Howard Engel - Getting Away With Murder

“You must have walked into an I-beam, Dave. This is crazy talk.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Anyway, it’s none of your business. Are you so well fixed you don’t need the business? I’ll call that Howard Dover guy. He gives value. Look, Benny, I was on the phone half the night talking to Paulette. You remember Paulette.”

“Sure. His first wife.”

“Well, we both think that I gotta do what I can or I won’t be able to live with myself. It’s something I gotta do, you understand what I’m saying?”

“You’re trying to buy peace of mind, Dave. I’m not selling that. I’m out of stock. Why don’t you see a good doctor?”

“Don’t give me that bullshit! I want you! I’ll drop by some money later on this morning. I got a transport to load and my boy’s off sick with the flu. You’ll take a cheque, Benny?”

“Okay, I give in. It doesn’t even have to be certified.”

“You’ll be hearing from me.” He hung up and I was back in the saddle again. I gave him my best anti-sales pitch and he overrode my apparent reluctance. Trying to cool out new customers was part of my standard operating procedure. It set me up for a cue later on when I could say, “Hey, I told you that when you hired me!” Having said that, and still feeling good about the case, I had to recognize that I was no longer just a private investigator, I was a futile token gesture as well. As I hung up the phone on my end, I thought, I can live with that.

The cheque came by messenger and I took it, along with Wise’s cheque, to the bank. Both went in without a fuss and I bought myself a good lunch at that Wellington Street place where I had met Lily, Wise’s second wife. On the same trip, I dropped off a copy of my report at Niagara Regional for Pete to have a look at.

That night, Anna and I went to see an Irish play in Buffalo. It was directed by Frank Bushmill’s niece, who was over from Ireland with a lively professional company. It was very good and had us laughing most of the way home again.

Tuesday, the Ides of March, dawned gloriously. The sun poured into the apartment from an angle that seemed to be higher than it should be for the time of year. It whitened the grey carpet and crawled up the wall to where Anna was making coffee. I watched her with the grinder, pot and cups.

It looked to me like this was going to be the sort of day when there is always milk in the fridge. Anna gulped her coffee, worked on a piece of many-grained brown-bread toast and came over to the bed. “Are you getting up?”

“Sure! Doesn’t it look like it?”

“Not from here. You look pretty inert.”

I moved a foot out of the covers. “How’s that?”

“It’s a start. But I can’t stay to watch it develop. I’ve got classes.”

“Lucky classes.” Anna walked around tidying and finishing up the last crumbs of her toast and sip of coffee in almost the same gesture. She was a ballet of concise movement. And then she grabbed her coat and ran out the door, leaving my face tingling from a parting kiss.

At the office, I put in a call to Pete and got Chris Savas, just back from his holiday. He promised to tell me all about his time drinking local wine in the mountains at the first opportunity Meanwhile, he’d pass on the news to Pete that I had called.

I tried both Hart and Julie and got nowhere. Even the answering machines were in mourning. I talked to Paulette, who sounded both heart-broken and relieved at the same time.

“I’ve been expecting this for forty years, Benny! The second shoe had to drop sometime. And now it has.”

“Are you okay?”

“Oh, I can take anything. I’m durable. Made of iron. That’s me. It’s Hart I’m worried about.”

“I tried to call him. His answering machine’s disconnected.”

“He’s staying with me, Benny. He has been very affectionate and is so … broken up about Abe. He says that he was just starting to know his father.”

“Tell him I want to talk to him, will you, Paulette?”

“Give him time, Benny. He needs time.”

“Sure. All he needs. Tell him I’m sorry for his trouble.” I left word with Lily that I wanted to speak to Julie when she surfaced too. Lily wasn’t covered in sackcloth and ashes by the sound of her. But her bright talk betrayed the fact that she had been drinking. Lily wasn’t one of nature’s drinkers. She was like me. It took a lot to make it happen.

This was the Ides of March. Have I mentioned that? Julius Caesar and Little Caesar both could have been butchered in fine style while I waited for the phone to ring. The Ides were come but not gone. I tried to remember our high-school production of the Shakespeare play. I played Cinna the Poet. It was a part that allowed me to watch a lot of the rehearsals from the empty seats of the auditorium. I think at one point I could have recited the whole script. Now the Ides, such bad news to Caesar, had become good news for me. It was just a week ago that I had been indelicately hauled from my warm bed to attend Abe Wise in his lair. I rehearsed all of last week again in my mind. It seemed like three months ago.

I reread my report, hoping that the killer’s name would jump out at me like a piece of toast from a badly adjusted toaster. It didn’t.

There must be some way to match my sudden good luck with action. Reading my own prose didn’t exactly ring with clanging claymores. I wasn’t storming the barricades. I could see who was answering the phone at Wise’s secret number, but I thought better of it. The last thing in the world I wanted was to step on the heels of Pete’s investigation. I’d have to give Mickey and the boys a wide berth for a day or two. Just in case Pete was nearby.

One thing I knew I’d have to get was some idea of the timetable. Who saw Wise and when? Pete had it, or had been working on it, but I couldn’t pester him. I was involved enough in the story, so that I knew Pete would get back to me before too long. But I also knew that I was nowhere near the scene of the crime during the likely hours.

He’d told me that Julie had seen him last. It had been a busy morning. Hart, Julie and others had come over to talk to him. The last one had brought one of Wise’s old guns with a silencer attached. The gun was recovered at the scene. Pete said there were no prints. There hardly ever are on the grips of handguns. It was the silencer that intrigued me. The killer had carried it away. Why? Silencers aren’t items you can buy over the counter. They have to be made. Maybe the workmanship could be traced. That was an idea. I could easily see the reason for the silencer: it gave the murderer the chance to get away undetected.

The Three Stooges, with Mickey Armstrong thrown in, were excellent bodyguards. Their security was pretty good. At least that’s what Wise thought. In practice, they were less good than advertised. Once a pizza was introduced among them, they became side-tracked like errant Ninja turtles. They took their breakfast seriously too. Mickey told me they were a good team except when they were eating. The clear message was that the boys weren’t on the job and that the murderer was counting on this.

This review was interrupted by the phone ringing away at the ends of the earth. I didn’t catch it until the third ring, even though I was sitting within easy reach. I’d been far away in my thoughts. It was Hart. He was excited and hard to understand. I tried to calm him down, expressed my sympathy and heard from the horse’s mouth some of the hearsay I’d got from Paulette. Paulette was a good witness. After a few minutes of rambling through reports of his last few meetings with his father, he got on to the very last one, which was what I wanted to hear.

“It was early, you see. He was always at his best then. I gave him a cheque for the car. At first he wouldn’t take it.”