Cold City Streets

by L.H. Thomson

  “Well, not you specifically…”

  “You got a point with this?”

  “Your boy lost a lot of money by listening to this dude.” Cobi didn’t like the way Gross quickly overreacted. He could see Leon’s face flushing, the tension rising.

  “So you’re here looking for a scapegoat, trying to make trouble for a guy I just told you is the most important fighter I ever had? You’re disappointing a career season-ticket holder. I hope you know that. You used to have more respect. Then again, I heard you were working for Buddy Gaines, so maybe times have been tougher for you than I thought.”

  “I’m not here to cause you problems, Leon. I just want to talk to him about Au-rex, see if he can shake something loose. Maybe there was someone he can think of angry enough at Featherstone…”

  “Yeah, right. So I leave you with him and the next thing you know you’re trying to get him to cop to whatever your guy did. Is that pretty much it, Cobi? Because I’m thinking that, my love for your former team notwithstanding, I might take a little offense to that.”

  “Leon…”

  “You know I’m not so old and out of shape that I won’t defend what’s mine. So my suggestion to you is to get the hell out of here.”

  “Give me five minutes with him….”

  Leon crossed over from irritated to angry. “You don’t mess with another man’s livelihood.” He thrust a finger at the exit. “Go on, get out!” He moved to shove Cobi but just bounced off.

  “Man… Leon, don’t do that, okay? I don’t want to fight you…”

  Gross looked embarrassed. But behind him, his hangers-on noticed the failed shove and quickly moved to back him up. None were lightweights, and they looked like they were spoiling for a fight. “You still want to make a point of this?” he asked.

  Cobi wasn’t stupid; five-to-one odds against a bunch of guys who had training? That was just asking for an ass-kicking. He held up both hands in mock surrender. “We’re cool,” he said, backing towards the door. “Leon, you cool off some and want to give me a call, I’ll leave my number on this card, by the front door.”

  The look on Gross’s face said to not expect it anytime soon.

  20

  Paul Sidney waited in the holding cell behind the prisoner’s dock, drinking water from a paper cup supplied by the guards, holding it delicately on each side with a pair of shackled hands.

  He finished it and passed it back, and the guard threw the cup into a nearby trash can. “Thank you,” Sidney said.

  The door buzzed and the second guard opened it to let Jessie enter. “Got a minute before things get going again?”

  She’d been fretting about the meeting, worrying about restating his options. He was vehement about defending against the charge, and Jessie understood that desire if he was genuinely innocent. But she’d only been to trial in two major crime cases, both abuse. A homicide was new territory, and her confidence flagged. She’d pondered the night before, lucid but buzzed on white wine, whether she really had a right to take on something that important.

  He nodded and she joined him, sitting down on the wooden bench next to him. “Paul, there was a story in the newspaper this morning. They got hold of some notes from your psychiatrist.”

  His face went white. “What did they…”

  “The part about shooting a classmate when you were twelve. The fact that you were never prosecuted means that technically you weren’t a young offender, and they can identify you.”

  “How…?”

  “It’s complicated, but they jumped through several loopholes. Even then we might be able to punish them for it. But the story is already out there, so the damage to perception and the jury pool is done. I’m asking you again: please let me ask the judge if we can re-elect and change your manner of trial. You don’t have to cut a deal or anything, but we should at least do this by judge alone.”

  “No! I told you before, there’s no point even trying unless we’re going to clear my name. And if I have just a judge and no jury, people will think I used some scam or technical thing.”

  “What’s more important to you, Paul? To beat this thing and be with your wife and daughter? Or to make sure people know you really didn’t do it?”

  He shook his head resolutely and crossed his arms. “Nope,” he said, the trace of a Maritime accent still there. “A man’s word’s the only thing he’s always got in life, the only thing can’t no one else control. No, Ms. Harper, I ain’t changing nothing.”

  “Okay.”

  She gave him a moment to fill the silence and process the new information. “So what happened when you were twelve? The story didn’t have a lot of detail.”

  “It’s embarrassing.”

  “Like I said when I met your wife, no judgments.”

  “Well, I was a small lad, and got the hell fair regular teased out of me. Same kid in particular, Jason Flowers, would smack me around every lunch hour, take my chocolate milk or my pop, or my snack cake. When he’d got away with it good for a month or two, he come to school one day with a Swiss army knife, figured he’d take my lunch money straight up. He did this for about a week, and I went to my old man, and I asked him what to do. He said I had to learn to stand for myself. Well, I knew Jason Flowers had six inches and a hundred pounds on me and would beat me senseless as a rag doll on Sunday morning. But I also knew my old man kept his revolver in his sock drawer. I didn’t mean to shoot him, mind, just to scare him.”

  She wasn’t going to tell him, but secretly a part of Jessie respected him for it. It was a first exhibition of strength from her client, even if it had been years earlier, before life, pressure, bad decisions, bad luck. “And they didn’t send you to juvie?”

  He shook his head. “Nah. See the thing was, Jason had already been disciplined multiple times at multiple schools, so they knew it was a frightened child and all. So I had to go for psychiatric counselling and be home schooled for six months, but then they let me back in.”

