Getting Away With Murder (8 page)

I drove through the double line of fast-food outlets and service stations to my parents’ town house off Ontario Street. It was the first house in the row and my father’s car was not parked in front. He must have been showing off his gin rummy prowess at the club. I could picture him, still smelling of talcum and a little pink from the sauna. I let myself in and found my mother watching television.

“Manny? Is that you?” Her eyes must have been temporarily blinded from looking at the screen.

“It’s only me,” I said, taking off my coat and hanging it over one of the dining-room chairs. “What’s up?” I asked.

“Up? What should be up at this time of day? I’ve got potatoes to peel, that’s what’s up. It’s a woman’s lot, Benny. But first I’ll watch the end of this program. I hope you’re not thinking of staying to dinner. I only have two steaks, one for your father and one for me. You should let me know when you’re in need of a home-cooked meal.”

“As a matter of fact, Ma, Anna is cooking for me tonight at the apartment.”

“Anna. Good! A girl that young needs all the practice she can get.”

“By the time she gets her second set of teeth, she’ll be able to boil an egg.”

“She’s still living with her father. I hear he has a French cook. Tell me you never eat snails, Benny.”

“Ma, it’s a big house and Anna has her own apartment in the back. And as for the snails, I’ve only seen the dining-room twice. Both times the table was covered with drawings from her father’s collection.”

“Why don’t you make us both a cup of tea?” I did that and when I returned to the orange living-room, Ma’s program was over and the set turned off. I put the tray down on a coffee-table.

“Be careful of my Chinese ginger pots, Benny. I love them better than my life.” Ma wasn’t exaggerating. Once, when Sam and I were still in pyjamas with feet in them, Grantham was hit by a small earthquake. Instead of carrying her two children out of the house, Ma took the ginger pots away from danger wrapped in a blanket. Sam says the blanket came from one of our cribs, but I think that that’s big-city cynicism showing.

“Ma, I’ve been thinking that it’s been a long time since you and Pa have had a holiday. Why don’t the two of you take off?”

“What have you been smoking, Benny? Just like that, we should go away! Why? Do you need the house? What are you thinking about?”

“I just thought that you could use a change of scene, that’s all. Is it a crime to wish you out of this cold weather? It’s been a long winter and you didn’t get away at all.”

“Except for the two weeks in Miami Beach.”

“Yeah.”

“And the week at Myrtle Beach.”

“I forgot about Myrtle Beach. Okay, you don’t
need
a vacation. I was just thinking that Pa looked a little frail when I saw him last week.”

“Frail? Manny frail? Why shouldn’t he be frail? He’s seventy years old, Benny. A lot of people his age have been dead for ten years.”

“That’s why I suggested that you both get away. Treat yourselves to a second honeymoon.”

“Are you coming up with the airline tickets?”

“I wish I could afford to send you on a trip around the world: London, Paris, Rome!”

“And as for a second honeymoon, the less you and Sam know about that part of our lives, the better I like it.”

“Don’t you just want to get out of Grantham when the winter won’t stop? It’s supposed to be spring, but where are the buds on the trees? Where are the crocuses?”

“How do you manage to boil a kettle and make cold tea, Benny?” I could see I wasn’t going to move my mother beyond the reach of Abe Wise’s influence. I could hope to do better when my father arrived. If he came down against the proposition, Ma would begin to see some virtue in it. I didn’t lose heart and I wasn’t surprised. I just had to make the attempt, that’s all. The price of a little peace of mind was cheap. It only took the effort. Half an hour later, when my father came in and draped his coat on another of the dining-room chairs, I put the idea of a southern holiday to him. He cocked his head as though I was going insane before his very eyes and said that he would think it over.

“What’s to think over, Manny? Money doesn’t grow on trees in Ontario.”

“I wouldn’t mind Palm Beach,” Pa said.

“You can’t get another day’s wear out of that white suit, Manny. Forget it. Besides, it’ll be spring in no time. I love a Canadian spring. It’s over so fast. You blink and it’s gone.”

“Why don’t you fly down to Arizona? They do a great spring in Arizona,” I said, selling the idea with as much conviction as I could muster.

