The Endless Knot

by Gail Bowen

  Zack exhaled as if relieved at the completion of a distasteful task. “Thank you, Mr. Dowhanuik, the people appreciate your co-operation.”

  Like a felon, Howard bolted from the witness box. Zack wheeled into his exit path, blocking him. “You were a lawyer, Mr. Dowhanuik. You must remember that you’re supposed to wait for Mr. Justice Harney to tell you that you may step down.”

  For a brief and heartbreaking moment, the two men at the centre of my life faced each other. Whether it was the booze or the disgrace, Howard was unsteady on his feet; in his wheelchair, Zack was a coiled spring. “You didn’t let me finish,” he said. “Ms. Morrissey was not found bleeding on the ground. She had gone inside her home, and was putting pressure on her wound. She, too, called 911. When the EMS arrived, she opened her front door and admitted them herself.

  “Mr. Dowhanuik, I hope you know that our encounter today has brought me no pleasure. My friend is right in saying that most of us know you as a fine, upstanding citizen, the clear-eyed leader of our province, but liquor and drugs have a way of distorting vision, of making a person see things, not as they are but as he wishes they might have been.” Zack wheeled over to the jury box. “Members of the jury, judges of facts, when you deliberate over Mr. Dowhanuik’s testimony, remember what you saw today – a man stitched and bruised from a drunken fall, his eyes bloodshot, his hands trembling, who, despite what I’m certain was diligent coaching from the Crown, was unable to get his story straight. Ask yourself if you would want your fate determined by the testimony of this man. Ask yourself if the testimony he delivered and then couldn’t remember an hour later was the truth or some drunken, drug-addled fantasy he spun out of his desperation and guilt.” Zack wheeled back to the defence table. As if as an afterthought, he threw Howard the sentence that liberated him. “Oh, no more questions.”

  As he left the courtroom, Howard was a broken man. I remembered Zack’s hesitancy about having me cover the trial for NationTV. He’d said he wanted me to keep believing he was a nice guy. He hadn’t been a nice guy with Howard. He’d been mocking, diminishing, intimidating, and menacing. On our first date, Zack and I had eaten at a restaurant that looked over the Qu’Appelle Valley. It had been a spectacular summer night and after we ate, we gazed across the hills and Zack said that the still waters and green pastures beneath us made him understand the Twenty-third Psalm. In that instant, I felt a sense of communion with him that had never left me. Now it was gone. I was dazed. What Zack did to Howard was primal: bone hitting bone until the weakest of the combatants was destroyed.

  Brette had been crouched over, writing frantically; when Howard finally left the witness box, she slumped back in her chair and exhaled theatrically. “Wow. At J school, they told us that cross-examination is the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth, but that was brutal. And how about Charlie D’s dramatic last-minute appearance on the witness list? I kept waiting for Shreve to object, but why would he? Charlie D turned out to be a great witness for the defence.”

  “Too great?” I said.

  Brette rubbed her hands together. “You mean his obvious rapport with Zack Shreve? Are you suggesting collusion? It’s a possibility, but Shreve’s too smart for that. He’s playing it close to the line though – ‘cusp collusion’ – almost illegal but not quite. That’s Shreve’s specialty – the whiff of sharp practice but nothing blatant enough for the Law Society.” Brette twirled her pearls. “So far, Shreve’s doing a good job of salvaging his case. In my opinion, the verdict in this trial is now officially up for grabs.”

  More unanswered questions, but despite everything, when court was adjourned for the day, the tension I’d been holding in my body drained. Howard had been chewed up and spit out, but he was alive and as the old adage has it, “while there’s life, there’s hope.” I’d told Rapti that Zack and I were flying to Saskatoon, so when I stepped out of the courthouse she and the cameraman were already set up and waiting. She shuddered when she examined my face. “You have definitely lost your glow,” she said.

  “You have a kit full of blush and bronzer,” I said. “Work a miracle.” Rapti dabbed away dutifully, then stepped back to examine her handiwork. “Not great,” she said. “But definitely better.” I snapped on my microphone. Just as I was about to start, Zack came out of the courtroom.

