Red Mass

by Rosemary Aubert

  “Going for a little drive in the country, are we?”

  A good-looking man the size of a buck deer leaned toward me in a maneuver designed to search the inside of the car. He was inches from my face, and any quick movement on my part wasn’t wise.

  “I have clearance to visit an inmate,” I said, keeping my voice level and low.

  “Produce it,” he growled.

  He watched me steadily as I slowly reached into my pocket. When I finally held the envelope toward him, he refused to touch it. “Remove the contents please, and hand them to me.”

  I did as he requested. He studied the document without the least change in expression. He seemed to be able to read without moving his eyes. I’d used the same trick when I was a judge, and later on the street, and I admired his skill.

  “Remove your keys from the ignition and hand them to me.”

  Puzzled at his instructions, I nonetheless complied. He jingled the keys a little as he walked a few steps away and handed my paper to a second officer. The other two moved closer to me.

  Without turning around, I tried to see through my rear mirror what the two with my authorization were doing, but they had moved to a blind spot.

  It seemed to take forever for them to come back. “Sir,” one of them said, “this is a fax.”

  I fought the urge to be sarcastic, because I really wanted the sidearms to stay put. “Yes, sir,” I said, “it is.”

  “We can’t accept a facsimile authorization.” Without making any move to return the fax to me, he ordered, “Put these keys back in the ignition. Wait for us to pull over. Then slowly turn around and proceed back to the highway.”

  “No,” I said.

  A look of surprise flickered across his eyes.

  “I want to talk to the warden,” I insisted. “I’m a lawyer visiting a potential client. Check your list. You have his name and you have mine. I want you to call Visitors and Communication and confirm that authorization.”

  He studied the paper, making a big point of glaring at Stow’s name, which was printed in large letters smack in the middle of the page. “There’s no one by this name in this institution, sir.”

  It occurred to me that what he was saying was technically true. It was against every regulation in the book for an individual who has not been sentenced to be detained in a federal correctional facility. Therefore, Stow was not officially inside these prison walls.

  But physically he was there, and I, who only hours before had not wanted anything to do with him, was now bound and determined to see him.

  “I have authorization, and I demand to be allowed to enter. ”

  “Stay there,” the officer barked at me. He took his time sauntering over to confer with his fellow officers, then slid into his cruiser. Through the open door, I could see him clicking away at his computer. He used his radio and his phone, too. Quite an impressive little display of thoroughness.

  “All right,” he commanded when he got back to my car, “proceed to the prison gate.”

  The road got narrower and the razor wire thicker the closer I got to the gate, which, after a couple more miles, loomed ahead of me. I was surprised when it lifted automatically to let me into the parking lot. I felt fearful already, as if I had committed a crime, surrounded as I was by stout guard towers and high multibank light standards.

  Around here, night would be much brighter than day. Two trucks making endless loops circled the grounds from opposite directions. I figured they’d pass each other twice an hour. When they did pass, I saw that no one in either truck acknowledged the presence of fellow officers. The drivers’ eyes were trained only on the never-ending circle of the road, and the guard in the passenger seat kept his eyes glued to the razor-wired, two-story-high fence. The regulations of a maximum-security prison would make a terrorist pause.

  I tried to imagine Stow in this environment instead of hobnobbing with the power players on Parliament Hill or sitting in his red robe on the highest bench in the land.

  “Remove all metal objects from your person and step through the scanner.”

  “Place your wallet and other personal belongings in this wire basket.”

  “Show me the bottom of your feet. Right foot first. I said right foot ...”

  “Enter that door.”

  I did as I was told and entered a metal and wire-reinforced glass enclosure. A heavy metal door crashed closed behind me. Before me another metal door stayed resolutely shut.

  More fear and more than a little claustrophobia gripped me. The tight little room started to spin. Dark blotches seemed to obscure my vision, and then the door before me cracked in half and fell away, and I found myself staring into a brilliantly lit room containing a small wooden table and two empty chairs.

