My Darling Detective

by Howard Norman

  “Right,” Hodgdon said, eating the last piece of lemon chicken.

  “I wanted that piece,” Tides said.

  Detective Hodgdon said, “So, we spoke directly to Martha here. And we asked what was the what of this. We asked if she knew much about your mother, Nora Rigolet, and she said no. And she was telling the truth because why wouldn’t she? Our mutual trust is based on mutual trust, right? Pure and simple.

  “But yesterday afternoon at work, Martha, out of mutual trust, called us to her desk and guess what she said, Jacob? She said this Robert Emil was probably. Most likely. Your actual old man. Jesus fucking Christ, Jacob, you want me to drive you over to the Angus L. Macdonald Bridge and take down your last will and testament and your fond farewell, or what? I mean, this must’ve been some news, Jakie. I mean, my own father was no saint. But this guy? Robert Emil? He was a sewer rat. No offense intended.”

  “Thanks for the offer to drive me to the bridge,” I said. “It was nice of you.”

  “Look, Jake, sorry if my sense of irony might not be refined as yours,” Detective Hodgdon said.

  Martha lifted and dropped the thick file on the kitchen table, which stopped the conversation.

  But then Detective Hodgdon said, “In my experience, when there’s big family secrets, that’s when police files can be very revealing. A lot of family history’s in police files. Except, as often as not, the families themselves are ignorant of the files. My guess is that this is true here, am I correct?”

  “Are you asking me,” I said, “if I knew of any police files about my family, or if my mother knew about them?”

  “I’m just saying, your fiancée, our colleague Detective Crauchet, is apparently going way out of her way,” Detective Hodgdon said. “And it may or may not be proper police procedure, and me and Tides don’t give a flying fuck either way. I’m saying that there’s every possibility that Detective Crauchet, by reading these files, not to mention every little thing she’s learning in Arts and Crafts—oh, yes, she told us about that too. Every little thing she is learning from Nora Rigolet in the loony bin. All of it put together is potentially making for a fuck of a family story you would not otherwise ever get to read, Jacob. Violating police procedure or not, Martha’s giving you a gift, my friend. What can I say? She’s smitten. What can I say?”

  “Look at this kitchen,” Detective Tides said. “There’s a full pot of coffee. The radiators are working. There’s a big fat cold-case file on the table. There’s two lovebirds who actually like talking with each other. That’s my description of paradise.”

  “I’m still hungry,” Detective Tides said. “Let’s go back to Mandarin Palace.”

  Then they were out the door.

  My Father, Officer Robert Emil

  Part Two

  Martha typed out a kind of biography of my father’s life:

  He was born on October 24, 1913, in Halifax to Phyllis and Lester Emil, who ran a leather goods shop. Phyllis was killed in the cataclysmic nitroglycerin explosion of December 6, 1917—a French cargo ship, the SS Mont-Blanc, which was fully loaded with wartime explosives, collided with a Norwegian vessel, the SS Imo, in the Narrows, the strait connecting Upper Halifax Harbor to Bedford Basin. Around 2,000 people were killed and over 9,000 injured. That day Phyllis Emil was in their shop but Lester had stayed home with a bad cold and fever. The shop was obliterated in the explosion and no trace was left of Phyllis Emil. Robert Emil was four years old. His father took him to stay with his first cousin’s family in Advocate Harbor, along the Bay of Fundy, and he went to elementary school there. Lester failed to put the leather goods business back together and committed suicide in 1920, when Robert Emil was seven. Robert lived with his aunt and uncle and cousins until he was sixteen, and he moved back on his own to Halifax, where he got a job as a night custodian at the courthouse.

  At the age of twenty, he became police. That would be in 1933. So this means Robert Emil was Halifax police for twelve years before he became your father. He worked his way up the ladder. According to his official file, he was a dedicated policeman, yet he had “a short fuse” and “a definite intolerance to anyone outside the Christian faith, especially a hatred for Jews,” more of which I’ll get to soon.

