Stung

by William Deverell

  “I couldn’t swear to that.”

  “Do you remember removing that notebook computer from the office?”

  “Not really.”

  “Do you remember locking your office door?”

  “It shuts and locks automatically.”

  “Did you leave your keys in that door?”

  “I assume not.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they were in my pants pocket the next morning.”

  “Okay, where did you find your pants?”

  “On a chair by the bed.”

  “Do you remember placing them there?”

  “I don’t even remember taking them off.”

  Maguire hears chuckling behind him. He doesn’t think Howie’s faking his blackout. He thinks he was doped up. With rohypnol, for instance, the date rape drug, it causes brain blanks.

  “Was anything stolen or removed from the apartment?”

  “Nothing, no. Nada.”

  “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  “We kissed.”

  4

  Khan putters about with several follow-ups about what he and Levitsky did next, what words were spoken, whether they had sex, and draws blanks — he’s stuck with that lone, last memory of a kiss.

  On rising from his sticky bed Sunday morning, Howie couldn’t reconstruct the evening, and at around eleven he phoned Becky and apologized, though for exactly what he wasn’t sure. Then came an exchange about her ill mom and a date for the Red Sox game the next Sunday.

  Azra seems about ready to drop it there, then remembers a leftover. “Mr. Griffin, a theory has been bruited about in this room that you somehow conspired with various and sundry individuals to plan the September tenth burglary in Sarnia. What do you say to that?”

  “I didn’t. But I might have, had I known then what I know now.”

  It’s definite — Howie has gone over to the enemy. Maguire sends a telepathic message to Khan: don’t press the issue, it’s a setup.

  Khan’s on top of it. “Your witness.” He makes a sweeping gesture to the defence.

  That’s sardonic, but makes for a dramatic moment to launch Arthur Beauchamp to his feet. “I’m intrigued by your afterthought — ‘had I known then what I know now.’ Are we to understand, Mr. Griffin, that you are abandoning views previously held?”

  “In a fundamental way. Significantly so.”

  Where does the dork suddenly come up with big words? Something has changed, all right. He’s composed up there, clear-eyed. It’s like he’s achieved some kind of Buddhist clarity.

  “I had a jolt back in September when this happened — the midnight raid in Sarnia, then the arrests. My getting the boot. I was embarrassed, but mainly confused, very confused. I couldn’t understand why she . . . why they would do a thing so risky, without profit. And I guess somewhere along the line, thinking about them, thinking about me, ashamed about my role as a corporate enforcer . . . anyway, somewhere down the line I had a catharsis, an awakening. Enlightenment.”

  The judge lets him carry on like this. Maybe she can’t figure out what’s going on, or she’s stunned, like a lot of people in here. Like Maguire.

  “I’ve had a lot of downtime since then to do a lot of reading. Books. Online. I discovered I’ve been an idiot. I no longer want to be on the wrong side of history. If there is to be any history.”

  Howie carries on like this, unchecked. It’s like he was blind and now he sees. He’s with the bees, he’s with the planet — all life is threatened by a climate change crisis caused by capitalist greed. “I was spreading this disease on behalf of the world’s most corrupt agrochemical corp—”

  This is finally too much for Judge Donahue. “Halt!” she says, glaring at Beauchamp, as if blaming him, though he only asked one question and let Howie preach. “The witness will kindly save his message of salvation for another time and another place. This is a court of law.”

  Beauchamp gives her an astonished look. “If it please the court, the credibility of this witness is an issue in this trial. The jury will want to know whether his stark change of mind is a belief honestly held.”

  Donahue can’t bring herself to admit he’s right. Her nose does its rabbit wiggle for a few seconds as she checks the wall clock — twenty minutes before the noon break. “Time is waning, Mr. Beauchamp. Please proceed.”

  “Mr. Griffin, you and I have never met, is that so?”

  “This is the first time, yes, sir.”

  “And we have never talked to each other, or communicated with each other, directly or through any third party.”

  “No, sir. In early March, I did talk briefly with Nancy Faulk. She advised me to hire a lawyer.”

