Red Mass

by Rosemary Aubert

  I nearly turned away from the Yule cliché, but somehow I found myself sliding into a pew just in time to hear the sermon. The gist of it was that it’s never too late for a new beginning. I wondered whether picking up the threads of the past counted as starting all over again.

  The next day, the Feast of Stephen, found Aliana Caterina once again in my office.

  “I’m doing an article on you and your involvement with Tent City,” she said without preamble.

  “I’m not involved,” I protested. “I’ve just gone down there a couple of times to help out.”

  “What I’m thinking,” she continued as if she hadn’t heard me, “is that it would really enhance your chances of obtaining the new judicial appointment if we can tie together what you’re doing for the homeless now and what you did for them when you were on the bench.”

  “Aliana, please don’t assume anybody even remembers what I did as a judge. It was all a very long time ago.”

  “Not so long,” she replied. “You make us sound ancient.”

  “Not you,” I teased. “You’re by far the youngest woman I’m seeing at the moment.”

  She did a double take. “You’re seeing women?” Her voice lost its light quality and became professionally investigative.

  “I have no social life. What I was about to say is that public attention is probably more detrimental than helpful to one who is seeking a judgeship. Keeping a low profile would be more appropriate under the circumstances.”

  “What other women are you seeing?”

  “Aliana, please.” Why had I jested to such a bloodhound?

  She pushed away her half-finished lunch, many dollars’ worth of take-out sushi. “One thing’s for sure,” she said. “The last article I wrote got City Council to back down on its plan to evict the Tent City denizens by the end of this month.”

  “City ordinances would have prevented an eviction at this time of year, anyway,” I corrected her.

  The scent of lemon and jasmine wafted toward me. “You were going to go to bat for them legally!” she said, bringing herself nose to nose with me. “You were going to use the anti-eviction laws to save their tents and shacks. Just as if they lived in rental properties! That’s brilliant, Ellis. Are you still considering it?” I saw her slip her hand into her bag.

  “Before you start interviewing again, kiddo, let me tell you that it was just an idea. I’m too busy to be building up precedent-threatening cases unless it’s a last-resort scenario.”

  “And you don’t see Tent City that way?”

  I heard a minute click. “Turn that thing off.”

  Aliana lifted her hand. A tape recorder the size of a lipstick sat on her palm. “It’s off.”

  “Listen, Aliana,” I said, “there’s a strong chance public opinion is going to save Queenie and her band of vagabonds. For one thing, Torontonians are capable of quite a bit of humanitarian generosity. Queenie tells me that ordinary people come down quite regularly with donations of food and clothing, especially now that the weather has gotten so cold.”

  “Is Queenie Johnson the woman you’re seeing?”

  Now it was my turn to smile mysteriously. “I’ll confess if you’ll give me something.”

  “What?”

  “How would a person get into Riverside Hospital? Don’t pretend you don’t know, you wrote about it last month. I saw the article. You got in. How?”

  “Well I didn’t have SARS or bird flu, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “It’s not,” I said. She was stalling.

  “Ellis,” she said, “anybody who so much as goes near there stands a chance of being incarcerated for at least ninety days. Why would you want to risk that?”

  “Didn’t you risk it, Aliana? Didn’t you risk being quarantined when you wrote that piece? Obviously you were not quarantined and not ill, either. So?”

  “What’s your angle?” Her voice was even and low, the voice, I thought, of a conspirator. No, the voice of a deal-maker.

  “I’m not at liberty to say,” I answered, trying to keep my tone light, as if the whole query were a joke.

  But Aliana wasn’t a joker when it came to her work. “Ellis,” she said, “you tell me what’s going on with Justice Stoughton-Melville’s defense, and I’ll tell you how I got into Riverside.”

  I thought about it for a moment.

  “I can’t,” I finally said.

  “Ditto.”

  Queenie was the woman I was seeing. At least for New Year’s Eve. “It’s just business,” she’d said cryptically. “I can’t explain. I’m paying. Will you come?”

  It had been quite a while since I’d worn a tuxedo and quite a while since I’d spoken with my son except for a few words of holiday greeting at Anne’s Christmas brunch. I knocked on his door, hoping to borrow cuff links.

