Leper Tango

by David MacKinnon

“Sorry. You want to meet me after the show tonight?

  I only do the early show. Maybe we could have a drink together. At your place. Just pick up some beers and wait for me. I finish around midnight.”

  Samantha’s real name turned out to be Karin Van Der Velde. She stayed overnight. It was a waystation, and one of the things a girl hung onto was that eventually she’d get out. But, Karin also told me about Hervé Bourque.

  It was appropriate that a whore would even be responsible for getting me my first job in a law office.

  Hervé Bourque’s office was on rue Notre Dame, bet ween a law yer’s gown shop and the Court Bailiffs, within the shadow of the dismal brown building housing the Palais de Justice de Montréal. When I entered his office, it was a Friday afternoon. Six girls were in his waiting room, but the sleaziest looking of them all was a purple-haired harlot sitting at the receptionist’s desk fielding phone calls. There was enough fishnet on her to outfit a trawler. If there were a police roundup, they would have gone for her first, although you could smell the street on the half dozen others curled up on the divan in the waiting area.

  A man in his early sixties entered the office, sporting a set of eyebrows which hung like tarantula legs from an awning. He extended his hand towards me. “You must be Robinson.” He waved impatiently.

  “C’mon in, I said, make yourself at home. How did you hear of me?”

  “One of the Cleopatra girls recommended you. Sir.” “Not exactly a shining recommendation, Robinson.” One of his eyebrows arched into a triangular bivouac. “Do you know I’ve been in front of the disciplinary committee more times than I can count, Robinson. How do you feel about that?” “Ever been disbarred?”

  Bourque peered intensely at me, as if my question had answered another question.

  “I’m the one interviewing here. What’s the most important word in the law, Robinson?”

  “I don’t know. Guilty?”

  Bourque hummed the word “guilty,” until it buzzed out of his mouth like a bug on an African verandah.

  “Not guilty, Robinson. They’re all guilty. Retainer is the word. And what is the first rule of the practice of criminal law?”

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “Never post bail for a client. They have all, without exception, been in shit up to their ears from the cradle onwards. Which is not a problem, provided you never forget it, and obey one or two ground rules. So, you live below a strip club. You have a taste for seed, Mr. Robinson?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. It felt like an inter view where it didn’t really matter what I said or didn’t say.

  “What would you say, Mr. Robinson, if one of those girls in the waiting room proposed to pay in kind for professional services rendered?”

  “You mean sexual favours.” “For example.”

  I considered the question. From the point of view of Bourque as a future employer.

  “I’d tell her to post her own bail and a small retainer.

  The balance we could work out in an instalment plan.”

  Bourque looked at me. He had a way of looking at you sideways or even upside down without even moving his head. I could picture him in front of a witness box, lighting a cigar while cross-examining an international money launderer, or a cop on the take or a sweating politician.

  “You’re hired, Mr. Robinson. See you in the morning.”

  Bourque used my services on a regular basis, i.e. from 10 to 12 on Mondays and 3 to 5 on Fridays in remand court, handling guilty pleas, setting down trial dates or posting bail for the Cleopatra girls. It was all about serving time or buying time. After three or four months of this, I answered a call in the office, asking for me. Who is it? “36th police precinct. Constable Lefebvre. Franck Robinson?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m calling you on a criminal matter. We require your presence at Royal Victoria hospital morgue. For an identification.”

  “What’s this about?”

  “We have someone who says he is your brother in custody. Homicide.”

  “I’ll be right down.”

  The receptionist in the emergency department of the Royal Victoria hospital wore her hennaed hair in a tight bun. Her name tag said Miss Catherine Jones, R.N. She was attractive enough, but there was something about the thick breasts bulging under her uniform that triggered a whole range of disconnected thoughts. She had somehow managed the female hospital staff trick of being pulpous, feline, servile, friendly and hygienic all at once. But, with a little imagination, and adding ten years to her age, it was easy enough to project her into another time and place. Northwest Wales on a pig farm, surrounded by sows and her own offspring, with a constant drizzle pouring over her head, her absentee husband leaning drunk against a rotting beam of the local village pub. Somewhere near a coal mine. Circa 1965. Miss Catherine Jones directed me to an elevator, where I was instructed in a friendly but firm tone to descend into the sub-basement. A Doctor Giguère would be waiting for me. He would tell me what it was about.

