Getting Away With Murder (15 page)

“The law’s supposed to be different. If the facts don’t fit, you’re supposed to look for a new theory. That’s what makes it scientific.”

“Don’t tell me about it. I know. And most of the people at Niagara Regional know it. Neustadt was a sport, a throw-back, a walking dinosaur who didn’t know he was extinct.”

“Who knew him best, would you say?”

“Talk to Major Colin Patrick. They were good friends.”

“I’ve heard that. Would you say that Ed Neustadt had a, shall we say, sadistic side?”

“Is this just curiosity, Benny, or are you working on something? Pat told me that you’re an investigator. Am I likely to be called on to give evidence?” Something in my question had put Harvey on his guard. I wanted to know what it was.

“I don’t think so. But it’s more than curiosity. I think that there was a sadistic side to the prosecution of this case. Had that ever occurred to you?”

“Hell yes! But I couldn’t say anything as long as Neustadt was alive. McStu has already been on the phone to his publisher about a new edition of
Haste to the Gallows.
It’s a hard world, Benny. But, I must say that I won’t be worried about libel any more. Those nightmares are gone forever.”

“Whatever happened to Mary Tatarski’s daughter? Is she around?”

“She spent a year at Napier McNabb University in Hamilton. That’s the last we know about her. She was at her stepfather’s funeral, back in 1992, of course. Then she disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“Perhaps that’s a little melodramatic. I mean I think she married and settled down somewhere.”

“I guess that’s one way to disappear.” Harvey laughed at that and asked if I would like a cup of tea. I said “fine,” so we had some.

I wanted to tell Harvey that I suspected that my client might have murdered Neustadt, but I bit my tongue. Bad-mouthing clients is a hell of a way to get ahead. Pat Voisard joined us when the kettle boiled and we talked of general things. Pat told us what it was like growing up in the farming country outside town and going to school way out Pelham Road. Harvey treated us to some photographs taken on a recent skiing vacation. Before I left the architects’ office, Harvey asked me to call around again or to call if I had any fresh ideas on the Tatarski case. I told him I would.

SIXTEEN

I spent an hour or two trying to put down on paper what I’d discovered that might be of interest to Wise. It amounted to so little that I widened the margins on my typewriter to stretch out the text a little. Leaving a line blank between paragraphs helped too. It looked better that way from a design point of view.

My typing was interrupted twice, once by each of Wise’s offspring: Hart, returning my call as though we hadn’t already had words, and Julie, probably at her mother’s prompting. With Hart I made an appointment to see him at 9:00 P.M. that evening at a pub he goes to up near Secord University. That sounded promising for the prodigal son.

Julie was another matter. She’d telephoned to say that she didn’t want to talk to me.

“Why’d you call then? Because your mother asked you to?”

“You got it. I guess you’re a good detective, eh?”

“Would your father put up with less than the best?”

“Do you always answer a question with one?”

“Whenever I get a chance. You know that somebody’s trying to kill your old man?”

“I’ve been expecting to hear that he’s been murdered since before I had braces on my teeth. I used to have dreams about it. Every time I use an airport parking lot, I think that’s where Daddy’s going to be found in the trunk of a BMW.”

“I like your imagination, Julie.”

“Yeah, I’m not even telling you the good stuff. Mummy says that you’re a scrumptious bit, is she putting me on?”

“Mummy’s putting you on. And ‘scrumptious’ isn’t one of her expressions, is it?”

“I do like your voice. You’ve got a ballsy kind of voice. Bet you’re a Leo. Leo’s are unpredictable and sexy.”

“I’m pistachio. That’s what I always say.”

“What month were you born in?”

“Julie, I haven’t got time for this. If you want to see me, fine, we’ll pick a time. If you don’t want to see me it’s been nice talking to you.”

“How do you get off using my first name, Mr. Cooperman? I’m not a child.”

“You tell me what to call you, Julie, and I’ll write it down somewhere, okay? Have you any idea who wants to see your man dead?”

“Me, for one.”

“It’s a start. How come?”

“He’s a lousy father. When I was small, I never saw him. When I was a teenager, he wouldn’t let me alone.”

“Are you talking abuse?”

