Howard Engel - Getting Away With Murder

“Oh, I always thought that Neustadt had him on the carpet for a while, gave him a bad time, scared the shit out of him, then let him go.”

“I guess … I guess. Still …”

“Who is it you’re going to hate if you’re Abe Wise? Somebody who shafted you or somebody who gave you a break?”

“He ever talk about it?”

“He hit that dud note a lot at the time, but after that he never mentioned it again. It was Abe on the ropes, Abe down for the count He wanted the earth to open up and swallow that cop. It embarrassed him.”

“But is it believable that he’d hate the man who let him go?”

“Not you, not me, but Abe? What good is a self-made man if he had help?”

“He could have had one of his boys put him in his place.”

“I’ll bet he thought about it. Boy, I’ll bet he did.” Dave put his butt out on the top of an I-beam and we both got up. There was a rusty stain on the back of his coat and, I noticed later, on the seat of my trousers. We walked in silence, thinking.

“We better turn here. There’s nothing up that way but railroad tracks my old man bought when they got rid of the streetcars. Could never sell ’em; too much cement attached.”

“You hear how Neustadt died?”

“Yeah, it was an accident in his driveway.”

“His car settled from a hydraulic jack onto his chest.”

“Jesus! That’s tough.”

“How does a hydraulic jack come down on you, Dave? Neustadt would have had to have ten-foot arms to turn that trick on himself. And they don’t release on their own.”

“Jesus!”

“Would Abe have done that, Dave? Just to be free of him?” Dave thought about that while we came down the aisle towards the yard hut. At last he shook his head:

“Naw. You couldn’t get me to believe that. Abe’s not the type. Look, he’s been in the rackets for nearly fifty years. He’s made his bundle over and over again. He’s been into every crooked kind of business you can think of. But, and I say ‘but,’ not once in all that time did he even a personal score. He had a lot of guys sore at him and Abe as mad at them. But not once did he ever turn it into a hit. It’s not his way.”

“Maybe one of the boys thought he was doing Abe a favour. Especially if Abe still sounded off at Neustadt. Ever see that movie Becket? Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole? O’Toole’s the king, you see, and Burton’s a bishop. And Burton’s handing O’Toole a lot of grief because he doesn’t want church law to give way to civil law. Finally, when the king’s had it up to here, he shouts out: ‘Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?’ Now he later claims that he didn’t mean it, that he was just shooting his mouth off, but four knights heard him say it and they rode out of town and did the job expecting a handsome reward. They didn’t get it.”

“Mickey wouldn’t go off half-cocked like that. And he’d never let any of the boys under him get out of hand. No, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree there, Cooperman. You want some coffee? I think there’s some fresh-made in the pot.”

We entered the shed and Dave Rogers poured coffee from a cracked Silex into a pair of blue enamel cups.

“You know,” Dave said, “when you think of us, Abe and me, it takes a lot of explaining. I’ve always played it straight down the line and Abe, well, Abe never did see the line, if you know what I mean. Take the case of Julie and Bernie.”

“Who?”

“Abe’s daughter and my middle son, Bernie. Bernie was Julie’s second husband. After she left that painter she married to get away from Abe. I thought that Julie and Bernie would get along fine. He had everything the painter lacked … but that wasn’t enough. She wanted more, and this fellow Long she married next, he couldn’t give it to her either. Now she’s playing with a French magazine publisher, who needs Abe’s money. Funny, eh?”

“I don’t think I follow you, Dave. How do Julie’s bad marriages figure in this?”

“Normally, you’d think there’d have been some friction. Pressure on me, pressure on Bernie. But no. Abe didn’t get involved. Our friendship was just as solid after the divorce as it was before Julie and Bernie stood under the khupe together. Isn’t that a remarkable thing?”

“I guess so,” I said.

“It’s like Abe’s got everything organized into separate boxes. And the Julie and Bernie box doesn’t get confused with the old Dave Rottman box, which is one of his older boxes. Funny.”

“I see what you mean.”

“Like his criminal activities don’t get in the way of his going to the opera ball. He even goes to the Policemen’s Ball! How do you like that?”

Together we sipped coffee while looking out the window at school kids coming down North Street. It must have been noon hour and I had an appointment again for lunch. I told Dave I had to go, and he lifted his huge bulk from the grip of a swivel armchair and walked me to the car. He was almost friendly.

The Sally Ann worked out of several offices and a church in Grantham. There were listings under Family Services, Correctional and Justice, and Hostel at locations on Church, Lake and Niagara streets. When I began my search for the Sally Ann officer who had recited Neustadt’s eulogy, I took a stab at the top number and was quickly shifted about until I was talking to Major Colin Patrick. I’d agreed to pick him up at the Corps, which turned out to be a church with a tin roof not far from Shaw’s antique-car lot on Niagara. As he waited for me on the front steps of the church, talking to another officer, I remembered his ruddy face from the funeral. In their navy blue uniforms with red tabs at the collar, the men looked striking against the wooden door of the church. I kept the motor running and watched the puffs of conversation across the street. After three minutes by the car clock, they shook hands and parted. No salutes. Patrick, who had seen me at the curb, came right over and got in the front seat. We shook hands and he buckled up.

“I haven’t got more than forty or fifty minutes, Mr. Cooperman. There’s a place down the street where we can go, if you don’t mind sandwiches.” He gave me directions and I found a parking space behind Paul’s Open Kitchen. Inside, Paul and two assistants were handling the noon-hour traffic. The major ordered a bowl of soup and a tuna sandwich on brown. I joined him in the soup and ordered my usual chopped egg on white with a glass of milk. The milk came in a carton.

“Now, I’m not clear what this is all about, Mr. Cooperman. Perhaps, to save time, you can tell me what it is you want.” I told him, without mentioning my client, that I was looking into the Tatarski case, which didn’t seem to surprise him. I told him that I was aware of Deputy Chief Neustadt’s letter to the Beacon and that I was examining all aspects of the case.

“I hope you know that McKenzie Stewart, the mystery writer, has just written a book on the case.”

“I’ve read it. What did you think?”

“Ed Neustadt didn’t come off very well. I think Stewart was looking for villains. It’s only natural. Terrible thing like that. If you can find a villain, then we all feel better, don’t we?”

“A kind of lightning rod for our bad feelings?”

“Exactly! Now, I knew Ed as well as anybody. I just buried him yesterday. He died a bitter, unhappy man. I tried to get him to see a psychologist that I know, but he wouldn’t. Poor Ed saw most of the things he’d loved and fought for disappear. He wasn’t one of these modern moral relativists. He wanted hard outlines, black and white. The grey areas drove him near crazy, sometimes.”

“He angered a few people over the years, I hear. Major Patrick, what was he like as a friend?”