  Basically, Robert Emil had a decent but far from exemplary record as a police officer. His famous temper got him into hot water on a number of occasions. There were reprimands but no docks in pay or suspensions. The word “hothead” recurs often in the file. Now listen to this. In 1944, during a Passover Seder for servicemen at the Quinpool Road Hostel, Robert Emil drunkenly interrupted the dinner—he was wearing his police uniform—and shouted, “Dirty kikes.” A number of Jewish servicemen threw him to the ground and took him in a car to the police station. In the end, he was merely reprimanded for “drunk and disorderly behavior due to the pressure of the job.” The file also includes the fact that Emil said he “was angry that some of his friends died in Germany and France just in order to save a few Jews.” Not a wonderfully insightful man.

  But in regard to the cold case, which is focused on the death of Max Berall in the spring of 1945, Robert Emil’s file is thick as a hassock. I’m sorry to tell you this, Jacob, but it is true. He was a real piece of work, your actual father. There is no possible way I can fully comprehend the relationship between what horrid things were happening in Europe and all the reported anti-Semitic incidents here in Halifax during World War II. Maybe a history professor at Dalhousie can set me straight on some things. But I can say that what seems to have particularly agitated Robert Emil was the visit of a Jewish radio personality named Edgar Roth, which took place in March and April of 1945. While Roth was in Halifax, he stayed with the family of Max Berall, who escorted Roth wherever he went. The file is full of newspaper articles about Edgar Roth’s radio broadcasts.

  Roth made his broadcasts on March 8, March 26, and April 5. These broadcasts were of varied content. But all of them took the United States and Canada to task for their anti-Semitism, for not being willing to comprehend and act on the news of the concentration camps early enough, and for continued anti-Semitic policies as they pertained to Jewish refugees. The transcripts of those broadcasts are in Robert Emil’s file because he refers to them during his original interrogation, which took place as a result of the fatal anti-Semitic incident.

  I’m trying to put this jigsaw puzzle together, Jacob. I have so far come up with four basic categories: 1. What happened in Robert Emil’s life that led to him being so sick and screwed-up a person but someone who could also charm the pants off that statue of Evangeline in the park downtown—though of course she’s wearing a dress, but you know what I mean. 2. What was the situation between Nora and Robert Emil—this is going to require a lot of stealth and patience in my conversations with your mother during Arts and Crafts, and my sense is, I won’t get much of anywhere with this. To date I have not uttered the name Robert Emil to her. Too soon. 3. Did you know that Emil actually published, ten years ago, a detective novel called Detective Emil Detects, the title of which he obviously stole from my beloved radio program. What a plagiarist jerk! I’m going to track down a copy of that book. 4. Find out all of what happened in the terrible incident with Max Berall and all of what happened on the day you were born, April 18, 1945, which is also the day Emil was arrested under suspicion of murdering Max Berall. And suspicion of murdering Mrs. Yablon too.

  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, it’s like a waking nightmare, this cold case. Which is warming up by the minute.

  Your Father May Still Be Right Here in Halifax

  New Year’s Eve, Martha and I were having dinner at Mario’s Pasta Joint on Lower Water Street. We’d been invited to a party, and to a dinner at Mrs. Hamelin’s, but decided instead on a private night. To celebrate the end of my first semester in library science. To just be together alone. “I’m with people all day long,” she said, “and I worked since six this morning, New Year’s Eve. So this is very nice for me. Just us here at dinner. Happy New Year.”
<
br />   “Detective Levy Detects is on later, you know.”

  “How could I not know that?”

  We ate our pasta and drank wine and talked, and then Martha said, “Do you mind a little shoptalk?”

  “Whatever you want.”

  “Well, as far as I can tell, the violence perpetrated by Robert Emil was a case of small things leading to big damages.”

  “How do you mean?” I said.

