Dead & Buried (19 page)

“That’s just the problem, isn’t it? Your average security man wouldn’t even check down there. But I’m sure that a guard of your calibre, who’s been with Dover for the last year and half—”

“Almost coming up to a year and three quarters.”

“There you are! Practically two years!”

“Is there something not right down there, security-wise, Mr. Cooperman? I want to get on top of it if there’s a loophole somewhere.”

“Well, as a favour to you, I’ll duke down there and have a fast look and let you know. Might be just a little thing. I’ll let you pass the word on to Phidias yourself, so they’ll know you’re on your toes.”

“Gee, that’s great!”

“Oh, I’m going to need your keys,” I said as an afterthought. He handed them over like they were cut glass. “Have ’em back to you in a few minutes.”

“Take your time. And thanks for doing this, like they say on TV.”

I took the elevator down to the place marked “B” on the floor selector. Part of the area was given over to underground parking. The rest was deeply involved with storage. I opened the door marked “Phidias” with one of the keys on the ring, and stepped inside. It was a long narrow room with green metal shelf units up and down the middle of the space and along each wall. At first my heart sank. I’d never get through to the things I needed. But right from the first cardboard box I looked at, my heart grew a bit lighter. Each box was clearly labelled as to date and company of origin. First of all I checked the Kinross section. There were columns of boxes which I quickly dug into. I was looking for paper having to do with the date of the accident and immediately afterwards. It took longer than I thought to find anything. Why is it that I grow thumbs on all my fingers when I need the skill of a brain surgeon?

Then I had something. It was the dispatcher’s list of business in and out of the Kinross yard on the day Jack Dowden died. I pulled it from the rest of the pack of similar reports and put it in my pocket. Then I found the personnel records for the same time period. Whoever kept these records kept them very well. I followed down the list of names looking for the familiar ones. There was Jack Dowden’s name leaping off the page. There were the amounts paid to his widow that she’d told me about. Further down the page I saw that O’Mara, Tadeuss
Puisans and Luigi Pegoraro were given bonuses. Their hourly rate was increased until, in Puisans’s and Pegoraro’s cases, they left the firm, both with parting bonuses as well as a handshake. I thought I was all finished, when I saw an extra bonus, this time to Rory O’Mara for hockey camp. So that’s what he practised. I’d been wondering about the black-clad lout in O’Mara’s living-room.

I helped myself to the pages concerned and stuffed them with my other papers into the files in my briefcase. After closing the boxes, I hefted them back to the shelves upon which they were allocated to spend eternity and dusted myself off. Back upstairs, I told Boris that he should suggest a steel door be added to the arrangements in the basement. “It’s too easy to get in there from the parking garage.” He nodded vigorously, having had the same notion himself, I’m sure on many occasions. “I could put this in my report,” I said, “but it would look even better coming from you, Boris.” Boris showed me his metallic smile again. “I’ll leave our little conversation out of my report completely, so the whole idea will come from you. You’ll get credit for the whole deal.”

“Gosh, Mr. Cooperman, I don’t know how to thank you.” I flipped him back his keys, which he caught over his right shoulder.

EIGHTEEN

The sun was going down over the city. In fact, except where you got an east-west street running straight to the horizon which wasn’t often in downtown Grantham, it had gone down already. I found the car, dusty from blowing leaves and neglect, behind my office. As I opened the door and sat down behind the wheel, I remembered the warning contained in my personal copy of the
Desiderata.
Had anybody ever been blown up in his car in this town? I tried to remember. I wasn’t sure what to expect as a follow-up, when it became plain that I didn’t know how to mind my own business. I thought of Alex Pásztory and turned the key in the ignition. The motor caught, and for a minute drowned out the racket of the textile mill on the edge of the canal below me. I turned the car in the limited space, then climbed up the narrow alley to join the one-way traffic of St. Andrew Street.

It was still light enough so that I didn’t have to turn my headlights on as I headed towards Junkin Street for a return visit. Kids were playing in a great heap of leaves at the corner of Geneva when I began looking for a parking place. I left the car on Geneva nearer St. Patrick than Junkin and walked back the block to the O’Mara house. I
couldn’t see anyone behind me, but what did I know? If I was following me, I’d keep out of sight too. Except for the school kids jumping in the leaves below the black trunks of the old maples, the neighbourhood was quiet as I walked up the steps and knocked on the door.

