by Howard Engel
“Thanks for the high-school pep talk,” Mickey said, opening the car door and stepping out into the chilly weather. I got out my door too, just to see if there was life after high school. For a moment he stared at me over the roof of the Olds, as though he was questioning my right to breathe the air in West Grantham.
“I was born a couple of blocks from here,” I told him at last, when he made no move towards his own car.
“Yeah? I opened my eyes on Dexter Street. You know where that is?”
“We could crawl there from here on our hands and knees if we had to.” He didn’t quite grin, but I could see the battle to suppress it in his face.
“Can you tell me who it was who met us at the door this morning?”
“Where?”
“At Wise’s place. Good-looking woman. He called her Victoria. Does she live with Wise?”
“That was my wife, Mr. Cooperman.” I could see I’d lost yards again just when I thought there was a chance of a first down. “We live in the house with Mr. Wise. Is there a problem?”
“Uh, no. I see. Does he have a female companion of any kind?”
“Who the hell …!”
“Cool it, Mickey, I’m just doing my job.”
“Well, I’m not the World Almanac. Answer your own damned questions.”
“You can at least put names to our companions on the drive. Come on! I’m asking small potatoes.” He returned my look but said nothing, as though he really didn’t know how to answer questions. At the same time, I could see he found my persistence funny.
“Never mind, Mickey. I’ll ask your boss. You’ll be hearing from him about cooperation. Cooperation with Cooperman is a big theme with him these days.”
“I haven’t heard a stop order on last night yet. Until I do you can call them Moe, Larry and Curly for all I care.”
“I couldn’t have put it better myself. And does Mickey get the odd custard pie in the face?”
“Mickey learned a long time ago you never feel sorry for things you don’t say.”
“Well, we all learn to eat our words, Mickey. See you around.”
From where I stood, I watched him cross the street and get into his car. He didn’t look back either. If he had, he would have seen me staring in a concentrated way at the bare, thick twigs and branches of the chestnut tree silhouetted against the horizon where Henrietta Street ran downhill away from me and my growling stomach. What does my stomach know from egg rolls? I got back in the car and drove across the high-level bridge.
On my way back to the office, I tried to think of a practical way to yell “help!” Mickey was in my rear-view mirror, of course. Where else would he be? The panic I felt was not for the moment, but for down the road. How long was I going to be able to stand the face of Mickey or one of his boys being reflected in my soup. They could give me a lot of aggravation if I wasn’t careful. This was also no time to think of using my off-and-on contacts with the local cop shop. I could bring them into it later, if there was one.
My answering service told me that a Mr. Dave Oddjers had called and I wrote down the phone numbers and the names that my egg-roll-eating friend had promised. I started with Paulette. The first Mrs. Wise seemed safest, next to Rogers the best contact I’d been given. I dialled the number and waited.
“Yes?” The voice sounded as if it was coming up from thirty fathoms.
“Paulette Wise?” I asked.
“Who is this? I’ve no use for the name Wise. I’ve been Staples again for I don’t know how long. Who is this?”’
“My name’s Cooperman. I’m a private investigator here in Grantham. I’d like to talk to you.”
“If this is about the Triumph, that’s all been cleared up. The bank agreed not to press charges. Have you talked to Mr. MacLeod?”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Wi—Staples, this has nothing to do with that.”
“Hart told me that it was all tidied up. If it’s not the Triumph, what is it, Mr. Cooper?”
“Cooperman,” I corrected. “I’d like to talk to you.”
“What is this all about? Are you giving hints, or do you want me to guess?” She was sounding more like what I imagined was her usual self, although I had no way of knowing for sure.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to make a mystery out of it: I want to talk to you about your ex-husband, Abram Wise.”
“Ha! You’ve got a lot of nerve! I wouldn’t talk to the Mounties and I wouldn’t talk to the local police. Why on earth should I talk to you?”
“I can’t make you talk to me.”
“You’re damned right! I bet you don’t even have any paper.”
“Right, again. No warrants, no subpoenas. Not even a note from the teacher. I wish I had something to catch your attention, but I haven’t. The only thing I know for sure is that somebody is trying to kill your ex-husband.”
“Why didn’t I think of that?” She laughed at her joke and I tried to go along with it. I wasn’t handling this at all well and I had a feeling that it was going to get worse. I held on to the pause that followed for as long as I could. “Are you still there, Mr. Cooperman?”
“I’m here, but it isn’t doing me any good, is it?”
“You give up too easy. What do I get out of this? And where are you coming from?”
“Mr. Wise hired me. I never met him until a few hours ago, when he sent some people to get me out of bed. He—”
“Well, at least I know you aren’t shitting me. That’s Abe all over. He’d never think of writing you a letter or calling you on the phone. So, he’s put you on the payroll. Good for you. Now, what’s my end?”
“What can I tell you, Mrs.—”
“Call me Paulette, for Christ’s sake! What does your mother call you?”
“Benny. I don’t have any money to give away, Paulette, not money that you’d call money. But I might be able to look into that Triumph business on the side. I know a few people in town. I can’t promise anything.”
