Dead & Buried

by Howard Engel

  I had never been a whiz with figures, but Fred McAuliffe could breathe life into a ledger. He seemed to remember every entry. Sometimes he would explain the reason for a group of figures as though he were lecturing to a large class of students; another time he would close the door and whisper reasons to me that I was too thick to follow. I got the general idea that Phidias had an insatiable appetite for small companies that had expanded as far as they could on the available capital. When it came to blocks of shares and values before and after splits, I was over my head, and only McAuliffe’s gentle patience helped me keep one toe on the bottom and my nose clearing the waves.

  What made working this close to Fred agreeable was that he enjoyed distraction from work as much as I did. I learned more about all four of the Welland Canals than has ever been printed in books. He was a walking encyclopedia. For instance, he told me his name, McAuliffe, came from the same word as Hamlet and that they both were fancy forms of Olaf.

  I asked Fred if he knew anything about the excavations at Fort Mississauga in Niagara-on-the-Lake. He didn’t suddenly change. In fact, he smiled.

  “Ah, yes!” he said. “That’s one of the Sangallo jobs. Yes, I’m glad to be associated with that. You know the supervisor is Dr. John Roppa of the RAM in Toronto, same fellow who discovered the remains of those American soldiers from the War of 1812 at Queenston three years ago.”

  “What’s he finding at the fort?”

  “Well, he’s keeping it very hush-hush at this stage. But I know this much: they are putting the earthworks back where they were originally, as well as making general repairs and restorations to the main structure.”

  “The last time I saw it, it looked like it had a skin disease.”

  “Ha! That’s pargeting,” said Mr. McAuliffe.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Parging, pargeting, covering the brick with plaster to keep the weather out. What the English call roughcast. The golf club’s lease on the property ends in 1991. After that, it will probably go to the Parks Board, like Fort George. The golf club’s moved a couple of tees and the old green beside the tower so that the historic landmarks people didn’t stage a protest. There’ve been more letters about that damned fort in the paper than there have been about the local water supply, which, to hear them, comes directly from the Love Canal over the river.”

  From the records I was looking at, it appeared that the Commander had retained active control of Phidias until recently. It was only when advanced age and crotchetiness had got the better of him that he had reluctantly stepped aside in favour of his son. But Murdo Forbes was still an important shareholder. Without owning an overall majority, he could at least match with his own shares anything that Ross could put up. Teddie’s interest in the firm amounted to a tidy ten percent. I couldn’t see why she had hung on to her shares since the divorce, but Fred explained that she would need the consent of the other board members to sell, and that permission had not been expressed in the minutes.

  “Oh, I’ve seen it more than once,” Fred said, “where an unwilling shareholder is kept involuntarily. It keeps the board from having to buy her out and it keeps newcomers away. On Mr. Forbes’s side, too, I think there may be something personal.”

  “Like spite?”

  “That’s your word for it, Mr. Cooperman, not mine. Teddie’s family is an old one in this town, you know, and Teddie herself has been a credit to her name.”

  From Fred I learned that Ross had never really taken charge of Phidias, not in the way the old man had. “The boy doesn’t have the grit of the Commander. He’s never had to worry about where his next meal is coming from, eh?” he said with a grin, while sending a shower of sparks up towards the ceiling-hung blower unit. “The Commander wasn’t born to a bed of roses. He made his own way, same as I did.”

  “Did Ross Forbes ever have a chance around here?”

  “Chance? Why, what are you talking about? There’s an opportunity born every day. And most days Mr. Ross comes in at ten in the morning. The Commander was always deep at work when I came in at seven in the old days. Seven, eh! And he’d be still hard at it when I went home for my supper at seven at night. Oh, the Commander loved making this place tick. And he kept all the subsidiaries ticking too. Why, I remember once he bought a failing dairy. He did everything but milk the cows until it turned a profit a year and a half later. Mr. Ross isn’t a detail man like his father. He goes for flow charts and graphs and printouts I can hardly read. The Commander can call any worker by his first name and tell you his wife’s name too and how many youngsters they have. Oh, the Commander’s a remarkable man.”