  “And before appearing here today, to whom have you mentioned your crisis of conscience?”

  “My lawyer, Greta Adelsen. My ex-wife, Maxine, we met over drinks.” For some reason he seems compelled to add: “In a wine bar. I haven’t been consuming much. I don’t like to drink alone, and I’m almost always alone.”

  “Drugs?”

  “I was doing too much cocaine, it was my escape. I couldn’t live with what I’d become, an accessory to crime—”

  Khan is up. “Can we avoid the melodramatics?”

  The judge: “You are being asked about cocaine use. Answer the question.”

  “I stopped dead six months ago.”

  Beauchamp asks, “When exactly?”

  “When Chemican’s fraudulent tests were leaked to the media, I realized their science was corrupt, the whole enterprise was corrupt. I felt revolted at what I’d done. And then . . . when I really straightened up was when Becky got pulled in. Rivie, I mean. Rivke.”

  He staggers his way to the finish line. On Maguire’s first encounter with this character, at the Lambton County OPP, he’d been wired, wiggling his snout almost as bad as Justice Donahue. He’s obviously clean now, in a weird spiritual way. But despite all his detective smarts Maguire can’t tell if Howie is putting it on. Or was he pulling a dork act last September?

  He doesn’t like to drink alone. That’s maybe true, Wiggie didn’t see any booze in his lake cottage, or empties. It was full of books. Beauchamp asks him about these, the books that aided his reformation. Maguire is vaguely familiar with some of the titles and authors, This Changes Everything; Oil and Honey, The End of Nature; Silent Spring; The Sixth Extinction. Naomi Klein, Al Gore, James Hansen, Rachel Carson.

  As he lists endless others, the judge looks more and more distrustful, wary, sensing trickery. The jury seems puzzled, withholding judgment. Several of the women are looking him over pretty good, though not Abbie Lee-Yeung, who’s staring at Levitsky, as if wanting her reaction. But Rivie’s head is down and she’s writing.

  “Let’s return to the last week of last August. You were in Sao Paolo. You were assigned to tamp down a protest, or as you put it, to fix things. How did you do that?”

  Howie catches the eye of his lawyer. She nods. He says he doesn’t wish to incriminate himself. The judge goes through the traditional charade of giving him protection under the Evidence Act, then scowls at him. “Very well, Mr. Griffin, your answers can’t be used against you on a criminal charge. Other than perjury.”

  In a nutshell, Howie tells how he was instructed by Kansas City to reach out “informally” to local decision makers. Chemican ultimately set up Panamanian accounts for three top public servants, plus the state governor and a judge. Nearly two million dollars got funnelled into those accounts.

  “Do you have records to prove your superiors knowingly participated in the crime of bribery?”

  “Voice recordings and captured WhatsApp texts.”

  Maguire picks up vibes of discomfort from the two Chemican representatives. Wakeling, their Canadian chief officer, is still here, with Jinks, their head scientist. Dr. Easling is long gone.

/>   When the judge adjourns for lunch, the two Chemican guys bolt out of here, maybe to warm up their shredders and call their lawyers. The press follow them, and you can hear them hollering questions all down the corridor.

  The accused, except Levitsky, scrum with their lawyers at the counsel table with volume down but in tense tones. Griffin chats amiably with Miss Pucket, then joins his lawyer in the exit queue. He doesn’t look at Levitsky and she doesn’t look at him — she’s still in the dock, still focussed on her writing pad.

  Khan breaks the huddle with his team and joins Maguire. He asks, “Can you keep an eye on Griffin?”

  “Why? Maybe it’s better he disappears. The loony bin van is outside waiting to take him back.”

  “He’s been gotten to. I don’t know how. I want him back here at two o’clock. I’m going to take him off at the neck.”

  Maguire ponders how he plans to do that as he follows Griffin and Adelsen out the back exit to the lunch wagons around the square. They’re not supposed to talk about the case while he’s under cross, but that probably doesn’t stop them.

