“You told me a few minutes ago that you’d joined AA.” The scowl was back. “You hinted as much the other day at lunch.”
“So?”
“And you told the Commander in the sauna? Is that right?”
“Sure, I told him. So what?”
“This is important: Who else knew?” Forbes looked at me and then began to scan the faces in the sitting-room.
“There’s no one else,” he said at last. “I planned not to tell anyone. Then I mustered courage to tell Dad before the wedding. Thought it might make a difference. Things haven’t been-”
“Never mind about that. Who else did you tell? Did your wife know? Or your old drinking pals?”
“I didn’t tell anybody else. I’m sure.”
“Why did you tell me, then? I’m nobody special to you. In fact we aren’t even friends. You don’t like me really. Why did you tell me?”
“I wasn’t trying to build an alibi, if that’s what you mean. I told Dad because he and it were on my mind. And you’re the sort of ingratiating son of a bitch who gets people to say more than they mean to say.”
“I wasn’t asking about your boozing.”
“Well,” he was twisting his mouth again, “maybe I thought it might get back to Teddie through you. Hell, I don’t know why I told you!”
“Who else knew you’d stopped drinking?”
“Damn it, Cooperman, I told you. Nobody except me, you and dad. Unless you count the people down at AA. But they don’t talk about things like that to outsiders. Why is this so important? Am I going to get an answer?” He was doing his best to glower down at me like his father. By my guess it would take him another eighty years.
“Not right now, but you will. I promise.” I left him standing in the alcove with the books and made myself free of the staircase and then the front room. Edward had my coat ready for me seconds before I hit the bottom step.
THIRTY
After the upper-class wake on Church Street, I went back to the one still going on in Frank Bushmill’s apartment. I felt a need to touch the earth. There were still enough people there to keep Martin Lyster’s memory green. Bill Palmer from the Beacon, for instance, was still in good form. I was surprised to see Chris Savas sitting in a corner. I knew that he’d known Martin, but I didn’t know he’d known him well. When I went over to where he was sitting, he explained:
“Martin got me the books I needed to get my stripes, Benny. A cop has to be educated these days and Martin got me through it.”
After the drink ran out, Chris and I went looking for Anna up at her father’s house on the escarpment. She was surprised to see us again, since she’d said good-night to me less than three hours earlier. Jonah Abraham, Anna’s father, was both surprised and amused at our late visit and insisted on pouring a round of drinks and showing us a new painting by Wally Lamb he’d just purchased for his collection. “Old Wally hasn’t lost his touch,” I said, looking at a platter of beautifully rendered green apples.
Anna had changed from the linen jacket and flowered skirt to a sweater and dark green cords. When we finished our drinks, she kissed Jonah affectionately and the three of us got into my Olds.
“Anna, don’t let these fellows keep you up all night,” Jonah called from the front door. “Remember you’ve got school in the morning.” The effect of this was to turn Anna into a thumb-sucking teenager as we drove out from under the porte-cochère. Jonah quickly went back into the house as we made for the highway.
It had been some time since I’d ended an evening at Lije Swift’s place outside St. David’s on the road to Queenston. Savas had introduced me to it maybe ten years ago and I’d been back a few times, but not for the last year at least. Lije, which was short of Elijah, used to run a boat above Niagara Falls packed with illegal Canadian booze during Prohibition. He now owned a roadhouse that ignored all federal, provincial and local laws regarding strong drink and licensed hours. I don’t know whether he paid off the authorities or whether they left him alone as a kind of living human monument to a colourful bygone age. Whatever the reason, Lije carefully screened his customers through a slot in the door before welcoming them out of the night. He was known as the provider of good food as well as teller of bootlegging tales from along the Niagara. Since the last time I was at Lije’s place, his son and daughter had taken charge of the practical management, leaving Lije, who was getting on in years, free to bother the customers with his stories.
The place was about half-full. I recognized a few of our most distinguished citizens sitting at some of the tables, which Don and Maggy attended to. Lije insisted on looking after Chris, Anna and me, himself. He plied us with illicit drinks, while Savas went to make a phonecall. He never served booze in teapots. Lije was used to living dangerously. After the drinks he brought a large platter of hors d’oeuvres to the table. It was plain that this was going to be a memorable night. About twenty after twelve, Pete Staziak walked into the room. He’d just come off duty in town and had taken all of the short cuts to get there. More baked beet salad, tapénade and chorizo in cider were brought to the table. In Lije’s short arms, the platter looked huge.
“You both missed the best part of the wake,” Chris said, looking at Anna and me, after Pete had settled in. “Frank Bushmill recited a very funny piece about sucking-stones. You should have heard it.”
“That’s right, Chris, rub it in,” Pete said, chewing on a piece of celery filled with Stilton. “Remember I had to miss the whole show trying to make sense of a couple of murders.”
“I had a few questions to ask Ross Forbes,” I said, “so I visited the wake going on up at his house.”
“Bet nobody sat on the floor there,” Anna said.
“I got a few important answers, though.”
“When do you think you’ll begin to see the light, Benny?” Chris asked. “Before or after the provincials inquiry into toxic dumping and tainted fuels nails your friend Ross Forbes to a permanent address in a minimum security institution?”
“I’m beginning to see light, Chris. A glimmer. Maybe more. Nothing that would do any of us any good in court, but I don’t think this case is going in that direction?”
“What kind of murder case doesn’t go to court, Benny?”
“The unsolved ones,” Anne suggested.
“Political ones?” said Pete, answering his own question.
At that moment, Lije was back with a great silver platter with roast duck on it along with a rosy garnish of red cabbage. Chris began to carve and we passed our plates to his end of the table. Anna helped him by dishing out the vegetables. I added gravy. Pete just sat there with his knife and fork already in hand. When we had all been served and Chris had added him comments to the rest of the ones we larded on Lije about the food, we settled down to serious eating. I discovered that I was hungrier than I’d felt; I even ate the slices of orange that had bedizened the golden roast duck. For a full twenty minutes we made table talk and laughed at Pete’s jokes. These weren’t all that funny, but the wine helped. There’s hardly a joke that wine doesn’t make better. Then Chris looked across at me and asked:
“Are you serious about talking about this thing, Benny?”
“Chris, it’s not talk yet, just thinking out loud.”
“We’ll buy it,” Pete said.
“At least we’ll listen,” said Anna, who hadn’t had as much to drink as Pete.
“I can’t believe that you think you’ve done it again,” said Chris, chomping on a wing.
“If you’ve done it, you took a lot longer than in the other cases we worked on. You used to wrap these things up in under a week. Maybe you’re losing your touch?” Pete was digging more stuffing from the bird’s cavity and carrying it to his twice-emptied plate. He looked from one face to another to find agreement. Figuratively, I kept my mouth shut, while I went on eating. There would be time to talk when coffee came.