by Chris Laing
A Family Matter
by Chris Laing
Copyright © 2017 Chris Laing
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system – without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages for inclusion in a review.
This is a work of fiction, and the characters in it are solely the creation of the author. Any resemblance to actual persons – with the exception of historical figures – is entirely coincidental. When historical figures consort with fictional characters, the results are necessarily fiction. Similarly, some events have been created to serve fictional purposes.
A Family Matter 978-0-9921062-5-6 (Kindle)
A Family Matter 978-0-9921062-9-4 (EPUB)
Editor: Bernadette Rule
Author Photo: Michèle LaRose
Cover and book design: Julie McNeill, McNeill Design Arts
Hamilton street scene courtesy of Janet Forjan, www.hamiltonpostcards.com
Published as an ebook in 2019 by
Chris Laing
www.chrislaing.ca
For Michèle
“My Sugar is so Refined”
CHAPTER ONE
The last person I wanted to see again was my mother.
But she turned up anyway.
A two-bit Mafia mug by the name of Bernie Fiore called me at my office. “Meet me at the Tiv at 3:30,” he said. “Upstairs in the loges, first row, beside the wall.”
“What the hell, Bernie? I work for a living – no time for movies in the middle of the day.”
“I can’t talk no more.” His voice a whisper now, “Just meet me there, Max. It’s about your mother.” Then he fumbled with the receiver and hung it up like a guy with ten thumbs.
I slumped in my chair, still clutching the phone, the dial tone a swarm of bees in my ear. My palm felt clammy as I plunked the receiver back on its cradle, my mind spinning.
How could it be about my mother? Was she back in Hamilton after all these years? And even more disturbing – why in hell would Bernie Fiore know a damn thing about her?
I stood at my office window, staring at the brick wall next door, as a slender, dark-haired woman slunk from the shadows of my mind. She was sheathed in a silvery dress shimmering with sequins and was smoking a cigarette in an ivory holder.
My father was spread-eagled in his armchair beside the radio; his Hamilton Police jacket, reeking of cigar smoke, was flung across the back of the sofa, his suspenders drooped at half-mast over his beer gut, and another quart bottle of Dow Ale was clamped in his massive right fist.
He sneered in her direction. “On the town again tonight?”
She turned to face him and shot back, “On the booze again tonight?”
He swallowed another long gulp, then waved the bottle toward her as though he were shooing a fly. “Good riddance.”
At the honk of a car horn she draped a lacy shawl over her arm and sashayed toward the door as she snapped over her shoulder, “Same to you, Buster.”
She didn’t say a word to me – didn’t seem to notice I was there, a skinny little kid with tears in his eyes, watching her disappear.
That was in 1923, what some folks called the Roaring Twenties. And I was seven years old when my mother roared out of my life. Now, a week before Christmas in 1947, I’d neither seen nor heard from her since.
She’d disappeared soon after my father was gunned down during a police raid on one of Rocco Perri’s bootlegging joints along the Beach Strip. Years later, I heard a rumour that she had run off with one of Rocco’s gunmen and that she might even be connected to the Mob somewhere in Florida. But I never knew for sure.
Isabel bustled into my office with a cheery “Morning, Max,” rousing me from my dismal reverie. “You okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I pulled myself together, sat up straight in my chair and gave myself a quick head-rub. “I’m a bit dozy today. Must be the weather.” I glanced toward the window – it wasn’t the weather. Sunlight flooded in, reflecting off the powdery snow that had dusted the city overnight.
Iz drew up a chair and reached for my hand. “Something’s going on, Max. Tell me.”
Her green eyes held mine and wouldn’t let go. My natural inclination to keep myself buttoned up didn’t stand a ghost of a chance. “Thinking about old times,” I half-confessed, and picked up a file folder from my in-basket. “Now, this new Nelligan case looks interesting. Think we could handle the surveillance on our own?”
