28 Seconds

by Michael Bryant

  MY LAW-SCHOOL CLASSMATE Richard King was awake around 1 a.m., September 1, when the broadcasts of the Bloor Street Bonfire of the Vanities started airing on TV and radio. Rich happened to catch a glimpse of the perp shot of me hours before the media would confirm my identity. He stayed up that entire night, listening to newscasts, and around 5 a.m. started calling my friends. King lined up Evangelista and Granovsky to liberate me from the Traffic Division.

  A few weeks later, he’d plant the idea with John West, head of the Toronto office of Ogilvy Renault, home to former UN ambassador Yves Fortier and former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, that maybe I would be a useful addition to the firm’s growing Energy and First Nations Business Law practice. Less than three months later, John West approached me to discuss my becoming a senior adviser at that firm. Ogilvy Renault was more than a century old, and one of the leading Canadian law firms, and would soon merge with the global U.K.-based megafirm Norton Rose.

  I may have been a former Attorney General, but I was also an accused felon. Law firms are primarily commercial enterprises—the mega ones, anyway—so they don’t need much of a justification for taking a pass on a new lawyer joining their firm, with the inherent risks and overhead. Usually, a couple of indictments are more than enough to do the trick.

  Yet John West teamed up with the national managing partner, John Coleman, and the firm’s chair, Norm Steinberg, to convince their partners that they should employ me. If innocent until proven guilty is to mean something, they argued, then we have to judge Michael as an innocent and therefore eligible to serve as a senior advisor here. So, in December 2009, I got a job. Having their support, and, just as importantly, a vocation, was instrumental to my life in the wake of what had happened. I would work there for just over two years, and I remain grateful for their courageous decision.

  Sometimes the act of kindness seemed minor, but the impact allowed me to feel like the Rumi quote: caught by stretchers. For example, Linda Martell of Fiorio salon had been cutting my hair for over a decade, and the kids’ hair since they were born. She knew I was due for a cut, but unlikely able to venture back into Yorkville for an hour of styling. She offered to cut my hair at her apartment, and loaned me some wonderful books that had helped her during a time of great trauma.

  But Linda wasn’t done. One of her clients kept talking about me, wishing out loud that he could share his own experiences with me. Finally, Linda hooked us up, and we met for lunch.

  He was a senior executive at one of the top-ten investment banks on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Over lunch, he shared his very personal experiences, and passed along his top three books that had helped him the most. Two of them I was familiar with, but one I had not read. Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis, written from a jail cell, became a bible for me. My new friend and I have kept in touch ever since.

  SOMETIMES, kindness and support came utterly out of the blue. A chin-up phone call from Brian Mulroney, then a wonderful letter from his son, Ben—neither of whom I’d previously known. A month or so after Darcy’s death, I received an email from a stranger. It was an invitation, from E. James Barton, who went by Jay, to have breakfast at the Royal York Hotel. Barton emailed, at first, then somehow got my cell number. I never returned the call but he kept at it, emailing me regularly. He proposed that I attend a breakfast meeting with street people, homeless people, some local celebrities, ex-NHL players, and a broadcaster. I finally responded.

  “Thanks for the invite, Jay. I’m no longer the CEO of Invest Toronto. But I can pretend to play the part. You still want me?”

  He did, and seemed fully aware of my circumstances. I showed up late for the breakfast, held in a private room off the main dining room of the Epic Restaurant. The Royal York Hotel is exactly like it sounds: dark wood, formal bellboys, thick Eastern rugs, a pipe tobacco shop in its gallery of jewellery and art stores within. Now part of the Fairmont brand, the Royal York is where a wealthy person would stay in Toronto if the Four Seasons was considered too nouveau riche.

  Barton was dressed for Bay Street: pinstriped suit, tailored; perfect white shirt with a collar seemingly hard as cement, a Polo tie, French cuffs, shiny buttons. His jawline resembled that of the animated superhero in The Incredibles. If he weren’t so cultivated, that chiselled chin would have regularly knocked over his water glass. Even his hair was courtesy of central casting for rich people you loved to hate: blond curl in the front of a fresh cut and a hairline that wouldn’t move until he was six feet under.