  He came over to me. “Mind if I watch?”

  “No.”

  Rapti raised her hand. “I’m counting down, Jo.” I watched her fingers. “Five, four, three, two …”

  The last finger fell and I began, “It was a good day for the defence in the Sam Parker case …”

  When I was through, Zack said, “Let’s get out of here. Sean’s bringing the car around.”

  “My overnight bag’s still in my car. Do you think Sean would mind driving the Volvo back to my place?”

  “Sean’s an associate,” Zack said. “He’d eat ground glass if he thought it would improve his chances of getting a promotion.” He glanced down the street. “Here’s our car. Do you want to drive?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It’ll be good to feel I’m in control of something.”

  The glance Zack shot me was questioning, but he stayed silent. When we were away from the courthouse, he reached over and massaged the back of my neck.

  “You’re pretty tight there,” he said. “Are you mad?”

  “I’m not mad, just shaken. I could hardly recognize you today. You were –”

  “A ruthless son of a bitch?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “I had a job to do.”

  “And Charlie helped you do it.”

  “Charlie was more than willing to co-operate.”

  “At what point does rapport with a Crown witness become collusion.”

  Zack’s gaze was probing. “When someone can prove it,” he said.

  “So you’re okay with all these private arrangements you and Charlie made.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Because they’re illegal.”

  “Not illegal – just close to the line. I have to win this case, Jo.”

  “Even if winning means bending the rules.”

  “Rules are made to be bent. I never go too far.”

  “You went too far with Howard today.”

  “That’s a different issue,” Zack said.

  “No, it isn’t. You used Charlie to get to him, and then you gutted him. What happened to the quality of mercy?”

  “With luck, the jury will extend it to my client.”

  “And you don’t care about what you did to Howard?”

  “Jo, I didn’t force the booze down Howard’s throat this morning. He made a choice, and he has to live with it. If Howard had chosen to stay sober this morning, he could have cleaned our clock, but he didn’t, so I went after him.”

  “But you had him, Zack. You showed that his memory of what happened that afternoon couldn’t be trusted. That was all you needed to do. You didn’t have to keep pummelling him.”

  “Are you sure of that? Are you absolutely certain that at that point in Howard’s testimony, I’d won my case? Because I didn’t know that. I still don’t. What if I’d got squeamish and pulled back and a juror who was wavering went against me. Nice lawyers lose cases they shouldn’t lose. I don’t, because I don’t leave anything to chance.”

  He continued rubbing my neck. “Better?”

  “I wish this day was over. I hate flying.”

  “I know you do. Jo, you don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

  “But you have to be there,” I said.

  “That doesn’t mean you do.”

  I saw the exhaustion in his face. “I think it does,” I said. I touched his hand. “Besides I’m not about to miss my chance to sleep in the lieutenant-governor’s bed.”

  The logistics of getting a wheelchair onto a small plane were humiliating for a man who didn’t take kindly to being dependent on the kindness of strangers. As Zack was being shunted aboard, I tried How
ard’s home number. No one picked up. I dropped my cell in my bag and mounted the steps into the plane.

  When the propellers revved, my body grew tense. Zack, who knew I was a nervous flyer, squeezed my hand and leaned towards me. “You okay?”

  My teeth were gritted, but I was reassuring. His mind at rest, Zack closed his eyes, and before we’d left the runway, he was sleeping the sleep of the just. He would, I knew, sleep deeply during the thirty-five minutes we were in the air, and he would awaken refreshed. I envied him. Alone with my thoughts, I examined the face of the man who had become so central to my existence.

  There is a vulnerability in the faces of most sleepers – a relaxation of the facial muscles, a slackening of the jaw, but asleep or awake, Zack never seemed to lose control. In the grey afternoon light, his face was as familiar to me as my own, and that was the problem. I was deeply in love with him, and yet that day in court he had been a stranger. The man I knew was warm, compassionate, loving, humane; none of that had been in evidence as he destroyed Howard Dowhanuik. I wasn’t naive. I understood that Zack had a job to do, but like the pain in a troubling tooth, the question Mieka had whispered in my ear before she left at Thanksgiving stabbed me: How much did I really know about this man?

