by Howard Engel
The Di was closing up when we got there, so we went on to one of the new restaurants that had opened up in the former home of the Upper Canadian Bank on St. Andrew Street. They had moved into a new office tower across from the market, and after several false starts, this restaurant with its little round tables and espresso machine seemed to be thriving. Anna thought the music on the stereo was a Bach Partita, and we settled in with the menu. We were both starved. Neither one of us did much talking. We ordered coffee to start with and then a couple of sandwiches. I had a toasted cheese for a change; Anna went for crab on a kaiser roll.
“Do you think you know what happened?” Anna asked when she put down the coffee cup where the waiter could see it. He did and brought a prompt refill for both of us.
“Well, there was no sign of a gun or a knife, so I guess he didn’t do himself in.”
“So, it was murder just like Jack Dowden and Alex Pásztory?”
“That’s the way it looks, but right now I can’t even say for sure that Jack and Alex were killed by the same person. I think they were killed for similar reasons, but I can’t prove anything.”
“You said in the car that you talked to the Commander this afternoon.”
“Yeah. He didn’t look like he was hiding from anyone. He wasn’t on the run. No, I think we have one very surprised dead man in this case.”
“What will you do now that the police are involved?”
“I guess I’ll report to Irma Dowden and beg off. There’s not much room to move with Savas running around on this end and Pete Staziak on the other. No, I think I’ve just found my excuse to get off this case. I can leave the scene with my honour intact.”
“I felt sorry for Teddie Forbes in that room, Benny. Not a friend in the place. It was good of you to stay close to her.” I looked at Anna to see if she was pulling my leg, but she wasn’t. She was glad I’d kept an eye on her. What else could I do? Ross was nearly foaming at the mouth just seeing her.
“Yeah, Teddie can’t wait to get back to Flagstaff. She doesn’t like being here. What do you think Sherry and Caine will do? The wedding can’t go ahead as planned, can it?”
“That’s the first thing I thought of when I heard that the Commander was dead: ‘I won’t have to go through with this white-wedding charade.’ Isn’t that awful?”
“It’s honest.”
“Are you sorry that Sergeant Savas didn’t consult with you about the Commander?”
“Oh, he can’t do that on the first day. He’ll find his moment when he’s walked around the body a few times. This one’s going to be a hard one to figure.”
“Why do you say that?” I gave some bills to the waiter and he carried them to the cash register, one of the new kind with plastic covering everything. The place was empty except for us. We got up, and I tried to grab Anna’s chair, but was too late. It fell over with the weight of her raincoat.
“For one thing the coroner’s not going to be able to say when the Commander died. The heat from the sauna will screw up the usual calculations that have to do with bodies cooling after death. He told Ross and me that he hadn’t eaten any lunch, so that will spoil the other way of fixing the time of death. Savas may get lucky, though. He may hear from somebody who was in the sauna at a known time and left the old man in there hale and hearty.”
“Won’t he automatically become the chief suspect?”
“Not unless he had an axe to grind. The Commander was heading from the pool to the sauna when I saw him and that was just after lunch. He was in there a long time.”
“Well, at least you can eliminate all the female suspects. They wouldn’t have been able to get past the fellow selling tickets for towels and robes into the men’s locker room. So you can concentrate of the men. What about Ross? Do you think he did it?”
“He had a motive, all right. The old man was always meddling in the business, and it looks like he was trying to throw some or all of the action into Norm Caine’s court.”
“Could Caine be the guilty party, then?”
“Why would he kill the Commander, his chief ally in getting ahead in the business?”
“Maybe they had a falling out.”
“Maybes don’t fly, Anna. Savas will need something better than that.” By now we had reached the street. Anna took my arm as we moved along to where I’d parked the car.
