by Mark Lisac
Asher began reading: “From B.F., the closest witness. Tainted by $2,500 inducement, but he said he was torn between keeping confidence and making a record of true history. Detail convincing.” Asher was fairly certain that was a reference to Burris Fleming, the ancient party organizer who had died not long before Apson died.
The notes went on to say that Mary Simmons had left Farber’s office abruptly. No one knew where she had gone or why. B.F. had seen his wife recently going through pregnancy and had noted Simmons’s expanding waistline.
“Farber and Manchester had been like father and son, or master and pupil. Now relations turned frosty. Spoke in more businesslike manner, rarely looked directly at each other.”
Further on: “Farber not averse to occasional drink but now started drinking heavily.”
Then: “Deeply drunk Tractor Tom tells B.F. letter arrived saying Mary had given birth to a ‘beautiful’ son that she called ‘her little lamb.’ But letter sent to Manchester, who relayed contents to Farber!! Manchester makes cutting comments to Farber about ‘Mary’s little lamb.’ He seems increasingly to take charge of events in office.”
Then: “Tractor Tom disappears for four days. Party office and Manchester cover up, referring to brief respite from heavy duties of office. Returns looking distraught and incommunicative.”
Then: “Farber dies. Officially of heart attack induced by pleurisy and overwork. Possibly true, but was also doing his best to get through a bottle of whisky a day in the final week. Maybe more the last day.”
Then: “End of B.F.’s knowledge. He asks Manchester once, as casually as possible, whether he knows of Simmons’ whereabouts. Manchester says no reason to spread gossip and she doubtless has heard about Farber’s death, although he has no idea where she has gone. Asks about postmark on her letter. Manchester surprised and angry at knowledge of letter. Says he is not a snoop and the envelope has long ago gone into the trash. Extracts promise never to mention to anyone for any reason. Seems to imply physical threat.”
The initials CP were written on the bottom of the page. They were circled, as if Apson had been pondering what name he could link to them.
The next pages surprised him. Apson had not confined his curiosity to whatever had happened decades earlier. He had been investigating Turlock’s finances and stumbled onto more.
An agreement gave Turlock a handful of minority shares in Oil Country Corporation. That was the privately held firm behind the oil museum and casino and racetrack venture. The government was putting up one-third of the capital cost, but the corporation was supposed to own and run the project as a business. It was to be a model of public-private investment, with the shareholders taking on all the long-term risk while proving that cultural institutions could be run as private businesses.
Copies of a contract showed $480 million in loans and $50 million in a loan guarantee from the People’s Finance and Credit Corp.
Apson’s handwritten notes on the margin commented on Turlock and Gerald Ryan influencing the decision to grant the money. Turlock apparently also had a small interest in some of the land where the project was to be built — some of the best farmland in the province, but paving it over with concrete and asphalt didn’t matter when there was money to be made. Asher suppressed a snicker.
One page in this section sketched an increasingly troubled project. Consultants were raising questions about its viability. Not being able to secure all of what had been rumoured to be spectacular oil industry memorabilia had not helped; neither had evidence of declining interest in horseracing and a sudden case of cold feet on the part of one of the major investors.
Asher had never heard of any public acknowledgment of PFAC being involved in the financing. Nor had he ever heard of PFAC ever risking or actually losing an amount of money anywhere close to $530 million.
He gave Finley a stripped-down summary of what the papers said about Farber and Manchester and a quick summary of the museum corporation business. He did not even consider mentioning his own role in buying what were supposed to be petroleum industry relics.
The last page was once again written in Apson’s hand. The writing was in black ink rather than Apson’s usual blue, and in larger letters: “B.F. dying. Wanted $5,000 to leave to son. Swore he was not inventing. Leaving record for sake of God, not for sake of people. Two days before F’s death, F told him he had visited her and the visit ended with her death. ‘I killed her.’ She died on ranch. Good view of heaven. ‘Everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.’
“B.F. found highly disturbing. Asked F no questions. Did not want to think about it further. Suppressed own memory. Wants to clear conscience with someone before dying.”
Asher felt shock alongside a thrill of discovery and registered a wave of his customary cautious skepticism. He read the last sheet of paper again. He checked the backs of all the pages to make sure nothing else was on them.
He did not tell Finley what was on the last page but said it was highly sensitive and disturbing information that could change people’s view of an important part of the province’s history — if it was true, and not something that two old men had imagined.
He asked whether the initials CP meant anything to him. Finley said no and Asher said he would check with Jensen too, although he wouldn’t expect him to know.
“What the hell?” Finley said. “Liars and cheats everywhere. What do we do with this?”
“First we see if Jensen has a scanner-copier,” Asher said. “I think I saw one in his office in the house. We make copies and I find a place to stash one of them in the city. Do you want a copy too?”
“Not hardly.”