  “Put your hands palms up on the table. Put your feet flat on the floor.”

  I did what the disembodied voice from the overhead speaker ordered, thinking of Orwell and Kafka, too. The mechanized inhumanity made me pity the wretches incarcerated in this forbidding place.

  “Counsel, thank you for coming,” I heard from somewhere behind me. The voice sounded human.

  I fought against making any gesture of self-protectiveness. I hadn’t heard Stow’s voice since he’d publicly cursed me at his wife Harpur’s funeral five years earlier.

  “Turn around, Portal.”

  I carefully twisted until I could see him. I don’t know what I expected. I guess I’d pictured him as a prisoner, maybe like the prisoners who’d been inside with me, men down on their luck but surprised at how far down.

  He wore a sweater that must have cost a couple of thousand dollars. Its gray-blue cashmere perfectly matched his eyes and set off the silver-blondness of his hair, which looked as though it had recently been cut. This alone, among all that I observed of Stow that day, did not surprise me. I knew that barbering was one of the skills taught to prisoners and that some were as good at it as Stow’s hundred-dollar haircutter.

  I had not expected the designer clothes, the black Gucci loafers, the Cartier watch, the air of complete control and command. Obviously Stow was not being housed anywhere near other prisoners, nor was he subject to even the most rudimentary rules of detainment. He was even wearing a belt.

  Also obvious was that Stow’s ingrained arrogance had not changed one bit despite his present circumstances and the fact that he seemed to be begging for my help.

  “What are you doing here, Stow, and why summon me?”

  He made me wait for an answer. He took his time walking around my back and toward the empty chair. I expected the guards to be keeping a close watch on him, and perhaps they were. One was near the door; the other had positioned himself to be simultaneously between Stow and the door and between Stow and me.

  But I couldn’t tell whether Stow presented unusual danger to one and all of us or whether the guards positioned themselves in the same way regardless of who the prisoner might be.

  Stow slid his lanky figure into the chair opposite me. Blond men don’t age well unless they have the best food, drink, toiletries, vacations and doctors, all of which Stow had. He looked almost robust, his lean frame lithe and muscular, his smooth skin lightly tanned. “What am I doing here, you ask? Is that a suitable question for my counsel of record?”

  His counsel of record? His official lawyer? What was he talking about? I had not been retained by this man.

  As if reading my thoughts, he said, “You might want to check in a day or two to see whether the retainer has been deposited in your account. You may rest assured that you’ll not be held up at V & C. I’ve registered your name.”

  “You’ve informed the prison’s Visitors and Communication office that I’m your lawyer?” I almost yelled.

  “Surely you didn’t think you’d get into this secure area using that fax from the warden? Anybody can fake one of those.”

  “How do you know so much about faking documents?”

  He laughed. “Easy, Portal. Easy. All will be revealed.”


  I felt as I had in my youth when John Stoughton-Melville had laughed at my innocence, my lack of sophistication, my stupidity. As a result, I protested vigorously. “I’ll need a court order to remove myself from the record.”

  “Removed from my case? I doubt it, Portal,” he taunted. “I’m your first client in how many years? You’d look like a fool having but a single client and unable even to get along with him!”

  “Stow, you bastard ...” I forgot about the palms-and-feet rule. I rose a couple of inches from my chair.

  A look of alarm passed across Stow’s aristocratic features. I wasn’t impressed. He was perfectly capable of feigning fear or any other emotion he cared to display. “Ellis,” he said, “I advise you not to show feelings of any sort in here. Not only would you face certain ejection, you might cause me to have to be moved to a far less comfortable situation. Do you take my meaning?”

  Yes, I took his meaning. Somehow he had contrived to make me his lawyer without my consent. I glanced at the guards.

  Stow lowered his voice. “I want you to conduct this conversation as though it had no emotional content whatsoever. I want you to listen and I want you to respond. But I do not want those guards to know that there is any tension between us. Do you understand?”

