Murder on Location (5 page)

Seeing all that in the paper made me feel close to the centre of things. After all, less than twenty-four before, I was practically having a drink with Williams. It also reminded me that I should be on my way back to the Falls to be there with a few more questions when David Hayes woke up.

So, it was up and over the canal again, a twist around the colour-coded exits until I found myself on the riverfront once more. As I got closer to the falls, a fine mist hit the windshield and froze. I sprayed a couple of jets of de-icing fluid, and ice came free in chunky cakes, the wipers moving them around on the glass. There were few tourists watching either the American or the Horseshoe Falls. Anyone standing around too long ran the risk of being turned into an ice sculpture.

I made a right turn and pulled up the steep hill through a double line of sideshow attractions. On one side a waxworks with assassinated heads of state on life-like display, and on the other an exhibition of the automobiles of the famous. At this season and in this temperature the few red noses walking by looked neither to the right nor left, heading for hot-buttered rum indoors. The whole street looked shabbier than it did during the summer. Even the life-sized figure of the French tightrope-walker, Blondin, balanced on a wire crossing the street and peeling from frost and sun, looked like he wanted to take the winter months off. I pulled the Olds into the Tudor's parking lot, blocking Hayes' Jaguar again, and went into the Tudor with my galoshes jingling like sleighbells.

The lobby had the look of hotel lobbies in the morning: discipline renewed after a long night, the ashtrays empty, and the carpets clean and unscuffed. I headed straight for the elevator without getting the fish-eye from the men at the desk. Double doors opened and I was back in the corridor on the seventeenth. I still had Hayes' key,
but I thought better of using it. I'd drop it on a table when he wasn't looking.

I knocked and waited. I tried again. There was no answer. I knocked louder, thinking I might have caught him in the shower. Again no answer. I tried a few more times, until the weight of the key I was carrying got too much for me. I opened the door of Room 1738.

David Hayes had flown the coop. His still smelly clothes lay crumpled into a ball on the floor and the bed still showed stains of coffee and other things. I was about to close the door gently behind me when the telephone rang. I scooped it up and grunted like I was half asleep.

“David? Can we meet tomorrow afternoon in the coffee shop on the basement level of the Colonel John?” I grunted again, and she hung up after telling me to be there at five o'clock. If that was Billie Mason, she hadn't been murdered and all I had to do was tell her husband to be at Butler's Barracks tomorrow at five and I could write “Closed” on another skinny file. I couldn't assume, on the other hand, that I knew Hayes' only female friend in his own home town.

I went through the revolving door of the hotel and saw the doorman decide I didn't look like I wanted a taxi. I turned left and walked down the hill. The wind was still blowing up a fine freezing mist, but it wasn't bothering sight-seers so far downwind. I walked across the Niagara Parkway and along the stone and metal balustrade past the coin-operated binoculars encrusted in an aspic of ice, to get a good look.

There they were: Niagara Falls, like on an oversized box of Shredded Wheat. As familiar as your big toe, only now they were valanced with ice. Ice above the falls, ice on the sides, ice retail and ice wholesale down below. In all of Hudson's Bay, I thought, there can't be so much ice. In one place it was stacked forty feet high. There was so much of it, you couldn't see water except on the falls themselves and ugly-looking pools of dark froth below. A few hardy cedars that lined the banks had their branches blown back to the cliff-face and frozen there. Up near the Rainbow Bridge the
Maid of the Mist
dock and loading platform that in summer sees thousands of tourists on and off the four midget steamers had been covered by a mass of glacial ice. But from where I stood, with a stout wind blowing off the falls and down the gorge, all was bright, calm and quiet. The forces pushing and pulling inside that mass of ice showed not a ripple on top.

Back in the last century and for over a decade in this, tourists were allowed to climb down into the gorge and walk out on the ice bridge, drop their jaws in awe of the falls, then buy a drink from the illegal bars that had been set up in shanties on the ice to stoke the internal fires. It had been found impossible to make a liquor offence charge stick on these bars, because the culprit always claimed his shack was across the international line from which jurisdiction had made the pinch. After an accident in which three tourists lost their lives, visitors had had to look for other amusements and the hotelkeepers, who had
found the ice bridge a winter bonanza, had had to grit their teeth and wait for spring.