  I stepped onto a long, rectangular freight elevator. A reedy man in orderly’s uniform stood behind a stretcher. The stretcher had a body on it. The body was covered with a creased, white bedsheet. The orderly’s nametag displayed the name Eric Chomsky, L.P.N., but since I didn’t feel like looking at Eric Chomsky’s face, or the body he was tending, or the cigarette he was making a half-hearted attempt at concealing, I focused on a metal plaque affixed to the wall of the elevator, which identified the manufacturer: Otis Elevators, Chicago, Illinois. The body halted at SSB, two floors underground, and Eric Chomsky wheeled his stretcher out of the Otis lift, just ahead of me.

  A tall gangly man stood in the corridor, his hair curly and boyish, as if he were the understudy to the conductor of the city symphony orchestra.

  “Doctor Giguère.”

  He motioned with a palm to the room behind him.

  “Come.”

  The room was bordered by an L-shaped counter containing three sinks, and a set of cupboards. The floors were tiled. In the centre of the room, a bed, fixed to the floor. An overhead neon light, and the low-grade buzz of an air ventilation system. In the rear of the room, an open entrance to an alcove, containing three walk-in doors.

  “Wait here, Mr. Robinson.”

  He walked into the alcove, and pulled open the latch.

  He opened the door, bent over, and walked inside, disappearing. Several moments later, a stretcher emerged, looking similar to the one which had accompanied Eric Chomsky down to the sub-sub basement. He wheeled the stretcher into the main room and aligned it beside the bed.

  “Before I can proceed, I require an identification.

  You, apparently, are the only person in a position to provide one.”

  He pulled back the bedsheet.

  “Recognize her?”

  “It’s my mother.”

  Mother’s torso had been stabbed repeatedly, but her face was intact, and even in death, I thought it had a trace of that wry, tight-lipped grimace Richard and I had looked up to for the first twelve years of our lives. Dr. Giguère pointed at one long scar tracing a vertical line up the centre of her abdomen.

  “The weapon used was a rapier, similar to the scythes used by Sikhs in ceremonial rituals. There is clear evdence of a sexual assault both prior to and following death.”

  The Honourable Mr. Justice Aznar of the Superior Court presiding over Courtroom 4.13, formerly Aznar, J. of Remand Court, in Courtroom 4.14 next door, briefly examined Richard, peered over the court record, and ordered an assessment to determine “whether the accused was, at the time of the alleged offense, suffering from a mental disorder so as to be exempt from criminal responsibility.” Etc. etc.

  The following day, I drove to the Pinel Institute to see Richard. I reviewed the proceeding and decided it had gone well, all things considered. Richard’s life as a free man was over, but Richard wouldn’t make a scene in the courtroom, and would generally allow the judge to expedite the matter.

  When I entere
d the visitors’ room, Richard seemed a little absent. I assumed he was comparing his own experience with Regina vs. Zont, and coldly assessing whether he had done anything unusual, i.e. unusual from a legal point of view, the only one that mattered if your aim in life was to become binding legal precedent, and be immortalized in the legal gazettes.

  “How have they been treating you?” “All right. No complaints.”

  “I guess there’s no point in talking about what happened.”

  “Not really.”

  “I have contacted defence counsel.”

  Richard’s eyebrows arched slightly.

  “I don’t see the point. Strikes me as a waste of money.

  It’s culpable homicide. Way outside the de minimis range.

  Smithers versus The Queen. 1977. Self-defence is a nonstarter. Provocation is out. It’s life, no parole before 25.

  Unless section 672 washes.”