  “Patronizing me as always, Stow,” I said. “You seem to forget that I can walk out of here at any moment. You can’t keep me.”

  “We’ll see about that,” he said amicably, with a perfect imitation of his best smile. “We may soon learn that I can certainly keep you, as you so quaintly put it.”

  “I’m no longer in a position to fear you, Stow,” I responded with more assurance than I felt, “so I suggest you forget about my helping you.”

  “Why did you come up here if you’re unwilling to help me?” he asked.

  “You got to Queenie somehow. I don’t know what you promised her, but I want her to have everything she needs. I came because of her. But now I see that was stupid. I don’t know what you want, but I can’t help. You need an experienced lawyer, not one who’s been away from the bar as long as I have.”

  “You were the best, Ellis,” he said, “and I assume you’ll return to being so.”

  This was such patent nonsense. At my age? I would have laughed in his face had I not taken to heart his warning about the guards. “You never found me to be a good lawyer, Stow. And you were shocked when I was elevated to the bench.”

  “That’s only your perception, Ellis,” he said, moving his hands in a small gesture that could be perceived as lightly dismissing some harmless comment. Still, the guards did not move. “Your own sense of inadequacy caused you to believe that I undervalued your worth.” He smiled pleasantly.

  I smiled pleasantly, too, and continued to speak evenly and conversationally. “You’re a hypocrite and a liar, Stow. The last time I saw you, you threatened my life. You humiliated me at Harpur’s funeral.”

  The mention of the funeral was cruel, and I regretted it. I saw Stow’s jaw tighten. He looked as though he were fighting tears. Much as I detested him, I was reminded that once he had felt pity for me.

  “Look, Stow, as I said, I came here today because Queenie Johnson reminded me that when I needed help, you came through for me. I don’t know how you got to her—or how you got to Anne, either.”

  At the mention of my ex-wife’s name, I thought I saw him flinch, but I could have been mistaken.

  “If you really expect me to help you,” I said, “you’re going to have to tell me in detail what’s going on, Stow. How did you figure that Queenie would talk me into seeing you? And most importantly, what have you done? How can you possibly be accused of murder?”

  When I realized what I had just said, I felt a jolt of alarm, and my eyes shot toward the guard who stood nearest the table. His eyes met mine and in them I saw boredom. How many conversations between supposed killers and their lawyers had he heard? He wasn’t a young man. Like most people who get a government job, he’d probably worked in the prison the better part of his life. This was all old news to him, even if the client was as distinguished as Stow.

  I plunged ahead. “I’m asking you again, Stow. What are you doing here?”

  He took a deep breath, stagy and prolonged. “I’m here because no other facility had the security necessary to protect a Supreme Court judge,” he said. “I’m not really under the jurisdiction of the Feds. I’m really on a provincial remand. My being here is a courtesy the federal correctional system is extending to the court.”

  Even though I hadn’t practiced law in a long time, I was used to this sort of conversation. I was used to clients taking what my young friend Nicky called “the long way in.”

  “Stow,” I said, “interesting as I find these technicalities, that is not what I’m asking about. I want to know ...”

  “Why I’m detained at all? Because I choose to be detained. I choose to be in custody so that the ridiculousness of the accusation against me can be made evident. And so that the charges will be dealt with as expeditiously as possible.”

  I took a deep breath myself. “Stow,” I said, “Harpur’s death was from natural causes. We all know that. We ...”

  I couldn’t go on. The night she had died, I’d held her frail body in my own arms. She’d been failing for days. The thought of anyone murdering her was absurd.

  “Ellis, you’re the only one who can understand all this. You’ve got to get me off.”

  “Get you off? You sound like a common crook.”

  “You’ve got to!”

  He reached across the table, grabbed my hand and touched the gold ring I wore.

  It was then that the guards sprang into action and dragged him out of my sight.

