Stung

by William Deverell

  * * *

  Rivie had exaggerated her talent with wilderness cuisine — the fillets were overdone and the nuts unevenly roasted — but Arthur praised her creation as fit for the gods.

  She credits her erstwhile lover, Chase D’Amato, for the recipe, then glumly muses about him. “Last heard from? Costa Rica, maybe, if I can believe the stamp on his letter. Hanging with tapirs and red-rumped antshrikes. Working at what? Jungle treks, zip-line tours . . .”

  Her voice fades into silence. Into memories, Arthur supposes.

  Margaret, tipsy by now, says cheerily, “Hey, we’re definitely going to the ballet tomorrow. I got the tickets.” To Arthur: “Firebird. A matinee.”

  “I’m envious,” says Arthur, who must spend Sunday with Khan’s clippings and recordings.

  Rivie tries to look pleased, but Arthur senses wistfulness. Lonely, unpartnered, missing her daredevil lover, only too aware that her housemates will be coupling tonight in the bedroom below hers . . .

  * * *

  Though Arthur hasn’t found his own release, Margaret lies sprawled on the rumpled sheets, catching her breath, her legs splayed, her head nestling on Arthur’s shoulder. “That was perfect, darling.”

  Arthur doesn’t quite know how he pulled it off. The feat had mostly been performed by hand, with instructions. But now he thinks back to an overheard exchange. Rivie: You have to take them by the hand. Margaret: He fumbles around — sometimes he even finds it. Was Rivie giving tips to his mate? Is there no limit to the intimacies women share?

  Margaret rolls over, begins a descent beneath the sheets. “I can do better than that cow.” Her head disappears.

  Chapter 22: Maguire

  1

  Tuesday, May 28

  Tim Hortons coffee sucks. Second Cup is inconsistent and tends toward bland. Starbucks is often bitter but gets a passing grade because of freshness due to the huge turnover. Only a handful of small roasters get A’s. What Maguire is drinking right now, according to his exclusive rating system, gets zero.

  They’re in their hotel restaurant, him and Gaylene Roberts, post-breakfast, killing time before court. Gaylene listens with a patronizing smile, humouring him over what she calls his coffee fanaticism.

  Maguire carries on: “The problem with all these chains — Starbucks is the worst example — is all the folderol, all the fancy brews. Soy latte, caramel macciato, chocolate mocha, and they’ve got something called an iced lavender latte. Whatever happened to coffee that looks like coffee and, damn it, tastes like coffee?”

  That is loud enough to fetch a waitress, or server as they now have to be called, who asks if everything’s okay. Maguire says his coffee is castrated and he’d appreciate it if she would refill him with some freshly ground and brewed.

  “Castrated?” Gaylene asks.

  “No balls.”

  “In addition to being a grump you have an addictive personality. It was nicotine, now it’s caffeine.”

  It was also chocolate bars. Maguire is beating that one, determined not to die twice, the next death permanent, you only get one chance at a life-saving kiss.

  Breakfast was oatmeal and half a grapefruit. He’s battling starvation. The hospital nutritionist, a health tyrant, would basically have him restricted to carrots and kale. But he’s twenty pounds lighter, has been walking every day, and he’s back in his old role of being OPP liaison with the Crown Attorney. Gaylene has pretty well got him up to speed, and now she’s off the case.

  “I’ll miss you,” he says. “I always enjoy the way you jerk my chain.”

  “I’ll miss your rants. I had to get out of that courtroom, Jake, I was going crazy with paranoia — the seas are rising, the insects are vanishing, the birds and frogs are dying, we’ve only got two decades to turn it around or we go the way of the dinosaurs.”

  Maguire tells her that’s nuts, but there’s no persuading. The major reason she’s stressed has to be her marriage.

  “We’ve only got one witness left anyway,” she says, “and I can’t bear to watch what they’re going to do to him.”

  Howie Griffin, security expert extraordinaire. An OPP patrol spotted him Sunday at his lakeside cottage in Penetanguishene, outside, reading. Wiggie Wiggens and another constable were dispatched up there yesterday to fetch him. They found him outside, in shorts, tinkering with his sixty-horse Merc. They spent some time convincing him resistance was futile and he could choose to be restrained or come along peacefully.

