Cold City Streets

by L.H. Thomson

  Inside was less impressive, Spartan in its concrete efficiency. The design of multiple ‘pods,’ or hexagonally shaped cell blocks, mimicked a U.S. super-prison. And it had been widely hailed as a step into the future. But there were plenty of problems. Inmate conflicts were frequent in the wide-open common areas that fronted each pod’s cells. Shoddy construction led to millions in vandalism and damages.

  The old Remand, built decades earlier adjacent to downtown police headquarters, had been crammed with twice as many inmates than ideal and human rights advocates from around the world attacked the living conditions as deplorable. The new multi-million-dollar replacement fixed most of the population problem, at least, even if guards did tell the local press the job was “more dangerous than serving in Afghanistan.”

  Jessie looked up at it as she parked her tiny sub-compact in the lot that flanked the modern, multi-unit detention facility. From a distance, the stylized window slits on the white plaster buildings looked like giant black keys on a piano.

  Inside, she signed in with the front desk guard before going through the security check; then she entered an adjacent room that featured a series of computers screens mounted on tall bases and behind chrome metal frames to protect them from vandalism. Everything else in the room looked cheap: a couple of tables, some dark-blue Berber carpet. A guard remained at the back of the room throughout the visit.

  The center’s high-definition video conferencing system allowed for maximum security while also allowing one-on-one privacy, and even featured facial recognition software to ensure the right parties were talking. It may have been safer, but it was condemned by activists as inhumane, given that Remand inmates had yet to be convicted, given that all conversations were recorded, and given that they didn’t actually get human contact with their visitor or loved one. The guard stood along the back wall, looking bored; the room smelled of bleach and dissatisfaction; and the stark white light of the fluorescent tubes made the cheap carpet shine slightly.

  She stood in front of a terminal. After a moment, the screen flickered to life, occupied by a frail-looking man with a bony face and bristly, dark hair. His eyes were sallow and dark, fatigue writ large, and he had a split bottom lip that suggested that, innocent until proven guilty or not, Paul Sidney was already doing time.

  “How are you, Paul?”

  “My wife called. You’re the lawyer?”

  “Jessica Harper. I run a legal aid clinic downtown.”

  He nodded blankly but said nothing.

  “Can you give me your version of the night you were arrested, Paul?”

  “Why? Didn’t my wife tell you?”

  “Yes; I need your version to see how consistent…”

  “What?”

  “How consistent your stories are. How they match up.”

  “Uh huh.” He thought about that. “You trying to get us to excriminate each other or something?”

  Jessie smiled and shook her head gently. She was accustomed to clients not trusting her at first; few people ever offered most of them a hand up in life. So her job took patience. She’d worked hard to develop a thick skin about mistrust. Now it was routine, a character into which she slipped on first contact.

  “I’m on your side, Paul. My job is to defend you against the charges you’re facing, not to incriminate you.”

  “Incriminate, yeah…. How’d I know you don’t work for the cops and are trying to trick me?”

  “By law, they can’t do that. The law doesn’t allow them to pretend to be your lawyer. And the Remand Center wouldn’t be allowed to let such a person in, either.”

  “Huh. Okay. So you can’t tell no one what I say, right? You have to keep it private if I say so?”

  “That’s right. So can we talk about that night?”

  “Well… I didn’t do it.”

  “Just start at the beginning.”

  Sidney’s version didn’t differ much from his wife, Jessie thought, a cascading series of stupid decisions that probably dated back far longer than she knew, to right about the time he decided to sell his first quarter-ounce. His tone throughout was baleful, informed by unhappiness in the way that becomes second nature when life just seems too hard.

  “So that’s it,” he concluded. “I just fucked it all up. If I’d just left the damn gun…”

  “It’s okay. They have a lot of issues to deal with, some inconsistencies.” She tried to sound optimistic. “I know Mr. Croce had you enter a not guilty plea, Paul, but if you think you might want to consider a deal from the Crown, I’m sure we can get that vacated, given that he…”

  “No! No way. I fucking told you! I didn’t do nothing! I just picked up a gun. Jesus… I thought you said you were going to help…”

  “I am.”

