As does Hubbell, I suspect. He confessed a couple of times, years ago, while drunk, that he’d had fantasies involving Annabelle.
I am distracted by the entrance into the dining room of Justice Bill Webb and his wife and another couple. There is an awkward moment as they pass by, Bill pretending not to notice the fellow AAer he spent all day in court with. That he doesn’t find the courage to meet my eye tells me I may not be able to count on him.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2011
There is a presence behind me. I can feel it, something ugly from the past. I lay out my books, papers, and writing tools, and finally turn to look for whatever apparition I have divined in this courtroom. My eyes settle on a face near the back – aged, leathery, dark with an Arizona tan, an artificial, ill-meant smile – intended for me, the lawyer who dared impugn the honesty of the upholders of the law in the Squamish Valley. Roscoe Knepp, long retired in Tucson, could not resist returning to the scene of his crime, the Vancouver courts.
It’s as if he’s been summoned from the netherworld of my nightmares. Maybe the one that awoke me this morning, though I can’t picture him among the dripping revenants crawling up the banks of the Squamish River, approaching me with their petitions. The lead haunter, as usual, was Dermot Mulligan, a horrifying sight with his horn-rims and stout penis, made up as a woman. Now that I think about it, this was a family scene, with Irene – oddly dressed too, as a man – and Mulligan’s son, Sebastien Snow, in prison greens, and Sebastien’s mother, Caroline. I can’t remember any of their words but hers. You could have saved me.
I keep staring at Knepp as that dream spools through my mind. His cocky smile dissolves and he can’t hold my gaze, checks his watch, frowning, as if he has a list of many things to do today.
As our case is called and Hollis Wotherspoon takes the floor, I stay trapped in that dream, wondering at Caroline Snow’s challenge, hurting as I remember that frail young addict whom I wooed with Keats and Byron and deserted in the morning. Remembering her son, whom I defended for random acts of windshield-smashing anger. It seemed to be the most sensible thing to do at the moment. Sebastien Snow, who begat Marie Snow in 1978, who has disappeared into the closed systems of Manitoba’s Adoptions Act. She would be thirty-three now. She would have no idea who her grandfather was.
Wotherspoon’s manner of litigating is old-school casual: unassertive, friendly, slightly underprepared, the occasional self-effacing joke, some stumbling about to reassure the judges he’s not as bright as they. He is only vaguely adversarial and likes to preface remarks with phrases like, “If I may be of assistance to the court …”
Martha Schupp tells him she’s “troubled” over the so-called suicide note, Exhibit One. Not troubled enough to leap to the obvious conclusion Mulligan was going to kill himself. Troubled by the note’s provenance and how it came to have been overlooked in the Archives. “There is affidavit material affirming it was done on the deceased’s typewriter and that the two six-by-eight sheets appear to be old, maybe by several decades. Are you happy with that?”
“If not happy, content. It may assist your Ladyship to know the document examiners were recruited from RCMP crime laboratories. Highly qualified; top people.”
“This exhibit could be many, many years old, I suppose.”
“Quite so, milady.”
“Might have been created a decade or more prior to 1962, who knows?”
I stubbornly refrain from rising; I will not be the one to embarrass her. Bill Webb, on her right, takes on that task, leaning toward her ear, suggesting she might look more closely at Exhibit One, at the first line: Albert Camus, who was unhappily taken from the world two years ago, wrote “there is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.” Webb’s advice that Camus died in 1960 causes Schupp to turn pink.
Loyally, Ram Singh tries to salvage her dignity by coming up with a light-hearted aside. “This reminds me of that case back in – when was it? – the fellow who allegedly hurled his accountant from his penthouse balcony. Does anyone remember the case? Something about a tainted suicide note and a massive bank deposit …”
I don’t bother to rise. “I remember it well, milord.”
“Oh, of course, you were defence counsel. What happened to your fellow?”
“He walked. All the way to the bank, I believe.”
A rumble of face-saving laughter from the bench, Schupp looking more at ease, maybe even grateful I haven’t rubbed salt in her wound.
As the morning winds down, she and her confreres take a few light shots at Wotherspoon, challenging him about O’Houlihan’s recent admissions he’d tried to blackmail Mulligan. “Why do you say he ought not to be believed?” Schupp asks.
