Red Mass

by Rosemary Aubert

I did not use my extra time trying to get any information from Stow. I did not use it to find my son and ask him why he was signing important legal papers. I did not use it to learn what was ailing Anne or Sal.

  I used it to look for Queenie. For the first time in our long friendship I could not do without her company.

  I went first to have a look at the clinic. It had only been a week or so since the operation had been shut down, but already a “For Rent” sign had been posted on the front window. Storefronts with offices above went fast on Queen Street. Queenie’s clinic would soon be replaced, probably by something far more upscale, another antique shop or art gallery.

  I decided to explore the valley, check a few likely spots for Queenie’s clients to have holed up. I turned away from the clinic and headed back to my car. I was just about to unlock the door when a ragged man rounded the corner, raised his hand and shouted a slurred greeting in my direction.

  “Hey, you there. Yo!” he called.

  Having been a beggar myself, I’m not a man who flees the needy. “Yes?” I answered, reaching for the spare change in my pocket.

  The man came nearer. When he was about ten or twelve feet away, he stopped. Just what I needed! Johnny Dirt. A smile cracked his filthy face, showing his stained and broken teeth. “Sir!” he cried. “Your Honor!”

  After several weeks of bowing and scraping to Justice McKenzie, I had almost forgotten that in this other world, the world of the derelict citizens of the back streets, there were those who remembered my former reputation.

  He eyed my hand in my pocket. I withdrew it quickly. I didn’t want to look like I was reaching for a weapon. Even in my lowest days when I had had to defend myself from ruffians on a regular basis, I had never been armed, not even with a piece of sharpened metal or a rock.

  “That’s right, Your Honor,” Johnny said. “You take that hand out of your pocket. You don’t gotta give no money to me. You give enough to us all, and I’m grateful.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean, Johnny.” Was the man drunk?

  “I changed my mind about you when I seen how you helped down at Tent City,” he replied. “In the winter when we was freezin’ our butts off down there and you was takin’ the trouble to teach us stuff ... Made me wish I could do something for you—like pay you back.”

  “No need,” I said, “unless you’d like to tell me where Queenie is today.”

  “Sure, man. She’s down in the valley, north of the viaduct between Bloor and the Pottery Road Bridge,” he blurted. “You could find her behind the willow trees where them boards from the old factory are stickin’ out of the ground, but don’t tell nobody I’m the one who told you. She’s got rules and I respect them.”

  “Thanks, Johnny,” I replied. “I’m glad we’re not enemies anymore.” I stuck out my hand for him to shake.

  “Don’t push it, man,” he said, turning away.

  About a mile north of the bridge at Queen Street, the Bloor Viaduct, a high multiple-arched bridge of weathered metal that was one of the most beautiful structures in the city, had been recently fenced with metal poles and mesh to prevent would-be suicides from jumping into the valley below. I negotiated a secret path down into the ravine underneath the bridge. A blue jay screeched in the trees, but the loudest sound was the rush of the Don River swollen by spring rain and the runoff of melted snow.

  Late purple crocuses and early wild daffodils swayed in the slight breeze that bent the new grass in which they danced. Ordinarily, the sweet peace of the valley was as calming to me as a drug. Today, it seemed, I could not be calmed.

  When I got near the location that I thought Johnny Dirt had meant, I stepped off to the side of the path. Behind a tall stand of spindly, leafless trees, I could see the flash of metal—traffic on the Don Valley Parkway. On the other side of the path, the trees were much denser. Years’ worth of sumac made a thick barrier between the path and the river, which was not visible, though I knew where it lay not only from previous experience but also because of the line of stately weeping willows that marked its eastern bank. Near the base of several of the willows, a decayed row of ancient wooden planks rotted at leisure in the mud.

  I stood still and listened. I heard a cardinal, a red-winged blackbird, the faint and distant whiz of cars. I heard, too, as I always can, the sound of the great heart of the city—a pulsation composed of all the sounds made by four million people intent upon living their ordinary lives. I heard the soft breath of a river breeze rustling the grass and the flowers. I heard the river itself. And I heard, faintly audible between me and the water, Queenie’s voice. “There,” she said, “is that better?”

