Red Mass

by Rosemary Aubert

  “Judicial appointment?” I gasped.

  Bailey Black smiled his wide politician’s smile.

  “You seem somewhat surprised, Portal.”

  No kidding.

  “Deputy, allow me to speak frankly,” I told him when I had a chance to catch my breath. “It’s been years since I was on the bench, and it’s no secret where I’ve been in the meantime. I was only readmitted to the bar a few months ago.”

  “Portal, this administration has been accused of hardheartedness, of putting people last. The Minister, the Premier and, of course, I myself don’t want us to appear to be the sort of government that is uncaring about the needs of people—especially our most vulnerable citizens.” He paused and looked at me as if I were supposed to know what he was talking about.

  “I’m speaking of children, of course,” he said, “vulnerable, poverty-stricken children.”

  “I don’t know anything about children,” I protested.

  He ignored me. “The Attorney General is about to announce that he is setting up a special judiciary appointment that will exclusively serve the legal needs of children, both civil and criminal. The posting will recapture the use of an old and honorable legal title, the Judge of Orphans. At present we have four nominees for this position. Because of your previous contributions on the bench and your personal knowledge of the needs of the marginalized on our city streets, you have been made one of our distinguished candidates.

  “The other candidates are a nun who founded a children’s legal crisis center, a social worker who saved the lives of several orphaned girls and a prominent professor at one of our universities. All of you are lawyers. All of you have served the city and the people long and well. May the best of you win, Portal.”

  He extended his hand, and I shook it, just as if I believed every word. When I left his office, I had but a single plan for the future use of my exceptional abilities, and that was to find a way to pull as good a trick on my friend Nickel McPhail as he had just tried to pull on me. Surely this meeting was a practical joke. Why would a man who’d already disgraced himself once as a judge have a chance to do it again?

  Jeffrey was waiting for me when I got back home. I found him in the parking lot of our building, gazing out over the ravine, which looked as though it had burst into flame. Both my son and I loved to come out here in the evening after a day downtown, to breathe the scent of tree-filled air, to hear the jays and cardinals call to their kin across the expanse of forest. The Don River valley was glorious in all seasons, but autumn was Jeffrey’s favorite.

  “Want to go for a walk, Dad?”

  I nodded, and in silence we descended the treed slope that led to the river far below. When we reached the shore, Jeffrey said, “I put in a call today to the broker who negotiated our purchase of the apartment building.”

  “Yes?”

  “I told him I might be interested in a parcel of land on the west side of the river.”

  “The undeveloped section where the river takes that turn toward the southwest?”

  “A little farther in,” Jeffrey said.

  I’m afraid. Someone is following me. My camp has been vandalized, and I have no idea why or by whom. I take only what I can carry in my hands. I ford the river on foot at its most shallow point. I set up again. At night the trains roar by. The sound reminds me that I am safer than I was but not safe enough.

  “Good idea, son.”

  If Jeffrey was pleased by my approval, he didn’t show it. “The broker promised to keep us posted. The City is liquidating quite a bit of its real estate holdings these days ...”

  We walked on until Jeffrey stopped at a point where the stream riffled over rocks, forming shallow rapids. A half dozen little whirlpools twisted in the green stream. I reached down and swirled my fingers in the cool water, as if washing away the dust of the city and the day. The flaming leaves of the trees danced in the moving waters. Jeffrey bent down toward the river, too. “Dad,” he said, “a long time ago, you told me the story that goes with that ring you wear.” He gestured toward the embossed gold signet on my right hand. “I remember about the symbols there, the scales of justice and the blind goddess, but I can’t remember the other part of it.”

  “Other part of what?” I stalled. I knew what he meant.

  “Something about a promise?”

  I drew a deep breath. The air was cool, as though the temperature had suddenly fallen. I decided to keep it short.