  “Okay, let’s get this party started,” I choked out, into a quiet room full of bacon smells and awkward conversation sounds. Nervous laughter exploded. Yeesh. This would be difficult.

  They’d all been seated and were halfway through breakfast. I was half an hour late.

  Jay repeated my joke, then nodded to the man beside me: “Michael, this is Jimmy, who was really looking forward to talking politics with you.” I looked at Jimmy. And everyone, all 12 men, cast their gaze at Jimmy and me, who were now expected to talk politics. Seconds passed. Nothing but the sound of coffee steaming. Yet soon enough, the different worlds of prosperity and poverty, brought together for breakfast by Jay, were one.

  The day after, I got a call from Jay Barton. “Hey, Michael, thanks so much for coming to the breakfast. It’s really important for the homeless guys and it takes major stones for the successful people to get out of their comfort zone, you know?”

  In the months that followed, Jay Barton invited me several times for coffee. I either ignored the invites or made excuses. I became suspicious that his efforts were just guilty white dudes getting their annual absolution by coming to breakfast with poor people at the Royal York. But one day I happened to be in the neighbourhood where his proposed coffee klatch took place, so I sat down with him over an Americano.

  Jay was wearing a faded green Polo shirt and long khaki shorts. A bicycle helmet sat on the chair beside him. Hmmm. This didn’t fit.

  He told me his story. It’s private, but I related to it. Suffice to say, there’s more to the man than the fancy clothes.

  E. James Barton, in fact, makes enough “cake” to stay in a certain “snack bracket,” but also enough to allow him to volunteer about half his time to helping people living on the streets. “Frontline work,” serving meals and talking with “guys and some gals.” Jay had organized the breakfast club to give some impoverished Toronto residents, with mental illness or suffering from substance abuse, an opportunity to interact with another world. And to give the “conventionally successful” an opportunity to interact with another world.

  Jay Barton had become, in essence, a street worker. Mediating, breaking up fights, escorting junkies to and from a downtown church; talking, listening, feeding, cleaning.

  He had learned, he said, “what it’s all about, ya know? Maybe all I can give them is some dignity but that’s a lot. To find an inebriated person a couch, to lay a blanket on them, so they could sleep it off with dignity, right?”

  I found that I wanted some of what Jay Barton had. I wanted some peace of mind and purpose. I wanted the kind of happiness that comes not from getting what I want, but from giving something without judgment or expectation.

  “I’m the luckiest guy, Michael,” he said. “You’ve no idea.”

  “Will you take me along sometime?” I asked.

  He would. We’d meet at the Starbucks “by the Sanctuary at Yonge and Charles Streets.” This was a couple of blocks away from where I first laid eyes on Darcy Sheppard.

  Through Jay I learned about Sanctuary Ministries, a Christian charity that is much more than a soup kitchen (if only because the food is fantastic). Sanctuary houses a community, but no beds. It’s a community of the homeless, of Rosedale scions alongside squeegee kids, of university students, and of hardened street soldiers. They all are shoulder-to-shoulder in that basement, or upstairs helping those who sometimes can’t help themselves. Through drop-ins, street outreach, and one-to-one relationships, they provide food, clothing, and basic heal
th care. Mostly it’s a bunch of friends helping each other.

  I was not allowed to “volunteer,” Greg Paul told me. He’s their leader, though not formally. An ordained man of the cloth. Hair buzzed back, slim, fit. He resembled a rock star or a professional cyclist, rather than a minister to people of the streets.

  We were in the basement of the Sanctuary, originally a stately mansion before it was overrun by porn video shops, condos, shawarma joints, and parking lots smelling of urine, around the corner from the gay village. The Sanctuary basement smelled of food and wet socks.

