Sing a Worried Song

by William Deverell

  “It’ll make it tougher for murderers and rapists to get parole. She’s such a softie, your spouse. Everyone deserves a second chance, et cetera.”

  §

  It’s seven o’clock, and Arthur is off by taxi to the annual meeting of the Downtown East Side Trial and Error Society, which traditionally gathers in an East Hastings hotel, in the beating heart of working-class Vancouver.

  Brian has yet to call in with any further update, but assuming he caught his flight there’ll be ample time to confer tonight. There is much to talk about. The survival gear suggests Skyler went off on some insidious adventure. Maybe to track and murder strangers. Maybe to pursue more worthy game. But how could he expect to escape from the Abitibi wilderness with no access to a vehicle or airplane?

  Arthur vows to put the matter out of mind as the taxi pulls up at the pillared front doors of the Tropicana, a small hotel remarkable only for its unlovely décor: faux palm trees and fading beachy murals. These East-End Bar events tend to be drunken and occasionally dissolute affairs, but the invitees — barristers and judges all — are sworn to silence about whatever may transpire. No photos, no recording devices, no gossip.

  The evening is well under way in the dining salon, where a buffet is being laid out: dishes, cutlery, dinner selections on warmers. Most of the action is at the cash bar, which is being patronized by counsel who impede Arthur’s progress with handshakes, hugs, and, in the case of Madam Justice Mandy Pearl, an almost uncomfortably ardent kiss, with a touch of tongue and a taste of wine.

  “Aw, you pried yourself from your dopey little island just for me. How sexy is that?” She grins, sips red wine, a woman off the wagon — but it would not be wise to comment on that. Not tonight. “God, Arthur, you don’t age, do you?”

  “‘Age cannot wither me, nor custom stale my infinite variety.’” He always enjoys the way she laughs, open, unsparing. “I am at your feet, Milady, overcome by the sheer radiance of your glowing countenance.”

  “You old fraud.” She does look lovely, in a tight red dress, not quite décolleté, but cut low, her cleavage veiled by a scarf.

  Of the myriad things Arthur has felt guilty about over the years, their fling does not even make the list. He considers it a small compensation for Annabelle’s eighteen men. She may have guessed he’d been with another woman, but she never asked and he never told. Just as her affairs were never spoken of.

  “Truly, it’s a great delight to see you elevated, Mandy. And even a greater delight to see off poor old Tom McDougall.”

  She hooks arms with him, and they study her fellow honouree, who is standing by one of the beach tableaux, squinting at a toy monkey dangling from a plastic palm frond. “The cerebrally challenged old fart has a dozen decisions on reserve, he can’t make enough sense of them to render judgement, and the Chief has assigned me to retry them. It’s sort of a rookie hazing. I’ll join you later.”

  She is drawn into a scrum of men. In her fifties, she’s still a magnet, still attractive, still available — unmarried since that early divorce. One of her admirers, moustachioed pothead Ballentine J. Bingham, circles an arm about her waist, and is not repulsed. Irritated, Arthur retreats to the coffee urn.

  He thinks of tea but opts for coffee, and while pouring a mug he has a moment of discomfort, sensing an undesirable presence approaching — confirmed when, weaving through the crowd, glad hand outstretched, comes Jack Boynton.

  “Arthur Ramsgate Beauchamp, QC. Who has forgotten more about life and law than most here will ever learn.”

  Arthur has seen little of him since 1987, but memories return of his gift for stiff, stock phrases, his bur-like clinging throughout the Skyler trial. His rigid smile seems a mask; his body language betrays discontent. He’s fat fellow now, the Deputy Attorney-General.

  “I presume you heard I achieved an elevated position on the short list. They interviewed me, of course, had me under the old microscope, searching for blemishes, ghosts in the closet.”

  Arthur has to work to make sense of what Boynton is nattering on about. He probably angled hard for the open judgeship.

  “They liked what they saw, I dare say. One divorce, that was it. Her adultery, not mine. But then Mandy had one too. For some reason, they must have discounted her drinking issues. It was an agonizingly close call, your essential flip of the coin.” He pours a hot chocolate. “Well, of course, being a woman helps.”