  “John Stoughton-Melville—Stow—has always been a man given to the dramatic gesture,” I began. ”The day that he, his wife Harpur, I and two other friends became lawyers, he gave me this ring as a symbol of our friendship. He maintained that friends should be willing to sacrifice all for each other. To that end, he asked me to promise him—and Harpur, too—that once in our lives, each of us could ask one favor of another, a favor that could not be refused, regardless of the consequences.”

  “And you promised?”

  “Yes.”

  Jeffrey looked up toward the deep blue sky as though he were addressing it instead of me. “Is that why you and Stow are still friends despite all the trouble that’s gone down between you?”

  I thought about that for a moment. “Maybe not friends, exactly, but acquaintances. Yes.”

  “And is that why you used to visit Harpur at the hospital?”

  “Partly,” I admitted.

  She lies so still. I don’t want to wake her. Nor do I need to. Sleep, my old love, sleep.

  “Dad, are you still with me?”

  “Son,” I said, “Stow, Harpur and I went back a long way. The night she died, it was as if an old alliance were broken. Stow was angry with me for a long time after.”

  “What happened that night?” he asked.

  But I couldn’t answer. We walked on through the autumn wood, pausing to study the trees, the lay of the land, the twist of the river in its green and bubbling course. It was many minutes before we spoke again, and then only to guide each other toward the path that led up and out.

  When we got to Jeffrey’s apartment, he knocked, and Tootie answered with Sally Alice, “Sal,” in her arms. The six-month-old giggled and held out her chubby hands, which I held to my rough face. She giggled again and squirmed to be held by me. Flattered, I took her and stepped inside.

  But I nearly dropped the baby because I was suddenly grabbed around the knees. Angelo was there, visiting. “Grandpa,” he shouted. “My secret isn’t secret anymore.”

  “What?”

  “Remember I told you that I had a secret? Well, now it’s in the paper so I can tell anybody I want.”

  “Okay,” I said, sitting down with the baby on my knee and Angelo leaning against me. “What’s the secret that isn’t a secret now?”

  “I went to Mommy’s work yesterday. I went to court.”

  I patted him on the head. “That’s nice, Angelo. What did you see? Did you see Mommy in her black robe?”

  “Sure. And you know what else?”

  “What else?”

  “I saw Chief Justice Stoughton-Melville. They got him for first-degree murder.”

  I stared at the boy, speechless. Finally I said, “I don’t think you know what you’re talking about, Angelo.”

  “Yes, I do, Grandpa. Look.”

  He ran over to the kitchen table and came back with the Toronto Daily World. Stow, in handcuffs, was on the front page.

  Chapter 3

  “I thought you were my friend.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Your Honor. Mostly I’ve been your only friend. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Queenie,” I insisted, “you should have told me.”

  “Told you what? I can’t tell a person something I don’t even know myself, can I?”

  I felt guilty confronting Queenie at nine o’clock in the morning when the waiting room of her clinic was jammed full of patients, but I wanted some answers.

  “You knew Stow was charged with murder, didn’t you? And you must also
know who he’s accused of killing.”

  “No!” she said with such assertiveness that I jumped. I wasn’t used to Queenie putting her foot down—not with me, anyway. “What difference does it make now? It’s all over the papers that he’s a suspect in a cold case. All I know is that he is trying to talk to you. He called me a couple of times. He asked me where you live, and I said I didn’t know the address, which is true.” She paused, flipped through her calendar. “I’m really busy right now, Your Honor. Maybe you could come back another time.”

  “Is he bribing you somehow? Is he giving you money?”

  “What the hell do you mean?”

  “For the clinic ...” I choked out. At her look of shock, words froze in my throat. I didn’t intend to accuse her of wrongdoing—just of going too far in the interest of her clients. “Maybe he offered you a donation if you would help him get to me.” She ignored me. She turned to her computer and studied the screen as it sprang to life. I couldn’t bear to have her angry at me. Not over Stow.

  “Listen, Queenie,” I said, coming up behind her. She clicked, and whatever was on the screen disappeared. “I’m just shocked that he would be accused of killing his wife. She’s been dead for more than five years. Seems ridiculous to me.”

