The Suicide Murders (11 page)

SEVENTEEN

It was pushing noon when I rolled out of the sack. I remember hearing that phrase stuck in my head. The events of the past twenty-four hours, I’m glad to say, didn’t rush back like the full tide as soon as my eyes were open. I woke into something like peace. And then my mother phoned.

“Benny, where were you yesterday? I tried to get you. I called at midnight and you still weren’t home. You keeping something from me, Benny? You out with a
shiksa
when there are lots of nice Jewish girls sitting at home waiting for you to ask them out? Benny, you should think more of yourself. Have a little pride. Anyway, I thought you were going to call me yesterday. So, what happened?”

“Ma, call me back. I just got up. I’ve been working on a case.” I upset a stack of paperbacks on a chair trying to reach out and turn around the clock.

“A case? A case of beer maybe. Look, Benny, you’ve got to live your own life. Your father says you haven’t been to see Melvyn all week. That’s your business. You got a case; I understand. It doesn’t hurt to say hello to Melvyn, Benny, you hear?”

“Ma, I can’t talk now, honest. I’ve been up all night.”

“Benny, what you do with your time is your own business. I’ve got two glass eyes where you’re concerned.”

“Ma, I’m hanging up. I’m going to hang up the phone.”

“A son doesn’t hang up on his mother, Benny.”

“I’ll see you both for supper tomorrow night. Bye.”

“We’re having liver. I’ll see how I feel. If I feel like liver, we’ll have liver.”

“See you tomorrow night. Give Pa my love. Goodbye.”

“That’s better. Goodbye.” She banged down the phone before I had a chance to. What the newspapers call a preemptive strike.

I flipped the clock back up on the blanket with a curved wrist shot that had to be seen to be believed. It was even later than I feared. My toes found my socks just out of sight under the tumbling bedclothes, and then I tried easing my legs out of the covers. I treated myself to clean underwear and went through the ball of twisted shirtsleeves and tails and pulled out a shirt that looked as though I consigned it to the laundry on insufficient evidence. My suit smelled as though it had been simmering all night in old soup.

While I was shaving, the details of last night began to tumble into place like loose hair falling from my comb. I recalled trying to shut out the light at eight o’clock in the morning on a spring day by turning out the switch. The last thing I remembered doing was calling the hospital and finding out that Frank was out of danger: just sleeping off the effects of a bump on the head and a few earlier slugs of whiskey. I must be a decent fellow. I’ll put my name up for the peeper of the year award.

I called the hospital again and asked for him without calling him “Doctor”; I don’t think I could cope with any confusion this early in the day. It took a few minutes, but eventually they put me through.

“Hello, Frank?”

“Who is this?”

“It’s your neighbour, Benny.”

“Oh, it’s you, is it. It was for the love of you that I got this wallop on the back of my head.”

“What happened?”

“I was sitting in my office trying to determine whether to cut my throat or buy and expensive dinner, when I heard a noise coming from your office. I thought it was you returning, Ben, and hoped for a word or two. The door was open. I think I called out your name as I came out of my shop. The door stood wide open, but the room was empty. My last thought before the stars came out and danced a mazurka on my medulla oblongata was wondering where you’d disappeared to.”

“That’s all you remember?”

“Whoever it was must have been standing behind the door. I didn’t see a thing. Wait a minute, I seem to remember hearing something like a whisper, a hiss a second before the whack.”

“How are you feeling? How long are they going to put up with you?”

“I resent that. I think they’re showing signs that I’m going to be turfed out at any moment. When the phone rang just now, the nurses flipped a coin to see whether I shouldn’t be made to take it in the hall. They show no respect.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that you’re feeling better. I’ll drop in to see you later, if they don’t proceed with the eviction. Why not pull rank on them, and demand further bed-rest? Got to go. Be talking to you.”

I was glad I didn’t have Frank’s blood on my hands, even if some got on the carpet.

I walked right by the front door of “Bagels” without looking in. Instead, I slipped into a pedestal seat at the counter of the United and caught the eye of the usual girl. She went through the routine with me. I took it toasted today, in honour of the fact that it was a full week since Myrna Yates had walked up my stairs with her suspicions. My reliable itch told me that Vern Harrington was due for a second visit. And I thought I had something this time to make him hold still.

