Howard Engel - Getting Away With Murder

“McStu’s book is an excellent beginning, Mr. Cooperman. All the facts are there. He did a first-rate job. The next trick is to get enough publicity so they’ll reopen the case.”

“But the woman’s dead, Mr. Harvey. I don’t get it. Why are you carrying the banner?”

“Some of my friends would say it’s because I’m a damned fool. Others think it’s because I’m one of nature’s born crusaders. One in every hundred thousand of the population. I don’t know, I think it’s because you can’t let them get away with it. Maybe. I guess I want to show that we have to be careful with human life. Look at the Marshall case. Who gave a damn about what happened to him? Harry Wheaton, the Mountie who dug up the evidence that cleared him, that’s who. Some of us have to wave the banner so that there’s some direction to the march. I don’t know. And, you’re right. Mary Tatarski will be just as dead at the end of a retrial as she is right now.”

“I’m interested in the part that Ed Neustadt played in the story,” I said. “I’m also curious about what happened to the people who survived.”

“Yes. Nobody survives a trauma like that intact. Mary’s sister …”

“Margaret,” I added to be helpful.

“Yes, well, she moved away, as did the others. She killed herself in Sarnia about four years after Mary was executed. You can’t tell me that those deaths aren’t related.” I shook my head in disbelief.

“You see, Mr. Cooperman …”

“Benny, please.”

“Well, Benny, a case like this is like a great plane crash. Not only are there out-and-out casualties, but there’s all kinds of indirect fallout. Casualties on the ground, lives bent out of shape, careers ended, relationships forever altered. You can see that operating here. Margaret is just the most dramatic case. The young brother, Fred, had to get out of town too. Grew up in foster homes. Only he came back here with a changed name and made a big success of his life. He was a credit to the Children’s Aid, if you disregard his alcoholism and occasional violence.” Harvey’s voice was deep and touched with the echo of an English accent, although I would bet he was native-born. Maybe he’d worked abroad or married into the Old Country.

“I guess that just adds more reasons for staying away from the death penalty.”

“We see that now, it’s just too bad we didn’t see it earlier.”

“When did Fred Tatarski die?”

“It was a little over two years ago. Bone cancer.”

“How did he make his big success?”

“Ever hear of the Nuts amp; Bolts garage chain? That’s Fred Tatarski. Only he changed his name to Tait.”

“Any family?”

“A boy, Charles Edward, who died young. Meningitis or something. And a girl, Drina. She’s Mary’s daughter. He brought her up as his own as soon as he was settled and working. Joe Tatarski had a brother who used to work at Patterson and Corbin in the shop. Retired now, I guess. He’s changed his name too. He’s Bill Tarson, lives over on Eastchester. Glengarry Apartments. We did that building back in the seventies. Needs updating, but we can’t-”

“Wait a minute! Back up a bit. Who was the father of Mary’s kid and what happened to him?”

“Now that’s a mystery that leads nowhere. He was a kid who had dropped out of school. Grew up next door. He went out with Mary when she could escape from that house-old Anastasia used to guard the doors like a prison warden-and he had vanished from the scene before she knew she was pregnant. He went to work in a winery in Jordan and then went out to Delhi to the tobacco farms. I found him in Kitchener, working in a hostel for unemployed men. There wasn’t a lot he could tell me. It wasn’t a case of somebody erasing a bad memory from his mind so it wouldn’t torment him; he just couldn’t remember Mary very clearly and had never heard about his daughter until I told him.”

“Does he have a name?”

“For what it’s worth: Thaddeus Nemerov.”

“Thaddeus Nemerov,” I repeated.

“Now don’t tell me you’re going to remember that?”

“It might turn up again. You never can tell.”

“As Shaw is always saying.”

“What! Shaw?” I surprised Harvey with my sudden animation. “What about Gordon Shaw?”

“I don’t know a Gordon Shaw; I’m talking about the writer: George Bernard Shaw. Benny, are you feeling unwell?”

“I’m fine, Duncan. Just fine,” I said, relaxing my grip on the arm of the chair. “I know it’s not in the book, but do you know of any connection between Abram Wise and the Tatarski case?” I was shooting wild and blind, but what the hell?

“Abram Wise? You mean the crime boss? No, I haven’t seen any mention of his name. There wasn’t any involvement with organized crime in this case. Just incompetent investigation and incomplete disclosure to the defence lawyer. Neustadt was responsible for both.”

“What was behind Neustadt’s zeal, do you think? Did he know the family?”

“No. After the first blunders, I think he was covering up for himself. He was an ox of stubbornness. Of course, he was the first officer on the scene when the father was killed. That’s in the book. So he knew the family. Did you know him, Benny?” I shook my head. “He didn’t want me getting together with McStu on this book. He knew it wouldn’t do his name or character any good. He was right. He died just in time.”

“Not quite. I think he had time to write to the papers denouncing the book.”

“What else could he do? If we are right about Mary Tatarski, he was wrong. I don’t want to be too hard on Neustadt. He’s an easy target: a prisoner of old-fashioned ideas, a certain inflexibility of character.”

“Would you include dishonesty?”

“In a manner of speaking. He wouldn’t call it that, though. Any shifting of facts in aid of a foregone conclusion was legitimate as far as he was concerned. If a nasty fact got in the way, he’d dispose of it somehow, just as we have to get rid of older buildings when we put up new ones.”

“The law’s supposed to be different. If the facts don’t fit, you’re supposed to look for a new theory. That’s what makes it scientific.”

“Don’t tell me about it. I know. And most of the people at Niagara Regional know it. Neustadt was a sport, a throw-back, a walking dinosaur who didn’t know he was extinct.”

“Who knew him best, would you say?”

“Talk to Major Colin Patrick. They were good friends.”

“I’ve heard that. Would you say that Ed Neustadt had a, shall we say, sadistic side?”

“Is this just curiosity, Benny, or are you working on something? Pat told me that you’re an investigator. Am I likely to be called on to give evidence?” Something in my question had put Harvey on his guard. I wanted to know what it was.

“I don’t think so. But it’s more than curiosity. I think that there was a sadistic side to the prosecution of this case. Had that ever occurred to you?”

“Hell yes! But I couldn’t say anything as long as Neustadt was alive. McStu has already been on the phone to his publisher about a new edition of Haste to the Gallows. It’s a hard world, Benny. But, I must say that I won’t be worried about libel any more. Those nightmares are gone forever.”

“Whatever happened to Mary Tatarski’s daughter? Is she around?”

“She spent a year at Napier McNabb University in Hamilton. That’s the last we know about her. She was at her stepfather’s funeral, back in 1992, of course. Then she disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“Perhaps that’s a little melodramatic. I mean I think she married and settled down somewhere.”

“I guess that’s one way to disappear.” Harvey laughed at that and asked if I would like a cup of tea. I said “fine,” so we had some.