Getting Away With Murder (26 page)

“And what did I do with this silencer you’ve invented?” Victoria asked, her eyes now flashing anger at me. “You searched the house, Sergeant. Did you find this silencer he’s talking about?”

“She’s got you there, Benny. We went through the house several times room by room.”

“I have to admit, you nearly had me there, Victoria. But let me show you how I discovered your secret. Hart, you told me that when you came in to see your father for the last time, Victoria and Mickey were in the kitchen.”

“That’s right. She was baking.”

“And Julie, when you got there some time later?”

“I could smell cinnamon and apple in the kitchen. She was baking pies.”

“Good,” I said. “And Pete, you say you found flour near the body. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes. But since it was Victoria who discovered the body, I don’t see how—”

“Pete, Julie says that she
smelled
the pies. They were in the oven by the time she got there. How was it that Victoria was still wearing a floury apron after the murder had been committed?”

“I wasn’t wearing an apron. I took it off after I’d tidied the kitchen. I told you that, Sergeant.” Victoria Armstrong said this as though it had figured importantly in her statement. Mickey looked like he was going to lash out at me all the same.

“You better have a good reason for putting us through this, Cooperman,” he said, which came off less effectively than it might have with the women removed from the room. Mickey watched his tongue with women about.

Suddenly everybody was looking at me. I hoped that what I was going to say was made out of the right words. “So, the flour didn’t come from the apron, and yet it was in the room. Could it have come from her shoes, Pete?”

“Not according to the forensic people. It wasn’t connected to a footprint. There were no footprints. The flour—and we’re talking about slight traces, you understand—was evenly distributed in the area where the murder took place.”

“I see. Pete, will you come into the kitchen with me for a minute?” Pete got up and assured the others that we would be right back.

When we returned, Pete was wearing a puzzled expression. “You were baking pies, Mrs. Armstrong, but we don’t seem to be able to find your rolling pin. Can you help us?”

“What has baking pies to do with anything?” asked Hart.

“More than you think,” I said. “Didier told us that Victoria was holding a rolling pin some time
after
Julie sniffed pies cooking in the oven. What was Victoria doing with a rolling pin after all of the pastry had been rolled out? And the latest of the mysteries: what has happened to the rolling pin?”

“Who gives a damn?” said Syl Ryan, looking at Hart for support.

“Pete, you told me that an effective silencer for a gun like the gun that killed Abe Wise would be a cylinder about eighteen inches long and around two and a half inches in diameter. You didn’t say it, but you might have: a silencer for Wise’s gun would be about the size and shape of a rolling pin without the handles. Drina, we know, was familiar with car motors and the tools in the shop of Freddy Tait’s garage. She would be capable of making such an object, together with the rod and clamp she’d need to install it.”

“Rod and clamp, Benny? I don’t follow you.”

“You need the one to align the exit hole of the silencer with the barrel of the gun, McStu. The clamp holds the silencer firmly on the barrel. Dudley Dickens would have known that.”

“Well! That’s quite a yarn. It’s not proof, of course, but it’s a good story. I may use that silencer idea. I think it might work in fiction, but Benny, this is real life, for Gawd sake!”

“Yes,” said Hart. “Lots of people had access to the kitchen, just as they had to the guns.”

“And what about that shot through the window at Wise?” asked Pete. “And the one at you,” he added as an afterthought.

“You already know about the tunnel, Pete A shot from near the garage into this room could have the shooter back inside the house within a minute at the outside.”

“Cooperman, I’m going to get you for what you said here tonight!” It was Mickey’s red face that was glowering at me.

“I’m just doing my job, Mickey. And if I were you I wouldn’t stray away from your wife right now. It could be—” Just then we heard a sudden cry. Victoria had jumped over the arm of the couch and come down on Julie’s foot. Before Julie had recovered, Victoria was in the kitchen. Pete was the first off the mark. He moved after her with astonishing speed. By the time I got past the preparation table in the middle of the kitchen, they were both gone.

“The tunnel!” Syl Ryan shouted, and started in after her. To the hounds a quarry is a quarry, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a fox or a hare.