  Yes, I wanted to say. Yes. Yes.

  The dense sumac branches were no barrier. I wove my way through them in a way I had learned from a feral dog. On the pebbles of a narrow beach made by the river in its meandering, a woman lay on a ragged blanket. Bending over her patient was Queenie, her dark silver hair catching the sunlight from the deep green waters. Queenie had a white cloth in her hand, mopping the forehead of the other woman.

  The patient sighed, reached up to touch Queenie’s hand. Queenie nodded, took the cloth away, rose and stepped closer to the water, which bubbled over a riffle of concealed rocks. With the agility of a younger woman, Queenie stooped toward the river and dipped the cloth into it, swirling it in the sparkling water, splashing a little on herself. She wore a light jacket, jeans and hiking boots, and also her nurse’s smock, as pristine and white as the cloth she now wrung out and replaced on the head of the woman.

  “Okay,” she said, “I’ll come back later.” She packed a few things into a small medical bag and stood, brushing the dust of the pebbled beach from her jeans. Then she saw me. “I’ll just check on a few of the others,” she told her patient. She walked a little way down the bank of the river, the sun off the water dappling her lithe body as she moved among the willows. I followed closely on her heels. I stumbled over pebbles to get nearer. I let the bare stalks of last summer’s wild grass slap my legs, the twigs of willows scratch my face. It seemed that now nothing could distract me, slow me. The time had come for me to admit that Queenie and I were beyond friendship. I caught up with her and grabbed her, perhaps a little too roughly. She didn’t protest, simply turned and found her way into my arms. As if we had practiced the moves all our lives, our lips met, cautiously at first and then deeply, my tongue exploring the recesses of her mouth. Without reservation, she pressed her small body into mine.

  I grabbed the rich thickness of her hair, hair I already knew the heft of. She pulled away and put her cheek on mine. It was cool and comforting, but with a suggestion of inner heat that stirred me.

  “I like this,” she said, emitting a ripple of laughter that was as soft as the sound of the river kissing its stony shore.

  “Queenie, I love you,” I said, hoping my legs would not give way. “Can you think kindly of the old fool who should have said this a long time ago?”

  And the few brief moments we seemed to spend there beside the Don became an entire afternoon, where two lovers in a pebbly Eden hardly noticed the sun sinking behind the shallow bank and the green waters turning black.

  When the sky’s azure finally relented into purple, I stroked her face and said, “It’s been so long since I’ve been with a woman, my love, that I was afraid I wouldn’t know what to do.”

  We had moved from the beach into a sheltered area where snow still lingered under willow branches that shaded the underbrush from full sun. Anyone else our age would have thought of catching cold or worse lying on the cold earth of the spring forest. But not us. Queenie and I were used to far worse. I thought of the irony of two old ex-bums coming together at last in an environment far from silk sheets and soft mattresses.

  Queenie jumped to her feet and pulled on her smock and jeans. “Good Lord, you haven’t forgotten one thing. You made me forget what I’m here for. Look at the time. I’ve got people I have to see down here. Come with me.” She reached down and pulled me
up. “You know all those people who disappeared when Tent City was burned?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” she said, “I’m still helping them out. It’s going to get dark pretty soon. You have to come along. So let’s go.” As if I would consider another alternative!

  As the light faded, Queenie and I made our way from camp to camp in the valley, searching out the displaced and the dispossessed. I held the flashlight; she told me where she wanted to go. We visited the ill and the lonely, those who sheltered beneath the trees and those who hid in caves behind the narrow expanses of pebbled beach. We found the old curled under tattered blankets, and the young stretched out beneath the northern stars with nothing to protect them. We listened to woes and laughed at jokes and shared stories.

  When we finished, the sky over the eastern rim was just beginning to turn from indigo to pink.

  “I’ll take you home, Queenie,” I said. “It’s been a long night.”

  “I need to walk,” she replied. “To think about things.” Her face was tired, her body was stooped. She was wary now, sad and almost, I thought, defeated. But she kissed me on the cheek before she walked away.