  Chapter 4

  Back in the city, I checked my bank account and discovered that the balance was twenty thousand dollars more than it had been the last time I’d looked. I didn’t know what the going retainer for a murder case was, so I had no opinion about the appropriateness of the amount. But I considered complaining to the bank manager about allowing access to the account without my approval. And I also considered sending a blistering letter to Stow objecting to his audacious assumptions.

  Then I thought, the hell with it.

  Not far from the courthouse at 361 University Avenue, I’d seen a sign in the window of a walk-up on Queen Street West. For rent was a tiny two-room office space above a store in one of the few remaining early twentieth-century buildings on the street. Unlike Queen Street East, where Queenie had her clinic, Queen Street West had been a haven for artists for decades. The Art Gallery of Ontario and the Ontario College of Art and Design were at Dundas and McCaul. Queen itself was thick with clubs and cafés and bookstores. As Tootie likes to say, “It rocks.”

  I gave the young man who was the landlord of the building the whole twenty thousand from Stow in cash, and in return, he gave me a paid-up one-year lease on my new office. I felt absurdly happy at having a law office again. I sat on the old wooden floor, its planks roughened by time, and stared at the peeling walls, planning what I might do with the place, until daylight faded and it was time to go downstairs for some supper.

  A man who once lived for five years in the wilderness with no roof over his head except what he could construct out of found material can function in basic accommodations more easily than other men, and he also knows how to make just about any space habitable. Over the next few days, I cleaned the rooms and furnished them—rather too grandly for their situation, I must admit—from one of the most expensive furniture stores in town.

  When my interior decoration was complete, I realized I had pretty much re-created the judicial chambers of my hero and mentor, B. Sheldrake Tuppin. When I was in law school the first time and he reigned atop Old City Hall, his chambers had been furnished in standard 1960s government-issue chairs, desk and bookcases. Reproductions of these objects were now called “heritage replications,” and each piece had cost me about what Magistrate Tuppin had earned in a year.

 
My office was cozy, quaint and conducive to the task I now set myself, which was to research Stow’s case. Fortuitously, my place was within easy walking distance of the law library at Osgoode Hall.

  Which is where I was returning from on a late November afternoon when I opened the street door to find someone waiting for me in the shadows at the bottom of the stairs.

  I thought it was a homeless person, and I felt first annoyance, then guilt, then a stab of recollection. I hadn’t helped Queenie’s clients get ready for winter as I had promised. Had the reprehensible Johnny Dirt searched me out to threaten me? I knew he was capable of violence. I steeled myself.

  “Who are you and what are you doing here?” I demanded.

  I heard a low rippling laugh, and simultaneously, I realized that the hallway was filled not with the acrid reek of unwashed hair and flesh, but with sweet citrus, a scent that teased my nostrils with some vague remembrance of another life.

  “So sorry,” a female voice breathed. “Didn’t mean to scare you. Your neighbor downstairs said I could wait here. Couldn’t find the light switch ...”

  By the time these words were uttered, I had found the switch. I hit it, and the narrow old hallway with its single flight of stairs sprang into golden light. Softly illuminated in the glow was a person whom I had completely forgotten in the years since I’d climbed out of the river valley and made my way slowly back into a life of respectability.

  “Aliana,” I said, “you look sensational! What are you doing here? I thought you were in the Middle East.”

  “Was. Now I’m back. Are you glad to see me?”

  I should have been. Aliana Caterina, now in her forties, seemed to be at the peak of the lush Italianate loveliness she’d possessed all her life: thick black hair, olive skin, full lips meant for kissing. It seemed to me that she had been perfect from the first time I’d seen her when she was just a kid helping her father, Vincenzo Caterina, my father’s assistant in the construction trade.

  “Sure,” I said. “Want to come upstairs?”

  Within minutes, she was cradling a tall dark drink in her long fingers. It was cola. Aliana knew I was no longer a drinker. It seemed everybody knew. “I thought you loved being a foreign correspondent for the Daily World.”