“Okay. Just one for me. And we make sure they won’t stay in the machine’s memory, even if I have to buy it from him and wreck it. Then we put the originals back into the jug and go back out to the cemetery. There won’t be anyone there after dark. It’s not a big enough place to have round-the-clock security either. We bury the jug where we found it. I can do the digging fast. No reason to get Jensen more involved. In the morning, that pasty-faced manager won’t see any difference from how we left it the first time.
“Then I go home, make a second copy of everything but the last page, and show it to the guy I think has been behind all the threats and hired the Rat Brothers. I tell him to stop. I think he will. The Mary Simmons stuff needn’t come out. The financial stuff could shake the government if that part comes out. PFAC stands to lose a lot of money. They may have broken their own rules on lending.
“The next question would be why the senior executive approved it. They may even have to ask for help and do a cover-up, which makes a lot of people vulnerable. No one in the corporation or the government will want a word of this getting out. That’s our leverage. That and the fact that the people behind it all won’t know for sure how many copies of this are floating around and who has them. It’s too late for them to try wiping it out now.”
He was hoping that Finley would not ask the question, but Finley did.
“And we’re going to leave it there? Not blow the whistle on these guys?”
“The financial damage is done now,” Asher said. And I probably helped make it worse, he thought. “Something may or may not come out. I don’t see that that’s our responsibility. If Angela had wanted to make a case of it she’d have shown these papers to me. She may not have known fully what they meant, but she probably had a good idea. I’m happy to go along with her wishes.”
“Is that what lawyers are supposed to do? Work according to what they think a dead client might have wanted?”
“I’m a successful lawyer. I never said I was a good one.”
31
THE OFFICE WAS BU
SY. A CASUAL VISITOR COULDN’T TELL. Walking in, a new client would see only the mahogany paneling on the walls, the well-mannered receptionist who looked like she could have been a model fifteen or twenty years earlier, and the thick carpet that absorbed sound and cast a respectful hush through the foyer and hallways.
Asher knew the telltale signs. Office doors were closed to let the partners work. The new admin assistant was walking briskly with bundles of paper. It was the final rush before the summer doldrums.
He passed one door that was open. George Rabani called him in. Rabani was known in the firm as The Garbageman. He handled the high-profile divorces and other cases that the other partners preferred not to have on their record. He was a big man but carried too much fat. It slopped over his gut like a layer cake sliding apart because the icing had been applied before the layers had cooled off. He had a bulbous nose and pockmarked skin.
The prevailing view was that Rabani took the less savoury cases because he would not inspire confidence in the commercial clients and the wealthy local business owners arranging family trusts. Asher thought it was because Rabani liked the pungency of real life. He was smart enough for the mainstream cases but liked to confront the smell and discoloration that the local leaders of society pretended weren’t there. If he hadn’t gone to law school, he probably would have been a real garbageman. Not a plumber; he wouldn’t have been able to wriggle into cramped spaces under kitchen sinks and behind toilets.
“Remember the Crammer divorce?” Rabani said. “It’s turning into a doozy.”
“I thought it already was,” Asher said.
“Yeah, but get this. Crammer’s wife took it into her head to raise chickens in back of their giant house in Willow Run. I guess she thought she could have the best of both worlds — a stylish home in the city and a country estate. Anyway, she’s accusing the Chinese mistress of smuggling feathers and feet and other parts of dead chickens into the country and dumping them into the chicken coop in hopes that some of the parts would sooner or later be contaminated and give her bird flu.”
“Was she smuggling?”
“Oh yeah, that’s the best part. It was an offshoot of a little scam the mistress had going with illegal imports of snakes and lizards. Now Crammer doesn’t know what to think. He’s still tired of his wife — crazy bitch thinks she’s Marie Antoinette, he says — but now he thinks maybe the girlfriend is crazy too. If she’ll try to bump off his wife with chicken flu, what’s she going to dream up for him if she gets tired of him and wants all his money instead of just half ?”
“You have all the fun, George. And in Toronto they think we’re a boring backwater.”
“Hey, we are. I think people get into these loopy affairs because they’re bored. That’s not why I wanted to talk to you.”
“Okay, go ahead.”
“You’ve heard of that book, Cleaning Out the Chumps?”
“Heard of it. Haven’t read it. Sounds like I should give it at least a quick scan.”
“A lot of other people have read it. I hear it’s in its second printing. The bookstores bring in stacks and they disappear in a week. And Morelli, the guy who wrote it, is selling copies on his own. Probably more than 10,000 copies in people’s hands, which makes it a mega-bestseller on the provincial scale. So how come none of the papers has reviewed it or written a news story about it? How come none of the opposition politicians mention it? How come a guy who’s peripherally mentioned in a fairly innocuous way is about to sue for libel and put the lid on even tighter?”
Asher found it easy to come up with plausible answers. “It’s nearly summer. The papers are getting ready to review the cotton candy at the exhibition. The opposition politicians are mad because someone they never heard of is throwing around the juicy accusations they wanted to have all to themselves in the legislature.”
