by Howard Engel
“I never wear a watch,” she said. I don’t know why I asked. “Benny, I’m sorry I didn’t call yesterday, but I’ve been hung over since Tuesday when some guy got me loaded in The Snug. The reference went over my head. At first I didn’t think her drinking had anything to do with me. Then I remembered her three martinis. I apologized to her.
“It was your fault. I’m not used to it any more. And there was somebody at the table I couldn’t completely trust after I got started. I don’t mean you, Benny.”
“That’s all very flattering, Teddie. What’s it going to cost me?”
“Is that the thanks I get? I’ve been in conference with Jim Colling since sun-up, as we say down in Arizona, and you don’t even want to hear what we came up with.” Jim Colling was Teddie’s lawyer, a smooth, intelligent man, with tiny corn-kernel teeth. He’d steered Teddie’s divorce into the big numbers.
“Okay, astonish me. What did you two think up?”
“Meet us at the Di right away.”
“Make it twenty minutes and you’ve got a deal. I have to put some clothes on.”
“Right, you make yourself presentable, then hurry to the Di.”
“What kind of lawyer is Colling anyway he can afford to put a hole in his morning? There aren’t many Grantham lawyers who step out of their offices for under five hundred dollars.”
“Jim has a score to settle with Ross, too.”
“Hey, Teddie, I don’t want to get in over my head! I try to keep things simple and as honest as I can afford to be.” Teddie laughed into the phone.
“Just make it snappy,” she said. “See you in twenty minutes.”
“Yeah,” I said, wondering if I had any clean socks.
There was an eddy of wind blowing dust and chewing-gum wrappers into a minor disturbance outside the apartment when I stepped out into the sunlight nearly half an hour later. I caught some of it in my left eye. It was still bothering me when I entered the Di, which is short for Diana Sweets. Gus, the counterman, paused with his chopping knife held above his sliced olives, and smiled as I walked past him looking for Teddie. I spotted them with my good eye, half-way down the aisle on the right side. They looked buoyant.
“Benny, what kept you? Aren’t you excited to know—? What did you do to your eye?” Teddie went from being generally excited and friendly to instant motherly concern in less than a second. She caught me under the chin and tilted my head up towards the suspended globes of light. “That’s dirt in there,” she said with emphasis that didn’t put me at ease. I handed her a wad of tissue from my pocket. She took it and dabbed at me with it, her long fingernails making a permanent impression in the back of my neck. “There!” she said at last, after scouring my cornea and holding up the tissue like a trophy of battle. “There, it’s out!”
“Thanks,” I said. “It was only a speck of dust.”
“Horatio Nelson went nearly blind from dust in the eye,” said Jim Colling, who had been watching Teddie’s demonstration of first aid. Both Teddie and I looked at him and he backtracked. “Well, it was gravel. Much the same.” Teddie released the vise on my neck. We both settled into the stained-maple seats of the booth, she beside Jim and me facing both of them. I think we expected to hear more from the lawyer about Horatio Nelson, but he seemed to have shot his bolt with the information already given. A waitress approached.
“Have youse decided what youse want yet?” she asked. She was balancing the edge of her empty tray on her hip, her weight unevenly distributed so that she looked more the coquette than she intended. We ordered coffee and she was off. Colling watched the ribbon that tied her apron on as it danced up the aisle to the service centre and the silexes of coffee. Teddie made a comment about “youse” and we all said something to make us feel superior. It felt good for a moment, like I’d joined the club. In the minutes that followed the arrival of the coffee Jim said “hopefully” and I got “lay” and “lie” twisted again. Grammatical purity is an elusive brass ring on the communication carousel. It’s like a flag blowing in the Antarctic wastes, out of reach to all but the pure of heart. I thought of Scott and Amundsen for a moment, then remembered my mother saying, after watching the recreated drama of the race to the pole on television, that she had always wanted to be the first woman to get to the pole in heels. Jim and Teddie exchanged looks as they sipped from their coffee cups. Jim’s saucer, like the cup in the Twenty-third Psalm, ranneth over, and he mopped up the spillage with a paper table napkin.