  “He wants to talk to you, that’s all. He needs a lawyer. You’re a lawyer.”

  “But—”

  “I don’t want to discuss this anymore.” She rose and moved toward the door. I reached out and took her by the arm. She glared up at me, and I couldn’t figure out why suddenly everything I did seemed to annoy her.

  “Let me help you.”

  Her dark eyes harbored a sadness that never left. She could be laughing—or singing or celebrating—but that sadness was always there, like a scar.

  “I don’t need a lawyer,” she said, deliberately misunderstanding me. “I’m not in trouble. And as for my clients, anybody could help with their legal problems.”

  “Anybody?”

  “They got no money, no property, no relatives. If they do something that lands them in jail, they’re sure of a warm place to sleep and regular meals. In is as good as out to a lot of them.”

  “I didn’t buy that when I was on the street, and I don’t buy it now.”

  She smiled. “Your big friend Justice Stoughton-Melville isn’t bribing me, and you aren’t bribing me either. Get out of here. I’ll be your pal—like always. You don’t need to do me any favors.”

  Her dismissal wounded me despite the forced lightness of her tone. I reached for her hand, but she evaded my touch.

  “I could help them get ready for winter,” I offered.

  “Get ready for winter? What do you mean?”

  I hesitated before I answered. “Do you remember all the things I used to do when I lived in the valley so that I wouldn’t starve or freeze to death? Remember how you used to laugh at me and tell me that if I’d just submit myself to the social workers at the shelter, I could save myself so much trouble?”

  “Your Honor,” she said softly, “I can’t bear to think about those days.”

  Touched by the emotion in her voice, I tried to hide my own feelings. “Sure you can,” I answered heartily. “Especially if remembering helps other people to get through the worst days of the year.”

  “What exactly would you do?”

  I pulled Queenie to me by trying—and this time succeeding—to take her fingers in mine. She dropped my hand, but she stayed close to the chair in which I sat. “I’d show the people down there in Tent City how to stay far enough away from the river and from each other, for starters. And I’d teach them about cardboard.”

  “What about cardboard?” she said, wrinkling her nose.

  “You can’t tell me you never stole a good piece of cardboard to sleep on,” I teased her.

  “From the garbage only,” she answered. “Never from anybody else.”

  “You lie,” I said, but the bitter memories of our time together on the street made me stop the teasing. “Anyhow, I’d teach them where to find what they need to keep warm. You know, just what kind of Styrofoam and bubble wrap is best for lining the inside of huts and crates. Not too thick or it’ll make them feel claustrophobic. Not too thin or they’ll freeze their sorry butts.”

  She frowned.

  “I’m only kidding. I’m sure your clients don’t have sorry butts.”

  “You don’t either now, do you?”

  “Not unless Stow gets hold of me.”

  It was meant as a joke, but Queenie shivered. I tried speaking more seriously. “I can teach them how to catch a Canada goose and wring its neck and remove its feathers and cook it over a fire. I can teach them how to tell a good mushroom from poison, how to keep butter from freezing, how to sew a ... Queenie,” I said, clasping her hand tighter. “I don’t know what it is you need that Stow can offer, but I don’t want you to talk to him. I want you to let me be the one you turn to.”

  “I’m not turning to anybody,” she said. “I can take care of myself. And as far as my clients go, all your fine ideas won’t work unless you’re right down there with them, Your Honor.”

  The thought of spending time under a bridge near the Toshiba sign was so far from what I had envisioned for my renewed life that I cringed.

  “What’s wrong?” Queenie asked. “You have trouble with a hands-on approach? It’s not the sort of volunteer work you had in mind, maybe. But it’s what we need.”

  “And it’s what you’ll have,” I stoutly declared. “Leave it to me.”

