Howard Engel - Getting Away With Murder

“Why not cut out the flattery, Mr. Wise, and come to the point.”

“I’ve got a job for you.”

“I have office hours, Mr. Wise. Most people do business with me without scaring me to death beforehand.”

“Yes, I understand. But there was a certain urgency in this case.”

“Everybody’s case is urgent. There are no other kinds.”

“Are your other clients about to be murdered?” he asked, and I could feel my back coming away from the chair. He could see that he had finally succeeded in impressing me.

“What makes you think that your life is in danger?” Wise got up from his chair and walked slowly towards the door. He opened it and closed it without saying anything.

“The mechanic at my garage,” he said, at last, certain of my attention, “reported to me that the drive belt to the power-steering pump of the Volvo had been cut almost through. Somebody who knows I like to drive in excess of the speed limit did it. I went down and saw the car myself. I could see it was cut; it wasn’t wear or any other normal problem.” He let go of the doorknob and walked towards the window behind his desk, where he found a cord hidden behind the curtains. When he pulled it, the curtains parted revealing two twelve-pane windows letting in the first light of day. “You see this?” he asked. I got up and walked around the desk. He was pointing at a small hole in one of the glass panes. It was a medium-calibre bullet-hole. “I was sitting in that chair when the shot was fired. It came that close,” he said, holding a hairy knuckle an inch away from his left ear. “That close!” He looked right at me to make sure I hadn’t missed the significance of what he had told me. Standing beside the bullet-punctured window, Wise looked very small. Sitting, he looked taller, but this was an illusion too. Our eyes were almost on the same level.

“The bullet landed in the pine hutch across the room,” he said. “Maybe you can dig it out with this.” He handed me a jewelled paper-knife and closed the curtains once more. The room had a warmer feel to it with the early light locked out. I placed the paper-knife on the desk and returned to my chair.

“Look, Mr. Wise, ‘I’m sorry for your trouble,” as the Irish say, but I can’t see how I can help you. I don’t even know that I want to help you. I don’t much like the way you have of getting a person’s attention. With your lifestyle, you must run into this sort of thing all the time. Violence begets violence.”

Wise nodded as I talked. The green lamp made his white shirt shine and still maintained his face in shadow. The brass on his desk glinted. “There are a couple of things, Mr. Cooperman. One is that I value my life and I don’t want to lose it just because I refuse to take the right precautions. The other is that you come highly recommended. I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. Naturally, you’ll be well paid and-”

“I don’t give a damn about the-”

“Now you listen to me!” He was leaning over his desk, his face dark and the tendons in his neck tight as bowstrings. “If you like living, you’ll shut up and listen when I’m talking! You hear? What kind of a man are you? I tell you that someone’s trying to kill me and you want to walk away from me when I’m talking? I won’t hear of it!” He subsided into his chair again and lowered his voice. He had made his point. He didn’t like interruptions when he was talking.

“Look,” he said, showing his open palms under the green light, “I know all about you. I know where your parents live. I know where the Abraham girl lives and I know you don’t want them getting hurt. Right? I also know that you value your own life, which, by the way, is hanging by a thread right now. A call from me, and you could join Larry Geller and all those other people who became parts of bridges and highways after midnight. They’re building a new piece of the canal over near the Forks Road. You wanna become a lasting part of it? I don’t think so. What I’m tellin you is that you haven’t any choice. You do your job and you’ll go home with a tidy sum of money to put in your mattress. What could be more reasonable?”

“If I take on this case-”

“We’re not talking ‘ifs’ here!”

“Okay. ‘When.’ When it’s over, I’ll know too much. How do I know you’ll let me go?”

“Mr. Cooperman, I’m a businessman, plain and simple; a lot smarter than most of them. I’m just a little impatient, as you may notice, with rules and regulations. I know this about myself. Now, you may not think that the word of someone like me is worth much, but it is. Even in my business you gotta build trust. Trust is all I’ve got! I can’t write contracts. I can’t make letters of agreement. I’m the board of directors. Everything is an understanding that is never written down. Never a word on paper. That means that trust means more to me, my word means more to me than it has to mean to the president of your bank, in your case the Upper Canadian on St. Andrew Street. Do you understand? I give you my word that you’ll walk away from this when you’ve done your job. The threats against your family and Anna Abraham will become null and void. You’ve got my word on that and my word is my bond.”

“Mr. Wise, that’s all very well for you to say now, but what kind of assurance do I have? How much do your men know about your reason for bringing me here? Whoever is trying to kill you can just as easily start by killing me.”

Wise shrugged. My life was only worth that to him. For a moment, I thought he was going to say something about making omelettes without breaking eggs. My shell was feeling fragile. But my mind had been made up for me. I thought of Anna. Even if all that talk about his word of honour meant nothing at all, or that on second thought I couldn’t be allowed to walk away from Wise with a cheque and a handshake, any way I looked at it, I didn’t have a choice.

“When do you want me to get started?”

“Good! That’s what I wanted to hear!”

At that moment, Mickey came through the door with an old-fashioned tea trolley on rubber wheels. There was a silver tea service, the first I’d seen for years not covered in Saran Wrap, and china cups and saucers. There was a basket of fresh rolls and cinnamon buns. I found that the conversation had awakened in me a sizeable appetite.

“Why don’t you let Mickey do this for you?” I asked, after Mickey had left us alone again. “You don’t seem to be understaffed.” Wise shook his head as he poured the tea.

“My people all know their jobs. I keep them on because they are good at them. When I want an outside view, Mr. Cooperman, I depend on the likes of you. As an outsider, you’ll not make foolish assumptions. That’s important.”

“I suppose I don’t have to tell you that I’m a one-man band? I don’t have operatives standing by waiting for my orders.”

“I know exactly what I’m getting.”

“And that doesn’t include security. I’m no bodyguard. I don’t carry heat. I-”

“I said ‘I know what I’m getting,’ Mr. Cooperman. You find out who’s trying to kill me. That’s your end. Leave the security to me.”

Wise filled his cup and we stopped talking while we took a few sips.

“How are we going to make this work?” I asked, putting my cup down in its saucer noisily. The tea was excellent; a factor I was obliged to take into consideration. Wise looked at me over the rim of his cup.

“I’ve given it a lot of thought,” he said. “I could put you up here and have all your meals sent in to you, but that would tend to put some people on their guard. It would also upset my domestic arrangements. I want to know you’re on the job, Cooperman, but I don’t want to run into you every time I turn around. Besides, you have too many friends at the Niagara Regional Police. Your temporary disappearance would only cause trouble. Pulling you out of your own life would only serve to create unwanted publicity.”