Cudlipp knew that caller’s voice, and decided he would put a tail on Bennie after the pick-up and try to catch him dealing. It would be a sawbuck in the can for Mr. Bones, a three-time loser.
“Got the sucker by the short and curlies, old boy,” said Flaherty with a slow, sexy wink. Charrington flinched. He knew the undercover officer had performed on the stage before joining the DEA, but did the role have to be so over-played?
“Are we ready to move?” he asked.
“Couple of weeks. Don’t get your ass in a knot. I want to play out some more line and see if the fish will run.”
The thin moustache on Charrington’s stiff upper lip seemed to bristle. Flaherty lacked the decorum that Charrington expected from the regular members of the force. The style was outrageously gauche.
The Organic Apple, where Jennifer Tann persuaded Cobb to come for lunch, was obviously her local, her hang-out. She joked with the staff and some of the customers — a leather, beads, and denim crowd. Cobb dined on an avocado-and-bean-sprout sandwich, while Tann played with a small salad and chatted gaily about herself, about her travels (she had been in the Far East, searching for her roots), her hobbies (jade and delicate Oriental watercolors), her forms of recreation (yoga, swimming — she had been a lifeguard — and, predictably, backgammon). She gaily tripped through one topic after another, pausing only sometimes to catch her breath. Cobb listened less than he watched, and it was her face he watched: expressive, open, her almond green eyes flashing and brilliant.
She turned the subject to the meeting two days earlier with the judge and defence lawyers.
“I think I took a little stuffing out of his shirt,” she said. “I don’t dislike the old guy. I guess he’s okay — with his big successful image and all that rubadub.” She shrugged, with a bird-like twist of her head that seemed to be her trademark. And she laughed: a light, giggling, tinkling sound that Cobb decided he liked. “It’s that stuffy pinstripe image that I can’t dig,” she said. “I mean, I used to go out with a lawyer in his firm. They’re all like him, over-bearing, preening themselves like prize roosters. This dude, his lawyer, took me home to meet his mom one day. Fat-cat Shaughnessy family. You know the scene — storekeeper’s daughter obviously gold-digging in the family mine, and mommy’s stuck-up little nose crinkling as if she smelled fish and onions on my hands, if you know what I mean. You don’t talk much, do you, Mr. Cobb? You just sit there being bored while I rattle on like some spinny over-age teeny-bopper, all mouth, no brain. She said, hoping he will disagree. Do you think I’m spinny? Do I rattle on too much?”
“I’m hanging on every word.”
“I’ll bet.” She laughed and shook her loose hair back from her face. “So anyway, my boyfriend. My last-ditch effort at making him human was to try to turn him on at a party where there were a few joints floating around. He went white and sort of fainted, and I looked at him, just sad, and said to myself, I said, hey, J.T., there’s no hope. The man is super straight.”
Cobb was looking at her with one eyebrow raised.
“I can see by the supercilious look on your face that you do not approve. Dope-smoking hippie — take away her licence to practise. Do you think that is a terrible thing, Mr. Cobb? You, with your disapproving scowl. Obviously you’ve never turned on. Too bad. Loosens you up.” Her eyes flashed green at him, laughing.
Cobb just looked at her blankly, searching with his tongue for a bean sprout stuck between his molars.
“Are you going to turn me in?” she said in a plaintive, teasing voice. “Will I be running my daddy’s vegetable store for the rest of my life? Do I shock you? Tell me if I am evil. Do you think I’m evil? Look me in the eyes.”
The reason Cobb had not been looking at her eyes was that his were absent-mindedly studying the gentle curve of small, high breasts, outlined in taut detail through her thin blouse. Suddenly he was aware that the words were no longer rolling from Tann’s mouth. In the shock of silence, he took his eyes away from her body and looked up with a start, with a red-faced grin.
“Hi,” she said.
Cobb shifted back in his chair and decided to relax.
“Why,” he asked, “is so unlikely a person as you working in the prosecutor’s office? Prosecutors are supposed to be stuffy old crocks, like me.” The comment was meant to be self-deprecating but somehow came out self-pitying.
