“Not yet, but let me have Olivia show you to a table.”
I am aware of eyes following me as I cross the lobby. In my early days, I tried the whole pantsuit, no-makeup look, but I couldn’t pull it off. So, at thirty-four I dress like who I am—dark suits, white shirts, crimson lipstick and nails (if it’s not a court day, maybe a bright jacket over a strappy dress) always with black heels. When I move, it’s chin up, shoulders back.
Mitchell hands me over to a statuesque young woman clad in black hose and the briefest of miniskirts who ushers me past the social shrieks of the lounge.
“House Chardonnay,” I say as I slide into a nook shrouded in drapes.
I hear Cy before I see him: the click of his artificial leg, the sound of his brace, the audible expulsion of breath with each step. Life is an effort for this man. Years after polio was eradicated here, Cy contracted it in Uganda, where his father went on sabbatical. Cy makes light of his limp, says it’s made him strong, but the burden of his body shapes his life and colors his moods. Most think of him as acerbic, some view him as shifty, a few call him downright mean. Slippery Cy, they whisper in the corridors of justice, and walk the other way.
Not me. It wasn’t easy, learning to be a criminal lawyer. I bumbled, lost more often than I should have. I was on my way down, another dropout from the cloistered criminal bar. No one cared. Except Cy. After pummeling me in court, he would offer coffee and a postmortem. Between banal bits of legal gossip, he slipped in morsels of advice: Think through your case, know your defense, look the jurors in the eye, don’t talk down to the judge And, by the way, never let the bullshit get you down.
Why are you telling me this, Cy? I would ask after each session.
An arch of brow, a twist of lip. I consider it my duty to toughen you up, Jilly.
And he did. These days our conversations are sometimes friendly, sometimes not. Though it’s our lot to do constant battle, he is forever, in some place in the back of my being, my mentor.
“Jilly,” his deep voice booms, “good to see you.” He pivots his body forward on his arm brace, lets it fall to the bench beside me, and motions to Olivia, who hovers in the shadows. “Laphroaig, straight up, no ice, double.” He’s a big man. His round head sits low on his thick neck, his forehead so broad he seems hydrocephalic.
“How’s Mike?” he asks.
“Great. Awash in apps and applications. Traveling too much for my taste.”
“When are you two going to make it official?”
“Soon.” I shrug. “Probably.”
“Jilly, dear Jilly. Take some advice from an old and bitter warrior. There’s more to life than courtroom skirmishing.” He pauses. “And Martha and Brock and the boys?”
“Thriving. Don’t see them enough, though.” I spare a fond thought for my foster family. I’m an orphan, abandoned by who knows whom, who knows where, appropriated, sort of, by a kindly United Church minister and his wife who took me into care. I was twelve when they died within months of each other. I try to avoid thinking about what followed—a series of foster homes where I discovered an impressive capacity for rejecting horror shows and getting thrown back into the system. My final home was with Martha and Brock Mayne. I am forever grateful for their kindness (not to mention financial underpinning), and for their four sons, from whom I garnered such street smarts as I possess.
I change the subject. “How’s Lois?” Cy’s wife, who more than once has offered me a homemade meal on a late trial evening, has been unwell of late.
Cy’s shining skull moves side to side. “Want the good news or the bad?”
“You know me. Both?”
“Well, the good news is she’s stopped drinking. The bad news is her liver is shot.”
“So, what do you do now?”
“We go for a transplant.”
“But if she’s—”
“You’re right, Jilly—big but. She’s sworn off, though. Doing detox. So she’s on the waiting list.”
“How long?”
“Who knows? In the meantime, let’s just say she’s not deliriously happy with the world.”
Our drinks arrive. I feel the first sip of Chardonnay slide down my throat, spare a thought for the misery of life. Cy and Lois seemed a perfect match at first: feisty country girl paired with only son of the late and revered academic, a force of a man. They had a son; twelve months later, he died. Cy buried his sorrow in a fueled-up passion to convict the sons of bitches who run afoul of the law while Lois sat alone in her grief. A nip to make the evening pass, then another. Get a divorce, end the charade, I’d told him, you’re killing her. But something—maybe guilt, maybe love?—has held him to her.