  As the plane started its descent, I leaned close. “Time to wake up,” I said. He turned towards me and grinned lazily. “And I wake up to you, Ms. Kilbourn. I am blessed.”

  Built in the dirty thirties on land that slopes towards the South Saskatchewan River, the Bessborough Hotel has the rococo extravagance of a chateau in a children’s fairy tale. When times are tough people dream of champagne, and the Bessborough has always been a champagne hotel: liveried doormen, polished brass, deep and welcoming chairs in the lobby, rooms of understated luxury that promise discretion. The clerk who checked us in wore a suitably conservative hotel uniform, but she had dyed the tips of her braids aqua marine. According to her discrete identification badge, her name was “Heaven Olsen.” We live in a time of flux.

  Our suite on the sixth floor was spacious and quietly grand with champagne on ice and a sinfully inviting bed. It was a place for romance, and as I straightened Zack’s tie and felt the warmth of his breath of my forehead I wanted him, and I knew he wanted me. But as Mick Jagger memorably sang, what we want is not necessarily what we need. That night I needed time to think and so, for the only time since I’d met him, I was relieved there was no time for Zack and me to make love.

  We arrived at the reception in time for a glass of Veuve Cliquot before we went into the dinner. Zack was delighted when he realized that we’d been seated with Linda Fritz. Ignoring her warning that she was a walking corpse, he reached over and embraced her warmly. “God, you’re a welcome sight. How are you doing?”

  Linda’s pleasure in seeing Zack matched his. “I’m a little dented, but definitely better. I seem to sleep all the time, and I’m taking these massive doses of antibiotics so I can’t drink. Anyway, I’ll live. But what’s really killing me is watching my case blow up.”

  “You heard about what happened today?”

  “Are you kidding? Howard Dowhanuik’s meltdown was topic A during the champagne reception. I still can’t believe Garth let it happen. Are you slipping stupid pills into his water jug?”

  “No need,” Zack replied. “Garth self-medicates.”

  Linda laughed. “You’re telling me. The day I finally packed it in, Garth came over to my apartment. I told him to get an adjournment. He could have had three weeks to get up to speed on this case. It’s hard on a jury to wait, but it’s better than going in there unprepared. Garth refused to listen. I tried to brief him on what was coming up, but he just gave me his big fat stupid smile and told me that it was his case now and I shouldn’t worry.”

  Zack chuckled. “I have to admit, I’m grateful. If you’d been sitting in that chair, I would have been in a lot more trouble.”

  “You think I don’t know that,” Linda said.

  “Would you believe me if I said I wish you’d been able to finish the case?”

  Linda glared at him. “I had a virus, not a lobotomy. Anyway, enough shop talk. We’re boring Joanne.”

  “Not at all,” I said. “Just prepare to hear your thoughts about Mr. Severight on NationTV tomorrow night.”

  The waiter set down our salads: arugula and watercress served with smoked whitefish and roasted peppers. Zack and I dug in, but Linda just gazed at her plate.

  “Aren’t you going to eat that?” Zack asked.

  “No,” Linda said. “It looks tasty, but my malaise makes everything taste like cardboard.”

  “Give it to Jo, then,” Zack said. “She loves smoked whitefish.”

  Linda pushed her plate towards me. “Be my guest,” she said. “Consider it a thank you for the dartboard and the lovely photograph of our friend here. It’s brought me hours of pleasure.”

  Zack put his arm around me. “I told you she’d like it.”

  Linda observed us with interest. “How long have you two been a couple?”

  “Not long enough,” Zack said.

  “Three and a half months,” I said.

  Linda gave Zack the thumbs-up sign. “Way to go. That’s three months, thirteen and a half days, and about eleven hours longer than most of your relationships.”

  There were eight of us at table, and for the rest of the meal we chatted about the inconsequential and pleasant topics that people talk about when the food and wine are excellent and the mood is mellow. After the chocolate mousse had been served and the coffee poured, a string quartet began to play “The Lark.” I drank in the beauty of the music and of the small white tulips in our centrepiece and felt the pieces of myself knitting together again. Zack leaned close and whispered, “You look happy again.”