  “You look real handsome in a tuxedo, Dad,” Tootie Beets told me. “Jeffrey’s all dressed up, too. You guys look like twins.”

  I have to say that both Jeffrey and I did look sensational in our black ties, but “twins” was not the appropriate comparison of me and my son. He looked like his mother: blond, slim. Unlike Ellen, whose dark curls, dusky complexion and solid build were just like my own.

  “These belonged to Granddad,” Jeffrey said, as he handed me a pair of gold cuff links with a delicate scroll incised into them.

  “Your mother’s father always had beautiful jewelry,” I said. “He gave your mother something new every birthday.”

  Jeffrey kept his eyes on the bits of gold in my palm. “Wrong granddad,” he said. “They belonged to your father. Gramma gave them to me when I was confirmed.”

  “My father! I never knew he had anything made of gold. He was a working man. A—”

  “Keep them, Dad,” Jeffrey said. “Maybe someday you’ll have another son. You can give them to him.”

  “Jeffrey—my boy! Why would you say that? You’re my one and only son.”

  “Don’t be so sure. You’re a hottie,” Tootie declared.

  I blushed at the vote of confidence and headed out for Queenie’s place. Her house was on a short street in an old restored downtown neighborhood. Once it must have been a worker’s cottage, but it had come up in the world. A white fence surrounded the one-story bungalow. There were no curtains on the two windows that graced the front of the place, but brightly painted shutters seemed to glow in the faint illumination of a nearby street lamp. She was very secretive about her living arrangements. “Just call me on your cell when you get here and I’ll come out,” she’d said.

  The little dead-end street was alive with people leaving for parties or arriving. I was watching the action and wondering how long before Queenie would appear to join me and my hired limo when, through the window of the car, my eyes caught a striking figure partially visible in the sidewalk’s shadows. A small woman in a low-cut, close-fitting black dress, revealed by the opening in her long black coat, stood there. She patted her upswept hair, which, in the light of a nearby street lamp, looked white. She touched a finger to her necklace of black stones. And then she pulled the coat closed, hiding a smooth and youthful throat.

  I looked away. I was filled with such loneliness that I wished, as Aliana had suggested, that I really was seeing a woman.

  The limo door opened, and I jerked to attention. Without a word, Queenie slid into the seat beside me.

  I stared at her in astonishment. Again, she touched her hair and the necklace at her throat. “What’s the matter, Your Honor?” she said. “Do I look okay?”

  “I didn’t even recognize you,” I replied. “You look beautiful, Queenie.”

  “You don’t look half bad yourself,” she answered.

  Often, in the good/bad old days, I had been a fixture at head tables across the city. Elevated at the front of the room. Gazed at by people either drunk and starving or drunk and stuffed. Trapped into talking to pompous strangers.

  Now I was experiencing a new twist on the old arrangement. I was the guest of honor�
��s date! “You should have told me!” I whispered in Queenie’s ear as she stood to accept the ovation of the distinguished public health supervisors who had voted her the most valuable health-care provider of the year. “I would have brought you an orchid corsage.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “You’re cute—quaint. But this is just a New Year’s party given by some people I’m on committees with.”

  “Some? It looks like a few hundred to me,” I told her as we looked down over the room, where crystal and silver glowed softly on white linen.

  “I didn’t bring you here to honor me,” she said. “I brought you here for good luck.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The person you’re with at midnight on New Year’s Eve is the person you’ll be with most during the year,” she said.

  The van pulls up. Queenie and I stand shoulder to shoulder so the drunks behind us can’t steal our spot in the line. She reaches up to take the cup of soup. Her hand trembles and she spills a few drops. She spills more when I push her out of my way. “Happy New Year to you, too, ” she spits at me.

  “Want to dance, Your Honor?”

  Some idiot is playing a trumpet. I take her in my arms. It’s like holding a bundle of Goodwill donations. We whirl around and around on the icy pavement until she falls and I fall on top of her. “Did you learn to dance in finishin’ school?” she slurs. I’m laughing too hard to answer.