“Uh-huh. Listen, some of the stuff in the book is minor-league, like Gerald Ryan getting a case of Glenfiddich for his birthday and sending it back with a note that he prefers a peaty single malt. And then getting that. The big stuff is PFAC’s finances. Morelli’s story is they’re into some tenuous deals. They also broke their own lending limits for reasons that have never been explained, and now they’re in a position to get hit with huge losses unless the government arranges some kind of emergency financing. Morelli didn’t dream up that up. Someone on the inside must have been feeding him information.”
“Sounds like entertainment for me some night when all my adoring female friends are busy washing their hair. What’s it got to do with me?”
“You’d know better than I would,” Rabani said. He was nearly wheezing now with the effort of all the talking. Asher avoided any reaction and waited for Rabani to go on.
“People talk to me. Ryan is trying to talk you up as the reason the oil country museum got put on hold. He isn’t laying anything specific on you. Not right now, anyway. It’s more like he’s trying to wreck your reputation — give a handful of the best connected and most powerful friends of the party a reason not to consider you when they have legal work. Then they let the impression seep out from there.”
“Is that right? He’s walking a fine line there. That’s practically an admission that the museum project is in big trouble. He starts burning that fuse and who knows where it’ll lead?”
“Yeah, but no one ever accused him of being dumb. Just thought I should let you know to watch yourself. You already had one bad scrape this winter.”
Asher knew Rabani had dangled the last comment to see if he would bite. Rabani was smart enough to suspect some link with the Barnsdale fiasco.
“It’s getting to be a habit,” Asher said. “Thanks. Maybe I’ll go have a talk with Mr. Ryan. Enjoy the Crammer case.”
“I will. It’s promising to be juicier than the time Renneker’s girlfriend went and spilled her guts to a columnist because Renneker wouldn’t give her the diamond watch she wanted.”
Asher walked toward his office, grinning in spite of the warning. He recalled another of Rabani’s recent stories. Rabani said a casino hostess had come to him claiming that she’d been fired because she refused to have sex with the manager anymore. She said she’d lost ninety thousand a year in tips and asked Rabani if there were any legal leverage there. Rabani said he asked the woman how much tip money she’d been reporting as taxable revenue. She’d glared at him and walked out.
Rabani was never going to be short of cases, despite the city’s reputation for boredom and the province’s veneer of rectitude. Maybe that’s why the local paper is always full of photos of local movers and shakers attending charity events, Asher thought; they’re buying moral insurance.
He remembered his first trip to France. He had joined a tour group marching to a lovely, albeit soot-blackened old abbey. The guide explained that it had been built by a medieval duke as an act of penance for marrying his cousin against the strict orders of the Pope. Private sins, public atonement with displays of good works. People don’t change.
“What am I going to atone for?” Asher wondered. “The worst thing I ever did was cost Amy a chance to grow up living with both her parents. The second-worst was not being the kind of husband that Sandra deserved. It would be easier to make amends for the other things, which are starting to add up to a long list.”
In the inner sanctum at the back of the office, visited by only the oldest and most prestigious of the clients, he knocked on Morley Jackson’s door and walked in after hearing an answer.
Asher looked at Jackson expectantly. Jackson said, “It should be all right. Someone’s trying to make a case about the way I handled some money held in trust. There’s nothing there. I can swat it away. But it looks like a message. The funds belonged to a client who’s well co
nnected with the party. I’d say the complaint is intended to throw a little dirt on me even if it doesn’t stick. I haven’t been getting in anyone’s hair. You have.”
“I think I’ll have that talk with Gerald Ryan now.”
“Do you think he’s the only person to talk to?”
“I’ll see.”
When he reached his own office, Asher glanced at the papers waiting on his desk and let them wait longer while he phoned Gerald Ryan’s private line. Ryan accommodated him by answering. He’s been expecting a call, Asher thought.
“Hello, Harry, what can I do for you?”
“It’s what I can do for you. Do you have time to meet tonight? On second thought, if you don’t, you should make time.”
“You sound awfully sure of yourself.”
“I’ve been learning by watching you. I have some paper you’ll want to see.”
“Me, or Jimmy? He’s the one who asked you to find some paper. Months ago.”
“You. Your name’s on it, not his.”
“You have me intrigued. Can you come to my office about eight-thirty? I’ll be here alone.”
“All right. Be sure about being alone.”
Asher returned to Jackson’s office and told him about the appointment.
He added, “I don’t know what I can squeeze out of him, but I’ve got his balls in a vise. Long story short, John Apson dug up a lot more dirt than just the story about Devereaux and Manchester. He had some documents — I’ve got them now — that show people in the government influenced PFAC to lend about five hundred million to the Oil Country corporation, on very advantageous terms. Apson’s notes mention Turlock and Ryan in particular. That may not hold much water — scribbled notes from a dead man, no witnesses — but the financial documents will be convincing.”