  “What do I do when I come here?” I asked Greg.

  “Just grab a seat. Hang out. If someone asks for a coffee, go ahead and get it for them but you don’t get to hide behind the authority of being a volunteer kitchen worker. We have staff for that.”

  “But what about them?” I pointed at women and men passing out plates. They’d come from another job, wearing official and unofficial uniforms of the employed.

  “They’re members of the community. Earned the privilege of serving others. You need to become a member of this community first, if you’d like.”

  Greg was treating me like a celebrity, introducing me to people, and he’d clearly blocked off time for me, at the behest of Jay. Greg showed me around the place. The office. The health-care “centre” (a room), the “library” (a book shelf), Marie’s Kitchen (where Donny is the “boss”; I make a Donny and Marie joke), the “chapel” (a gymnasium upstairs), where there would be a book and CD launch, Greg told me.

  The next night, the chapel was converted into a bandshell where books and CDs were for sale. The back room had Styrofoam cups full of Cheezies and cans of generic-brand pop and coffee, but that room didn’t get opened up until after the festivities began. When it was announced that the food room was open, there was a stampede of dozens—about half the crowd—from the metal chairs facing the stage.

  I was too afraid to dance to the band’s rock but I wanted to. Everyone was dancing. The dance floor was full. Everyone was happier than any group of people I’d ever seen, outside of my fellowship of recovery. I sat on a chair beside a fellow who was mentally handicapped in some vague fashion. Stuffing his mouth with Cheezies, he was bragging about being able to live on his own. On the other side of him was watchful Jay, who got up periodically to check out empty rooms in the church for sleeping giants. A woman was crying, makeup going all Alice Cooper on her, and Jay took her someplace where dignity was restored. This is what Jay Barton does.

  I was welcomed completely, but not yet part of the community. It would take some time. But that night it felt, after an hour or so, that it was time for me to go.

  I shook Jay’s hand goodbye. He followed me out to where a guy with an Expos hat stood, apparently on duty for general crisis management. We all shook hands again and I walked down the stairs. They stood at the top of the stairs, chatting; my back was to them as I descended.

  Then something happened.

  The band was playing music loud enough to dance to. Perfect volume, actually. It was very difficult to have a conversation amidst that volume but not impossible. So Jay and his friend shouted at each other, not worried that I could hear them over the din.

  But it was as if the music were a breeze, a breeze that blew all sounds down those stairs. So I heard their conversation perfectly. I don’t understand the physics of it all, but I overheard them.

  “You met Michael?” Jay asked.

  “Yeah, good to have another tall guy around here.” We were apparently the same height. It took me a few seconds to realize they were talking about me.

  Jay’s voice: “Yeah, he’s really hurting—”

  “Yeah, for sure…. Read in the newspaper—then heard from Greg … Yeah, Jay, you did outreach … outreach—for Michael? … —for how long?”

  “A while. Called him—about a month after the arrest. Yeah, REALLY hurting … and also … even after charges dropped … after the breakfast…. Had to keep calling … hurting…. Then another coffee, you know HOW IT IS…. Slowly … Came yesterday … but he’s getting better—”

  I was frozen now, at the bottom of the stairs, looking out onto Charles Street, the sidewalks full of people in their twenties mostly, the 8 p.m. crowd. The music seemed far away, Jay’s words echoing in my head. I felt like Bruce Willis’s character at the end of The Sixth Sense.

  I’d fallen for the oldest charity trick in the book: thinking that I was offering charity to others, in helping Jay Barton, while the opposite was true. He and all the other people at the Sanctuary were helping me, bringing me back to life, to connection with other human beings, to my own humanity.

  TEN

  For the Defence: Marie Henein

  Marie Henein should have a comic book series done on her. Her Clark Kent nameplate says criminal defence counsel, but she’s a superhero to me and everyone she rescues. It’s impossible to describe Marie without saying the word tough. Street legal worn, turned out tough. The toughest I’ve known. My ex-wife Susan is considered tough by many, and Susan was plain old scared of Marie.

