by Howard Engel
Some of the dried bird-shit came in my direction. I took that as a good sign. Let him take it out on me and then call Savas. I can take a little bird-shit.
“You see, Mr. Cooperman, I’ve got a lot to lose. And there’s the question of friendship. Norm Caine’s been a good friend to me. I owe him a lot.”
“Yeah, that’s the dilemma of ethics, right? Who do I dump on: my friend or my fellow citizens? It’s a big question, I admit. What can you do about it, look for the greater good? If you tell all to Savas, maybe Caine gets sent up for faking an accident, or worse. If you keep quiet and you get caught, you lose your licence, this place— which, by the way is a very nice little property—and you could do some time, maybe not in jail, but getting involved in worthy community projects of which the judge approves. I won’t kid you, Dr. Carswell, I’m glad I don’t have to make that decision.”
“Shut up for a minute, I’m trying to think.”
“Sorry. I always talk too much. I’m sure your wife and family will back you up and stick with you. They won’t let you down.”
“Confound it, man, you’ve got me in a cleft stick!”
“Me? Doc, I haven’t got you at all. I walk out of this nice yard, that’s the last you see of me. You’re the guy you have to worry about. Do you have the guts to stand by your friend and dump on the rest of the community? That’s the question.”
“Can I talk to you about this?”
“Well …”
“It’ll be a relief to see what you think.”
“I can’t promise you any kind of protection. I’m not making a deal with you, Doctor. You understand that?” He bobbed his head up and down. I watched a line of sweat move down his cheekbone and drop to the hood of his sweatsuit. “At the same time, I can tell you I’m not going to make a bee-line to Sergeant Savas’s office. In these matters, I generally keep my own counsel except where it involves my client.”
“I don’t know where to start.”
“You were supposed to have breakfast with Norman Caine. You arrived at around seven-thirty.”
“That’s right. We met like that one a week to talk over what was going on in the yard. I told you I was a troubleshooter for them on questions of pollution?” I nodded and kept my mouth shut. “When I got there, I could tell I was early, because Norm’s car wasn’t there yet, so I went into his office. I carry my own key. That’s where I got my first surprise.”
“He was there, right?”
“Yes! He was very upset. He told me I had to bring my car to the door and get him off the lot without being seen. I didn’t ask him what was going on. It was just one of those times when you know that questions will destroy. I did what I was told and drove him through the gate as fast as I could. Norm was on the floor of the back seat.
“When I got down the road, I stopped to let him climb in front, and he started to talk. I couldn’t make anything out a first. Then I understood. There’d been an accident at another location …”
“At the fort?” His eyes opened slightly at the word, then he continued scraping the table.
“You know about that?” I nodded. “Then you’ll understand why Norm had to move the accident to the yard. We never kept illegal substances in the yard overnight. It seemed a harmless enough deception, Cooperman. I just helped to get Norm out of the yard. He’d already planted the body under the truck.”
“I get it. Caine drove Jack’s truck back from the fort at seven-forty according to the dispatcher’s log. Why did you go back to the yard?”
“I had to make sure that Norm’s absence was noted and to be the first medical man on the scene. I’d hardly got out of the car when the fuss started. Then there were the police and the inquest.”
“Webster, the dispatcher, what did he know?”
“Only what I told him: that there’d been an accident and that it would be better for all of us if there were witnesses.”
“So you stayed around to assist the cops until around eleven.”
“I telephoned around and finally located Norm at the City Yard. He came right over. I don’t know how we got away with it for so long. I honestly don’t.”
“Caine never gave you the details, later on, I mean?”
“I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it and he never tried to explain.”
“I see. I see.” I couldn’t think of any more questions for the doctor, not then anyway. He was looking pretty ragged. I didn’t want to put him through any further cross-examination just then, not with his wife looking on from the screened-in porch. I thought I’d better leave him the ability to continue raking up the leaves after I left. Carswell walked with me to the street without adding anything to what he had already told me. What he was interested in was how it was all going to come out. Would he be charged? I told him that frankness was his only card at the moment and wished him luck. He shook my hand in a serious and unnecessary way. I felt like a Cub Scout. I got to the curb and caught him just as he was turning:
“What do you hear about the old lady? How is she?”
“I was over there first thing this morning. It’s hard to tell. They’ve tried to make her comfortable, but she’s very upset. The shock of it all, I guess. The fact that she’s lasted through the night’s a good sign, but it’s still touch and go. I’m surprised you’re interested, Mr. Cooperman.”
“She seemed like a woman of spirit on Friday night. I’m sorry it’s ended like this.”
“Yes, the arrest of Ross was more than she could bear. Well …” He made a helpless gesture and I found a sad smile.
I walked to where I’d left the Olds and got in. By the time I drove by the house, Carswell’s wife had arrived on the lawn and was talking earnestly to her husband.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Monday came, and with a keen sense that I had to talk to Norman Caine, who, I was guessing, packed his plans to wander the long, warm beaches of a special island, along with the big wedding cake, the long dresses and the flower girl. If he was still in town, he was probably at a hotel with his bride. In Grantham, there is only one hotel that beckons to special family events among the well-todo: the Stephenson House, which is partly owned by a friend named Linda Kiriakis. I telephoned the front desk.