She reached across the desk, plucked the folder from my hand and tossed it aside like a soiled Kleenex. “Oh, phooey, Max, the Nelligan case can wait. Now what about these ‘old times’?”
She grasped my hand and squeezed, her vivid green eyes flashing.
Isabel O’Brien.
The stunning red-haired woman who’d been keeping me off balance since she’d joined Max Dexter Associates last summer to train with me as a private investigator. Six months later, I still hadn’t learned to adjust to her straight-for-the-heart delivery. Does any man truly admit that he’s met his match? That a woman – especially a woman as clever as Isabel – is almost as smart as he is? I checked myself. Forget about ‘almost’. She was sharper than a fistful of carpet tacks.
“It’s about my mother,” I said, parroting Bernie’s phrase. “Remember I told you she left Hamilton after my father was killed back in the twenties?”
She didn’t speak, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“I just got a call from Bernie Fiore, a young guy from the old neighbourhood. Last I heard, he was an enforcer with the Dominic Tedesco crime family. He says he wants to talk to me about her.”
“She’s back in town?”
“Bernie didn’t say. I don’t know why she’d come back now. And I don’t think I’d want to meet her if she did.”
Isabel stood and stepped behind me, placing both her hands on my shoulders. Her subtle fragrance teased me as she massaged the tightened muscles in my neck.
I leaned back in my chair. “Mmm – don’t stop.”
“If she is in town then you should see her, Max. Every mother must feel something for her only child. Even after all these years.”
I reached back and held her arm. Then I gave her a big smile and changed the subject again. This time she followed my lead.
After lunch I stepped out onto King Street, relieved to see the sun had melted the light overnight snow. Wintry weather wasn’t the best time of year for a war vet making do with a shrapnel wound that buggered up his right knee. I limped to the nearby Capitol Theatre where I spotted my friend Bob seated aboard his wheeled dolly.
He looked up when I approached, a grin on his clean-shaven face. “Hey there, Sarge, how goes the battle?”
“Okey-dokey. How’s business here?”
In front of him on the sidewalk, he’d spread a small rubber mat where his pencils were lined up like toy soldiers ready for inspection. Bob had lost both legs at Dieppe but that didn’t stop him from scooting himself around the downtown streets, setting up shop at the busiest spots. Bob extended his right hand. When I shook it, I noticed the tips of the thumb and first two fingers of his woolen glove had been snipped off: I guessed so he could handle his pencils better and make change.
“Business is always good at Christmastime, Sarge. What’s up?”
I chuckled to myself. I wasn’t a sergeant in the military police anymore, but some
of my fellow vets still liked to call me Sarge.
“I’m meeting a guy at the Tivoli – about 1530. Think you could set up there? Keep an eye open for me?”
“Sure. Who’re you meeting?”
“Bernie Fiore. Know him?”
He nodded then pushed back his army field cap as it tipped forward. “Yeah, I see him around quite a bit. A young Mob guy: I think they’ve got him on collections – the old protection racket. He hangs out at that pool room down near the corner of Cannon and James. But dumber than a pile of bricks. His brother got all the brains in that family.”
I smiled at his description. Bernie’s older brother Nick had been a few years ahead of me at Central Collegiate: a hard-nosed lineman on the football team and that kept him in shape for his weekend job hustling booze for the Rocco Perri gang. And after Rocco’s sudden disappearance – some said at the bottom of Hamilton Harbour – Nick was playing full-time on the Dominic Tedesco team.
“I’ll be there, Sarge. You can count on me.”
CHAPTER TWO
Mid-afternoon, I slipped into my overcoat and grabbed my grey fedora from on top of the filing cabinet by the door. When I left my office I had to jostle with an army of Christmas shoppers surging along King Street and filling the shops. Road traffic was also heavy – two Belt Line streetcars added to the din, one heading west, the other going east, their bells clanging at pedestrians bold enough to cross in mid-block. So I cut over to King William to avoid the clamour, then up to James Street North.
