Sing a Worried Song

by William Deverell

  He found himself gravitating downhill toward the harbour, Gastown, skid road. An area he knew too well, from when he’d run a single practice from a dilapidated storefront. He traded greetings with a pair of street junkies he’d represented and with a young, industrious prostitute whose appeal he’d won. He was pleased to learn she hadn’t let her studies lapse and was completing her second year of college.

  Arthur recognized the house on Powell Street where Chumpy had lived. Lights were on in Jimmy Gillies’s apartment, so he hurried on, not wanting to be seen. Presumably, Chumpy had bought the case of Coors that night — off-sale, maybe, from one of the many nearby taverns, but no witnesses had been found to prove that.

  The killer can’t get it up. Arthur was familiar with the affliction. The campus stud, however, wasn’t similarly disadvantaged. Naked with Chumpy — that could hardly have been natural for him, but of course he’d picked up that Chumpy was gay, and to bring his guard down had likely teased him with the prospect of sex play. And he would hardly have wanted to be seen on Powell Street in bloodied clothes.

  There was nothing in the police reports about the bite marks on Skyler’s leg, a serious lapse. The likely reason Gillies heard no screams was that the victim’s teeth were imbedded in that leg. What he did hear was, “Holy Mother, save me, I done wrong.” Why would Chumpy confess to the Blessed Virgin? Why would he blame himself? Maybe that stemmed from religious guilt about his homosexuality.

  At Columbia and Hastings, another former client was hurling drunken epithets at passersby. Arthur crossed the street, accelerated his pace.

  The Trial Lawyers Chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous met every Friday evening — the hardest time for counsel still wired from the courtroom — and the meeting, uptown, in a United Church lounge, was just getting under way as Arthur strolled in. He counted fifteen participants, all friends, so he felt silly standing there saying, “My name is Arthur, and I’m an alcoholic.”

  When he added, “I’m on Day Twenty, ladies and gentlemen,” they applauded. He thought of the shouting drunk. He’d been that man, as drunk, as loud. He was better than that.

  §

  “Problems?” said Annabelle, still embracing him. She’d been in bed, reading, when he got home after an eat-out with his AA mates.

  “It’s the tension of the trial, dear.” He lay there rigid, ashamed. “I’ve been holding back all day, to the point it’s become chronic.”

  “Holding back in court?”

  “I think so.” Such half-hearted erections typically occurred when trials were going poorly.

  She kissed him. “Never mind. Hubbell called to chat. Harriett and the kids won’t be back till Monday, so I asked him to dinner tomorrow. We’ll celebrate your coming partnerships. Better, we’ll celebrate Day Twenty-One. Three weeks, darling! Congratulations.”

  Five more days to go before equalling his personal best. It was marked on his calendar, Thursday, April 29.

  SATURDAY

  Arthur spent most of this rare fair day in his garden, with spade and hoe, and for the most part was able to subdue his concerns over the Skyler case, though it seemed to keep bursting forth, like the rhubarb and the spring weeds.

  He felt out of his element working the prosecution side, chafing at the role of Her Majesty’s humble servant, felt restricted, shackled by his vow to be a non-combatant, the unimpassioned butler serving up fairness and justice to the guests.

  He thought he’d been far too easy on Manfred Unger, a witness he would have shredded as a defender, in which role he hadn’t always observed the niceties. At some level, he felt sorry for him. The stress he was under. The painful prevarication under the censorious eyes of God.

  As for Randy Skyler, Arthur just wanted to nail the punk.

  Annabelle was heavily engaged with weekend rehearsals for Tristan and Isolde but got home in time to help Arthur with dinner before changing into one of her “little somethings,” as she called her clingy cocktail dresses, her uniform of choice when hosting dinner parties at which men were available to be teased, and wives made jealous.

  Arthur pulled the lamb roast from the oven just before Hubbell Meyerson arrived with roses and a bottle of Pouilly-Fumé. He and Annabelle exchanged cheek pecks, in the Continental manner that Arthur thought tiresome.

  “You look appallingly beautiful tonight, Annabelle.” Hubbell handed her the flowers. “Thank you for taking in this poor, starving recluse. I’ve been pulling out my hair in lonely desolation while Harriett and the kids are away.”

  “Bullshit,” said Annabelle.

