Several minutes later, the two returned, Dr. Jerrison jovially reassuring Lou the sprain would only take a few days to heal and cautioning that he must avoid punching anyone for at least ten days.
Down the corridor they went, and I hobbled along behind. Lou was deposited inside a private “Recovery Room,” as it was labelled, and upon leaving him there, the good doctor paused to say, “They’ll be along soon.” I heard only a mumbled response. Then Jerrison: “Not at all, Rob. It was entirely my pleasure.”
Someone must have given Lou a pen and some writing paper, because as I entered he was sitting on a chair making notes — not surprisingly, because this experienced journalist knew he had a highly bankable story to tell.
He may have thought I was a doctor — I have the manner and the overpriced suit, and I didn’t introduce myself. I merely passed him my phone and told him to tap the Call button. “That’s your wife’s cell number. Celeste is waiting for you.”
My hope was to spirit Lou from the hospital before investigators showed up. But four or five agonizing minutes passed in fervent conversation between them, dominated by Celeste. Her husband squeezed in an occasional gasping declaration of his affection, all the while shaking with shock or excitement or joy or all of the above.
I finally took the phone and told Celeste we were on our way. Lou followed me like an eager puppy as we quickly went out a side door to a driveway where he took cover behind a laundry van while I retrieved my car.
In less than the minute it took me to rouse you at your hotel — and drag you away from the five o’clock local news — he was in the Fiat, and we were on our way to the aptly named Hope Street.
The scene inside the Wong house was tumultuous — they’d been huddled around the TV screen, but all jumped up, and Lou was buried in enfolding arms.
You showed up in a taxi ten minutes later, and your spent lieutenant was grateful to turn over operations to his field marshal (Monty, as dubbed by your barber?) for a campaign to breach the enemy lines.
Let me reiterate my admiration for the array of weaponry you brought to bear on Lou: your good-natured bantering, your soothing reassurances, your basic kindness. However, he was in such an unusual state of euphoria, besotted with life and love recovered, that he seemed in a hypnotic trance. So please be warned he may not have caught it all. Smiling and nodding one’s head like a puppet does not imply comprehension.
Later, if I may say so, you were at your eloquent best in taking on what seemed the entire Calgary Police Department: an exhibition of both charm and firmness as you worked the phone, making your way up the ranks of the hierarchy, finally speaking to the deputy chief and the chief himself.
I was not present at the two-hour tete-a-tete with them at your hotel, but that broad smile as you returned to the war room revealed your triumph even before you spoke of it.
The negotiated terms of surrender seem fair and wise. The national hero, your valued new client (secreted in the suite adjoining mine here at the Fairmont Palliser), is prepared to fully cooperate, but only two days hence. Until then, the cops will keep the lid on and screw it tight.
Altogether, a demonstration of forensic skill that will never garner headlines (though you’ve had those). But not all great art goes on public display.
I was glad to be of help assembling your team of experts. Professor Deore is reputed to be quite a bright young woman. The voice identifier — that was a coup, the very gentleman Farquist had hired to identify Margaret’s voice on the Freak Out recording.
It’s nearing three. I shall slide these pages under your door, then enjoy another sip of whisky before heading to bed.
Will you want me at the law courts building today? I’d love to be there.
With best wishes for the new year,
Francisco Sierra
SUCKER PUNCH
It was 10 a.m. on the last day of the year. Tonight, some would celebrate the arrival of the new one. Others would mourn. Arthur aspired to be in the former camp, but now was nagged by doubt and was struggling against the cynical grump within: the doomster whose wife could barely abide his dismal scenarios.
They’d been uncomfortable with each another ever since he proposed they take separate rooms. He couldn’t even bring himself to hug his client, except in private, and then awkwardly. Margaret followed his cue, refraining from touching him in public.
But they were allowed smiles, and now she adorned one with a wink before joining her current roommate, Pierette, in the lounge area outside the discovery room. Nanisha was already inside, with the court reporter, setting up.