St. Andrew Street looked dark and a little scary at that time of night, at least it did that night after what I’d seen at the club. The gentle curve of the store-fronts was a study in shadows and made the empty streets look like pictures by that American painter Anna liked, Edward Hooper, I think that’s his name. The tunnel-like opening, where Bixby’s used to be looked like the entrance to hell or the Black Hole of Calcutta. While I was trying to sift through these sinister imaginings, I became aware that there was a car coming up behind us. Why was it hugging the sidewalk we were on when it had the whole breadth of the one-way street? Why was it slowing down? I didn’t wait for an answer.
“C’mon!” I yelled and grabbed Anna’s hand. We ran into Helliwell Lane and then turned right, under the fire escapes and dark windows, into Somerset Place. We blundered into the leanto that Apply Mary had set up. She began to yell as we came out on James, across from the Centre Theatre. Still holding on to Anna, I dragged her across James and into the alley, which followed the long unbroken line of the theatre’s auditorium to the end and then bumped into the new warehouse behind Graham’s bookstore. What I wouldn’t give for a key to his back door, I thought. But I knew that the alley wasn’t the kind that ended in a dead end, so we were quickly through the darkest part. We stopped in a doorway and listened in the shadows to the sounds above our heavy breathing. I could hear no footsteps, I could see no headlights.
“I’m putting you in a taxi,” I told Anna.
“In a pig’s eye, as you always say. You’re not packing me off home the first time the game gets rough.”
“It’s not a game! These are the boys I was telling you about. Let me see you safe, then I can concentrate on this damned mess.”
“I would prefer not to.” She made it sound like a quotation. I certainly couldn’t move her. After another minute we worked our way from Chestnut Street, through the bus terminal to Academy. From there it was a short sprint to my apartment. I left Anna standing behind a stout maple, while I surveyed the rest of the way to the front door. The street was quiet and there were no boogeymen hiding on the landing watching me fish out my key.
Once inside, with the door locked and bolted, we began to find our courage again. I brought out a bottle of cognac and we both had a short sharp shot, just enough to restore perspective.
“You’d better call your pal Savas. He should know about this. And about the other night. Does he know about your drive out to Port Richmond?”
“Savas has his hands full tonight. The best thing we can do is give Savas a wide berth.”
“Until morning.”
“Sure. If you insist.” Anna smiled at that and tried to relax. But I could see that she was shivering. I slipped her coat back over her shoulders and held her for a few minutes. That seemed to help.
“What I really need is a scalding hot bath,” she said. “That’s my defence against all known and unknown terrors.”
“Help yourself,” I said, suddenly aware of the limitations of my bachelor establishment. I found some fresh towels and a terry-cloth robe and handed them to her. She closed the door, and soon I heard the sound of running water. The apartment walls were looking at me as I sat there watching steam billow from the crack at the bottom of the door.
Later … But that’s nobody’s business.
TWENTY-FIVE
I was having my morning coffee at the Diana Sweets and reading the Saturday Globe and Mail, when I felt an extra two hundred pounds on the bench I was sitting on. Staff Sergeant Chris Savas had joined me and the napkin dispenser. He carried his own coffee in a foam cup with a plastic lid. He didn’t say anything. Before I even got my m
outh open to tell him what he knew already—that he looked like he’d been up all night—Pete Staziak moved into the place opposite me. He carried no coffee of his own, but he too didn’t look like a man who’d spent the night in the bosom of his family. I waved for the waitress. Savas surrendered his foam cup, and we ordered a new round to start afresh.
“Okay,” I said. “I won’t make any clever remarks about burning the midnight oil. I’ll speak when spoken to.”
“Damn right,” said Pete, taking off his hat and giving us all a look at the red line around his head.
When the coffee arrived, Savas, at my elbow, took a sip and then turned to me. “What the hell do you think’s going on? I’ll be damned if I can figure it out.” Such an admission from Chris was simply a ploy of some sort. He was too good a cop to be all that much at sea. It was meant to disarm me, to turn me into a cooperative witness. I shrugged. It seemed the best thing to do under the circumstances. Then Pete joined in:
“What cards are you holding face down, Benny? That’s really all we want to know.”