  Hubbell declined an invitation to relax in the living room, preferring to lean on the kitchen counter and watch Arthur toss the salad. Annabelle went off to lay the table.

  “So what do you think of prosecuting now, Arthur?” He’d obviously read the newspaper accounts. The reviews hadn’t been favourable.

  “I’ll need a miracle to pull this one off. Could be at it all week.”

  “This could use a quick chill.” Hubbell got up with the Pouilly-Fumé, but Annabelle returned, barred his way, took the bottle from him. “Arthur’s had a monstrous last few days. I’d rather we don’t drink in front of him. It’s not fair.”

  “Nonsense, darling. The sight of wine in a glass will not drive me berserk.”

  “It’s Day Twenty-One, we’ll celebrate it with coffee.”

  “Please, Annabelle. Hubbell brought a fine wine. It would be insulting.”

  Hubbell backed away, his hands up, staying out of it.

  “Subject closed.” Annabelle put the wine in the back of the fridge and turned to them brightly. “Let’s eat. Everyone to the table. Bring the salad, Arthur.”

  §

  Arthur tried not to mope through dinner, tried to be gracious in accepting plaudits for his creation of lamb and steamed baby potatoes and asparagus, but he was chafing at being regarded as such a weak vessel. He supposed Annabelle had acted out of affection — he was sure she loved him, in her way — but her manner was peremptory, unseemly in front of a guest.

  Soon after dinner, he apologized, claiming he was fatigued, and went off to bed with the clear though unspoken intention of freeing Annabelle and Hubbell to share the wine.

  He turned the bed lamp on and played with a Times crossword for a while, then picked up the worn paperback Nordquist gave him. For the Fun of It.

  He paused, several chapters into it, to listen for sounds. Nothing, no laughter or clink of glass. He wondered if he should put on his robe and think up a pretext. Then he dismissed the idea. How foolish. How abhorrent.

  SUNDAY MORNING

  Arthur fell asleep midway through the book, and on rising with the dawn he retrieved it and crept from the bedroom while Annabelle remained curled in sleep. He’d briefly awakened when she crawled in beside him, her breath perfumed with wine.

  Day Twenty-Two. Four days from a new personal record. Why wasn’t he feeling good about it? After showering in the downstairs bathroom, he padded about in his robe with a cup of freshly ground, doing his morning tasks, making toast, picking up. In the living room, he retrieved the empty Pouilly-Fumé and two empty wine glasses, one on a sofa table, the other on a chiffonier. Twenty feet apart. A proper distance.

  His coffee refreshed, he sat in the den in his favourite old club chair with For the Fun of It.

  According to the one-paragraph biography on the last page, the prolific Mr. Widgeon had penned two dozen novels set in the apparently crime-ravaged town of Illings-on-Little Close, featuring the indomitable but stuffy Inspector Grodgins and his wrong-footed sidekick, Constable Marchmont. Seemingly eager to encourage competition, Widgeon had also published several how-tos about the crime genre.

  As a result of a bullet wound to the head suffered in a prequel, Grodgins had developed severe agnosia, impairing his ability to recognize familiar faces. Despite the handicap, his finely tuned skills had h
im closing in on a bad apple, an aristocrat who’d randomly killed several friendless loners.

  Three coffees later, after absorbing much forensic and psy­cho­logical detailing, Arthur reached the climactic final chapter, set in the billiards room of Illings Close Castle, where Grodgins had assembled the various suspects, none of whose faces he could recognize, among them Lord Scarfe-Robbins, whom the agnosiac inspector wasn’t able to pinpoint in the crowd.

  “In your efforts at normal sexual conjoining,” the inspector declaimed at no one in particular, “you were impotent, sir.” That caused Arthur a moment of irritation. Picking on the impotent seemed a low blow. He had his set his hopes on the brawny horse trainer who’d regularly bedded the earl’s wife.

  Grodgins continued to hurl challenges in the general direction of Lord Scarfe-Robbins: “As Donny Millibun underwent his death throes after falling from the roof, you found yourself aroused to the point of orgasm. Then the killings began. In your warped mind, you realized you’d finally found a satisfying form of congress with another — in death. Yes, murder, the only way you could achieve a sexual climax.”

  “You’re dead wrong, you rotter!”

