Sing a Worried Song

by William Deverell

  “I’ve done two consecutive tours on this rock. I’m supposed to get reassigned this fall, but they’re never going to let me off it. Everyone else gets shuffled around but me. In my paranoid moments, which is most of the time, I feel like there’s a conspiracy to drive me frigging insane. A medical experiment, like they do in the CIA, to see how much it takes to break a serving officer. Gentlemen, the first thing we do is destroy his marriage. Then let’s make him the laughingstock of some tight, twisted, little hellhole of an island.”

  Edwina’s affair with the local telephone man was open, notorious. Ultimately, she moved in with her lover, pregnant by him. That is the main reason Pound is desperate to get off the rock. Arthur gets it. The public shame he himself endured as a cuckold propelled him into exile.

  Voluptuous Emily LeMay, the ageless siren, sets two coffees on the table. “Goddamnit, Ernst, tell Zoller to stop dicking around with the cars down there, he’s killing my business.” To Arthur: “Heard your sweetie left on the morning ferry.” Lips to his ear. “Emily’s open for business anytime for you, big guy.” She enjoys teasing him, sometimes gets him to blush.

  As she sways off, Pound resumes his dirge. “Seriously, Arthur, they’ve got it in for me at division headquarters. I heard it from someone up the line. They think I’ve done piss-all in this shithole. They’re going to stick me with another two years here if I don’t nab someone soon. Someone big. ”

  He looks at Arthur in a needy way, as if seeking deliverance. Arthur sips his coffee.

  “It’s my only chance, Arthur. My only chance to escape from this Alcatraz.” He takes a deep breath. “It’s this weekend, isn’t it? The Potlatch.” He is unnerved by Arthur’s steely gaze, and stammers: “I … I saw you up at Stoney’s. We all know he’s one of the ringleaders.” He takes a gulp of coffee, chokes. “I don’t care about the little guys, the Stoneys, the small growers. But big-city dope dealers are due in, heavies, racketeers. I just want to collar one of them. Just give me one of them.”

  He sags, wipes perspiration from his forehead, and raises a hand in surrender. “Forget it. That was insulting to you, I’m sorry. I’m pretty messed up.”

  Kurt Zoller has been hovering by, and announces himself now by jingling his keys and handcuffs, one of the compulsive acts he’s prone to.

  Pound swivels to him. “What is it, Kurt?”

  Zoller is holding a nearly depleted ticket pad. “I got Johannsen for six, including no emergency, broken tail light, and I got Gilmore for exhaust pipes and muddy plate and …”

  “Give me those tickets.” Pound gets up, snatches the pad, drops it into the trash bin, then heads down to his cruiser. Zoller follows, red-faced.

  Arthur carries on to the store, finds the mailroom unattended, picks up a frozen pizza for tonight and some fruit to eat on the way home. Gaunt, spindly Abraham Makepeace pauses from stacking onions and holds up a finger to say he’ll be a minute. Arthur wanders down the aisles of pots and mops and stationery and books, cheerlessly examines the little stack of autographed copies of A Thirst for Justice: The Trials of Arthur Beauchamp. The covers are dominated by his long nose in profile. “Now half-price!” a sign shrieks.

  It’s a second edition, revised, in paperback. Wentworth Chance, its author, revelled in the Hogarthian details: the gin-spiked pitcher on the counsel table, the drunken quarrels with judges, the lonely horror of the skid road years. He held little back, including Arthur’s futile and hilarious relationships with the other sex. Despite all, the putative hero comes off as a reasonably lovable old coot.

  Makepeace finally passes him his mail: a Hydro bill, two magazines, and a postcard from California. The postmaster saves Arthur the bother of reading it. “It’s from your grandson, Nick. He’s doing advanced computer electronics at Stanford, on a scholarship. Getting settled in. Sends his love. You’d think he’d email you, but he must know you haven’t got a clue about computers.”

  “I am not computer-illiterate. The fax, please, Abraham.”

  He fetches it from the Blunder Bay box. “Let me just check this is the right one.” He takes a few moments to peruse it. “Yep, that’s what it says, someone wants to take you down. It means bump you off. Maybe you overcharged him.”

