by Andrew Pyper
“Make believe,” he says.
FORTY-ONE
The next day is passed by explanations of DNA identification technology delivered by the goggle-eyed lab rat the Crown has brought up from Toronto. I feel for the poor bastard though, trying to teach a remedial science lesson to the jury who looks back at him as though auditioning for the chorus in Deliverance: The Musical. It gives me a chance to doze off for five-second hits of sleep. A tricky business which involves holding your head up with one hand and positioning it so that your closed eyes will be hidden from the bench. This part is essential. Judges are universally intolerant of sleeping lawyers, mostly because their own seating arrangement prevents them from indulging in the same pleasure themselves.
And each time my eyelids spring back open it’s with the terrible image of Bert Gederov and Graham Lyle having kittens all over the boardroom floor two hundred miles to the south because I haven’t yet returned their calls. The reason is simple: despite my best efforts, I haven’t come up with a reasonable explanation for my remarks to the press of the other day. But by the time court is adjourned in the afternoon (the DNA dweeb having just finished his “introductory remarks”) I know it can no longer be avoided. If I don’t call back tonight they’re liable to pop up for a visit themselves, and neither of them would arrive in good spirits. Bert because it would mean a day not spent in court (hating this more than anything else in his broad taxonomy of hates) and Graham because of the hives, watery eyes and swollen glands he suffers from the moment he travels outside Toronto’s city limits.
“Well, well. It’s a good thing I caught you! Phone here at the desk’s been ringing off the hook!” the concierge calls out from the shadows the moment I walk in The Empire’s doors.
“I know about that phone.”
“Beg pardon?”
“You’ve got some messages for me?”
“Some? A bundle as thick as my—”
“Thumb?”
“My thumb, yeah. One of the fellas that’s been callin’ is as foulmouthed a sort as I ever spoke to. A Mr. Buggeroff or Getyerrocksoff or something.”
I move forward toward the stairs, keeping my eyes away from the glowing head.
“Here you go,” he says, sticking the messages into my waving hand. “And good luck with that Buggeroff character.”
“Good afternoon, Lyle, Gederov & Associate. Can I direct your call?”
“Hi, Doris. It’s Barth.”
“Bartholomew,” the receptionist whispers. “They’ve been on the warpath looking for you. Is your cellular not working?”
“I guess I just haven’t turned it on for a while. Are they around?”
“Both in the boardroom right now, actually.”
“Good, I guess. Time to meet my makers. Hook me up.”
There’s a moment of muzak while I’m put on hold (“The Girl from Ipanema”) and then the click of the boardroom speakerphone being switched on, the background hum of fluorescent lights and air-conditioning.
“Bartholomew! You’re alive!” Graham sings at a considerably lower register than usual.
“Nominally. How are you?”
“Concerned, frankly. Bert is here with me and I think I can speak for him when I say that he’s concerned as well. Why have you refused to return our messages? Can we start there, Barth?”
I’ve never heard Graham quite like this before. Clipped, a viciousness barely concealed by a thin skin of businesslike civility. It’s far more unsettling than the raging abuse I’ve come to expect from Bert.
“I guess it’s because I knew what you were calling about,” I say.
“And?”
“And I didn’t much feel like explaining a public relations mistake when I had a trial to concentrate on.”
“Public relations mistake? Are you fucking kidding? You stand there and talk straight into the cameras about what it’s like to be a mercenary who doesn’t give a fuck and you call it a public relations mistake? You blew it! I told you to keep your mouth shut and then you go and sing like a birdie at the first question they ask. Do you realize how this makes us look? Or are you too fucking stupid?”
This is Bert.
“I recognize that this makes you look bad. But I didn’t intend to—”
“Hey, Barth. Can I ask you something? Are you some kind of fucking idiot?”
“Some kind.”
“Prick!”
“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!”
Graham’s on his feet judging from the distant sound of his voice. It’s his habit to stand whenever Bert gets rolling, as though in preparation to make a run for the door if things get entirely out of hand.
“Now, Barth. Can we get back to the motive for your comments of the other day? Why did you say those things?”
“It just happened. That’s a poor excuse, I know, but one minute I’m standing there trying to find a way through them to the door and the next minute all these things are coming out of my mouth.”
“Barth, are you having problems?”
“No. Problems? Yeah, I guess I’ve been having some problems.”
Bert lights a cigarette, scoffs and brings up a load of phlegm from his throat in a swift sequence.
“What sort of problems?” Graham continues.
“Nothing specific, really. I mean, Tripp is being totally unhelpful. And then there’s other things too, I don’t know. I haven’t been sleeping much, I guess.”
“Awwww! Poor baby! Not getting enough sleepy bye-byes?” Bert coos, then follows it with a punctuating snort.
“What’s most troubling of all,” Graham goes on, “is the matter of your confidence in your client. Do you remember that part? When asked directly as to whether you yourself believed in your client’s guilt, you walked away. Walked away! Infinitely worse than screaming, ‘He did it! He did it!’ from the rooftops! Bartholomew, really, what in heaven’s name were you thinking?”