The tulip buds in the planters by the war memorial were opening as I walked up the steps of City Hall. The girl who watches over the privacy of the alderman jumped up when she saw me coming.

“Was there something?” I asked her, as she placed her frail body between me and Harrington’s door.

“Oh, no,” she said. “You’re not getting by me this time.”

“Miss Keiller, I think you’re making a mistake.”

“Oh, no, I’m not. You’d better go, or I’ll call a commissionaire.” Her words were tough, but she was a cream-puff.

“You’d better call three or four of them. And when they’re here, maybe you’ll all take this note in to Mr. Harrington.” I gave her my friendliest grin. She moved her lower lip in confusion. She had one of those permanent waves that leaves the hair looking wringing wet. Her rouge and the rest of her make-up didn’t go with the pink plastic glasses. She was like a Thunderbird with wooden wheels. She took the note from me, and held it like she thought it contained a jack-in-the-box. I tried to picture Harrington’s face as he opened the envelope and read:

Something in his office fell over. It wasn’t a sharp thud, but a broadloom-blunted one. Harrington was in the doorway, his face paperwhite. He was leaning on the door frame, trapping Miss Keiller inside his office. I could see her under his arm, picking up one of the slender tulip chairs.

“What do you want?” he said, underlining each word because the words didn’t seem to have enough blood in them by themselves.

“Ten minutes,” I said. “Just ten minutes.” He huffed and puffed, and when he was finished I was facing him across his desk. Miss Keiller had cleared out.

“All right: ten minutes.”

“First of all, I want you to know I’m not sore at you for making things tough for me. You slowed me down, but I’m fast and wiry. I know about you and Zekerman. And I still want to know what you know about Chester Yates’ death. Just like last time.”

“You carry a big stick. Ask your questions.”

“You knew Chester for a long time?” He rubbed his nose on his knuckles.

“We were at school, university and for a while in business together. We played golf once a week. Our wives get along.”

“Can you think of any reason why somebody might want to see him dead?”

“You mean murdered. No. Chester had no enemies. Can’t name one. Not in private life or business. I know that in business it’s natural to collect enemies, but not Chester. That wasn’t his way. He was, well, didn’t like leaving blood on the floor.”

“Was he depressed near the end?”

“Well, he shot himself, didn’t he? That ought to prove something.”

“Not in a court of law, Mr. Harrington. That’s reasoning from effects to causes. Did he seem depressed to you?”

“No, not if you put it that way.”

“No sign of business stress, or personal trouble?”

“Not that I saw, but he could have been …”

“Yes?”

“I was going to say that he could have hidden it. But that wouldn’t be Chester. Chester couldn’t dissemble. It was beyond him. A bad poker player was Chester.”

“You knew that he was one of Zekerman’s regulars too?” Harrington’s eyes widened. If I’d crowned him with one of his testimonials, gilt-frame and all, his reaction would have been less telling.

“The poor bugger,” he said simply.

“Zekerman bite?”

“That goddamned blackmailer could have driven him to suicide. God knows I’ve thought about it often enough myself.” I tried not to let my delight show in my face. “Zekerman didn’t have patients, he only had suckers he bled. I’ve been on his hook for four years. Jeeze, I didn’t know Chester was on the end of his gaff too. Slimy son of a bitch.”

“How do you know that he only treated suckers? What makes you so sure there were others?”

“I didn’t need to read it in a book. He made me crawl to see him with my money every month. We’d go through the motions of sitting in his big leather chairs and he would ask me questions about myself, and about how I felt about paying him the money, and how that by paying I was atoning in a measure for … for what he knew about what I’d done. I didn’t think for a minute that I was his only sucker. He had to have others, and he knew just how hard to squeeze them.”

“He must have squeezed too hard a few days ago.”

“Blackmail’s a dirty game. If you’re going into Zekerman’s practice, you’ll never know when you’re squeezing your last sucker. It’s over that fast.”