“He ain’t here!” Mrs. O’Mara was again playing protective games. I pointed out the car in the driveway and her defence broke down. I was glad her boy Rory was out peddling dope to school kids or whatever he did to amuse himself between meals. Against very little opposition, I pushed the door open the rest of the way and she retreated ahead of me. A flushing sound from the back of the house told me that there were at least three of us present. In a moment, O’Mara arrived upon the scene with a blue towel in his hands.

“You again!” he said, throwing me a look that tried to make me feel guilty of breaking our bargain. “I told you, Mr. Cooperman, that I can’t go around blabbing all day just because Irma Dowden wants to waste her insurance money on a rent-a-cop! I want nothin’ to do with you. You already got me more heat than I want.”

“There’s going to be more heat from now on, Mr. O’Mara, not less. And it won’t be coming from me. I saw what you’ve been hauling for the City Yard to the fort. All of that’s going to come out before long. Now we both know what was in those oil drums.” O’Mara’s expression changed. He sent his wife out to get some beer from the kitchen.

“Shit, Cooperman, I don’t want Dora knowing about this. Where’d you leave your tact and good manners, eh?”

“I can listen anywhere you say, Brian. It’s your call.”

He thought about that. He was just about to speak when Dora arrived back with two unopened bottles, no glasses and a rusty opener. I think she was beginning to like me. “What about the Men’s Beverage Room at the Harding House on James at King, say, seven-thirty?”

“How do I know you’ll be there?” I asked, getting a lot of foam in my mouth from the warm beer.

“I’ll meet you. I’m tellin’ you I’ll be there, okay?”

“If you let me down, I’ll come looking for you up the hill, Brian.”

“Yeah, I figured you might. I’ll be there like I said. After supper. Seven-thirty.”

I took a polite deep swig of the beer in my hand, smiled at Dora and bowed out of the house. I wasn’t used to threatening people. I never thought I’d be any good at it. In this case, I was pretty sure that he would show up, unless Dora tied him to the television set and had Rory lock the door.

Nobody had thought to slash my tires. The car started, and I treated myself to a good meal at the Diana Sweets. They had vegetable soup and a sandwich on special, with coffee thrown in. I tried to kill the hour or so I had in hand with a bum-flattened copy of the
Beacon
I’d found in my booth. I worked my way through it from the front page to the obituaries. It is always a lift to read the obits and discover that I’m still numbered among the living.
After I got my change from the cashier, I wandered up St. Andrew, bought a fresh pack of cigarettes before I discovered that I had most of the present package unsmoked in my pocket. I selected a cigarette, like they say in books, and rounded the corner of James Street.

The Men’s Beverage Room at the Harding House was a throwback to less enlightened days when the sexes were separated for the purpose of drinking. The room next door was set aside for “Ladies and Escorts.” It was a fancier room, its walls were decorated and its floor got swept more regularly than in the Men’s. I was sitting at a round table for two with my back to the service bar at about twenty-five after seven. I was so sure O’Mara would show, I’d ordered the waiter to cover the table with draft beer so that now it looked like the other tables in the dim, smoky room. The beer was cold and I sipped one while watching the waiter move in and around the tables, dropping glasses, removing empties and giving change. He looked like a ballet dancer with an apron full of silver instead of a tutu.

I’d been there long enough to start worrying what I’d do with all this draft beer in case O’Mara didn’t show up. Pubs don’t stock the equivalent of doggy bags for customers who order more than they can swallow. This problem was developing nicely when O’Mara pulled out the chair opposite me and sat down. He was wearing a quilted hunting jacket over a plaid shirt. The cap he was wearing had been made for a sportscar driver, but it was a close enough equivalent of the traditional working-class
cloth cap to pass if you didn’t look too closely. It’s funny about clothes and class. I’ll have to think about that some time.

“You didn’t think I was coming, I’ll bet,” he said, lifting the nearest beer to his mouth.