“Stephenson House. Good-morning.”
“Good-morning. Is that you Stavros?”
“No, it’s Renos. Who is speaking please?”
“Renos, it’s Benny Cooperman. I was just checking up on the newly-weds. I hope that they haven’t been bothered over the weekend.” I was using a voice that pulses with concern and worry. I hadn’t lost the gift.
“They’ve had a quiet time, Mr. Cooperman. Nobody goes in. Nobody goes out. Like it should be with newlyweds, right? Your friend Bill Palmer from the paper wanted to know if they were staying here. I had my orders, so I told him they weren’t expected. Stavros took up breakfast half an hour ago.”
“Well, you might get some out-of-town papers now that the weekend’s over. I hope you can manage the security.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Cooperman. Slowly, slowly, we are getting our security in apple-pie order. Okay, I gotta get the other phone.”
“Just checking, Renos. I’ll be talking to you. Goodbye.”
I hated to do it, but I couldn’t think of a shorter way. I drove over to the hotel, parked myself in the lobby and moved about from the coffee shop to the bar and back to the lobby again. It’s what a private investigator does best: wait. I waited through the rest of the morning and into the afternoon.
I was doing a crossword puzzle in an out-of-town paper, when I caught sight of my quarry heading for the tobacconist like a man possessed. He bought four packs of my brand and a pack of menthols. He was learning about married life and had a way to go. I let him pocket his change and get a cigarette alight before walking over to him. It looked like his first smoke in some time.
“Mr. Caine, congratulations on your marriage!”
“Oh,” he said looking back to see who had recognized him behind a pair
of sunglasses, “it’s you. Thanks a lot. It’s not what we’d planned, but it’s just as legal. Nice running into you.”
“It wasn’t a coincidence, Mr. Caine. I’ve been waiting for you. I think we’d better have a talk. Ross Forbes is in custody. I think we should talk before they let him out.” Caine grinned at me, but it was without warmth.
“Why would I want to talk to you at all, Mister … Cooperman, isn’t it?”
“I think you know my name. Let’s try to be as honest as we can with one another, starting with the little things. Like Sherry knowing that Anna was going to be out of town and would miss being part of the wedding party. That must have put a crimp in her plans when she thought she’d have to get another maid of honour. But you’d just heard the news from someone who heard it from me: one of those hoods who picked O’Mara and me up at the Harding House last Thursday night. I didn’t want them bothering Anna, so I made that up. But they reported back to you. That’s how I know you tried to—Hell, it was more than an attempt! You did effectively snatch both O’Mara and me and take us to Port Richmond. Were you planning to leave us at the bottom of the harbour?”
“Cooperman, I haven’t got time for this. I’ve got to get back. I don’t want to waste my breath answering these groundless questions.”
“Have it your way, Caine. I’ve already talked to some of the others. You may end up in the prisoner’s dock alone, if the others are prepared to give evidence on the other side.”
“You’re bluffing!”
“Maybe I am, but you won’t find out standing in the draught. I suggest we sit down someplace.”
“I’ve got to get back.” His eyes moved in the direction of the elevator.
“On Thursday you were willing to risk prison to talk to me. That’s putting the most harmless construction on that episode. Now you haven’t got ten minutes.” I tried on a rather theatrical laugh and turned away.
“Look, Cooperman, I guess we can talk in the bar for a minute. I’ll have to make a phonecall, that’s all.” He walked over to the house phone and picked it up. I backed away, leaving him lots of room for explanations. It took longer that I thought it would, then he was standing looking at me again. He still resembled a big teddy bear. He was very good at disguising his well-known ambition. “You still want to talk?” he asked. We both started making our way into the bar.
The bar at the Stephenson House on a slack Monday afternoon was not a hive of activity. The bartender was polishing glasses while conferring with the solitary waiter over the Friday stock closings in the business section of the Globe and Mail. There were no customers. As soon as we came in, the paper disappeared behind the bar and the waiter came smiling in our direction. Caine ordered a Campari and soda. The waiter nodded as though this was a normal drink instead of something almost unheard of in any of the other water holes in and around Grantham. The Stephenson House was an echo of the outside world in the centre of rye-and-water drinkers. Actually, I took mine with ginger ale, when I took it at all. By the time the waiter returned with our drinks, I was breathing the smoke of a Player’s at the dark panelling of the wall, waiting for Caine to break the ice and knowing that he was waiting for me to do the same thing.
He looked sallow under a fine fuzz of neglect on his chin. He looked like a senior executive, junior grade, on a holiday. If he’d worn shorts, I wouldn’t have been surprised. “Okay,” he said, slightly more breathlessly than I was expecting, “let’s talk.” The word “talk” seemed to stab between the radar whorls emanating from both of us. He sat up straight in his chair, like I was going to strap him down and play electrician.
“You can assume for a start,” I said, smoothly, I hoped, “that I know a good deal. That will save time.”
