Needles

by William Deverell

  “Nothing.”

  “Now, tell us what you saw, Mr. Ming.”

  “Uh, see, uh, blood, some blood. I, uh, clean up.”

  “And who was in the room?”

  Ming stared ahead of him, his mouth open, caught on words which would not come. If he looked at Dr. Au, he would see in his eyes the warrant of death. Yet Au still had the power to make him look, and Ming did look, and saw the message of his own execution. Then he looked behind Au to the front row, where the watchers sat, and he saw the messengers, Leclerc, Klegg, Snider.

  “Mr. Ming, please answer,” the judge said.

  “Who in the room?” Ming repeated. “Uh, me, uh, Laszlo . . . Dr. Au.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Jim Fat, uh, not there. Laszlo and Dr. Au P’ang Wei, they go. I clean up.” Words that he knew he must not say had now been said, drawn from him by forces beyond his control.

  “Thank you, Mr. Ming,” the prosecutor said. “Answer Mr. Smythe-Baldwin’s questions, please.”

  The old lawyer, still shaking his head, stood up, holding in his hand a piece of paper. What was he now to do? Here was another man of great importance.

  “Mr. Ming,” said Smythe-Baldwin, “is this your mark?”

  “Yeah, I sign it.”

  “You signed it a week ago Saturday, isn’t that so?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I want you to read it.”

  “I, uh, not read too good.”

  “Then let me read it for you. ‘This statement has been read over to me by Mr. Smythe-Baldwin, and it is true. On Saturday, December third, Dr. Au and I drove to the home of Jimmy Wai Fat Leung, and he came with us. We drove to a place on Kingsway where Dr. Au left the car because he wished to meet with a man about business. I drove the car to H-K Meats, and Jimmy Wai Fat Leung left the car and went into the building. This was about seven o’clock at night. I returned to the building an hour later to meet Jimmy Wai Fat Leung. He was not there, but there was blood on the floor, which I cleaned with a mop. After a while a policeman came, and because there was blood, I was scared, and I ran away. Dr. Au was a good friend and employer of Jimmy Wai Fat Leung in the mortgage business, and I have no reason to believe he was responsible for his death. I have made a statement to the police in which I said that Dr. Au was at the H-K Meats on the night of December third. I said that to the police because I was scared of Detective Harrison, who had dragged me from my bed in my pyjamas later that night and who struck me in the stomach to make me come. He also placed handcuffs on my wrists, which caused bruises and shouted at me, telling me I must say Dr. Au was at H-K Meats or I would be charged with murder. The statement I gave to the police is untrue, and I would not have made it if I had been allowed to see a lawyer. Dated this twenty-four day of March at 312 Main Street.’”

  Smythe-Baldwin paused. All those words were a great confusion in Ming’s mind.

  “Now, Mr. Ming,” Smythe-Baldwin continued, “that is the statement you gave me, and you gave it to me without my putting any words into your mouth, and you gave it honestly, isn’t that so?”

  Now the prosecutor spoke again. “He is being asked to answer three questions at once.”

  The defence lawyer then spoke: “Is this your statement, Mr. Ming?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it true? You are under oath. I warn you that if you lie you can be charged with perjury.”

  Fear was compounded by fear now. The man’s voice was very strong, and he was angry. How could it be answered?

  “I think it, uh, true. I don’t know.”

  “What I read to you was true, was it not?”

  “I, uh, don’t remember. Maybe. Maybe Dr. Au not there.”

  “He wasn’t there, was he?”

  “I, uh, maybe, uh, don’t know.”

  The judge spoke then. “Mr. Ming, I don’t quite follow. Was the accused at H-K Meats on that night, or not?”

  “My lord,” said Smythe-Baldwin, “I am in cross-examination.”

  “Yes,” said the judge. “I am sorry, but it requires to be made absolutely clear. Was the accused there, witness?”

  Ming looked up at the judge, and felt himself turning cold. After pause, he said in a quiet voice: “Yeah, he there.”