“I’m talking about his never letting me have any fun. He watched me like a hawk. Nobody was ever good enough for his precious Julie, so I sat home reading
Vogue
and
Elle
.”

“Is that why you married young? To get out of the house?”

“To get away from
him!
That’s dead on. The poor young
shlump
didn’t know I picked him just to drive Daddy crazy.”

“Did it work?”

“No. Daddy had it annulled before he’d figured out how to unhook my bra. I had better luck the second time. Are you still there, Mr. Cooperman?”

“Just. Why don’t you name a place where you want to eat your dinner and I’ll meet you there. I’ve got an office full of clients and my assistants can overhear everything we say.”

“I can’t do dinner. That’s out the window. Where will you be around one?”

“In the morning? I hope I’ll be in bed. What about tomorrow?”

“If you really want to see me, be at the Patriot Volunteer over the river at one. See yuh,” she said and hung up.

The Patriot Volunteer had a familiar ring to it. It was a roadhouse on the Lewiston-Youngstown road, a dance-hall and lounge that catered to locals from New York state and to Canadians who wanted to meet at a discreet distance from their own backyard. I had been there a few times years ago, but I had almost forgotten that it still existed.

I went back to my report wondering whether I was giving my client value for his money. I’d met with most of the people who have been important to him, I had uncovered no plot to send him to join his ancestors. If there was a plot, it was cleverer than I was. But I wrote it all down, all of the things I knew for sure and added the things I suspected. Even with wide margins, it didn’t fill a lot of paper.

* * *

It was some time later in the afternoon. The shadows had moved along the walls. I must have dozed off in my chair as I sometimes do. I blamed it on the lunch, which almost demanded a restorative nap on an oriental divan to get those rose-water flavoured sweets out of the system. I say I had been asleep, but I wasn’t asleep when it happened. When it happens in the movies, it makes a bigger bang. All I heard was the sound of a thud in the wall. That was followed immediately by the noise of shattering glass. A mug, left on top of the filing cabinet just over my left shoulder, was suddenly in pieces both there and on the floor. A fine shower of glass from my window covered the papers in front of me. I dropped to the floor as a second shot came through the window. I pulled the phone down with me and called 911. I told the dispatcher that I was being shot at from across the street; the Russell House was the best bet, I said, but I wasn’t about to examine the view from the window too closely. I could see two tidy holes in my window now. The second shot had buried itself in the metal filing cabinet with a loud ping. But the big noise must have been across the street. As the target, I wasn’t being treated to either sound or light.

Whoever was doing the shooting must have been on the run already. He couldn’t be sure he missed me with that second shot, because I hit the floor at almost the same moment it came through the window. He would have to get out of the hotel fast. If this was the same person who took a shot at Wise, he was still not getting close enough to do any damage. No professional hitman could get away with this amateurish approach.

I crawled along the floor in the direction of my door, pulled my coat down and upset the stand as I overbalanced it. The crash to the floor was the loudest noise of the whole encounter. I pulled my coat after me into Dr. Bushmill’s office next door. Frank was a chiropodist, a scholar and a friend. He’d taken lumps on his head on my behalf more than once. In the waiting room there were two middle-aged women and a young mother with a little boy with a tear-stained face. I rushed in and looked out from the window farthest from my own. The hotel stood where it always had. The shot had come from almost directly across the street, from a second- or third-floor window. I wanted to rush down the stairs and across the street, but the gun could even now be trained on the front door of my building. I raked the second-floor windows with my eyes. One window was open, the rest were closed. The floor above looked deserted. I watched the street door of the hotel. Nobody came out. Nobody on the street had stopped. Nobody was looking up at my windows.

“What! Benny? What brings you here?” It was Frank Bushmill.

“Sorry to intrude, Frank, but I wanted to look out your window.” I didn’t want to mention shooting or bullets from across the street. I was pretty sure that it wasn’t a random shooting nut that had fired at me. That meant that Frank’s clients were in no danger. They were sitting with their backs to a safe wall anyway.

“A heavy snow is rare this late in the season,” Frank observed. Snow? I hadn’t even noticed.

I gathered my coat and carried it to the back of the building, where I climbed down the fire-escape for the first time in over fifteen years. It was snowing all right, whitening everything in sight, and making the rusty stairs treacherous but not a bit quieter.