  “And your bully?”

  “Probably still got that limp,” he said. “Sure hope so.”

  “The judge will instruct the jury to discount it, but if I feel later in the trial that you’re not getting a fair shake from them because of it, I might need you to testify about it. You’re okay with that?”

  “You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, I suppose.”

  The bar just off of Calgary Trail lay far enough south of trendy Whyte Avenue that police officers could go there and mostly be undisturbed. It wasn’t fancy. The exterior siding was made of thick, creosote-stained planking and looked vaguely like a hardware or garden store, some seventies relic out of place even amongst its strip mall neighbors.

  The good old days are long gone, Det. Peter Carver thought as he parked his sedan out front. Back then, a serving member would tie one on after work, drive home half-cut, and he could bank on a brother officer looking the other way if he swerved the car a little here and there. Hell, for years they’d had a vending machine in the basement of HQ that served up beer on the cheap, until some loudmouth in the media ruined it for everyone.

  He got out of the car and crossed the short distance across the near-empty parking lot.

  Times had changed, all right. But the place was still a cop bar, still a place where, for the most part, real cops kept their mouths shut. The young idealists? They didn’t come here, preferring family. The older reformers didn’t either; it wouldn’t look good on their resumes, Carver thought contemptuously.

  He pushed the glass door open. It sure wasn’t fancy inside, either: a long, low bar with a vinyl counter, a couple of big freezer chests against the wall behind it for beers, three shelves of hard-liquor bottles, a cash register and a whole bunch of cheap seating. Mariner occupied a space at the bar, a half-pint glass in one hand as he leaned on his forearms waiting for his former partner.

  “Starting before me? Lightweight drinker like you, it must be one lousy week so far.”

  Mariner turned his head for just lon
g enough to acknowledge him. “I thought we said four-thirty. It’s nearly six.”

  “Eh… you know how it is,” Carver said. “I got working on something interesting. Not that you’d be worried about that.” He grabbed a stool, leaving one between them.

  “I thought we’d been over all of this,” Mariner said. “I don’t figure you wanted to socialize after work, so it must be something else.” Things had been tense since the beginning of the Sidney case, and Mariner had finally had enough. He’d asked to be assigned to a new partner a week earlier, and they’d had a blow up the following weekend. It had cleared the air, Mariner thought.

  The bartender delivered Carver a bottle of Pilsner without having to ask, along with a small bowl of pretzels. Carver tipped the bottle in barkeep’s direction by way of thanks then took a long swallow. “Yeah… well maybe I figured we shouldn’t leave things like this, you know? I mean, we closed a lot of cases together. Am I right?”

  Mariner nodded, but remained silent.

  “So I figured, you know, better we have a drink, part on good terms…”

  Mariner looked sideways at him, the gaze the typical mix of mistrust and disdain to which Carver had become accustomed. He didn’t say anything about the look, or protest it. It wasn’t the time.

  “Look, I know we’re not going to agree about everything…”

  “You got that right,” Mariner said.

  “But we’re on the same side.”

  Mariner stared at him again. “Are we, Pete? Really?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Carver took a hesitant swallow from the bottle of Pil. “Of course we are. You know the score: catch the bad guys, put them away for as long as possible…”

  “Is that what Sidney was? Just another night catching the bad guy?”

  Carver felt a wave of anxiety. “You’re not ever going to let this go, are you? You’re like some Devil on my shoulder or something.”

  Mariner sighed audibly. “Angel, Pete. I’m the angel on your shoulder. The devil is the little voice that tells you to take the easy route, because life owes you something or some shit.”

  Carver held his tongue again. He was so sure of himself, the bastard. “Because life… Is that really what you think, Jon? That I just take the easy route?”

  “Well?” Mariner took a sip of beer. “Don’t you?”

  “It must be difficult being so right all the time,” Carver sneered. “The weight of carrying the rest of us amoral bastards on your back must really be tiresome.”

  Mariner looked around the room. “The rest of who, Jon? There are plenty of other serving members who’ve done twenty tough years or more. I don’t find myself worrying that they’re going to ruin my career, or worse, send the wrong guy up. I don’t wonder why they live in a condo they shouldn’t be able to afford.”

  Carver sneered at him. “Cut the moralistic bullshit, okay, pal? Because it’s been three months; if you really thought that scumbag Paul Sidney should be out and walking around, you’d have said something by now. Or don’t you think you should, you know … take the hard route, as you like to put it?”

  “Maybe I should reopen the case, start digging around on my own,” Mariner said.

  Carver drained the rest of his beer and threw a five-dollar bill onto the counter. “Keep the change, Jamie,” he told the bartender. He leaned down slightly to Mariner’s level. “You do what you’ve got to do. Just keep in mind that if we’re not partners, and we’re not friends, that there’s still a code. Some of us take that seriously.”

  He looked around the room as he zipped his coat back up. No one familiar around; no one who would break with the old, unwritten rules. No one except his soon-to-be ex-partner.

  Carver pushed the door open and went back out into the crisp winter cold.

  21

  As she’d expected, the Crown asked for the psychiatrist records to be subjected to a publication ban. The judge adjourned the hearing for the day while he considered the motion and gave the local newspapers a chance to state their case.