  Grodgins sought the source of that frantic voice, and was finally able to locate Lord Scarfe-Robbins in the faceless crowd, whereupon he produced, at the end of a billiard cue, what he hoped was a pair of soiled underwear. “Your Lordship is perhaps unfamiliar with the new science of DNA profiling. The semen on this garment, sir, holds your genetic fingerprints.”

  As Scarfe-Robbins bolted for the stairs, a man in some kind of uniform raced off in pursuit, nearly toppling Mrs. Gullweather. Grodgins could only assume the pursuer was Constable Marchmont.

  This absorbing tale failed to parallel reality in a couple of obvious ways. Inspector Harrison, unlike Inspector Grodgins, wasn’t armed with incriminatory semen. In any case, randy Randolph was anything but impotent. Otherwise, the plot’s similarities intrigued Arthur, although he remained confident that the motive stemmed from Skyler’s homophobia.

  At any rate, it was Unger, not Skyler, who’d been absorbed in For the Fun of It. The thought crept into Arthur’s mind that Unger had been conning everyone. Maybe Manfred was inspired by that book to kill for a thrill. Maybe, like Inspector Grodgins, Arthur had been unable to recognize the perpetrator — his eyes clouded not by agnosia but tunnel vision.

  For what it was worth, Unger’s copy of For the Fun of It had been retrieved by Kingston police, who’d got permission from RMC brass to toss his dormitory room. The book had been on a shelf of crime novels. No correspondence with Skyler was found, though there were a couple of photos of him, one in track togs, and several family pictures. Janet Andrews, his fiancée, was prominent on the wall, alone in one photo, Manfred’s arm around her in another. The copy of For the Fun of It was being couriered.

  Arthur went to the phone before it woke Annabelle and Deborah. “Good morning, Arthur,” said Jack Boynton. “The pleasure of your attendance is requested at 312 Main Street, homicide office. I believe they’ve come upon some useful information.”

  “Yes? And what is it?”

  “Honcho has imposed telephonic silence.”

  “Please, Jack, don’t be coy.” Unger had prayed to Jesus and repented? Confessed to the murder? Maybe Skyler had absconded …

  “I’ll give you a clue. You asked Unger if he’d stopped anywhere or talked to anyone. His answer, and I quote: ‘No, sir, I went straight to my room. I read for a while, and went to sleep.’”

  §

  Arthur left the Rolls in the garage. Though piqued that Boynton had been so unforthcoming, he was in no rush, and was determined to get into shape as an aid to conquering his alcoholism.

  It was a gentle, hazy day, and he chose a route near the water, joining other Sunday strollers on the paths above Locarno and Kitsilano Beaches, down streets lined with sturdy bungalows and cherry trees in full blossom. After descending from the city’s graceful art deco Burrard Bridge into the dense West End, he found the views less attractive: skeletal constructions and cranes and hoardings with signs promising luxury living dominated the landscape. Old Vancouver, the low-key, toned-down town, was disappearing behind these shiny monoliths.

  Downtown South Granville was livelier, its various salons offering beer, burgers, hash pipes, used books, Cuban cigars. Granville morphed into Theatre Row, where Chumpy the Clown had entertained for the movie lineups with his mouth organ and his Chaplinesque collisions with light standards and waste bins. The archetypal sad and lonely man in clown makeup. A man chosen at random to die, chosen by … whom? If not Skyler, then Unger. Or both. Or, as a Widgeon-worthy twist, a swarthy fellow wearing a windbreaker and toque on a sunny summer day.

  Arthur’s own gleaming office tower lay ahead, but he turned east and walked through Gastown to Chinatown, where he stopped for green tea and a bowl of hot and sour soup at the Ho-Ho, which he drank while perusing a discarded Saturday newspaper. The Chumpy trial was on the front page, under the headline, “He wouldn’t die!” It offered an account of Unger’s verbal contortions, along with a photo of him looking haunted as he walked alone from the courthouse. Arthur dallied over the crossword puzzle, then headed out.

  Two blocks north of Chinatown, conveniently snuggled into Vancouver’s high-crime district, was the blocky, charmless Public Safety Building. Arthur’s last visit had been twenty-two days ago. Shock treatment in the drunk tank, the jolt he’d needed — but one that still hovered like a dark cloud over Arthur’s prospects for a partnership.