“Just the name of my client. That’s all I care about. The rest is yours or anybody else’s. But remember, I only came into this thing a week ago last Tuesday.”
Silently, Pete pulled out his wallet and handed Chris a five-dollar bill. “What’s that all about?” I asked.
“Chris said you wouldn’t volunteer the fact that there was bad blood between you and Ross Forbes. I said different, that’s all.”
“You didn’t give me time, damn it! I didn’t know you were putting money on me. Hey, and besides, Ross Forbes isn’t in the morgue. It’s his old man, who has never laid a glove on me.”
“The point is, you aren’t as freshly into this as you let on, Benny. That shows a lack of trust, a lack of openness—”
“Bull! I gotta mouthful of coffee and you just sat down, for crying out loud. What do you want, a printout of my comings and goings for the last ten years?” Chris leaned away from me. Either my breath was bad or I was making my point and he was not going to dispute it. He certainly wasn’t going to return Pete’s five. I ignored Chris for the moment and faced Pete. “How are you getting along on the other one?”
“Professional job. Very tidy,” Pete said.
“Those pros took one of the Kinross drivers for a ride on Thursday night. I’d keep an eye on the house of Brian O’Mara who was within an ace of being accurately described as ‘late of the parish.’”
“He didn’t report anything.”
“What do you expect? These guys always play deaf and dumb when it does them the least good. I know it happened because I was there.”
“Damn!”
“They tried to get you too?” I nodded, and Chris gave Staziak a look.
“What’s more, after we left the club last night, Anna and I went to that ex-bank restaurant at the corner to talk. When we left, a car was following us. We had to scuttle through back alleys to my place.”
“What time was that?”
“After eleven-thirty. Maybe a quarter to twelve.”
“What kind of car was it?” Pete was leaning towards me as though a lot was riding on my answer.
“Some kind of Ford, I think. I didn’t wait around to get the registration.” Pete looked at Chris and then at me:
“I was looking for you around then, Benny.” He had taken on a sheepish look. “I didn’t think you’d take me for a hoodlum with the mob.”
“You son of a bitch!” I yelled, louder than I intended. Heads turned to see what was happening in our booth. I was getting hot where my tie was tied too tight. “You nearly scared Anna to death!”
“Sorry, Benny. Really, I had no idea!” He kept looking at Chris to help him out, but his partner let him stew. “Jeez, Benny. I only wanted to talk to you. Maybe I shouldda honked?”
“We woke up Apply Mary and ran four or five blocks!”
“Why don’t you two continue this on your own time,” Chris suggested. “I’ve got the jist of both your arguments. Just give it a rest.” Chris looked at each of us and I bit my tongue.
“What’s happening with the Pásztory investigation?” I asked Pete, hoping that it was an embarrassing question. “I didn’t read in the Beacon that the body was found under Fort Mississauga in a hole with a few tons of poisonous waste.”
“We don’t want to scare the villains away, Benny. If they know we have the body, they must know where we found it.”
“I don’t see the advantage,” I admitted.
“If we talk to somebody who knows more than has appeared in the paper, then we know we’re on to something. Crooks have a hard time keeping straight what they know and what they’ve read in the press.”
“In that, crooks are like everybody else,” I said. “But, I’ll remember that. I can, by the way, give you a description of the three hoods who borrowed me and O’Mara from the Harding House on Thursday night.”
“Is that where your consulting rooms are located these days?” Chris was beginning to sound like his old self.
“Why don’t you go home and have a shower?” I asked. “It’s one thing to be up all night, but another to look it. Chris, you look it.”
“I will, I will, but first I want to know why you were having lunch with Ross Forbes yesterday at the Grantham Club?”
“Boy, you’ve had your little people out beating the bushes, haven’t you?” Chris eyes were not crinkling at the corners showing signs of laughter and humour. I changed tactics. “Nothing mysterious in my breaking bread with Forbes. He wanted me to do a job for him. Nothing to do with Kinross or Phidias. I turned him down.”