“Jilly,” Cy says. “You know I like you. I need to give you a word to the wise.”
What I need is a deal that will save my skin on Monday, not advice, I think.
“You’ve been on a roll. The Smith verdict, then the Nugent drug-conspiracy trial you torpedoed for the prosecution. Your win in the Court of Appeal the other day.”
He shifts the weight of his torso on the bench. “Ten years, and you’ve built a reputation. You’re hot, Jilly. But it could all be over like that.” He flicks his finger against his thumb. “A couple of losers and you’re gone.”
I shoot him a look. “There’s always legal aid.”
“You can’t go back to that. It would kill you.”
“Your point, Cy?”
“You’re starting to take chances, Jilly. I’ve seen it happen before. Cheskey—it’s a loser and you know it. Yet you’re taking it to trial.”
“If I’m not mistaken, you’re taking it to trial, Cy. Last time I looked, you were the prosecutor.”
“Cut the bullshit. I offered you second degree.”
“Not good enough,” I say. “Second degree gets my client parole in ten years. Nice boy, no record, scared shitless when he fired the shots. He’s a kid, Cy. It’s a waste if he goes to jail. With luck, I get manslaughter or an acquittal.” I let the words hang.
“Acquittal, Jilly? You’re crazy. He blasted five shots into the victim. Point-blank. You know I can’t go to manslaughter on this one.”
“Then I guess we go to trial.”
“I guess so. But it pains me to see you lose.”
“Spare me.” I know Cy loves to win as much as I do. Needs to win. Lives to win. He shifts gears.
“I hear you’re defending Trussardi.”
“We’ll see. I’m meeting him tomorrow.”
“Another loser.” Cy takes a deep draught of the single malt. “He’s guilty as sin, Jilly. No one could pull an acquittal for your guy out of that crime scene. And it’ll be big. National, maybe even international.”
I shake my head. Does Cy care about me? Or is he worried I might win?
“It’s my job to defend the accused, Cy. In case you’ve forgotten, he’s presumed innocent. Anyway, from what I read in the papers, you have a problem. The identity issue. In street talk, whodunit.”
“He’s going down, Jilly. His bed, his gun. And the photos—let’s just say when you see them, you’ll understand. Just thought I’d try to warn you.”
“Cy, if fear of losing were enough to make me quit, I’d never have started in this business. Every case, somebody loses. I know how to pick myself up.”
He cracks a small smile. “I thought that’s what you’d say.” His eyes lock on mine, unblinking. “I see it all now. Back at your condo on the Creek. Open a can of tuna, crank up the jazz. Google Trussardi. Enough on the web to last you until midnight. At least.”
“And you? Home to cold roast beef and a bleak evening with your ailing wife. Don’t worry about me, Cy. I’ll survive.”
He’s about to order a second drink, but I motion for Olivia, who eyes us discreetly from behind the velvet drapes. “The check,” I say, “and a cab for my friend.” I flip a twenty on the table, rise. “Thanks for the advice, Cy. See you Monday.”
CHAPTER 4
CY KNOWS ME WELL. AFTER a salad from
Urban Fair, I settle in behind the blond desk that sits at an angle in my living room window and spend the next few hours ignoring the ocean sunset and getting to know my client.
I start with the wife, Laura Trussardi. There she is, looking up at me from the social pages of the Sun, taking the steps of the Hotel Vancouver on the arm of her husband, radiantly arrayed for the Beaux Arts Ball, gloved hand raised in silent greeting to some unknown acolyte, bared shoulder framed in silk. Blond hair sweeps up from her long neck in an elegant coif held in place by a diamond comb, and the emeralds at her throat shimmer in the klieg lights. The social bloggers do not reveal her age—bad form—but I can guess: forty, tops.
I learn that she kept busy, sat on the boards of arts groups and ran drives to raise money for causes as diverse as cancer and Bard on the Beach, an annual Shakespeare festival. The perfect wife. I scan further. No mention of children, though.