  His expression stiffens as he watches Mandy provoke her admirers to laughter. “As you may recall from the Chumpy trial, she and I have a history.” He goes to Arthur’s ear. “Came close to having a premarital relationship, but … she had a past of some, shall we say, profligacy. Under the circumstances, I wasn’t ready commit myself to going further.”

  That isn’t quite the story Arthur remembers. Obviously, Boynton still carries a torch after twenty-five years, now wreathed by envy and resentment.

  “Well, it’s a real old-times get-together, isn’t it? Mandy, you, me, and I hear Brian Pomeroy is coming — pity what happened to him, career-wise. All we’re missing is Randy Skyler.” Boynton laughs, to signal he’s being funny. “Seriously, I hear he made parole.” He sips his hot chocolate.

  So far, Arthur hasn’t gotten a word in, though he hasn’t been much interested in trying. But now he struggles with his silence. There is so much to relate that the task seems almost futile.

  “Well, I’m sure he learned his lesson,” Boynton says. “Smart, college-educated, sportsman, good family — not your basic recidivist. Chumpy was a one-off, surely.”

  “Jack, we need to set aside some time to talk about Mr. Skyler.”

  “Damn right, let’s do that. Over dinner sometime. Funny, it comes back like yesterday, how you trapped Skyler into that one big lie. If you don’t mind my saying, Arthur, you cut it close to the line there. ‘A shade less than savoury,’ isn’t that what the appeal bench said? Had it been any lesser counsel, I think they’d have taken his skin off.”

  Arthur takes another peek at Mandy. Bingham is hovering over her, vulture-like in his Stetson and denim and cowboy boots, loudly relating some rambling anecdote: “So finally I said …” Her eyes implore Arthur to save her.

  “I do believe,” says Boynton, “that Her Ladyship is sending me a message. I am being called upon to rescue her from that lout.”

  Arthur gallantly lets Boynton be the hero, watches him stride toward Mandy as if on important business, cutting Bingham off just before the punch line, escorting her away, ultimately to the chow line. Mandy pauses at the salad display to send Arthur another imploring look.

  He must leave her to her admirers, because others have taken him aside, all with the firm of Macarthur, Brovak, Sage — good friends, sharp counsel, to whom Arthur would regularly refer surplus clients. They are all tipsy, talking over each other, recalling good times, Brovak offers a stirring re-enactment of the aftermath of Augustina Sage’s call party in 1987, when he slugged a Gastown bouncer, causing a melee and a mass arrest of counsel.

  Missing from this core group, gratifyingly for Arthur, is junior partner Wentworth Chance, his overly diligent biographer, who has spurned the event in favour of the Vancouver Writers Festival. Also missing, so far, is Brian Pomeroy, who, in better days, was their partner. What is holding him up?

  Augustina catches him looking at Mandy, and tiptoes to his ear. “She’s had a crush on you forever, Arthur.”

  The two women are best friends, confidantes, but he wonders if she’s kidding. “You are well aware, Augustina, that she ought not to be drinking. I presume you’ll look after her tonight.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  Arthur sighs. He will keep an eye on Mandy. He can do little more than that right now, because there are no empty chairs at the table she’s sharing with Boynton, who has just bought another bottle of red and is refilling Mandy’s glass. Surely he knows she’s AA.

  Arth
ur is late to the buffet table and is hurriedly filling a plate with the remains when Provincial Judge Sophie Marx, a big, commanding woman, takes to a podium and welcomes all to the annual general meeting of the Trial and Error Society. She shouts over the continuing tumult: “Order, order, please!”

  “Double rye whisky and a beer chaser,” someone yells.

  “Motion is denied,” says Marx. “Minutes of the last meeting are hereby waived, and we’ll go directly to the new business of immolating our two victims. The no-buns rule is in effect.”

  A dinner bun is thrown at her. Quips and ripostes fly. Arthur takes his tray to a table away from the action, near the door to the lobby.

