by Howard Engel
“So the fort’s the main dumping spot?”
“Yeah, but we also store stuff there. Stuff that’s too hot to keep in the yard. We sometimes rig a pig there if we’re selling fuel oil over the river.”
“Pig? What are you talking about?”
“It’s an inflatable plastic bag, about the size of a swimming-pool liner. You fill it up with toxic garbage after sticking it into an empty tank of a big tanker, then you fill up the rest with regular bunker C, stove oil, domestic fuel oil or diesel fuel oil. It doesn’t matter, as long as you’ve got a buyer on the other side. You know the scam from the papers last spring. They nearly put us out of business. We had to keep our noses clean for a while because they tightened up the border inspection on the few points they didn’t close down.”
“So this pig would get your PCBs through customs?”
“Yeah. Once on the other side, we would break the pig with steel rods and let the two substances mix.”
“It would have served you right if the damned stuff exploded.”
“Hey, Cooperman, I was just following orders. Besides, PCBs are very stable and don’t combine with anything at low temperatures. Like, they’re inert.”
“Gee, I wonder what all the fuss is about! Have you ever heard of dioxin? Did Jack Dowden ever mention TCDD? There’s a whole alphabet soup of garbage you’ve been chauffeuring around the countryside! Didn’t it ever bother you? Damn it, O’Mara, your grandchildren could be born with their belly-buttons where their chins should be. You should read up on this stuff you’re messing with.”
“Kinross has always treated me right, Cooperman. I’ll say that for them.”
“Well, you can’t make a separate peace with them. We’re all drinking out of the same trough. Same trough Webster was drinking from. I’ll bet Kinross sent a big wreath to the funeral. They’ll do as much for you.” I let him think about that for a moment, while I went back over the list of questions I had stored in my head. When I found a new line of inquiry, I interrupted his drinking again. “The fort’s only been available for a year and a few months. What did you do before that?”
“There was the old Hydro fill near Niagara Falls. That landfill is full of stuff. There’s another twenty or thirty drums under the ornamental floral clock on the Niagara Parkway. The place is dotted with dumping sites. You want me to draw you a map?”
“Why are the hands of the clock in the Kinross yard?”
“A truck from Sangallo left it there. Sangallo has been keeping the damn thing going for the tourists to see.”
“I get it. You even have to set out the plants and water them.”
“That’s Sangallo. We don’t want strangers digging under the petunias, if you know what I mean.” We were steadily progressing through the beer on the table. He was doing better than I was, and I was reaping the rewards.
“Tell me about Sangallo,” I asked, picking up my third glass. “I know the head man’s Harold Grier.”
“Yeah, Grier is the front man all right, but there’s somebody else.”
“Like who?”
“I don’t know, but I get the feeling—it’s just a feeling—that Grier’s fronting for—maybe it’s the mob, I don’t know. What I’m saying is that Grier may sign the cheques, but I think there’s somebody standing behind his chair.”
“You mean like Phidias is behind Kinross?”
“Naw, that’s all in the open. This is more secret like.”
“So you mean that this other element is working at the fort too?”
“I thought you were listening. Sangallo is the whole show in Niagara-on-the-Lake. We just drive and deliver.”
“I thought Sangallo did historical restorations.”
“Yeah, like an iceberg floats on the top of the water without blue ice underneath going down maybe a couple of hundred feet.” O’Mara wiped his mouth on the cuff of his right sleeve and, at the same time, shifted his haunches. “I’ve got to get rid of some of this beer,” he said getting up. “You want chips when I come back, Mr. Cooperman?” His chair squawked against the tile floor and I watched him weave his way through the clutter of tables to the john at the far end of the room.
He was still holding things back, O’Mara, but he had moved his lines of defendable territory from our earlier talk. If he would help, maybe the Jack Dowden case could be reopened. If he wouldn’t come forward himself to be a witness, at least he might be able to point me in the right direction so I could find some proof myself.