“I suppose because he’s a generally untrustworthy character.”
“He hasn’t long to go, though, according to your own brief of evidence. Deathbed repentance – isn’t that what we saw on those videotapes?”
Singh has a different take. “I thought he spoke more with pride than repentance.”
“Maybe so, milord,” says Wotherspoon, happy to concede anything to get through the day.
Singh expresses interest in the semen-stained panties and the missing socks, but Wotherspoon is unable this time to be of assistance. It’s good that they’re testing him, though likely only out of courtesy to the old trouper opposing him. They will reserve, of course, for the same reason, perhaps for a few weeks, long enough for Schupp and Singh to bend Webb to their wills. That may not be difficult; his body language, his apologetic glances inform me there will be no dissenting judgment.
Schupp notes the time and asks either counsel if they have anything to add.
“If I may summarize in a nutshell,” says my learned colleague, “there’s an excess of evidence to support a conviction, whether by guilty plea or not.”
“Mr. Beauchamp?”
“It is obvious to the entire world that Gabriel Swift was the victim of a vicious conspiracy fuelled by revenge and racism. I trust it is as obvious to this honourable court.”
That’s for the press and, through them, the public – not even our highest courts are immune to the vox populi – but also, mainly, for Roscoe Knepp. The Chief gives me a stern look but suppresses the temptation to lay into me. “We will reserve.”
As the gallery empties, Knepp, who is bent over and using a cane, turns to me and mouths, You prick. Age has not mellowed this fellow – he is not the glib, ingratiating staff sergeant we once knew.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2011
The Southlands is a Vancouver enclave of the very rich, the horsy set: estates with paddocks and pools and high hedges to keep the gawkers away. It is on the rolling, manicured lawns of one such estate that the birthday of Roy Bullingham is being celebrated this afternoon. At least a few hundred people here. Tents for shade. Canapés on trays. The finest wines, some of which are being blind-tested in one of the parlours of the host’s manse. A party game: guests are asked to guess the variety of grape, country, region, and price.
Martha Schupp is present, as are many others of the judiciary. A glass of champagne has transformed this cheerless auditor of regs and rules into a charm machine promenading about in her sun hat. “Splendid day, Arthur,” she sings out as she passes by.
“How lovely to see you, Martha, in such a lovely setting.” She is not fooled by my sunny response; she knows that I know I’ve lost.
Annabelle too is here, a woman comfortable with power and the powerful. Teasing, sexy, the old tycoons falling for her. Her escort is Stan Caliginis, who seems wowed by her, astonished by his good luck at being consort to a woman so vibrant, so attractively repackaged in her new skin. Annabelle has him where she likes them – at her feet.
I proceed into the house with Hubbell Meyerson. Gifts are piled by a table (mine is an eighteenth-century edition of Coke’s Commentary on the Laws of England). The guest book must be signed, the array of old photos admired. Here is Bullingham in 1960, with the partners he outlived
: absent-minded Geoffrey Tragger and Tom Inglis, unlovingly known as the Fat Man. They were oblivious to me until my glad-handing by Dief the Chief in 1962 – the year when my career began to soar, yet a terrible, terrible year, a year of shame and remorse.
We slip into the grand salon, where the Emerson Quartet is playing Beethoven’s opus 131 for a small, rapt audience. But I am still in 1962, remembering the frightening thrill of taking on my first murder, remembering my early optimism, my earnest naïveté, my travels in the Squamish Valley, where I was ill-used by a rainstorm and the local RCMP. I’ve never returned to the upper Valley and probably never will, not even to pay homage at Mulligan’s bookish shrine.
I remember the spirited debates with Gabriel, our growing shared respect – dare I say fraternal feelings, dare I say love. I remember my obsessive fear of losing him to the hangman. When the appeal court judgment comes down, I will have to be a man and deliver the news face to face. It wasn’t meant to be, I’ll say. I gave it my all. Please stop hating me.