“I wasn’t making bets either way. I just know we’ve still got lots to talk about. For instance, if you have the bad luck to get hit by a big truck, you get you pelvis crushed, not your chest. You don’t get your spine damaged where Jack’s was. So that means the story of Jack being on his feet when the truck hit him is made of rhubarb, Brian.” O’Mara was studying my face, looking for what was going on inside, I guess. He put his first empty glass down hard on the red Formica top of the table. “Another thing, Brian: if a Freightliner nudged me with all of its weight, I’d end up pinned against the wall I was standing against. I wouldn’t slide under the truck. Not unless the truck was in gear and there was somebody behind the wheel to put it in reverse.”

“You’re crazy if you think that!”

“Yeah, then I’m crazy then. And you and the other witnesses weren’t paid off to dummy up and say what they were told to say at the inquest. Maybe Rory paid his own way to hockey camp. What do you take me for, Brian? Some kind of idiot who can’t count his feet? O’Mara, if you can’t tell talk from bullshit, stay away from me. And when they find you in a ditch along Old Number Eight because you knew too much, I’ll laugh my
head off.” I pretended that I was getting up. We both thought about Pásztory without saying his name out loud.

“Sit down, Mr. Cooperman,” he said. “I didn’t know you were into this this deep. I gotta be careful, you understand?”

“Nobody ever rubbed out anybody who shared a secret with enough other people, Brian. Right now, you’re hot. With Pásztory out of the way and what he’d been digging up about Jack Dowden’s death probably in their hands, you’re on deck, kid. Don’t neglect your life insurance.”

“Okay, I’ll level with you. Is that what you want?”

“It’s your only hope.” O’Mara nodded sadly. He cold see I had a point. “To begin with,” I asked, trying not to waste the opportunity, “what did you really see up there?”

“Nothin’. We didn’t see nothin’ movin’. He didn’t scream. Jack was under the cab of the tractor. You could see he was done for. We pulled him out and Puisans ran to get the doctor.”

“Carswell.”

“Yeah, he’d been waiting to have breakfast with Mr. Caine, but Caine didn’t show up.”

“When did he come on the scene?”

“Caine? Oh, he didn’t get there until around ten-thirty, which was late for him. By then the ambulance had gone and the cops were all over the yard like a tent, takin’ pictures and measuring stuff.”

“Who put you up to the testimony you gave?”

“Webster. He was in charge of the yard, chief dispatcher. He checked everything in and out from the office at the front of the yard.”

“Keep going.”

“He ran the place, made up our cards. What more is there to say?”

“Find it.”

“He said it would be best if we got our stories straight. He said anybody could see it was an accident, so where’s the harm in saying so.”

“So, you were just doing your duty?”

“Come off it, Cooperman! I’m tellin’ you what I’m tellin’ you.”

“You’re just beginning. Keep going; it gets easier.”

“Webster was the guy we had to deal with, so what were we goin’ to tell him? Webster was callin’ the shots. We just said what he told us to say.”

“So he knows where the bodies are buried, eh?”

“Knew,
Cooperman,
knew.
Webster ain’t with us any more. He got the Big C and he died just after the Civic Holiday in August. So, go ask him some questions.”

O’Mara emptied another glass of beer and started on a third. I’d got to within a swallow of the end of my first. For me, that wasn’t bad. The cold of the coming winter crept along my bones as I picked up the second draft. Maybe I was coming down with something.

“So, although you admit to no inside knowledge about it, you’re saying that the Kinross brass might have had a good reason for arranging an accident for Jack Dowden.”

“You said that, not me!”

“Would you swear that there’s nothing to what I’ve said?”

“Well, you know, anything’s possible.”

“That’s right. Unfortunately, it isn’t proof of anything. Now tell me about the fort.”

“You were in my mirror all the way from the City yard. I could have blown the whistle on you.”

“But you didn’t. That’s why I didn’t come blundering in the front door right after you.” O’Mara nodded. He’d been thinking about that. He finished another glass, still looking as uncomfortable as when he had sat down. He was sitting like his back hurt and it was driving him crazy.

“What kind of garbage are you getting from the city and why are you burying it there?”

There, I’d said it. I’d asked the big question. All O’Mara had to do was hit me on the nose or answer. He compromised by wetting his lips with his grey tongue. He had another half-draft and put the glass down again. Soon he was moving the glass around his end of the table, breaking up the wet rings of condensation and spilled beer. At last he lifted his eyes and looked me in the eye.