I’d been there long enough to start worrying what I’d do with all this draft beer in case O’Mara didn’t show up. Pubs don’t stock the equivalent of doggy bags for customers who order more than they can swallow. This problem was developing nicely when O’Mara pulled out the chair opposite me and sat down. He was wearing a quilted hunting jacket over a plaid shirt. The cap he was wearing had been made for a sportscar driver, but it was a close enough equivalent of the traditional working-class cloth cap to pass if you didn’t look too closely. It’s funny about clothes and class. I’ll have to think about that some time.
“You didn’t think I was coming, I’ll bet,” he said, lifting the nearest beer to his mouth.
“I wasn’t making bets either way. I just know we’ve still got lots to talk about. For instance, if you have the bad luck to get hit by a big truck, you get you pelvis crushed, not your chest. You don’t get your spine damaged where Jack’s was. So that means the story of Jack being on his feet when the truck hit him is made of rhubarb, Brian.” O’Mara was studying my face, looking for what was going on inside, I guess. He put his first empty glass down hard on the red Formica top of the table. “Another thing, Brian: if a Freightliner nudged me with all of its weight, I’d end up pinned against the wall I was standing against. I wouldn’t slide under the truck. Not unless the truck was in gear and there was somebody behind the wheel to put it in reverse.”
“You’re crazy if you think that!”
“Yeah, then I’m crazy then. And you and the other witnesses weren’t paid off to dummy up and say what they were told to say at the inquest. Maybe Rory paid his own way to hockey camp. What do you take me for, Brian? Some kind of idiot who can’t count his feet? O’Mara, if you can’t tell talk from bullshit, stay away from me. And when they find you in a ditch along Old Number Eight because you knew too much, I’ll laugh my head off.” I pretended that I was getting up. We both thought about Pásztory without saying his name out loud.
“Sit down, Mr. Cooperman,” he said. “I didn’t know you were into this this deep. I gotta be careful, you understand?”
“Nobody ever rubbed out anybody who shared a secret with enough other people, Brian. Right now, you’re hot. With Pásztory out of the way and what he’d been digging up about Jack Dowden’s death probably in their hands, you’re on deck, kid. Don’t neglect your life insurance.”
“Okay, I’ll level with you. Is that what you want?”
“It’s your only hope.” O’Mara nodded sadly. He cold see I had a point. “To begin with,” I asked, trying not to waste the opportunity, “what did you really see up there?”
“Nothin’. We didn’t see nothin’ movin’. He didn’t scream. Jack was under the cab of the tractor. You could see he was done for. We pulled him out and Puisans ran to get the doctor.”
“Carswell.”
“Yeah, he’d been waiting to have breakfast with Mr. Caine, but Caine didn’t show up.”
“When did he come on the scene?”
“Caine? Oh, he didn’t get there until around ten-thirty, which was late for him. By then the ambulance had gone and the cops were all over the yard like a tent, takin’ pictures and measuring stuff.”
“Who put you up to the testimony you gave?”
“Webster. He was in charge of the yard, chief dispatcher. He checked everything in and out from the office at the front of the yard.”
“Keep going.”
“He ran the place, made up our cards. What more is there to say?”
“Find it.”
“He said it would be best if we got our stories straight. He said anybody could see it was an accident, so where’s the harm in saying so.”
“So, you were just doing your duty?”
“Come off it, Cooperman! I’m tellin’ you what I’m tellin’ you.”
“You’re just beginning. Keep going; it gets easier.”
“Webster was the guy we had to deal with, so what were we goin’ to tell him? Webster was callin’ the shots. We just said what he told us to say.”
“So he knows where the bodies are buried, eh?”
“Knew, Cooperman, knew. Webster ain’t with us any more. He got the Big C and he died just after the Civic Holiday in August. So, go ask him some questions.”
O’Mara emptied another glass of beer and started on a third. I’d got to within a swallow of the end of my first. For me, that wasn’t bad. The cold of the coming winter crept along my bones as I picked up the second draft. Maybe I was coming down with something.
“So, although you admit to no inside knowledge about it, you’re saying that the Kinross brass might have had a good reason for arranging an accident for Jack Dowden.”
“You said that, not me!”
“Would you swear that there’s nothing to what I’ve said?”
“Well, you know, anything’s possible.”
“That’s right. Unfortunately, it isn’t proof of anything. Now tell me about the fort.”
“You were in my mirror all the way from the City yard. I could have blown the whistle on you.”
“But you didn’t. That’s why I didn’t come blundering in the front door right after you.” O’Mara nodded. He’d been thinking about that. He finished another glass, still looking as uncomfortable as when he had sat down. He was sitting like his back hurt and it was driving him crazy.
“What kind of garbage are you getting from the city and why are you burying it there?”
There, I’d said it. I’d asked the big question. All O’Mara had to do was hit me on the nose or answer. He compromised by wetting his lips with his grey tongue. He had another half-draft and put the glass down again. Soon he was moving the glass around his end of the table, breaking up the wet rings of condensation and spilled beer. At last he lifted his eyes and looked me in the eye.
“The city has these cross-walk lights,” he said. “The boxes that control the lights are full of PCBs. When they wear out or get broken, they have to go somewhere. There are other things, too, other toxic garbage. The city gets us to dump it like we get rid of a lot of other stuff.”
“But that other stuff doesn’t all get buried in the new earthworks of Fort Mississauga.”
“Right. We dump a lot of the liquid-the metallic stuff-into the lake from there. It’s the perfect spot and nobody even guesses we have a pipe going into the lake. And that close to the river, if they spotted our stuff, they’d think it came from up the river someplace.”
“So the fort’s the main dumping spot?”
“Yeah, but we also store stuff there. Stuff that’s too hot to keep in the yard. We sometimes rig a pig there if we’re selling fuel oil over the river.”
“Pig? What are you talking about?”
“It’s an inflatable plastic bag, about the size of a swimming-pool liner. You fill it up with toxic garbage after sticking it into an empty tank of a big tanker, then you fill up the rest with regular bunker C, stove oil, domestic fuel oil or diesel fuel oil. It doesn’t matter, as long as you’ve got a buyer on the other side. You know the scam from the papers last spring. They nearly put us out of business. We had to keep our noses clean for a while because they tightened up the border inspection on the few points they didn’t close down.”
“So this pig would get your PCBs through customs?”
“Yeah. Once on the other side, we would break the pig with steel rods and let the two substances mix.”
“It would have served you right if the damned stuff exploded.”
“Hey, Cooperman, I was just following orders. Besides, PCBs are very stable and don’t combine with anything at low temperatures. Like, they’re inert.”
“Gee, I wonder what all the fuss is about! Have you ever heard of dioxin? Did Jack Dowden ever mention TCDD? There’s a whole alphabet soup of garbage you’ve been chauffeuring around the countryside! Didn’t it ever bother you? Damn it, O’Mara, your grandchildren could be born with their belly-buttons where their chins should be. You should read up on this stuff you’re messing with.”
“Kinross has always treated me right, Cooperman. I’ll say that for them.”