“I didn’t say I thought he was guilty. I didn’t say I thought he wasn’t.”
“Well, why couldn’t you have said something?”
“Because he’s as good a pick as any. I couldn’t say I have every confidence in my client’s innocence when I don’t.”
“Why the fuck not? Why not say what you’re supposed to say, for God’s sake! You know what I don’t get about all this shit? How come you’re the Goody Two-shoes Boy Scout all of a sudden? ‘Oh no! I couldn’t possibly tell a lie!’ Jesus Christ, Barth, what’s happened to you up there?”
The line goes quiet as they wait for me to respond. But I can’t say any of the things they want to hear. Don’t worry, it won’t happen again. I was just joking around. My comments were taken out of context. It’s too late.
“I’m sorry. I guess I’m just having a bit of a rough time up here. A lot of things have been going on that I’m having trouble putting together, you know? No, you wouldn’t know.”
“Sure, sure,” Graham says uncertainly. “We understand the pressures of a trial of this kind. We just need to know if you’re telling us you’re not able to continue. The truth now. Can you get this job done on your own or do you need to be bailed?”
“Yeah. No problem. I’m going to finish it. I need—it’s important that I finish it.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m aces.”
“That’s the spirit! Now we’d ask you to stay in touch a little more, O.K., Barth? And answer your phone when it rings.”
“Sure.”
“And Barth?” Bert craning his head back to blow smoke directly into the air above him.
“Yeah?”
“Get some sleep, alright? And if the bogeyman keeps you up in the nighty-nights, give me a call and I’ll send my mother up there to hold your hand. She’s got nothing better to do these days.”
“Thanks, Bert.”
“Right then! Good luck with it and do stay in touch!”
Graham’s false briskness has returned, calling the conversation to a close. I should be relieved. But instead there’s a bu
bble of sudden panic rising in my chest.
“There’s something—” I start, but the line’s already dead.
FORTY-TWO
Pulling up outside the Emergency Room doors of the Murdoch District Medical Clinic and Dr. MacDougall there to meet me. Smile on his face like on open fly, smoking with the smug conviction of a man who’s been the first to learn that science has been wrong the whole time, that in fact all that nicotine and tar and pesticides has never done the slightest harm to a single soul.
“The boy’s been asking for you,” he states flatly as I step out of the Lincoln and attempt to pass him on the way inside.
“The nurse called me. That’s why I’m here.”
“I didn’t know you’d made such close friends among the teenaged subculture of our town, Mr. Crane.”
“Not sure I know what you mean.”
“People have seen you about, haven’t they? Hanging out with the kids at the doughnut shop. Mooning round the high school halls. And now wee Laird’s using his one phone call on you.”
“It’s a real mystery, isn’t it, Doctor? But obviously the best minds of Murdoch are on the case, so I’m sure you’ll have everything figured out soon.”
He gives me the slow up-and-down that’s meant to communicate suspicion rather than read any signs I might be showing.
“End of the hall,” he says after he’s taken all of me and the remainder of his cigarette in.
Laird’s room no larger than a walk-in closet but at least he has it all to himself: the subterranean clangs within the heating vent that lolls out tongues of gaseous heat, the nylon roses set in a coffee mug on the bedside table, the window screen with a hole at the bottom as though a fist had been plunged neatly through in an effort at escape. And the patient himself. A bony extraterrestrial under the single sheet.
“How you doing there, Laird?”
“How’s it look?”
“Not too damn good.”
“Sounds about right.”
There’s no sign of physical injury outside of the IV tubes and ECG beeping out the truth of his mortal condition. The room’s size forces me to stand closer to him than I’d prefer, however. I could reach down and take the banana-peel skin of his hand in mine without moving forward another step.
“All this has a certain self-inflicted look to it,” I say.
“And you’d be correct.”
“What’s your poison?”
“Acid. Rolled up a sheet of blotter and kind of ate the whole thing,” he laughs, shoots a tail of mucus out his nose. “Then I headed out on this major quest but started to trip really fucking bad. And I guess I must have passed out or something, because some guy peeled me off the highway, brought me in here and the next thing I know I’m having my stomach pumped and they’ve got me hooked up to all these bags and machines and shit.”
“Where did you think you were going?”
“Let’s keep in mind that I wasn’t thinking. But I guess I had an idea I was going to make my way out to the lake.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to go for a swim.”
A thousand needles pushed through the whole of my body. Instant stabs of cold in the overheated room.
“Wrong time of the year for that,” I say.
“Tell me about it.”
He motions his chin toward the table and I pour some water into the empty plastic cup that sits there but his hands don’t rise to take it, so I have to dribble it between his lips myself. Palm behind his head. Teenage boy vapors rising off his skin.
“And once you came around you decided to call me,” I say after returning his skull to the wet indentation it’s left in the pillow. “Not your mom or any of your friends.”
“I’ve told you before. I don’t have any friends. And my mother? Please. I’ll be lucky if she pays for my cab home.”