  “It’s a remarkable family,” I agreed. “And I guess they will all be on their best behaviour for the wedding?”

  “That’s where class shows, Mr. Cooperman. There may be problems. I’m not saying there aren’t. But in public it will be smooth as silk. Oh, the Forbeses are the salt of the earth.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” I lied. I was trying to cut down on sodium like the Forbeses. They were bad for my diet.

  “The interesting thing, Mr. Cooperman, is that this wedding is a case of history repeating itself.”

  I thought I’d heard that story before, but I thought I might learn something new. “How’s that?” I asked.

  “Sandy MacCallum didn’t have a son to carry on his business, so he married his daughter to a capable young lad with lots of get-up-and-go. He could see that the Commander, even in those days, had as much stick-to-itiveness as he had himself. That’s why he became more of a son than a son-in-law. Now the Commander is looking at Mr. Ross’s girl, Sherry, as a second Miss Biddy. You see? He thinks the world of Miss Sherry’s young man, Mr. Caine. Mr. Caine will be grand for the business, Mr. Cooperman. I think he’s the Commander all over again.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Fred had repeated the story as I’d first heart it; so it must be common knowledge. In my business a little confirmation is a big help in taking the next step.

  “Oh, I am,” Fred was saying. “I know I am. You see, it’s not just breeding, it’s the military training. Mr. Caine was in Central America with the Americans for a year as a volunteer. Before that, he was in the Canadian Forces. You can’t beat military training, Mr. Cooperman. It cuts out fuzzy thinking. They all had it, you know: the Commander, of course; Miss Biddy in the Canadian Women’s Army Corps; even Mr. Ross held a commission at one time and he had all those military academies one after the other.”

  “They sound like dangerous people to know.” I said it as a joke, but Fred pondered it seriously. There was no trace of a smile on his face when he answered.

  “I wouldn’t want to cross them. I’ll say that. But they all work like Trojans. They expect as much from the people around them. Still, I see what you mean. Medes and Persians, eh?”

  “Pardon?”

  “‘According to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not.’ They, as a family, are rather rigid once they’ve settled on a question.”

  “Inflexible?” I asked.

  “Well,” he hedged, “a close cousin, I’d say. You know I’ve been with them for many years. I don’t want to bore you on that score, but I know that there will be a pension for me when it’s time for me to go. There’s nothing written down, mind. But, I know. It’s their way of doing business. You can’t find many examples of that these days, Mr. Cooperman. There was a time …” Here he headed off into one of his sketches of contemporary practices that made business seem knowable even for people like me. I felt like I could pick up the Report on Business in the Globe and Mail and understand every word. Of course he’d missed things that had been going on during the last twenty years, but it wasn’t my job to put him straight.

  “Here’s something I think might interest you, Mr. Cooperman.” He handed me a framed photograph showing a very young Murdo Forbes standing beside a middle-aged, lean man with ones lens of his glasses frosted over. Sandy MacCallum, even in a black-andwhite picture, looked like a man in a
brown suit. I could see him getting along with the man at my elbow. The Commander, seen some years before he had earned that rank, looked like a man on the make. He still had hungry lines on his face, which had not widened to the familiar patrician face of the present. His features were as good as a look into his antecedents. You could see from his eyes how much the moment recorded in the photograph meant to him. For MacCallum it was just another photograph. I handed the picture back to Fred. “Nice,” I said, “nice.” After McAuliffe handed me a picture showing the Grantham Hunt, all mounted up wearing hunting pink jackets and drinking stirrup cups in the front yard of the MacCallum house on Church Street, even I thought that it was time to get back to work on the company books.