  He found Boynton on the third floor, studying a corkboard on which photos of fugitive murderers were pinned. Arthur asked him how his weekend had gone.

  “Not well.”

  “How so?”

  A brave shrug. “I fear it’s off between Mandy and me. We had an evening out last night. It appears there are certain cultural values and, let us say, feelings we don’t share. She was regretful that she was attracted to me only intellectually. I told her I was attracted to her in a much different way, not meaning it as an insult, but I’m afraid it was taken as such. I felt I ought to tell you that, in case you pick up an unusual coldness from the defence side.”

  “Well, thanks for the warning.”

  “I’m actually relieved. There are a few qualities not in her favour. She has a bit of a reputation for sleeping around.”

  “Then you’ve saved yourself from heartbreak.”

  Nordquist broke off the maudlin scene by calling them into Honcho’s office. The inspector was relaxing behind his desk, feet up, a glowing cigar in his hand. “I have one of these when I’m feeling good. Not supposed to, eh, Bones?”

  “It’s your body, pal, your lungs.”

  Harrison swung his feet to the floor and tipped an inch of ash into his wastebasket. “We got lucky.” He passed Arthur a transcription of his telephone conversation with one Laurence Wyacki. “Nice young man. Nineteen. From Detroit. Accepted into Wayne State law school next semester. Lives with his parents. Dad’s a high school principal, Mom’s a mental health worker. Kid has everything going for him, except he’s queer.”

  “Queer?” said Boynton. “For shame, Inspector.”

  “Help me, Jack. Is it okay to say homo? Anyway, Laurence has a boyfriend, he’s candid about it, his parents accept it. Pretty damn liberal for polacks, you ask me.” He blew a plume of smoke that had Boynton backing up. “To make it short and sweet, Laurence Wyacki was in Vancouver on Saturday, August second, and spent pretty well the whole night in bed with Manfred Unger.”

  Harrison grinned on seeing Arthur’s face go slack with astonishment. “We bought him a plane ticket and reserved a real nice room for him. He’ll be arriving about seven tonight.”

  “I’m afraid you gentlemen will have to handle it by yourselves.” Boynton’s parents were hosting a dinner party. He couldn’t let them down.

  SUNDAY EVENING

&
nbsp; The hotel chosen for Laurence Wyacki was away from downtown, on Denman, near Stanley Park, in the gay-friendly West End. From the twenty-first floor, Arthur could see the sun setting beautifully over English Bay as he waited in silence until Harrison and Nordquist wrapped up their interrogation. He then saw them to the door, promising to join them in the lobby after spending time alone with the young man.

  Harrison’s rough manner had prompted Wyacki to retreat to the balcony, where he was nervously chain-smoking. He was slender, with shoulder-length hair and a well-tended moustache, the kind Arthur had nurtured a few decades ago, probably for the same reason — to make him seem older.

  A.R. Beauchamp, QC, widely regarded as an astute judge of people, was still reeling over having misread Unger. None of the signs had been there, nothing in his body or verbal language. He was engaged, no less, to a student at a small Christian college in Eastern Ontario. A virgin, perhaps, her consummation devoutly to be wished.

  Manfred Unger was not only deeply closeted, Arthur concluded, but in love with Skyler. Mr. Popularity, who’d scored with the beauty queens.

  Was Skyler aware Unger was gay? Skyler, the presumptive homophobe. But any suspicions he held were likely overwhelmed by the glow of the reverence on offer. It must have been a painful struggle for Unger to play the straight companion.

  Arthur joined Wyacki outside, pulled out his pipe, packed it. “I’m glad we’ve been able to grant you a rare April sunset.” Orange stripes were traversed by yellow beams as the sun slid behind the green humps of Vancouver Island. “I want to thank you for extending yourself in this way.”

  Wyacki hadn’t heard about Skyler’s first trial and had learned about the current one only because he and his boyfriend had been clicking through channels while waiting for a Saturday night movie. They’d paused at a Canadian news program, and Wyacki immediately recognized the man running a gauntlet of reporters. Wyacki became, as he put it, “seriously uneasy” on learning Unger claimed to have been alone on the night of August 2. He consulted with his boyfriend, then his parents, and called Vancouver homicide the next morning.