Street Legal

by William Deverell

  Carrie was unhappy with this conversation. It was starting to sound as if Cristal had been in that loft longer than a second or two.

  “I’m not following.”

  “Mrs. Barr, how can I explain . . . I ’ave a strange feeling, somet’ing is not right. Maybe the police they ’old t’ings back from you. Maybe . . . Sometime, you know, I feel . . . how do you say? Psychic?”

  She looked into his guru eyes, felt oddly uncomfortable, some-how compelled by those eyes. “Psychic, yes.”

  “So in my ’ead I see anod’er man in there.”

  “But how could someone slip out unseen?”

  “There is a back door, a fire escape. But maybe I am making ghosts.”

  “Let’s assume a witness. What could he say? More than you have told me?”

  “No more, I walk in, I look around, I am in shock, I walk out. I walk out past that sink. I ’ave a feeling I am being watched. And also, I ’ave a feeling I am being set up. But maybe I am not psychic. Maybe I am crazy.”

  Carrie fiddled with her pen. How much of what he was telling her was false? Possibly he had actually seen some other person in that loft. Probably he was being more than a little evasive. Probably he was — no, not guilty, don’t make that jump.

  “Why were you carrying gloves?”

  “To ’ave no prints on the bundles I pick up.”

  Carrie nodded. Logical. “Can Big Leonard raise the three hundred thousand?”

  “Big Leonard, I don’t t’ink he has so much money, but od’ers have.”

  “Who?”

  “Billy Sweet. Maybe he owes me some worker compensation.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “I ’ave never met the man. He is not so public. But I ’ave met Speeder.”

  “Speeder . . . ?”

  “Speeder Cacciati. Second in command.”

  The name seemed familiar. Then she remembered a trial a few years ago — she’d been in court. Cacciati had beaten a murder charge, got it down to manslaughter and a sentence of a few years.

  “Maybe they will worry I might name names to the police . . .” Cristal was musing. “Maybe they will be generous.” He nodded to himself, as if he’d confirmed something in his mind. “Yes, you will see my friend, Mr. Woznick? I’m sure he will talk to Speeder Cacciati and Billy Sweet.”

  “I am certainly not going to threaten anyone with blackmail to get bail for you.”

  Cristal’s smile enveloped her. “They will see the possibilities. Just tell them how un’appy I am to be ’ere.”

  Carrie didn’t like the idea of being bearer of his subtle threats. She liked even less some of the dangers that seemed inherent in such an approach.

  “I’ll talk to Mr. Woznick. I’m not going to suggest where the money might come from. I don’t want to be responsible for any further deaths, including yours.”

  Cristal poked into his packet of Drum, then quickly looked up at her. “T’ree ’undred t’ousand dollar, that would be a good fee for you, yes?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Billy, he will want to give me cash for bail. I will assign the bail to you.”

  It was often done; criminal lawyers got many of their retainers that way. She could hardly think he meant it: three hundred thousand.

  “If I . . . disappear, then you keep it all.”

  “If you skip we get nothing. They seize the bail.”

  “If I disappear in a different way.” No smiles now, just the eyes, like drills. “If I die.” He rolled one up. “Then it will be a good year for your office.”

  He smiled. She didn’t.

  “Good luck, Mrs. Barr. I t’ink I am in good ’ands.”

  He reached out for one of those hands, studying it, as if reading a future. Another little spark as their fingers touched. She jumped.

  He laughed, a gentle, easy sound. “We ’ave ’igh voltage, eh?”

  ***

  Everything went smooth as silk in O’Leary’s courtroom, and Chuck walked out of there with his bail order before the feminist vigilantes in the other court realized they’d been had. He thanked Ty Slocum, and sped off to the court clerk’s office to get Harry Squire admitted to bail.

  The clerk seemed to take an interminable time getting the order signed. Chuck wanted to slip out of this building quickly and quietly with his client. Then he would call Lisa at her office, suggest lunch, tell her about the hilarious coincidence of his being retained just this morning by Harry Squire. They could agree to be on opposite sides of this issue. It would be fun, lots of laughs.