I hit a link—LEAF, short for Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund. There she is, a woman who never cracked a law book, handing a check with big numbers on it to the president of the local chapter at a fundraising breakfast. LAURA TRUSSARDI CONTRIBUTES $25,000 TO THE FUND FOR MISSING EASTSIDE WOMEN, the headline reads. I lean back in my chair. So, Laura Trussardi was a woman of conscience. A while ago, I was part of LEAF, might have even met Laura, but I’ve been off causes lately. These days, I’m more likely to be defending the guys accused of crimes against women than lobbying for their victims.
I find fewer photos of my client. Google says his parents came to Canada via London in 1945, fleeing the chaos of postwar Italy. They had a daughter named Raquella, and a decade later—an afterthought, maybe—a son whom they named Vincent after his father, Vincenzo. Vincent lived a charmed life—Oxford, cars, World Cup sailing. No shortage of women, judging by the photos. After a decade or so—his mother dead, his father ailing—he returned to Vancouver from abroad to take over the family business. Surprising the doubters, the playboy buckled down and steered the family firm in new directions. Not content with purveying Italian shoes and furniture, he diversified, acquiring banks and a chain of pharmacies. One of the banks failed in the dark days of the early eighties, but he picked himself up and went on to remake his fortune. Along the way, he started collecting Aboriginal art, amassing the best collection of bentwood boxes and baskets in the world, barring the Museum of Anthropology. Then, ten years ago—late in life, as these things go—he married a woman fifteen years his junior from a prominent Vancouver family. I follow a link to Western Living, scan Laura and Vincent standing together in their West Vancouver home, a gallery of paintings in the background.
I consider hitting the chat sites, seeing what the masses say about Trussardi now that they’ve probably found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but I decide not to bother. I already know enough from the front pages of the papers. LAURA TRUSSARDI, DEAD IN HER BED OF GUNSHOT WOUND, the Sun had proclaimed, leaving the details to the imagination. I shut my computer down. I am all too aware of what they’ve concluded.
Something doesn’t jibe. My mind keeps going back to the man I met in the interview room—dignified, distant, stoic, moved to passion only at the end when he spoke of the need to attend his wife’s funeral. The eyes haunt me, sad and grieving—one minute telling me he’s overwhelmed by what he’s done, the next that despite the damning evidence, he’s innocent. I try to wish the thought away—it only makes the job harder to know that if my efforts fail, an innocent man will go down.
The jangle of my cell phone interrupts my thoughts. I pick it up. “Yeah, Jeff?”
“Got him out.”
“Difficult?”
“Piece of proverbial cake. Didn’t even have to put up money. Out on his own recognizance. ‘Surrender your passport, stay around town. No boating south of the forty-ninth parallel, and, oh, by the way, show up for trial.’ The usual warnings, ‘Your undertaking is sacred da-da-da,’ and the judge signed the paper. Done. Finito. Home free.”
“Home, but not free. Anyway, good work, Jeff. Where is he now?”
“Headed back to his house. Driver picked him up.”
“God.”
“Yeah. I know. I wouldn’t go near the place. Not if I was innocent.”
“Ours is not to judge, Jeff.”
“Whatever you say, boss.”
The line goes dead. I stare at the mute phone in the hollow of my hand, wondering if Trussardi will spend the night in the matrimonial bed, assuming it’s been cleaned up. Eleven thirty, the red light says. Time to sleep, or try to. Tomorrow is another day.
CHAPTER 5
NINE A.M., FRIDAY. I’M AT my desk poring over papers when my line blinks. “Vincent Trussardi has arrived,” says Debbie.
“Show him into the boardroom,” I reply, referring grandly to the twelve-by-fourteen-foot cubicle we use for meetings. “And get Jeff—Alicia, too, if she’s in.” I want to make an impression.
When I enter the boardroom, I see Trussardi standing at the arched window, gazing out on the street below. He turns. “Miss Truitt.”
He is wearing a silk ascot and a jacket of finely checked wool over dress trousers. He looks exactly like what Google says he is: entrepreneur cum cultivated collector of fine art.
I cross to him, offer my hand. “Mr. Trussardi. Good to see you.”
He releases my hand with a nod. The melancholy mood of our prison interview is replaced today with a veneer of courtly manners. His eye travels from me to the Inuit bear carving on the table and the Toni Onley prints on the wall. “I see you are interested in art.”
