Sing a Worried Song

by William Deverell

  “We call this Lovers’ Leap,” Arthur says, “though none have ever been known to do so.”

  “How charming.” Then it’s right to business: “Mr. Beauchamp, the accused has no visible means of support, no family here, no roots, is known to drink to excess, so I’m going to oppose his release. Sorry.”

  Immediately, she has gotten his goat. He waves a sheaf of papers. “Ms Vickers, I have a score of testimonials. But I suggest we set aside the issue of bail. I should think you’d rather talk instead about pulling the plug on this mess. The local citizenry is out in force today in support of a fellow islander who is known for his unstinting dedication to helping those in need.”

  She seems to be trying not to smile as she stares out at the serene waters of the inlet, Ponsonby Island and its trail of islets.

  He clears his throat and continues: “You surely won’t want a lot of people, particularly those in high office, wondering why you didn’t nail the coffin lid on this stinker before it got into the mainstream media. It’s the kind of light-hearted pathos the public loves, a poor, generous soul under siege by the full power of the state.”

  She tries to smother a laugh, and he realizes he’s been at his pompous worst, sounding like a relic from a century ago.

  “I guess I can see why you wouldn’t want a trial, Mr. Beauchamp. Splashing it all over the media that you got crotched by a female narc at the scene of the crime.”

  The graphic verb “crotched” is new to Arthur. He feels less embarrassment than irritation at her dig — obviously, the story of his humiliation at the old quarry has gone the rounds of the prosecution offices. This competitive scold is clearly itching to take on Arthur Beauchamp, a major test for the young scalp collector, to be delightedly shared with her comrades over a glass of chilled Pinot Grigio.

  “Ms. Vickers, that incident is already a source of ribaldry locally. I don’t give a hoot if the rest of the planet shares in the merriment. However, if you think it enhances your case, please run with it — though I suspect you’re a better lawyer than that.”

  “Sorry, I was out of bounds. Or joking. Forget it.” A shrug, as if she’d expected a richer sense of humour. “Mr. Beauchamp, I have no recourse but to go full speed ahead. We all know the situation: the arresting officer’s vehicle has been stolen. He is determined to give no leeway.”

  “Madam, your arresting officer is a loose cannon. His claim that Dog was part of some vast international conspiracy is a myth of his own wild imagining, is vexatiously ill-founded, and unprovable to boot. You are wasting the public purse on going after small cheese. It’s a picayune case!” His shout is heard by onlookers who have approached too closely. All but Stoney take a few steps back. He’s brandishing a placard: “stop this pervertion of justice!!”

  Vickers remains placid. “If your guy is such small cheese, why has he got A.R. Beauchamp as his lawyer?”

  Arthur fears he’s losing ground. He speaks of the reverberations on Garibaldi, the plea from Constable Pound to settle things down, the certainty that Zoller’s Hummer will be restored to him once the charge is dropped.

  Vickers takes umbrage. “I’m not going to be accused of bartering a dope trafficker’s freedom for a car stolen from a cop. The Crown does not give in to hostage takers. I’ve prepared this case, I’m ready to go to trial on what I’ve got.”

  “Ms. Vickers, in the normal course of business, a trial will be many months away. Doubtless by then a bright and energetic counsel such as yourself will have moved on to greater things. I sense in you an eagerness to test my mettle, so let’s see if you’re up to it. Let us go to trial today.”

  Words fail her. She has been put on the spot, and pride will make her reluctant to turn tail and run. “Hey, I’m up for it — except I don’t have all my witnesses, the drug analyst, the attending officers …”

  “I shall admit the analysis of Cannabis sativa. I’ll admit location, date, and time. None of the other officers witnessed the alleged transaction. Kurt Zoller is your whole case, all the rest is just cake decoration. And to top things off, Zoller is under the apprehension that the trial will be proceeding today. He’s eager, and he’ll never be better prepared.”

  She looks down, traces a finger along a carved heart on the seat, looks up, studies the view, gazes expressionlessly at the several dozen watchers, then more intently at Zoller, standing erect and determined among his little coterie of backers. She knows she has little to lose and a chance to fell a giant.