  Squire was finally brought out to sign his recognizance.

  “I’ll never forget this, Chuck.”

  “Hey, no problem. Come on, sign it, sign it.”

  Here, unhappily, came that newspaper guy who covered the court beat.

  “Thought there was something strange up,” the reporter said. “Court was adjourned, no Harry Squire.”

  “Okay, we have to go.” Chuck took Squire’s elbow, propelled him forward.

  “I’m from the Star, Mr. Squire. What do you want to say to the public?”

  “He wants to say nothing.”

  But Squire wasn’t so reticent. “No, I want to say something. I simply don’t understand how the police can come in and seize half my stock and yet I’m presumed innocent until proven guilty. If you’re Hugh Hefner, you can get away with anything; if you’re a little fellow like me, the forces of reaction jump all over you. This prosecution is anti-democratic and intolerant. It strikes at the very heart of our so-called free society.”

  “Okay, Harry, that’s enough.” They were almost to the University Avenue entrance of the building, but the reporter was following. Chuck hoped there were taxis on the street.

  “How are you going to elect to be tried, Mr. Squire?”

  “I’m electing jury, I’d like our citizens to know how their tax dollars are spent. And for the record I want to say one more thing . . .”

  “Harry . . . ,” Chuck warned.

  “This gentleman here . . .” He put an arm over Chuck’s shoulder. “He’s a true fighter for freedom of expression.”

  They had paused at the door. Chuck had a sinking feeling: he could hear a rumble of feet, a herd of buffalo, and now they came swarming around a corner, the W.A.P. posse, with more reporters.

  Squire grabbed Chuck by the wrist, raised their hands in a gesture of defiance. “Together Mr. Tchobanian and I are going to make a stand for freedom,” he called out.

  Chuck found himself staring into the amazed eyes of Lisa Tchobanian. She was holding her cardboard sign: JAIL HARRY SQUIRE.

  “I can explain,” Chuck said. “No, I can’t.”

  She swung the sign like a baseball bat, and the cardboard ripped as Chuck raised his arms to defend himself from it.

  Chuck tried to push Squire out the door, but he was resisting, determined to brave the enemy. “That was a clear case of criminal assault, are you going to let that woman get away with it?”

  ***

  As Carrie walked back to the office, she was lost in thoughts about Cristal. If I die. What had he meant by that? Had his so-called psychic self foretold his own demise?

  Odd, odd man. Powerful emanations. You needed a voltage regulator to be around him. Electronic imbalance or something. Dope dealing, running other criminal chores for Big Leonard Woznick — a picture of Cristal as somebody’s busy, crooked gopher didn’t come together. He seemed very unlike a man who simply accepted orders, more like one used to giving them.

  But a picture of him with a smoking gun in his hand was not that hard to make out. He looked too much the part in court today — Justice Blake had seen it. A button man, an expert? Someone called in for the big, special jobs? Hired to kill the killer — had Billy Sweet for some reason wanted him to remove Jerszy Schlizik? Cristal had
said he didn’t know Sweet, but he’d said a lot of things Carrie was beginning to suspect were not true.

  But here she was, doubting her own client’s innocence. You’re a hell of a better lawyer if you believe in your client, her father had told her. Makes you work harder. You don’t believe in him, the jury won’t.

  Well, perhaps more would come to light about the man when she visited his friend tomorrow, Mr. Woznick. Cristal had been working for him only six months — why was there already this bond between them?

  She reminded herself she had to do some checking on that rooster-head, Blair Johnstone. Or was it Blaine?

  Another searing day — when was this stretch of weather going to end? But in the cruelty of winter one hungers for days like this. The climate back home had been softer, less extreme.

  There was her building, a busy branch of General and Commercial Trust occupying most of the ground floor. G & C Trust was their bank, their creditor to the tune of a few hundred thousand dollars, money spent on their fancy furnished offices. They were also major providers of clients, though, and were sending up another mortgage today.