“Hart’s not a bundle of joy to me these days, Benny. He’s more damned trouble than he’s worth. But, he’s mine. What am I going to do? I can’t let them send him to jail!”
“I’ll see what I can do. When can I see you?”
“Give me an hour to put my face on. You know where I live?”
“I’ve only got your telephone number. I heard that you used to live over the river in the States. When did you move back here?”
“Six months ago. I still don’t know what you’re after, Mr. Cooperman. I came back because after a lot of moving around, this is where I want to be. Besides, I’m getting to be of an age when it’s good to know where your doctor is when you want him and whether or not he can get you a hospital bed if you need one.”
“Are you in bad health, Paulette?”
“You’ve met Abe, haven’t you? Well, Abe has been bad for my nerves for forty years. And I was older than him when we met. I’m not getting any younger, Mr. Cooperman. But of course, you don’t mean to pry, do you?”
“I’m in a prying business, Paulette.” She laughed at that then gave me an address on Duke Street, not far from Montecello Park. I could walk there from my office in five minutes, if I didn’t run into too many people. I glanced at the clock. Why was it two hours earlier than I thought it should be? I should try to schedule a nap into my calendar for today.
I picked up the telephone again and did the same number I’d just done on Paulette with Wise’s second wife, Lily. She was more polite and cultured in her conversation, but she turned me down flat. She did it so well that it took me a moment to realize it. Lily had dealt with a lot of Fuller Brush people in her day. I had to hand it to her.
SIX
It was a big house with a catalpa tree on one side of the porch and a ginkgo tree on the other. There were no leaves on the trees to give me clues, but the long black pods on the one and a few brown fan-shaped leaves at the base of the other helped me make my diagnosis. I climbed up the broad front steps to the large, fan-lighted door. There was an ol
d-fashioned doorbell with a hand-crank. I gave it a turn and heard a wheezy ring for my trouble.
I could see a figure moving from the front of the house towards me through the curtains that covered the glass panel in the front door. In the last century, when this house was built, nothing was as safe as houses. Glass in a door was as good as steel. Privacy was universally respected, except by professional and amateur burglars, which was to be expected. In general, a man’s home was his castle and a closed door was as good as a locked and bolted one.
“Are you Benny?” Paulette Staples asked as she opened the door. I nodded and she moved back so I could enter the hall. “Come in out of the cold,” she said. “I don’t know when this winter’s going to give up. Here, let me take those.” I shed my coat and hat and she hung them on the porcelain-tipped hooks of an ancient hall stand. I could imagine the original owner looking in the mirror, making last-minute alterations to his headgear before braving the cobblestone streets of the 1890s. As a matter of fact, I don’t think they were cobblestone: in Grantham they went from dirt to cement without any in-between stages.
Paulette led the way to the back of the house, where the old kitchen had been turned into a sitting-room. She had reserved, as I guessed, the front room for her sleeping arrangements. “I’ve got tenants upstairs,” she told me. I wasn’t sure whether that was a warning or just information. It was all grist to the mill; I simply filed it in an open and unlabelled dossier in my head. She indicated a comfortable wicker chair for me to sit on. I removed from it a cushion with a few months of accumulated cat hair and sat down.
Paulette Staples appeared to be a middle-aged woman with good skin and a look of having been around. Her clothes suggested that she wasn’t gadding about much any more. She was wearing a pant-suit with a flowered blouse. Her eyes were sharp and busy taking in the stranger. “Would you like a drink?” she asked, with an air of confidentiality and devilment.
“Why not?” I said. Why should I tell her that I hardly ever took a drink during the day. I didn’t have to make her a present of my whole life. She went to a cupboard, which hid a fair collection of bottles and asked, without turning: “Scotch?”
“Rye with ginger ale if you have it.”
“I thought you were a drinker,” she said, busying herself making comforting sounds with ice and glass. When she turned, she held two old-fashioned glasses and delivered one of them to me. Her eyes were a grey I hadn’t seen for some time. I could tell that she had been a great beauty in her day. Dave Rogers had said that she reminded him of Myrna Loy, the late and lamented Hollywood beauty queen. I wondered how many people would remember Myrna Loy’s side-glances that spoke volumes in the language of sex and humour.
“I don’t have to tell you that Abe isn’t my favourite character, do I?” She lit a cigarette, which seemed completely in character. She knew how to talk and time what she said with her smoking. It was an art and it was disappearing from the face of the earth. “I first met him when I worked at Diana Sweets.”
“I just came from there,” I said, trying to help break the ice with a fib.
“I was waiting on tables in those days and Abe was a young kid on the make. I knew what he wanted, but in those days that was what everybody wanted. I had this look or something. It wasn’t anything to do with me. I just had it and Abe wanted some.” She took a long sip of her drink, then set it down on a glass-topped coffee-table.
“When did you meet him? What was he like then?”
“I’m not good at dates, but this must have been in the fifties sometime. Say 1950 or ’51. He wasn’t twenty yet and I wasn’t much older. You knew I was older than Abe? Did he tell you?”
“I haven’t had a lot of conversation with him. I only met him this morning.”