George Cowper, waiting near the elevators with his junior, seemed impatient, though he preserved his default expression of utter sadness. Emil Farquist finally emerged from the elevator, only ten minutes late, followed by his aide, Hawkes.
In short time, the parties and their counsel were seated in the discovery room. Arthur was sandwiched between Nanisha and Margaret, who had got up the nerve to share the small, closed room with her arch-enemy. She had confided: “If I feel sick to the stomach, I’ll leave.”
Farquist, across from Arthur, appeared sober, no hint of a morning libation. Natty suit, modish tie, well combed and deodorized. He looked steadily at his inquisitor, smiling. Maybe he was on a drug. Not a trank — his eyes were too clear and sharp.
“For the record, you are still under oath,” said Arthur.
“Of course,” said Farquist.
“Then let us resume. Mr. Farquist, certain events of Saturday may have captured your attention.”
“Yes, involving this Sabatino fellow. Quite astonishing, wasn’t it? I remember him being quite the milquetoast as a journalist.” That relaxed manner again. Put on, Arthur decided.
“Lou Sabatino. The man you accused only three days ago of conspiring with Svetlana Glinka. The milquetoast has turned out to be quite the hero.”
“I was surprised by that, frankly. But I suppose a man can be brave and corrupt at the same time.”
That elicited a gasp from Margaret. Nanisha had her laptop open, her fingers dancing over the keyboard.
Cowper frowned. “Please just answer the questions, Emil.”
Farquist waved him off. “I don’t remember hearing a question. But if Mr. Beauchamp expects me to join in the general canonization of Mr. Sabatino, I will not. As a newsman he was a cynical smartass. He appears to be an even more unsavoury fellow since he got fired.”
Cowper seemed about to cut him off, then for some reason thought better of it. Farquist was clearly set on being his own man. He plowed ahead.
“Stalking about under a false name with a professional sado-masochist who apparently was also a Russian spy. He was related by marriage to that corrupt lawyer the Mafia assassinated. Giusti? Nick Giusti. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Sabatino meets with the same fate.”
Maybe he was on speed: cocaine or some manner of amphetamine. “And you wish us to believe that Lou Sabatino, for some reason, and Svetlana Glinka, for some reason, conspired to embarrass you publicly with malicious falsehoods?”
“Of course. Through the agency of Margaret Blake. Sabatino had it in for me. I don’t know what Glinka’s plan was. Extortion? Well, now she’s hiding in Russia, and Sabatino seems to have met a worse fate.”
“And your view is that Margaret got set up?”
“Set up and sucked in. They knew how reckless your wife can be. Your wife? Your client? What’s the protocol? I’m not quite sure.”
Arthur sensed Margaret stiffen — she was about to rise. He stilled her with a hand on her thigh. Time to ratchet it up.
“Mr. Farquist, you are aware — and please be honest — that a video was recorded of you consorting nakedly with Svetlana Glinka?”
“That is preposterous. Utterly impossible.”
“Impossible because your detectives’ fine-toothed combing failed to find it? Or because
you bought Svetlana’s video for an exorbitant fee?”
“Because it never existed!”
“I take you back to Sunday, January sixth, exactly one year ago less a week. Your day book had promised a ‘free afternoon’ — with an exclamation point. You were not at home working on your so-called parks bill. On that day you had your first appointment with Ms. Glinka, in your mountain chalet.”
Arthur was leaning toward Farquist, who was not backing up; indeed, he looked like a bull about to charge.
Cowper finally stepped in. “Maybe your dramatics could be saved for a courtroom, Mr. Beauchamp. Emil, I must firmly advise you not to rise to the bait.”
Arthur held his ground. “You were filmed by a hidden camera. But you know that, don’t you, Mr. Farquist?”
Instead of answering, Farquist took a long drink of water. Arthur nudged Nanisha, who turned her laptop to face the witness. The video was running, and a large bottom glowed from the screen and a voice called out: “I was a bad boy, very bad!” A thwack from Glinka’s riding crop. “Please, Mother, I beg you!”
Farquist turned white, then scarlet as the blood rushed back, but kept his expression blank, calm, unmoved.