  “I wouldn’t bet my last dollar on 672. It’s not automatic anymore.”

  Richard stopped, considering this.

  “Who’s counsel?”

  “I don’t think you k now this one. I found him through Bourque. He’s good, in fact very good, and he’s cheap, because he’s had some recent troubles with the law society.” “What kind of troubles?”

  “He has been under investigation for fronting a sale of si x hundred k ilos of cocaine through a group of Montreal biker gangs.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Gutman.”

  “Gut. Man,” he mouthed disjunctively.

  “No. Gutman.”

  “That’s good. I like that. What do you think he’ll plead?”

  “I think you can safely rule out reasonable apprehension of bodily harm.”

  “Don’t suppose drunkenness or any specific intent defence is really an option.”

  At that point, I was still a little naïve. Not about everyone. But, I thought Richard might want to discuss things.

  “Richard, why did you do it?”

  “I’d rather not discuss it.”

  “Richard, you can tell me anything. I’m on your side.”

  “If you’re on my side, you know why I did it.”

  “Honestly, Richard, I have no idea. I’d be the first to admit it.”

  “I think it’s about time you told me why you really came to see me.”

  It had been a while. Five years. A lot can happen in five years.

  “All right, let’s say I know why, but, I need to hear you say why you did it.”

  Richard raised the index finger of each hand, and placed them on his temples. Like two Martian antennae.

  “It was the aliens.”

  “Of course, Richard. But, which aliens?”

  “The ones who kidnapped her body. And, who want to poison the water supply of the City. It was purely preemptive. I should get the Order of the British Empire, Franck.” “We’re no longer a colony. Okay, fine, Richard, I take it back. 672 might wash. But, forget about the defence for a moment. This is your brother talking. I’m not saying you weren’t justified. But, just this once, Richard, I want to know why.”

  R icha rd looked a round the four corners of the visitors’ room. Smiled knowingly. Like, you idiot brother, how can you not see this. Unless you’re working for them. He raised his voice.

  “I don’t care if this is being recorded! Or who you’re working for! Hezbollah agent Candice Robinson, my socalled mother. Mossad agent. Funding suicide bombers.”

  Richard smiled sometimes. But, he never laughed.

  

  “So, that’s about it, Emily. The Swiss Family Robinson. A collection of social shipwrecks and mutants.”

  I sat back, took a deep breath, lit a cigarette. “Any coffee left?”

  “That is one incredible story, Franck.”

  “Well, you know what they say. You can pick your friends, but not your family.”

  “So, tell me, Franck, is anything of this, and I mean any small piddling fact true?”

  “I don’t know, let me think about that one for a second. Hey, by the way, you really do know what you’re doing, don’t you?”

  “If I were a little less experienced, I’d label you a pathological liar.”

  “Really. So, what am I?”

  “I think you’re trying to get into my pants.”

  “I’ ll be. Bang on, Emily. That very thought had in fact just crossed my mind. Does that raise any ethical issues from your side?” “Do you know how many of my patients develop this type of fixation?”

  “If they don’t, there’s something really wrong with them. Anyways, why is it a fixation to want to have sex with someone?”

  “I’m going to try something a little different next week, Franck.”

  The following week, as I drove into the West End of the city towards NRC Consulting, I mulled over what it was that attracted me to Emily. On the street, Emily was nothing much to look at. She was almost nondescript. She had white hair, was well into her fifties. I decided the non-descript component had something to do with it. Emily had succeeded where I had failed, and become completely invisible to the outside world. Also, her smile had seeped down to my internal water table. During the week following our meeting, I felt I had come into contact with the forces of good. Whatever. It was better than the options.

  I sat down on a mauve divan in the waiting room, picked up a back issue of Psychology Today open on a mahogany coffee table, leafed through it. A man entered the waiting room from the same corridor where Emily had emerged the previous week. The man had the beard and concave forehead of the man on the old John Player’s cigarette packages.

  “Mr. Robinson?”