  Smythe-Baldwin’s words now came at him from another part of the courtroom, and Ming, turning to his right, saw him standing beside the prisoner’s dock, only two feet from Au P’ang Wei. “Mr. Ming,” the lawyer said in a calm, steady voice, “you are mistaken. I put it to you that my client was not there that evening. This is important, Mr. Ming. The future of this man is at stake. Whether he goes to jail for his life is up to you. You must be very careful. Now, I ask you again — he was not there, was he?”

  Au’s hard eyes bore into Ming’s head like drill bits of tempered steel. From the right side of his vision, Ming saw the executioners sitting in the front row, and he felt a shadow pass in front of him.

  “Dr. Au there,” Ming said. “Dr. Au there.”

  Au then looked away from him, to the left, toward the three addicts, and Ming saw Leclerc nod slightly, and smile. For the remainder of Smythe-Baldwin’s cross-examination, which lasted to the end of the day, Au did not look upon Ming again.

  At the end, Smythe-Baldwin sat, and Cobb arose.

  “May the material-witness warrant be cancelled, my lord?” the prosecutor said. “There is nothing to hold Mr. Ming here further.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Justice Horowitz. “You are free to go now, Mr. Ming.”

  “I would simply ask that the witness make himself available should an occasion arise requiring his further attendance,” Cobb said.

  “Please give the sheriff your address as you go,” said the judge. “I would suggest you not leave the city for a while.”

  For some reason, Ming thought that was funny, and he chuckled to himself as he walked out of the courtroom and down the street. He was feeling well, all things considered. The day was warm and pleasant, and he did not expect to see another one, so he enjoyed it.

  And the plainclothesman whom Harrison had assigned to watch over Ming was enjoying the day, too. He was watching the girls on the courthouse lawn as Ming strolled down the street behind him, disappearing around the corner.

  Wednesday, the Fifteenth Day of March,

  at Five O’Clock in the Afternoon

  For the addict, death comes in many ways: from dirty needles that carry bugs, or contaminants in the mix that do not dissolve and are carried to the lungs and damage them, poisons that are added to the buffing agent — by accident or design. (Rat poison has been found to be cheap and effective.) But a simple overdose of pure heroin — even a single capsuleful — will do in a user whose tolerance is low after a long stay in hospital or jail. A junkie who has built a high tolerance will just get high with ten times the amount.

  The heroin way is held in high regard by the aficionados of death. They will urge upon you that for your final passage, for a blissful rendering of your soul to worlds that lie beyond, you should spoil yourself with a rich preparation of diacetylmorphine. It is a way of death that gently eases you into arms.

  By the time your lungs give in, their tissues swollen, their air sacs filled with fluid, and by the time breathing struggles and stops, you will already have drifted from trance to coma to shock, and you will have had no sense of the end that is arriving. Before the trance, there will have been dreams of many colors and textures, and your fantasies will have given you diamonds to pluck from the sky and golden palaces to rule. You will have soared and swooped like an eagle. You are neither awake nor asleep, and if your eyes are open and your ears tuned, they will create beauty where before there was degradation, fear, and loneliness. The dreams will have followed the opiate rush, a sweet orgiastic feast for all your senses.

  All it will take to go this way — for those whose bodies are not tr
ained in the processes of addiction — will be one or two capsules of Dr. Au P’ang Wei’s 97-per-cent pure White Lady. If you are uncomfortable about poking needles into your flesh, then you can eat the heroin, but death will demand it in much larger quantity. (However, by eating it, you will get off for a longer time before checking out.)

  A concluding word: do not fight it. Flop with it. Let it carry you. Because otherwise your fantasies become nightmares, and pleasure gives way to an awful terror.

  Charlie Ming, although a non-user, was aware of the fact last stated, and when, while looking up at the two dark holes of the barrels of Leclerc’s loaded, cocked, twelve-gauge sawed-off shotgun, he washed down a quarter ounce of the acrid powder with a half-pint of chocolate milk, he decided to lie back and let the narcotic waft him across the Styx.

  He was not pleased to know death so early, but content at least in the manner chosen for it.