“Paul Weinberg found a scorpion in his garage in Arizona. Are you trying to send us to our deaths?” The conversation drifted from the Arizona murder plot to other things.

“Boy, did I get a shock at the club this afternoon,” Pa said. It was his way of announcing the death of one of their contemporaries.

“Manny, I don’t want to hear about it!” Ma always tried to postpone the news. Maybe she thought she could breathe a moment of life into the dear departed by keeping at bay the specifics of who exactly had died.

“And he was only retired a few years.”

“I don’t want to know!”

“A better hand at poker you couldn’t wish for.”

“Are you talking about Dave Kaplanski?”

“I thought you didn’t want to know.”

“I don’t want to know if you’ll shut up about it. If you won’t shut up, then I’ve got a right to guess. Is it Louie Stein? He played poker. And I think he just came back from Florida. I thought that such a tan was criminal. Now he’s dead. That’s the way the world goes.”

“Sophie, what are you talking about? Lou Stein’s face told you every card in his hand. A poker player? Lou Stein couldn’t understand Snakes and Ladders! I’m talking about the old deputy police chief, Ed Neustadt, not Lou Stein. Lou’s been in his grave for six—seven months already.”

And so it went. I tried my best to save their lives in Palm Beach or Flagstaff, but to no avail. I looked at my watch, kissed them both and left them to their steaks. I was beginning to feel hungry, so I pointed the Olds in the direction of home.

EIGHT

“Benny! Which way did you go?” I was sitting in my apartment at the all-purpose table with Anna Abraham staring across at me. With the certain knowledge that Phil, the hood, or one of his pals was keeping at least half an eye on my windows, I was not brilliant company.

“Huh?”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself. Benny, what’s the matter with you tonight? You sulked through dinner and haven’t been listening for at least the last twenty minutes. Are you telling me that you could do with less of my company? I can take a kick in the pants as well as the next girl.”

“I’m sorry, Anna. I know I’m being lousy company.”

“An understatement if I ever heard one!”

“I said I was sorry.” I stared at the wine stain on the tablecloth. I’d poured salt over it to prevent it becoming permanent, but I wasn’t sure it wasn’t just an old wives’ tale. The wreckage of two approaches to eating grilled salmon lay before us: Anna’s tidy clean plate; my chopped-up remains, partly hidden under the mashed potatoes.

Anna had come early, letting herself in with her own key, and had a good dinner on the stove when I returned from playing travel agent at my parents’. I was delighted to see her, of course, but I knew that I had put her in danger by just knowing her. I wanted to tell her, but I was afraid of the consequences. I was sure that she would stick by me. In fact, her loyalty was the problem. The last thing in the world I needed at the moment was damn-thetorpedoes loyalty. What I needed was everyday indifference, the sort of long-standing arrangement that might allow for Anna to not see me for a couple of weeks. The last thing I wanted was to have Anna know more about Abe Wise than was good for her. I had already quizzed her during dinner about her responsibilities at the university. She couldn’t take any time off and that was that. What would have happened to her, I wondered, if she had been with me when Mickey and the Three Stooges paid their call?

“Do you remember what I was saying?”

“You were talking about … No, I don’t remember. You caught me fair and square.”

“Well, you’re honest, at least.” She was looking at me. I knew it, but I couldn’t return her gaze. I wasn’t sure what I might not say once I was caught staring into Anna’s salamandrine eyes.

“Let’s start again. Okay? I’ll try harder. I’m not the rat fink you think I am. I’m just careworn from a bad day at the office.”

“Office. You haven’t been in your office for hours. I tried calling you there umpteen times. You’re not going to tell me what this is all about, are you?”

“This is something you don’t want to get involved in.

“Benny, you’re always saying that the only way to protect yourself from the consequence of having guilt knowledge is to pass it around. Secrets get people killed. You say it all the time! Well, why not take your own advice? What’s going on in your life that I should know about? Are you tracking down a serial killer? Are the fuzz about to bust you for non-payment of your many secret operatives spread out across the nation, around the world?”

“Very funny!”