“Well,” I said uneasy about what I might be getting into, “what have you two come up with?”
“Jim has a lulu, Benny,” Teddie said. She was leaning on her elbows like a little girl about to tell a secret. She turned to face each of us as she said our names, as though without the glance we might get ourselves confused. “We considered a few schemes, but they all collapsed because Ross is such a suspicious bastard.” The waitress hovered again with a silex and refilled our half-empty cups. She didn’t appear to have been offended by Teddie’s language. She didn’t look as though she listened to conversations, not so much as a matter of principle as from a desire to keep life as simple as possible. Teddie unarched the raised eyebrow and dug an elbow into Jim’s well-hidden ribs. “Tell him,” she said.
“You see, Benny,” he began, “Teddie still has a legal right to ask for favours from Phidias. She’s still on the board. She’s well known and they value her connection more than they otherwise might, considering the way things between Ross and her turned out.” Jim began to tell me about how Teddie had come into the firm and how many shares of what kinds of stock she was seized of. I kept one ear on the monologue while I tried to remember what I knew about James J. Colling. Jim was an educated farmboy from out in the township. He’d done a law degree in Toronto and had slowly built up a practice centred on the real estate he’d wandered over as a boy. All those vanished farms were now subdivisions under the brow of the escarpment, and he was one of the best-known lawyers in Grantham. I watched him talking at me, smiling with what looked like a mouthful of a hundred baby teeth. His fat cheeks were unlined, his nose, rather piggish but well centred. He had the shoulders of a wrestler and a collar that looked too tight. I tuned in again.
“The moment Teddie wants something, Ross would know that something was up. He knows she has rights, but he watches her like a hawk. As a director of Phidias she has more rights to see the company books than you or I.” Teddie caught my eye with one of hers. I wonder when she began to get so sensitive to Jim’s rough edges. “So, I thought of a scheme that might work because Ross has little regard left for Teddie.” They exchanged a conspiratorial grin and faced me again. This time Teddie took up the plot.
“That’s right! If you go to the office, Benny, saying that you are doing me a favour, Ross would stall and stall. But, if you go in saying that you’re from the IRS in the States, you know, Internal Revenue, doing an audit on my status as a non-resident, or that you’re from Revenue Canada auditing my return for, say, two years ago, Ross would lead you by the hand to the minute books of the corporation just hoping that you’ll nail me good.”
“Teddie, I can’t go in there pretending to be a government officer!” I protested. “That comes under at least three criminal statutes that I can think of without even looking it up!”
“Cyrano to the life!” she said. I didn’t catch her meaning. What did this have to do with the long-nosed guardsman in a play?
“I admit it’s sailing close to the law,” Jim said, pulling at a tightly knotted necktie thoughtfully. “What about this: suppose you are working as an agent for Teddie, hired by me to check the dividends owing to Teddie in the company books. You see, Teddie has an apartment here in town and her place in Flagstaff. Teddie has chosen the Grantham place as her permanent residence and plays Canadian taxes. You follow me?”
“So far,” I said, “but you could lose me in a second. Why not get an accountant to examine the books? Wouldn’t that be more normal?”
“I thought you’
d ask that. There are a few reasons. One, you’re cheaper; two, it’s not very complicated; three, bringing in a bunch of chartered accountants is bad for business—it puts the wind up; four, if you need it, you are known to have acted for Teddie in the past.” I nodded that I had heard him, but I was still just listening. I could still not agree to any of this.
“You see, Benny, residency is a grey area in tax law. The main thing is that Teddie has been paying Canadian taxes. She has to pay here or there, and since her income comes from here, there’s no reason that she should have to pay Canadian witholding tax.” Colling was quickly losing me as I had predicted.
“Benny,” Teddie put in, “Ross put my American address into the Phidias records, so they take fifteen percent of my dividends as witholding tax. That means that in spite of my paying Canadian taxes, I’m also paying extra as a non-resident.”
“But you are a non-resident, Teddie. I don’t see the miscarriage of justice.”
