Howard Engel - Getting Away With Murder

“Tell me about your will. Who gets your money?”

“My visible assets and as many of the invisible ones that survive probate go to Hart and Julie in equal shares.

In the event of the death of either, the remaining child inherits everything. There are some fairly sizeable gifts to institutions, charities and people close to me, but the bulk of it goes to Hart and Julie. Is there anything else you need?”

“I can’t think of anything. Oh, yes, Lily won’t talk to me.”

“I hear what you’re saying. I’ll look after it. I can’t promise anything with Lily. Never could. If there’s nothing else, I’ve got to go. It’s a busy, day and there’s a funeral I have to attend.”

“Would that be the one for the former deputy police chief? I wouldn’t have guessed that you were all that close.”

“We weren’t, my friend. But having an unsavoury reputation has this peculiar advantage. When I turn up at Neustadt’s funeral, everybody will think he was a bigger son of a bitch than he was, which is going some.”

“I guess you crossed swords more than once?”

“Once was enough! Now, I don’t have time to banter with you, Cooperman. Goodbye!” I got my ear away from the phone just in time to save my eardrum from rough use. I was glad that I wasn’t in daily contact with Abe Wise. I don’t think I could take it.

I knew when I bought it that I should have spent some time seriously looking at McKenzie Stewart’s new book. As the only living author of my acquaintance within a hundred miles or even a thousand, he was bound to run into me sooner or later. Sooner, if I hadn’t read his book. That’s the way the laws of probability work around here. I was right. He was coming out of Christopher’s Smoke Shop with a couple of foreign newspapers under his arm and a fresh pouch of pipe tobacco, which he was tearing open with complete absorption.

“Ah, Benny!” he said, putting a big brown hand on my shoulder. “How are things in the world of crime?”

“McStu!” I said. “I just bought your new book this morning,” I lied. McStu, when he wasn’t writing crime novels, was teaching English or Creative Writing at Secord University up on the Escarpment. He also travelled a lot lecturing on black writers.

“Thank God somebody bought it!” he said emphatically. “It might as well be you. I told them that nobody’s going to buy that book, Benny. Nobody.”

“But it’s a local story, isn’t it?”

“Well, we’ll sell a few around Grantham. But Grantham isn’t the world. My U.S. publisher wasn’t interested. My English publisher said he’d skip this one. So all I’ve got to look to are Canadian sales. What did you think of it?”

“I … I’ve just started it,” I said, stammering. “The beginning is great!” I said as enthusiastically as I could.

“Yeah, I got all that stuff about the execution from the hangman himself, an old gaffer named McCarthy, who lives in Grimsby. And three guards who are still around told me things.”

“You really think she was innocent?”

“Hell, Benny, all I can say I said in that damned book. What it boils down to is the fact that I don’t think the Crown made its case. There wasn’t complete disclosure of the police evidence to the defence or to the Crown. Oh, it was a miscarriage of justice all right. No two ways about that. That Neustadt fellow, the old cop who died this week, kept his witnesses writing statements until they said what he wanted them to say. The defence never saw the early versions. Duncan’s still trying to get the case reopened, you know?”

“Duncan Harvey, the architect. Yeah. What does he get out of this?” Today I was suspicious of everybody.

“Duncan’s the last of the good guys, Benny. A genuine concerned citizen. Last of a dying breed. He writes letters to the editor and even sits through City Council meetings. Amazing man. There’s a crown on high waiting for Dunc. He’s been trying to do something about the Tatarski case for years.”

“I can’t see what good it will do. They can’t give the woman her life back, can they?”

“But, you see, Benny, they can remember what happened to Mary Tatarski the next time they think they have an open-and-shut case. Nothing in life is simple. Making mistakes is what we do best.”

“You got time for a coffee, McStu?”

“Lay on, Macduff!”

Less than five minutes later we were seated facing one another in the middle section of the Diana Sweets with the hope of coffee moving in our direction.

“How did you get involved doing a book that didn’t have Dud Dickens in it?” I asked.

“Dud was getting on my nerves. I wanted to change the rules just for one book before I went back to him. I needed a sabbatical. Then Dunc offered to let me see what he had in his files. By the way, Benny, I’m almost finished a new Dud for your Christmas stocking. Don’t worry.”

“I wish I could talk to you intelligently about the Tatarski book, McStu, but I just bought it.”

“When you’ve finished reading the book, we’ll tear it apart together, okay?”

“What kind of reviews is it getting?”

“Toronto papers liked it. Local reviewer complained I got street names wrong. There was a letter in The Globe accusing me of being the latest bleeding heart to burst into bloom in southern Ontario. There were letters in the Beacon too. Interestingly enough, one of them was from Ed Neustadt, the cop who did the original investigation.”

“Interesting.”

“Speaking of cops, have you seen those two sergeants of yours lately? I need to talk to one of them about a technical point in my new book.”

“Savas is on holiday. I think he’s gone back to Cyprus for a few weeks. But Staziak is still around.”

“Good! I’ll give him a call.” Coffee had by now arrived and soon McStu was telling me about the latest Hamilton harbour scandal and how he was using a thinly veiled version of it in his novel in the works. I took a long shot and asked:

“Is Abe Wise involved in that?”

“Name one dirty deal within this hemisphere that Abe Wise doesn’t have a thumb in, and I’ll eat the rest of his digits.”

“How close is he to the action this time?”

“He has made a lot of people angry, Benny. That, I admit, is unusual for the old smoothy. Shee-it, he could get himself killed. You see it’s not just money running on this, it’s reputations. And people will go farther to protect their names than they will for a dirty buck.”

“I’ll remember that. How does he get away with it, McStu?”

“Wise has a legitimate business running parallel to all of his crooked ones. Keeps the cops guessing. For some reason the local cops have never bothered him much. He must buy a lot of tickets to their annual ball. I don’t know.”

“How is Cath?” McStu’s new wife, Catherine Bracken, read the evening news on the local TV station. I’d been hired a few months ago to keep an eye on her. It was the best job I ever had.

“We’re expecting a baby, Benny. I guess it’s okay to tell you. You’re practically family.”

“Congratulations to both of you! When’s the big day?”

“Cath is going to work right up to the middle of June and then take time off to get ready.”

“That’s wonderful! Give her my love.”

“I will. I will,” he said and we drank our coffees silently for a few minutes, trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t be an anticlimax after news like that. Neither of us could, so we continued to drink in silence.

A few minutes after McStu pulled himself away with the lame excuse that he had students to meet up at Secord, I walked back down James Street to the library and spent twenty minutes reading up on the Letters to the Editor going back to the weeks following the appearance of the first reviews of McStu’s Mary Tatarski book. I wasn’t surprised to find the one signed Deputy Chief of Police Edwin Neustadt, Niagara Regional Police (retired) so easily.