I spotted Bob in the wide entranceway of the Tivoli Theatre; he’d stationed himself beside a life-sized poster that shouted: NOW PLAYING – The Big Sleep. A cigarette dangled from Bogey’s lips as he gawked at Lauren Bacall in a slinky dress, who skewered him with a sultry look. A tagline across the poster caught my eye: The type of man she hated … was the type she wanted.
Bob wore what looked like a cut-down Army great-coat, probably remodelled for him by his sister Aggie with whom he lived nearby. His pencils were on parade as before and he glanced up at me as I approached. “Pencil, Mister?”
“Yeah, sure.” I pretended to survey his display while a middle-aged couple paused nearby to read the movie ads. The woman was cooing over a poster of Princess Elizabeth and her new hubby. “Just look at this, Dearie” and she tugged on her husband’s sleeve. “Motion Pictures of the Royal Wedding – in Technicolor.”
They moved away and I turned back to Bob. “I’ll take one of those HBs.” I removed my gloves and dug out my wallet. Then I slipped him a couple of bucks for helping me out.
The money disappeared into his coat pocket in a sleight of hand motion that Blackstone the Magician might have envied, then he lowered his voice. “Bernie went in five minutes ago. Alone.” He selected a pencil and made a production of presenting it to me with a flourish and raised his voice for the benefit of a couple of other bystanders who might’ve been keeping an eye on the lobby. “Thanks, Mister, and a Merry Christmas to you.”
I ponied up two bits for a matinée ticket and crossed the lobby toward the wide staircase to the right of the snack bar where the carnival odour of popping corn had attracted a couple of old-timers.
At the top of the stairs I paused, allowing my eyes to adjust to the semi-darkness. On the screen Bacall was giving Bogey some lip, the kind of smart-ass dialogue I liked: “So you’re a private detective,” she said. “I didn’t know they existed, except in books, or else they were greasy little men snooping around hotel corridors.” That remark gave me pause: was Max Dexter like his fictional idol, Philip Marlowe, up there in black and white? Or was he that sleazy little snooper meeting a Mob guy on the sly in the gloom of the Tivoli Theatre?
I turned away from the screen and spotted Bernie right away – he was slouched beside the balcony wall in a short row of empty seats, munching on big handfuls of popcorn. I side-stepped down the row to join him. I hadn’t seen him since I’d shipped overseas in ’39. He was much bigger now – a brawny, brick shithouse of a guy. Bob had said he worked for the Mob as muscle, and he fitted that stereotype to a T: the kind of guy you’d avoid in an alley, dark or otherwise.
I shrugged out of my coat and when I sat down he withdrew his right hand from his greasy popcorn bag, wiped it along the side of his seat cushion and stretched it out for me to shake. I waved it away with a scowl. “Just tell me why we’re here, Bernie. What’s all this guff about my mother?”
He yanked his hand back, a half-assed sneer on his mug. “It ain’t guff. It’s the straight goods.” His chin tilted up. “And they call me Bernardo now.”
He rubbed his hands along his thighs, his bag of popcorn now wedged between his knees.
I nudged his arm. “I’m waiting, Bernie … excuse me, Bernardo.”
“Yeah, well, don’t rush me. I’m thinking of a trade.”
I stood up and leaned toward him. “See you around, Bud.”
Bernie jumped to his feet. “Wait, Max!” He spoke a little too loudly and I saw a few heads in the seats below us turn upward. Someone made a shushing noise. Bernie sat down and lowered his voice. “I need your help with my brother.”
Reluctantly, I sat down too. “You mean Nick? What’s his problem?”
“He’s in the clink. Barton Street.” He leaned in closer, spraying me with his popcorn breath. “And he needs your help to get him out.”
“What? Even if I could do that, why the hell should I?”