  In the late afternoon, Ming had enjoyed the last taste of a sunny day in March, walking the three or so miles to his home from the courthouse. He had refused Leclerc’s offer of a ride, and Leclerc understood, and directed his men to follow on foot while he circled slowly about here and there in his car. Everyone joined in a quiet group at the entrance to Ming’s small duplex, and Ming invited them in. He was glad that the place was tidy — his sister had a key, and must have cleaned it.

  He was allowed to go to the bathroom and shower and brush his teeth and change into his pyjamas, ironed crisply by his sister and folded at the bottom of his bed. No doubt she would visit tonight, after her dinner, and he wanted her to find him cleanly attired, not unpleasant in smell or in sight. Beyond requesting the privilege of cleaning himself for his decease, he expressed no final wishes. One, however, was asked of him, and he found no reason to refuse; and so in a poor choppy scrawl, with Leclerc directing his hand, he wrote in English upon a scrap of paper these words: “I am not able forgive myself for my errors of the past and I give my soul to God.” He was allowed to add some words for his sister: “To Mary, my sister, I give all stuff here, and thank you for frais pigamass.” No one could spell pyjamas, although the issue was hotly debated, and Leclerc believed “fresh” might be spelled somewhat like the French word.

  The glutinous mix of white powder and chocolate milk in Ming’s mouth slid down like syrup. Leclerc kept a little stuff for himself and his two companions, and the three of them fixed, and sat back to watch Ming die. Leclerc had seen the effects of overdoses before, but John Klegg and Easy Snider — junkie dealers from the Corner — were interested in the process, and joked in a good-natured way with each other as Ming nodded off. When his breathing finally became labored and hoarse, they got up to go. Leclerc wondered what it would feel like to ball a dying man, but decided against it.

  Mary Ming, looking forward to seeing her brother after his absence of more than three months, came by after dinner and found him in his bed in smiling permanent repose, a bubbly red froth upon his lips and nose.

  Cobb’s sleep that night was far less pleasant than Ming’s, and the only thing that could be said for it in preference was that it was concluded by an alarm clock. The news of his witness’s death had struck him hard, and late at night he had cranked up a good hit — despite his best intentions to keep his use down to a two-cap straightener in the morning and a couple more in the late afternoon. After Ming’s sister had called the police Wednesday night, there had been a hurried conference at Ming’s duplex, at which Harrison lacerated the ashen-faced plainclothesman who had let Ming slip away. Finally, at three a.m., Cobb had dragged himself into bed beside his fitfully sleeping wife.

  Harrison, on the other hand, had slept not at all, but angrily stalked the junkie bars and gay clubs in dogged but futile search for Leclerc.

  Cobb was heading for the shower at eight a.m. when Harrison phoned.

  “Nothing,” the policeman said.

  “Where was Au?”

  “You got to be kidding.”

  “Well, where was he?” Cobb said.

  “Very conspicuous until the call came in at six-thirty. Then we lost him.”

  “Well, where was he until six-thirty?”

  “In a Chinese restaurant surrounded by a couple of dozen witnesses.”

  “The mayor, city council, and seven or eight members of Parliament.”

  “Something like that. Well, what’s going to happen, Fos?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Hunkie.”

  “Oh, shit, I’ll just keep my fingers crossed, Honch.”

  “If he’s heard something? Jugs have ears. Cops who don’t think talk a lot, and prisoners pick up what’s going on. They flew him in last night. If the word’s out, he knows.”

  “Aw, fuck!” The word exploded from Cobb’s rank morning mouth, and he hung up.

  Cobb checked into his office before going to the courthouse. The news from his answering service added a decidedly unattractive complication to Cobb’s already disordered world: Bennie Bones had been picked up during the night in an RCMP sweep. He was in the city bucket waiting for bail to be fixed. Cobb hurriedly made arrangements with the federal drug prosecutor to put the case near the bottom of the first-appearance list so Cobb could run down to remand court during his noon break.

  Then, his door locked from the prying eyes of his secretary, he cooked up a rich shot, popped a virgin vein in his leg, and lay back for several minutes, blinking, floating, swept away in the rush.