  A man was lounging near the front door of the G & C Trust Building, a grungy little person who looked as if he was on something — he was swaying, his pupils hugely dilated.

  As she tried to go past him, he said, “You Mrs. Barr?”

  She stopped. “Yes.”

  “I know you’re the Frenchman’s lawyer.” His voice was slurred. He seemed to have trouble focusing on her. “I seen your picture.”

  “What can I do for you?” A handout? Was he offering some kind of threat? This was a busy street, but she was a little frightened.

  “Maybe I got inf’mation.”

  Carrie looked at his left arm: the scars of a user, a fresh mark there, a spot of blood.

  “Maybe I was in that loft where Perez and Hiltz got greased. Maybe I can be of assiss . . . assiss . . . help.”

  My God, thought Carrie, the other man in the scenery loft, Cristal’s psychic creation, that swab of bloodied cotton in the sink.

  “Maybe I was the tester.”

  “Look, can you come upstairs to my office?”

  “Don’t have time.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “No, I gotta . . . I gotta . . .”

  “What? Shoot more heroin? You are on one hell of a habit. What’ s your name?”

  “Normie, but I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ yet. Yeah, I’m beltin’ ever’ half-hour, and when I run out I’m gonna need some . . . some more.”

  “Come on up for a second.”

  “No, I jus’ want you to think about it. I figure I oughta have a consider . . . sider . . . reward for what I seen or what I ain’t seen.”

  “What sort of reward?”

  “Big, flashy reward.” He grinned; his teeth were black. “What I call sweet money.”

  Billy Sweet, she inferred. Normie the tester . . . he’d been paid off with product, was going through it fast, worrying already about where his next hit was coming from. How was she going to handle him? Lasso him, drag him by the ankles to the elevator — this man represented the whole case for or against Cristal, murder one or nothing.

  She was desperate, there was only one way with a junkie. “I’ll give you a key to the office washroom.” He could do up there, it was a sick, last, reckless offer.

  He took a step away from her. “I ain’t talked to the bulls. I won’t go to them. ’Cept as a last resort.”

  He began staggering across the pavement, toward the street. Carrie pursued him.

  “I’ll call,” he said.

  “Where can I reach you?”

  “You can’t.” He hailed a taxi, got in.

  She ran, her business card extended, and he grabbed it and slammed the cab door shut despite her efforts to keep it open, to keep him talking.

  After the taxi left, she waited for a few seconds in the hope another cab might show up, so she could follow him. Then she gave up and went inside.

  This was a potentially dangerous situation, she thought as she rode up on the elevator. Inspector Mitchell might offer a great deal for this man’s evidence, especially if it could be shaped to fit the Crown’s theory.

  The waiting room was empty. Carrie asked Pauline Chong: “Where are those new clients the trust company was supposed to send up?”

  Leon overheard her and came out. “Barnsworth cancelled them. He was up here the other day complaining about our image. Doesn’t think we run a sufficiently dignified shop.”

  “That little prig.”

  “He’s starting to send people down the street to Jensen and Company. I don’t know, we may lose G & C Trust altogether.”

  How depressing. General and Commercial’s referrals had paid the overhead, kept them afloat. “Some big fees had better come in soon,” Carrie said.

  “Well, Ted can keep us going through the rough patch. He has some major billings. Boggs, for instance. Melissa Cartwright.”

  She didn’t tell Leon about the three hundred thousand dollars they might earn from Cristal. It was looking as though they might need it.

  Carrie went through her mail and messages, freshened up in the washroom, and headed out to the Provincial Courts.

  ***

  “Blair Johnstone,” Carrie said.

  “No one by that name.”

  “Or Blaine. Johnstone with a t and an e.”

  “No current file by that name.”

  The clerk went through her list a second time, accused persons who were before the Provincial Courts. Carrie was feeling more than a little frustrated.

  “A pot charge, simple possession. He was here yesterday.”