  “Reading the transcripts of Emil’s interrogations, I discovered this one thing. He goes on and on about a ‘Hebrew girl,’ as he calls her. Her name was Flora Lipkus. They went to high school together. According to Robert Emil, he proposed marriage to her about a million times, until finally Flora Lipkus’s father, named Joseph Lipkus, had a serious talk with Robert Emil. That’s how he put it in the interview, a ‘serious talk.’ Well, it seems that specific rejection sent Emil into a tailspin. And given his violation of that Passover dinner, and everything else, apparently he never did stop spinning. The weird thing is that there were so many anti-Semitic incidents during World War II. In fact, finally I did go over to talk to a history professor, Professor Kimbray, at Dalhousie, and he told me that in 1945 alone there were more anti-Semitic incidents in Halifax than in any previous year. I checked the police files, and Kimbray was right. Mostly there were eggs tossed and paper bags of horseshit thrown at synagogues, but there were some worse things. There was a bomb threat. Some older Jewish people got roughed up. Things like that. The city was pretty pent up after the war too, and there was the big riot a month after you were born, May of 1945, when the whole city went berserk. But by that time Officer Robert Emil had been exonerated for lack of evidence and had disappeared. And here’s another thing, Jake. I can’t find any death certificate or death notice for Emil.”

  “So you think he may still be alive?”

  “Tides and Hodgdon think he may still be in Halifax. Tides found a copy of that stupid detective novel Emil wrote. He thought he might track him down through the publisher. No such luck. It was published by what’s called a vanity press. Which basically means Emil paid for it out of his own pocket. The advantage we have is, while technically Emil’s on the lam, he isn’t aware that a cold case has been opened on him. He wouldn’t necessarily have his guard up. On the more personal level, of course, him being your—”

  “Technically my father.”

  “—​him being your father complicates things, doesn’t it.”

  The episode of Detective Levy Detects took place on New Year’s Eve 1945. Martha and I drank champagne from water glasses as we listened. The episode was titled “Leah Diamond Fends Off 1946,” and it consisted mainly of a party at the time-travel Devonshire Hotel, with the gangsters, gun molls, Leah, and Detective Levy dancing and drinking and celebrating and talking over the year’s most interesting cases that everyone solved together on the streets of Toronto. But toward the end of the episode, Leah Diamond suddenly says, “Hey, who invited him?” Everyone turns to the hotel room door and the narrator says, “Right away, Goose Molito goes for his gun, but Leah Diamond says”—back to the actor’s dialogue—“No, Goose, no, put that piece away. Let me take care of this.” The narrator says, “Everyone saw that it was a man wearing a tuxedo with a banner wrapped around his chest that said HAPPY NEW YEAR 1946! But nobody wanted it to be 1946 yet, so they let Leah take care of the poor hapless fellow. She took him out into the hallway and used up a little lipstick on him and sent him half stumbling, half walking down the stairs and out to the street. Detective Levy and Leah Diamond watched through the window as the poor hapless fellow went bumbling along, probably looking for another party to crash. But nobody wanted it to be 1946 quite yet, and Leah Diamond did something about that. In the morning it could be 1946. But for now, dancing and whooping it up, all the boys and dames and Frederik and Leah were making time. Let the new year arrive somewhere else, some other hotel, not the Devonshire. Not yet . . . ”

  Radio Detective Frederik Levy’s Love Life

  On February 9, 1978, after my History of Library Archives seminar in my second semester, I met Martha in the lobby of the police station on Gottingen Street. Apparently the desk sergeant, Fisk, a “charmless fathead,” as Martha called him, had been informed that I was studying library science.

  “Hello there, Jake,” Fisk said. “Look, I may be out of line here, but let me ask you a question, eh? My wife, Thalia, she was cleaning out the attic the other day. Now, we have a house built in 1870. And while she’s up there Thalia finds a tin box. And in the tin box is a book called Butterflies We Tell Our Children. It’s got all sorts of illustrations of butterflies in it. Turns out it’s part of a series of books written last century, each about different categories of nature—butterflies, birds, plants, mammals, all like that. Each and all of them in the Tell Our Children series. Now, the thing to know is, Thalia inherited the house from her parents, now deceased. They’re over in Camp Hill Cemetery with Thalia’s grandparents, who originally built the house. The important fact is, the book, Butterflies We Tell Our Children—get this—is one hundred and five years overdue. Taken out of a public library in Halifax in 1878. So Thalia sets this felony evidence on our kitchen table, and it’s just sitting there.”