But Cowper lost his cool and accused Arthur of all manner of improprieties: a gross breach of ethics, flouting long-standing rules of disclosure, laying traps, and, in a rare use of idiom, of swinging a sucker punch. As Cowper caught his breath, he seemed dismayed by his own behaviour: his reputation as an even-tempered gentleman had been severely dented.
Nanisha put the tape on pause as Farquist gripped Cowper’s shoulder. “Chill out, George, this might be good for a laugh. Let’s see what kind of bullshit they’ve come up with. It’s an obvious fake.”
The man had balls of steel. Arthur’s ploy hadn’t worked; he’d gambled on shocking him into blurting an admission of guilt.
Cowper wasn’t used to his clients taking over, and seemed to lack the toughness to rein Farquist in. Instead, he sat back, stunned. Arthur felt sorry for him, and apologized. “Please excuse the lack of timely disclosure, George, but this video just came to hand. It might be wise to give Ms. Blair a break while we watch the rest of it.” There was no advantage to putting more of this on the official record before they talked settlement.
He turned to Sarah Blair, whose face was glowing with embarrassment, and suggested she spend the next couple of hours preparing transcripts. Cowper lifted a limp hand in assent, and Blair gathered her equipment and hurried off without a look back.
Arthur half-expected Margaret to join her, but she seemed bolted to her chair. Her fingers dug into his thigh.
“Let us resume,” Arthur said.
And the video played on. Bondage and humiliation on an Oriental carpet. In background, a blazing fireplace, a wall of rough-hewn logs, an iced-over lake. Action in the foreground, Svetlana trading her quirt for a massive dildo, her client trying to buck her off like a rodeo bronco, all the while pleading for mercy.
Arthur had first viewed this rollick on Sunday morning, and subsequently another half-dozen times, mesmerized. Lou’s pirated copy, on a USB drive, remained in a locked drawer in his home in Porcupine Plain, but he had uploaded the file to the cloud, and was able to recall its complex password. In every detail, it matched what Margaret had witnessed early in June. Sabatino’s twelve-page affidavit detailed its provenance and history.
On the laptop, seconds passed soundlessly after the dominatrix and her masochist piggybacked off screen. Cowper’s junior was showing signs of illness, his face slightly green.
“Is that it?’ Farquist demanded.
Then his image reappeared in full frontal view, in lounging pants, pulling on a turtleneck pullover, then ambling out of the frame.
Farquist held a steely silence. His eyes flicked to Arthur, then back to the screen.
Several seconds later, Glinka appeared, still bare-breasted but in skirt and leggings, advancing quickly toward the lens. A close-up of her blue-eyed baby-doll face as she reached up and turned off her camera.
A hoarse laugh from Farquist. “Nice try. Got to give Sabatino credit for balls if not brains. Fabricating that piece of film fiction — the staging was patently amateurish. They used an actor, of course, for their opening scenes, or maybe some tramp off the street. Except at the end, where they spliced me in.”
He wasn’t even sweating. Arthur couldn’t help, in a paradoxical way, admiring the man: his toughness, his control, his straight face, his unshakeable tenacity in bluffing his way through this ordeal. He was one of the staunchest witnesses Arthur had ever encountered, and there’d been thousands. Maybe it wasn’t some cocaine-like pharmaceutical. Maybe it was straight-out sociopathy.
“You’ll have noted the date stamp,” Arthur said. “January sixth, Ms. Glinka’s first visit to your chalet. She regularly filmed her initial encounter with a client. In case of hanky-panky, as she explained to our independent witness, Mr. Sabatino.” To Nanisha: “The affidavit.”
From her briefcase, she drew two copies of Sabatino’s sworn statement, one for Cowper, the other for Farquist.
“You’ll want to take some time going over this.” Arthur rose. “We’ll be close at hand.” He held the door for Margaret, who was gaping at Farquist and would have walked into the door frame had Nanisha not caught her arm.
“Oh, and here’s a copy of the video.” Arthur pulled a memory stick from his pocket and passed it to Cowper’s junior, who put it down like a hot ember, rose, mumbled something about a bathroom break, then dashed outside.