  In my car, staring in the mirror at my bleary eyes and gray stubble, I wondered if I’d lost my mind again. Yesterday had been spent more productively than any I’d spent in ten years, but today was supposed to be my day in court, the day when I must produce witnesses for the defense or suffer the infamy of defeat.

  Lucky at love, unlucky at cards ... Maybe I should have spent the previous day working in my office.

  Or not.

  Chapter 17

  I was foggy-brained by the time I got to the courthouse, so exhausted that I almost missed Nicky waving at me from the doorway.

  “Stow left a message with Security that he needs to see you before you go in,” Nicky said, sounding scared. Without comment, I made my way on foot through Security and down to the cells.

  Despite Ellen’s insistence that my remembrance of the syringe incident was irrelevant, I felt that I must inform Stow. In the few moments I had before I confronted him, I decided that the quickest way to accuse him of being a liar was to immediately remove myself from his case and take the consequences. But before I had a chance to utter a word, Stow, as always, trumped me.

  In the parking garage beneath the courthouse, a cavernous, complex, concrete labyrinth that seemed to stretch in every direction, I fought for breath because of the exhaust fumes of three prisoner vans that lumbered by. The fourth van came to a stop in front of me near the short driveway between the judges’ parking area and the fortified steel garage door that led to the unloading dock of the cells. A side door slid open, and a guard motioned me to enter.

  I sidled in beside Stow onto the wire-mesh seat of the van. He signaled to the guard to unlock the shackles that bound his ankles to a loop on the floor. I was astonished when the guard complied. This was my first experience with a prisoner van that did not smell of sweat, urine or disinfectant. Indeed, the only odor was a faint one of Stow’s cologne. Outside, the garage was a cacophony of slamming doors, trampling feet and the grinding of gears on the metal door that separated judges from prisoners, but inside the van, it was as still as a church.

  “Ellis,” and here Stow clutched my wrinkled jacket in excitement, “I tried to have you reached all yesterday. I wanted you to know that your appointment is a fait accompli.”

  I was astonished at his gall.

  “Don’t sit there looking stupid, Portal. As soon as this trial is over—whatever the result—the announcement will be made. You will become a judge again.”

  To say I was angry is to underestimate my revulsion. The man—even in a prison van, indicted for murder—knew how to put me on the defensive and make me inarticulate with rage. “St-Stow, I know you take consummate pleasure in be-bedeviling me, but not any ...”

  He seemed to hear nothing I was saying. “I’m taking the stand. Today.”

  “What?”

  “Tell McKenzie I’m ready to talk.”

  “You are crazy. We’re not prepared. One way or another, you’re determined that we lose this case, unless, that is, we plead complete and total insanity then and now.”

  “It’s almost ten o’clock. Let’s not keep the judge waiting, Ellis. You look like you slept in a tree last night, but you’re still working for me, and I’m telling you that in eight minutes, I’m going to testify.”

  Before I could reply to these words, which I considered the bombast of a seriously deranged man, the rear door of the van slammed open and two guards took Stow off for processing. I felt as helpless as a baby, no sleep for twenty-four hours, dirty and bedraggled, unable to bring Stow down from his hysteria and at a loss to deal with it.

  I gowned quickly, hoping to have a brief word with Nicky, but at the door of the courtroom I was surprised by my ex-wife. She looked, as usual, the picture of a Toronto society matron, but even her exceptional poise and exquisite grooming couldn’t hide a certain air of being distraught. Something was amiss. Sal?

  “Ellis, we need to talk.”

  “Anne,” I said, glancing at my watch, “I can’t possibly talk now. Unless it’s about Sal, and even so ...”

  A look I hadn’t seen in twelve years crossed Anne’s face. The look she used to give me when I made a promise to her that had no chance of being fulfilled.

  “I will talk to you later, Anne,” I said more assertively, and I gave her hand a brief squeeze. I felt like everyone was coming at me at once.

  “Grandpa,” I heard a voice pipe up. It was Angelo, arriving with his uncle Jeffrey.

