Howard Engel: A City Called July

“Tell me about his wife. Does he have a family?”

“A boy and a girl. Ruth, his wife, is a sensible girl. She’s Morris Kaufman’s daughter. Your family knows them. Morris was in the needle trade in Toronto. Your grandfather would have known him on Spadina Avenue. Ruth is very worried, naturally. She hasn’t seen or heard from Geller. She doesn’t know where he is; she can’t even guess. I don’t think she knows about the money. I didn’t have the heart.”

“And the partners?”

“Only former partners. Geller was independent for the last ten years. He used to be with Bernstein, Wayne and Hart. But that is a long time ago. He used to chum around with Eddie Lazarus and Morrie Freeland. They were at Osgoode together.” I began making a few notes to go with the doodles I’d been manufacturing on my block of lined yellow foolscap.

“You didn’t talk to any of them?” I failed to establish eye contact with either of my visitors. “I know you didn’t because they would have told you what I told you. You have to tell the police about this. I mean, you’re talking about two million dollars.”

“Think of the old people, Benny. I’m talking about widows and people from the old country who don’t understand about our laws and the whole shooting match.”

“Saul, you’re breaking my heart. Look, I told you my professional opinion. If I told you the only way to make suits was to do them one by one you’d tell me I’m crazy. You know that you cut out dozens at a time. Well, I’m telling you the way to find Larry Geller is to tell the boys at Niagara Regional all about it. I mean, Rabbi, you are talking about fraud with a very big F. Call Chris Savas. You’ll be glad you did.”

“Benny, we aren’t saying we won’t go to the police. My God, as far as I know maybe the police know all about it. I’m just asking you … both as a friend and as a member of the community … to see what you can see. Find out his assets. Maybe he’s left a trail. We don’t expect miracles, do we, Rabbi?” The rabbi shook his head. The last thing he expected me to deliver was a miracle. I was a plodder, a keyhole-gazer, not a worker of miracles. “For a few days,” Tepperman said after a pause. Then there was another silence. If there is such a thing as an unshared silence, this was it. “We’ll pay whatever it costs. After all you’re a professional.” Out the window I could hear a transport truck pulling a heavy load through town towards Queenston and Niagara Falls. At the same moment, I felt in my bones, a truck with an equal load was rolling off the Queen Elizabeth Way and on its way via King or Church to the west end of town and the old highway to Hamilton.

“It wouldn’t hurt,” said the rabbi. Another pause. Both Tepperman and the rabbi looked at me like the barrels of a Gatling gun. I thought about my other possibilities. I supposed I could continue cleaning the jam jar.

“I’ll do what I can,” I said.

As soon as I heard the last of the clatter of the tailor and the rabbi on my stairs, I called Staff Sergeant Chris Savas and got instead my old friend and schoolmate Pete Staziak, who also serves the forces of law and order in the Niagara region. To be truthful, Pete wasn’t really a friend from school-days. We’d both been there at the same time, I’d been in a play with his sister, but we only took one class together in five years. Much more recently, we’d been mixed up in a few cases, and since we were both stamped with the indelible impression of Grantham Collegiate Institute and Vocational School, we gave support to the fiction that we’d been pals. With some of the teachers, it didn’t matter when you had them, you ended up with the same memories. Pete could finish any snatch of poetry I could remember, and I could complete the Three Results of the Persian War if he gave me a start. Being pals made introductions easier and in the end we’d come to believe it.

“How’s the private sector, Benny? Busy?”

“Have to beat the business away with sticks, Pete. How about you?”

“Routine stuff, Benny. I think time this week is running slower than usual. I start to doze off around three-thirty in the afternoon.”

“Yeah, time behind a desk crawls on all fours.”

“It’s summer. That’s what does it. I’m sweating just talking on the phone.”

“Well, you can comfort yourself with the fact that the days are growing shorter already,” I said. Pete grumbled and I told him I wanted words in person. He told me to drop over towards lunch-time and we’d grab a sandwich together at the Di.

The Di was Diana Sweets. It was the oldest establishment on St. Andrew Street. It must have been started when the street was still an Indian trail curving along the high bank above Captain Dick’s Creek. Ella Beames at the library told me once that Captain Dick was a “man of colour” who was reputed to have hidden a crock of gold not far from the water. If anybody ever found it, I never heard about it. I tried to imagine the captain sitting in one of the stained cherry-wood booths of Diana Sweets, with shining, knowing eyes.

Pete and I took a booth for four and surveyed the menus. When I was young, my father and mother brought me in here for a “Newsboy,” a single scoop of ice-cream with a dollop of marshmallow on top. It came with a glass of water and the curled paper check for five cents. In those days the Di had one menu totally given up to sundaes, sodas, frappés, fizzes, phosphates and other frosty desserts.

Pete ordered a cheeseburger and I tried a tuna on white, toasted, with a glass of milk and a vanilla sundae. The girl claimed she’d never heard of a Newsboy. I didn’t push it. I was on the second triangular half of sandwich when Pete brought me back to business.

“You got something on your mind, Benny?”

“Yeah. This morning I had a visit from Rabbi Meltzer and Saul Tepperman. Two worried men, Pete.”

“I’d be worried too, if I was in their shoes. Not that they are liable in any way.” Pete wiped his mouth on the tiny paper napkin. A bit of paper was lost on a face that big. He leaned his weight into his forearms along the edge of the table and examined the melting cheese running down his cheeseburger.

“So it’s no secret, then?” Pete’s face split into a smile that showed me more of his mouth than I wanted to see just then.

“Oh, the Beacon hasn’t tumbled to it yet, but that’ll happen tomorrow or the day after. It’s no secret at Niagara Regional.” He took another messy bite of the cheeseburger. He was looking at me with an indulgent smile drawn over his working jaw. “They get you in to try to keep it quiet? No way, Ben. I know this isn’t going to make anybody look too smart, and nobody wants that kind of publicity. But we aren’t in the publicity business. We don’t get it for you when you want it, and we don’t stop it when it comes looking for you.”

“I’m glad you heard me out, Pete. You know, a lot of guys would have jumped to the conclusion that I’d been retained to hush something up.” I tried to look indignant. Pete took another bite of his cheeseburger. We continued to banter and eat.

“And don’t give me that crap about your even-handed righteousness. When was the last time the sitting member got his name in the paper for driving while impaired?” Pete looked at his plate. “Since you ask,” I said after swallowing, “I’ve been retained to look into this business, not put the cork in it.’

“For the Jewish community?”

“Right.” He smiled like he’d been right all along. “Okay, okay,” I admitted, “naturally they don’t want publicity. Nobody wants to look stupid or have a trusted member of the community exposed as a crook. They’d rather see their money back, but I guess you know the odds on that better than I do. You taking bets?”