§
Nanisha led Arthur and Margaret to a nearby courtroom, unlocked, empty. They took padded seats at the back, and Arthur stretched out, feeling the invigorating tingle of apprehension that courtrooms always stirred in him. He imagined scenes of forensic combat at the distant counsel table, the room packed, the prosecutor objecting, the judge sternly reprimanding Arthur for yet another sucker punch. Farquist finally cracking under the onslaught.
Arthur had felt constricted in that cell of a discovery room. With its namby-pamby rules denying old-fashioned, no-holds-barred cross-examination. Here, in a courtroom, was where the real dramas played out. It seemed sad, wrong somehow, not to be confronting Farquist on that witness stand.
He imagined how it could have been. Playing that explosive video in a crowded courtroom. The gasps from the gallery, the howling complaints, the threat of a contempt citation. How he would have enjoyed that.
Nanisha, on her phone, elbowed him out of his reveries. The only words he caught were, “A runner will pick them up.” Arthur gathered she was talking about the draft opinions from the experts. Rush jobs, but Cowper mustn’t be allowed another complaint about lack of notice.
Margaret slipped her hand into his. She was smiling at him, her silver eyes shining with either relief or excitement, or maybe love. “Fuck propriety,” she said, and kissed him on the mouth. He put his arm around her. Held her.
CONFIDENTIALITY CLAUSE
“What I wouldn’t do for strong drink right now,” Cowper said.
“I know the feeling well.”
“Sorry, I forgot, you’re . . .”
“An alcoholic. In recovery. Oddly, I’ve always felt I was a better lawyer in my boozy era. Maybe less inhibited.”
They were alone in the discovery room. Summoned by Cowper, Arthur had passed Farquist on the way in: he was stoic and calm, but Arthur caught a heady whiff of malice as their eyes met.
Cowper sighed. “You showed little inhibition this morning. I ought to have expected that, given your reputation in the criminal courts. Sorry for my little outburst.”
“It is I who must apologize. Old habits die hard.”
“But your impromptu screening didn’t elicit, as you intended, any confession. On the contrary, Emil was firm and blunt in his reaction to that tape. We quite honestly suspect it was doctored. If that turns out to be the case —
and we’ll have it expertly examined — the stakes become very high for Ms. Blake, especially if she is seen as a party to the making of it.”
Arthur hadn’t expected immediate surrender, but nor had he expected his opponent to grasp at this flimsy straw. He answered a knock at the door, and Nanisha handed him the three experts’ reports, two copies of each. Each comprised several pages of analysis and opinion, and many more of source notes, technical data, and references.
“Full disclosure, George.” Arthur handed him the lengthiest one. “Professor Deore is head of film studies at the University of Calgary. Teaches film editing techniques. Former film editor herself. She found no evidence of tampering, splicing, or any manner of editing of the tape.”
Cowper scanned through it, looked up. “She concedes this is only a preliminary report and advises further testing.”
“And she is doing that. Brilliant young woman. Earned her Ph.D. at twenty-one. And this is the report from Fred Wiggins, formerly Staff Sergeant Wiggins of the Calgary PD. Their lie-detection expert. Hundreds of hours of experience. Testified many times as an accredited expert.”
“To little avail, I assume, given the infamous unreliability of the polygraph machine.” Still counter-punching, if with grim valour.
“A persuasive opinion, nonetheless. Lou was caught in one falsehood, claiming he harboured no enmity for the plaintiff. I don’t know why he would say that, given your client once publicly called him an irresponsible, vacuous twerp.”
Unexpectedly, Cowper smiled, and eased back in his chair, as if relaxing in defeat. “What else do you have?”
“Voice analysis. We felt lucky to get Professor Mathews. Your client knows him, of course.”
“Let me talk to Emil.” Cowper groaned as he rose, expert opinions in hand. He was not looking forward to sharing them with Emil.
He paused at the door. “We will have to insist on a confidentiality clause.”
Whipped Page 30