“That’s the trade I was talking about,” his head now bobbing like a kid’s toy. “You agree to help Nick and I’ll tell you about your mother meeting with Mr. Tedesco.”
Whammo! Like walking into a brick wall.
So she was here. And with Tedesco, to boot.
I slowed my breathing and tried to put the brakes on my run-away thoughts. “When did she arrive?”
“Few days ago, I think. But I ain’t saying no more unless you agree to help Nick.”
“This is his idea?”
“Well … sort of. Nick told me you used to be a copper. We all talked about it after you shot Mr. Tedesco’s driver a couple months ago.”
I allowed myself a small smile of satisfaction, imagining Tedesco and his thugs sitting around in their social club on Cannon Street, puffing on their stogies and discussing what to do about that goddamn private dick who had the nerve to fight back when threatened. So far Tedesco hadn’t retaliated and I began to wonder if Bernie’s presence here in the Tivoli might be the opening act in some sort of payback scheme to even the score with Max Dexter. But why would he send a slow-on-the-draw guy like Bernie Fiore?
Because sometime it was smart to seem stupid?
I shrugged those questions away – unanswered. “So Nick asked you to call me? To see what I could do for him?”
“Well … he told me about your mother coming to town. So I thought, maybe if I told you about it, you know, you’d agree to help Nick.”
“Did Tedesco tell you to contact me?”
“Oh, jeez, no.” He leaned in closer, his eyes wide and jittery. “If he knew I was talking to you he’d shit a brick. And you ain’t telling him, are you, Max?”
I shook my head – the poor bugger. It must have been a giant step for him to go behind Tedesco’s back to talk with me. Bob was right about Bernie and that pile of bricks. But what could I do about his brother?
I shrugged his hand from my arm. “What’s Nick been charged with?”
“Murder.”
That got my attention.
“He was meeting some guy in the west end last week. And the guy died somehow.”
Holy hell. I was gaping at him now. “You talking about that murder at Paddy Greene’s?”
“Well, yeah. You heard about it, eh?”
Everybody had heard about it. The newspapers and the radio couldn’t stop talking about it. For the newshounds it was lik
e the Evelyn Dick case all over again. Because the “some guy” Bernie referred to was Controller George Harris, chairman of the city’s Planning Committee. And the “somehow” was as a result of having his throat slit, almost to the point of decapitation. His body had been dumped in the ravine behind Paddy Greene’s Tavern on Main Street West and, according to The Hamilton Spectator, the estimated time of the killing was two or three days before. Estimated, because the body had been “extensively interfered with by wild animals.” All in all, I thought that was quite harsh treatment, even for a politician.
I swiveled in my seat to look at Bernie face-on. “Yeah, I heard about it. Did Nick kill that guy?”
“Hell, no. He told me he didn’t. That’s why you have to help him.”
“But how can you be so sure it wasn’t him?”
My question seemed to baffle him, his mouth open but no words coming out.
I waited.
“Nick never lies to me. He said that him and Sal Angotti were meeting this guy at Paddy Greene’s. Then something must’ve happened ’cause the guy ended up dead.”
“So you’re saying this Sal guy killed him.”
“Don’t know. But Nick said Sal went kinda crazy.”
“Then why’s Nick in jail and not Sal?”
He gave me that puzzled look again, as though the answer was obvious. “Well, the cops got the wrong guy, didn’t they?”
“Maybe they did, but I don’t see what I can do about it. Tedesco’s lawyers will represent Nick in court and if they make a good case they could get him off.”
“Yeah, but you know what them damn lawyers are like. They don’t give a damn if Nick goes to jail – or even gets the noose. That’s why I’m coming to you, Max.” He began fidgeting again, glancing around the theatre. Something must’ve caught his eye that spooked him because he jumped out of his seat, his popcorn cascading onto the floor. And he bent toward me as he squeezed past. “Wait a few minutes before you leave, Max. No offence but I don’t want nobody to see me talking to you.”