  “You fuck off now!” he snapped, backing away from the camera a step, shocked. “You said you were on my side…”

  “I am, Paul… I’m on your side, I promise. Look, you’re going to need to trust me if I’m going to be able to help.”

  He eyed her sullenly, breathing heavily through his nose. “Well then you may be shit out of luck, ‘cause I don’t trust nobody but Andrea,” Sidney said.

  Privately Jessie had been pleading with a higher power for him to be okay with a deal. It wasn’t just that she had so little criminal law experience; it was the weight of the case. It seemed unwinnable, a year or more of the inevitable, drawn out by appeals, all the while watching this man and his family fall apart, all the while not really knowing if he’s guilty or innocent, because everyone gets their day in court.

  “Like I said, I’m here to help. But you need to accept that help. I can’t do anything for you if you fight me throughout.”

  “And what if I just say fuck off to you, and the cops and the whole thing?”

  “Then they’ll assign you another lawyer; then the jury will acquit you or convict you. If it’s the latter, they’ll have a sentencing hearing, at which point the judge will throw you in jail, and you’ll do at least ten years for second-degree murder.”

  His head dropped slightly. “I don’t want no deal. Fuck that. I didn’t do it. Jesus Fuck… I’m not taking a deal on something I didn’t do.”

  Not exactly a shocker, the story staying consistent. Who knows? Maybe he didn’t. “Okay Paul. The next step is a preliminary inquiry. By then we’ll know exactly what approach they’re taking, and we’ll get a chance to challenge the charges.”

  “So when do I go to trial?”

  “If the inquiry doesn’t toss anything out? Probably three to six months. We’ll figure that out later. Hopefully, we can do something about all of this before that even happens.”

  For the first time, her client nodded slightly, the barest affirmation, a small-but-positive sign. “Well… okay, then, Ms. Harper. Okay. You do what you can for me and Andrea and our little one.”

  7

  Outside the office, a small crowd gathered on the sidewalk, the effect accentuated by standing closely together in a mob. A few held picket signs, hastily marked to read “For Shame!” and “Bring back the Death Penalty.”

  There were perhaps fifteen people, not a lot by Edmonton protest standards, mostly older women but a few senior men, white haired and mustachioed, stooping slightly from age and cold bones. A pair of young moms with strollers, perhaps more bored than concerned, just someone from the neighborhood stopping by. One of them showed heavily and she cupped her pregnant belly with both hands while her taller, long-haired friend slumped sullenly beside her, mouth hanging open.

  What now? Jessie pulled the car up at the curb and put it into park, then she collected her legal briefcase from the passenger seat and got out. She slammed the door and tried to figure out why they’d be there, other than Paul Sidney. But she’d only just interviewed him; she had other clients, but nothing that would draw a mob. Word couldn’t have gotten out already, could it?

  A middle-aged man in a blue parka seemed to be directing traffic as they marched and cars honked.


  Further up the sidewalk, a burly blond news photographer captured the scene as cars rolled on through the Ninety-seventh Street slush and mud just a few dozen yards away. The photog stood next to a couple of bored looking guys with recorders whom Jessie figured were reporters. She reached the top step with her hand on the door handle when an elderly man with a gentlemanly demeanor and a navy blue English flat cap addressed her.

  “Excuse me, but are you Jessica Harper?”

  “Yes, sir. How can I help you?”

  “Well to start with, you can withdraw from defending that murdering scum Paul Sidney,” he said indignantly.

  The small crowd hooted its agreement.

  “We think Mr. Featherstone was a great man, a job provider in this city; and you have no right trying to stop his killer from facing justice.”

  “Sir, I’m just representing my client…”

  “Oil built this town, and people like you wouldn’t have a job without people like Mr. Featherstone.” The indignant man’s supporters muttered their agreement. “It’s this kind of thing that has made people lose faith in the justice system and feel unsafe in their own homes.”

