Howard Engel - The Suicide Murders

In about twenty minutes, my mother called us to the table. The Friday night candles had been lit, and there were two bowls of soup on the plastic cloth, one for me and the other for my father. It was canned vegetable.

“Where’s your soup?” my father asked.

“I never eat soup,” she answered. I was still in short pants when I first heard that exchange. “If anyone wants a salad, I can make one,” she dared us. I said that a salad would be just the thing. She didn’t budge. Pa went into the kitchen to retrieve the steaks from the broiler. “Manny, let Benny have the rare one.” He placed the platter of steaming meat in the middle of the table, after I cleared a place. “You know how he likes his rare.” He handed me my plate and I cut into the meat. It was liver gray all the way through. The vegetables were canned peas and carrots; lukewarm. Ma repeated her invitation to salad. Maybe there remained in the back of her mind the ghost of a servant lurking in the kitchen who could whip up these trifles at a moment’s notice. The meal concluded with the traditional passing of the teabag from cup to cup, followed by the time-honoured squirt from the plastic lemon. After his last sip of tea, Pa pushed himself away from the table observing, “Benny, it does you good to get a home-cooked meal for a change, after the chazerai you eat in restaurants.”

Later, back at my office, I did a few useful chores. I attached the key I’d taken from Martha Tracy’s desk to a piece of paper with Scotch tape, slipped it into a stamped envelope, addressed the envelope to Martha Tracy care of her office in the Caddell Building on James Street and put it with my out mail. Then I tried to reach Dr. Zekerman again. No luck. I left my name for a second time with his answering service. Then I lit a cigarette and dialled the number Myrna Yates had given me.

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Yates, this is Benny Cooperman.” There was the sound of some sort of mental process down at her end of the wire.

“Oh yes, Mr. Cooperman.” Her voice became metallic and formal.

“I just wanted to tell you how sorry I was to hear about what happened to your husband.” I was trying to find a way to tell her what I’d found out without saying too much over the phone. “I wonder if we might meet to discuss some business-after Monday, of course.” That was the best I could manage.

“Mr. Cooperman, I don’t think we have any business to discuss. I thank you for what you’ve done, and I’m sure you understand that there is nothing further …” At this point another voice, on an extension somewhere, joined in with an authority familiar with the forms and arts of chilling a poor private investigator to the marrow.

“Look here, Mr. Cooperman, I don’t know what business you are talking about, but Mrs. Yates is in no condition to discuss business at a time like this. I’m sure you appreciate the severity of the shock she’s had and I don’t think that I want to see her suffer any more if I can help it. Do I make myself clear?”

“Bill, I …”

“Let me handle this, Myrna. I think that Mr. Cooper-man understands the situation.”

“My business,” I began to say, “is with Mrs. Yates, Mr.…?”

“This is William Allen Ward, Mr. Cooperman, and I think I’ve made it plain that Mrs. Yates doesn’t wish to be harassed by people just now. I don’t wish to sound unpleasant, but if you don’t get off the line, I will be forced to report this unfeeling and distress-causing behaviour. Do we understand each other?”

“Sure, Mr. Ward. Have it your way. But since when is a single phone call ‘harassment’? I’ll bet Mrs. Yates could tell me to hang up all by herself if she wanted to.”

“It seems to me I did just that, Mr. Cooperman,” she added, filling an inside straight that I’d left wide open to her.

“Okay, okay. I’m hanging up. Sorry to have caused all the commotion.”

So Myrna Yates had William Allen Ward running interference for her. I guess the mayor could spare him for a few hours in such a good cause. Ward was a comer in local politics, the mayor’s shadow, and the man responsible for adding the Harvard Business School phrases to the most recent crop of official documents. A local boy, he had brushed the hay and alfalfa off his jeans and made good in a way that looked like it was going to pull the whole city into the big time behind him. Even the mayor looked like a cracker-barrel hick when sitting next to Bill Ward on a public platform. I was impressed by Myrna

Yates’ taste in protectors. She couldn’t have picked better.

Next, I thought I’d try Martha Tracy. I dialled her home number. Bill Ward couldn’t be in two places at once. I was getting smart in my old age.

“M’yeah?”

“Martha Tracy?”

“That’s the name. Who wants her?” It was the husky voice of an original. I could picture her at her desk shooing away unlikely visitors from Chester Yates’ door.

“This is Benny Cooperman. I’m a private investigator.”

“Come off it, who is this?”

“No, really. I want to talk to you about something concerning Mr. Yates’ death. Can I come over to see you?”

“I got a house full of people here.”

“Tomorrow, then?”

“M’yeah. But not before noon. And it better be good. I’ve had my craw full of policemen the last few days. What was the name again?”

“Cooperman. Benny Cooperman. See you at noon, tomorrow.”

“Goodbye.” And she hung up. Martha Tracy was going to be someone I wouldn’t like to miss. She sounded as shaken by the death of her boss as the security man, less. Chester must have been a wonder to work for.

I locked up the office and started for the stairs. Frank Bushmill’s light was burning, so I wandered in. The Doc was sprawled in his waiting room, dead to the world. An empty bottle had rolled from where he’d dropped it across the worn carpet to the opposite side of the room. His mouth was open and he was blowing soft bubbles at the glass globe supported by three brass chains above his head. I found a coat on the chipped walnut rack and threw it across the body. He mumbled something unintelligible, which I agreed with, naturally, and then I left him there. He didn’t have patients on Saturday morning, so he wouldn’t be awakened by an emergency case of athlete’s foot at the crack of dawn.

Back at the hotel, it was the usual Friday night din. The beat from the band hammered at the floor like an electric vibrator. Somehow the melodic line was lost in transmission through the joists and plaster, just the amplified bass notes tickled my toes out of my socks like magic fingers in cheap motels. I climbed out of my clothes and into bed. I tried to sleep but got tangled in the loose ends of the bed sheets. I hate loose ends.

Saturday dawned a hot one. But these old brick walls kept the heat away from me until I hit the street around ten. After some coffee and toast at the United, I went back to the office. The Saturday crowd on St. Andrew Street must have been laid off. Three or four merchants stood at their doorways, wondering what had hit them. Somebody should tell them their former customers are out at the shopping plazas. Out there, the storeowners have customers knee-deep and wall to wall.

The sun cut a diamond-shaped patch through the transom, throwing the reversed letters of Frank Bushmill’s name across the stairs as I climbed to my floor. No mail on a Saturday. That meant less garbage. I tried reading an itch at the back of my knees. It seemed to say get in touch with Dr. Zekerman at home. He wasn’t listed in the phone book, so I turned to the city directory. No help there either. He must have a place out in the township someplace. I phoned Lou Gelner and he looked him up in the medical registry, complaining that he was doing all my work for me, which was true. He found that Zekerman lived out along the Eleven Mile Creek by Power Gorge. I thought that I might run out there after I went to see Martha Tracy.