  “You don’t know how to dance, Queenie,” I whispered.

  “Try me!”

  She leaned against me, the top of her head touching my jaw. Her perfume was the scent of musk and rose. Surprised, I remembered her scent of wood smoke from the distant past. I held her lightly, thinking that I liked wood smoke better than musk, and slowly we began to circle the dance floor. Maybe she was concentrating on her steps, but she said not a word during the tune. When it was over, I led her back to her seat. From our vantage point, I looked down on a room that I suddenly realized was full of medical personnel.

  “Queenie,” I said, “will you do something for me?”

  She glanced up. The room’s low light was not reflected in her eyes. They were dark and unreadable, but her whole demeanor seemed charged with expectation. “I’d do anything for you, Your Honor,” she said. “For old times’ sake. You must know that by now.”

  I moved my head closer to hers. “You know a lot of doctors and hospital administrators,” I whispered. “I need you to help me find a way to get into Riverside. Before you say no, I must tell you that if I don’t see for myself the layout of the floor where Harpur died, I won’t be able to defend Stow. And don’t say the floor plan will be different now. From maps sent to me by Ellen, I know it isn’t. But,” I added, “they’re not enough. I must get into the facility. Will you help me?”

  Before she could answer, the master of ceremonies approached with the mayor in tow. Queenie took the mayor’s hand, and was then swept up in a crowd of people offering their congratulations. Too soon, the band announced it was midnight. Amid the balloons and noisemakers, I searched for Queenie in the crowd, but she was nowhere to be found. Sullenly, I drove home in my rented limo. Happy New Year, Your Honor, you old fool.

  “Do the homeless people sleep outside even when the ground is frozen? How do they wash? How do they make a fire? Mommy says they can eat at Osgoode Hall and lawyers—even judges—serve them like waiters. Is that true?”

  I was reluctantly preparing to visit Tent City and its New Year’s Day dinner. My grandson, Angelo, who had stopped by with his mother, was begging to go with me. I hadn’t slept all night, realizing I’d asked Queenie a stupid question and she had faded into the congratulatory crowd to avoid answering me.

  “Please let me go with you, Grandpa,” Angelo begged.

  “Take him,” Ellen said. “There’ll be lots of volunteers down there today. Besides, I want him to see how other people live,” she added. “It will be a good lesson.”

  Yes, I thought, a good lesson not to grow up like your grandpa. “Okay, then, kid. It’s me and you,” I told Angelo. “Get ready.”

  He talked the whole way there. “Why didn’t we take the streetcar, Grandpa? Homeless people don’t ride in cars, do they? I think it would be better to go like they go. Should I say Happy New Year to them? Do you think their New Year could really be happy if they have to live outside?”

  I was nearly worn out with question-answering by the time I parked the car and crossed Queen Street to climb down. Before descending, we stood for a moment on the bridge. “Wow!” Angelo said. “I didn’t know there would be so many people.”

  I didn’t either. The population of Tent City seemed to have doubled. The narrow bank of the river was jammed with hundreds, about a third of whom were children. Frigid wind off the river pierced the fur-lined hood of my parka. I reached down and pulled Angelo’s wool cap over his ears, adjusted his scarf. Cold as it was, some of the children there had no hats, scarves or gloves.

  “They’re freezing, Grandpa,” Angelo said. He pulled off his mittens and handed them to a child who backed away as if frightened by my grandson’s offering.

  “Put them back on, son,” I said to Angelo.

  Reluctantly, he did as he was told and followed me wordlessly through the underdressed and shivering crowd. We made our way toward a large white tent where a portable stove billowing a cloud of steam gave off peculiar cooking smells. Stirring the pots was the hazy silhouette of Queenie.

  I approached gingerly, feeling all sorts of emotions. So I had miscalculated the appropriate time for asking her a favor? She should have understood how important that favor was to me. After all, she was the one who’d wanted me to defend Stow. She was the one who preached that friends should help each other out. And she was the one who had disappeared rather than answer me.

  “This must be Angelo,” I heard her say. “Haven’t seen you since you were a little baby.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Angelo said, taking off his gloves once more and accepting Queenie’s outstretched hand. “Grandpa and I are here to help. What would you like us to do?”