The balance of the beer on the red-topped Formica was now tipped in favour of the empty glasses. The waiter danced over, removed the empties and without asking replaced them with amber reinforcements. I put a few bills in the waiter’s hand and he dipped into his apron for some change. When I gave him a tip, it was pocketed silently.
O’Mara was taking his time in the men’s room. I’d noticed other renters of the Harding House beer going to and coming from the toilet, some of them ignoring the suggestion of the management that clothing should be adjusted before leaving the room with all the porcelain fixtures. At last, I got up and walked between the tables myself. I was developing a need of my own, but it was less than serious. Mainly, I was beginning to worry about my friend O’Mara.
He wasn’t in the john. He wasn’t standing at either of the urinals, and the only occupied cubicle produced a stranger after I waited two minutes. O’Mara was gone.
NINETEEN
There were only two things that could have happened. Either he had got tired of our conversation and gone through the back door to return home to Junkin Street, or he had been taken out of the Harding House by people who didn’t like him talking to me. I looked around the floor of the toilet without finding anything that suggested one theory over the other. I followed his probable route out of the john and into the small parking lot. Not even the alley cats were moving. I caught just a cold whiff of the usual night smells of Grantham: papermills and beer from the exhausted air of the pub. I went back to my table and sat for ten minutes in case he sent a message. I was worried for O’Mara, but not nervous for myself. I didn’t think the heavies from Kinross, or wherever they came from, would start anything in the crowded beverage room. I might have been right, because the only company I had was my own.
In the end I abandoned the last of the glasses of draft beer on the table and left the pub through the front door, the one that faced the old courthouse. It had recently been turned into a maze of boutiques. I honestly didn’t know what to do. A phonecall to the O’Mara house in a few minutes would tell me if Brian had got tired and wandered home. It would also tell me if he was still out and unaccounted for. I didn’t relish being the messenger with the news that he might not be getting home for some time. I didn’t want to face Dora and tell her her instincts about keeping quiet were well founded.
I was saved from further speculation of this kind by, first, a vague feeling that suddenly O’Mara wasn’t the only person I should be feeling sorry for, and second, pressure in the small of my back that only in the movies turns out to be the stem of a pipe.
“Keep walking,” ordered a voice behind me. At the same moment my arms were grabbed tightly. My arms were held tightly and close to my body so I couldn’t turn around. I tried, but was tugged back so that I was facing the street. The former courthouse saw what was going on but did nothing, having lost the power to preserve the peace when it was transformed into all those boutiques and shoppes. Of course James Street was deserted.
There were two of them. The one on my right arm was taller than the other, judging from the height of his grip on my arm. He was holding the gun, or pipe, or corner of a box of chocolates in his left hand. I wondered whether I had the courage to call out. I tried, but nothing happened. If I made a sound, it was swallowed up by the din from the Harding House. The emptiness of the street, an emptiness I haven’t seen this side of midnight since I first started staying up late, daunted me, froze my vocal chords. Whatever was pressed into my back, I knew it could go off, leav
ing the field of private investigations in Grantham open to my chief rival. Right now, Howard Dover could have all my clients. I’d throw in Irma Dowden for nothing.
I don’t know why I was thinking like this, none of it had much to do with getting me moved quickly around the corner and into King Street, where a dark green Toyota was idling at the curb. Here the noise from the Harding House was more mocking than ever. The back door was ajar. The man on my left arm opened the convenient right-hand, rear door of the car and shoved me inside. The man with the gun slid in after me, while the first guy got in on the far side. By now I had seen their faces. They were new to me. I didn’t like that. Hired heavies from out of town.
“I hope you know that I’m being followed,” I said, ad libbing my part as I went along. “I’m going to be missed faster than you figured.” The driver pulled away from the curb and joined the sparse one-way traffic moving towards Ontario Street. That was the only response to what I’d said. On each side of me, my two captors looked straight ahead and said nothing. “Well, I hope you know what you’re doing. There are people who will come looking for me.” I got no rise out of either of them. The driver turned right at Ontario, signalling the turn like a good citizen.
