Howard Engel - Getting Away With Murder

I found the dark red Le Baron under a white shroud and the paper bag with the bottle of pills inside. On leaving, I noticed that one of the headlights had been damaged. Expensive repairs. The night was cold on the back of me, and my fingers tingled from handling the car door. I rushed away from the unpleasant truth about the drive home into the noise and light of the Patriot Volunteer.

“You’re an angel, Benny!” Julie said, as she took two pills with a swallow from her champagne glass.

“It’s a terrible night out there!” I said, hugging myself and trying to get warm.

“Let’s leave it out,” drawled Christa, who was holding a sipping straw, and trying to focus on my eyes. Felix and Pierre had straws in front of them too, although they were drinking champagne. Didier was twisting one around in his fingers and got rid of it under the table. Julie lent me an arm to restore my circulation. Santerre applied stimulants of a more conventional kind than they had just treated themselves to. I moved in closer to Julie and tried to keep my mind on my job.

“Tell me, Julie, has your father ever mentioned his feud with Ed Neustadt to you?”

“Is that the one who just died?” I nodded. “I think he once said that he was the only man who ever questioned him in a police station. Imagine! With all he’s done! It’s incredible!”

“But, your father has no record. That means, Neustadt didn’t follow through. He was still ‘assisting the authorities,’ they call it, and then they let him walk. In law, a miss is as good as a mile. Why do you think he hated Neustadt?”

“Ask him. He never told me. Maybe he hates to be beholden to anyone. I can understand that.” She reached over to get another glass of champagne and toasted me over the rim. She was in great spirits and I was rapidly going downhill. Everybody who knows Abe Wise says just about the same thing about him. If there was a conspiracy, at least it had a good leader. I was yawning into my wine glass. It was time to go home. Our little group was being closely watched by other people in the room. When the designer got up to dance with Christa, the blonde ragamuffin in the underwear shirt, the waiters stared. Didier got up and pulled Julie after him. He must be French after all, I thought. I couldn’t think of anyone I knew leading the way to the dance floor.

“You’re a detective?” Morna asked. I smiled a sad admittance.

“I’ve got an office on St. Andrew Street,” I said, wondering what I could say to this exotic creature.

“My grandfather worked with Pinkerton’s for thirty-five years. He used to tell us stories about his cases. He should have been a writer.”

“They’re a big outfit. Go back to the Civil War.”

“I knew that. What’s his face, the writer, used to be a Pinkerton.”

“Hammett,” I said. “Dashiell Hammett.” She had lovely deep green eyes under her red hair.

“Do you want to dance?” she said with a golden smile.

“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

Anna was away early: signs of her after-breakfast cleaning around the sink were in evidence. A half-pot of coffee was inviting me to start the day. There was a container of bran for me to pour on top of my Harvest Crunch.

In the shower I thought about all of the characters I had met the night before. It was a peep-hole into another world, a world that my father should know a lot about, if he had ever read a fashion magazine. But he hadn’t. His knowledge of women’s ready-to-wear came not from Vogue or Women’s Wear Daily , but from his pals the manufacturers along Spadina Avenue in Toronto. Every other Wednesday, he drove to the provincial capital to buy stock and play a few hands of gin rummy with his cronies. After a corned beef sandwich at Shopsowitz’s Deli, he would visit the factories and have a shot of schnapps in a showroom before a few more hands of cards. This was the world of fashion as he knew it. To him it was all merchandise. It could have been men’s wear or hats as far as he was concerned.

At least Pa knew more about the business than I did, I thought, while I was rinsing the shampoo out of my hair. It had fed us and clothed us for over twenty years. He had sent Sam through university and medical school. He would have anted up for me to go to college too if I’d had the inclination. He made a good living for a high-school drop-out and knew as much about the fashion business as he had to know in order to be a success. In a place like this, that wasn’t much. Me, all I knew about the business was how to make coat and suit boxes from the pile of flat cardboard Pa kept under the coat rack. Sam and I both got our first taste of the commercial world making tops and bottoms for a penny each on lazy Sunday afternoons while Pa was going over his accounts or drawing up an ad for the Beacon .

I was no reader of Vogue either. Anna was and she had told me that Morna McGuire was not just a model, but a supermodel, which meant that she could make good her boast that she wouldn’t get out of bed for less than ten thousand dollars.

After cleaning my teeth a second time to get the bran out, I walked to the office. My service had messages from Dave Rogers and Major Colin Patrick for me. Both of them would talk to me, one at eleven and the other at noon. I put in time working on my interim report for Wise.

Once again I was sitting face to face with Dave Rogers. Only this time we were perched on bales of rusted eighth-inch wire in his yard off North Street. The sign outside read “C. Rogers amp; Sons: Steel Fabricators.” Earlier, we had been walking up and down the aisles or paths that led through the canyons of metal heaps. It was filled with every sort of metal imaginable, except maybe lead for toy soldiers. But who knows? Along the right-hand side of the path through the rusty forest were bales of wire: bright red copper, green, older copper, oxidized steel hoops looking like great balls of knitting wool gone off a little in the rain. On Dave’s side were stacked shoulder-high piles of H-beams. In and out of the pile three or four feral cats wove their way looking for vermin. Dave picked a place to perch. He lit up a cigarette and I found a final Halls at the end of a package.

“I told Wise I’d talk to you once. I didn’t say I’d have you for lunch and dinner too. Are you going to phone up every time you run into a problem? What kind of detective are you?”

“We’re talking about your childhood friend’s life here, Mr. Rogers.”

“Call me Dave for Christ’s sake and let’s get through with this.”

“Tell me about Neustadt.” He wasn’t in a hurry to give me a pat answer. I could afford to wait.

“He wouldn’t tell you?” I shook my head.

“He told me a few little things,” I said, “but nothing important. Why was Abe so glad to see the last of that cop? Why did he practically dance on his grave at the funeral?”

“You saw that? I can believe it; I can believe it.”

“Good for you. Now, let me have the truth.”

“Abe, you know, is a self-made man. Nobody gave him a handout. Nobody handed him a family legacy. Abe’s proud of that. But that cop, Neustadt, gave him a break when he was still a kid. Neustadt gave him a second chance when he was pinched with a pillowcase full of silver knives and forks. They had him dead to rights, but Neustadt turned him loose. Anybody else and Neustadt would be remembered with honour and thanks. Ha! Not Abe Wise! Wise hated that. He thought the bum was soft. He couldn’t find a good thing to say about him. Can you beat that?”

“It still doesn’t explain the intensity, Dave. All that happened back just after the war. How much baggage are you still carrying around from the fifties? Not much, I’ll bet.”