“You seem to know a lot about it.”

“You have no idea how glad I am that that … filth is dead. If I had more nerve, I’d have done it myself.”

“Did Zekerman ever ask you about Chester?”

“Zekerman made me stay and talk the full fifty minutes. He asked about city politics.”

“Did he know about C2?”

“Core Two? Yes he knew about that. But I didn’t tell him about it.”

“Who else would know about Core Two?”

“It’s a short list: me, the mayor, and, of course, Bill Ward.”

“Of course.” I had most of my ten minutes’ worth, but before I left, I thought I’d better try one more shot. “Tell me a little more about Core Two.” He looked a little surprised, as though I was skipping the hard questions and giving him another easy one.

“Well, it’s common knowledge that we have been examining plans for a satellite business centre and city hall branch on the other side of the creek someplace. The actual location, and the details of the project are still highly confidential, for reasons that are obvious.”

“Chester was in on it?”

“Certainly not. He was in a position to make a pile. It would have been most improper for him to have known anything about it.”

“I see. Can you imagine how Zekerman found out?”

“Nothing that man did would surprise me. He was the incarnation of evil, that man.”

“You mentioned it.” Harrington was holding on hard to the edge of his desk, like he was at a political rally. I had to bring him down from the heights somehow. “Look, Mr. Harrington, I know that Zekerman had you in his vise. I think I know how tight he could turn it. But I don’t care about that. I’m only concerned with finding out who killed Chester. I’m not trying to solve the problems of the world, I just want to find one murderer. That’s all.” That said it plain. I was still interested in what Zekerman had on him, but he didn’t need to know that. And I knew that when I found it, it might only be sensational and not important. When I left Harrington standing there, it looked like he was trying to see whether he could hold his breath for a full minute. It didn’t look as though he was going to make it.

As I started walking down Church Street, I saw my face reflected in a store window. There was a big grin on my kisser, and I felt as good about life as someone opening up a new bar of soap for a hot bath.

EIGHTEEN

The day was putting up an effort to help out the tourist trade, but there wasn’t much heart in it, and the “Tourist Homes” along the Queenston Road would have to wait for later in the spring to make their killing. This was the time to get out into the yard and get rid of the crud that grows under the snow drifts through the winter. It was still too early for there to be much green about, except in places like City Hall where it was all laid on like
gezundheit
follows a sneeze. I went into a pay-phone booth, one of the ones with the wrap-around plastic window, and put in a call to Pete Staziak. I had to wait about three minutes until they found him.

“Yeah?”

“Pete, have they taken the phone out of your office?”

“Oh, it’s you. The Cat Bandit.”

“Right, and I’m going to cut you in. It’s not fair that you shouldn’t get your share. You do the thinking and I’ll take the risks. Anything new on Zekerman?”

“I’ll put you through to Harrow.”

“Pete! I take it back. What do you hear? Come on, you know I don’t want to go to work searching titles at my age.”

“You just don’t want to go to work.”

“You played that card. Come on, think up a new one. You tell me something and I’ll tell you something.”

“Big deal. Zekerman’s not mine. Why don’t you sleuth a little for your old pal?”

“You can look pretty good in the Department if you know that Zekerman was blackmailing everybody and his brother. You can drop that in their laps.”

“Sure, and how do I answer their question, ‘Who told me?’”

“Look, would I steer you wrong? You, a friend? I’d cut off my right lapel for you. Pete, believe me, I’ve got good goods. I had it straight from one of his so-called patients. He tells me that Zekerman was getting manna from the beaks of some of the cleanest birds in town. You brought back some of his files. Tell Harrow to start reading them in the light of a blackmail scam.”

“Okay, I’ll try it out on them and let you know if I come up with any crumbs to drop on your picnic. Benny, I hate to tell you, but manna just fell on the desert, it wasn’t dropped by ravens. Maybe you’re thinking of Elijah?”

“Since when am I a biblical scholar? And, while we’re on the subject, since when are you?”

“I’ll call you at your office in two hours, if I’ve found anything. See you in church. Bye.”

