Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [164]
“Okay. Gotcha. Now I will have to take this illegal gun with me, but I will leave you a receipt.”
“Let me know if you need any help with the spelling.”
“Hey, you’re a card.”
“Do you wish to charge me with anything?”
“Bad manners, maybe.”
“In parting, then, let me wish you an afternoon of joy on the golf course. May you be hit on the head with somebody else’s drive, not that anybody would be able to tell the difference afterward,” I said, grabbing him by the jacket lapels and beginning to shake him. He didn’t resist. He merely smiled. “Bobbe-myseh. Shabbes goy. Mish-pocheh. Don’t you dare patronize me with your pidgin Yiddish, you functionally illiterate prick. Agatha Christie. The Case of the Missing Swimmer. I’ll bet the last book you read was your Dick and Jane reader, and you’re probably still trying to work out the plot. Where did you learn how to question a suspect? Watching Dragnet? Reading True Detective? No, I would have known. Your lips would still be chapped.”
Smirking, O’Hearne released himself from my grip with a neat chop of his hand, making me wince again. Then he cupped the back of my neck with his other hand, yanked my head forward, and drove a knee into my groin. My mouth agape, I was bent over double only briefly, because next he raised his joined fists like a sledgehammer and caught me under the chin, sending me sprawling backward to the floor, arms windmilling. “Panofsky, do yourself a favour,” he said. “We know you did it and sooner or later we’ll find wherever you buried the poor bastard. Asparagus bed, my ass. So save us time and effort. Show some rachmones for hard-working officers of the law. That means ‘pity’ in your lingo, which I’m willing to bet I speak better than you. Come clean. Lead us to the body. We give points for that. I’ll swear in court you were a real sweetheart, cooperative, filled with remorse. You hire yourself a smart Jew lawyer and you are charged with manslaughter, or some shit like that, because there was a struggle and the gun went off by accident. Or it was self-defence. Or, good heavens, you didn’t even know it was loaded. Judge and jury will be understanding. Your wife. Your best friend. Holy mackerel, it had to be temporary insanity. Worst case, you get three years and you’re home-free after eighteen months. Hey, you might even get off with a suspended sentence, a poor, deceived husband like you. But if you insist upon that bobbe-myseh you’re spinning us, and I testify in court that you hit me, nobody will believe your story and maybe you get life, which is at least ten years, and while you’re rotting in jail eating dog food, getting the shit beat out of you by bad guys who don’t like Jews, your hot number in Toronto will be spreading her legs for somebody else, eh? I mean, you finally get out you’ll be a broken old man. So what do you say?”
Nothing is what I said, because I couldn’t stop retching.
“Jesus, look what you’re doing to your carpet. Where can I find a basin to bring you?”
O’Hearne leaned over and offered a hand to raise me off the floor, but I shook my head, no, fearful of another pummelling. “The only thing for that carpet now is a shampoo. Well, merci beaucoup for the beer.”
I groaned.
“And if and when your buddy, the long-distance swimmer, turns up, do be good enough to give us a call, eh?”
On his way out, O’Hearne managed to step on my hand. “Whoops. Sorry.”
I lay on the floor for an hour, maybe longer, after O’Hearne and his minions drove off, then I managed to pour myself another Laphroaig, bolting it down, and rang John Hughes-McNoughton. He wasn’t at home or in his office. I found him at Dink’s and told him that the cops had paid me a visit. “Your voice sounds funny,” he said.
“O’Hearne beat the shit out of me. I want him charged.”
“I hope you didn’t answer any questions.”
I thought it was best to tell John everything, including O’Hearne’s discovery of my father’s snub-nosed revolver, and my speaking harshly to him before we parted.
“You grabbed him by