  “He started an argument,” Wiggie said. “Wanted to talk to his lawyer. He had to be cuffed right there in his shorts, shirt, and sandals. We didn’t have a warrant to toss the house, or we would have.”

  “Very righteous of you.”

  “It was full of books. Nature. History. Politics. You wouldn’t believe.”

  Anyway, Griffin spent last night in the cooler.

  “The dork was offered a chance,” Maguire says. “Could have been a good citizen and assisted us with our investigation.” As usual, a lawyer is jamming the gears of justice. Greta Jane Adelsen has muzzled Howie.

  “So, when are you heading out?” he asks.

  “This afternoon. I’ve been given a nice little homicide in Elgin County.”

  “I expected that.”

  She looks surprised. “How? The body was just found yesterday. The Chief Super called me personally.”

  “Well, you want to know, I kind of bonded with Lafriere over my heart attack. Told him you earned yourself a juicy murder. You’ve got a love triangle, the victim stabbed forty times in a frenzy. Crime scene is twenty minutes south of London, so you can actually work out of my old office. I’ll help you on the staffing, and it’ll take your mind off things, a holiday in the country.”

  She smiles again, differently, warmly. “You are too much, Jake.”

  “And you don’t need a hotel. Sonia would want you in the suite.”

  They’ve bonded too, Sonia and Gaylene. That grew over the last two weekends, when Gaylene stopped over on her trips to Sarnia. But it began early in the trial when the two women cracked each other up over that fake news blow job. Over that, he had a heart attack.

  “And you’d be closer to your family. And who knows, they still haven’t replaced me in the London regional HQ.”

  Maybe a career move to London would win back her husband, who hates Toronto. It’s an irony that he and Sonia had always wanted kids but are happily married. Gaylene and her partner have a boy and a girl, and their marriage is in meltdown.

  “That close brush has made you kinder and gentler, Jake. I’m finding you . . . it’s like the bees, it’s disorienting.”

  Maguire can’t finish his coffee refill. “No balls,” he repeats. As they rise to leave, Gaylene gives him a big goodbye hug.

  2

  It’s a bright spring day, and Maguire enjoys a slow stroll from his hotel to the courthouse — he’s not going to overdo it on his first week of full parole from what his doctor jokingly called house arrest. This will be his second day back, and he’s finally resuming his role as unseen courtroom fixture. On Monday, he had to brave the press and, worse, speeches from counsel and judge: quips about The Kiss and his return from the afterlife.

  He’d missed a lot of testimony, nine days, nine rounds of bruising battle, only to return to a long, boring morning of listening to the perps’ media interviews. Counsel wanted selected portions read aloud, so Khan gave speaking roles to his machine-like junior and his infatuated student, who droned on and on. Some of the magazine pieces, like the New Yorker profile of Helmut Knutsen, were too long, so were just filed as exhibits.

  The afternoon was slightly more entertaining, tapes of radio and TV interviews and a couple of long podcasts, one of them very loud and lefty, a Q and A in which Levitsky, Wales, and Wozniak detailed the whole conspiracy, literally bragging about it — except for the bedroom scene with Howie Griffin, Levitsk
y was coy about what happened there. The total effect, though, as far as Maguire could see, was they hanged themselves with their own tongues.

  Only Trebiloff and Snider, owners of Ivor Antiques Ltd., kept their yaps shut, so their role isn’t quite so obvious. The unindicted co-conspirator, Chase D’Amato, was never discussed with the media, obviously to protect the ass of this shadowy, forgotten eighth perp.

  What Maguire missed out on while recuperating was Arthur Beauchamp’s exercise in creative fiction, portraying Howie as a coke-snorting mastermind who used the Sarnia Seven as puppets to get the plant shuttered for the insurance. Something like that. Like Howie suckered Rivie, not the other way around. The legal mind at work.

