“Take your time. And thanks for doing this, like they say on TV.”
I took the elevator down to the place marked “B” on the floor selector. Part of the area was given over to underground parking. The rest was deeply involved with storage. I opened the door marked “Phidias” with one of the keys on the ring, and stepped inside. It was a long narrow room with green metal shelf units up and down the middle of the space and along each wall. At first my heart sank. I’d never get through to the things I needed. But right from the first cardboard box I looked at, my heart grew a bit lighter. Each box was clearly labelled as to date and company of origin. First of all I checked the Kinross section. There were columns of boxes which I quickly dug into. I was looking for paper having to do with the date of the accident and immediately afterwards. It took longer than I thought to find anything. Why is it that I grow thumbs on all my fingers when I need the skill of a brain surgeon?
Then I had something. It was the dispatcher’s list of business in and out of the Kinross yard on the day Jack Dowden died. I pulled it from the rest of the pack of similar reports and put it in my pocket. Then I found the personnel records for the same time period. Whoever kept these records kept them very well. I followed down the list of names looking for the familiar ones. There was Jack Dowden’s name leaping off the page. There were the amounts paid to his widow that she’d told me about. Further down the page I saw that O’Mara, Tadeuss Puisans and Luigi Pegoraro were given bonuses. Their hourly rate was increased until, in Puisans’s and Pegoraro’s cases, they left the firm, both with parting bonuses as well as a handshake. I thought I was all finished, when I saw an extra bonus, this time to Rory O’Mara for hockey camp. So that’s what he practised. I’d been wondering about the black-clad lout in O’Mara’s living-room.
I helped myself to the pages concerned and stuffed them with my other papers into the files in my briefcase. After closing the boxes, I hefted them back to the shelves upon which they were allocated to spend eternity and dusted myself off. Back upstairs, I told Boris that he should suggest a steel door be added to the arrangements in the basement. “It’s too easy to get in there from the parking garage.” He nodded vigorously, having had the same notion himself, I’m sure on many occasions. “I could put this in my report,” I said, “but it would look even better coming from you, Boris.” Boris showed me his metallic smile again. “I’ll leave our little conversation out of my report completely, so the whole idea will come from you. You’ll get credit for the whole deal.”
“Gosh, Mr. Cooperman, I don’t know how to thank you.” I flipped him back his keys, which he caught over his right shoulder.
EIGHTEEN
The sun was going down over the city. In fact, except where you got an east-west street running straight to the horizon which wasn’t often in downtown Grantham, it had gone down already. I found the car, dusty from blowing leaves and neglect, behind my office. As I opened the door and sat down behind the wheel, I remembered the warning contained in my personal copy of the Desiderata. Had anybody ever been blown up in his car in this town? I tried to remember. I wasn’t sure what to expect as a follow-up, when it became plain that I didn’t know how to mind my own business. I thought of Alex Pásztory and turned the key in the ignition. The motor caught, and for a minute drowned out the racket of the textile mill on the edge of the canal below me. I turned the car in the limited space, then climbed up the narrow alley to join the one-way traffic of St. Andrew Street.
It was still light enough so that I didn’t have to turn my headlights on as I headed towards Junkin Street for a return visit. Kids were playing in a great heap of leaves at the corner of Geneva when I began looking for a parking place. I left the car on Geneva nearer St. Patrick than Junkin and walked back the block to the O’Mara house. I couldn’t see anyone behind me, but what did I know? If I was following me, I’d keep out of sight too. Except for the school kids jumping in the leaves below the black trunks of the old maples, the neighbourhood was quiet as I walked up the steps and knocked on the door.
“He ain’t here!” Mrs. O’Mara was again playing protective games. I pointed out the car in the driveway and her defence broke down. I was glad her boy Rory was out peddling dope to school kids or whatever he did to amuse himself between meals. Against very little opposition, I pushed the door open the rest of the way and she retreated ahead of me. A flushing sound from the back of the house told me that there were at least three of us present. In a moment, O’Mara arrived upon the scene with a blue towel in his hands.
“You again!” he said, throwing me a look that tried to make me feel guilty of breaking our bargain. “I told you, Mr. Cooperman, that I can’t go around blabbing all day just because Irma Dowden wants to waste her insurance money on a rent-a-cop! I want nothin’ to do with you. You already got me more heat than I want.”
“There’s going to be more heat from now on, Mr. O’Mara, not less. And it won’t be coming from me. I saw what you’ve been hauling for the City Yard to the fort. All of that’s going to come out before long. Now we both know what was in those oil drums.” O’Mara’s expression changed. He sent his wife out to get some beer from the kitchen.
“Shit, Cooperman, I don’t want Dora knowing about this. Where’d you leave your tact and good manners, eh?”
“I can listen anywhere you say, Brian. It’s your call.”
He thought about that. He was just about to speak when Dora arrived back with two unopened bottles, no glasses and a rusty opener. I think she was beginning to like me. “What about the Men’s Beverage Room at the Harding House on James at King, say, seven-thirty?”
“How do I know you’ll be there?” I asked, getting a lot of foam in my mouth from the warm beer.
“I’ll meet you. I’m tellin’ you I’ll be there, okay?”
“If you let me down, I’ll come looking for you up the hill, Brian.”
“Yeah, I figured you might. I’ll be there like I said. After supper. Seven-thirty.”
I took a polite deep swig of the beer in my hand, smiled at Dora and bowed out of the house. I wasn’t used to threatening people. I never thought I’d be any good at it. In this case, I was pretty sure that he would show up, unless Dora tied him to the television set and had Rory lock the door.
Nobody had thought to slash my tires. The car started, and I treated myself to a good meal at the Diana Sweets. They had vegetable soup and a sandwich on special, with coffee thrown in. I tried to kill the hour or so I had in hand with a bum-flattened copy of the Beacon I’d found in my booth. I worked my way through it from the front page to the obituaries. It is always a lift to read the obits and discover that I’m still numbered among the living. After I got my change from the cashier, I wandered up St. Andrew, bought a fresh pack of cigarettes before I discovered that I had most of the present package unsmoked in my pocket. I selected a cigarette, like they say in books, and rounded the corner of James Street.
The Men’s Beverage Room at the Harding House was a throwback to less enlightened days when the sexes were separated for the purpose of drinking. The room next door was set aside for “Ladies and Escorts.” It was a fancier room, its walls were decorated and its floor got swept more regularly than in the Men’s. I was sitting at a round table for two with my back to the service bar at about twenty-five after seven. I was so sure O’Mara would show, I’d ordered the waiter to cover the table with draft beer so that now it looked like the other tables in the dim, smoky room. The beer was cold and I sipped one while watching the waiter move in and around the tables, dropping glasses, removing empties and giving change. He looked like a ballet dancer with an apron full of silver instead of a tutu.