  “I am happy again,” I said.

  “Then so am I,” he said, and we sat hand in hand and listened to Haydn, and all was right with our world.

  Before the speeches started, I excused myself and went to the ladies’ room. As I was freshening my makeup, a blonde wearing a very short emerald dress caught my eye in the mirror. Her mascara was smudged and she was having trouble focusing. She had, it appeared, drunk well if not wisely.

  “So you’re Zack’s latest,” she said.

  I met her mirror gaze. “I am,” I said, reaching for my lip liner.

  The blonde reached into a sequined evening bag and found her lipstick. “He’s a son of a bitch,” she said. “And he’ll dump you.” She began outlining her lips, overshooting the mark in more than a few places. I didn’t bring the matter to her attention. “He’ll be classy about it,” she said. “There’ll be some serious flowers and a handwritten note, but he’ll never call again.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” I said.

  “Caveat emptor. Don’t say you weren’t warned. One way or another, Zack has fucked 90 per cent of the people at this dinner tonight.”

  I turned to her. “Are you through?” I asked. “Because the man I love is about to give a speech and I’d like to be there.”

  “The man you love,” she repeated. “I am impressed. Is the man you love still into threesomes?”

  “He doesn’t need a threesome,” I said. “He has me.”

  As exit lines went, it wasn’t bad, but my heart was pounding, and the walk back to the ballroom seemed agonizingly long. I slid into my place at the table just as Zack was about to speak. When he saw that I was seated, he gave me a conspiratorial grin and began. He opened with Mel Brooks’s trenchant observation about retirement: “ ‘Never retire! Do what you do and keep doing it. But don’t do it on Friday. Take Friday off. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, do fishing, do sexual activities, watch Fred Astaire movies … My point is: Live fully and don’t retreat.’ ” It was a good opening and it got a laugh. When Zack moved to a more measured assessment of the accomplishments of the retiring dean, his comments were gracious and touching.

  When my life had centred on politics, I’d written more than my share of speeche
s, and I knew Zack’s speech had been effective, yet the applause when he was through was oddly grudging. I glanced around the room and I noticed that the faces of the guests were closed. They had enjoyed the speech, but they didn’t like the speaker. For the first time it occurred to me that Marnie Dowhanuik’s assessment of her son might also be true of Zack – that like Charlie, Zack was a man who had fans, not friends. Both were men who needed to win and that meant they would always be surrounded by people they’d beaten. Remembering the blonde’s cutting appraisal of Zack, I felt a chill.

  We were silent as the elevator took us to our suite. Once we were inside, Zack turned to me. “So what happened?” he said. “You were happy again, and now you’re not.”

  “Let’s get some sleep,” I said. “We can talk about it tomorrow.”

  “Uh-uh,” Zack said. “Not if it means you sleep on one side of the bed and I sleep on the other. Why don’t I make us some tea and we’ll talk about what’s bugging you?”

  There was a table and chairs in front of the window that overlooked the hotel’s formal gardens. In gentle weather, brides and grooms would exchange vows in those gardens and sip champagne under the cherry trees. Now, in mid-October, the lawns were leaf-strewn and the trees were spectral. Symbols everywhere.

  Zack wheeled over, picked up the basket of teas the hotel supplied, and brought it to me. “A cornucopia of possibilities,” he said. “What’s your pleasure?”

  “Camomile,” I said.

  Zack started the tea and came back to me. “Your turn for a good deed now. Can you untie this damn tie?” I untied it and handed it to him. “Thanks. Now, why don’t you tell me what’s wrong.”

  “When I went to the powder room tonight, I had an unpleasant encounter with an old girlfriend of yours.”

  “Who was it?”

  “I didn’t catch her name. She’s blonde. She was wearing a very short green dress, and she has amazing legs.”

  “Margot Wright,” Zack said. “She’s with Ireland Leontowich.”

  “Another lawyer.”