“Why?”
“Conflict.”
“You mean scruples, Benny?”
“I mean conflict of interests. I’m already working in that area, and Forbes is one of the people I’ve got my eye on.”
“Well, you’ll save expenses on him from now on.”
“What do you mean?” Peter grinned at Savas and waited for him to enlighten me.
“I just had Forbes arrested,” Chris said.
“Ross Forbes? For the murder of his father? You’ve got to be pulling my leg!”
“Let’s not get technical. I’m telling you he’s been arrested. Right now, as a matter of fact, he’s cooling his heels in the lockup.”
“Chris, you can’t believe that he’d kill his old man. They’ve hated one another too long for it to end this way.”
“Well, read the paper when it comes out. He was the last person to talk to the Commander. He even admits it. Says they had a little chat in the sauna in the afternoon. Of course the way he tells it, they were getting along better than ever. Benny, he was seen at the club, seen on his way to and coming from the sauna as he went through the changing room.”
“You didn’t book him for just being in the club at the same time, Chris. Now did you? Damn it, the old man was slow-roasted in that sauna for so long that the best bet you have of getting the time of death is by checking the date on the newspaper he was reading. All you know is that he was killed some time, maybe hours, before he was found.”
“We’ve got the gun.” That stopped me.
“Oh?”
“It came from the Commander’s collection. Ross had access.”
“Sure, and so did the rest of the family, I’ll bet. Come on, Chris. Has he confessed or what?”
“No, he’s stonewalling us, but he’ll talk in the end.”
“Why do you think he did it?”
“The old man was trying to bump him out of the family business. After the wedding, Norman Caine would become top dog at the next board meeting on Monday.”
“You think he killed Pásztory too?”
“We’re still working on that. We’ll drop you a line if we link them up. Right now, according to Pete, Pásztory was snuffed by professionals from out of town.”
“You’re repeating yourself. I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard about Jack Dowden?”
“Dowden? Doesn’t ring any bells with
me,” said Savas, looking over at Pete who was dredging into his memory and almost but not quite remembering.
“Come on, Benny, this isn’t a TV quiz show. There are no prizes for the right answer.” I started to remind them and it was Pete who remembered the rest of the story. Between the two of us we filled Savas in.
“So, you’re saying that this accident was maybe not an accident?”
“Chris, if you stand in front of me and I run you down with my Freightliner, I will pulverize your lower back and pelvic area. Dowden’s chest was crushed. So, he was on his knees when he was hit. Witnesses have been paid off and have left town. Another one, O’Mara, was the object of a snatch on Thursday night. He told me that they saw nothing of the accident in spite of what they told the coroner.”
“A minute ago you were going to bat for Ross Forbes. Now you’re trying to stick two more bodies on him. What’s going on?”
“I’m not saying Ross didn’t do them all in. All I’m saying is that the picture is bigger than the one you were looking at in the club last night. It has to include Dowden and Pásztory. By the way, Pásztory was in Chet Bryant’s office looking up the facts on the Dowden case. He read the coroner’s report. Does that tie things more tightly together for you?”
“That ties Pásztory to Dowden. How does it put them closer to Ross Forbes? He was top dog at Phidias not Kinross. Maybe we should be talking to Norman Caine.”
“I don’t care whom you talk to—”
“You catch that ‘whom,’ Pete? Very pretty. That Anna of yours is sure a classy woman, Benny.”
“I’ve been talking English all my life. Get off my back, Chris!” That came out a little more forcefully than I’d intended. I shot Pete a grin to show I was only fooling, and that reminded me of something. “Pete, Ross Forbes told me that he has noticed a tail on him. You know anything about that?” Pete rubbed the back of his neck, like he’d just got out of a car after a long trip. It gave him time to think of what he could afford to tell me.