  I smiled at this exchange, but Queenie paid no attention to me. “You can both help serve,” she said to Angelo, gesturing toward a huge pot of chili or stew. “You can hand up the bowls and your grandpa can ladle out. How about it?”

  My grandson stared doubtfully at the parade of shabby figures lined up for the contents of those pots. There were other smells in the tent besides the food. Sterno. Coffee. Baked goods. Just a hint of the smell of the street. I thanked God it was winter.

  “Cool, Grandpa,” he finally said. “Let’s get going.” We worked in silence, Angelo and I juggling bowls, at the same time handing out cheese cubes and bread and fruit. I kept waiting for Queenie to take a minute from her own tasks to come see how we were doing, but even when the homeless were finished and the volunteers were having their meal, she didn’t stop by.

  But Nicky McPhail did.

  “Yo, Ellis,” the young lawyer said, “starting the year off with a good deed, I see. And enlisting the help of relatives, yet.” He sat down with Angelo and me for hot drinks at a table littered with paper plates, plastic cups and discarded cutlery. “What a sterling example!”

  Angelo seemed properly subdued at the number of people in Toronto who needed food and clothing. His legs dangling over the edge of the bench on which we sat, he tried to balance hot chocolate and a butter tart in one hand, as he observed the others doing. “They sure make good tarts at the food bank,” he said, but he sounded like he was only being polite.

  “I don’t think I get this,” Nicky said. He was watching the action, listening to the slurps and gulps of hundreds of people filling their bellies. I thought he was referring to the couple in front of us. The girl’s hair was bright green and the guy’s blue. Both of them were dressed in long yellow plastic bags with “Toronto Parks and Recreation” printed on them in black letters. I hoped they had sweaters or sweatshirts underneath.

  “Young people today,
” I said, grinning.

  “No. I mean Stow,” he said. “Maybe he doesn’t talk because he’s innocent. And if he’s innocent, then he’s being framed. But why? By whom? The police, to save face now because they failed to thoroughly investigate Harpur’s death five years ago? I’m beginning to know those disclosure files by heart, and I can’t see where the Crown claims anything about Somatofloran except that it alone couldn’t have killed Harpur. I can’t see any evidence that Stow augmented the effect of the drug in any way.”

  “No,” I answered, a little concerned that Nicky didn’t seem able to take a break from the case long enough to concentrate on the humble New Year’s feast.

  “So you agree it could be a trumped-up case?”

  This was neither the time nor the place. “Look, Nicky, today’s a holiday, and Angelo and I ...”

  “Malicious prosecution. Maybe it’s malicious prosecution.”

  “Are you accusing Ellen of something like that?”

  “Why not? She’s a sharp one—and it looks like she’s done her homework. Her name is on just about every document we’ve checked.”

  I couldn’t let him get away with criticizing my daughter. “She’s the Crown. Of course she’s going to sign off on potential exhibits. But she’s also ...” I tipped my head toward Angelo. Nicky took the hint and shut up.

  Now, I caught a glimpse of Queenie. She was hoisting a giant pot so that one of the volunteers could scour it. Angelo saw her too and walked over to lend a hand.

  It’s freezing. I’m lying in a doorway, Queenie curled up beside me. My arm strays to her waist, encircles it. We fall asleep like that for hours. But when we wake up in the morning, she slaps me. Hard. And tells me I’m a dirty drunk who should keep his filthy hands to himself.

  “Ellis?”

  “Sorry, Nicky. I should just keep an eye on Angelo.” I trained my eyes on my grandson, who had helped move the pot and was now deep in conversation with Queenie. “I wouldn’t worry about anything as imaginative as framing people or prosecuting them for punishment or to prove some point other than their guilt. That’s not what Ellen’s about. I’ve spent as many hours going through those boxes as you have. There’s little in them except photocopies of useless stuff: endless police memo books, Pipperpharmat annual reports, junk. I’m not only mystified about Stow’s case. I’m mystified about Ellen’s. What makes her think she’s got a case strong enough to nail my client? It looks weak to me.”