“Ha! Yeah, you were telling me! Abe’s up with the birds. He doesn’t sleep more than four hours a night. Used to drive me crazy! Nobody but Abe is on the phone before five in the morning. He used to call me all hours of the night. He’ll probably call me after you leave. Does he have Mickey Armstrong following your every move?”
“That’s right.”
“I knew it. He always has a Mickey to do his legwork for him. In my day his name was … I forget. Billington! Christopher Billington! How do you like that for a tame thug?”
“So you met at the Di?” I hoped that she wouldn’t mind me attempting to stage-manage the interview.
“Yeah. I forget exactly the circumstances. He was always a good tipper and kept on teasing me about things. He was very glib and made with the fancy talk. I thought he was a salesman at first, but he was so young. I mean where did he get all that bright chatter from and him still in high school?”
“Did he try to take you out?”
“Sure. He was always trying to get me alone. But, in those days, ‘alone’ was the hardest thing for me to be. That’s why it doesn’t stick in my mind in particular.”
“Did you know where his money was coming from?”
“Oh, sure! He never made any bones about that. He was proud of himself. Me, I didn’t give a damn, but I thought that he was going to get put away if he didn’t watch his mouth better.”
“Was that the way he always was?”
“At first. But, you know, he changed. From being a bit of a show-off, he became the opposite. After a while, I couldn’t get him to tell me anything.”
“Was that because he was getting into drugs?”
“Maybe, but I don’t think so. By then I was going out with him. No, he stopped talking to me all at once. I mean he still talked. He could talk my head off. But he didn’t talk about the jobs he was doing any more. You know he was breaking into houses in those days?”
“You knew his friend Dave Rogers?”
“Oh, sure, Dave. His name wasn’t Rogers in those days. Yeah, he and Abe went everywhere together. Then Abe started seeing me and Dave got a girl of his own … You know how it is.”
“What did you like about him?”
“Oh, I always went for the tough guys. Gangster types. I liked living the danger at second hand. I still get a kick out of it. I still know a few of the bad boys from Miami. They call me when they’re in town. I guess they liked the way I could keep buttoned up. I never told tales. That’s why it makes me nervous talking about this stuff with you.”
“Can you think of anyone who would want to kill Abe Wise, Paulette?”
“Ever since you called, I can’t think of anything else. You know, there are a lot of bad characters who pick up the hates wherever they go. Abe was never like that. What I liked about Abe was that he loved a good time. He didn’t pretend that I talked him into it the way some of the boys do. He loved being seen with me and showing me off. He got a bigger kick out of it than I did, to tell you the truth. I liked his jokes and the tough guys he always surrounded himself with. Have you ever heard of Frankie Carbo? He used to fix fights in New York and all over …”
She was moving away from the area of my interest again. I knew that Frankie Carbo wasn’t a current crime figure, although I couldn’t remember where or how he’d met his fate.
“What about somebody wanting to kill him, Paulette? I’m not talking about the old days, but about right now.”
“Benny, I don’t see him any more. Not for the last ten years. If it wasn’t for the phone … But people don’t change. I’m sure he still rubs people the wrong way. He has a vile temper. But he tries to keep his business as fair and square as a crooked businessman can. He never went out of his way to buy trouble. Even when he drank, he was a happy drunk, big tipper. Still …”
“Still?” I coached, hoping for a breakthrough.
“Still, Abe was what he was. He did what he had to do. And he did it fast, and as tidy as he could. Like the pro he was. None of the Mafia-style dramatics. That wasn’t his way.”
I heard a noise in the hall followed by the sound of the door being slammed. Before we could both readjust, a redheaded young man with a wedge-shaped face strode into the room. His face was
bright with anger.
“Hart! I wasn’t expecting—”
“Shut up, Mother! Just what do you think is going on? What are you doing to me? Can’t you leave me alone for ten minutes?”
“Darling, what are you talking about?”
“Him, for a start.”
“Darling, I told you on the phone about Mr. Cooperman. Mr. Cooperman, this is—”
“The last thing I need is a private eye prying into my life! Get rid of him!” I returned my outstretched hand to my glass.
“Hart, he’s here as my guest.”
“Get rid of him! I want him out of this house!”
“Darling, be reasonable!” I got to my feet. The last thing I needed was a fight with this madman.
“Maybe some other time,” I said to Paulette. When I turned, Hart was standing blocking my way. “Excuse me,” I said and repeated it in the same reasonable tone. Hart remained fixed like a post. Paulette’s face had gone quite white as she felt the conflicting roles of hostess and mother. Hart still hadn’t moved when I looked back at him, so I sat down again, which seemed to confuse him.
“I want you out of here!” he said, not quite facing me. “You have no business mixing in our lives!”
“Maybe you’ll clear a path to the door. I can’t walk through you.” Hart sputtered, then moved over to his mother’s side, as though completing an alliance that had only been hinted at. I got to my feet again.
“Mr. Cooperman, I hope you’ll understand,” Paulette said, her eyes pleading with me louder than her words.
“Mr. Cooperman will keep out of my business, if he knows what’s good for him.” He was gambling on the unlikely possibility that I would knock him down with his mother in the room. I had already decided not to lay hands on him, even mine, unless he touched me first. I collected my hat and coat and left the tender scene to unroll without me.