The hood on my right was the taller of the two, as I’d suspected. He was just over six feet, with no neck, and shoulders that could have earned him a football scholarship almost anywhere. His bland face, showing smallish eyes and an unbroken nose, was impassive. The man on the other side was smaller, narrower, with dark eyes deep-set on either side of a thin hooked nose. He was losing his hair early. What remained was spread to disguise the fact. Of the driver, all I saw was a big head and neck that didn’t get smaller as it disappeared into his blue bomber jacket.
“Listen you guys,” I went on, talking to the streetlights passing us hypnotically as the car continued up Ontario, “you are forgetting that I was expecting your little visit. I’ve left a letter behind. You boss isn’t going to thank you for this. Not if he finds his face all over the front page of the Beacon tomorrow. Another thing …”
“Shut up and enjoy the scenery,” the driver said, speaking to the rear-view mirror, which was turned so that I couldn’t see his face. “We won’t be long now.” We were crossing the dip in Ontario Street where the road crossed the grave of one of the old canals. I didn’t usually think of it that way. Must have been the company. There was a good-looking farmhouse on the left, I could just glimpse its lights through a small stand of trees, a survivor, the last of dozens of farmhouses that used to run all the way to the lake.
The car continued to the end of Ontario, turned left over the two bridges that beckoned the way to Port Richmond, once the Port Said of Lake Ontario, now a summertime marina and tourist haven. At this time of year it was quiet and self-contained. There were a few good fish restaurants that remained open through the winter. There were a few pubs that were lively enough to raise the ghosts of all the departed sailors who used to frequent them back in the last century. I could glimpse the lights as we curved around the inner harbour, until all light was cut off as we passed under the shadow of an old rubber factory. I watched those dismal windows slip past us. Beyond, I could again make out the lights of the street that faced the outer harbour. Facing this row of busy hotels, pubs and restaurants was the harbour, itself a bright circus of dancing lights in the summer, but now dark and deserted. I’d feared we might be headed here.
The man with the thick neck pulled off the road and parked the car facing the water. The nearest light from that direction came from across the water.
“Get out!” the driver said. “We’ve arrived.” The door to my right had been opened and the big fellow now stood leaning into the car. Finally, I could see that what he was holding in his hand was not a pipe. At least I didn’t have to guess about that any more. Narrow-nose gave me a push, so I moved out. At the same time, the driver got out and walked around to the trunk of the car. He unlocked and lifted the lid. I wondered if they wanted me to get inside. It wouldn’t have been the first time I’ve seen the world from the inside of a car trunk. Then I saw that the trunk already had a passenger. It was Brian O’Mara. He was wearing a bruise on his forehead that he hadn’t got from the beer at the Harding House. He looked out of that dark hole next to the spare tire, first at me and then at the other three faces watching him shift to his knees and clamber out onto the pavement. His eyes were half-closed. Nobody lent him a helping hand. Is it a kindness to help the condemned up the gallows steps? I could read panic in O’Mara’s eyes as he got his footing.
“Okay, you two,” the driver said. “We’re going for a boatride.” I felt a familiar hand on my arm pulling me in the direction of the dark marina. A car’s headlights passed over the faces of the hoods I could see. “Get a move on. Our friend doesn’t want to wait around all night.” At the same moment, O’Mara was yanked into movement by the heavy with the skinny nose. I tried to see what there was out in the harbour that might still have life aboard this late in the season. I couldn’t detect a thing. I should stick to tracing oil-company receipts.
“Benny! What are you doing here?” It was a voice from behind us. A woman’s nasal accusation. “We weren’t expecting to see you too.” We all turned around to see the newcomer. It was Edna Stillman. Edna Stillman? What was a friend of my parents doing here, running into our abduction? It was like seeing an animated Disney character walk into the middle of Casablanca or the Maltese Falcon. A step behind Edna stood Edna’s husband, Hy Stillman, who was just locking the car door. Now I remembered the headlights of a minute ago. They’d just parked beside us.
