment, when Dr. Roppa interrupted me again. He had a call on the other line, a policeman from Grantham, he said. I told him to give Sergeant Staziak my regards and thanked Dr. Roppa for his help. I slipped his phone number into my wallet for future reference and beat it back to the courtroom.
My client Mr. Tutunjian was very happy with the result of my performance on the witness stand. He was in a mood to celebrate, but I got back to the highway as fast as I could. I did stop off at Switzer’s on Spadina for a corned beef sandwich fix followed by a Vernor’s ginger ale, stuff you can’t find in Grantham, but that’s not important to the story.
When I got back to town, I stopped at the first newspaper box I saw and picked up a copy of the Beacon. Opening the first section over the steering wheel, I could see that Pásztory’s death was being given a prominent place, but under his pen name, Pastor. LOCAL ENVIRONMENTALIST FOUND SLAIN. I skimmed through the story quickly and was glad to see that the police “went to the murder scene acting upon information received.” That was as close as it got to me, and my breath came easier. Usually, I get a kick out of getting my name in the paper, but this time I was glad to hide behind Staziak’s reticence. In the story, there were no references to the drums of toxic waste found along with Pásztory. The writer didn’t guess at what was going on at Fort Mississauga. No connections were made between the rebuilding of the fort’s earthworks and the disposal of a large quantity of dangerous and unwanted chemical waste.
I parked the car in its usual spot behind my office and went up the stairs carefully, because it was no secret that I hadn’t been going as placidly amid the noise and haste as I could have. Nor had I collected as much peace as I might have from an equal measure of silence. At least there was no new warning shoved through my door when I unlocked it. I checked with the answering service and found that Martha Tracy had called. I put the copy of today’s Beacon on my desk where I could see it and called her back. That evening with the beer and pizza seemed like a month ago.
“Martha?”
“M’yeah. Cooperman? I’ve got that information you wanted.”
“Great, Martha! That’s wonderful!” I was trying to remember what it was I’d asked her to do.
“I pulled out the city’s contract with Kinross, Benny.”
“Great!”
“It ran to forty pages without the appendices.”
“Martha, I can’t wait to buy you lunch.”
“Cooperman, you’re a real womanizer, you know that?”
“Now, don’t you start! Tell me about the contract.”
“The main thing is that the city can’t be held accountable for anything Kinross does. There are two clauses covering that. In one Kinross promises to assume the defence of and indemnify the city against all claims, and in the other it accepts all responsibility for its operations and employees. So, if Kinross gets caught with its hose in the Niagara River, the city can hold up its hands in shock at how it has been misled and abused.”
“That’s wonderful stuff, Martha!”
“M’yeah, I thought it was worth a phonecall. Now, don’t you go thanking me again, Benny. You never could do ‘sincere’ if your life depended on it. We’ll do lunch like you said and forget all about being sincere. Okay? Right now I’ve got to put my face on and go out. G’bye!”
“Goodbye, Martha, and thank you from the—” She cut me off with a click.
The Beacon on Saturday was usually a plump paper, except after Christmas, when it was as thin as boardinghouse gruel. This Saturday the paper confirmed Pete Staziak’s guess about how Pásztory had died: a single shot in the chest. It also explained that Alex Pastor was the pen name of Sandor or Alex Pász
tory, but kept on calling the deceased “Pastor,” which meant that I kept having to translate that back to Pásztory, remembering what he’d said about fine old Hunky names. There was not a word about the scene of the crime apart from a reference to the golf course. That was all. The fix was obviously in at a high level. If Ross Forbes was behind this, he must be calling home all the favours people in high places owed him. It wouldn’t take much journalistic digging to link Sangallo to Phidias. Or to Tony Pritchett and the mob. Where are the newspaper bloodhounds of yesteryear? One of them, it suddenly occurred to me, was recovering from the shock of a post-mortem examination.
Saturday night I took Anna out to the movies. While it was more enjoyable than most of what happened to me that week, my date added nothing new to the case.
Sunday? At least Sunday didn’t add anything new to the story since, as I’ve already mentioned, there is no Sunday Beacon. The out-of-town papers were still letting the story alone. There wasn’t a mention in either the Buffalo or the Toronto papers.
On Monday I got a call from the office of Jim Colling, Teddie Forbes’s lawyer. He told me that he’d just had a favourable FAX message from Phidias about the proposal he’d put to them.
“Whoopee!” I said. “When do I start?”
“As soon as their treasurer gets back from his vacation. How does Thursday suit you?” I thanked Colling and, while I was doing it, I was still wondering what he was getting out of this. It was hard to get a lawyer to say hello to you without him running up the meter. So why was Jim Colling such a bundle of friendly helpfulness? If he was sinking his personal hook into Phidias, I didn’t want to be the worm.
FIFTEEN
The main office of Phidias Manufacturing was in the new complex that filled in almost all of the space between St. Andrew and King east of Queen and west of James. They called it City Centre when it went up in the early 1980s. It had been intended to give the sluggish old centre of town a shot in the arm. After all the hoopla died down, it became just another office building with a walkthrough mall full of stores selling things you could live without. But a few important companies were located here, as was our leading criminal lawyer, branches of two banks and the order office for a Toronto department store. I got off the elevator at the sixth floor and asked for the treasurer, who was expecting me. He came at me beaming from his corner office as soon as my name was taken in to him.