“As long as I maintain the apartment, I’m living here, Benny. It’s not a scam, honest.”
“Look, for years I’ve tried to get Forbes to direct the dividends to Teddie’s Canadian address and stop the nonresidence witholding tax. But Ross isn’t about to do Teddie any favours.”
Both of them were looking at me from across the table like they were selling a new brand of drug. I still didn’t like it.
“Benny,” Teddie said, “if the IRS is auditing me, and demanding that I file a U.S. return, I have a right to try to show that Phidias has exaggerated my dividends. We hire you, and that way you’ll get to see the minute books of the corporation.”
“Teddie’s right,” Colling said. “Phidias is a private corporation, so the minute books will show all share transfers and all leases, just the things that Teddie told me you wanted to have a look at.”
“The beauty of the scheme, Benny, is that the IRS isn’t going to put anybody wise. They never tell people what they are up to. They don’t explain their actions to anybody.”
“And you think that Ross would let me into Phidias just because it may put Teddie in wrong with the American tax people?”
“Exactly!” Colling resembled a happy convert to a new sect or schism.
“Why won’t he stall us?” I wondered whether he was listening.
“Because it’s in his interest to see that Teddie’s life stays as complicated as possible.” I believed him about the complicated part. “And as far as Section 319, et cetera, of the Criminal Code goes, you are not going to profit by any of this information financially. Not directly, anyway.” Colling was still selling. Teddie was backing him up to the hilt.
“I only regret I won’t be here to see the look on Ross’s face when he finds out!” Teddie said. Colling shot her a quick look and my eyes must have given me away too. She quickly added, “Years from now, I mean, Benny. Years from now. After it’s all over and done with.”
“Thanks a lot, you two,” I said, ripping open a plastic cream container I had no intention of using. “The best that can come of this is the lessons I’m going to get in how to stitch mail bags in Kingston pen. Haven’t either of you any idea that I can’t go around saying I’m an accountant when I’m not?”
“You don’t have to say anything,” Colling said, making a soothing gesture with both his chubby hands at once. “Supposing I set it all up from my office?” Jim suggested. “Without making any false claims, I can say things in an ambiguous way so that the treasurer of Phidias will expect you and then, once in, you can take it from there.”
“Oh great!” I said, trying to think things through. “What happens when Ross recognizes me? What happens if he asks me a question I can’t answer ambiguously? He knows I’m an investigator.”
“Okay, you’re an investigator. That’s just as good.”
“He’ll see through it,” I said, shaking my head.
“He hates me too much,” Teddie said. “I’m his blind side, Benny. If he thinks I could get hurt, he’ll show you the books himself. Trust me, Benny. I know him.”
“My noses still itches where Ross Forbes flattened it.”
“Benny, I said trust me. I know Ross. I was married to him for Christ’s sake.”
“You’re all moving too fast for me. I have to think about the angles, Teddie. Remember, I don’t have an Arizona bolt-hole to run back to.”
“I thought you wanted to get inside Phidias, Benny. Were you just romancing me the other night or were you serious?” She was right. I had asked for help. It was just that I had an instinct to keep life simple. I was like the waitress. Simple is sometimes all I can take. As I watched the faces opposite me, I began to doubt my motives for getting inside the boardroom at Phidias. What was I expecting to find? An order to break the law and pollute the environment set out in black and white? Moved to snuff out one Jack Dowden for running off at the mouth. All those in favour? Carried.
Another two things bothered me. First, if Phidias knew what was going on at Kinross, then in the quiet offices of Phidias I’d be in as much trouble as I’d be walking into the Kinross yard asking questions. I could get myself killed and still not get any wiser.
The other thing was that I was in the dark about what Teddie and her lawyer were getting from all this. I didn’t like to hold the hammer Teddie was hitting Ross with. It was like standing between two cars bent on ramming one another. While you couldn’t tell how much damage they’d do to one another, it was pretty clear that I’d be a write-off.
