Howard Engel - Getting Away With Murder

“Why don’t you make us both a cup of tea?” I did that and when I returned to the orange living-room, Ma’s program was over and the set turned off. I put the tray down on a coffee-table.

“Be careful of my Chinese ginger pots, Benny. I love them better than my life.” Ma wasn’t exaggerating. Once, when Sam and I were still in pyjamas with feet in them, Grantham was hit by a small earthquake. Instead of carrying her two children out of the house, Ma took the ginger pots away from danger wrapped in a blanket. Sam says the blanket came from one of our cribs, but I think that that’s big-city cynicism showing.

“Ma, I’ve been thinking that it’s been a long time since you and Pa have had a holiday. Why don’t the two of you take off?”

“What have you been smoking, Benny? Just like that, we should go away! Why? Do you need the house? What are you thinking about?”

“I just thought that you could use a change of scene, that’s all. Is it a crime to wish you out of this cold weather? It’s been a long winter and you didn’t get away at all.”

“Except for the two weeks in Miami Beach.”

“Yeah.”

“And the week at Myrtle Beach.”

“I forgot about Myrtle Beach. Okay, you don’t need a vacation. I was just thinking that Pa looked a little frail when I saw him last week.”

“Frail? Manny frail? Why shouldn’t he be frail? He’s seventy years old, Benny. A lot of people his age have been dead for ten years.”

“That’s why I suggested that you both get away. Treat yourselves to a second honeymoon.”

“Are you coming up with the airline tickets?”

“I wish I could afford to send you on a trip around the world: London, Paris, Rome!”

“And as for a second honeymoon, the less you and Sam know about that part of our lives, the better I like it.”

“Don’t you just want to get out of Grantham when the winter won’t stop? It’s supposed to be spring, but where are the buds on the trees? Where are the crocuses?”

“How do you manage to boil a kettle and make cold tea, Benny?” I could see I wasn’t going to move my mother beyond the reach of Abe Wise’s influence. I could hope to do better when my father arrived. If he came down against the proposition, Ma would begin to see some virtue in it. I didn’t lose heart and I wasn’t surprised. I just had to make the attempt, that’s all. The price of a little peace of mind was cheap. It only took the effort. Half an hour later, when my father came in and draped his coat on another of the dining-room chairs, I put the idea of a southern holiday to him. He cocked his head as though I was going insane before his very eyes and said that he would think it over.

“What’s to think over, Manny? Money doesn’t grow on trees in Ontario.”

“I wouldn’t mind Palm Beach,” Pa said.

“You can’t get another day’s wear out of that white suit, Manny. Forget it. Besides, it’ll be spring in no time. I love a Canadian spring. It’s over so fast. You blink and it’s gone.”

“Why don’t you fly down to Arizona? They do a great spring in Arizona,” I said, selling the idea with as much conviction as I could muster.

“Paul Weinberg found a scorpion in his garage in Arizona. Are you trying to send us to our deaths?” The conversation drifted from the Arizona murder plot to other things.

“Boy, did I get a shock at the club this afternoon,” Pa said. It was his way of announcing the death of one of their contemporaries.

“Manny, I don’t want to hear about it!” Ma always tried to postpone the news. Maybe she thought she could breathe a moment of life into the dear departed by keeping at bay the specifics of who exactly had died.

“And he was only retired a few years.”

“I don’t want to know!”

“A better hand at poker you couldn’t wish for.”

“Are you talking about Dave Kaplanski?”

“I thought you didn’t want to know.”

“I don’t want to know if you’ll shut up about it. If you won’t shut up, then I’ve got a right to guess. Is it Louie Stein? He played poker. And I think he just came back from Florida. I thought that such a tan was criminal. Now he’s dead. That’s the way the world goes.”

“Sophie, what are you talking about? Lou Stein’s face told you every card in his hand. A poker player? Lou Stein couldn’t understand Snakes and Ladders! I’m talking about the old deputy police chief, Ed Neustadt, not Lou Stein. Lou’s been in his grave for six-seven months already.”

And so it went. I tried my best to save their lives in Palm Beach or Flagstaff, but to no avail. I looked at my watch, kissed them both and left them to their steaks. I was beginning to feel hungry, so I pointed the Olds in the direction of home.

“Benny! Which way did you go?” I was sitting in my apartment at the all-purpose table with Anna Abraham staring across at me. With the certain knowledge that Phil, the hood, or one of his pals was keeping at least half an eye on my windows, I was not brilliant company.

“Huh?”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself. Benny, what’s the matter with you tonight? You sulked through dinner and haven’t been listening for at least the last twenty minutes. Are you telling me that you could do with less of my company? I can take a kick in the pants as well as the next girl.”

“I’m sorry, Anna. I know I’m being lousy company.”

“An understatement if I ever heard one!”

“I said I was sorry.” I stared at the wine stain on the tablecloth. I’d poured salt over it to prevent it becoming permanent, but I wasn’t sure it wasn’t just an old wives’ tale. The wreckage of two approaches to eating grilled salmon lay before us: Anna’s tidy clean plate; my chopped-up remains, partly hidden under the mashed potatoes.

Anna had come early, letting herself in with her own key, and had a good dinner on the stove when I returned from playing travel agent at my parents’. I was delighted to see her, of course, but I knew that I had put her in danger by just knowing her. I wanted to tell her, but I was afraid of the consequences. I was sure that she would stick by me. In fact, her loyalty was the problem. The last thing in the world I needed at the moment was damn-thetorpedoes loyalty. What I needed was everyday indifference, the sort of long-standing arrangement that might allow for Anna to not see me for a couple of weeks. The last thing I wanted was to have Anna know more about Abe Wise than was good for her. I had already quizzed her during dinner about her responsibilities at the university. She couldn’t take any time off and that was that. What would have happened to her, I wondered, if she had been with me when Mickey and the Three Stooges paid their call?

“Do you remember what I was saying?”

“You were talking about … No, I don’t remember. You caught me fair and square.”

“Well, you’re honest, at least.” She was looking at me. I knew it, but I couldn’t return her gaze. I wasn’t sure what I might not say once I was caught staring into Anna’s salamandrine eyes.

“Let’s start again. Okay? I’ll try harder. I’m not the rat fink you think I am. I’m just careworn from a bad day at the office.”

“Office. You haven’t been in your office for hours. I tried calling you there umpteen times. You’re not going to tell me what this is all about, are you?”

“This is something you don’t want to get involved in.

“Benny, you’re always saying that the only way to protect yourself from the consequence of having guilt knowledge is to pass it around. Secrets get people killed. You say it all the time! Well, why not take your own advice? What’s going on in your life that I should know about? Are you tracking down a serial killer? Are the fuzz about to bust you for non-payment of your many secret operatives spread out across the nation, around the world?”