“Could you be more specific?”
“We were visited by-where is it-ah! Murdo Forbes, who was the chairman of Phidias Manufacturing. I remember he came out to watch us one morning.”
“So, Murdo Forbes, the Commander, came to see the dig?”
“Yes, as I said, a fine old gentleman. Actually, for an old-timer, he was there bright and early. He was trying to smooth over some damage his workmen had done to the parging on the fort. Let me see if I can find it. Yes, here it is: Work delay while giving a tour to Commander Murdo Forbes (RCN, Ret.) C of B Phidias Man’f’ing. Inspected slight damage caused by equipment. Parging damage slight, showing healthy red brick underneath. Whole site inspected. He knows a great deal about local history. Took me to local hotel for coffee and further talk about our findings. Bone fragments found yesterday definitely not human. Possibly canine …
“It goes on from there, Mr. Cooperman, but I’ve gone past the break in our routine. We were able to accomplish very little that day until well into the morning. Is that the sort of thing you’re looking for?”
“That’s just what I wanted, Doctor. What was the date on that entry?”
“Ah, that’s marked July 13, 1989. It’s from Book One for this assignment, in case you need the text. I’ll leave it to you to remember; my mind’s rather too full of things like that. I suspect it’s old age creeping up on me. What do you think?”
“Well, I’m sure-” I don’t know what I was going to say. I was prepared to make it short, because my case was due to be called at any moment, when Dr. Roppa interrupted me again. He had a call on the other line, a policeman from Grantham, he said. I told him to give Sergeant Staziak my regards and thanked Dr. Roppa for his help. I slipped his phone number into my wallet for future reference and beat it back to the courtroom.
My client Mr. Tutunjian was very happy with the result of my performance on the witness stand. He was in a mood to celebrate, but I got back to the highway as fast as I could. I did stop off at Switzer’s on Spadina for a corned beef sandwich fix followed by a Vernor’s ginger ale, stuff you can’t find in Grantham, but that’s not important to the story.
When I got back to town, I stopped at the first newspaper box I saw and picked up a copy of the Beacon. Opening the first section over the steering wheel, I could see that Pásztory’s death was being given a prominent place, but under his pen name, Pastor. LOCAL ENVIRONMENTALIST FOUND SLAIN. I skimmed through the story quickly and was glad to see that the police “went to the murder scene acting upon information received.” That was as close as it got to me, and my breath came easier. Usually, I get a kick out of getting my name in the paper, but this time I was glad to hide behind Staziak’s reticence. In the story, there were no references to the drums of toxic waste found along with Pásztory. The writer didn’t guess at what was going on at Fort Mississauga. No connections were made between the rebuilding of the fort’s earthworks and the disposal of a large quantity of dangerous and unwanted chemical waste.
I parked the car in its usual spot behind my office and went up the stairs carefully, because it was no secret that I hadn’t been going as placidly amid the noise and haste as I could have. Nor had I collected as much peace as I might have from an equal measure of silence. At least there was no new warning shoved through my door when I unlocked it. I checked with the answering service and found that Martha Tracy had called. I put the copy of today’s Beacon on my desk where I could see it and called her back. That evening with the beer and pizza seemed like a month ago.
“Martha?”
“M’yeah. Cooperman? I’ve got that information you wanted.”
“Great, Martha! That’s wonderful!” I was trying to remember what it was I’d asked her to do.
“I pulled out the city’s contract with Kinross, Benny.”
“Great!”
“It ran to forty pages without the appendices.”
“Martha, I can’t wait to buy you lunch.”
“Cooperman, you’re a real womanizer, you know that?”
“Now, don’t you start! Tell me about the contract.”
“The main thing is that the city can’t be held accountable for anything Kinross does. There are two clauses covering that. In one Kinross promises to assume the defence of and indemnify the city against all claims, and in the other it accepts all responsibility for its operations and employees. So, if Kinross gets caught with its hose in the Niagara River, the city can hold up its hands in shock at how it has been misled and abused.”
“That’s wonderful stuff, Martha!”
“M’yeah, I thought it was worth a phonecall. Now, don’t you go thanking me again, Benny. You never could do ‘sincere’ if your life depended on it. We’ll do lunch like you said and forget all about being sincere. Okay? Right now I’ve got to put my face on and go out. G’bye!”
“Goodbye, Martha, and thank you from the-” She cut me off with a click.
The Beacon on Saturday was usually a plump paper, except after Christmas, when it was as thin as boardinghouse gruel. This Saturday the paper confirmed Pete Staziak’s guess about how Pásztory had died: a single shot in the chest. It also explained that Alex Pastor was the pen name of Sandor or Alex Pásztory, but kept on calling the deceased “Pastor,” which meant that I kept having to translate that back to Pásztory, remembering what he’d said about fine old Hunky names. There was not a word about the scene of the crime apart from a reference to the golf course. That was all. The fix was obviously in at a high level. If Ross Forbes was behind this, he must be calling home all the favours people in high places owed him. It wouldn’t take much journalistic digging to link Sangallo to Phidias. Or to Tony Pritchett and the mob. Where are the newspaper bloodhounds of yesteryear? One of them, it suddenly occurred to me, was recovering from the shock of a post-mortem examination.
Saturday night I took Anna out to the movies. While it was more enjoyable than most of what happened to me that week, my date added nothing new to the case.
Sunday? At least Sunday didn’t add anything new to the story since, as I’ve already mentioned, there is no Sunday Beacon. The out-of-town papers were still letting the story alone. There wasn’t a mention in either the Buffalo or the Toronto papers.
On Monday I got a call from the office of Jim Colling, Teddie Forbes’s lawyer. He told me that he’d just had a favourable FAX message from Phidias about the proposal he’d put to them.
“Whoopee!” I said. “When do I start?”
“As soon as their treasurer gets back from his vacation. How does Thursday suit you?” I thanked Colling and, while I was doing it, I was still wondering what he was getting out of this. It was hard to get a lawyer to say hello to you without him running up the meter. So why was Jim Colling such a bundle of friendly helpfulness? If he was sinking his personal hook into Phidias, I didn’t want to be the worm.
FIFTEEN
The main office of Phidias Manufacturing was in the new complex that filled in almost all of the space between St. Andrew and King east of Queen and west of James. They called it City Centre when it went up in the early 1980s. It had been intended to give the sluggish old centre of town a shot in the arm. After all the hoopla died down, it became just another office building with a walkthrough mall full of stores selling things you could live without. But a few important companies were located here, as was our leading criminal lawyer, branches of two banks and the order office for a Toronto department store. I got off the elevator at the sixth floor and asked for the treasurer, who was expecting me. He came at me beaming from his corner office as soon as my name was taken in to him.
“Mr. Cooperman? Good to see you. You didn’t waste any time. Glad to see you’re ready to get started. I have Mr. Colling’s letter, of course, and I even think we can find a corner for you to work in for just as long as you’re going to be with us.” Mr. F.P. McAuliffe was a quick little man in brown, with wispy red hair around his ears and nowhere else except for wild eyebrows of the same colour. He looked tweedy, and from the signs of ash about him, he was a pipe-smoker.