“I’m putting you in a taxi,” I told Anna.
“In a pig’s eye, as you always say. You’re not packing me off home the first time the game gets rough.”
“It’s not a game! These are the boys I was telling you about. Let me see you safe, then I can concentrate on this damned mess.”
“I would prefer not to.” She made it sound like a quotation. I certainly couldn’t move her. After another minute we worked our way from Chestnut Street, through the bus terminal to Academy. From there it was a short sprint to my apartment. I left Anna standing behind a stout maple, while I surveyed the rest of the way to the front door. The street was quiet and there were no boogeymen hiding on the landing watching me fish out my key.
Once inside, with the door locked and bolted, we began to find our courage again. I brought out a bottle of cognac and we both had a short sharp shot, just enough to restore perspective.
“You’d better call your pal Savas. He should know about this. And about the other night. Does he know about your drive out to Port Richmond?”
“Savas has his hands full tonight. The best thing we can do is give Savas a wide berth.”
“Until morning.”
“Sure. If you insist.” Anna smiled at that and tried to relax. But I could see that she was shivering. I slipped her coat back over her shoulders and held her for a few minutes. That seemed to help.
“What I really need is a scalding hot bath,” she said. “That’s my defence against all known and unknown terrors.”
“Help yourself,” I said, suddenly aware of the limitations of my bachelor establishment. I found some fresh towels and a terry-cloth robe and handed them to her. She closed the door, and soon I heard the sound of running water. The apartment walls were looking at me as I sat there watching steam billow from the crack at the bottom of the door.
Later … But that’s nobody’s business.
TWENTY-FIVE
I was having my morning coffee at the Diana Sweets and reading the Saturday Globe and Mail, when I felt an extra two hundred pounds on the bench I was sitting on. Staff Sergeant Chris Savas had joined me and the napkin dispenser. He carried his own coffee in a foam cup with a plastic lid. He didn’t say anything. Before I even got my mouth open to tell him what he knew already-that he looked like he’d been up all night-Pete Staziak moved into the place opposite me. He carried no coffee of his own, but he too didn’t look like a man who’d spent the night in the bosom of his family. I waved for the waitress. Savas surrendered his foam cup, and we ordered a new round to start afresh.
“Okay,” I said. “I won’t make any clever remarks about burning the midnight oil. I’ll speak when spoken to.”
“Damn right,” said Pete, taking off his hat and giving us all a look at the red line around his head.
When the coffee arrived, Savas, at my elbow, took a sip and then turned to me. “What the hell do you think’s going on? I’ll be damned if I can figure it out.” Such an admission from Chris was simply a ploy of some sort. He was too good a cop to be all that much at sea. It was meant to disarm me, to turn me into a cooperative witness. I shrugged. It seemed the best thing to do under the circumstances. Then Pete joined in:
“What cards are you holding face down, Benny? That’s really all we want to know.”
“Just the name of my client. That’s all I care about. The rest is yours or anybody else’s. But remember, I only came into this thing a week ago last Tuesday.”
Silently, Pete pulled out his wallet and handed Chris a five-dollar bill. “What’s that all about?” I asked.
“Chris said you wouldn’t volunteer the fact that there was bad blood between you and Ross Forbes. I said different, that’s all.”
“You didn’t give me time, damn it! I didn’t know you were putting money on me. Hey, and besides, Ross Forbes isn’t in the morgue. It’s his old man, who has never laid a glove on me.”
“The point is, you aren’t as freshly into this as you let on, Benny. That shows a lack of trust, a lack of openness-”
“Bull! I gotta mouthful of coffee and you just sat down, for crying out loud. What do you want, a printout of my comings and goings for the last ten years?” Chris leaned away from me. Either my breath was bad or I was making my point and he was not going to dispute it. He certainly wasn’t going to return Pete’s five. I ignored Chris for the moment and faced Pete. “How are you getting along on the other one?”
“Professional job. Very tidy,” Pete said.
“Those pros took one of the Kinross drivers for a ride on Thursday night. I’d keep an eye on the house of Brian O’Mara who was within an ace of being accurately described as ‘late of the parish.’”
“He didn’t report anything.”
“What do you expect? These guys always play deaf and dumb when it does them the least good. I know it happened because I was there.”
“Damn!”
“They tried to get you too?” I nodded, and Chris gave Staziak a look.
“What’s more, after we left the club last night, Anna and I went to that ex-bank restaurant at the corner to talk. When we left, a car was following us. We had to scuttle through back alleys to my place.”
“What time was that?”
“After eleven-thirty. Maybe a quarter to twelve.”
“What kind of car was it?” Pete was leaning towards me as though a lot was riding on my answer.
“Some kind of Ford, I think. I didn’t wait around to get the registration.” Pete looked at Chris and then at me:
“I was looking for you around then, Benny.” He had taken on a sheepish look. “I didn’t think you’d take me for a hoodlum with the mob.”
“You son of a bitch!” I yelled, louder than I intended. Heads turned to see what was happening in our booth. I was getting hot where my tie was tied too tight. “You nearly scared Anna to death!”
“Sorry, Benny. Really, I had no idea!” He kept looking at Chris to help him out, but his partner let him stew. “Jeez, Benny. I only wanted to talk to you. Maybe I shouldda honked?”
“We woke up Apply Mary and ran four or five blocks!”
“Why don’t you two continue this on your own time,” Chris suggested. “I’ve got the jist of both your arguments. Just give it a rest.” Chris looked at each of us and I bit my tongue.
“What’s happening with the Pásztory investigation?” I asked Pete, hoping that it was an embarrassing question. “I didn’t read in the Beacon that the body was found under Fort Mississauga in a hole with a few tons of poisonous waste.”
“We don’t want to scare the villains away, Benny. If they know we have the body, they must know where we found it.”
“I don’t see the advantage,” I admitted.
“If we talk to somebody who knows more than has appeared in the paper, then we know we’re on to something. Crooks have a hard time keeping straight what they know and what they’ve read in the press.”
“In that, crooks are like everybody else,” I said. “But, I’ll remember that. I can, by the way, give you a description of the three hoods who borrowed me and O’Mara from the Harding House on Thursday night.”
“Is that where your consulting rooms are located these days?” Chris was beginning to sound like his old self.
“Why don’t you go home and have a shower?” I asked. “It’s one thing to be up all night, but another to look it. Chris, you look it.”
“I will, I will, but first I want to know why you were having lunch with Ross Forbes yesterday at the Grantham Club?”