“I’m just learning the ropes — do I call an old crock like you ‘Mr. Cobb,’ or what? — so I’ll know what happens on the other side of the fence when I start defending people. When I go out on my own. Eventually. Also, I need the bread. Mom and Dad barely make it working all day and night in a little store — and I mean a little store. A Chinese corner store, if you know what I mean. And it’s the same store my grandparents ran before they died. And their parents came over as contract laborers on the railway. I’m a fourth-generation Canadian,” she said proudly. She paused to take a breath.
“Foster. People call me Fos. You can call me ‘Fossil.’”
“Is it a game? Are you modest, or are you really putting yourself down? I mean, old crock? Fossil?”
“I guess I’m hoping you will tell me I am not all that bad.” He smiled.
She studied him hard, then smiled back. “Well, maybe you are an old fossil. Mr. Fossil Cobb, the barrister.” She reached out and touched his hand softly. Cobb’s impulse was to jerk his hand away, but he stilled it, and her fingers touching him were long and fine and cool. “Am I being too forward?” she said, withdrawing her hand and slapping it in mock punishment for her transgression. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I touch a lot.”
“It’s too late,” Cobb said. “Now you’ll have to marry me.”
“Oh, yeah? You aren’t already taken?” She leaned toward him like a conspirator, one of her eyebrows arched, and spoke in a stage whisper: “But does your wife understand you?”
No! Cobb wanted to shout. Instead: “Currently, we are undergoing a re-evaluation of our respective marital roles within the framework of connubial stress.”
“Ah, so, said the Chinese detective, you are breaking up. A chance for the Dragon Lady to move in.” She batted her eyes at him comically, then pushed her empty plate away and leaned forward on her elbows, holding her face in the palms of her hands. “Tell me true, Fossil, are you unhappy in your marriage?”
After a few moments he said simply: “I would have to say I care for her.”
“Then I’ll just be your heartbroken friend. Tell me about her. Do you think I have any business asking you these questions? No, you don’t. It’s none of my business, is it?”
He could think of nothing to say. Deborah was beautiful, tough, sexy, charming to others, and cruel, it seemed, to him. She had moods that left him outside her, unable to touch her. He wanted to make the marriage work. But why? Out of stubbornness? What could Fossil say about his red-haired queen?
Finally: “She’s a ski instructor.”
“So she’s a jock.” She said, then studied him for a reaction. “Was that unfair? Do you not react? Do you always sit there like a big grapefruit? Do you have to wear that awful Clint Eastwood deadpan? Are you always so WASPY? God, no feelings. You’d make a great judge — you’re pompous enough. Are you pompous? Or just mysterious? Am I bugging you with all my prying?”
“Yes.”
She gave him a look that said she was disgusted, giving up on him. “Okay, you want to talk business. Here’s Jennifer Tann, very business-like.” And she picked up her briefcase, withdrew a thirty-cent ball-point pen and a pad of paper, stuck a pair of wire-rim glasses on her nose, crossed her legs, and sat poised, wearing a sour stenographer’s face.
Cobb grinned, and finally broke up.
“Good God,” she said, “he’s human.”
Cobb found his eyes had slipped again to her blouse. He shook his head as if coming out of a coma, and reached down into his briefcase, pulling
out a file.
“All right,” he said, “let’s start with Charlie Ming. He’s a reluctant witness. Au or one of his top men got to Charlie after he signed his statement, so he’s now changed his story, and he will probably deny that Au was anywhere near the H-K Meats. I have to interview him yet, and maybe he’ll come across, or maybe we can get him declared adverse. Get me a brief on the law of hostile witnesses, applying it to the circumstances of this case.”
He paused. “Is there coffee in this place, or do they consider that part of an imperialist conspiracy to keep Latin-American dictators in power?”
Tann laughed, again the cheerful giggling sound, a sound that made him want to make her laugh. “Comfrey tea is what you want,” she said, and yelled to the kitchen: “Comfrey tea for my friend and me!”
“Number two,” Cobb continued. “Wiretaps. The city narcs, not the RCMP, have a tap on someone’s line, and they’ve been listening to people talk about the Jim Fat murder. I don’t have the transcripts yet, but Au’s name, or some reference to him, shows up. Can we use anything like that in cross?”