  Jessie held in her feelings. If it had to be an angry mob, why couldn’t it have been one that understood the legal system? If they did, she thought, they might not be so ang… no, scratch that. “Mr. Sidney is entitled to the same defense as any other individual charged…”

  “He’s a murdering piece of filth, and we want you to know this city doesn’t think much of people who support him.”

  There was no point trying to reason with the man. Jessie long ago learned that trying to change someone’s mind when it didn’t want to be changed was like trying to change a dirty diaper on an angry grizzly bear. So she didn’t. Instead, she opened the door quickly and stepped inside, closing it behind her as the man’s voice echoed out of earshot.

  “Nice fan club you’ve got there,” Rhonda said from her usual front-desk perch.

  “Got any idea how they knew we were involved this quickly?” On some level, it irritated Jessie that her mother acted so nonchalant about the whole thing.

  “The news radio guys got a tip that you visited Paul Sidney this morning.”

  “Uh huh. Was that ‘we pay you fifty dollars for your news tips’? That station?”

  Rhonda just shrugged. “They did a piece on it about an hour ago. I’m guessing that’s the reaction.” She filed her nails at the reception desk. “When you said you were going to law school, I was picturing three-piece suits and big pay, not Law and Order: Killed by An Angry Mob.”

  “Mom…”

  “They’re probably right, you know. It sure sounds like your client killed that guy.” Rhonda liked to be blunt and clear about how she felt; sometimes people loved it.

  Sometimes.

  “Mom, just leave it, okay? Did you have any more luck finding us a private investigator? We’re going to lose the grant if we can’t get a replacement soon.” Her first investigator, a freelancer named Charlie Pleasant, retired four months earlier.

  “Are you kidding? It’s like PetroMas has managed to get in touch with every firm in the city and either put them on retainer or frightened the hell out of them. No one wants to touch this, and I can’t say I blame them. If word gets out in the oil patch that you’re blackballed…? Anyway, I talked to Arlene at the Sheffield Agency and she said she heard they called everyone in Alberta with a license.”

  “What about Charlie? Could we talk him into…”

  “He’s in Florida, working on his tan.”

  Perhaps I could just escape, Jessie thought. Anything would be better than this. Her head still throbbed slightly from the wine the night before, and she fished her water bottle out of her purse, unscrewed its cap and took a quick swallow.

  “If we haven’t found anyone by four o’clock, call the paper and put a classified in. There’s got to be someone out there who needs a decent job and isn’t afraid of a multinational that could crush them like an insect.”

  8

  The crowd stood in an imperfectly timed wave, their jewelry shimmering in the glint of the dull-but-low-hanging lights. Their shadows danced and turned. The cheers were a dull roar that crashed back off of the conference hall roof, many stories above. They raised arms in fandom, chanting, fists pumping, eyes bright and teeth bared; they sat twenty deep on all four sides, men and women in suits and fancy dresses.

  Sweat flew from the brow of the grown man in the spot-lit ring, and a gloved fist crashed into his lightly bearded chin, spit flying from his mouth, his younger opponent’s bloodlust high.

  In the fifth row, Cobi Tate was the only person not on his feet, uninterested in the sudden, furious assault that stood likely to end the fight in the seventh. He slumped slightly in the temporary seating, looking nonplussed. It wasn’t Cobi’s style, boxing. He didn’t hate it or anything, he just didn’t think much about it at all. He’d never been one of the guys from the old neighborhood who’d seen it as a “way out.” Not when he’d had football and basketball. Too many people beating on each other in the world already. It didn’t help that both fighters were as black as he was, and nearly everyone cheering them on was white.

  His old man loved the “sweet science.” Maybe that was another reason why it never much appealed to his son. Everything his father liked, it seemed, he resented, even when the old man was right, which was often.

  He wanted Allan to be a fighter. Got more than he bargained for with that one.

  So Cobi wasn’t much into the spectacle, a sea of Edmonton’s nouveau riche and their sleazy friends jammed into the conference center, drinking themselves silly, dressed to the nines, cheering on two aging “never were” fighters as they beat each other senseless.