  During the fleeting seconds he actually met my gaze before spinning into an about-face, his eyes appeared to be jiggling. The man bore a striking resemblance to a former acquaintance. As I followed John Player down the corridor of NRC Consulting, I tried to recall what I could of my friend, the body double of the man I was following. He had telephoned me long distance, reversing the charges, frantically claiming he was being held prisoner in the basement of a Fort Lauderdale scientology centre and had been forced to sign over proceeds from his pension funds. I hung up the phone and never heard from him again.

  We entered a room with a capital B glued loosely on the corridor side of the entrance door. The man waved me in ahead of him, closed the door, motioned me to take a seat on an art-deco sofa, about-faced, hunched over and began marching around the room, carrying some circa 1973 tape recording equipment as if it were a geiger counter. He plugged it into the wall outlet.

  “Okay, Franck,” he said by way of preamble, “before I turn this thing on, I want to explore the place in the world where you feel safest.”

  We briefly made eye contact for the second time. Another memory of his alter ego. That he had been captain of a tugboat. And that he had lost his job, when he was caught masturbating in the toilet by a woman bailiff sent by the courts to seize some stereo equipment he had forgotten to pay for.

  “I don’t know. I feel safe in an Audi.”

  “I see. An Audi.”

  “They handle well. Good for altitude driving. Generally have good sound systems.”

  “I see. Anywhere else you feel safe, Franck?” I thought about that for a moment.

  “I took an elevator up the Empire State Building once. It was old. But, I felt safe. In good hands. So to speak.”

  “So to speak. I see.”

  He noted something down in a coiled notepad on his lap. “I think I know what you mean.”

  He peered into my face. For a moment, I wondered whether this wasn’t in fact my long lost acquaintance. I decided against confronting him.

  “There is one place where I both feel in and out of danger simultaneously.”

  “I see. Where?”

  “Sheba’s cunt.”

  He made another notation in his notepad, which I noticed was quadrilled. It looked like he had sketched ∑, followed by a V, and a word scribbled, wh
ich looked like jungen, or jung.

  “It’s a little unusual, Franck, but I don’t see why we can’t take a look at this place which you are calling Sheba’s cunt. It’s a working hypothesis.”

  He recorded another entry. Then, something seemed to strike him as droll, but he put a cap on that.

  “How would you, describe this ... cunt, Franck, and by describe, I mean what are its salient features as a physical, organic entity?”

  Each pronunciation of the word cunt caused him to cringe, which was followed by a nervous titter.

  “Well, in some ways, she’s like any other woman. She has the usual equipment. You know. Labia. Clitoris.”

  “No, Franck. I don’t know. But you have my full attention.”

  “Well, for starters, her clitoris seems to have a brain of its own. I’d swear her cunt is equipped with extrasensory apparati with about a 10,000 kilometre range.”

  He held up a flat, jaundiced looking palm towards me. Like a traffic cop.

  “Stop. Stop right where you are, Franck.”

  He looked excited about something, wiped his pate. “What do you mean by range?”

  “I mean, close up or far away, she has the capacity to suck the brain cells right out of me.”

  I recalled an image which had been recurring in my dreams since her departure.

  “You know the student revolution in May ’68?”

  He did, or at least his nod indicated that he didn’t require a complete re-run of penumbral fifth republic France.

  “Rue Gay Lussac. The overturned cars running up the street from the Luxembourg Gardens.”

  “I see.”

  I took this as a signal to continue.

  “If I were to locate her clitoris, the time frame would be May ’68, and the location somewhere around rue St-

  Jacques. The CRS are six deep, twenty-five across, wearing plexi-glass face shields and swinging billy clubs. The hairs of her cunt are back at the Medici palace. Just behind the statue of Bacchus.”

  “I see.”

  “That is where her cunt starts. It slithers up Claude Bernard. Like a snake. The exact spot where the head of my dick penetrates is around the Place de l ’Italie. And her fallopian tubes fork off in two directions. One leads to the tapestry factory at Manufacture des Gobelins.”