  “She should be,” Marie replied when I told her. Without smiling. But tough is often misunderstood, I think. Former Supreme Court Judge Frank Iacobucci explained this to me. He said, for lawyers, you’ve got to be smart to be tough. Otherwise, it’s just bluster. To be tough requires forging a path against great resistance, full of obstacles, with a clear, difficult target on the horizon. It was John Wayne who said, “If you’ve got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.” That’s smart/tough.

  Doorbell rang. I could see the silhouette of Marie Henein and a young man, through the translucent curtains covering the front door window. It was around 6 p.m., September 1. When I opened the door of my house, to let in Marie with her associate, I was surprised at how pretty she looked, for someone who was clearly ferocious. Her high heels looked particularly expensive, which said something because lawyers like their shoes. Often it’s the only accessory that’s their own, once they have the generic black gowns put over their white-collared barrister shirts and black vests.

  I recall that she had an overcoat on, and shook out an umbrella. But that makes no sense because it never rained that day. Her height was difficult to discern. Those shoes were high, the leather looked like it had come off an endangered species, and the cut was something that could have been in the Museum of Modern Art.

  Marie has different looks, different masks. Of Lebanese descent, she’s dark and her hair is short; curvy and lean at the same time. Her brown eyes are big and brooding, hard and unhappy. Jovial is not how I saw her most of the time, during our time together with me as her client. Marie is in the rescue business, after all. Like a veteran paramedic, she’s seen it all.

  Standing in my doorway, briefcase in hand, Marie shook Susan’s hand, said hello sweetly to my inquiring kids, then switched from mom to poker-faced lawyer while I blinked.

  Marie had a look about her that I’d not seen before except in a boxing ring, or on Reggie Jackson’s face as he went up to hit his third home run in one night during the World Series. The Yankees’ manager, Billy Martin, said that the look on Reggie’s face was such that he’d have been shocked if Reggie had NOT hit a home run at the plate. Marie had that look and I’d see it over and over again as we worked together.

  We went to the top floor of the house. Her associate, Jordan Glick, sat at the desk because he was using the computer. I sat on a chair across from Marie, who was nonplussed to be sitting on an uncomfortable bench. We formed a triangle.

  “So what happened?” she asked.

  ONE DOESN’T HAVE TO BE a former Attorney General to figure out that the first order of business after being arrested is getting a lawyer. Or at least I should have been able to figure that out. However, the process of retaining someone to represent me through to a trial, of finding someone to save my life in a courtroom, was complicated by my state of mind. Having kept my wits about me during the period of incarceration, which fo
llowed on the heels of the 28 seconds itself, my brain basically shut down. Although I needed to make some critical decisions, the store of my mental faculties was closed for business.

  Upon reflection, this would be common for most people charged with crimes, which is why the presumption of innocence is so important: the vulnerability of the accused is acute; their capacity could not be lower, and the risk to their freedom could not be higher.

  The morning after I’d been released, September 2, I wandered into the kitchen a few minutes after waking to have a telephone waved in my direction. I felt as if still in a trance, and I wondered how I’d gotten from bed to kitchen floor, and I had no idea why I was taking the telephone and putting it to my ear.

  “Hello?”

  Men’s voices began coming out of the telephone receiver. It sounded like adults do in Charlie Brown cartoons. I held the phone out and asked Susan what was going on.

  “It’s Peter Lukasiewicz and P—,” she was whispering loudly. These were her partners, technically her boss was Peter. And they’d been put on hold for about five minutes so the indicted Mr. Magoo could get his butt downstairs to get the urgent advice as to whom he ought to retain as his criminal defence counsel.

  Lukasiewicz and P—had consulted with the best minds on the subject, and were offering to me their learned shortlist of defence counsel that I should retain, given the (freakishly unprecedented) circumstances.

  “Oh,” I said to Susan, then put the phone back to my ear.