And what about Colling? What was his interest? Is he just accommodating a lady or is there something in it for him? Teddie and Colling were watching me. I sat and sipped my cold coffee. Colling’s twin rows of tiny teeth were smiling expectantly. Teddie tilted her head sympathetically as I ruminated. I tried to go through all of the possibilities again in my head. I sweated the idea for another minute, then accepted on the principle that I hadn’t a clear alternative and what the hell.
ELEVEN
It was going to take a few days for Colling to work his magic on the treasurer at Phidias Manufacturing. In the meantime, I gave Kinross another chance to settle things before I had to run the risk of meeting Forbes again. I drove up to the Scrampton Road and took a table at the Turkey Roost where I could look across the road at the front gate. For half an hour I watched the way the guardhouse operated. There was a man inside who checked the documents of all trucks leaving the yard and who kept track on a clipboard of all the cars and trucks coming in. I wondered about the page for the day of Dowden’s death. I’d like to see that.
The only trucks I recognized were Euclids and Macks. I tried to concentrate on the rigs with closed containers and the ones hauling storage drums. Most of these were huge, lumbering things, with more wheels than the insides of a ten-dollar watch. I paid my bill for the coffee I’d consumed and the styrofoam cup I was taking back to my car with me. Once in the car, I decided to follow one of the trucks, just to see where it went. I didn’t see the driver’s face as he climbed into the cab.
I trailed him, slow and steady, staying just far enough behind him so that he wasn’t tempted to use his CB and send for help. He took the Queen Elizabeth Way towards Niagara Falls. Ah, I thought, pay dirt on the first try. But he turned off and stopped at the little park with the floral clock in it just outside Niagara Falls. The clock was shut down, of course, waiting for spring like the eager student horticulturists who maintained it from April to Labour Day. I saw the driver retrieve a few large metal planters made in the shape of numerals, a three and a six, which he put into the back of his trailer before getting back on the road again. After less than three minutes, he’d pulled into a truck-stop called The Fifth Wheel, the restaurant O’Mara had mentioned. I could see that the lot at the side was full of loaded rigs from all over. I suppressed an urge to drop in. I didn’t know which of the faces inside I was following. I made a U-turn and returned to the Scrampton Road again, thinking about the floral clock and the things I’d seen behind the Quonset hut.
After a t
oasted chopped-egg sandwich a the Turkey Roost, I tried again. This time it was a tanker, which headed straight for the City Yard on Louth Street. Here I was stopped at the gate, not by a guard, but by a failure of the imagination. I couldn’t think what I would say to anyone challenging my right to be there. I used to be better at this, but now television has turned all parking-lot attendants and yard men into Perry Masons. There was a time when I could work for a year and never have to flash ID. Even phoney ID. Now you have to wave paper or plastic in front of everybody, even when all you want to do is use the toilet.
The tanker had disappeared around one of the two beehive-shaped storage sheds. From the street, as I turned off into the approach to the yard, they resembled two enormous breasts reminiscent of the busty pinups of the 1940s. The nearest intersection was notorious for the number of accidents that occurred within eyeshot of these mammoth mammaries. I wonder whether there is any connection. From my standing position at the gatehouse, I could see that the sheds had non-erotic functions as well as the fender-bending ones. I could see grey piles of road salt ready to attack the bottom of my car in the coming winter. The salt kept ice off the roads, but it exacted a random tax on the cars that used them: a muffler here, a tailpipe there and other bits of rusted underpinnings, mute testimony to the efficiency of the roads services of the Department of Works and Sanitation.
A big fellow in a nylon anorak of faded green had caught sight of me admiring his sheds. He stood looking at the car for a few seconds while a thought began forming under his yellow hard hat. When he was fully aware of its nature, he waved me off the property. Maybe he was reading my mind; I couldn’t think of what I was doing there either. I turned the car around and came to a stop long enough to let a big, flat-bottomed, wide-bed truck with a medium-sized load under tarps out to Louth Street. It was a huge thing and I had to back up further to give it elbow room to pass me. I always have a lot of respect for anything that size. It would collect it, whether I was willing to give it or not.