I had another dime, so I thought I’d see if Martha Tracy was in her office. She was.

“M’yeah?”

“Martha?”

“Who wants her?”

“Cooperman.”

“Just a shake ’til I get to another phone.” I heard a click in my ear, the sound of the swallows landing on the wires outside the Caddell Building, then she was back. “M’yeah. Cooperman; how are you doing you little devil? Uncover any secret plots?”

“How’s everything?”

“Well, they finally cleared out Chester’s office and it’s sitting there empty waiting to see which of the two people fighting over it finally inherit the space. Honestly, you’d think grown men would have better things to do than fight over where they park their desks. Would you care where they put you to do the job?”

“It’s just magic, Martha. They don’t make decisions unless they can wear the proper hats and wave the right wands. Who is going to be in charge, anyway?”

“Oh, that’ll take years to settle. Meanwhile, there’s an administrator looking after the day-to-day stuff, and a board of directors with Chester’s wife on it making the policy decisions. I’ve still got my job, that’s all I care about.”

“What time will you be at home? I want to look at those things Elizabeth Tilford left behind when she disappeared.”

“Elizabeth? You worried about her? She’ll lay you out, Cooperman.”

“Just doing my job.”

“Well, I’ll be home after six. Give me an hour or so to eat and you can have some coffee.”’

“Good. I’ll see you.”

I was going to phone Savas at Regional Police, but I was out of dimes. So I went into the United and asked for a coffee. The lunch rush had thinned out and it was easy to find space. Further down the counter the Mad Writer was scribbling away on his great work. My waitress looked rather too tough to wear a big blue ribbon on her rear. Some girls should have their aprons stapled on. I fished out a pack of Players and lit the last of them.

On the whole, I wasn’t feeling as tough as I expected to feel. I thought that maybe, with a little luck, I’d make it an early night. Last week at this time I was tailing Chester to his last appointment with Dr. Zekerman. I wondered if Chester knew about his appointment with his murderer. It could have been accidental. Or could it? The murderer knew where he kept his target pistol. He knew that the security guard never arrived until close to six, and that the whole floor was practically soundproof from the other floors. The two of them had a drink. Martha said she’d bought a set of eight glasses; I saw only six. So maybe he left with two of those glasses wrapped in the bar-towel, probably faster than wiping off fingerprints. But why take both? Why not leave one of them on Chester’s desk, as a jolt of Dutch courage to stiffen him for the fatal act? No, he had to take both glasses because he had handled both. He poured the drinks and brought them to the desk. It would be easy to use the bar-towel while pouring the drinks, with his back to Chester, but it would look too foolish to carry both drinks with it.

I started thinking about the clipping that I was still carrying in my inside breast pocket about the suicide of Elizabeth Blake. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to take a quick run out to the Secord University. The library was crowded with students, and as far as I could see there was no running water to distract the avid reader. I filled in a pink form and ordered the 1964 volume of the Secord
Standard
, the school paper, and found a place near a window to plough through it.

I found an account of Elizabeth Blake’s death that added nothing to what I already knew. There were pictures of an ice fort built during an unexpected school break, when the campus was closed down for a week by a record snowfall. I flipped through the rest of the fat, black-bound volume to kill ten minutes. I felt guilty returning the book in less time than it took to find it in the stacks and sign it out to me. I read a few smart-ass movie reviews that didn’t find much to like in anything. The football games sounded like the ones today. The name of a kid who went on to write comic pieces in one of the Toronto papers was prominent in nearly every issue. Then I hit it. A twenty-four-year-old honours chemistry student named Joe Corso took a drop of six stories from the balcony outside one of the chemistry labs. 1965 was certainly a year for it. A couple of his pals said that he had been broken-hearted since he’d been turned down by the scholarship committee at M.I.T. That sounded fair enough. I nearly cut my throat when I flunked grade two. The cute bit of information came in the last paragraph which named Corso’s two pals: Chester Yates and William Allen Ward. As chummy a pair of chief mourners as you could wish for.

