Howard Engel - Getting Away With Murder

“Mr. Wise is pretty strict about the lookout, Ben,” Victoria said. The mail gets delivered next door, where one of the boys sorts it and checks odd-looking parcels.”

“There’s no way a letter bomb could get through to Mr. Wise,” Mickey added. “And if anything came to his uptown office, they’d catch it there.”

“Tell me about uptown, Mickey.”

“The legit operation. Wisechoice Import and Export.”

“Gotcha. You were talking about security?”

“He doesn’t even use the Volvo all that much. But if he uses any of the cars, that’s the one he likes to drive.”

“So, whoever it is, it’s someone who knows Mr. Wise very well,” Victoria said, echoing the thought percolating in my head.

Soon the bouncy waitress brought coffee served in little brass ewers. Victoria caught me admiring the bounciness and we both smiled. The coffee inside the ewers was sweet and thick. I liked it. The meal was rounded off with some cake made of puff pastry with green pistachios bathing in honey. I liked that too. Anna would have enjoyed the meal. I promised myself to suggest the Beit al Din the next time it was my turn to be inventive.

“Was there a special reason you wanted to see me again, Mickey? So soon after our chat in your car?”

“Mostly I just wanted to get out of the house. He’s been hell to live with since that cop’s funeral yesterday. He tore my head off six or seven times. I was glad Phil got an abscess.”

“What is the link between Wise and Neustadt? That’s what I want to know.”

“It’s just cops and crooks. Nothing strange about that,” Mickey said.

“No, there’s something more. I’ll be damned if I know what it is.”

“The deputy chief could never make a charge stick against Mr. Wise,” Victoria put in. “He says that all the time. But why would that make Mr. Wise angry? I see what you mean, Ben.”

“It’s a puzzlement, all right. Mickey, was Mr. Wise upset about Neustadt before his death?”

“Mr. Wise hated that cop’s guts. He hasn’t talked about it lately, but after Neustadt’s accident, you couldn’t shut him up.”

“I can vouch for that,” Victoria said.

“If Wise felt that bad about Neustadt, Mickey, he could have done something about it. Would you know about that?”

Mickey took a moment to answer, sipping his coffee. “I’m his regular link with his usual people. But, he has a phone in his office and one by his bed. He knows people who do that sort of work. Beyond that, I can’t say.”

I couldn’t quite get over this sudden glasnost in the air between me and Mickey. Maybe his wife had softened him. I guess it made better sense keeping an eye on me from across a table. It beat sitting in a chilly car or trying to keep out of the wind on St. Andrew Street. From my point of view, I didn’t mind sitting opposite them. It’s easier to study faces close up. And Victoria’s face, which I hardly had noticed that early Monday morning, was beginning to grow on me. She was attractive in a more subtle way than the waitress, and concealed her age very well. She had a style of dressing all her own. Sort of arts-and-crafts school. I doubted whether Julie had been giving her fashion tips.

When they said goodbye, I thought that it was at last time to go to work.

At the office, my service passed on the facts that I’d had a call from the Registrar of the Ontario Provincial Police and a message from Har Twize, according to the spelling I was given. I thanked my service for passing on my home number to the OPP and told her never to do it again. When I called Hart Wise, I got an answering machine, which gave me the best idea I’d had all day. I left my number and put my shoes up on my desk. I formed them into a “V” for “Victory” and thought of Joe Tatarski fighting through the war and then coming home to an early grave. It was dirty luck, no matter how you looked at it.

I called Duncan Harvey’s office. Apart from being the big authority on the Tatarski case, next to McStu, he was in a partnership with a couple of people I was in high school with. When Pat Voisard’s voice came on the line, I could still hear him reading out the athletic announcements to the senior assembly. It was a breathless staccato that made me feel young again. I told Pat who was speaking and with only a moment’s delay I was talking to Duncan Harvey. I told him about just finishing McStu’s book and that I was wondering whether I could see him.

“An architect has all the time in the world these days, Mr. Cooperman. The economic climate can’t be helping you either. Do you want to meet me here at the office, or would you like to meet outside?”

“Your place will be fine,” I said. We set a time, just an hour away, and I hung up. I was a little surprised and a little flattered that I didn’t have to explain my line of business. If Duncan Harvey was anything to go by, it was common knowledge.

I took a yellow block of foolscap and wrote a few names on the top page:

Margaret Tatarski (sister)

Freddy Tatarski (brother)

Mrs. Neustadt

Neustadt’s daughter

Dave Rogers

Major Patrick

I put in a call to Dave Rogers and another to the Sally Ann officer who had been such a great pal of Neustadt’s. The policeman’s family could wait. They had their hands full just managing their grief. I might never have to bother them. Pete Staziak would help me with the whereabouts of the leftover Tatarskis I hoped, if I couldn’t get the information from Harvey or McStu. They weren’t listed in the local phone directory or in the Buffalo or Hamilton books. I tried Toronto and struck out again after a few wrong numbers.

While I was killing time waiting for people to phone back, I compared the photographs in Haste to the Gallows with the list of names. There was Joe, the sergeant in uniform with a big grin and his arms akimbo. It was battle-dress he was wearing, with a short tunic and a wedge cap on the side of his head. From the look of him, the army had been a home away from home for Joe. He looked comfortable, like a foreman getting a bottle from his work gang. Ready for a scramble-net or a three-day pass, he had found his full achievement in a khaki uniform. Since he was murdered in 1946, he only had a few months to adapt to Civvy Street.

Across the page was a blurred picture of Anastasia, his wife. She was a big-boned woman, strong, by the look of her arms and back, and determined, if the line of her jaw was any guide. Her dark hair was mostly covered in a babushka. She had been a handsome woman, but in this photograph, taken according to the cutline just after Joe’s murder, she appeared middle-aged, even older. Was this the girl Joe came home to?

On the next page were pictures of the children of this unlikely couple: Margaret, in rimless glasses, wearing a wartime nurse’s aide or Red Cross uniform; Freddy, the youngest, a weedy lad in a Boy Scout outfit, holding a large roll of what might have been aluminum foil; and the biggest picture: Mary Tatarski, the second-last woman to be hanged in Canada, looking very much alive and ready to go out dancing. She had her mother’s strong features, but with a lightness and vivacity. Her lips, coloured red in real life, but here in the picture looking nearly black, were parted in a smile that showed even teeth and a memorable smile. Was this the face of a killer, I asked myself. Not at first glance, no.

Duncan Harvey’s face was a familiar one when I saw it in his bright studio-like office. I’d seen it on King Street and around town over the years. It was a rugged, handsome face, the sort that comes with ski clothes and Alpine peaks. Behind his desk he was dressed more conventionally, but there was a trace of the great outdoors about him and the sun-filled room was as close to that element as could be found away from the Beacon ’s Travel Section. When I came in, he and Pat Voisard were talking shop. I heard “Abu Dhabi” and “Shiraz,” which sounded like nice places to visit, but they broke this up when they saw me, and, after an exchange of greetings with Pat, I was left facing Duncan Harvey, who sat back in a chrome and black-leather chair that inspired confidence. I told him again that I had just finished reading McStu’s book about the Tatarski case, which he applauded with a smile.