  It left Jessie with the entire afternoon unscheduled… which really meant four hours to work on the case. She dialed Cobi’s number.

  “Uh huh?” he answered.

  “Where are you? We need to talk.”

  “True,” he said. “Things are getting more interesting on the suspect end.”

  “You shoot stick? You know, eight ball, nine ball?”

  “Sure, I guess. Not enough that I call it ‘stick’ or nothing, but…”

  “Eh, you’re an ex-athlete,” Jessie said. “I’m sure you’ll hold your own. I’ve got this place downtown that’s good for lunch and a few quick tables, or a few quick beers, or both.”

  “Got an address?”

  A half-hour later they tucked into pub fare at Metro Billiards, with Jessie alternating between bites while she racked up the balls. “You want to break?”

  Cobi gestured towards the green felt. “You racked ‘em, you crack ‘em.”

  She lined the cue ball up slightly off center, taking her stick back to its fullest extension before smoothly striking through the top half of the ball, the topspin driving it through the mass of gleaming hard plastic, balls caroming in every direction, one sinking quickly in the corner, another following it almost right in, a third running the length of the table and going into the bottom corner, a fourth stopping right in front of the left side pocket, a fifth in front of the right.

  Jessie moved with business-like precision to line up her next shot. She wondered casually if he watched her, sizing up her game. Or her appearance.

  Cobi watched her with a wry look. “So, this is all new to you.”

  She sunk the next shot and the cue ball spun perfectly into place to line up the four ball with the top corner. “Have you seen the story yet?”

  “Uh huh. Hard to miss those news boxes.” He filled her in on the meeting with Leon Gross and the manager at the apartment building.

  “Those are both interesting. Six in the side.”

  He took another bite of his cheesesteak sandwich, and she sunk another ball.

  “And your other question,” he said.

  “Uh huh?” She lined up the two ball.

  “You asked if I shoot stick. My answer would be ‘I guess not today.’ ”

  “Yeah… well, I grew up around a lot places I shouldn’t have been in. I had to find a way to keep busy, and a game of pool lasted longer and was cheaper than Golden Tee Golf.”

  “You don’t drink?”

  “Not during the middle of the day. After work? It helps me unwind sometimes.”

  “But you said…”

  “I meant that if I’d started drinking when I was young, I might have gone through some of the same problems my parents went through. It’s sort of a stereotype about First Nations peoples, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “Uh huh.” Cobi felt a little self-conscious; they hadn’t really discussed anything that personal before. It had only been a few days. “I guess.”

  “No, it’s true,” she said. “My mom had her issues for quite some time. She assumes I do, too.”

  “Tough childhood?”

  “Sometimes. She only really went off the rails for the one time; one period of about three weeks when I was twelve.”

  “What happened?”

  Jessie hadn’t thought about it in a while. “Yeah… long time ago. Short version is she went on a multi-day bender and I got locked out of the house; I wound up staying at the Youth Emergency Shelter because all of our other family members are down south. So social services got involved and there was some hearings, some counselling.”

  There were times as a kid when Cobi wished his old man wasn’t around; but he knew he hadn’t really meant it. “That must have hurt pretty bad.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, it did. But I was also kind of lucky. I got to see another side of life with people in care, and the court system, and even just the skidders my mother was hanging around. And when you get to know people
you find out that everyone has a story of how they got there, usually a pretty bad one.”

  “Is that why you’re a legal aid lawyer? Trying to save all them lost souls?”

  She smiled. “I guess. Maybe not save. Maybe just give a few of them another chance, a few weeks to get back into society, off the drugs or booze.”

  Cobi thought back to church as a kid. “In the black community, Sunday service is a real big deal where I come from, and we had this reverend who was always preaching about the ‘demon drink.’ ”

  Jessie snapped out of the moment and realized how personal it had gotten. “In case you’re wondering, I don’t have a problem. I mean, not really. I maybe drink more than I should, but it doesn’t run my life or anything. The odd bad night.”

  “Okay.”

  “So it’s not a problem for me.”

  “Uh huh.” Cobi felt anxious. It was like she was trying to convince herself.

  “I’m just used to the booze discussion becoming a debate about my culture. It’s awkward, like I’m not supposed to even talk about it, let alone take a drink every now and then. Especially when mom’s involved.” Jessie only had one low ball left, potting the seven in the upper corner, the cue ball rolling perfectly back to the middle of the table.

  “As you can tell, she figured her issues out eventually; but when she was still married to my father, they would get into some pretty bad fights. The woman who ran our neighborhood bar would let me go in the other room and play pool for free. Can’t turn down ‘free’ in that kind of situation.”

  “I can dig that,” he said. “That’s how I got started in basketball and football. Only cheap things to do back home. Well… you know, that or get mixed up in the game.”

  “You’re preaching to the choir,” she sighed. “Eight ball, corner pocket.”

  “Are you really going to run the table on me the first time we play?” he tested.

  “Mr. Tate, I’m going to run the table on you every chance I get. I like winning at pool. My mother would describe it in crazier terms, but we’ll leave it at that.”