Other news in the papers looked peculiar and irrelevant, like news from a distant country. European events were on the front page of the Beacon while The Globe’s dealt with domestic matters that formerly stayed in the closet. I went through both papers without skipping, eating up everything from the ads to the editorials. I needed all this as a spring tonic to get me up and moving again. I was spread out with the papers on the rug when the phone rang. I felt a stitch in my hip as I got up to answer it. I was feeling my years.
“Hello?”
“Benny? Pete. What are you doing?”
“I’m goofing off while Anna is spending the weekend with visiting historians up at Secord. And I’ve been reading in the papers all about my friend Pete Staziak and his latest investigation.”
“Tell you a little secret, Benny. I get help from the public. You couldn’t guess how many anonymous tips cross my desk.”
“You got a description from the salesmen?”
“Why can’t you play by the rules?”
“Sometimes, Pete, you stumble across things and you can’t wait, or get involved right then. It’s a nasty part of my business.”
“Until you lose your damned licence, Benny!”
“Sorry, Pete. Would you rather I just tiptoed away?”
“Isn’t that what you did?” he said, letting his anger show in his voice. Before I could respond, he had caught his breath and came back at me on a totally new tack. “How are you anyway, Benny?”
“I feel pretty good, considering.”
“Considering. Oh, you’ve heard, then?”
“What? I was hoping that my client, Abram Wise, might call me to answer some of the questions he keeps sidestepping whenever I see him.”
“He’s not going to phone, Benny.”
“You always were a pessimist, Pete?’
“Benny, he’s not going to call, he’s not going to write and he’s not gong to fax anybody any more The spring will come at last, Benny, but not for Abe Wise. He’s finished buttoning and unbuttoning forever. Do you get my meaning, Benny?”
“I don’t like this, Pete. I haven’t even cashed his cheque yet. Will the bank honour it, or is everything on hold?”
“Slow down. You aren’t denying that you were working for Abe Wise?”
“I’m not ashamed of work, Pete. I didn’t like the threats he gave me to take the job, but once he had my attention, he treated me fair enough. What is it you are telling me?”
“What you’ve already guessed. Your client is, even as we speak, being moved downtown where he is going to a new address in a refrigerator drawer. Wise is booked to have a post mortem first thing Monday morning. Any other questions?”
“When did all this happen? I was over there yesterday! Friday. He didn’t just sicken and die, right?”
“Right. He took a nine-millimetre slug between the eyes. That is if the piece that was on the floor did the shooting, which is the handiest possibility.”
“How did you learn about me?”
“Not from you, damn it! You might have mentioned the fact when I was talking to you on Tuesday. The housekeeper, Victoria Armstrong, gave me a list of the people in and out for the last couple of days. Not informing the authorities is getting to be a habit with you, Benny. Watch it!”
“Are you in charge of the case?”
“Until I hear I ain’t, I am. You think we should have a little talk?”
“I was just going to suggest it. Pete, does this mean we’re in the middle of a gang war?”
“If you’re lumping in the Shaw murder, you could have a point. Shaw’s not too clean when you take a close look. This we don’t need, Benny. Remember when that guy got it in the tower overlooking Niagara Falls? That was a real bloodbath. Emptied a lot of files around here. But this time, I don’t know. We got the smoking gun, but there are no prints on it.”
“When do you want to see me?”
“Gimme an hour, hour and a half, to go through some stuff. Then you better come up here to the house. You been here, right, so you can find your way. See you, Benny.” He hung up and I held onto the stinging receiver for another ten seconds or so before I put it down. Damn it! I thought, what next?
I made a single wrong turn on my way to the Wise house, but it was enough to make me later than I’d intended. There were three cop cars parked in front and Pete’s own car around back. Inside, Victoria took my coat, just like old times. Her eyes were red. She looked like she’d been through a Cuisinart, the way her hair was all over the place. I saw uniforms and lab-coated forensic people going about their business. Pete stood by the big partners desk surrounded by yellow plastic tape inviting me to stay clear of the Crime Scene. Pete was talking to Mickey and one of the uniforms. He gave me a short grin of recognition when he saw me standing beyond the tape. After a few minutes he climbed over the plastic and came towards me, passed me and went on, past a view of a big, well-equipped kitchen, to a large TV room I hadn’t seen before. It too was a show-off location for little brown clay figures, paintings and wall-hangings. Victoria was there with Phil and Sidney. Syl had been taken downtown, I was told later, for questioning about an unrelated matter. Victoria slipped me a smile, but there was worry written in her brown eyes.
“You know everybody?” Pete asked, waving his hand in the direction of those sitting down and not excluding Mickey and the uniform who had followed us into the room. “Remember Corporal Kyle, Benny? He ran you in once on a B and E.”
“Thanks for the memory, Sergeant,” I said through my teeth. “Hello, Corporal. Good to see you.”
Pete asked a few questions of each of the people in the room and then fired some at me. They had to do with times and dates. He was still trying to get the background, who was where, and who could observe whom and when. I found out that Wise slept in a room above the familiar office and that Mickey and Victoria shared a room on the third floor at the back. There were several spare rooms reserved for special guests as well as rooms for both Hart and Julie on the second floor. It was early days in the investigation. Just the same, Pete looked like he had been up all night.
“Let’s get out of here for a few minutes,” Pete said to me after about twenty minutes of this. “I’m out of cigarettes.”
“Great! That’s one thing the suburbs do well. Hundreds of places wherever you look.” He took another three minutes whispering to Kyle in the kitchen before we finally headed out the door.
“Okay, we’ll take my car.” We got in and even after driving around for ten minutes, we hadn’t seen anything that looked like it might sell tobacco. After another five minutes of turning and twisting, Staziak spotted a 7 Eleven store not far from the Forks Road.
“Abe Wise died before his work was finished,” I said, as Pete fumbled with the car door.
“How do you mean?”
“Well, there’s a lot of room for improvement in the location of tobacco outlets around here. Wasn’t tobacco one of his rackets?”
“See what you mean. I don’t think it was a major interest of his for at least a year. I’ll be right back.” I watched him move away from the car and into the store with its bright red-and-blue plastic soft-drink signs outside. The trees brushed naked branches against the dusty galvanized roof. A girl coming out of the store with a silvery bag of potato chips pulled up her collar as she walked to a car stuffed with kids.
When Pete Staziak got back and had lighted his first smoke in a long while-by the look of him-I knew that he was ready with questions for me. I filled him in on how I had won the opportunity to work for Abram Wise in the first place and then told him how I’d seen him last on Friday. He was interested in my telling him the reason why I was hired and I told Pete I’d send a free sample of my report writing to his office.