  “Long as you can sell it to Haywire, game on.”

  §

  When court resumes, Vickers runs through her remaining list: liquor and traffic violations resolved by guilty pleas, fines meted out, trial dates set, adjournments granted. Hayward is testy and distracted, scanning the crowd as if for troublemakers, regularly glancing out the window. Quite a few are still out there, mostly smokers.

  Arthur is down on himself for having got the worst of the battle on Lovers’ Leap. The woman is relentless, And now, having bluffed Vickers into agreeing to the quick trial, he feels unprepared. What if he were to lose? This tight little island would never forgive him.

  Vickers calls Regina v. Zbrinjkowitz, and the prisoner is led from the back to a supportive murmur from the public seats. Hayward’s darting eyes take in all the Free Dog T-shirts.

  He acknowledges Arthur, though without apparent pleasure, wary of tricks and traps. When Arthur proposes they proceed directly to trial, Hayward tenses, his face immobile except for his eyes, which flicker brightly like candles in a breeze as he looks from Arthur to Vickers to the buzzing rabble restless in stackable plastic chairs.

  “Today?”

  “If the court please. Else we shall all be twiddling our thumbs until the late-afternoon ferry.”

  “I set this for a bail hearing. This is unprecedented.”

  “Your Honour has a well-earned reputation for not blindly following precedent. Public agitation has arisen over this case, so Your Honour has a splendid opportunity to bring closure and a return to calmness.”

  “The Crown is in accord?”

  “Ready to proceed,” says Vickers.

  “Me too, Your Honour, sir.” Energetically spoken by Zoller from the front row.

  “Constable, I can’t hear you.”

  Zoller, looking confused, raises his voice. “I’m the arresting officer, sir. Ready to proceed.”

  “I can’t hear you!”

  Zoller yells back: “Auxiliary Constable Zoller! Ready to proceed!”

  “Constable, you will stand when you’re addressing court.”

  Zoller stands at attention; “Yes, sir, Your Honour,” he shouts. “Can you hear me now, sir?”

  “Shut up and sit down!” Hayward looks about wildly, gestures at the scene outside the wide windows, Stoney with his misspelled sign: pervertion of justice. “Look at that. Crazy people out there. Insult to the courts. How can I run a fair trial?”

  “With your usual devotion to justice and fair play,” says Arthur, hoping Hayward will not see his truckling as sarcasm. But he knows this man, his high regard for himself.

  Hayward looks at his watch, at the ceiling, out the window. “Can this be completed today? I have the annual dinner meeting of the Victoria Pressed Flower Society this evening. I am chairman. There are awards to be given out. I am not going to miss the four o’clock to Swartz Bay. Which means we pack up here at three-thirty, not a nanosecond later.”

  Arthur calculates: the lunch break is almost upon them, leaving maybe ninety minutes for an afternoon trial. “Not a problem,” he says.

  “I hope to be brief,” says Vickers, carefully.

  “Take the plea,” Hayward says.

  Arthur places a hand behind Dog’s shoulders and moves him forward two paces, a chess move, a queen’s pawn opening. The clerk reads the charge of trafficking in marijuana and asks how he pleads. Dog looks up a
t Arthur, who whispers the answer.

  “Not guilty,” Dog croaks.

  “Speak up!”

  Dog clears his throat, tries with better result, and the case is put over to two o’clock. “Be warned,” Haywire hollers as he departs. “If we’re not done at three-thirty there’ll be a two-month continuance.”

  §

  While the Women’s Guild is busy in the communal kitchen, preparing soup and sandwiches for the court staff and lingering locals, Arthur heads off to the Brig for a more private lunch, with his breathalyzer expert.

  “Tell me this rig is safe, Arthur,” Jillings says, as the Fargo begins the descent down Shewfelts’ Hill.

  Arthur tests the brakes, and they answer eagerly, without a jolt or squeak. Arthur is disposed to forgive Stoney. I just saved your life, man.