  “Why are you all here today?” I asked. “Why isn’t this child in school?”

  “We want to see who’s going to win,” Angelo said. “Mommy said it’s almost over. She said the judge might talk. Plus, if a judge wants to talk in court, he can. For as long as he wants. Is that true, Grandpa?”

  My ire rose by the minute. Why had Ellen allowed the family to come? Whatever happened, the day would not provide pleasant listening. Did my daughter want her little son to witness the grim closing addresses to the jury? Today might well be the day that Ellen would remind the twelve exactly how, in her submission, the evidence proved that Stow had murdered his wife.

  “Well, Grandpa, is it true or not? Can a judge talk as long as he wants? Can he say whatever he feels like saying?”

  The child was, in fact, pretty much correct. A judge could filibuster in court to his heart’s content, unless he feared that a higher court, the Court of Appeals, might reverse him or render what he said ridiculous by a ruling of its own.

  Was Angelo reflecting something Ellen had said about the case? And if so, to which judge was he referring? To McKenzie? To Stow? Or to me?

  I motioned for Nicky to sit beside me. What was Stow going to do about it—fire me? Nicky didn’t hesitate. He plunked down his files and began a flow of words. “I tried to get you all day yesterday and all night, too. Where were you?”

  “I was out,” I whispered.

  “Didn’t you have your cell phone? How could you be incommunicado at a time like ...”

  The loud knock of the deputy interrupted us. The court sprang to its feet as McKenzie climbed the few steps to his seat.

  A fresh pile of folders sat on the desk in front of Nicky, and, as the clerk officially opened court for the day, I tried to take one. I needed a clue as to what he’d been working on since court had adjourned. Good thing one of us had been working. Nicky didn’t take the hint, only straightened the files self-consciously and laid his hands on top of them.

  “Mr. Portal,” McKenzie began the moment the deputy had poured his water, “have you reached a decision about defense witnesses?”

  I hesitated. What a mess—my first trial finding me so unprepared, so open to condemnation. But like any good lawyer, I decided to bluff.

  “Your Honor,” I began, “my client has indicated to me his intention that I mount a defense on his behalf. We will be calling ...�
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  “Just a moment,” the judge said. “I don’t think I want you to lay out your plan in the absence of the jury. Deputy,” he said to the man at his right, “instruct the matron to bring them in.”

  In the few minutes it took for the jury to arrive, I finally was able to have a whispered conference with Nicky.

  “Tell him we have three witnesses,” Nicky told me, still protecting his notes.

  “But who?”

  “Just tell him three. Trust me, Ellis, it’s the best we can do. I’ll explain as soon as I can.”

  “The jury is present, Your Honor,” the clerk announced.

  The twelve looked eager, excited, their faces fresh and their eyes bright. In just a few hours, they would look haggard, puffy-faced and dazed. Mood swings were part of the game.

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” McKenzie began. “As you will no doubt recall, the case for the Crown has now been fully put before you. The time has come for the accused to answer this case, if he so chooses. He is under no obligation to do so, and, should he choose not to respond to the allegations of the Crown, that choice is not to be construed as reflective of guilt. It is the onus of the Crown to prove to you beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused committed the act for which he has been brought before the court. He may, if he elects to do so, provide full answer and defense.”

  McKenzie turned from the jury and leveled his gaze upon me. “Mr. Portal ...”

  My opening address in Stow’s defense would have to be generic. The jury knew as much as I did about what was going on in my client’s mind, and had as little to gauge his guilt or lack of it.

  I rose; I walked slowly to a position directly in front of the jury box. There was a little collapsible shelf hidden in the decorative wood paneling on the front of the box. I treasured it as a useful prop for manipulating the thoughts and feelings of the jurors.

  I carefully ran my fingers along the molding at the top edge of the paneling, feeling for the small brass knob that would release the shelf.

  As I did this, the jury studied me, those in the front row only inches from my face. I was certainly not as good to look at as Ellen. But human beings, sociable creatures that they are, equate intimacy with familiarity and familiarity with trustworthiness. Just by allowing the jury to be this close, I was already beginning to gain a psychological advantage.