The tunnel didn’t do justice to its name. There was nothing mysterious about it: just another back way out that happened to run down a set of stairs and come out near the garage. From a distance away, we could hear raised voices, sounds of a struggle. “Let me through!” shouted Mickey, shoving both Pete and a uniformed man aside. But before he could get to the stairs, Syl Ryan came up, followed by two men in uniform carrying a struggling Victoria Armstrong between them.

TWENTY-EIGHT

The next few days are a bit hazy. I don’t remember much. I cleaned my office, got rid of a lot of old files, emptied the drawers of ancient apricot stones and Kogan’s empty bottles. I didn’t sleep much, and I wasn’t much fun for Anna to be with. But I hadn’t been much fun to be with when I was working either.

I got a call from her father. He was prompting me to name a date and time for me to make an honest woman of his daughter. I told him that I didn’t know a more honest woman than Anna and that if she had lost the family honour by staying with me on occasion, then there was something rickety about the family honour. I’m not usually so outspoken with Jonah, who could buy and sell me a million times over, but there was something about the limbo state I was suspended in that gave me courage.

I didn’t see Pete Staziak or Chris Savas for a week. I got a letter from Dave Rogers with a cheque in it. I hadn’t even billed him yet. When I opened the letter, it was just a blank page so that the cheque couldn’t be seen when held up to the light. I wouldn’t have minded hearing a word or two from Dave. I thought we always got along well.

It was one of the biggest funerals in years. In death, Abe Wise had it all over Ed Neustadt. There were limousines with licence plates from all over eastern North America. The floral tributes were a little more tasteful than those in Capone’s day, but there were easily enough to satisfy the world of crime that they had given one of its own a proper send-off.

Hart and Julie were standing side by side near their mothers, a sight Abe himself may not have seen in the last twenty years. Mickey was there by himself, although he had been in for questioning almost every day during the week. Phil Green and Sidney were there, but Syl Ryan had been detained downtown. Although he had left no fingerprints on the knife he used to kill Gord Shaw, a big handprint on the roof of the Alfa Romeo was plainly his. A little something extra to go with that Indian-head buckle I found in the snow.

I didn’t know the rabbi who led the service, he was from out of town. He didn’t appear to be enjoying himself the way Major Patrick had at Neustadt’s funeral. But then Abe hadn’t been committed to the earth as fast as Jewish traditions require. The casket was massive, of course, made of bronze judging by the shine on it. There was an engraving on the top: it was a copy of the ugly terracotta mask in his office. He must have left very explicit instructions.

By the time I left the grave-side, the others had gone on ahead. I knew there was going to be a traffic tie-up, so I killed some time with my former client. I hadn’t kept him alive, but I never said I could. I never believed in security. It always makes headaches for the innocent and presents no problem to the dedicated villain. All of the cars but mine were gone from the verge of the road through the cemetery. The weather felt warmer. It wasn’t spring or anything dramatic, but the hold of winter was broken. Slabs of ice were breaking off and running down the creek as I drove over the high-level bridge. I stopped to have some won-ton soup and fried rice at the Chinese place where I had first met Dave Rogers after the service. The place was empty.

* * *

One night, just after I locked up the office, Pete came by. He honked his horn and I slid into the front seat of his car. “You eaten yet?” he asked. I shook my head. “Me neither, and the wife has some women friends in to play cards tonight.” Usually I would chide him for using such terms as “the wife,” but that night I didn’t have the energy. I was washed out.

“We’ve got the Shaw case in good order, Benny. Next to the Wise case, it’s simplicity itself. Thanks for putting us onto Ryan.”

“Yeah, I saw that Indian-head buckle in the snow. You found it?”

“Sure, but what could we make of it? You had a head start on us with that bunch.”

“Don’t remind me. Syl Ryan used to be a biker and bikers are all crazy about the famous old Indian bikes. Syl was the only biker connected to Wise and his gang.”

“Of course, we had the handprint on the car.”

“Sure.”

“Your friend Mickey’s going to be away for a long time, Benny. We got him on weapons, hijacking and smuggling. He and his pals were using boats to run booze and cartons of drugs across the Niagara River. That’s small stuff, but enough to put him down for a few years. By the time we get an understanding of the whole operation, we’ll both be getting our pension.”

“Did he put up a big fight?”