  He withdraws it from Arthur’s reach. “Glad to see your correspondent shares my complaint about you not having an answering machine. You’re never home when he calls, and you don’t answer his emails neither. That’s why he had to resort to this fax. All the way from the rainforests of Haida Gwaii, which I like better than when we used to call it the Queen Charlotte Islands, it’s more poetical. Two pages, two dollars.”

  Arthur digs in his pockets, places two loonies in Makepeace’s left hand, and tugs the pages from his right.

  “It’s pretty darn confusing about why someone wants to kill you. Guess he’ll explain it, he’s coming down to see you. Pomeroy. Brian Pomeroy. ”

  Alarms are ringing in Arthur’s head. Brian Pomeroy, against whom he had done sweaty battle over Randolph Skyler’s fate. Someone wants to kill you.

  “Weren’t you in the same law office or something? Fast talker, if he’s the same fella used to come over for visits. Kind of jumpy and wrought up was my impression.”

  Brian Pomeroy, the inventive, crazed, substance-abusing counsel with whom Arthur shared many trials. Different law offices but similar practices: the vigorous defence of criminals and, occasionally, the innocent. They’ve remained friends since the Skyler case, but have rarely talked about it, and whenever they have Arthur has sensed a bitterness, the resentment of the sore loser.

  Pomeroy had been on his way to becoming one of the top young guns of the courts, but then came a series of crashes: his marriage breaking down, drugs, more drugs, then a cocaine-induced psychosis that had him trying to write mystery novels. He fought and lost his wife’s divorce action, went broke, tried a gold mining scheme that didn’t pan out, tried being a full-time beach bum in Costa Rica, failing even at that, then began a small practice in the islands of Haida Gwaii, in the remote North Pacific.

  The fax’s first page is just a cover, with Brian’s name, an address in Port Clements, and his fax number. Arthur folds it for now, tucks it into his shirt pocket. Makepeace leans toward him. “Don’t spread it around, but the Potlatch kicks off Thursday noon at the old quarry.”

  “I shall not whisper a word.”

  Arthur pays for his pizza and pears, slings on his pack, walks out, contemplates the long trudge to Blunder Bay, then settles his aching joints on the bench that Nelson Forbish has deserted, pulls out the fax.

  “Dear Arthur, I have to assume you have (accidentally?) put your phone on mute, because it rings endlessly, chillingly. Each unanswered peal causes my spine to spasm. Has my god and mentor been murdered in his sleep?”

  Makepeace is not alone in finding that pretty darn confusing.

  “So I checked Tragger, Inglis’s website, which trumpets the fact that although ostensibly retired you remain a partner. I got the receptionist to give me your email and this fax number. Claimed not to know if you had a cell phone.”

  Arthur had given her instructions to say just that. The number of his little Nokia is known to only Margaret and a handful of discreet friends. That is partly because his life companion, in a waggish moment, changed the ring tone to “Twinkle, twinkle, little star,” and he doesn’t know how to change it back.

  The fax continues: “My emails don’t bounce back, so I must ask: is it too much bother to look at your inbox? Or have you created a filter to junk all messages from any sender named Pomeroy? — Pause for a return to reality. — Beauchamp create a message filter? Does he even know how to open his mail program?”

  Arthur does know how to read his emails, but he can’t remember when he last did so. Perhaps a week ago.

  “I can’t afford Air Canada’s monopoly rip-off fares, so I’m coming down there by ferry and bus. Here’s t
he gist: a certain fellow whom you grievously offended is back in freeside and he’s out to take you down. Nuff said. Brian.”

  For a moment, Arthur’s anxiety neurosis is in full bloom, then he swallows hard, struggling to recover. And he does so with some success, by remembering that the conveyor of this deadly message is a master of the wild theory, full of preposterous, paranoid scenarios. Drug-addled half the time. Yes, this has to be typical Pomeroy malarkey.

  Baldy Johannsen walks from the Brig with the overly prudent gait of the impaired, then takes a misstep near his pickup upon spotting the clutter of tickets on his windshield. He decides he needs a lawyer. “Hey, Arthur, old buddy, old pal, lemme give you a liff home.”

  “Thanks, Baldy, but I need the exercise.” He heaves himself to his feet and slogs up the road.

  §

  On his homeward hike, Arthur continues to buoy himself by putting Pomeroy in proper context. He’s an infamous practical joker, whose multiple offences range from sabotaging a prosecutor’s briefcase, from which, in front of a jury, she pulled out a dildo, to forging a love note from a judge to an attractive juror, a note that somehow made its way into the exhibit box, resulting in a mistrial.

