Howard Engel - Getting Away With Murder

“Hal” I said. “I thought so. Didier made a half-hearted attempt to pick up the check at the Patriot Volunteer the other night. And I’d already been tipped they had a sucker to pay. I thought he was trying to impress Julie. A guy with a bankroll doesn’t have to impress anybody. It’s the poor buggers who have to spend the money.”

“Sure, toilet paper’s cheaper by the case. But who do you know who buys it that way?”

“It’s bad luck to buy it by the case. You might drop dead while you’re still on your first roll.”

“Listen you two comedians, I didn’t come back to this cold climate to hear you bellyache. Besides, your example stinks. It’s a bad analogy if I ever heard one. This is my first day back, you guys, give me a break!”

We walked along in silence down the right-hand side of Academy. Ahead of us we could see the scaffolding around the Folk Arts Festival office at the top of the street. The building, the original “academy” for which the street was named, was the oldest secondary school in Ontario. City Council cherished it and kept property developers at bay. They had recently rejected a plan to have the old place sandblasted after discovering that the process would do serious damage. My reflections were interrupted when Pete slipped on a piece of ice. I caught his arm and we both went down. As we brushed one another off, ignoring Chris’s laughter, I asked:

“Did you ever hear back anything about Neustadt’s death, Pete?”

“You still trying to tie that to what happened to Wise?”

“I’m keeping an open mind, that’s all. Well?”

“There was nothing wrong with the jack, Benny. Somebody had to have turned the valve.”

“Maybe Neustadt hadn’t tightened it before he got under the car?”

“Nope. If the valve’s not turned off, you can’t hoist the car in the first place. The jack can’t suck and blow at the same time. Only it’s not air, it’s hydraulics, Benny. How the hell did you get onto this? You a closet engineer?”

“So, you are saying that you are considering his death murder?”

“Considering, Benny, but not flapping the news around. We’re keeping quiet until the monkey thinks he’s safe.”

“I’ll keep buttoned up too, Pete. By the way, was he lying on a creeper board with casters on it?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“I’ve been trying to imagine the scene. It got so real, I had to make sure I wasn’t inventing the evidence.”

By now we had come along Church Street to the front door of Niagara Regional. We stood for a while together, blowing hot vapour with a garlicky perfume at each other.

“Yeah,” said Savas, “I was away for that. Jesus! Not a nice way to go.”

“Did you know him well, Chris?” I asked.

“Benny, you don’t want to know about Ed Neustadt. You don’t want to know.”

The last man in the world I expected to see was standing in front of my desk. He looked terrible. His shock of fair hair no longer made his face look fresh and pink. Whitey York was grey and bloodless as he tried to catch his breath after his climb up my twenty-eight steps. His camel-hair coat was unbuttoned and stained along one side. His necktie was askew and his shirt looked dirty. A pong came off him like he’d been taking lessons from Kogan, the former panhandler who was now my landlord. He was in serious condition, so I got up and helped him into a chair.

“You know about Gord?” he said, still out of breath. I nodded my head. When had that happened? It was hard keeping track of the days. It was before that terrible weekend: Friday. Yes, Wise was still among the living on Friday. York looked like he had been in hiding since Friday.

“Could you use a shot,” I said. He shook his head and waved his hand in an ambiguous gesture.

“No!” he said. “I don’t need any more than I’ve already had.” Good, I thought. I’d have had to ask Frank Bushmill to lend me some of his Irish. My file drawers were empty. “Cooperman, what should I do? I can’t go home. I don’t want to be murdered.”

“Hey, hold on! Hold on! Who do you think is trying to kill you?”

“They got Gord Shaw. I’m next.”

“What makes you think that? Wise is dead. You know about that?”

“Do you think that it’s over then? His boys might … You know. I’m scared, Cooperman. I don’t care who knows it.”

“Look, Whitey, Shaw was involved with other people besides you, wasn’t he? Why do you think it was Wise?”

I had my own ideas about this, but I wanted to hear it from York himself. “It was a scam,” he said. “Biggest thing I’ve ever been involved in.”

“It was about a car, wasn’t it? But not that old Triumph. That was just a come-on. Right?” York nodded his head, letting it fall on his chest at the end, as though he’d just run a mile in under three minutes.

“Yeah. Yeah. You got that right. The kid was in on it, of course. The whole scheme turned on the father-son relationship.”

“You better tell me about it.”

“You ever hear of the 1964 Alfa Romeo Giulia 160 °Canguro?”

“Can’t say I have. But you would have guessed that already.”

“The Canguro never went into production. There were a couple of prototypes, but that’s all. The last of these test models was destroyed in 1970. Except for a few spare parts, the Canguro no longer exists.”

“I’m listening. Go on.”

“Don’t look at me as though I’m the expert. Shaw told me all this. When a car is rare, Mr. Cooperman, it fetches a very high price. When it is extinct, you can write your own ticket. This one car is worth a couple of Renoirs, a van Gogh, a Rembrandt. Shaw knew where the only Canguro in the world is under wraps in a garage in Southampton, England. He needed operating money to get it fixed up. The three of us were partners. Hart was the link to the money we needed.”

“Which is more than the cost of a TR2, even an antique TR2, right?”

“That’s it. We were using the Triumph as bait.”

“So, on the surface it looked like you were going to press charges against Hart for the bad cheque, but really the three of you were counting on the old man buying you off.”

“I told Shaw not to talk to Wise directly. I told him to let me handle it. But he was that sure …”

“And it cost him his life. Now if you’d been the contact … Well, who knows?”

“Shaw kept saying that when we had the Alfa here, we could pay back our debts. We could make it all right after we had the car.”

“Where did you spend the weekend?”

“I have a married sister in Guelph. I didn’t think he’d find me there. Then I read about his murder. I don’t know where I stand.”

“Have you talked to Hart?”

“I tried to, but he hung up on me. What the hell am I going to do, Mr. Cooperman?”

“Well, it’s my guess that you are in no immediate danger except maybe from Hart. Wise’s death has stirred up the mud at the bottom of the pond. It won’t clear overnight. You can go home and take a shower. That’s my free advice, go home and take a shower.”

Whitey York pulled himself out of the chair, gave me a hunted look and left the door wide open. I could hear him clumping on the stairs. I nearly sent him down the fire escape in back, but I don’t think I could have done it with a straight face.

I was about to shut the office and call it a day when Frank Bushmill stopped in to greet me.

“Stately, plump Benny Cooperman,” he said. “Where have you been keeping yourself? Has anyone else been shooting holes in your walls?” I told him, without going into detail. He nodded sagely, looking stately and plump himself.

“And have you run into any exciting corns or bunions since we last talked?”