  Then he went to the courthouse to meet Plizit. Flown in from his interior hideaway jail, Plizit had been kept locked up overnight in isolation, and Cobb kept his fingers crossed against a leak. Plizit, looking sour and depressed, was brought by the sheriff to Cobb’s courthouse office.

  “How long is this take?” he asked.

  “It will take half an hour to go over your evidence, Laszlo. I want you to read your statement so it’s fresh in your memory.” Cobb fished a duplicate copy from his briefcase and gave it to him. “Let me tell you the questions I will be asking you, and you can tell me your answers.”

  “I am dead man this country.”

  “What?”

  “I am dead man this country. They kill me any way I go.”

  “You’ll be okay, for Christ’s sake. But you’ll be safer if you help us put Dr. Au away. When he is in jail, he will have no power.”

  Plizit snorted. “Who you kid, Mr. Cobb? Nobody is put Dr. Au away. Not me, not you. He kill us all.”

  “Let’s go over your evidence.”

  “I know what I am saying in court. You help me get out of this country, don’t worry, I tell you truth.”

  “Get out of the country?”

  “You ask parole board, maybe they deport me. In Hungary they give me time for rob a store I did not do, plus I get some time for run away. Maybe deuce more. Is goulash all week, or I am dead man this country other ways. But goulash tastes better in throat than knife.” Plizit broke into a hollow chuckle. “Maybe they educate me, make me good socialist citizen.”

  “If you give up your claim to refugee status, the parole board will send you out on deportation parole,” Cobb said, more optimistic than sure.

  “I take my chances communists not put me against wall. I hate Hungary jail. It is teach, teach, teach, work, work, work. But I am dead man here.”

  “I will help you,” Cobb said. “In Hungary, there is no Dr. Au.”

  “In Hungary, they shoot Dr. Au.” Plizit picked up the copy of his statement and looked at it without interest for a while. Then he put it down and looked hard at Cobb.

  “How is Charlie?” he asked.

  “Charlie Ming was a good witness.”

  “How is Charlie now?”

  “He’s a free man, Laszlo. We let him out last night. He went off, had a good night’s sleep. We’re looking after him.”

  “I hear is reward out for him.”
r />   “A contract? Well, I saw him just this morning. Safe and smiling. He’s somewhere no one can get at him.”

  “I think we should wrap it up,” Superintendent Charrington said. He was out from Ottawa and had read Flaherty’s detailed reports. “Before it goes too far. I should think it would be well to fill in Detective Harrison.”

  “Give me another couple days,” Flaherty said. “I can really nail this cocksucker in a day or two. By the weekend, you’ll be able to use his balls for Easter eggs.”

  Charrington blanched.

  Cudlipp, in the old days, had worked in small towns with Constable Bob Klosterman, an easy-going Mountie who did not like the city and whose only ambition was to remain right where he was: head of a two-man detachment in a little cowboy town called Tlakish Lake. Cudlipp figured he might take Alice up there for a little fishing holi-day after the trial, before moving to Australia.

  On the phone, they talked about this and that, and Cudlipp learned that Klosterman was keeping a special guest in his cells.

  Thursday, the Sixteenth Day of March,

  at Ten O’Clock in the Morning

  Cobb took a deep breath, glanced over at the jury, and began.

  “Your name is Laszlo Plizit?” said Cobb.

  “Yeah.”

  “And you know Dr. Au P’ang Wei?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Point him out, please.”

  Plizit pointed to the accused without looking at him.

  “Were you with him on the evening of December third last?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you go somewhere with him?”

  “We gone first to Jimmy Fat Leung’s home.”

  “What happened there?”

  “Well, me and Dr. Au and Charlie Ming, we have pick up Jim Fat and went to office of Nationalist Association, where Dr. Au paralyze Jimmy with needle.” His words came in a great rush. “I know nothing about what will happen, believe me. We go to Jim Fat home, you see, and Dr. Au say there is important job for him in business. That is what Dr. Au say for us to say, do you see, and —”