  On the front door of the Phidias office, a marvel in glass and boards stripped from the last of our old barns, I noticed the little decal that told me that security at Phidias was being handled by my rival in the private investigation business in town, Howard Dover. When I got a chance to call Howard, I did. Since Howard knew that I wasn’t interested in the rent-a-cop business, we got along reasonably well. By the end of our conversation he’d told me several interesting things:

  “Working for Phidias, Benny, is like working for Jack Benny. They’re so cheap they’ll skin a mouse to sell its pelt; they’ll have the hide off a cockroach, I’m tellin’ you.” In addition to this, I learned that the man on duty downstairs that night was named Boris Jurik and that he was reasonably dim in spite of having been on the job for a year and a half.

  Later in the day, on my way back from the bathroom, a sudden voice behind me made me check to see if I’d forgotten to zip up. “Hey! Cooperman!” It was Ross Forbes. I stopped and turned around as he caught up to me. I got the feeling that this might be the end of my intimate association with Phidias Manufacturing. And just when I was getting used to Fred’s informal course on local history. “Will you come back with me to my office, please?” He didn’t say it like it was really a question. I wondered if I’d ever willingly accepted that tone of voice. I doubted it.

  “Sure,” I said. “What’s up?” There was no answer, so I kept a half a step behind Forbes and followed him into one of the big corner offices. Its carpet was deeper, its furniture newer and with a designer’s imprint on the glass and blond wood. There was also a better view over the city from here. How had he arranged that?

  Standing in the deep plush in the middle of the room were the shoes of Norman Caine. The face a little over five feet above them was not smiling, but I recognized it from I’m still not sure where.

  “Is this Mr. Cooperman?” He looked at Forbes for his answer. Maybe my word wasn’t good enough. Forbes nodded.

  “Mr. Cooperman, Mr. Norman Caine,” he said. “Mr. Caine is in charge of Kinross Disposals, a subsidiary of this company. He wants a word with you.” From the way Caine was looking through me, I was wondering whether I had disappeared without knowing it. His failure to make contact reminded me of somebody. Of course, it was the Commander.

  Apart from his slight stature, Norman Caine looked like he could be a formidable antagonist. But had to work hard to make his cherubic face frown. There was a fuzzy, boyish quality about him that his tweedy jacket accentuated. His hands were joined by a length of yellow pencil. “Mr. Cooperman,” he began, “is it true that you are looking up material for Teddie Forbes?” I fielded that question fairly well, I thought. Forbes bobbed his head as I explained. I think I did a better job on Caine than I had done to date. I had mastered the phrases that Jim Colling had given me and to them had added fresh lines of patter from Fred McAuliffe. Caine didn’t look convinced for a minute. I came to the end of the speech:

  “Anything wrong with that?” Caine levelled his pencil at me.

  “What do you know about a man named Alex Pásztory?” Ah-ha, this was no casual encounter.

  “Well, I used to read his stuff in the Beacon. But I have a low tolerance for stuff about pollution, so I make a poor advocate for a pure environment. I’m for it, you understand, but I’m no fanatic. I may get to the barricades, but I won’t be among the first, if you know what I mean.”

  “Have you ever talked to him, face to face?”

  “Sure. Pásztory’s an old drinking friend of mine. I’ve known him for years. I don’t lumber him with my transom gazing and he keeps his acid rain to himself. What’s wrong? Is it wrong to know Alex all of a sudden?” I don’t usually think fast on my feet, but from my memory of the figure sitting opposite me at the Turkey Roost, I thought that I was making a reasonable invention. I was sure that he knew that I had seen him at the restaurant.

  “Did you know he was found dead at Fort Mississauga on Thursday night?”

  “Sure. I read it in the weekend papers. I’m sorry he’s dead. He was a funny guy. My big brother used to date his sister. So what? Is it a crime to have known him?” I’d thought of showing shock at the news of his death, but decided that I couldn’t play it in the round. As it was, I’m not sure either Caine or Forbes was buying my act.

  “He was found murdered, Cooperman,” Caine said. “And I think you know more about it than you’re saying.”