In 1938 the ice was so bad it pulled down the Honeymoon Bridge, right under the watchful lenses of cameras from the leading newspapers and wires services of the world. It was a tremendous scoop. Unfortunately the hands that should have been on those shutter releases were hugging warm coffee cups across the street, and the only picture of the collapse was snapped by a passing amateur.

I walked along looking over the railing at the river below—log-jammed with ice floes. It was an eerie sensation. They say that in the spring of 1948, when the ice blocked water getting over the brink of the falls, the suddenly silent cataracts woke sleepers and caused dogs to bark at the unfamiliar stillness.

I know all this stuff because, when we were kids, the Falls was the favourite place of my older brother and me. It was close to the border and coloured comic books (during the war) and movies on Sundays. Going “over the river” was a minor miracle. People who don't live near a border lose a free lesson in just about every subject they teach in school. People who grow up surrounded by more of the same for hundreds of miles on either side of them end up international yokels, gaping at strange licence plates or looking suspiciously at a foreign coin.

I stepped into a restaurant across the street from one of the big railway bridges that run over the Niagara gorge. Grade level was high above the road and the damp and
rust of the tracks had stained the stones of the abutments. The restaurant had been let into a space between the bridge supports, a hole in the wall almost literally. There was a short counter with pedestal seats and several booths. The walls were shiny yellow that reminded me of flypaper. The coffee, when it arrive in a white stoneware mug, was both hot and a credit to the railwaymen who had kept the place in the black over the years. I was sitting at right angles to a couple of middle-aged Ukrainian women who were sharing a sandwich and talking about property values. I ordered a chopped egg on toasted white and a glass of milk. The egg salad was a little tired, but the toast was just the way I like it, noisy.

Along the street a crowd had gathered in front of an appliance store. I joined it. Inside the window, a bank of TV sets showed a woman receiving flowers from an official who held a homburg in one hand. The setting was a large hotel lobby. A second camera gave us a close-up of the woman. It was Peggy O'Toole, in glorious colour, pushing her gamin face into the flowers, smiling and shaking hands. She should have got an Academy Award nomination for smiling through an interminable speech of welcome. Beside me, sidewalk critics and fans were addressing comments through the glass at the face on the half-dozen screens.

“Isn't she gorgeous. I love her hair!”

“Did you see her in
Needing People
? She was wonderful.”

“I heard she bought John Barrymore's castle in Hollywood.”

“She could afford it. Is she still seeing that baseball player from the Mets? Slinger Bone?”

“Ancient history. She's after bigger bucks.”

“Bone's got a million-dollar contract. What's bigger?”

I walked a chilly block and found a public phone. When I was about to feed it change, I discovered that it had been disembowelled of its working parts. I had better luck across the street in the entrance to a gift shop that specialized in English bone china and spelled shop the long way. My answering service had no messages for me.

From the phone booth, I wandered down along the riverfront toward the falls, where I could see in the distance the film crew at work. A crowd had gathered at one of the strips of park land between the hotel and the river, and half a dozen cops were trying to keep order. It wasn't as hazardous as a rock concert, and too cold to stand watching for long. Grips were busy laying track across the street on a slant. Beyond the cops, a clutch of crew members were holding up giant reflectors; several others crowded around a dolly which would eventually be lifted to the tracks. Those not busy stood near one another drinking coffee from Styrofoam cups. A group of extras huddled for warmth in the lee of one of the customs buildings attached to the Rainbow Bridge. Dawson Williams was there beside the parapet overlooking the gorge, wearing a pigskin bomber jacket that looked like he'd inherited it from Charles A. Lindbergh. Jim Sayre, in a
yellow Anorak of nylon that looked none too warm, was puffing suggestions at him as they looked down to the ice below. The cameraman joined them. Nobody hurried, but I didn't see many wasted movements.

The hold-up was the laying of the track. It had to be lifted with shims and blocks so that the camera dolly could move smoothly from road level to sidewalk level in one easy uninterrupted motion. The man in charge of the dolly looked doubtfully at the track. He didn't want to risk the camera until the track tested perfect. I wondered why the rest of the crew not involved in railway work didn't go inside and unthaw their noses.

A little farther along the curving icy sidewalk, with the mists of the falls sometimes obscuring it, the front of a motel was done up in rustic stone and advertized vacancies from a large sign. Workmen were adding touches to the windows. A painter was adding daubs to the stonework. Just as I was wondering why I'd never noticed a motel this close to the falls, I could see that behind the front there was nothing but masking canvas. A piece of scenery with landscaping.