“In cross?”
“Cross-examination of Au, if his lawyers decide to put him on the stand. Anyway, you know the law there. Obviously.”
“I did a paper on wiretaps. First thing I plan to do when I get out on my own is have the whole wiretap law ruled unconstitutional, contrary to the Bill of Rights, the Magna Carta, the un Declaration of Human Freedoms, and the Ten Commandments. Anyway, I’ll get together a brief on that.”
Cobb returned the file to the briefcase. “I guess that’s all for now. The whole key to this trial will be to put together a strong enough case to force Au to give evidence, to expose him to my cross.” He paused, put his hand to his forehead, and closed his eyes. Then he looked up. “There’s a missing link — a third man in the room, I think, in addition to the guy who was outside standing watch. Maybe all Smythe-Baldwin has to show is that someone else had the same opportunity as Au to kill Jim Fat, and there’s his reasonable doubt. We think the motive has to do with Jim Fat turning informer, but I have not been able to nail that down.”
Cobb paused, sipping his hot comfrey tea. “Our main problem is that Smythe-Baldwin claims he has a cop who will alibi for his client.”
“He has a what? A cop to give evidence for him?”
“Yes. I don’t know him. A Corporal Cudlipp. A Mountie in narcotics. I’ve been trying to reach him — no success. All the drug prosecutions in this town are handled by federal prosecutors, so I have never seen him on the stand. I’m going to try to get some kind of book on the guy. He may have been paid off.”
“A corrupt narc?” she said. “God forbid. Who can you trust?”
“Narcs, my poor innocent, rub shoulders with all sorts of not-so-innocent folks — and some of these folks have big money to throw around. And sometimes it rubs off on them.”
“Heavy,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said, “it’s heavy.”
The psychiatrist sighed and shook his head. “All right, you’re on the needle. I hope you sterilize it. Dirty needles cause hepatitis and tetanus. You’ll end up sick, and I’ll have to send you to a real doctor. Two caps a day. That’s what you tell me. Two caps a day. Yeah, sure. Who can believe a junkie? I’ve never known an honest junkie. It’s four caps, isn’t it, Fos?” He threw his hands up in disgust.
“So what am I going to do?”
“I don’t know what you’re going to do. Figure it out for yourself. I’ve got my own problems. Your trouble is you came off the tit too soon. You know what I figure? The hypodermic syringe is a big tit. When you shoot up, you’re breast-feeding. Only problem is, you don’t have a mother to wean you, so you have to do it yourself. Listen, Foster, I laid this on you ten years ago. The craving starts up in times of crisis. I warned you about psychosexual crises. Just control your intake, or you’ll develop too much tolerance. Keep the level within bounds, and you can handle your trials.”
“And how am I supposed to resolve it? My so-called sexual crisis.”
Dr. Broussaud leaned toward Cobb and looked hard into his eyes.
“Let me lay something on you, Foster. This comes more from a friend than a psychiatrist. As far as your marriage is concerned, you’re simply going to have to decide whether you want to fish or cut bait. You suffer from a trial-lawyer syndrome: you hate losing. You can’t handle the thought that you may be losing your wife. If you want the marriage to work, you are going to have to work at it. But I don’t know if you do. The two of you have been winging off in different directions ever since you met.” He paused, bit his lip.
“Okay, look,” he continued, “the movie started off great — eighteen-year-old college queen meets jailbird-junkie turned crown attorney. She’s infatuated. But she’s twelve years younger than her husband. He’s had his excitement: a poker-playing pool-hall shark who got hooked on dope and pulled a robbery. He settles down, puts that all behind him, retreats to his den, surrounds himself with his pipes and law books and Mozart and Vivaldi, and she’s bored. She can’t drag him out to a discotheque or a party.”
“Yeah, well, she won’t go down to the pool hall with me, either.”
“That’s supposed to be sardonic, but it’s probably typical of your relationship. Anyway, what has she got? She’s got a guy who’s just like her father — a stuffy law professor. She’s not quite ready to marry her father. But of course Foster Cobb worships her old man, and the two of them can sit around for hours talking about jurisprudence and listening to the professor’s Schubert.”