  I glanced at her. She wore her uniform of white slacks and white tunic with the circle symbol emblazoned near her shoulder. Her sleek, straight, pewter-colored hair swung at the level of her firm chin. Her skin was smooth and so perfectly toned that I was reminded of the golden leaves of the Don valley. She was small, but compact and strong.

  And yet, by some trick of memory, there was suddenly superimposed upon this vision of health and strength another view altogether. It was as if I were looking at one of those spirit paintings in which the ghosts of the past are standing among the living. I saw a hunched, broken-toothed, dirty-haired hag so bundled up in ragged pieces of denim and wool that you couldn’t tell how old she was or what sort of body she had under those trash-bin clothes. And beside this miserable pile, I saw me, her male counterpart. A reminder that it doesn’t matter where you started from; it only matters where you end up.

  “I’ve got a meeting, Your Honor,” Queenie said, apparently failing to notice that I’d been staring into space. “And I’m already late. But if you’re thinking about old times, you ought to remember that Stow helped when you were in trouble.”

  The phone rang. She picked it up. I relished this chance to escape before she tried again to talk me into helping Stow. I had fought hard to work my own way back from disgraced judge to respectable lawyer. It would not be to my advantage to help another loser.

  But if I thought I could get away from Queenie that easily, I was mistaken. She grabbed my wrist and held it captive the whole time she was on the phone negotiating for a shipment of syringes. When she finally let go, I realized I had not really tried to free myself.

  “For heaven’s sake, Queenie,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  “What?”

  “For heaven’s sake. That’s why we help each other, isn’t it? That’s why you are going down to Tent City to show people how to survive the winter. And it’s also why you are going up to Fernhope to talk to your old pal, Stow.”

  Smack in the middle of Fernhope maximum-security prison, a hundred miles north of Toronto, is a hunk of the Canadian Shield, a geological formation that has been in that place since before the laws of man were dreamed of. I’m not sure what the designers of the prison had in mind when they centered the complex on this mammoth hunk of rock, but the inmates say a prison with a heart of stone is an honest place to live.

  I hadn’t decided whether it was fear or friendship that was leading me to Stow, but I found my resolve wea
kening with every mile. In the city, autumn was at its early November peak, but the leaves thinned with the traffic and the buildings until I was passing farmers’ fields, then cottages, then rock outcroppings crowned with spruce and pine. When I was quite sure the same spruce and pine had crossed my vision a number of times, I gave myself up for lost and reached for my cell phone.

  “Nicky, I can’t find the place. Didn’t you do some work up here last year? Where is it, anyhow?”

  “Where are you now, old man? Do you have any idea?”

  “Jones Road. Does that ring a bell?”

  “If you’re not headed toward Bracebridge, cross the highway,” Nicky advised.

  I watched with dismay as a seemingly unending line of vans and pickups whizzed by. My heart in my mouth, I zipped across to a chorus of horns and squealing brakes.

  “Now what, McPhail?”

  “The turnoff to the prison is unmarked, but if you make the first sharp left, you’ll be headed in the right direction. Just keep going until somebody tries to stop you.”

  The phone went dead, and I went on for a few miles. I started to notice that the road was narrowing. On either side, the rough-hewn rock had posts driven into it. A triple strand of razor wire was strung from pole to pole.

  Not for the first time, I wondered whether Queenie had made a mistake concerning Stow’s whereabouts. What was he doing in a federal prison before he’d even gone to trial? Why was he detained at all? He had money and connections. Was he dangerous? He had certainly not acted like a homicidal maniac the day he was hauled out of the Red Mass. As a man once accused of being a homicidal maniac myself, I felt qualified to judge Stow’s appearance.

  “Stop!”

  Four officers in gray uniforms with fur-collared black leather jackets and Smokey-the-Bear hats approached, signaling for me to lower my window. Two cruisers blocked my way in front and behind.

  I’m facedown on the floor, the terrazzo cool against my cheek. Harpur is screaming and screaming. I want to tell her how sorry I am, but there is a zueight in the middle of my back. If I move, it will break me.