  He watches in sorrow as they tuck into their thick, meaty takeaways, and unwraps his own lunch, a container of tomato salad, an apple, and two hard-boiled eggs.

  5

  The packed house hushes as the big hand creeps toward the top of the clock. Wakeling and Jinks are in their reserved seats, and have managed to squeeze in a stout lawyer. The Sarnia Seven are whispering and analyzing, glancing at Griffin, working on the same brainteaser as Maguire — is this guy for real or is he jacking us around?

  Rivie Levitsky continues not to be aware of Howie’s existence, but has finally recovered from her trance and is consulting with Lucy Wales, in whispers, but intensely. Wales has the kind of hiccups you get when you gulp a couple of cocktails over a fast lunch. Slowly sipping water isn’t working.

  The jury returns, Miss Pucket bellows everyone to order, and Judge Donahue gallops in. Wales hiccups. Howie retakes the stand. Wales hiccups, drinks water. Beauchamp rises.

  “Mr. Griffin, I have, perhaps regrettably, insinuated that you helped facilitate the Sarnia attack at the behest of your employer. You deny that.”

  “That is not on the list of shameful things I’ve done for them.”

  “This enlightenment, as you call it, hasn’t really come out of the blue, has it? Your role with Chemican has bothered you for some time.”

  “Increasingly, for the last few years.”

  Wales’s hiccups provide a soft background rhythm.

  “You thought of whistleblowing.”

  “I didn’t have the ammunition. Until Brazil.”

  “How did the protest get resolved?”

  “An injunction was restored by the judge we bought. The state government sent the army in. There were arrests. The plant was reopened.”

  “Having done your business there, you returned to Toronto on Saturday, the first of September, dog-tired but determined to keep your date for dinner. At which you consumed half a bottle of champagne, a bottle of red wine, two double martinis, and three Baileys. I take it that would be more than your usual limit.”

  Punctuated by Lucy’s “Hic,” that gets laughter. Miss Pucket cries for order.

  “Frankly, I got so drunk that I can’t remember driving home. I don’t know why I let myself go like that. I was exhausted. I was nervous. I was deeply in love, blindly but deeply, and I was afraid of rejection. I was also sitting on evidence that could implicate my employer in the crime of bribery. A confluence of factors bore down on me, and . . . I guess I just let myself go.”

  “You were sober enough earlier in the evening to engage with Ms. Levitsky. What did you talk about?”

  “I griped about my flights, the delays, the security lines. I’m sure that didn’t impress her. I went on about Brazil, a bit of a travelogue. I gave her a gift, a pair of artisan earrings, which I think she felt were bizarre and outré.”

  Prompting a slight eruption from the prisoners’ box, more of a snicker than a snigger. Probably Levitsky, who strains to keep a straight face. Beside her, Lucy tries the water cure again. Then: “Hic.”

  Beauchamp asks, “What else was discussed?”

  “Baseball. My former wife, my divorce. My parental background and what I assumed was hers.”

  “Did you talk about how you handled the blockade in Sao Paolo?”

  He takes a while to compose an answer. “I confessed to her what I did, hiring the lawyers who set up the contacts and the payments. I told her about my thoughts, my doubts, my sense of guilt about the role I played in Brazil. And that I’d played elsewhere over the years, doing Chemican’s dirty work. I told her that in doing so I felt corrupted as a human being.”

  “At your apartment later, after a couple of cognacs, it’s likely you were still carrying on about Chemican?”

  “Maybe. Probably. I don’t know.”

  “And you brought Ms. Levitsky into your office, your war room, correct?”

  “I don’t remember but I’m sure I did.”

  “And at some point you gave her the keys, you gave her complete access to the room.”

  “I must have done that. I can’t see any other possibility.”

  “Why?”

  “Because to get the entry codes to the plant and the lab she had to know the password to the main computer. It was not written down anywhere in my apartment. So I either gave it to Rivie or turned on the computer for her.”

  “You could have said, ‘It’s all yours, take what you want.’”