My office backed on a ravine leading down to a textile mill, so I had a longer way to go down than I realized. At the rear, my office was four floors up. I didn’t worry about all the irrelevant garbage going through my head. It was the voice of shock or panic or something. I just had to listen and keep moving.

I walked up the incline of the alley between my building and the bank next door. I still couldn’t hear sirens. And there was a noise behind me.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Benny, what’s afoot?” It was Frank. He must have bounded down the fire-escape after me. I don’t remember hearing him.

“Frank, somebody in the Russell House just put two bullets through my window.” Frank’s snow-bedecked eyebrows rose to his hairline.

“No! You’ve called the garda? The cops, I mean?”

“They’re taking a hell of a long time getting here!” Great fat flakes were falling silently between us as we shot at them with steaming breath.

“Thanks for not frightening my pigeons. I’d better get back to them, unless I can help. I left Mrs. Sampson with her foot soaking. I’d best pull her out. God bless,” he said and was gone down the alley again, slipping and sliding, to Mrs. Sampson’s bunions.

When I looked again across St. Andrew Street, there were two cruisers parked in front of the James Street door of the hotel’s pub. One man sat in the front seat of the closest cruiser. Pedestrians seemed unaware of the situation; they came out of stores and crossed the street with the lights and against the lights as usual, their heads tucked in against the weather. After a minute, three men in uniform came out the pub door. A passer-by laughed to her friend at this, and said something that set them both giggling. I was watching them when I also caught a glimpse of the skinheaded hood who sat beside me on my drive to see Wise last Monday morning. It was him all right, tattoos, earrings, the works. I’d know his blue skin anywhere. Was he the shooter? Or was it just his turn to play minder? The three cops conferred with the driver of the cruiser, who pointed across at my office. My minder, the skinhead, melted into the late-shopping crowd along St. Andrew Street. The three uniforms crossed through the one-way traffic. I met them at the street door.

“Hello,” I said. “My name’s Cooperman. The shots came into my office from across the street in the hotel.”

“We better have a look,” one of them said.

“Sure, the bullets will wait for you. But what about the shooter? Don’t you think you should search the hotel?”

“Look, Mr. Cooperman. The hotel is semi-closed down. There are repair people all over the place. We found the room where the shot was fired from …” As he said this, another cop waved a clear plastic bag with two long brass casings inside. “A carpenter said that a guy wearing a heavy parka came through the hall carrying a sports bag. He went out of the pub entrance three minutes before we showed up. So what’s the percentage running all over town, when we can phone in a description from upstairs while we look at the holes in your wall.”

Since there was no chance to catch the sniper on the run, I did the next best thing: I invited the uniforms upstairs. Here they marked the bullet holes with a magic marker for the next batch of cops, and tried to line up the two window holes and the marked circles. We all could see that they ran straight across the street to the partly open window. I could see a shape in the room, which made me alert the cops, but the figure waved back when the three with me waved across the street.

By the time I’d talked to a young officer and told him that the sniper could have been a whole filing case full of former clients and their disaffected spouses, Niagara Regional wiped its hands of me. I was cautioned to be careful. It was suggested that I get out of town for a few days. I thought of having them forward that request to my employer. The forensic team turned out to be one man, who looked like a telephone repairman. He gouged one of the bullets from the wall and showed me where the other had chewed its way through several dozen files in a drawer, doing the sort of damage you might blame on a hungry gerbil.

When the office was clear, I went next door again, where Frank poured me a tumbler full of Irish whiskey with his own name on the bottle. I wanted to ask him about that, but I didn’t have the energy. I downed my medicine and took another shot. Both neat. Soon my hands stopped trembling. By then, the calm voice in my head, the one that is so maddeningly serene in emergencies, had gone away to bother another creature in panic. All I wanted to do now was find a place to have the other half of my interrupted nap. Frank helped out here too. “I’ll leave you the rest of this, Benny. There’s a pillow and a blanket in the cupboard.” I don’t know what he did with his last patients and I didn’t ask. He clicked his office door’s spring catch and told me to close it after me when I left. I helped myself to another ounce from the bottle he’d left, then curled up on his couch and fell asleep. I slept covered by my coat until well after dark.