  Brian’s post-divorce mythic spectacle involved no mere breakdown. Arthur believes he actually went mad. Drug-induced or otherwise, the illness was of an intensity that wins insanity verdicts. On one occasion he bolted from a courtroom and ran down the rainy streets of Vancouver in his gown, flapping like a chicken. Later, in a hospice for recovering junkies, he tried to hang himself. He quit a hectic practice as senior partner of Pomeroy, Macarthur, Brovak, Sage, and ran away as far as he could, and Vancouver lost one of its ablest trial lawyers.

  Satisfied that Pomeroy is either experiencing another delusionary episode or, at best, is playing a prank, Arthur softly sings that he won’t be worried long, and limps along Potters Road to his cedar-canopied driveway. He is reminded that the snake fence has to be rebuilt where Stoney’s aide-de-camp, Dog, recently backed into it. So many chores to be done. Today he walked almost the length of Garibaldi Island, stubbornly refusing all offers of rides. Pride has its price, and his is exhaustion and hunger, which he will alleviate presently with a hot shower and a hotter pizza.

  Among the trees, Arthur glimpses a gleaming black sedan parked near his porch. It’s the Kozonskys’ 1982 Cadillac. Stoney has honoured the offer that Arthur turned down, the discourtesy car. Also parked there, at a picnic table, are Stoney and Dog. The well-filled ashtray and many beer cans testify that they likely pulled in while Arthur was at the store and have been enjoying a late afternoon break from their labours. From fifty feet away, he can smell pot.

  Stoney spots Arthur advancing, and calls: “Yo, padrone, we were worried, man. We were just about to go look for you. Right, Dog?”

  His laconic, snockered sidekick merely smiles in agreement. This genial, broad-shouldered runt earned his nickname because of his devotion to his master. His real name is a Polish one, unpronounceable and unspellable. He’s an island favourite, though, always volunteering to help out the ill and old when weeds need whacking or wood needs stacking.

  “Sorry to have caused you fellows so much inconvenience.”

  “No damage done. We were only hoping we wouldn’t run out of liquid refreshment before you got here to drive us back. We’d’ve walked but we got to save our energy for the Potlatch.” Stoney takes a final drag, pinches the roach and flips it away. A finger to his lips. “It’s at the quarry on Thursday.”

  “Yes, at noon. Everyone on the island seems to know.”

  He looks shocked. “We only told some trusted confidants who guaranteed they wouldn’t say nothing. Not to rub salt in any wounds, but did I tell you we’ll be celebrating the life and achievements of the seven-time Orfmeister winner?”

  “Doc Dooley would not dream of coming within a thousand light years of your function.”

  “Maybe he ain’t as stuffy as you think. He’s young at heart.”

  Arthur wonders how he has allowed this conversation to deteriorate into a debate about the Potlatch. He is hungry; he has other things to do, including holding at bay a worry monster threatening to rise from its too-shallow grave. He will waste no more breath warning Stoney about the risks he’s taking on this island of idle tongues. A stiff fine and a lengthy spell of probation might just smarten him up.

  “Okay, about this here vintage DeVille. She’s been sitting in Joe Kozonsky’s garage for the last ten years, just needed gas and oil and she fired right up. One of the last great V8s, eh, so there’ll be a fuel issue. Right fender needs straightening, and Joe says that spiderweb on the windshield was from a pebble, not a bullet, though it looks like it. Sometimes she don’t gear down going up a steep incline, so you gotta give her some pedal or put her in low. I hope you can drive an automatic.” He clicks open the tab of another beer. “Oh, hey, I ain’t being a good host — you want to share this last one?”

  “Thank you, no.” Arthur has been proudly AA for almost twenty-five years, yet he still gets offers, usually out of misplaced courtesy.

  “Otherwise, you got this here luxomobile for as long as the Fargo takes, not a bad deal, eh?” He opens the doors, shows the spacious interior. “Lots of room to take your produce to the Saturday market. You could put ten big pumpkins in the trunk.”

  The sales job is working. Arthur hasn’t had a comfortable vehicle since he retired his Rolls-Royce.

