Miles To Go

4. Toronto 1961

4

Toronto 1961

I informed Callaway about the search for the fringes and the case. This time, Birdie came along. The crime tech had finished in the upper part of the house.

Opposite the top of the stairs, you practically fell into the bathroom. These houses had a powder room on the ground floor. Banister to the left and a narrow hallway leading to three small bedrooms. Mendel Black had turned one of the rooms into an office. The smallest of the three. The one that should have been the nursery if things had gone that way.

“I’ll check the office. You take a look at the main bedroom.”

“What am I looking for?” Birdie asked.

“Tzit-tzits.”

Birdie shrugged. Miryam leaned up against the doorframe with an amused expression on her face.

“Did he have only the one?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she replied. “Just the one.”

Birdie lumbered down the hall. The threadbare carpet barely concealed the booming cracks as he walked. God, I loved these old houses. You took a breath and they creaked like a centenarian’s spine.

I heard Birdie moving around the bedroom. I hoped he didn’t fall through the floor and crash into the crime scene.

“He did okay, did he, Mendel?”

“We never seemed to want,” Miryam said.

“But he was a bit tight?”

“He could be frugal.”

Looking around the house I didn’t doubt it. Diamond merchants could make a lot of scratch yet this house screamed poverty.

I turned my attention to the room. Not much of an office. A small, battered desk and lopsided swivel chair. Looked like they came from a rummage sale. A solid-state radio sat on the desk behind an ink-stained blotter and a tin holding a variety of pencils and pens. Formerly, a receptacle for Heinz baked brown beans. A three-drawer, wooden file cabinet sat in the corner adjacent to the only window. The blind had been pulled down. In the opposite corner stood a small safe. I took out my handkerchief, then tried the handle. Locked.

“Do you know the combination?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I didn’t mix with his business.”

“So, the case could be in there?”

“Yes. It could be.”

“Who might know the combination if not you?”

“His brothers. His father, maybe. That would be my guess.”

“You get along with them, your mispoucha?”

“We weren’t close,” she said.

“Not even with your mother-in-law?”

She shook her head. “She thought it was my fault. They all did.”

“Not bearing children?”

“You really are a detective, Mo.”

I took the pad out of my jacket pocket, tore off a sheet and handed it to her with my pencil. “Please write down all their names and their contact information. The cops will need to talk to them all, of course.” The beat cops worked their way up and down the street talking to neighbours, taking witness statements.

I went over to the filing cabinet. It too had a lock. I always carried a set of picks with me. I’d liberated them from a burglar I’d collared years before. Ever since, he lamented their loss. The lock took about 30 seconds to open.

“I didn’t know policemen also acted like criminals,” she said, sarcastically.

I smiled at her. “Now you know. And I’m not a policeman.” And pulled open the top drawer.

She sat at the desk to write out the information I’d requested. “Let me know if you find anything interesting in there.”

“Uh-huh.”

The top drawer contained a number of files pertaining to the house; mortgage documents, phone, water, tax and heating bills. Pretty mundane stuff. The second drawer contained more files that looked like business accounts; invoices to suppliers that had been paid or were still outstanding, some client invoices and so on. I wondered why he kept these files here and not in his office. I’d let Callaway and his minions go through them. I glanced over at Miryam, bent at her task. The curve of her cheek, the elegance of her slender neck, her dark, smoky looks. Things I didn’t want to remember. The fullness of her bosom. That I did remember. I shook my head and looked up to see her staring at me, her full lips slightly parted. Then, the same ironic smile before she returned to her writing. The small room suddenly seemed like a stuffy shoebox. That clammy feeling came back in waves. The third drawer came up empty except for a pair of handcuffs, an extra pair he used for the gem case, I figured. I reached in with my handkerchief and plucked them out.

“Have you seen these before?”

She glanced at them. “They look like the ones he used to carry his case with, but I couldn’t be sure. They all look alike to me.” t

So, he removed the cuffs and probably stuffed the case with the gems into the safe. Birdie filled the doorway.

“What’d you find?” I asked.

“Five blue suits, six white shirts, two pairs of black brogues badly scuffed and enough underclothes to keep him happy for about two weeks.”

“No fringes?”

He nodded and smiled. “No fringes.”

“Miryam. Was Mendel in the habit of going to the schvitz on the way home?”

She shook her head. “Not usually. Maybe once in a blue moon.”

“So, you don’t know if he did stop at the bath house for a steam on this occasion?”

“No, I don’t. Sorry.” She handed me the list and the pencil. “That’s everyone.”

“Thanks.” I shoved it into my pocket. “Er, was he seeing someone?”

She looked up at me blandly. “I wouldn’t know. Or care. For his sake, I hope he was.”

“Okay. And what about you?”

“No. I was a loyal wife.”