  Besides, he was technically working, keeping an eye on his boss, local businessman Buddy Gaines. “Businessman” was a Buddy euphemism for loan shark, as far as Cobi could tell, probably worse. Buddy was small and squat, and he smiled a lot, little white Chiclet teeth standing out from his oily, pockmarked skin and his sparse, wiry brown moustache. For all that smiling, no one ever mistook him for a nice guy.

  Cobi was never in the room for anything really bad; usually, he stood outside the door waiting to follow Buddy and provide “security” while his boss and his henchmen sunk their claws into an increasingly desperate line of customers. In truth, in the month he’d worked for him, it hadn’t amounted to much more than a chance for Buddy to ask him about his glory days in college football, and for Buddy to brag about how much money he made from his many holdings and investments. Cobi began to feel like a trophy.

  The bell chimed to end the round, and the ref separated the fighters; the older man looked a little wobbly, prompting a check from the official to make sure he was okay to go on. With a head nod, the veteran retreated to his corner, his feet leaden compared to the bounce of the other fighter.

  The crowd was a few thousand strong; the adrenalin subsided into the chatter of debate, people wondering how much longer the fight would continue. Some got up and headed for the concessions stands at the back of the room. Warm inside, the place offered a temporary refuge from winter marred only by the smells of sweat and booze.

  “What a spectacle!” said a man behind Cobi.

  You got that right.

  A pair of fingers tapped him on the collarbone, five-feet-six inches of Buddy in his grey pin-striped suit, greatcoat, hat and stickpin, trying to get his attention. The gangster looked like an HBO extra, Cobi thought ruefully.

  “You’re not watching this, kid? That was a hell of a round. This is a hell of a fight.” It was better if the new kid got involved, became one of the guys, Buddy figured. A month in, Cobi still kept kind of quiet. Maybe he was too much of a thinker.

  “I told you, I’m not a fan.” Cobi tried to keep the tone light. Buddy hated being disrespected, and Cobi wasn’t his only muscle.

  “You know, these guys are every bit the athletes that football players are,” Buddy said authoritativel
y, taking his seat again and leaning in towards the larger man as he spoke. His breath smelled of cigars, onions and chili dogs; and Cobi squinted to keep his eyes from tearing.

  “Sure, Buddy.”

  “You think I’m fucking with you? Some of these guys, they got, like, six percent body fat.” The kid was a great athlete once, Buddy told himself, but he needed wisdom; he needed schooling, street smarts. And who better to bring it to them than the King of Kingsway Avenue?

  Cobi glanced up at the boxers. More like six percent brain function. “Whatever you say, Mr. Gaines.” Buddy was spectacularly full of shit, Cobi had decided. But whatever his business really was, he knew it well; he made a ton of green and carried a money clip in his inside pocket thicker than a steak sandwich.

  The fight resumed with the ding of the ring bell, and the two journeymen lumbered to the center, under the spotlight. The younger man resumed beating the older, doughier man’s brains in, and the crowd resumed its excited concerto. Sweat flew from the two combatants, their blows heavy and thunderous, the ref in his blue shirt and bow tie keeping the shots up, the elbows in, expertly putting his slight frame between them, breaking things up as necessary.

  Cobi slumped slightly in his seat. What am I doing here? What am I doing in Edmonton in winter, babysitting a low-level player at a fight, in a business conference center? This shit cannot be for real…

  The date wasn’t helping. The New Year was just a month past, four weeks since the anniversary of the big game, the Cotton Bowl, his much-anticipated launching pad from college sophomore to NFL star. The game where everything went wrong, from Heisman runner-up to fifth rounder, where fate just stepped in and kicked him in the face, like some strong safety coming in late on a blitz.

  After so many years of hard work, overcoming so many obstacles, it just unraveled. He saw it all happen in a sort of slow motion, the same high-performance “zone” that had benefited him in the past instead cruelly tricking him, making it all happen in fractions of a second. Every pass just seemed to hang there in the air, waiting to be picked off. Every handoff fumbled despite Cobi doing his part; his defensive line fell apart, guys he’d both depended on and led for three seasons parting like the red sea to wave after wave of linebackers and secondary.