“Bach. He likes baroque —”
Broussaud cut him off. “Bach. Whatever. But here’s one of the problems: You can’t bear the thought of the hurt your beloved old mentor would suffer if his favorite and only son-in-law breaks up with his daughter. So the marriage drags on, because you feel responsible, not to your wife, but to her father.”
“Jesus,” said Cobb softly.
“Oh, yeah, she had a program for you: politics, a lucrative private practice in a big firm, an acceptable level of fame and fortune. You say the hell with that; you’re happy where you are. And it gets more boring for her. She tries for a family, but her periods continue to arrive as faithfully as the month’s new moon. So the cheerful-homemaker trip is a failure. She takes up skiing again, and you and your friends the Santorinis buy a condominium at Whistler, and she’s up there every weekend giving ski lessons. And you stop going with her because you complain you can’t keep up to her on the hill. Well, it’s almost as if you’re asking her to fuck around up there —”
“That’s crap!”
“— because you’re looking for some evidence, so you can blame her if the marriage fails. ‘That’s crap,’ he says. Well, it’s not a very heroic masculine trip to set your wife up to do the dirty work in a marriage break-up, so you’re not going to admit that to yourself.”
“Aw, c’mon.”
“Well, what do you think she’s doing up there, Fos? Drinking hot toddies and twiddling her thumbs? Ah, shit, I shouldn’t even be doing this. If the psychiatric association found out, they’d revoke my licence.”
“Well, goddamnit, Jack, I love her.”
“You don’t even know what love is at this stage. It could be some kind of dependency trip.” Broussaud reflected for a moment. “Yeah, in a way, she’s always been some sort of crutch for you. You didn’t need junk when she was around for you.”
“Well, I don’t think she’s screwing around on me.” Cobb folded his arms and looked stubbornly at Broussaud.
Broussaud exploded. “Well, why the fuck do you think you’re wired again?”
Cobb reeled back, stunned.
Broussaud sighed and shook his head.
“Sorry, Fos. Look, you try to think some of this through, and we’ll get together in a week or so. I think you’re going to have to get into your head and pump out some
of the shit that’s blocking you from dealing realistically with the marriage. All right. I’ve got people waiting outside, and they’re crazier than you.”
Cobb took in a full lungful of air and slowly breathed out. “Okay,” he said. “Yeah, okay.” Then he paused. “Look, Jack, speaking of crazies, just before you fire me out the door: I’ve got a murder I’m prosecuting, and there’s a letter from the crown shrink suggesting a sociopathic personality with some sexual dysfunction. The guy’s into some weird kind of castration thing.”
“That’s a good one. Okay. Sociopath. Psychopath. Same guy. No loyalty, no guilt, no conscience. But usually no big sex-kinkiness factor, unless he has some kind of sadomasochistic hangup.” He paused and reflected. “Now, there is a kind of psychopath, when he’s exposed to stress, he can develop a paranoid psychosis, delusions of persecution, that sort of thing. Centre on some guy as a mortal enemy.”
“Dangerous?”
“Depends. Could be if he gets into some wild psychotic trip. Charlie Manson-ing around your drawing room. Get a guy like that, with a tendency for a little violence, you might want to head for the fort, draw the gates and man the cannons.”
Friday, the Third Day of March,
at Six O’Clock in the Evening
Cobb dragged his tired body and aching head into his apartment, seeking solace. Unfortunately, this afternoon Cobb had drawn — in the lottery of the provincial courts — one of the lesser lights of the lower bench, and his impaired-driver client, doubtless guilty but not proven so to Cobb’s mind, ended surrendering his licence and five hundred dollars.
Deborah was in the bathroom, making up. At its doorway, Cobb sipped a glass of water and watched. She was naked, softly damp from the shower. Her movements were liquid. The hair dryer buzzed softly, blowing into the plastic cap over her hair and ears. He watched her a long while, and she glanced at him through the mirror and must have seen the longing in his eyes. She even smiled, and that was a very good sign, he thought. He scanned the curve of her body, her breasts, her buttocks, and felt a dryness in his mouth and sexual tension surge through his system.
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