Mortal Sins

by Anna Porter

  Masters poured himself a glass of water from a big plastic jug on his desk and stood before a brownish photograph of Zimmerman and himself, arm in arm, in front of a two-story building and a Ford Model A. Zimmerman’s long arm reached down, Masters’s elbow bent up—they were both laughing.

  “That was his first piece of land,” Masters said. “I negotiated the loan for a pittance. I used McCarthy paper to get the Bank of Nova Scotia in. Amazing what a letterhead will do. Even now. God knows how he talked Eaton’s and Simpsons into it, but they came, too. He was still working at Le Coq nights. Weekends he scrubbed down washrooms at the Montreal General. And he read Latin and economics at Loyola; he said he didn’t study, he ‘read.’ Funny, that. He spoke English with an accent so thick you could cut it with a knife, but for some reason he wanted to be fluent in Latin. I suppose, in retrospect, that was a European thing. Owning land makes you prosperous, knowing Latin gives you class.”

  “In Hungary?”

  “Especially in Hungary. They are as class-conscious as anyone in Europe, maybe more. Some hangover from the old Hapsburg Empire. Everything is a question of breeding. Same with horses—can’t buy yourself a winner no matter how much you’re prepared to pay, it’s all in the breeding.” He smiled up at the photo of himself riding the fat quarter horse. “Paul didn’t much care for money, not for its own sake. He thought it dehumanizes.” He stopped pacing near Judith’s shoulder, rocked back on his heels, hands in his pockets. “Naturally, I didn’t agree with him.”

  “For a man who didn’t think much of money, he did expend huge bursts of energy stashing it away,” Judith said.

  “Sure. He was exceptionally good at it. Driven. Tireless. But it wasn’t for the money. At least, not for its own sake. Or for the power it generates. The challenge, I think. Proving he could do what he set out to do, every time. Not to anyone else, only to himself. He didn’t much care how the rest of the business community viewed him. He almost enjoyed being seen as an interloper, a robber baron. He had no interest in joining clubs, in seeking acceptance. He was, except for the few friends you saw Sunday night, a loner.”

  “He’d known all the people he invited that evening, except myself, a long time?”

  “All of the men, more than 20 years. Let’s see, now...” He looked around his wall of photographs till he found a group shot of some white-clad people waving from the guardrail of a white yacht: “Monte Carlo, 1965. We were all there. The Bonniers— he’s had his ups and downs, but never a doubt they stayed close to Paul. Eddie’s a hard worker, he hangs on one deal at a time, not a risk-taker, like Paul. Couple of times he stayed in too long. You heard the other night about his wine business.”

  “Did Paul lend him the money?”

  “Not exactly. We bought some shares in his new venture and bailed out when we had to. That’s all.” He pointed at another couple in the photograph. “Reuben and Vera Jonas. You met the rabbi already. Vera was away with her family in England. Her mother’s been ailing. Jonas is one of the best fundraisers in the city—no, the world, I venture. Over the years he’s snatched millions from Paul, and all for good causes. In January alone Paul donated over $700,000 for the new university in Tel Aviv. Adrian Parker, down the end of your table, he’s with Ross, Wilkinson. He’s been advising us on investments since ’63, when he was still a junior accountant and he was all we could afford. Now he’s one of the best in the business. Couldn’t have done the PA deal without him. Jack and Alice Goodman. He is Domcor now. Super manager. Paul and I tried to tempt him away from ITT for years. I met him at law school. Same as Chuck Griffiths, my old law partner, now heads Loyal. You might have noticed Martha. She wore a low-cut dress made of some diaphanous material. Made her look like the tooth fairy. She’s a pretty little thing, only been married ten years. Chuck’s second wife.”

  “Who’s the dark-haired woman next to Paul Zimmerman?” A full head of curly black hair and blue eyes. White pants skin-tight across her round hips.

  “That’s Eva, Arthur’s mother,” Masters said curtly.

  “Is she coming to the funeral?”

