“And have you run into any exciting corns or bunions since we last talked?”
“Ah, Benny. You don’t know the half of it. The practice of medicine, even below the knee, continues to be rewarding, but my private life is a burden. I don’t want to go into that. I feel a little like the philandering surgeon that Oliver St. John Gogarty commented on: I made my reputation with my knife and lost it with my fork. I see myself as the arch mender, if you’ll excuse the horrible pun.” He went on in that vein for a few minutes, with all sorts of references flying high and wide, well beyond my fielding skills. He always had nice things to say about Anna and I appreciated him for those.
Then Chris Savas was there standing in a pool of water from rain dripping from his raincoat and holding an umbrella that had been blown inside out by the wind. He looked awkward standing there until I remembered how seldom he had climbed the stairs to my office. After introductions and a few pleasantries which again required a Dublin scholar to understand them, Frank tried out his Greek on Chris. There must be more kinds of Greek than one because both of them looked bewildered by what the other added to the three or four exchanges, and then they gave up and returned to English, where I tried to join them. As it turned out, Frank knew the island of Cyprus from some years ago and so I was again excluded from the conversation while unfamiliar place names filled the empty hallway between our offices. In the end, Frank begged off further palaver, said good-night, and went down the stairs and into the chilly night.
“Is Dr Bushmill a good friend, Benny?” Frank asked when the street door closed.
“He’s taken a few lumps on the head on my behalf since I’ve known him. Yes, he’s a good friend. He’s also trying to become my university.”
“Whenever you can find him sober after hours.”
“Oh, you know about Frank, do you?”
“I live in this town, Benny, and Frank isn’t inconspicuous.”
“He’s a damn good friend, Chris. I wish he could be less of a pain to himself.”
“And St. Patrick’s Day is coming. He’s taking the short road to the cemetery if you ask me.”
“What brings you to my consulting rooms?”
“Pete’s been filling me in about Wise and Neustadt. I thought that maybe we should talk after all.”
He pulled up a chair, one of the leftovers from my father’s store, and I pulled my swivel chair around so that the desk didn’t come between us. It was my training in amateur theatre that suggested this approach.
“Did you know Wise?” I asked.
“Knew? Who knew Abe Wise? He was always a mystery man. The only time he was arrested was before you were in long pants. My very first partner, dear old Michael Prescott, had the pleasure of bringing him in with a bag of illegal goodies one night on Louisa Street. It was his first collar, Benny. He told me about it one night on Lake Street when he’d been shot up and I was trying to keep him talking until the ambulance arrived. Michael-we never called him Mike-was a lot older than me; he would have been well away into his retirement now if-”
“If he hadn’t died in the line of duty?”
“Michael? Dead? Not a chance. He’s still running a resort up on Lake Muskoka. Still plays squash every morning like he’s forty. Still collects Toby mugs. Still dresses like a kid. No, Benny, Michael quit Niagara Regional when Neustadt got too much for him.”
“When was that?”
Nineteen seventy-nine.”
“No, I mean when he arrested Wise.”
“That was in nineteen fifty-two.”
“The year of the Tatarski case.”
“Yeah. This happened about a week into her trial.”
“Pete told me that Neustadt turned Wise loose. Is that right?”
“Yeah. And after Michael had worked so hard. He’d been watching the kid, see. Saw him go into the house and was waiting for him when he came out with the loot. He was feeling like a real cop when he brought him into the station. Michael said that Neustadt questioned the kid for half the night. Then he asked Michael to step into the interrogation room with them. Wise was sitting with his head down on the table and Ed came over to Michael saying that he thought that since the stolen goods had been recovered and since the lad-he called him a lad- had been only playing at breaking and entering and since … He went on and on with his ‘sinces.’ Michael could see what was coming, so he was ready for it. I mean, hell, Ed was a sergeant, for Christ’s sake, and Michael was still on probation …”
“So he let Wise walk.”
“Yeah. And that was the last time Abe Wise was in a police station.”
“He tried to make Michael Prescott believe that he had caught Wise taking his first step on a road of crime and this was the moment to reclaim him. Is that it?”
“That was his version.”
“But Prescott didn’t buy that?”
“Hell no! That kid had been in and out more windows than Peter Pan, for Christ’s sake! That’s what Michael said. He had been watching him.”
“That fits with what his first wife told me. Do you know why he let Wise walk? Did your friend?”
“I used to drag it out every couple of years, usually when I’d had a run-in with Ed. Never could figure it.”
“I think I’m beginning to see some light. It’s the only thing that makes it make sense.”
“What’s that?”
“We know that Wise was working that part of town: Welland Avenue and north of there. Suppose, just suppose for a minute, that Wise also broke into the Tatarski house. Russell Avenue. It’s in the same part of town.”
“Hey, what are you saying?”
“I’m not saying anything, I’m supposing, thinking out loud.” I tried to focus again before speaking. “Wise goes into the Tatarski house. Unfortunately, Mary’s mother hears him. She comes downstairs, there’s a struggle, and she’s killed. It’s murder while a robbery is in progress. Neustadt isn’t the first cop on the scene, but he is called in. Came running, I’ll bet, because he had been in that house before.”
“So, when Michael Prescott collars young Wise, Neustadt says nothing about what he suspects, or even what he forced Wise to admit. Mary Tatarski’s trial is going on.” Chris stared out my window with his fingers coming together under his chin. I let him think for a second. “Well, well, well!” he said.
“Yeah. Does he call up the Crown prosecutor and say ‘Let the girl go, I’ve got the real killer,’ or does he let the kid walk?”
“Neustadt was the chief Crown witness. He headed the whole investigation. He would have had to admit he’d read all of the evidence wrong. His whole career was riding on this trial and his handling of this case.”
Savas blew some air between his teeth. It wasn’t quite a whistle. “Well, well,” he said.
“What do you think, Chris?”
“Benny, I’ve been a cop all my working life. If you’d said that about anybody at Niagara Regional except Ed, I’d have hit you so hard you wouldn’t be able to stand until Christmas. But Neustadt …”
“But Neustadt …” We didn’t speak for a couple of minutes.
“It makes sense, Benny. I never would have thought … You see, Ed was the first man on the scene when the Tatarski house was robbed five years earlier. Did you know that? He let the girl walk that time. Old Ed wasn’t going to be played for a sap twice. Two break-ins stretched the plausible.”
“He saw the second break-in as a copycat of the first, the real break-in. It made a believable story. It covered the known facts or I’ve misread McStu’s book.”
“Neustadt had this tenacious streak in him. He wouldn’t let go.”
“So, there was an understanding between Wise and Neustadt. A deal had been agreed to, even if they didn’t put it into words. Wise would walk and keep his mouth shut. And the trial would move on just the way it was planned.”
“You know, Benny, there are no living witnesses. They’re all dead: the Tatarski girl, the mother, Ed, and Wise.”