We trooped downstairs. The morgue attendants had finished wrapping up Mendel’s corpse. Three men stood with their heads bowed. They wore long, black silk coats with the sashes tied, black suits and kept their hats on. The two brothers and father of Mendel Black, I assumed. Callaway stood off to the side watching the scene. Behind the three newcomers sat an older woman in one of the hard backed chairs. Her eyes had swelled from weeping. She snuffled noisily into an embroidered handkerchief. The older two of the three men, as is the tradition, kept full beards. The younger one remained clean shaven. The father’s beard was shot through with grey. They looked up as we entered. Normally, Birdie captured attention everywhere but in this case their eyes focused on Miryam and the hostile glares couldn’t be ignored. The elderly woman stood up as the morgue attendants lifted the corpse on to a gurney and began to stickhandle it through the narrow doorway. The atmosphere had turned from oppressive to suffocating.

“We’ll need him back,” said the older man. “For burial. Jewish law demands it. It is forbidden to perform medical acts on my son’s body.”

“I do understand your concern, Mr. Black,” Callaway said. “But I am an officer of the law and I’m afraid your son needs to come with us. We will be as quick as we can and then return him to you.”

“He will be desecrated,” the older man said. “Violated in the eyes of God.”

“I’m sorry. I have no choice. We need to find the person who did this to your son as quickly as we can. I’m sure you want the perpetrator of this crime found and punished, do you not?”

The old man nodded once. “Yes, of course.”

I looked at the faces of the two brothers. One stood tall, slim and fair, blue-eyed and freckled. The other looked like a wrestler I used to follow at Maple Leaf Gardens. His coat barely contained his broad chest. His thick arms looked like they’d burst the seams of the sleeves. Both wore payot, the traditional sidecurls. I didn’t see grief on either. The bull spouted smoke from flared nostrils and the other, the slim, fair, one, looked afraid. Miryam kept her distance from all of them, even the sobbing mother-in-law.

We watched silently as Callaway nodded and the body was removed. No one spoke. I decided to pipe up.

“He wasn’t wearing his fringes. Does anyone know what might have happened to them?”

The mother stopped crying. The father looked up blasting me with a steely gaze.

“Who’s asking?” the bull brother said.

Callaway stepped in. “Er, he’s with me.”

“The name’s Mo Gold,” I said.

The old man c****d his head. “Gold? Gold?” he echoed to himself. Then recognition flooded in. I could see the flash of remembrance. “Gold,” he repeated. “Not the thief, the liar and jailbird. Not that Gold?”

“My old man,” I replied. “You can’t pick your relations. Now, the fringes? Anyone have an explanation as to why he wasn’t wearing them?”

The old man’s face turned purple. “Get out,” he roared. “Get out of my house, you blasphemer. I remember you now. You were a young schlemiel. Tried to make everyone believe you were one of us.”

“This is my house,” Miryam said quietly. “And I will decide who stays and who goes.”

The old man turned to her in astonishment. “What? What are you saying?”

“This is my house now,” she repeated.

“The house I paid for. The house I gave you,” the old man sputtered.

“Yes,” Miryam replied. “You never accepted me. None of you did. I tried to be a good daughter-in-law, to be dutiful but I couldn’t do or say enough. Well, that is now over. We are over. I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened here, but I am certain the police will find out.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Black,” Callaway hemmed. “We will need to ask all of you questions. I’m hoping that tomorrow will be convenient. I understand you need to grieve for your son but we need to act quickly. I would like all of you to come down to the station tomorrow morning so we may continue our inquiries. And now, if you please, it is time we left.” He turned to Miryam. “Mrs. Black, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be here this evening. Is there somewhere you can stay for the next few days? I will leave a man on guard here to watch the house.”

Miryam nodded. “I’ll stay with my aunt Helen. She just lives down the block.”

“Good,” Callaway said. “Take some things with you. We’ll wait until you go and one of my men will escort you.”

Miryam looked at me briefly then turned and disappeared upstairs.

I felt a thick palm against my chest and I looked into the bull’s glaring eyes. “Don’t think this is finished, Gold.” It hit me then. Twenty-five years earlier, my old man, Jake, had scammed the Lubovitcher Benevolent Society; a charitable organization that managed and maintained some cemeteries around the city. Old man Black had been the treasurer back then. Jake had wormed his way onto the governing council, then promptly disappeared with some of their cash. I’d spend my life cleaning up after Jake, it seemed. I must have been ten or twelve at the time. I remembered a husky kid hanging around then. Joel Black, I presumed, now thick chested with a memory to match. And one to carry a grudge.

I grinned at him. “It’s just beginning, yid. Now take your hand off me before I break it off at the wrist.” I sensed Birdie come up behind me.

“Hiding behind the schwartze? One day, he won’t be there.”

“Then I’ll have you all to myself.”

“Joel, please,” the mother spat. “Your brother is dead. This is no way to behave.”

Joel stepped back. He pointed a stubby forefinger in my direction. “Later then, Gold. Count on it.”

The happy Black family shuffled out of the murder house. I suspected sadder days ahead.