  “We’d linger awhile, sahib, but we got a little Potlatch preview party going. You know how it is, eh, you got to build up slowly for the main event. So if you can just drop us at Hamish’s studio, Dog and me would be mighty grateful. Right, Dog?”

  “Absolooley.” A valiant effort from the squat sidekick, who clambers dutifully into the back of the sedan.

  Arthur takes off his pack, lowers his weary body into the front seat, and is promptly seduced by its unFargoish comfort. This is Stoney’s offer of penance for nicking his truck. Arthur will reinforce such good behaviour by taking them to their Potlatch preview, a test drive.

  §

  Back home, he sinks wearily into a swivel chair behind his old desktop computer, and devours a mushroom salami pizza while reading Brian’s emails. The two most recent were urgent demands that he respond. The first was chattier.

  “To catch you up, Arturo, I am surviving on notarizing docu­ments (twenty clams a pop) and by trading advice for halibut steaks, fresh-laid eggs, and psilocybin shrooms, supplemented by the occasional legal aid fee, while pooling resources with the exotic woman who currently shares my bed, a Haida artist.

  “Having papered an entire wall with rejection slips, I’ve given up on mysteries. I’m trying out a couple of screenplays instead. I am cool; I am together. I like to think I have recovered from the spectacle I made of myself after Caroline’s breathtakingly successful divorce suit and her court-sanctioned theft of all I owned but my shoelaces.

  “But this is not about my continuing struggle for survival but yours. You’re in danger. The Web is infested with police spies, they have access to all our emails, and for reasons only they know, they’re watching me in particular. We need to talk privately. I’m heading down there au plus vite.”

  He added, “Say nothing, rien, nada,” and ended his note with: “Be wary, don’t worry.” Don’t worry? It’s like asking Arthur not to breathe. He shakes his head, to clear its cobwebs. Psilocybin! Magic mushrooms! Clearly, this death threat scenario is a drug-induced Pomeroidal delusion. Arthur is in as much danger from Skyler as Brian is from some fantastical, vast spying apparatus of international police agencies. He worries that Brian has gotten so heavily into his shrooms that he’s developed a paranoid psychosis, and will arrive at Blunder Bay babbling about cabals and conspiracies that somehow involve Arthur.

  If he’s not mad, he’s simply putting Arthur on, having fun with the renowned worrywart. But would a prank be worth the pain
of a thousand-mile journey from the misty, mystic islands of the Haida nation? Probably, in Brian’s case.

  Arthur emails him back, explains he rarely answers the house phone because he’s under siege by telemarketers, and lets him know — calmly, humouring him — that he would be delighted to host him and share some good conversation.

  There is little else of note in his inbox. Yet another invitation to join Facebook. A reminder about Thanksgiving at Al’s and Zoë’s, bring the Woofers. A function being planned in Vancouver in late October to honour and roast a retiring judge and his replacement. Justice Thomas McDougall, whom the Chief Justice persuaded was too senile to carry on, is leaving the bench. Mandy Pearl will take a seat on it.

  Comely, eager Mandy Pearl. Clumsy, tipsy Arthur Beauchamp. He hadn’t been able to get it up for her the first night, but — wonders will never cease — he’d achieved success on the second night, and the fourth. Mandy had introduced him to tai chi and taught him some basic moves. Somehow, that had lessened his thirst, his need.

  It was Mandy who’d weaned him from the bottle, Mandy with her loving, her expert massaging, her counselling. She’d locked him in her townhouse from Thursday to Sunday, she ministering, he talking. It was the alcohol that had disempowered him, she said. Stay off it and they would make love night after night like this.

  He stayed off it, but went back to Annabelle, helplessly, unable to break the bonds of masochistic love. She assumed he’d been in a dry-out centre. Everyone did. No one knew about him and Mandy.

  Arthur is about to close up when a message from Pomeroy appears, expressing relief that they’d connected, detailing his travel schedule, and warning that “they” were watching. “Special Agent Harry Hacker studiously reads my outgoing traffic, so we have to be surreptitious. You may have to look that word up, Harry.”

  WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19

  Arthur has been trying for the last two days to get through to Margaret, badgering her staff. He has not been wholly able to still his jitters about Pomeroy’s hazy, weird warning; he needs someone to share it with, a sympathetic ear. But when he finally gets her on the line this evening, he clutches when he is about to divulge why he called.