“Bigger than I expected. I thought we had him at a weak moment, what with his wife … you know. But, it took three good men to hold him and make the collar.”

“He have a good lawyer?”

“Yeah, that fellow who used to be such a drunk around town.”

“Rupe McLay. Good for Rupe!”

“Hell, Benny, you sound like you want Mickey to walk.”

“Half and half. I feel like hell about Victoria, Pete.”

“What you made sound like a crime without greed or personal advantage comes out looking premeditated and cold-blooded, Benny.”

“What’s been happening this week? I’ve been out of circulation.”

“Hart’s moving into one of his father’s houses. Julie and Didier have broken up all over again. You know anything about that, Benny?”

“A little. Santerre was only interested in refinancing his magazine. Julie was his road to Wise. Wise was willing to pay off Santerre if he would leave Julie alone. Santerre tried to have it both ways. But Hart’s cheque bounced.”

“That’s where we were called in. The bank gets weary of rubber cheques with Hart Wise’s name on them.”

“Those two kids have a long way to go. Look at the Tatarskis. You never know where it will work itself out.”

“What put your nose into the wind on this case, Benny?”

“I was robbed of a night’s sleep.”

“Yeah, but after that.”

“First time I talked to Dave Rogers he said that some old woman had got herself killed by a burglar over on Russell Avenue. Nobody else knew that. It had to have come from Abe Wise himself. Next question?”

“Where do you want to eat?”

“I don’t know. Where do
you
want to eat?”

TWENTY-NINE

The Queen Elizabeth Way was built to commemorate the visit in 1939 of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. It was at that time the finest divided highway in North America. It was still the fastest way to get from Grantham to Toronto, Hamilton or, as in this case, Grimsby. I pushed the Olds along at a good clip, keeping the lake to my right and the beetling escarpment to my left. Also on my left ran miles and miles of vineyards and orchards. There was pink blush about the naked twigs. Buds? I couldn’t tell. Once I turned off the familiar highway, I was in strange country. I didn’t know these quiet roads or streets. I tried to keep to the directions Mr. McCarthy had given me on the phone a day or so ago when I first talked to him. Pete had got the number for me and it took me the better part of a week to get the nerve to call it.

The house was small, with a muddy driveway leading up to a tin garage with a door hanging halfway open or closed, whichever way you wanted to look at it. I parked the Olds in the driveway behind a beat-up blue Pontiac. looked about the same age as the other cars parked in driveways and along the treeless street. There was mud on my shoes when I mounted the porch of the sunblasted, artificial-brick-sided bungalow. The mat looked too new for the shoe-cleaning I had in mind, so I did what I could on the edge of the top step, leaving the mat for a final polish. I rang the bell, and heard the ring resounding through what appeared from the outside to be an empty house. On the second try, I could hear footsteps coming up from the basement. A dark form came between me and the light coming through a long hall from a back window and dusty lace curtains.

“Yes?” said the man who opened the door about as wide as it would go. The man I was looking at was eighty. I’d figured out his present age from an article on his retirement in a Toronto paper. In the flesh, he looked older. He was a tall, rangy man, with lines on his face that were closer to furrows than wrinkles. There was a worried bloodhound expression on his features as he took in what he saw standing in front of him. Was he sizing up my height and estimating my weight, I wondered.

“I’m Cooperman. Remember? I phoned.”

“Cooperman? I don’t …” He rubbed a grizzled grey beard with the back of his hand while he tried to recall the conversation.

“You
are
Mr. McCarthy, aren’t you?”

“That’s right, but my memory is starting to go. They told me it would and now I guess I’ll have to believe them. Will you come in, Mr. Cooperman?” He moved away from the door and I followed him into the front room of the tiny house, which was decorated with brownish prints of sailing ships and sea captains in nor’westers. Next to the front window was a table with a fringed cloth on it. A bowl of nuts was its only decoration. A velvet wall-hanging of a stag at bay dominated the space above an upright piano with its lid closed.

“Make yourself at home, Mr. Cooperman, and try to give me an idea of why you are calling on a gaffer like me on a nice day like this. You’re not a reporter, are you? I don’t talk to reporters, you know.” I tried to remind him of our conversation and he nodded from time to time as though what I was saying was striking chords in his head.