  Jillings frowns at the designer roach clip dangling from the ignition key, with its tooth-like pincers. Arthur doesn’t try to explain its provenance. He is focussed on the trial, the time limits, the need to keep Jillings’s testimony succinct.

  The Brig has taken on the atmosphere of a small, local fair, attendees bantering with Stoney, who, afraid of taking a bath on the T-shirts, has knocked the price down to ten dollars.

  Not unexpectedly, Ballentine J. Bingham is here, presiding at a couple of joined tables bedecked with pitchers of beer and tenanted by an enthralled cluster of Free Doggers.

  “Thirty tons of sinsemilla, boys, and those horse’s apples lost that coastal tub in the fog. You may recall seeing me on TV, calling it the biggest investigative fuckup of the last decade.”

  Arthur and Jillings order the lunch specials, then find a table on the deck, private enough, but Bingham’s foghorn carries out the open doorway. “Yeah, you’re quaffing suds with the guy who got the Rivera gang off. Cost ’em plenty. B.J. Bingham don’t come cheap.”

  Over halibut and chips, Arthur briefs Jillings, asks questions, makes notes. When Stoney wanders by, carting his box of shirts, Arthur excuses himself, catches up to him.

  “Tell your troops to stay away from the windows of the hall, and to stow all their signs and antics. The judge may take it out on Dog. Maybe by remanding him in custody until November.”

  Stoney promises to pull the demonstrators and tries to leave, but Arthur grips his wrist. “We made a deal, Stoney. I am doing my part. Do yours. Release Kurt’s Hummer.”

  “Yeah, but … I ain’t saying you won’t get Dog off, I got utmost faith … but first I got to dump these shirts.” He hauls a bundle of them across the ramp to the store.

  Bingham is passing out cards while giving instructions on how to evade a customs search. “So when they open your bag, you got all your soiled underwear on top, maybe a shit stain on your gonches. They suddenly lose interest in fighting the war on drugs.”

  He catches Arthur’s fierce look. “Hey, Hometown Favourite, how’s it going? Get that little fucker out on bail yet?”

  Arthur lets that slide, suppressing his ire behind a smile that betrays a lack of confidence. The worrier within has raised its ugly little warty head, warning of things going wrong this afternoon. Especially with a wild card like Hayward presiding, jumpy, distracted, fretting about making the flower pressers’ do.

  Vickers is sharp, ambitious. Stripped of its excesses, her case would be simple: Dog sold an ounce of marijuana to an undercover cop.

  Arthur has to get around that simple fact.

  §

  Zoller takes the stand looking so flushed and tightly wound that Arthur surmises all did not go smoothly between him and Vickers. She has tried to pare down the Crown’s case, but it’s soon apparent that her witness is doggedly sticking to his course.

  “Tell us what you did in connection with this case.”

  “Yes, ma’am, being a long-timer resident of this community, I am familiar with an annual ritual known as the Potlatch.”

  “Let’s put that aside for now. Tell us where you went that day.”

  “I have to explain about the Potlatch first. For all intensive purposes what it involves is local growers meeting with big-time traffickers from the mainland …”

  Hayward is studying Zoller with distaste, and interrupts. “How do you know this? Have you ever been to one of these Potlatches?”

  “They’re common knowledge, sir.”

  “I’ll ask again. You ever been to one?”

  “No, sir, not personally.”

  Hayward has realized that this windy witness may become an obstacle to his making the four o’clock. He checks his watch, turns to Vickers. “Can’t we get to the point? This is about a single alleged drug sale, isn’t it?”

  Zoller does not give up. “Well, my theory is this was a ruse …”

  “This court does not decide issues based on irrelevant hearsay.”

  Vickers speaks calmly. “Constable Zoller, just tell us what you saw and did that day.”

  Zoller looks aggrieved, but to give him credit, as Arthur regretfully must, he has been gifted with a never-say-die mindset, a knack for bouncing back. And soon his sad face lifts as he eagerly describes his role-playing as a Devil’s High-Rider, front man for Operation Pot-Snatch.