  “No. She lives in Europe now,” Masters said, as if that explained why she wouldn’t come.

  “Is she included in the will?”

  “She is well taken care of already, as is Arthur. But we haven’t read the will yet.”

  “You know who the chief beneficiaries are, though, don’t you?”

  “Obviously Brenda and Meredith, in trust.”

  “And what will happen to the companies?”

  Apparently relieved that she had veered off personal matters, Masters grew effusive again. Sure, they would all miss Paul’s particular brand of genius, but they were superb organizations with strong executives at the helm. Monarch’s board would elect a new CEO. Pacific was on the way to a turnaround, the management team was in place. In six months, at most, they would be into calmer waters. Paul knew how to select his teams.

  “I saw the funeral notice in the Star,” Judith said. “Why did he pick Forest Hill Catholic for the service? Wasn’t he Jewish?”

  “He used to be. I don’t know why he changed his mind. Frankly, I doubt if he believed in God in the end.”

  “Oh,” Judith said. She was remembering Zimmerman tipping head first into the plate of boeuf en croûte with noodles. Such would be a time when a passing thought of God could be most useful.

  Masters pulled a blue folder from a drawer and tossed it to Judith’s end of the pine carpenter’s bench that served as his desk. “I assembled this for you: a list of his major holdings and a chronology of his acquisitions, from the first building. Back when we started in New York no one else would think of risking money there. The city was virtually bankrupt. His timing was impeccable, as was his judgment. The Reichmanns came after him. Everybody did. He knew when to take chances.”

  Judith didn’t reach for the folder. That would have been a sign she was ready to leave. “When you said we had hoped he’d be around for the opening of the Harbourfront Tower, what did you mean?”

  “We? Paul and I, of course.”

  “Why wouldn’t he have been there?”

  Masters stared at her for a second. “I guess Paul didn’t tell you,” he said, his voice rising to a squeak again. “Never did say why he agreed to the interview, did he?”

  “I thought...”

  Masters sighed theatrically. Then he leaned over his desk toward her, supporting himself on the palms of his hands, arms straight, like a small bulldog about to pounce.

  “Paul was dying. Heart. He’d known for almost a month. But we thought he had at least another year.”

  Nine

  THE FORENSICS REPORT on the glass shards Yan had dug out of the man’s chest arrived on Tuesday. Yan’s initial information that they had come from some expensive vehicle was correct: light refractors from a Jaguar XJ-S. “Good news is,” the Chief told David Parr, “that there are no more than 250 XJ-Ss in Toronto, perhaps another 2,000 throughout Canada. If we can track his car, we’ll know who he was.”

  “I’ll treat him with more respect now,” Yan clucked over the phone. “Not everybody I see has the wits and good taste to die in an XJ-S. Any chance you get him out of here by noon?”

  Parr was quite certain he wouldn’t. If a man had the money for an XJ-S, he had the relatives who’d want to speak up when he was dead. Unless he was from another country. American missing persons reports, for example, rarely meet up with “Whose body is this?” queries in Canada. Another small breakdown in communications that would hearten any nationalist. Canada is nobody’s backyard, after all. Canada has a whole separate set of administrators.

  Parr decided to follow the shoes to New York.

  He didn’t bother with Dack’s Fifth Avenue. Giannini had sent the long form of the press release and photo kit to the manager, who said they didn’t remember this or any other customer, except for a few regulars. Not remembering was his prerogative. Helping the police of another country was a nice thing to do, but not
a civic duty.

  Parr took a cab across the Queensboro Bridge to the 107th Precinct. The cabbie grew solicitous when he heard the address. He’d been driving cab for some 15 years and he’d been there before. The general assumption in the city was that Queens shouldn’t need more than a token family peacekeeping force— they liked to think of it as the garden borough, the family borough, full of hardworking, middle-class citizens who kept their noses clean. There were 16 understaffed precincts for a total population of almost 2 million. Every time there was a murder in Queens, the district attorney took it as a personal insult, a mean-spirited attack on his re-election platform. He was particularly outraged when something hit the papers, as the Sorel murders had four years ago. A small-time cocaine dealer named Sorel had been offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity at big game. To prove his credentials, he’d had to kill a couple of dealers who had become unstable. In his enthusiasm for the task, he took out their families as well. They had all lived in the Fresh Meadows housing complex in Queens, well within the 107th Precinct’s territory and Captain Joe Martelli’s range of responsibility.