“Maybe it isn’t business at all. Let me think about that. The blonde hasn’t arrived to displace me, has she?” Anna has always been kidding me about my falling for a blonde bombshell with no brain and a full bra. I know it is just a joke, but she brings it out whenever she’s feeling peculiar about our arrangements. We have been seriously not living together off and on for nearly three years. I could go on like this forever, but Anna and Anna’s father would like some resolution to the informality. My own parents are noisily silent on the subject. I get looks across the table when Anna’s name is mentioned. I catch exchanged glances and sense the undercurrent in the room. I once was kicked under the table when Pa got close to the subject of rabbis and invitations. I didn’t know how to pass along the warning from Ma, but my father got the idea from my cry of pain.

“The blonde is in the closet under my laundry,” I said. Anna looked over at the closet door then back at me.

“She’s very quiet.”

“She’s well brought up. Breeding does it every time.”

“Is that a reproach to my father’s new money?” she said, brushing a lock of hair back where it belonged.

“You know I’m indifferent to your old man’s millions. It’s your body I’m mad about.”

“What about the blonde under the laundry? Doesn’t she have a body? Maybe she can’t pull herself away from your smalls.”

“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. Dirty shorts are a very big kick. Maybe not my kick, but a kick nevertheless. Come over here.”

“Aren’t you saving yourself for her?” I answered the question by getting up and walking around the table. The next half-hour has no place in the report about Abe Wise’s call on my professional services. Although I hadn’t answered Anna’s questions, I had forgotten that she had asked them. Maybe she had too. It was a long time before I thought of Abe Wise or of his minions stationed across the street.

The light was gone when I rolled over. The candles had guttered out in silence while I caught thirty winks in Anna’s warm arms.

“She isn’t making much noise in there,” Anna said at length.

“I thought you were asleep.”

“I was, but I was feeling sorry for the woman with your smalls.”

“I told you; she likes it in there.”

“Until I’m gone and then she jumps out to behave in the most abandoned manner.”

“You’ve been looking in my window.”

“I’ve been reading your mind. Why don’t you give the poor dear a break while I sit in a hot tub. I’ll only give you ten minutes. I call that generous, I do,” Anna said, wrapping the top sheet around her. She made no move to abandon me.

“Why not make it a shower? There’s room for two.”

“I’m talking about cleanliness and all you can think of is more sex. No wonder you keep the blonde in there. If she wasn’t a figment of your warped imagination, I’d call the cops on you. And there are a few women’s groups that should be informed too. I think you should be seeing somebody about this. If Freud were alive …” Anna delayed her tub for several minutes with a dissertation on my mind and what the world of psychiatry was missing. I thought again about making things more permanent with Anna. There was a natural male reluctance in me. Anna had pointed it out a few times. She said I was addicted to having the blonde in the closet. As a figure of speech for my wild bachelor years, the blonde was carrying a lot of dark meaning, most of it Anna’s. But who am I to interfere with her illusions about me? I decided that this was a bad time to talk about the blonde coming out of the closet and leaving town. Abram Wise and his boys had a lot to answer for. Was I just turning to Wise as an excuse for continuing in the old established, make-it-up-as-we-goalong ways, or was I really worried about Wise and what he might do to Anna? I was worried.

“Before you head for the bathtub, Anna, will you scratch my back?” Anna moved around and pulled herself up on the pillows. She caught me in a straight look.

“Can’t get her to do it, eh?” she said. “It figures. Roll over.”

NINE

I called the Upper Canadian Bank and got nowhere trying to talk to the Bill MacLeod who was dealing with Hart Wise’s antique-car problems. By pretending that I knew more than I did, I fooled him into letting slip a few names, and details new to me. Crumbs from head table, really; but that’s what my job is: picking up crumbs and trying to get them to say something.

I telephoned the secret number that Wise had given me, partly to show him that I was on the job and also to show him that I was penetrating beneath the skin of his family life. Maybe he would have second thoughts about our early-morning meeting. Maybe he’d tell me to go to hell. I was hoping he would, as a matter of fact. I was getting tired of running into Mickey Armstrong every time I looked up from my coffee cup.

“Who the hell gave you this number?” he shouted at me. Good, I thought, now I’ll be cut loose and returned to civilian life.

“You did, Mr. Wise. Yesterday morning. This is Benny. Benny Cooperman. Remember in the very early morning?”