  Sergeant Fisk stopped there and looked at me inquiringly. Then he shrugged his shoulders and an outsize frown animated his face. He shrugged a second time.

  “What’s your question?” I said.

  “Well, it’s pretty obvious what I’m asking, Jake,” he said.

  “I’m thick,” I said. “Humor me.”

  “This is a private family matter,” he said. “Mind coming closer to the desk?”

  I leaned up close against the desk, and Sergeant Fisk whispered, “Would you consider looking into this for me? Me being a colleague of Detective Crauchet’s, looking into it for me.”

  “Looking into what, exactly?” I said. I was whispering too.

  “Jesus, you are thick, aren’t you? Looking into how much Thalia owes on Butterflies We Tell Our Children, what else? I mean, what were the fines back in the 1800s and whatnot. Because I consider by now that the book’s stolen goods. Is how I look at it. And the way I see it, Thalia is directly responsible for it being a hundred years overdue, because she inherited the book and should own up to her responsibility. And me personally? I need to figure out, should Thalia not own up to her responsibility, should I turn her in. Because as a police, I cannot act as though I am not aware that a felony continues to be in progress each day the book is not returned to the library and the fine paid. I mean, Jake, I’m between a rock and hard place here, see what I mean? Thalia is my wife, but she’s also a Canadian citizen.”

  “Why not let me take the book to the Halifax Free Library and tell my friend there, Jinx Faltenbourg, she’s senior librarian, the whole story and speak on behalf of Thalia?”

  “You would do that for Thalia? You never even met her.”

  “The wife of a colleague of Detective Crauchet’s, of course I would.”

  “And here I thought Martha might be all romantically caught up with a queer, you know, library science and all, but here you turn out to be a regular guy man to man. Live and learn. Live and learn, and I can only shake your hand and say thanks and let me know how it turns out immediately.”

  Fisk reached into a drawer and removed a paper bag in which was the copy of Butterflies We Tell Our Children. He handed it to me. It was a beautifully bound book, with an inlaid depiction of a butterfly on the cover. He looked around as if worried that our exchange would be witnessed, which it wasn’t. I put the book back in the paper bag. “On the down low, right?” Sergeant Fisk said.

  “I’ll take it over to the library in the morning,” I said.

  “Do your best,” he said.

  Martha came down the stairs, looked at the paper bag, nodded to Fisk, said “Good night, Sergeant Fisk,” took my hand in hers, and we walked out to the street. On the way to her apartment I explained what had happened between Fisk and myself, whi
ch got her interested. I showed her the book.

  “What if I just drove over to arrest Thalia Fisk right now?” she said. “I mean, handcuffs and everything. March her right past her husband at the front desk and get fingerprints taken and toss her into the holding pen. I could use the words ‘She stays here pending investigation,’ which I always love when I hear them on Detective Levy Detects but have never had the chance to use myself. What do you think?”

  “I made a promise to Fisk, though,” I said.

  “Oh, right,” Martha said. “There’s that.”

  “I’m bringing the book to the library tomorrow morning, like I promised.”

  “Well, there goes my chance to say ‘pending investigation,’ but you are a good and honest man, so there’s that too.”

  I thought: Maybe I have been forgiven for dropping her trust that one time, with Tombeau des Rois, in London.

  In her apartment, Martha said, “Would you mind making potato leek soup? I’ve got all the ingredients. I need a bath and time to think, okay?”

  “Think about what?” I asked.

  “Today, all day, I was supposed to be concentrating on a forgery. A fellow who has an antique store on Bishop Street and sells autograph letters too. He sold someone a letter that was supposedly written and signed by Adèle Hugo, Victor Hugo’s daughter, who lived for a while in Halifax. Turns out the letter’s a forgery and the owner has skipped town, but just to Dartmouth, my sources tell me. I was supposed to be following up on this. But all day I didn’t do it and didn’t do it and it didn’t get done. I’m sure this guy’s going to be easily located tomorrow. But it was supposed to get done today.”

  “So why couldn’t you concentrate on work today, Martha?”