Disillusioned with the mad make-believe of show business, I got in my car and called on several local hairdressers. I'd tried making this kind of check on the phone before and decided that you're never sure you have the storekeeper's full attention unless you're standing in front of him. The driving ate up a lot of time, but I came away from the last of my calls, Anton's Salon on Centre Street, with the information that Billie Mason was expected for a
touch-up and set on Friday at 2:15. That was better than a kick in the head, and I felt like I was earning some more of Lowell Mason's money. I returned the car to the rear of the Tudor, but went in the Colonel John for a routine look around.

There were flower petals on the floor of the lobby. A bellhop with a long-handled dustpan was sweeping up the left-overs of Peggy O'Toole's reception. The crowd had found other business. I did a fast tour of the bar and all the snacking and eating places. In the restaurant, a dim place with a suit of armour waiting to show you to your table, I spotted Adela Sayre. She was sitting with Miranda Pride.

Miranda Pride had been away from the screen for about ten years, but nobody could ever forget her or fail to recognize her. She was as much a part of Hollywood as Taylor, Hepburn and Lassie. She was adjusting a pair of enormous sunglasses and scooping cigarettes and lighter into her bag as Adela's smile of recognition dragged me over. In that light, Miranda looked about thirty-two, but I knew she was that and half as much again. She had the kind of face and figure that seems to shine in the dark.

“Miranda, I want you to meet a detective friend of Jim's: Ben Cooperman. He lives here in the Falls. Ben, this is Miranda Pride, one of my oldest friends.” We both said how-do-you-do, and I got a full blast of the Pride smile, which I'll leave to my grandchildren. It was like a week in Palm Beach with all expenses paid. Her mouth
was as famous as Leo, the M-G-M lion, and at times it had roared as eloquently.

“So, you're a local boy too, Mr. Cooperman?” And without waiting for an answer she continued: “When Adela calls me one of her oldest I feel at least eighty. Why don't you say I'm your niece from Bryn Mawr or something?” She was straightening a cloche hat over her dark hair, and then went on to service a series of silk scarves of the same colour and finally smiled with sudden delight at her tailored linen suit that whispered of sunshine and balmy days. “If you are planning to eat here, I'd work around the Chef Salad: I think he's just discovered spinach.”

“Why did you say ‘So you're a local boy too?' Miss Pride?”

“Miranda, please, Miranda. ‘Why?' Because my husband comes from the Falls.” She examined my face like it was a part she was learning and when she saw no kindling of the lamps of recognition she added: “Neil Furlong. He wrote the script of
Ice Bridge
. There isn't much about the Falls he doesn't know.”

“Yes,” said Adela, “and it's all in the script.”

“That's not funny, Adela,” and the maître d' hurried over to help Miranda into her mink coat. “They're still battling about it. If you're not good, you won't get your T-shirt.”

“My what?”

“Thank you, Costas. You haven't heard? Neil's had
Ice Bridge
T-shirts made for everybody.”

I didn't get my tongue working fast enough to make the big impression I'd been planning all these years. I didn't even get to tell her that I lived in Grantham not the Falls. Somehow the details of my life were the fine print of this meeting.

“Where to now, Adela? She's been leading me around by the nose since she arrived. We've bought out all the English china in town. And there's real wool in the stores. It makes me almost wish I'd learned to knit. But someone would come along with a camera and catch me at it and that would be the end of me. I'd embark on a new career playing mothers. Oh, I don't want to think about it!” Miranda managed to look as though she was unaware that everybody in the restaurant was watching her every move. “I hope to run into you again, Mr. Cooperman,” she said extending her gloved hand in my direction, and then in a swirl of furs the two women were on their way again. I lacked the courage to follow, to confess that I wasn't really hungry, but I saw just outside that David Hayes, looking tall and sober in an old yellow sweater, had been stopped by Miranda. She took him by the arm and introduced him to Adela. A waiter offered to find me a table and when I next got to look around, the women had gone. Hayes came into the restaurant alone. I gave him a big grin, but he looked right through me. The next time he ties one on, I thought, let him crawl home by himself. The waiter sat him at a table for two just beyond mine. I wondered whether he was there to meet with Billie Mason. My instinct to go over and begin a conversation
was overruled by the chance that I might learn more by keeping my mouth shut.