  The defence has a new gambit — they’re bringing up an American who claims he got crippled from drinking Vigor-Gro seventeen years ago. Another from Beauchamp’s endless supply of red herrings. He wants to call a specialist too, to back him up.

  As Maguire steps out of the elevator, he realizes he dallied too long — 6-1 is already filling up, it’s close to ten. He casts about for a tall, buff, brown-haired prime witness, then remembers that Howie, who was in the city jail on a bench warrant, will be in the witness room, under escort by super-sleuth Wiggie Wiggens.

  But that room is empty, no Howie, no Wiggie. Maguire’s mood is suddenly grim as he hurries down an empty corridor and gets on the blower. He can’t reach witless Wiggie and leaves a forceful voice mail, then radios an alert to OPP dispatch. “Get me Constable Wiggens!” He waits, gets nothing, then he texts.

  From down the hall a court officer hollers: “Inspector Maguire, Court 6-1. Inspector Maguire, Court 6-1.”

  On arrival there, Maguire feels a tension, jurors uncomfortable, reporters’ pens held stiffly over notepads, the prosecution team trying to look small. But Judge Donahue is smiling, a rare event. “No rush,” she says, urging him forward. Khan and the robot make space for him.

  “Inspector Maguire, I address you in your role as manager of the comings and goings of witnesses. I am not blaming you for this. The last thing I want, given your recent illness, is to cause you stress. No doubt a blunder has occurred at a non-supervisory level.”

  The phony sweetness grates on Maguire. “Thank you.” That’s all he can think to say.

  “Counsel for Her Majesty says his final witness, Mr. Griffin, is nowhere to be found. Indications point to him being not only a reluctant witness but an uncooperative one. I thought you might help us out.”

  Maguire glances at his screen — Wiggie has sent a text.

  “Don’t let me tear you away from your tweets, Inspector.” Still smiling.

  “It’s a message, Your Ladyship. Mr. Griffin was released from the lockup just after nine, he was in the company of his lawyer.” Maguire is relieved that this is somebody else’s fuckup.

  “We will recess for fifteen minutes.”

  * * *

  It takes Maguire ten of those minutes to catch up to Wiggie in the Eaton Centre mall, only two blocks away. Greta Adelsen finally answered her phone. She’s in a menswear store, Moore’s.

  That’s where Maguire also finds Wiggie, looking exasperated. He’s getting an earful from Adelsen, a well-structured redhead who’d be cute if she weren’t so pissed off. She’s holding a greasy pair of men’s work shorts. Griffin is in a changing room, trying on a suit.

  The picture couldn’t be clearer. Because Wiggie — who’s too honest — didn’t have a search warrant for the cottage he couldn’t lawfully retrieve the arrestee’s city clothing. Maguire would have done it.

  3

  Judge Donahue’s fifteen-minute recess lasts half an hour, but she’s okay about Maguire’s explanation. A snafu at the lockup, nobody’s fault really. The judge thanks Maguire for his service, gets sucky again about his return to health and how even in retirement he makes the Ontario Provincial Police proud.

  She doesn’t invite the jury in for this backslapping event. Nor does she admonish Griffin or his lawyer or make the point that Howie could’ve shown up on time in shorts and sandals — she probably doesn’t want the press to think she’s the time-obsessed crank she is.

  Adelsen and Griffin are in the front row, she in her robes, he in a dark suit — nice classic cut but it hangs like drapes over what used to be a gut. White shirt, no tie. More grey in his hair than when last seen. His face more lined, but handsomely, and he’s getting looks from the ladies.

  Those don’t include Rivie Levitsky, who studiously ignores him and whose expression seems contorted and stiff, as if she’s struggling not to show her feelings. Howie doesn’t look at her either, stares straight ahead.

  His little redhead lawyer introduces herself for the record, advises she’s concerned about “preposterous allegations” that her client was criminally involved in this case. That doesn’t seem to bother Arthur Beauchamp, with his tranquil smile.

  “My client is under subpoena and is prepared to testify,” Adelsen says. “He wants to get this over with.”