“Benny!” Hy chimed in. “I didn’t think we were going to see you too!” I wished they would underplay the stuff about this being a chance meeting. I’d already begun planning a new strategy involving the Stillmans. I could say that I was followed everywhere by Hy and Edna Stillman, who ran Lambkins, a children’s clothing store and baby outfitter on St. Andrew Street. It was the perfect cover for surveillance work. Hy was still talking:
“Manny said it would just be the four of us.” It wasn’t going to do me any good now to smile as though the plot I’d been talking about in the car was beginning to unfold on time.
“They’re late,” I said evenly. I think that’s how it came out. “Evenly” was my intention, anyway. At that moment a black 1980 Caddie parked beside us and my mother and father got out.
“Here they are!” said Edna with her usual oboe-like intonation. “We’re not going to split hairs about being late.” She went on to greet my mother and father. Pa gave Edna a kiss and Hy did as much for my mother, who hadn’t taken her eyes off me and the rogues’ gallery I was standing with since she’d come out of the car.
“Benny, is everything all right?”
“Hy and I were early for a change,” Edna finished up what she had started to say. “Are your friends coming into the restaurant too?” she asked, giving the three hoods and O’Mara a bright smile. O’Mara pulled away from the guy holding him.
“I’m coming,” he shouted. The driver and the thin-nosed hood stood back so that there never could be a question of their having stood in his way.
“Is Anna with you, Benny?” Ma asked, still looking the hoods up and down. “Your friends don’t look like they enjoy seafood,” she added in a lower voice. My father slammed the door on his side of the Cadillac and came up behind Ma. We exchanged nods as he gave the group standing by the open trunk of the car a careful scrutiny. The big guy, who now showed no sign of his gun, smiled back at him awkwardly.
“Anna’s gone to Boston on a research project,” I lied. I hoped that the hoods would know as much about research at this time of year as my mother did. “She’ll be away until the end of the month,” I added, in case my lie needed buttressing.
“What have you got, a case of bootleg beer in the trunk?” my father said. “You look like a bunch of rubes with a bottle in the trunk.” The hoods, and even O’Mara, moved away from the rear of the car to show that th
e trunk contained no illegal extras. “The way you were standing there, it made me want to get in line!” There were some poor attempts at grins, nothing to win any prizes.
“Benny,” Ma said taking my arm, “when are you going to bring Anna over to the house? Your father and I would like to meet her. You keep her such a big secret, I’m beginning to think maybe you’re not getting on so well. Is that it?”
“She has other friends besides me, Ma. We only go to the movies once in a while.”
“But, I can tell she likes you. Just from the way you talk. But it’s just as well you don’t bring her over just yet. The slip-covers are still not ready. When they’re done, she can come over and bring that father of hers too. I’ll charm both of them with my chicken soup.”
“Campbell’s Chicken Broth?”
“Benny! That’s my secret! Have a little respect for your Aged P!”
Hy Stillman came over and put an arm on my shoulder: “Benny, the reservation’s just for the four of us, but I think it can’t be too busy on a Thursday night. What do you think?”
“I think my friends have another date,” I said, looking at the stout-necked driver. He blinked and glanced at his two buddies.
“Thanks a lot, but we gotta be gettin’ back to town,” he said. The other two grabbed O’Mara under the arms as though they were just having a little fun. In a second they would have had him stuffed back into the car. The back seat was an improvement on the trunk, but I felt obliged to protest.
“Just a minute!” I said. “I don’t think Brian wants to go home yet. I’m sure the restaurant can find another extra chair.” Brian peeled the hands that were clutching him off his arms and propelled himself past the hood and away from the car.
“You’re pushing it, Mr. Cooperman,” said the driver slowly.
“It was fun running into you fellows. Sorry that our plans changed so quickly. That’s life, isn’t it?”