I remember – too well – how during the trial I prospered one day and got trounced the next, how I caved in after Irene claimed to have recognized the size-eight foot. How odd that this foot had a similar vestigial toenail, though I’ve learned they’re not so rare (nor, it turns out, are unidentified washed-up feet). I think now that Irene simply wanted it to be Dermot’s, out of a need for closure. Yet I’m troubled by her signing of that affidavit so quickly and incautiously.
Hubbell shakes me out of this bleak cud-chewing, leads me off to the blind wine-tasting contest: a dozen brown-bagged bottles on the table, glasses to swirl and sip from. A pearl-bedecked matron is studying her score card. “Gracious, a two-hundred-dollar vintage. I was way, way low.” The master sommelier running this show comforts her by saying she did well to identify it as a California Chardonnay; he gives her, generously, seventy per cent.
None of the twenty or so guests here comes forward when the sommelier asks for another volunteer, but then Hubbell cries out, gesturing at the doorway. “Here’s our man!”
Stan Caliginis has just entered, Annabelle on his arm. Hubbell promotes him hard: “A famous connoisseur of the grape, a vintner himself, keeper of a cellar the envy of the Western world.”
Caliginis is known by most here, and they applaud vigorously as Hubbell urges him forward. He wants to resist – I can see it in his frightened eyes – but Annabelle practically strong-arms him to the table.
“Ha, ha, wasn’t expecting this. Not quite in shape for it, I think. Bit of a throat.” The excuses tumble out in his staccato way of speaking. Annabelle gets laughs with her simulated rubdown, as for a prizefighter about to enter the ring. Caliginis sniffs, swirls, sips, then mouths a series of adjectives he’s comfortable with: flinty, steely, unoaked, apple-like acidity. “A superior French Chablis, Burgundy region, of course, and I would put it about eight years old and priced at … oh, in the low hundreds.”
The sommelier turns pink, as if flustered or embarrassed. “A joke,” he says finally. “You had me there.”
Caliginis goes “ha, ha” again. “Sorry, I just felt like having a little fun.” He’s fooling no one. He whispers something to Annabelle that seems to annoy her, then says something louder about expecting a call and heads off quickly with his phone.
“A rather uninteresting screw-cap wine, actually,” says the sommelier, grimacing. “A Chilean Sauvignon Blanc, retailing for eight dollars at your local beer and wine store.”
Annabelle sends me a weary look and takes Hubbell’s arm. They walk out through the sun porch to poolside.
It is at this oddly gratifying moment that April Wu calls on my cell. “I am not a very good detective. I assumed you were home.”
“I intend to be this evening. Where are you?”
“In your living room. I thought we would be able to avoid the media here. Marie is sitting beside me.”
Momentary confusion. Marie … Mulligan’s granddaughter. “Amazing! How … where did you find her?”
“In La Ronge, Saskatchewan. Marie Dubois.”
I’m not as shocked as I ought to be; in fact, I have a sense of a fulfilled premonition. Marie, mother of Kestrel, who went missing three weeks ago on a quest for the same long-buried answers that have eluded me. For surely that’s what she’s doing in Squamish.
I pace the upper deck of the Queen of Prince George. I return inside to the little carrel where my bags and briefcase sit, dig some papers out, looking for something, though I’m not sure what. I wander off again, to the gift shop, to the forward lounge, then outside, where I pace again, fretfully.
With no flights available, I’ve had to resign myself to the mercies of a ferry busy with weekend cottagers and other undesirables. These include, below me on the car deck, Stan Caliginis, sulking in his monster pickup, and Stoney and Dog, quaffing beer in the bumper-stickered Mustang, which somehow they have rescued or stolen from the B.C. Ferries compound. Both give me headaches; I will try to negotiate a ride home with someone else.
I’m not ready yet to re-immerse myself in the picaresque pleasures of Garibaldi society. I am stressed because of the lateness of her cross-dressing highness the Queen George. We’ll not be pulling in until well past ten-thirty, and I have guests – important guests.
I dig out my cellphone and ring April – for the third time – to confirm that the boat hasn’t sunk and I’m still on my way. Everything is fine, she says. Niko and Yoki have come by to help them settle in and have stayed for tea. A bed has been prepared for Marie, who is exhausted from travelling and worrying.