  When Sorel hightailed it to Canada, Martelli followed. He hadn’t enlisted official help because he didn’t want Sorel arrested in Canada and tied up in endless extradition proceedings; he wanted him back across the border so he could close the case and get the DA off his back. Martelli met David Parr after he was arrested for impersonating a police officer at the Harbour Light on Jarvis, where Sorel had sought refuge for the night. The Salvation Army colonel in charge knew what a police badge looked like, and he was pretty sure it didn’t have a silver star, except in the movies. Parr had Martelli released and tore up the constable’s report; they exchanged stories over a bottle of Red Label, and in the morning Parr helped run Sorel to ground, then handed him over to Martelli on the far side of the Peace Bridge. Sorel knew enough to squawk loudly to his lawyers, but not enough to finger Parr, so the DA got his man and Martelli owed Parr one—or, as Parr figured it, several.

  The 107th’s premises made 52 Division seem like a suite at the Waldorf-Astoria. The squad room was painted a grimy gray, the venetian blinds were broken and hung on a frayed string, the floor was spattered brown-green and sticky underfoot, the cluttered desks left barely enough room for one man to pass in between, the whole place smelled of stale sweat and cigar smoke. Parr smiled at the sergeant behind the desk. “Martelli in?” he asked.

  “Uh-huh,” replied the sergeant without looking up from his paperwork.

  Parr went around him and through the squad room to the back where Joe Martelli’s small glass cage attempted to give him the status that went with the job. No one paid any attention to Parr. Helluva place to break into, he thought, but then, who’d want to?

  Martelli sat hunched over his desk, the phone held between his chin and shoulder, his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, his holster draped over the back of the chair. He was a big-boned, chunky man in his mid-40s, his hair an unruly mess of damp black curls, his complexion the pale sort that hints at a five-o’clock shadow early in the day. He was doodling on a piece of yellow paper and occasionally grunting into the receiver. When he saw Parr, he grinned, cupped the phone with his hand. “Undercover filing his weekly... Why don’t you sit...,” he whispered.

  Parr got himself a drink from the watercooler. When he came back, Martelli had hung up and was leaning back, appraising him. “Still the crazy professor,” he said. “I don’t know where you get your threads, David, but they remind me of my wasted youth at Columbia. Beautiful. What brings you to the big city?”

  “I’ve been wanting to give some guy a decent burial,” Parr said. “Body’s been waiting in cold storage a week now, and no one’s come forward to claim it. He was dumped in a doorway late at night, and by the look of him, there’s a story. Muggers in Toronto don’t often do random killing.”

  “And you think he’s from here?”

  Parr spread out the photo, the coroner’s report, and the detectives’ words on the shoes.

  When Martelli finished reading, he asked, “So what do you want me to do?”

  “Check through your missing persons records for the past week, maybe as far back as ten days. All points. He could’ve been from any city, visiting New York, buying shoes. And, yes, please have a man go double-check on Dack’s. Some guy in uniform with time to spare. If nothing else makes them remember, that will. Uniformed cops are bad for business.”

  “What do you think happened to him?”

  “He was killed at close range, I’d say, unexpectedly, by someone he knew well enough to sit in a car with. The killer then had the good sense to strip him of anything that might have identified him. At first I figured he might have been a mule, but there was no trace of drugs in the clothing, and wear marks showed his feet filled the shoes pretty tight. He wasn’t a user. But he could have been a carrier of some kind. The killer might have been looking for something in the shoes.”