  Without prodding, but relishing each detail, he describes the crime scene, the abandoned quarry, the dead end where he encountered the accused. Two-by-eight boards stretched over quarried rock comprised Dog’s table, which bore his produce and a simple sign advertising prime organic at thirty dollars a bag.

  Dog was prone in a sleeping bag on an air mattress, but he woke up at Zoller’s approach, rising to his full five feet, one inch, as Zoller drew two bills from his wallet, a twenty and a ten.

  During all this, Hayward constantly checks his watch. His occasional entreaty to hurry it along only wastes more time, as Zoller, who has memorized his many pages of notes, loses his way, and continually has to back up and reload.

  “Quickly,” says Hayward. “Then what?”

  “I handed him the thirty … no, that’s later. First I smelled a bag and detected a strong smell of marijuana, which I am familiar with through previous incidents though I have never in my life smoked it.”

  Hayward groans. “Why should I care?”

  Zoller doesn’t take that as rhetorical. “Well, because my experience in similar drug-related cases has given me insider knowledge, and … ”

  Vickers takes her turn at reining him in. “Did you have a conversation with the accused?”

  “Yes, ma’am, and by the way he gave no indication he recognized me. I asked him if this was good marijuana and he replied in the affirmative, and that was the whole conversation. I then proceeded to give him the thirty dollars and pointed to one of the bags, and he handed it to me.”

  “And is this the bag of marijuana that you bought that day?”

  “You can take it for granite, ma’am, because it has my initials on it and the time.”

  “Exhibit One, Your Honour. And then?”

  “Then he went back onto his air mattress.”

  “No more questions.”

  “Excuse me? I haven’t finished.”

  Vickers sits, a signal that she, at least, has finished.

  “I also questioned him about where his confederates were hiding, and he wouldn’t tell me. I had strong reason to believe …”

  Hayward erupts. “She said no more questions! That’s your job, to answer questions, not rattle on.” Turning to Arthur. “Cross-examination. And I’m looking at the clock, Mr. Beauchamp.” It was nearing three o’clock.

  “Then let’s get to it. Mr. Zoller, when you asked Dog if this was good marijuana, he replied, as you put it, in the affirmative. But in your arrest notes, you don’t have him replying at all.”

  “I wrote down that he nodded and smiled. I took that as affirmative, sir. He was smiling ear to ear.”

  “Did you take a count of the be
er empties lying about?”

  “Yes, sir. Exactly seventeen empty bottles of Lucky Lager were seized in evidence, along with an empty pint bottle of Lamb’s Navy Rum. If you’ll refer to my notes, on page two, near the bottom, you’ll see I concluded that a drinking party had occurred there the night before.”

  Arthur takes a deep breath. “Now, Kurt, you and I have been kicking around this island a long time, and both of us know Dog is an avid consumer of alcoholic beverages and prone to bouts of drunkenness during which he tends to smile from ear to ear. I want to suggest to you, Kurt, and I hope you’ll agree, that on that Thursday afternoon Dog was completely plastered.”

  “He looked the same to me as he always does, Mr. Beauchamp.”

  “He was crocked. Sozzled. Let’s not pretend otherwise.”

  “Well, I never seen him without that smile, so maybe I never seen him sober. Not being a drinking person, I would say I’m not the right one to ask.”

  “Come now, Kurt. He was dead drunk on your launch when you took him to the RCMP lockup on Saltspring.”

  “I believe he was sleeping, because he was snoring.”

  “He was given a breathalyzer test at the Saltspring detachment. Are you aware of that?”

  “I believe that’s a formality they do when someone is brought in who is intox … has been drinking.”

  “And that was close to two hours after his arrest?”

  “One hour and forty-seven and a half minutes.”

  “And the reading was what?”

  “Two point seven millilitres of alcohol per one hundred millilitres of blood.”

  “At that rate, Kurt, he would be dead.”

  He seems unsure why. “Can I check my notes?” Permission granted, he studies them for what seems an eternity: “Sorry, it’s point two seven.”