Howard Engel - Getting Away With Murder

Sirs,

I am astonished that your paper has given room for a review of Haste to the Gallows by McKenzie Stewart. I was intimately involved with the original investigation of this case and find that all attempts to lift it into the realms of the exotic or sensational are ridiculous. It only serves to titillate morbid unhealthy appetites. It was a very ordinary case. There was nothing at all remarkable about any of the people concerned. Yet the present author is trying to make us believe that the woman involved was executed without a thorough investigation or fair trial. I object to this view in the strongest terms. Mary Tatarski was a headstrong, abandoned creature, who would have killed anyone who stood in the way of her wilfulness. The best thing that can be said in her favour, which the defence had ample opportunity to say at the trial, is that Anastasia Tatarski was an old-fashioned woman, who objected to having her daughter away from the house until all hours, leaving her infant child in her care. If this is ignorance and backwardness, I think we could do with more of it more than forty years after that poor woman’s violent and premature death. Killing her mother may have been the crime for which Mary Tatarski suffered, but it must, in all fairness, be remembered that her father, Joseph Tatarski, a veteran just back from the reconquest of Europe, was also murdered under that same roof. It is incredible that weak-kneed sentimentalists have nothing better to do than try to create martyrs from such twisted human rubbish …

I came away from the library with half a wish to have known more about this moralizing deputy chief of police. I guess it was at that moment that I decided to take the time, a couple of hours later in the afternoon, to go to Neustadt’s funeral. Unless he had been kidding, Wise would be there. It would be a good opportunity to observe the intensity of Wise’s feelings about the dead man. It would be a further insight into Wise. God knows I needed all the insights that I could get.

I hadn’t been back in my office long when the phone rang. It was Wise’s second wife, Lily, although I didn’t catch on right away.

“You’re doing some work for my husband?”

“Who is this? I work for a lot of husbands in my line, lady. Are you going to help me out with a name or do you want me to recite a list of my active files.”

“A comedian! I always said Abe can pick them! Look, Mr. Comedian, I’m Lilian Wise. Does that mean anything to you?”

“Sure it does, Mrs. Wise. What can I do for you?”

“Still making jokes! I’ll save my laugh for later. I heard that it’s you who wants to talk to me .”

“That’s right, Mrs. Wise. When can I see you?”

“You’re getting expenses, so I’ll let you buy me lunch.”

“Great! Where shall I meet you?”

“There’s a little place I like on Wellington. Just a little north of Church Street. I forget the name.”

“I know the place. What time?” She told me to meet her at twelve-thirty and to make the reservation. It took me a while to remember the name of the place, but I located the phone number and made the reservation. That left me an hour and a half before our meeting. To kill the time, I called the car dealer who was holding Hart Wise’s bad cheque.

“Yeah?”

“Is this Gordon Sawchuck?”

“Shaw. I do business under the name of Shaw. Who the hell is this?” I told him and he agreed to see me after lunch. My social calendar was quickly filling up. I should get a gold medal from Wise for attention to duty, or at least be allowed to go on living.

To fill the rest of the time before lunch, I returned to Diana Sweets where I tried to make a list of what I knew about the assembled threats against the life of my client. I chewed on my pencil for a long ten minutes. Frustrated, I turned to the crossword in yesterday’s Beacon and the better part of the time flew by like a breeze.

I’d left myself time for a bookstore browse on my way to the restaurant. I was looking for fiction about far-away places. But this idea was frustrated too.

“Okay, Mr. Cooperman. What do you want to know?” Mickey was standing in the doorway of a store next to Diana Sweets. He grabbed my arm as I walked by him and held on to it like I might try running across the street into the one-way traffic.

“Oh, it’s you, Mickey. You had me worried for a minute.”

“You were right the first time. I want to talk to you.” He pulled me into Helliwell Lane and hustled me through the brick canyon to where it opened up into a nest of trendy cafés and restaurants. From there it was a short push on my arm until I was forced to his car, parked illegally at the intersection with Brogan Street. “This will do fine,” he said, opening the door and shovelling me into the passenger side. He walked around to his side and got in too.

“Is this a new conversation or a continuation of the last one, Mickey?”

“You better stop this horse-shit, Cooperman. I’ve got a short fuse where you’re concerned. Leave the funny lines to the talk shows.”

“That seems to be the consensus. This morning, anyway.”

He lit a cigarette with a pocket lighter and breathed the smoke in my face. He thought it might annoy me, but it was the best thing that had happened to me so far today.

“Okay,” I said, popping a Halls into my mouth, just to keep me sane, “where do we go from here?”

“You’re the one with the mouth. Ask your questions.” Wise had obviously had a quiet word with Mickey and he was sticking me with his resentment. I guess it’s natural. I tried to think of some questions related to the investigation. It was harder than I thought.

“Mickey, where did you come into the picture?”

“I met Mr. Wise through some people he used to deal with in the States, I used to live in Buffalo, but I have relatives on both sides of the river. Part of my schooling was at a half-baked military school on the Chippawa Creek. They used to clobber us if you couldn’t bounce a dime on your new-made beds. A few of the kids and I started moving stuff across the Niagara River in a boat for this guy.”

“Above the falls?” I asked. He nodded. “That takes guts,” I said. “Lije Swift operates a speak down in St. David’s. He used to run a fast boat during Prohibition.”

“Thanks for the lesson in local history. Ain’t it colourful? Do you have questions to ask me or what?”

“So that means you’ve been with him for how long? Five years? Ten?”

“He bought me from the guy I was talking about eight years back. At first I just mixed in and helped out. There was another man doing what I do now.”

“What happened to him?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“So, when he left, you were slotted in?” He nodded again without elaboration. “There’s somebody, Mickey, who’s trying to kill your boss. It’s my job to find out who. He’s already tried a few times, but he’s only come close. Your boss is a very careful man. He looks under his bed at night and I suspect he lets you open up his mail.”

“So that’s the score,” he said, running a finger along the edge of his chin. “Why couldn’t we handle it inside? What do we need a peeper for?”

“Take that up with Wise. I tried asking him and got nowhere. My guess is that he wants a clean sweep of his whole life: business, private, past, present and future. You can’t do a clean job with an old broom.” I regretted the “old broom” as soon as it was out. Mickey winced, but kept his hands where they were.

“So that’s why you want to know about Cook? The guy before me. He met with an accident while on holiday abroad.”

“Panama?”

“Hey! Not bad. Yeah, those crazy hammerheads. But I still say I could have done a better job from inside with what I know about the operation.”