  “Maybe he pleaded. Maybe he’s out.”

  Carrie went to the lockup. It was four o’clock now, things weren’t busy. Horse was reading a copy of Hustler, his lips oddly puckered. He tried to slip the magazine out of sight when Carrie came up to him, but she spotted it. She was disappointed in him, a family man.

  “That guy, Johnstone, with the t and the e. With the awful dyed red hair. Is he still here?”

  “Shipped out, I don’t know, last night, this morning. I wasn’t on duty.”

  “To where? The Don?” The main Toronto jail, where prisoners awaiting trial were kept.

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  At the office, she phoned the records clerk at the Don. To her relief she discovered that they did have a Blaine Johnson. The court lists must be gummixed up. She would go out to see him. Tomorrow. Heavy date with Ted tonight. No, tomorrow she was in Montreal. Friday then.

  ***

  They dined across town on the Danforth, in one of their favourite Greek restaurants. Ted was attentive, didn’t stare at the waitress’s legs as he often did. Their talk was mostly about work, her frustrating day, his new divorce case, another wife-beater.

  “Like Boggs,” she said.

  “All right, look, I can hardly stand the guy myself. Honey, you don’t pick and choose your clients in this business.”

  “You don’t get in bed with them either.” That wasn’t exactly what she had intended to say.

  Ted looked shocked. “I thought we had that straightened out.”

  “I’m speaking figuratively. You don’t want to get too close to Boggs, some of the grease might rub off.”

  “He’s a door. It opens to other clients.” He leaned toward her. “Listen, there’s a big directors’ meeting tomorrow in Montreal, Sky Electronics, he’s going after them, and they’re trying to stop him. Buy Sky, he said. Buy quick and sell in two weeks.”

  “Ted, that sounds like insider trading.”

  “I’m only telling my wife.”

  “But he told you.”

  “I’m his lawyer. For some things.”

  “Ted, you’re going to get in trouble.�
��

  “Hey, Carrie, what do you think, I’m that dumb, I’m going to mortgage the house and buy stock? Forget it, I’m just interested in seeing how the whole thing works. Anyway, look, Boggs is laying on the dog in Montreal, the whole five-star-hotel treatment.”

  “So?”

  “Do you want to join me for the evening? You said something about going to Montreal tomorrow. A suite in the Bonaventure. An elegant restaurant in the old quarter. A little champagne to restore order to our marriage.”

  “Will Royce Boggs be sharing this romantic evening?”

  Ted paused as he thought about that. “Gee, I don’t know, that may be unavoidable. He’ll want to buy us dinner.”

  “Uh-uh. Three’s a crowd. I think I’ll come straight back, Ted.”

  Ted shrugged. “We’ll be flying to Montreal together, anyway. I reserved the same flight. More retsina?”

  “I have to have a clear head tomorrow.”

  “What’s the deal then? Who are you going to be seeing?”

  “A certain rounder named Big Leonard Woznick, who is connected to Billy Sweet, who in turn has three hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Aw, honey, I don’t like the idea of you running around a strange city collecting bail from gangsters.”

  “It’s what you have to do.” She wasn’t so sure, though, if she liked the idea herself. “Ted, he’s willing to turn the bail money over, the whole thing.”

  “As a fee? Jesus, that’ll help out.”

  “But I think he plans to skip.”

  “What’s he afraid of?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let’s hope he sticks around — we keep the whole three hundred.” Then he thought. “Unless Billy Sweet wants it back. Jesus, Carrie, there are some serious implications here. Don’t you think — maybe Chuck or somebody should go along with you? I can’t, I’ll be tied up in meetings.”

  “It’s my case. I’ll do it on my own.” She didn’t need anyone to hold her hand crossing the street.

  “She wants her star billing.” He grinned. “What an egotist. Ah, hell, I’m jealous, I think you’re a better counsel than me.”

  Compliments were flying fast and furious this evening. She thought it took a lot for Ted to say that. There’s no more competitive creature than a trial lawyer.