  “Great! You think I killed him? I didn’t even know he was found at Fort Mississauga until you said so. That wasn’t in the paper. So right now I’d say you know more about this than I do.” That was a bad move; I’d put Caine on the defensive. I tried to think what I could do about it. “Alex always said it would be our smoking that got us in the end. He said we were the last of a happy breed of men.” What I’d added was irrelevant, but it seemed to oil the troubled waters. For half a second mortality was contemplated in the blond office, then Caine was right back in there reaching for my jugular vein.

  “I think you know a lot more about Pastor and the things he was playing around with than you’re letting on. I say you’re lying.”

  “Look, I told you, I know—knew—him casually. Since when is that a crime in a town this size? I had coffee the other day with a zoologist. What does that make me? A petunia?”

  Caine took his eyes off me and glanced over at Forbes. “I don’t like this, Ross. I say get him out of here.”

  “But he’s only—”

  “Yeah, that’s what he says. But I say unload him now and forget all about what he’s doing here. Teddie’s not your business any more. I say he’s an inconvenience at best, at worst he could be trouble.” Ross looked at both of us and then at a glass polar bear, which was the only decoration on a bare bookshelf. He did a thing with his lower lip and moved his jaw from side to side, as though thinking didn’t come easy.

  “Cooperman is here for a good reason, Norm. Teddie’s ten percent gives her a lot of clout. She could demand an audit and that could run into big numbers. I don’t want to run afoul of the Business Corporations Act if I can help it. Mr. Cooperman here is a very convenient solution.” It was smoother than I’d heard him talk before, reasoned for a change and calm, which put the wind up Caine who was facing him.

  “I still say he’s a pest. Get rid of him! I don’t like this timing.”

  “Cooperman’s not going anywhere close to Kinross affairs, Norm. McAuliffe’s got his eye on him. I suggest you leave this to me.”

  “McAuliffe? Get serious, Ross.” Caine threw a scornful glance at Forbes and even included me in it. It was nice to be part of the party again after being the thing they were arguing about. “Now, Ross, I’ve talked this over with the Commander and—”

  “I don’t care whether you’ve had direct communication from God Almighty! Phidias is my affair. So is Teddie. I think you should spend more time down at the yard and less up here looking over my shoulder!”

  “The Commander isn’t going to like this! He is Chairman of the Board, you know.”

  “Norm, my father can’t order a box of paperclips in this office without my okaying it. I’m in charge here and the sooner you remember that the better!”

  “Look,” I put in, just to show I wasn’t a lifelike replica of Benny Cooperman but the man hims
elf, “if I’m in the way …”

  “Cooperman, keep out of this!” Ross said and I did that, while the two continued to wrangle. I hoped that some crucial information might fall my way, but they were both too clever for that. The altercation ended with Caine storming out of the room, red in the face and with white knuckles

  “You’ve made a bad enemy, Mr. Forbes,” I said at length.

  “Caine? Oh, we’ve been at each other’s throats since he arrived. This is nothing new.”

  “He could be right, you know.”

  “If I unload you, Cooperman, Teddie will have everybody in town talking. I know what I’m doing. It’s business as usual at Phidias Manufacturing.”

  “Well, thanks, anyway,” I said.

  “Look, my friend, don’t imagine for a moment that you played any part in what just occurred. Caine and I have been jousting like this for the past three years. If he’d suggested that I keep you here, you’d be on your way out of here this minute.”

  “He seems to think the Commander—”

  “For Christ’s sake, Cooperman, get out here before I change my mind!”

  I turned and tried to walk calmly through the open door and down the corridor. I got back to the office just as McAuliffe was putting on his coat. It was about five after five.

  “Well, good-night there, Mr. Cooperman,” he said.

  “I suppose you heard most of that?” I asked. He would have had to be stone deaf not to have caught at least part of what went on.

  “I think you’re a lucky man, Mr. Cooperman. You have been given a very rare privilege to come and go here. I hope you appreciate that?”