Marie and her husband, Samson, spent several days on the coast hoping to regain contact with their fourteen-year-old, but Kestrel hasn’t phoned since she called them from Squamish. They returned home a few days ago to their jobs, needing to be occupied. Now Marie has made a second journey, with April, who told me Marie is eager to speak to the lawyer she’s read and heard about, the lawyer trying to solve the puzzle of her grandfather’s death.
I was surprised to learn that Marie, though adopted at seven, knows about her antecedents. “How can that be?” I demanded of April.
“Patience,” said April, “is the companion of wisdom.”
“Lao-tzu?”
“Saint Augustine.”
I’m back at my carrel, perusing the old RCMP exhibit list: items seized from Mulligan’s desk, the outstanding one being Frinkell’s letter, its accusation of adultery, its claim for damages. Casually tossed into his in-basket, unconcealed from his full-time attendant/researcher/secretary. Irene must have used that desk regularly for typing his manuscripts, handling his correspondence. Yet she claimed not to have known about it. There was no other working area she could have used, as I recall from my long-ago visit to the hobby farm. While Thelma McLean fixed us coffee, I’d snooped, found two decks of playing cards in a drawer of that desk, bridge decks in a clear plastic box. Irene’s game, not Dermot’s.
It is already ten p.m. as the Queen George putts into the Ponsonby Island dock, the last stop before Garibaldi. I pack up and descend to the car deck. The several island residents I encounter either have full vehicles or live far away from Potters Road, so I must choose between Caliginis and Stoney. A ride from the latter promises danger, but the grape connoisseur might prove even more distracted, now that his affair with Mrs. Beauchamp has imploded. I do not want to be driven off Breadloaf Bluff and land among the elves on the Shewfelts’ lawn.
“Dog and me, we’re sort of going that way anyway, so keep your wallet in your pocket. The mere pleasure of your company, sire, is reward enough, plus maybe out of the generosity of your heart a little pro bono advice.” As we drive off the ramp, the top still down, Stoney pulls a massive joint from behind the visor and lights up in full view of everyone at the ferry landing. He passes it behind him to Dog, who exchanges a fresh can of Lucky for it.
Though I have insisted on sitting in the front, where there is a working seatbelt, I don’t feel in any extreme peril. To give Stoney credit,
he knows Garibaldi’s roads so well that his responses to the dips, curves, and potholes are almost instinctive, automated, even as he smokes, drinks, and incessantly talks.
“This here’s the situation. I had to pay off the ferry corp the flagrant amount of $357 and change for towing and storage. This was done according to my standard corporate practice, with a cheque on my business account.”
“And how much is in that account?”
“Four dollars.”
I earn my fare by telling him that a bounced cheque rarely gives rise to criminal proceedings.
“There ain’t currently no law on this here island anyway, right, Dog?”
A grunt of assent. I ask, “What happened to the law on this here … on Garibaldi?” The second-hand smoke is getting to me.
“From various accounts we have pieced together, Ernst Pound got his ass suspended for punching the lights out of that pole-climber who’s been poking his old lady. Zoller got the boot for standing by useless while this was going on outside the bar, and we ain’t got no replacements.”
Talking incessantly, he bemoans the loss of his cash crop – I dare not tell him the livestock ate it – but accepts the blame. “My problem is, though I ain’t totally always aware of it, sometimes I rap too much when I do reefer, so some wrong ears musta overheard me mentioning in passing where I stashed my stash. No matter, I got friends with surplus, and anyway it’s party hardy time on copless Garibaldi. The bar’s gonna be rockin’ wild all night, man. Metal Zombie is playing – they just got kicked out of Seattle for getting naked with some groupies on stage, right, Dog?”
“It was on TV.” A rare entire sentence. Dog passes the joint back. Stoney fills his lungs, breathes out like a dragon, and orders Dog, through song, to “Roll another one, just like the other one.”
Homer bounds up the driveway, announcing, He’s back! April’s car is outside my farmhouse, a nondescript Honda Civic suitable to the tasks of a discreet PI. She is out here too, but not quite so inconspicuous: she has found a pool of light, is leaning languorously against a veranda post, her jacket slung over her shoulder. One wonders if she once aspired to be a photographer’s model.
I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel Page 38