“You’re working for Dowden’s widow. That’s no secret any more.” I let that fly over my head without comment. So what if he knows. If he was using this as ammunition against me, he didn’t have much. He was bluffing at least as much as I was. I had to remember that. “I don’t think you know as much as you let on, Mr. Cooperman.”
“I see you’re a poker player. That’s good. Let’s start with Dowden’s death. How much do I know there? I know you faked the accident. You got Carswell to help you get away once you put the body under the truck. Yes, I know he wasn’t killed on the Kinross property. You took him there in his own truck. Hell, without even spreading the mess to Niagara-on-the-Lake, I can get you into a lot of trouble.”
“You’re not even a policeman, Cooperman. What is this, some kind of shakedown?”
“That would simplify things, wouldn’t it? Just another palm held out regularly. The trouble is, I’m not in the blackmail business. And whether I do anything or not, you know you’re in a lot of trouble. The Commander’s death has pulled the tower you’ve been building down about your ears. Take the oil drums buried at the fort to begin with. We both know they don’t contain oil. A couple of years ago you might have got away with it; now anybody who can read knows what PCBs and dioxins are.”
“I think I can stonewall you, Cooperman. Anything you say against me goes double for Ross Forbes. He’s got more to gain in this than I have. And he’s the one they’ve arrested. Your friends downtown won’t like having to let Ross go when you bring me in. And who says you can make your accusations stick?”
“What about Alex Pásztory? Are you going to claim that as a misdemeanor?”
“You can’t touch me for Pásztory!” He said this loudly enough for me to form some hope that I might be able to move him with something else. He tried to distance himself from Pásztory, like Pásztory was the only dirty thing we were talking about. Why was this special? Why was he presenting the fact that he had nothing to do with Pásztory’s death as the one clean thing in his life?
“Everybody knows there was bad blood between you ever since he began writing those articles in the paper last spring. It would have been very inconvenient for him to have passed on to the cops what he found at the fort. I think Pásztory’s got a long reach, Caine.”
“Sherry and I were watching a play at the Shaw Festival theatre that Thursday, Cooperman. I was seen by hundreds of people.”
“You seem to know more about this than has appeared in the paper, Caine. As far as I know no time of death has been reported. Wouldn’t it be funny if it turns out to be the exact time you were watching the play? But then you know, it’s hard to establish the time of death as precisely as they do in books and on television. Your alibi may not have been worth the price of admission.”
Caine realized that he’d fumbled now and his face was getting rosy with anger. That was good for me. An angry man is careless, and God knows I needed every scrap of carelessness I could find.
“What do you want, Cooperman? What’s the bottom line for you?”
All of the questions in the back of my mind began coming out at once. To Caine, I must have looked like hooked carp. I tried to organize myself, impose some order and chronology on the confused and cloudy past. I thought, I should get back to Dowden. It began with Dowden. Begin there.
“I want to know what happened to Dowden at the fort that morning.”
“You don’t want much, do you?”
“I think it will all come out anyway. If you tell me now, it won’t look so bad on your record later on.”
“You say that so smugly. Like we weren’t talking about lives. My life, for instance?” I couldn’t tell whether this was the cut-off point or a preamble to further confidences. I was betting heavily on the latter.
“Come on, let’s get it over with. Dowden was killed at the fort. I’ve seen the dispatcher’s log. I know that Carswell came and went before he arrived for your breakfast meeting. Earlier, Dowden came in and drove his truck to the fort. What happened at the fort?”
“You talked to Carswell?”
“Forget Carswell, damn it! He’ll break in half if the cops raise their voices at him. He’ll dump you if he has to save himself. You can depend on that. And don’t forget O’Mara. The
cops are watching his house, so you won’t have another chance to reinforce his silence. Once O’Mara talks, you’re cooked.”
Caine’s eyes moved around the room, looking for an answer that wasn’t written on any of the empty tables. “The medical evidence, Norm. It never would stand up to a serious police investigation. Come on! I thought you were a realist. The game’s over. There’s no sense to the cover-up any more.” Caine glanced up at me from the floor where his eyes had become fixed for the last few moments.
“Okay,” he said. “It happened at the fort! But what does that prove? It was still an accident wherever it happened. It was just more convenient not to have the cops wandering around the fort just then. The tunnels had just been started, but it wouldn’t take a smart cop long to see that it didn’t have anything to do with the archaeological dig.”
“There had to be more than that. Dowden was crushed in the chest area, that’s not consistent with injuries received standing up or walking away from the truck. He was on his knees. Were you behind the wheel?”
“I’m not saying anything else about that. You’re right as far as you went. I hope that makes you happy.”
“You think I enjoy this, Mr. Caine? I can think of lots of things I’d rather be doing. So, let’s just try to get through this as painlessly as possible. Who else was out at the fort and saw the accident?”
“Just—nobody. Nobody saw it but me. So you’ll have to take my word. I hope you don’t think that’s intended to be funny.”
“It’ll have to do for now; I can’t prove you’re lying. But I know you’re covering up for somebody. If they lay a murder charge against you, Mr. Caine, we’ll see how loyal you’re prepared to be. I suggest that it stops just this side of formal charge of murder.”
“I say the police can make just as good a case against Ross. I already told you that.”