Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [99]
Izzy looked pained. “Gratuitously?”
“Unnecessarily,” I said.
“No fucken way, mister. I condoned it. Absolutely. But, you know, it’s human nature, when a feller is young, you give him authority, he likes to push people around. But when I was young I didn’t, because I knew my name was Panofsky.”
“But how did you get suspects to talk, Inspector?” asked my future father-in-law, looking directly at his daughter, as if to say, are you prepared to marry into such a family?
“I got my ways and means how.”
“How time flies,” I said, glancing pointedly at my wristwatch. “It’s almost six o’clock.”
“You lay down the law to them. They don’t want to talk, you take them down below.”
“Then what transpires, Inspector?”
“Well, we get this feller in the room, we slam the bloody door and then we start to throw chairs around. You know, scare the shit out of them. Maybe I step on his toes. Come clean, I shout.”
“What happens if, perchance, it’s a woman you take downstairs?”
“Well I never remember — I’m sincere when I tell you about this — I never remember beating a woman, we never had occasion to, but if you get a tough guy, in many instances I could tell you …”
“Dad, may I have the bottle back, please?”
“Darling, should you?”
“Let me give you another for instance. In 1951 this was, I found those bearded rabbinical students were being beaten up outside their school on Park Avenue by all those punks. Just because they were Jews. Well, those punks they see you and I, well they doubt a little bit because we may not look too much like Jews, and we don’t act it, but when they see a guy all dressed up, you know … Anyways their leader, this Hungarian roughneck, just off the boat, was caught, and I drove him to Station 17 to have a look at him. He’s got those boots on, you know those big boots, rough as hell, I shut the door. What’s your name, I says? I don’t care about anybody, he says in that accent they have. His English is terrible. So I slammed him good, mister. Down he goes. He passes out. Jesus Christ. I thought he would die. I tried to give him first aid. You know what passed through my mind? Just imagine … JEW POLICE OFFICER KILLS … if the guy died. So I rushed up an ambulance and we get him to come to …”
Then, even as Izzy wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and was about to embark on another for instance, I was driven to take a desperate measure. I started to whistle. But this time, in deference to my future mother-in-law, something cultural, the “La donna è mobile” aria from Rigoletto. That succeeded in clearing the house of both my future in-laws and my bride. Following their hasty departure, Izzy said, “Hey, congrats. They’re very nice people. Warm. Intelligent. I enjoyed talking to them. How’d I do?”
“I think you made an unforgettable impression.”
“I’m glad you brought me here to look them over. I’m not a cop all these years for nothing. They’re loaded. I could tell. Demand a dowry, kid.”
5
Hey, nonny-nonny, here’s a hot one, plucked from this morning’s Globe and Mail:
PROBATION FOR “DEVOTED”
WIFE WHO KILLED HUSBAND
Caring for sick man “intolerable burden” after 49 years’ marriage
A devoted 75-year-old wife who killed her seriously ill husband shortly before the couple’s golden wedding anniversary walked free from the High Court in Edinburgh yesterday.
The poor dear was placed on probation for two years after she admitted that she had suffocated her husband with a pillow in their home last June before trying to commit suicide with a drug overdose. The court heard that she and her husband had been a “devoted and loving couple” for forty-nine years. But after hubbie, that inconsiderate boor, suffered a massive heart attack and had chronic kidney failure, the burden of nursing him had become too much for his wife, and made her suffer from depression. Tch-tch. The lawyer42 said that caring for her husband had become “an increasingly intolerable burden.” The night of the killing, he said, the husband had been getting out of bed and she ordered him to return