“That’s all for the moment, Mr. Gursky, and I do thank you for the patience and of course the unfailing courtesy of your replies.” But as Solomon got up, MacIntyre motioned for him to sit down again. “Sorry. Just one more thing. Going back to that game in which you were lucky enough to win the Queen Victoria Hotel—”
“From the late Willy McGraw?”
“Yes. From the late Mr. McGraw. Can you tell me did you use new playing cards?”
“Yes.”
“And where were they purchased?”
“Why, from A. Gursky and Sons, General Merchants.”
Charley Lin wasn’t summoned to the stand until late in the afternoon. He averted his eyes as he waddled past Solomon, who smiled and whispered something that made Charley stumble and then turn to the judge to protest that he had had a long journey and did not feel well.
Judge Leclerc, noting the late hour, adjourned the court, asking Mr. Lin to resume the stand at ten the next morning.
But the next morning Solomon Gursky did not turn up in court at the appointed hour and was not to be found at home, either. He had met with Mr. Bernard the previous evening, according to Clara Gursky, the brothers quarrelling bitterly, and then he had gone out for a stroll at six in the morning and hadn’t been seen since.
“Did he take a suitcase with him, Mrs. Gursky?”
“No.”
It was late in the afternoon before the RCMP established that Solomon had taken a taxi to Cartierville airport and flown off in his Gypsy Moth with the raven painted on the fuselage.
Bound for where?
North was all Mr. Gursky said.
Where north, for Christ’s sake?
Far, he said.
Refuelling in Labrador, it was later discovered, heading still farther out in appalling weather conditions, a whiteout predicted.
The next day’s newspapers featured page one photographs of the late Willy McGraw, lying in a puddle of blood on the railway station floor. There were interviews with Charley Lin. Photographs of Solomon seen seated with “Legs” Diamond in the Hotsy-Totsy Club; Solomon standing on a corner of Third Avenue, kibitzing with Izzy and Moe, the fabled Prohibition agents; and, finally, a photograph of Solomon in his flier’s uniform, standing before his Sopwith Camel, on an airfield “somewhere in France.”
Reporters speculated that McGraw had discovered Solomon was playing with marked cards acquired from his father’s general store. Fearful of exposure, or possibly responding to blackmail, Solomon appointed McGraw manager of the Duke of York Hotel in North Portal and then had him murdered, his own alibi foolproof.
RCAF search planes hunted for Solomon’s Gypsy Moth, which seemed to have disappeared after refuelling in Labrador, where the mechanic who had serviced the plane was sharply questioned.
“Didn’t he tell you where he was heading?”
“North.”
“We know that, damn it, but where?”
“Far, he said.”
A bush pilot, consulted by the RCMP, said that the day Solomon had taken off nothing else was moving, because it was as good as flying through a bottle of milk. In a whiteout, he explained, there is absolutely no horizon, and even the most experienced pilot, riding it out, wheeling and turning, his sense of gravity gone, is inclined to fly upside down into the ground. And that, he felt, is what happened to Gursky somewhere in the barrens, where only an Eskimo had a chance to survive.
Shuffling into court three days after Solomon’s disappearance, Mr. Bernard apologized to Judge Leclerc for being unshaven and for wearing a suit jacket with a torn collar and slippers. It was not, he assured him, out of disrespect for the court, but in deference to the tradition of his people when mourning the death of an immediate family member, in this case a cherished brother, no matter what his sins.
Five days later, the Gypsy Moth still missing, Judge Gaston Leclerc delivered his verdict to an attentive court:
“The Crown claims that the accused maintained agencies in Newfoundland and St. Pierre et Miquelon for the purpose of smuggling and that the sales made there were proof of an illegal conspiracy. However, the accused were jolly well within their rights. They were legally entitled to maintain such agencies in such places, and it is no secret that at the time many Canadian distilleries sold as many of their products as they could outside of Canada. These acts, I’m bound to point out, were legal and the vendors were not obliged to verify the destination of the goods they sold, nor was there any obligation upon them to inquire of the buyers what they intended to do with the goods.” The judge concluded, “There is no evidence that the accused committed a criminal act. I am of the opinion that there is not, prima facie, proof of a conspiracy as alleged, and the accused are herewith discharged.” However, he did add that if Solomon Gursky were to be found alive there would be other charges that he would have to answer to in court.
The next morning an RCMP inspector subpoenaed Judge Leclerc’s bank records and raided his safety-deposit box. No incriminating evidence was found. In any event, Judge Leclerc retired the following year, stopping in Zurich before proceeding to the Cotswolds, where the estate he acquired had a walled rose garden, masses of rhododendrons, a labyrinth and apple and pear trees.
The long-awaited verdict on the Gurskys didn’t even make page one, because the same day charred pieces of a disintegrated Gypsy Moth were found strewn over a three-mile area in the barrens. Many of the airplane parts were brought in by a wandering band of Eskimos, all of them wearing sealskin parkas with fringes hanging from the corners, each fringe made up of twelve silken strands. One of the Eskimos had found an attaché case embossed with the initials S.G. It contained Solomon’s passport and close on two hundred thousand dollars in American banknotes. Solomon’s body was never found. It was assumed to have been blown apart when the Gypsy Moth exploded, the pieces dragged off and consumed by the white wolves of the barrens.
The next morning Mr. Bernard summoned Morrie to his house. “Before Solomon ran away,” he said, “he was good enough to sign these new partnership papers.”
Fifty-five percent of McTavish for Mr. Bernard, thirty percent for Solomon and his descendants, and fifteen percent for Morrie.
“I thought my share was going to be nineteen percent.”
“I fought for you like a tiger, but he wouldn’t budge.”
Mr. Morrie signed.
“There’s only the two of us left now,” Mr. Bernard said.
“Yes.”
“But you mustn’t worry about me. I’ve decided to start having regular check-ups.”
“Should I do the same you think?”
“Aw. Why go to the expense? You look terrific.”
Four
Becky Schwartz’s name was now a fixture in E.J. Gordon’s Social Notes in the Gazette, most recently in a column celebrating an anniversary of the Beaver Club; Harvey, like the other achievers who had been invited, bedecked in a beaver hat and a tailcoat and sporting a goatee for one of the grandest nights an the city’s high society calendar.
“Boy, do you ever look like a shmuck,” Becky had said before they started out.
“I’m not going.”
“We’re going. But would you please line the inside of that hat with paper or something. It looks like you have no forehead.”
The Beaver Club was founded in 1959 to recreate the riotous dinners held two centuries earlier by Montreal’s fur traders. “Welcoming the guests,” E.J. Gordon wrote, “were Caughnawaga Indians, clad in doeskins, the men wearing feathered headdresses, standing beside their tepee in an encampment in the lobby of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel.” Seated cross-legged immediately before the tepee, beating the drums, was a fetching young girl, actually a great-great-granddaughter of Ephraim Gursky and Lena Green Stockings, who would later enchant the guests with her rendition of “Hava-negilla”.