A City Called July Read Free Page A

that is a long time ago. He used to chum around with Eddie Lazarus and Morrie Freeland. They were at Osgoode together.” I began making a few notes to go with the doodles I’d been manufacturing on my block of lined yellow foolscap.
    “You didn’t talk to any of them?” I failed to establish eye contact with either of my visitors. “I know you didn’t because they would have told you what I told you. You have to tell the police about this. I mean, you’re talking about two million dollars.”
    “Think of the old people, Benny. I’m talking about widows and people from the old country who don’t understand about our laws and the whole shooting match.”
    “Saul, you’re breaking my heart. Look, I told you my professional opinion. If I told you the only way to make suits was to do them one by one you’d tell me I’m crazy. You know that you cut out dozens at a time. Well, I’m telling you the way to find Larry Geller is to tell the boys at Niagara Regional all about it. I mean, Rabbi, you are talking about fraud with a very big F. Call Chris Savas. You’ll be glad you did.”
    “Benny, we aren’t saying we won’t go to the police. My God, as far as I know maybe the police know all about it. I’m just asking you … both as a friend and as a member of the community … to see what you can see. Find out his assets. Maybe he’s left a trail. We don’t expect miracles, do we, Rabbi?” The rabbi shook his head. The last thing he expected me to deliver was a miracle. I was a plodder, a keyhole-gazer, not a worker of miracles. “For a few days,” Tepperman said after a pause. Then there was another silence. If there is such a thing as an unshared silence, this was it. “We’ll pay whatever it costs. After all you’re a professional.” Out the window I could hear a transport truck pulling a heavy load through town towards Queenston and Niagara Falls. At the same moment, I felt in my bones, a truck with an equal load was rolling off the Queen Elizabeth Way and on its way via King or Church to the west end of town and the old highway to Hamilton.
    “It wouldn’t hurt,” said the rabbi. Another pause. Both Tepperman and the rabbi looked at me like the barrels of a Gatling gun. I thought about my other possibilities. I supposed I could continue cleaning the jam jar.
    “I’ll do what I can,” I said.

TWO
    As soon as I heard the last of the clatter of the tailor and the rabbi on my stairs, I called Staff Sergeant Chris Savas and got instead my old friend and schoolmate Pete Staziak, who also serves the forces of law and order in the Niagara region. To be truthful, Pete wasn’t really a friend from school-days. We’d both been there at the same time, I’d been in a play with his sister, but we only took one class together in five years. Much more recently, we’d been mixed up in a few cases, and since we were both stamped with the indelible impression of Grantham Collegiate Institute and Vocational School, we gave support to the fiction that we’d been pals. With some of the teachers, it didn’t matter when you had them, you ended up with the same memories. Pete could finish any snatch of poetry I could remember, and I could complete the Three Results of the Persian War if he gave me a start. Being pals made introductions easier and in the end we’d come to believe it.
    “How’s the private sector, Benny? Busy?”
    “Have to beat the business away with sticks, Pete. How about you?”
    “Routine stuff, Benny. I think time this week is running slower than usual. I start to doze off around three-thirty in the afternoon.”
    “Yeah, time behind a desk crawls on all fours.”
    “It’s summer. That’s what does it. I’m sweating just talking on the phone.”
    “Well, you can comfort yourself with the fact that the days are growing shorter already,” I said. Pete grumbled and I told him I wanted words in person. He told me to drop over towards lunch-time and we’d grab a sandwich together at the