“My foster parents introduced me to fine art. They insisted on trekking the family through galleries on weekends. I got into it. The colors, shapes, stories.”
“Art is my passion,” Trussardi muses. “I’ve had other loves, from time to time. But I always return to art. Beauty in all its fascinating forms.”
I don’t know what to say. Not much art—nor beauty—in prison, unless you count the graffiti on the walls.
Jeff enters, followed by Alicia. Here to take notes, she pats her laptop. Alicia is first-wave Chinese, she likes to remind us—descended from the men who came to build the Canadian Pacific Railway a century and a quarter ago and who paid a head tax to the government to bring their wives over. She wears her long black hair pulled back from her smooth face. She looks delicate, but I know better. She was second in her law class last year. I feel lucky to have her. We slide into our chairs. But before I can launch into my spiel, Trussardi speaks.
“I expect you want to know if I killed my wife.”
“Not unless you want to tell us,” I say. Why do they always think it’s about the truth? “Our job is not to decide whether you’re innocent or guilty—it’s to give you the best defense we can.”
“For the record, I didn’t. I didn’t kill her.” He must see the wheels going round in my head. “Nor did I hire anyone to do it. I loved my wife.”
“That’s good to know, Mr. Trussardi. But unfortunately, it’s not enough to get you off.” I think of the mountain of evidence Cy will amass against him. His wife, his bed, his gun. Circumstantial, sure, but evidence nevertheless. If he’s telling the truth—and I want to believe he is—he has a lot of explaining to do.
“Do you have any idea who killed your wife?”
A moment of hesitation, then he shakes his head. “None.”
Alicia stops typing. Jeff’s eyes meet mine, I told you so.
“Mr. Trussardi, we need your help. You must have thoughts about who could have killed her, who could have wanted her dead.”
“She was a good person.”
“Too good, Mr. Trussardi?” I ask. I think of my Google search. “Too many causes, too many missions?”
“I admired what she did, tried to support her causes.”
“But it wasn’t always easy?”
“No.” Then the words come out in a pent-up rush. “Sometimes it drove me mad. She was always trying to help this person or fix that wrong. ‘It’s not your problem,�
�� I used to tell her, ‘not our problem. Why can’t we just live our lives, you and me, why do you have to save the world?’ ” He pauses for a breath. “But I didn’t kill her. Sorry,” he whispers. “Never speak ill of the dead.”
“Don’t be sorry. We need to know her, know you, know how it was.” I lean across the table. “Who did she try to help?”
“Everyone. Crazy kids, missing women. Me.” He offers a tortured smile. “She took a playboy and gave him a conscience, or tried to. She took my sister, Raquella—in a wheelchair and beset by inner demons—and gave her a reason to live. The boy who used to hang around—” He breaks off.
Jeff, Alicia, and I watch Trussardi’s bowed head. “I’m not a saint—sometimes it drove me mad. But I loved her. I didn’t kill her.”
I clear my throat. “Sometimes bad people kill good people. Do you have any enemies, Mr. Trussardi? Anyone who would want to hurt you by murdering Laura?”
“I have business rivals, of course, but no enemies, no one who would do . . . this.”
“Do you have an alibi?”
He leans back, relieved to retreat to neutral territory. “Yes. I was sailing. Came home. Found her. Her body.”
“Were you with anyone? Do you have any way to prove you were away when she died? Someone who saw you? A cell phone trace that puts you on the water when she was killed?”
“I turned my phone off—I wanted peace and quiet. I sailed alone, but there were people at the yacht club. Someone must have seen me.”
“And what about the gun? Where do you keep it?”
“In my safe, but when I came home, the safe was empty.”
I make a note. “Mr. Trussardi, let me be frank. This will be a difficult case. Perhaps impossible. If we are to have any chance of success, you will need to be open with us, work with us. No secrets, no games, no holding back. Any of those things and you find yourself another lawyer.”
Alicia’s keys, clacking furiously as I speak, fall silent as Trussardi takes his time to answer. “I understand. No secrets, no games, no holding back.”
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