  The judge thanks her and calls the jury in. As Howell J. Griffin takes the stand and swears to tell the truth he seems oddly relaxed. Serene may be the word, as if he’s come to terms with stuff.

  Azra Khan leads him through his career, from his master’s in computing at York, being hired by Chemican out of college, a spell in their Mexican operation, a spell in Kansas City, then to Toronto, as head of Canadian security and the go-to guy for special missions in Latin America.

  “Anything to add to that?”

  “Unemployed. Divorced, living alone in a short-term flat. Running, reading, thinking, trying to stay sane.” That odd, rambling footnote about a sad life causes murmurs of sympathy from the gallery. He won’t look at any of the Seven, though he checks out the jury, judge, and counsel.

  In a calm, composed way he explains he ran a cyber-security department for Chemican as well as being in charge of guarding offices, plants, delivery systems, you name it.

  Khan asks, “Can we put on record that you hired Irwin Fleiger, Barney Wilson, and Archie Gooch?” The gang that couldn’t guard straight.

  “I recommended, Personnel hired.”

  Khan then barrels right ahead into the love story, starting with how Griffin and two guys from the cyber unit met for a cold drink after work on a hot August Friday in the Beaver’s Tail. And did he meet someone there? He did. And how did she identify herself? As Becky McLean. And do you see her in this courtroom?

  So finally he looks at her, and she at him, unhappily, probably feeling guilty at wrecking his life. Howie gets something in his throat, clears it. “Second from the left. Light brown hair, dark brown eyes.”

  You can see the possibility of an emotional scene here, maybe over her betrayal, how she used him and tossed him aside. Khan is aware of this because he moves Howie along briskly, skipping over how they bantered and shared their stories, reducing this first encounter to buying her dinner, inviting her up, showing her around, making plans, not having sex, sending her off in a cab.

  He breezes through their subsequent dates — the Jays-Rangers game, the romantic strolls, the Georgian Bay boat ride and picnic. Given Howie’s refusal to be prepped, Khan is doing a pretty good job. But soon he’ll get into the murky stuff where Howie’s memory drive is corrupted.

  “During the final week of August, you were in Brazil?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell us about that.”

  “There was a protest. Millions of honeybees were disappearing and small farmers and beekeepers were going broke, so they blockaded Chemican’s plant in Sao Paolo. I was sent down to try to fix things. And I guess I did. I fixed things, all right.”

  “We don’t need to hear about your work down there.” Khan’s tone was brusque. “When did you return to Canada?”

  “I left late Friday, August thirty-one, arrived the next afternoon, maybe slept for two of my twenty-four hours en route.”


  “All right, take it from there. Tell us what happened on September first.”

  “I had invited Becky, as I called her then, for dinner at Paramour. I had time to get home and shower and change, check messages, unpack, put away my electronics, laptop, some paperwork. Had a triple shot of espresso and drove to a drugstore in North York where Becky said she worked, and she was waiting for me outside. And we went off to dinner.”

  “How much alcohol was consumed during this dinner?” As if Khan doesn’t know — Operation Vig scooped a copy of Griffin’s bill from the restaurant. The total could have fed an Ethiopian family for six months.

  “I can’t remember. A lot, on my part. Becky just had a few glasses of champagne.”

  Khan has him identify Paramour’s bill, which lists the champagne, a bottle of red wine, two martinis, three Baileys. There are gasps from the crowd as Howie admits driving home after swilling enough juice to float a yacht. It’s another reason for Maguire to dislike Griffin, his blood alcohol had to be at least point eighteen, probably higher, he risked lives.

  The bill goes in as an exhibit, and the scene moves to Howie’s apartment. Poured himself yet another drink, a cognac. Maybe two or three — here is where his memory fails.

  “Did you or she take any drugs that evening?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Tell us how the evening progressed.”

  “I assume I went into my war room, as I called it. To get a notebook computer. I must have offered it to her.”

  “And did she take it?”

  “It was still there the next day, on the dining table with her note.” Sweet dreams. Had a lovely time. Exhibit 37.

  “Was Ms. Levitsky in the war room with you that night?”