Howard Engel - Getting Away With Murder

Never indicted

I was saved from more speculation by a blast from the telephone. Picking it up, I heard a voice with a rasp in a high register. “Mr. Cooperman?” the voice began. It didn’t sound familiar. It was a woman, but beyond that, I was stumped.

“That’s right. Who is this?”

“I’m calling from the office of the Registrar, Ontario Provincial Police.”

“Uh-huh. What can I do for you?”

“I’m looking at a list of recent complaints against you,” she said. “You are well aware of the fact that the Registrar takes a dim view of licensees bringing this office into bad repute. If there is a repetition of the complaints we have been getting, we may have to convene the licensing committee.”

“This sounds a lot like a threat. My licence isn’t due to be renewed for a year. And why are you calling me at home to tell me this? I have an office.”

“All licences are subject to review, Mr. Cooperman. It’s a question of maintaining standards.”

I told her to put what she had told me in writing. They hate doing that. I’ve used the ploy before and it always works like a charm. I would have liked to suggest that she give the name of my client to the active departments of her OPP office, but it seemed both futile and disloyal, so I kept my mouth shut.

I tried to imagine where the complaints were coming from. The names Shaw and York quickly came to mind. I was getting in the way of a profitable scam and they, quite rightly, resented it. There’s nothing in the rule book that says that the bad guys can’t enlist the help of the law. After all, wasn’t I going to be paid off in money earned in all sorts of ways I didn’t want to know about?

I was just beginning to think about lunch, when there was a knock on the door. When I got there, I saw two familiar faces. “Are we going for a ride? Have I been summoned?” I said to one of them. “I thought you preferred the early morning, Mickey.” I backed away from the door to allow Mickey and Victoria Armstrong to come in. Victoria’s eyes ran fingers over all my dusty surfaces.

“I was just checking up on you. Cooperman. You didn’t go to your office in the middle of the week, so I wanted to see if you were being cute with me. Phil Green’s taking the afternoon off. He has to go to the dentist. So, I’m the guy with the short straw. You met my wife the other night, right?” Victoria and I shook hands and momentarily achieved eye contact.

“I just came along in case there’s a chance to do some shopping,” she said. “Mickey’s schedule makes for a rough marriage, Mr. Cooperman. Mr. Wise treats us well, but he often forgets that Mickey needs time off.”

She was dark and tidy-looking, with large brown eyes and nice skin. Her heavy wool skirt and brown boots told me about the weather outside and the pastels of her blouse and sweater told of the spring we were expecting every hour.

“I was thinking of lunch,” I said. “Any takers?” The Armstrongs looked at each other and then Mickey grinned.

“I guess we have to eat somewhere. And you’re on expenses.”

“Aren’t you ? Or is this bodyguarding included in normal duties?”

We didn’t go to the Di, or to the Wellington Court, but to the restaurant downstairs, which was now called Beit al Din, a Middle Eastern place with travel posters showing off the beauties of Lebanon: vistas of crusader castles, glimpsed through Gothic arches, the cliffs of the Beirut seafront. I had been keeping an eye on this place ever since the Hungarian restaurant that it displaced closed down. The location had seen half a dozen unsuccessful attempts at exotic cuisine. This was the first to survive for more than a year. A waitress, who echoed what Paulette must have looked like in her bosomy prime, gave us a big smile and seated us near the back. Neither Mickey nor I could make head or tail of the menu, so Victoria ordered for all of us.

“Are you always called Victoria?” I asked. “It seems such a formal name.”

“Believe it or not, I was named after Queen Victoria. My father wanted only the best for me. Before I met Mickey, my friends called me Vicky, but the combination of Mickey and Vicky was too much. And Mickey refuses to go back to Mike or Michael. When I was in high school I envied a girl with the same last name as me. She was called Lally Tate. Isn’t that marvellous? Wouldn’t you die to be Lally Tate? Are you always called Benny?”

“I hate to admit it, but I can’t get anybody to make it just Ben. I can live with anything, even Benjamin, but I’m hoping one day to meet somebody who’ll take a shine to just Ben.”

“I’ll try it on,” Victoria said just as the plates began to arrive. First there was a beige-coloured paste called “hummus” which went well with the flat pita bread, then came some vegetable salads with rice and tomatoes, followed by pieces of grilled chicken on skewers. There was some eggplant too. When I asked what that was, she gave me a name that sounded like a sneeze.

“Where did you learn about this stuff?” I asked her. Victoria threw her head back and laughed.

“I may have been born here, Ben, but I have lived all over the place. There’s a place in Old Greenwich, north of New York, where I used to live, with the same menu. There are dozens of places like this in Toronto and New York. My first husband was a broker and, because of his clients, he enjoyed all the varieties of Middle and Far Eastern cooking. Do you know the cookbooks by Madhur Jaffrey?”

I told her that I hadn’t run across them. Then she started in on traditional Jewish cooking and I found I knew as little about that as I did about the food we were eating. “I eat simply,” I said. “Soup, a sandwich. Basic fare. That’s me. Were you always interested in food?”

“I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t. The kitchen is the heart of a home, for me anyway. I’ve always loved to cook.” That seemed to stop further conversation in the food line so we ate in silence for a few minutes.

“How did you two get together?” I asked, wondering what kind of answer I might get. They both answered at the same time.

“Victoria came to cook for-”

“Mickey was working-” We all laughed, attracting the attention of the waitress, who smiled at our pleasure.

“Mr. Wise had business in Old Greenwich, and when he heard …” Victoria looked at Mickey for help.

“Victoria’s husband was in a boating accident. They never found him.”

“I’m sorry,” I said inadequately.

“So, I came to Grantham to live,” she said, and added, taking Mickey’s hand in hers, “and I haven’t regretted it.” Mickey moved in the direction of a blush, but he strangled it at birth.

“I dug that slug out of the hutch in Mr. Wise’s office, Benny,” Mickey said, biting into a round, brown meatless meatball. “It was a smallish bullet like a.32.”

“Is the glass in that room anything special?”

“Antique, like the rest of the house. But, I see what you mean: it wasn’t bullet-proof, just ordinary window glass.”

“Wise talked to me of two attempts on his life: the shot and then the steering on the Volvo. Were there other attempts that you know about?”

“We watch him pretty well,” Mickey said. “Victoria does all the cooking in the house. Next door, the boys manage on their own. Fast food, mostly pizza.”

“Give them their due, Mickey. They fry up a storm for breakfast.”

“When they’re not filling their faces, they’re a good team.”

“I didn’t get a very good look at where exactly the house is in relation to the rest of the nearby houses. Do you have a good view of traffic in and out?”

“That’s why Wise picked that place. Dorset Crescent is a dead-end street. No through traffic. There’s always a lookout checking who’s coming and going.”