For a few minutes I stood examining an early American terracotta figure with a broken ear, then Pete called on everybody, all eight of us, to be seated. He reviewed what was already known about the death of Abram Wise-stealing my thunder-and introduced me as a friend of the investigation. He mentioned a couple of my successful cases, not all of them, then pulled me to the front of Wise’s old desk.
“The answer to why Abe Wise was killed is obvious,” I began. “He was killed because he was hated. ‘Hated’ is strong language, but when you think about it, it fills the bill.”
“Are you going to give a lecture, Benny?” McStu asked, innocently. “Why don’t you sit down and join the party?” He gave me a big grin, giving me a fine view of the space between his two front teeth. I found a chair, and we all moved our chairs into a circle, except for the Armstrongs who were sitting on a velvet couch.
“Look, all of you.” It was Mickey. “Nobody says Mr. Wise was an angel, but, given his … his … ”
“Questionable activities,” prompted McStu.
“Criminal past and present,” suggested Pete.
“Whatever,” said Mickey, shaking his head. “Mr. Wise was well respected inside the community he worked among. I can’t believe that he was killed by another … by somebody he did business with. Because he always played fair. He told me that it was the only way to play when you couldn’t write down the rules.” Victoria took his hand when he stopped talking.
“Fair enough,” I said. “I agree with Mickey. What happened to Mr. Wise had nothing to do with his criminal activities. He was killed because of something that happened many years ago.”
“I should have brought a sandwich,” Syl Ryan whispered to Victoria.
“When Abe Wise was still a young burglar, back in 1952, he was picked up, caught with the goods and arrested one night by probational patrolman Michael Prescott of Niagara Regional. It was a fair cop. Wise had been under surveillance for some time and he was caught with enough evidence to have sent him to Kingston for a few years or at least to a reformatory. But, Ed Neustadt, Prescott’s senior officer, let Wise walk. Why? We’ll have subpoena Prescott up in Muskoka. All we know right now is that Wise hated Neustadt. He went to his funeral, he told me, expressly to dance on his grave and to tarnish Neustadt’s reputation just by showing up. The only conclusion we can draw from this is that there was something between them: a guilty secret, perhaps. Let’s suppose that it was a secret. Something known to the young burglar and the ambitious policeman. What could it have been?
“Nineteen fifty-two was the year of the Tatarski case. I’ve checked the date of Wise’s arrest and the trial date. The trial was in its eighth day. It went to the jury on the following afternoon. For those of you old enough to remember, it was a major story around here and it made national headlines because it was a capital case involving a young unwed mother. Ed Neustadt was in charge of the investigation and I suggest to you that the secret had to do with this case. What could a young punk like Wise know about the Tatarskis? Did he live near them? No. Did he go to school with them? No. Did he know their house because he had gone into it during the commission of a robbery? Possibly, very possibly. Wasn’t he caught in the act in that same neighbourhood while the trial was in progress?
“But Mary Tatarski was convicted of killing her mother and then making the scene look like a burglary had been interrupted. Remember that Mary was old enough to remember the break-in five years earlier when her father was killed. A young impressionable girl like Mary, with a grievance against her mother, the Crown argued, wouldn’t have forgotten that.
“We know that Ed Neustadt needed the conviction of Mary Tatarski to advance his career. He also may have had some personal reason for proceeding with the case after he had got Wise to admit that he was the burglar who had been interrupted by Anastasia Tatarski that night. I don’t think this is the place to probe Neustadt’s warped character. We know he was tenacious, unforgiving-”
“He was an avenging son of a bitch!” shouted Sylvester Ryan, the studs and rings in his ears catching the light. “He never gave anyone a break.”
“Well, at least some of us agree that Neustadt had a certain zeal in doing the work he was paid to do. But why would he purposely overlook testimony that would clear the Tatarski woman? To my mind there is only one possibility: he was sure that if she hadn’t done this crime, she had done the earlier crime. He was sure Mary murdered her father!”
“But she was just a teenager!” McStu protested.
“Even so,” I said. “I didn’t say she did murder her father, I’m saying that Neustadt was sure she did. It was his way of getting himself off the hook for not telling the Crown prosecutor that Mary Tatarski was innocent. She had played him for a sucker when he was a fresh young cop. He had been beguiled by her, McStu. So, now he was going to show her, pay her back, and protect his own, simply by saying nothing.”
“I’m beginning to see through this,” McStu said, pulling at an earlobe. “His big problem is what is he going to do with young Wise. He has to shut him up.”
“Right! He trades liberty for silence.”
“Wise walks and the Tatarski case goes to the jury,” Pete said, half to himself.
“That’s no deal,” Hart volunteered. “It’s an invitation to blackmail.”
“The Abe Wise of 1952 wasn’t as canny as the Wise who was just murdered. It would have taken him a while. Don’t forget, Neustadt had been browbeating him all night trying to get him to confess to having broken into the Tatarski house as well as all those other houses. And when Wise finally realized what had happened, how he had been used, Mary Tatarski was dead, forgotten, except for Duncan Harvey’s efforts to clear her name. Wise grew to hate Neustadt for his big favour: for letting him go on those terms.”
“Are you saying that Abe Wise killed Neustadt because of what happened forty years ago? Nobody’s going to believe that!”
“Sit down, Mickey. When did I say that Wise did the deed? I know all he had to do was have a quick word with you, or Phil or Syl, but I didn’t say he did. Still, you raise a very good point, one we should all remember: why did the murderer take so long to act? Why the delay? Remember that. What I hope I’ve been able to establish is the connection between Wise and Neustadt running through the Tatarski case.”
“Benny, Duncan Harvey’s been saying that Mary Tatarski was innocent for years. I just wrote a book about it. She shouldn’t have been hanged.”
“You’re right. Both of you deserve a lot of credit. It’s because of you that we know what happened next.”
“What did?” asked Julie, her face still puffy and red from the night before. “What happened to her family?”
“First, they left town and changed their names. There was fallout as there always is after an execution. Margaret, the older daughter, committed suicide after failing to re-establish her life on some firm basis in a new town. Freddy, the youngest, on the other hand came back to Grantham when he was still fairly young and started up a business. He made a success of himself. He started up the Nuts amp; Bolts chain of automobile service centres and made a lot of money.”
“Freddy Tait! Are you saying that Freddy Tait was Mary Tatarski’s brother? I never heard that!” Hart Wise was suddenly taking more of an interest. “He was a great mechanic.”