“What about your father?”
“Missing in action.”
Laird closes his eyes for a second and the lids come down purple, thick and shining.
“But still. Why me?”
“I guess I wanted to tell you because I had a feeling—because I know that whatever I say to you is privileged or whatever, right?”
“No. You’re not my client. But if there’s something you want to tell me about the trial, I assure you that I—”
“I thought about doing things to them too, man.”
“Who?”
“Ashley and Krystal. Who the fuck else?”
He looks so small. Not that Laird was ever a big kid. But there was a rangy breadth to the space he filled before that’s gone now, his head turned to face me and everything else narrow and still under the covers.
“What kind of things?”
“Sex and shit. And worse.”
“Try me.”
“Like hurting them.”
“And did you?”
“No. But sometimes it feels like whether I was the one or not—that it doesn’t make much difference if you thought about doing the same things yourself.”
Behind me the intercom is calling out for Dr. MacDougall, Dr. MacDougall. Please come to Emergency, Dr. MacDougall. The nurse’s actual voice at her desk down the hall as loud as her amplified one.
“That’s an interesting philosophical debate you’ve introduced, Laird,” I say, voice lowered. “But I’d still like to know what I’m doing here. You want a shrink, talk to Principal Warren. But I’m a lawyer. I defend people who’ve done things. And you haven’t done anything. Unless there’s something you’re not telling me.”
“What I’m not telling you is that I’m scared shitless,” the kid says and is immediately silenced by a lengthy spasm of shivers as though to prove the point. “It’s like I see them sometimes in these places around town. All of a sudden, just turn my head and bang there they are. Laughing their heads off with mouths that could swallow you whole but quiet, quiet.”
“You’re talking about people who are most likely dead, Laird.”
“No shit. Hello! I’m the guy in the hospital on account of he thought he was losing his fucking mind.”
Laird throws his eyes over to the cup of water on the table once more but I pretend not to notice. His oversize spectacles set like welder’s goggles to forehead and cheek.
“What were they wearing?” I’m asking now, wobbling almost directly above him. “The girls. When you saw them.”
“That’s the other weird thing,” he says, bringing his voice down now along with mine. “It was like these old-fashioned dresses. But ripped up and stained all over, as if it was the only thing they’d been wearing for the past year-and-a-half. Nothing else but—what’s wrong with you, man?”
“Don’t they have any goddamn chairs in here?”
“Have a seat here if you want.”
He pats the surface of the bed as though bidding the family dog up for a nap but instead it’s me planting myself next to him, legs dangling over the edge like water balloons.
“You O.K.?”
“Fine, fine. Hot,” I manage, gesturing a paw toward the heating vent.
“I know, man. I’m buck naked except for one of those hospital thingies that no matter how you tie it your ass is always sticking out, and I’m warm in here.”
“Did you help Tripp, Laird?” I ask in a rush, the words mingling with the kid’s nervous laughter.
“With what, man?”
“Did you do something to them together?”
“You don’t seem to understand that what I’m getting at here is that I could have. But then intention is half of the criminal act, isn’t it, Mr. Crane? Who knows? Maybe I would’ve said yes if he’d bothered to ask me.”
I’d like to move away from him now. Slide forward and return my body to its own command but I’m sinking where I am, half tilted against Laird’s skeletal pokes and jabs.
“I’m not saying my client did anything, by the way,” I say in place of moving. “I was only speaking hypothetically just now.”
“No, you weren�
��t. But don’t worry. I won’t tell anybody.”
There’s a moment when I consider denying this, or telling the kid to go fuck himself, or bouncing up off the mattress and out the door without another word. But the moment passes.
“I think you have to do something, man,” the kid’s saying now, the words clicking out through blocked sinuses.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. But everything’s fucked right now and unless somebody steps up I have a bad feeling it’s going to stay that way.”
“I’d like to help, I really would. But I still don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do, Mr. Crane.”
“How can you tell me—”
“Have you given my files over to the police yet?”
“As a matter of fact, I haven’t.”
“And why’s that?”
“I’m still considering my options.”
“Bullshit.”
Solid footsteps coming down the hall that send creaks through the ceiling tiles, rattle the metal strips that hold the walls in place.
“You’re keeping them for the same reason I did,” he says.
“And why was that?”
“To make them mine, man. But the thing is that now they’re dead it feels like I’m fucking theirs.”
Shoes scraping to a stop at the door.
“Ach, well now. Isn’t this comfy cozy?”
Dr. MacDougall a mile above us in the overhead lights, grinning like an ape.
“I was just leaving.”
“Oh no, no. I wouldn’t want to disrupt such a comforting scene as this.”
I’m up now and none too steady, but there must be something on my face that gives MacDougall cause to go easy because he slides back to let me out without another word. And with his retreat there returns a trace of the bitter energy I’ve come to depend upon over the course of my professional career. The sugared blood of pride bringing me back to life.
“Hey, Laird, you want some advice?” I say as I step out the door.
“Sure, dude.”
“Next time you decide to OD, do it right.”