I made a couple of calls from the library phone. The first got me the Alumni Association, which got me the representative of the 1964 graduating year. Within ten minutes and four dimes later I had a link which joined the dead girl and the dead chemistry student. Yes, they had dated and yes it had been serious.

At the Diana Sweets I ordered a vanilla marshmallow sundae and a vanilla milkshake. With that on my stomach, I thought I’d call Savas. It took about six rings before he answered.

“Savas,” he croaked.

“You sound like you’ve been up all night.”

“I’m up all night every night, shamus.”

“Don’t try to make me feel guilty for your sins. I’ve got enough of my own. What’s happening?”

“Cooperman, we checked out your Phoebe Campbell. She’s made of smoke. We covered the waterfront on this. Not only isn’t she anywhere now, she never was anywhere. Not under that name and not with that description. Sure you’re not seeing things?”

“I’ve got two hundred dollars in my wallet that she gave me for last night’s B and E. Is that evidence?”

“Two hundred dollars’ worth. Doesn’t buy much.”

“Savas, you ever hear of Joe Corso?”

“Sounds like a football player. Who does he play for, the Cleveland Browns?”

“I know that you guys are tripping over all the suicides that have been happening, but I’ve got another for you. I was up at Secord University this morning looking into Elizabeth Blake’s death in the school paper. Nothing new there. But a couple of weeks later a chemistry whiz named Corso took a long walk on a short balcony of the Chemistry Building and didn’t live to graduate head of his class. There are a couple of things about this that might interest you: the pals that told everybody that he was feeling blue because he missed a big scholarship were Yates and Ward. The topper is that his girlfriend was Elizabeth Blake.”

“So he killed himself out of sympathy? So what?”

“Come on. Nobody’s that sympathetic.”

“Look, Cooperman, all this stuff isn’t worth peanut shells without a story to tie it all together. I bet you can find that Dr. Zekerman was the head of the Chemistry Department under an assumed name or something. Do you get me? I can’t touch this stuff without a trunk full of old-fashioned evidence. You can’t get anywhere on a murder charge with a bunch of affidavits. Hang in there. You’re a good peeper, Cooperman, but you’d make a lousy cop. I’ll be talking to you. Goodbye.”

I’d killed about as much time on the phone as I could profitably do, so I cut across the street and took a run at the twenty-eight steps leading to my door. I had a little over an hour before Pete’s call was due, so I drew up a list and started drawing arrows from one name to another. Before I messed it up with doodles, it looked like this:

Elizabeth Blake ............ 1964 (suicide)

Joe Corso ...................... 1964 (suicide)

Chester Yates ................ present (suicide)

Andrew Zekerman ........ present (murder)

To this list I added:

William Allen Ward

Elizabeth Tilford .......... present (disappeared)

Phoebe Campbell ......... present (disappeared)

Vernon Harrington

Myrna Yates

I guess just about any of them might have had a motive, even Myrna. As the widow with a lot to gain, she could throw the law off by pointing to me as the sleuth she’d hired to look into her husband’s untimely end. Phoebe Campbell fitted into this crazy web in some way. The story she told me about Twining could fit Ward just as well. He was a well-known sniffer of girls’ bicycle seats. But I couldn’t see why she’d want to beat that African carving to splinters with Zekerman’s head. And why kill Chester? If she was disappointed in love, why not go after Ward? Same with the Tilford woman. She was pushed out of bed by Phoebe, or so it looks. Tilford knew Chester, knew the office lay-out, but, according to Martha, she got on with him fine. Besides, she looked less like a doer than a done to at the moment.

It was at Ward’s name that I looked longest. He had a dirty finger in the eye of everyone on the list. He was at the University at the same time both Elizabeth Blake and Joe Corso were killed. He knew Chester since they were both in Pampers. He was in on the bottom floor of the Core Two development. Myrna Yates has been in love with him since the year one, and he had had affairs with both of the missing women. Ward could have been one of Zekerman’s suckers. Zekerman sounds as though he was pumping Harrington for information that would give him leverage on Ward or on Chester. Funny, how I keep calling Yates “Chester.” I never met him, but he seems an altogether more likeable bum than Ward. Nobody’s obliged to speak well of the living.