  “I might have. Anything was possible that night. I didn’t care. I was up to here with my job. I was drunk. I was in love. I would have done anything for her.”

  Somehow, with that response, Lucy Wales stops hiccupping. But she looks distressed, maybe because her bladder’s pretty full.

  “How did you react when you learned she’d been stalked and threatened by a self-proclaimed Nazi?”

  “As every normal, sane person would react, I imagine. With abhorrence. The guy is still walking around somewhere while these people” — his arm arcs toward the prisoners’ box — “are on trial for trying to save the planet from mass starvation.”

  That’s it, Beauchamp sits.

  A shout from somewhere near the back: “Right on!”

  The judge roars, “Remove that person!”

  Rumblings of discontent as a court officer hustles off an old hippie. Then a deathly silence as Khan rises. “I have a few questions in re-examination.”

  Maguire suspects that behind the cheerful smile, Khan is seething. He probably thinks Howie — a bribemaster, an experienced schemer — was paid off and that this was all rehearsed and Beauchamp pulled a fast one, marginally ethical.

  “Mr. Griffin, on Sunday you were so reluctant to testify we had to send two officers all the way to Georgian Bay to pick you up, and here you are today, eager to testify, words pouring forth as you bare your soul to the world. Can you explain this sudden transformation?”

  “Mr. Khan, I had hoped against hope that you would not insist on bringing me here. I knew I would have to admit arranging bribes, and I would risk arrest. I have no option now but to simply tell the truth and take my chances.”

  That kind of boomeranged on Khan, but he doesn’t lose his smile. “You’re referring to the corrupt payments you engineered in Brazil. But were there others?”

  “A lot, I suspect. I know of two others, to officials in Romania and South Africa, but I wasn’t directly involved.”

  “And of course you reported these instances to the authorities.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “You didn’t call up the FBI or Interpol, and tell them you felt you were being corrupted as a human being.”

  Beauchamp, who has been moving ever closer to the edge of his seat, finally ejects from it. “I object. This isn’t
re-examination, it’s sarcasm. My friend knows he can’t attack his own witness.”

  Donahue merely urges Khan, nicely, to “stay within the bounds.”

  “You told Mr. Beauchamp that when the accused uploaded deceptive Vigor-Gro tests to the media, you suddenly decided their whole enterprise was corrupt. Did this catharsis or enlightenment, as you call it, occur before or after you were fired without severance?”

  The long pause doesn’t help Howie’s case. “My suspicions about Chemican jelled a few days after I was fired, when I read about the faked research in the Toronto Star.”

  “Ah, your suspicions jelled after you were fired. And of course you weren’t bitter about getting the boot, were you?”

  Beauchamp doesn’t rise to the bait this time. Maybe he doesn’t want the jury to think he’s coddling Griffin.

  When Howie is slow to answer, Khan presses him: “Two decades of loyal service — for one little slip-up you deserved a lot more than a pink slip. Is that how you felt?”

  “Frankly, I felt a huge sense of freedom.”

  “You were quite content not to have got compensation?”

  “I was more unhappy with the way I was summarily let go. By a phone call from Mr. Wakefield’s secretary.” A glance at his former boss, who whispers something to his mouthpiece.

  “And given you were determined to whistleblow on your employer, did you renounce a claim for compensation? Some might think that would be the high-minded approach.”

  Beauchamp can’t take it any longer. “This doesn’t arise from my cross-examination. My friend’s rights to re-examine are narrowly restricted, and he knows it — they don’t allow for bullying and rhetoric.”

  “That sounds rather odd coming from my learned friend, who has proved himself a master at those arts.”

  Sparks are flying finally. Maguire saw this building up, Khan getting crankier, realizing he underperformed while his opponents played fast and loose.

  Beauchamp retorts: “I’m as eager as anyone in this room to hear everything Mr. Griffin has to say, but surely my friend doesn’t have to rely on schoolyard taunts to elicit that information.”

  “May it please the court, I am seeking leeway in dealing with this witness. I am loath to accuse my friend of lying in the weeds with him, but—”