  “Have you talked to the horsemen?” Martelli asked, as he rolled down his sleeves and strapped on his gun. With one hand, he tested his chin for stubble.

  “Got some cute girls in missing persons?” Parr asked.

  “One.”

  “I only call the RCMP when I’m told to. Haven’t been told to so far. They’re too damn high-handed.”

  “Comes from running around in those stiff tunics,” Martelli suggested. “Four o’clock, I’ll meet you at Ashley’s, seven or eight blocks down, near the old Sunnyside Garden site. Ask anyone in the neighborhood, just don’t sound like a cop when you’re asking. They might send you to Westchester.”

  Parr spent the time till four o’clock prowling around Queens: Forest Hills, Shea Stadium, Corona Park. He had no trouble finding Ashley’s on his own.

  It was a fake Irish pub, with stained wooden beams, leaded glass windows, orange lanterns, and a long, beer-stained bar. The barman wore a green shirt with a shamrock outlined in white on the breast pocket. He told Irish jokes in a Southern drawl.

  When Martelli arrived, he touched his forefinger to his temple, feigning a salute. “Took early retirement from the force in Birmingham,” Martelli explained. “Couldn’t adjust to the changing times.” He pulled some folded sheets of paper from his coat pocket. “I think we’ve got your man,” he said. “Name of Harvey Singer, 57 years old, lived at 120 West 59th Street—not a bad neighborhood. Central Park South. Wife Gloria, of the same address, filed a missing persons report on Saturday.”

  “That’s two days after he died...”

  “We double-checked the shoe joint. He bought the shoes in December by American Express. They kept the stub. They keep tabs on all their customers so they can let them know when the sales are. Any idea what those shoes cost?”

  Parr shook his head.

  “Guess.”

  “A hundred? One fifty?”

  “C’mon, you can do better than that.”

  “Two hundred,” Parr ventured.

  “Three hundred shmeckers, buddy. Those babies cost more than a holiday in Florida. And it turns out Singer bought three other pairs since last summer. At full price.”

  “Did his wife report a car missing?”

  “No. She said he left home on foot, Thursday around noon, and never showed up again.”

  “Did she say where he was heading?”

  Martelli smoothed out the sheets of paper and laid them on the bar. “Says here she thought he was visiting his accountant.”

  “So why didn’t she report him missing on Thursday night, or Friday?”

  “She didn’t say. Here, you can have these.” Martelli gave Parr the reports. “Are you going to give her the news?”

  “Yes,” Parr said. “But first I’ll have to confirm with her that the Auschwitz serial number checks out. Wish me luck.”

  “You won’t want me to file anything till tomorrow?”

  “Right. I’d like to talk to her alone. Thanks, Joe.”

  Ten

  JUDITH EXAMINED her face in the hall
mirror. It was a small whitish oval, surrounded by a bush of auburn hair. She had planned to cut if all off on her 40th birthday but, in the end, had lacked the courage. The area around her eyes was greener than she had intended, leaving a darker green reflection in the semicircles under the eyes—a sure sign she needed more sleep than she’d been getting the past few days. There were freckles on her nose. She had always had freckles on her nose, but they turned invisible in the hall mirror, because she had positioned it some three feet from the nearest source of light. The idea was not to see freckles—or any other glaring imperfection—immediately prior to leaving the house, and to acquire the steely mien of firm-jawed determination Judith was convinced she needed to do daily battle with the world.

  The evening required more than adequate steel. She had been conned into having dinner with James and the kids. When her mother had first extended the invitation to a “family” meal, she had omitted to mention that she viewed James as a life member. At the best of times, Judith loathed meals at her mother’s, but tonight’s was sure to set a record. The last half-hour had been spent talking Jimmy out of the pair of torn jeans he saved for special occasions and into the new pair he hadn’t yet massacred with the bleach. As a concession to his growing feelings of insecurity, she had ironed out the seams. “I’m going to look like an idiot,” he claimed, insisting that no one ever wore new jeans.