  Sophie Marx scrutinizes retiring Justice McDougall. “Let’s find out if Tom is sufficiently compos mentis tonight. Judge, do you see me over here?” McDougall waves weakly, trying to smile. “Do you know where you are?”

  “In trouble.”

  “He seems fairly responsive today.” Marx catches Mandy reaching for the wine bottle. “Oh, and I see Madam Justice Pearl is into the sauce tonight. Maybe because the Deputy A-G is trying to get his hand between her legs. Okay, who wants to drag them through the mud first?”

  Arthur is unable to come to grips with his boiled cauliflower and overdone pork chop, the runt of the litter on the warming tray, and keeps an anxious eye on the door, fighting the temptation to slip outside and call Brian on his cell.

  The speeches are spicy and sharp-witted. There’s not much original ammunition left when Arthur’s turn comes, and he merely thanks McDougall for giving him so many opportunities to successfully appeal his inscrutable decisions, and congratulates Mandy Pearl for earning her crimson sash despite her charm, intelligence, and sterling character, the lack of which has been a long-standing requirement for judicial appointments.

  Arthur is followed by Abigail Hitchens, who begins with a manhood-eviscerating joke so lewd that buns fly. Arthur deserts his cold, rubbery chop, finds his phone, and heads through the lobby to the street, busy East Hastings. B.J. Bingham’s Porsche is in the hotel parking zone, and he and Pomeroy are lolling brazenly against it, bobbing their heads over something obviously illegal.

  Brian is wearing a sports jacket and tie, and looks unaccountably happy, and this makes Arthur anxious. It suggests something has gone awry. His eyes seem to be glowing. Maybe it’s just the cocaine.

  Bingham twists a finger up a nostril as he waves Arthur over. “Hey, Save Dog, man. Never got a chance to applaud you for your big upset win. Wanna try a little pixie dust to keep the engines revving?” The offering is the gutted shell of a ballpoint pen and a little mound of powder on an iPad screen.

  Arthur smothers his irritation as he declines. Bingham fills his nostrils, shows his utter disdain for hygiene by licking the screen, and returns the iPad to Brian. He slips it into a carrying case, bumps fists with his fellow stoner, then lets Arthur lead him off, down the street a ways. He is late, he explains, because he stopped to wholesale a psilocybe crop to pay off his line of credit. Etiquette demanded there be a formal shroom sharing.

  Brian takes a few stumbling dance steps. He can’t seem to stop smiling. “I love this old barrio. It doesn’t screw around, no frills, no bullshit. Proletarian. Fuck the rich.” He stops at a junk store window, admires the clutter inside. “Can you see the elegance here, Arthur? The harmony? A canvas. A poem.” He takes a photo with his iPad, and as they continue on he chuckles again.

  “Let me in on the joke.”

  “Better tighten your cloacal muscles.” Brian taps the iPad, goes online, pulls up a story from the Toronto Star, expands the print so that the headline jumps at Arthur:

  “Paroled Murderer Defies Blizzard, Saves Lives of Toronto Canoeists”

  Arthur feels discombobulated and looks up to orient himself. Hastings Street, a passing 16 trolley bus, a union hall, a 7-Eleven, pedestrians on their cell phones. All is normal, he’s not hallucinating. He stares dumbly at the screen again, at a recent photo of Skyler, in park attendant attire. At fifty, he looks fit, thicker than in his youth, big in the chest. He has a week’s growth of grey-streaked beard, some loss of hair on top. The same cold eyes.

  Arthur collects himself and reads on. The account has Skyler setting out into the storm late yesterday, after the two canoeists failed to check out of the reserve as promised.

  A long trek along the riverbank, a flashlight his only aid in the growing, swirling darkness, finally brought Skyler to an overturned canoe snagged in the branches of a fallen tree, and, a hundred metres downstream, on the shoreline, two men in wet clothes, both shaking with cold, one with a broken ankle, the other desperately trying to start a fire with a wet lighter.

  Skyler quickly got the fire going, and pitched a small tent nearby, in which the two men — a married couple, the story adds — shared a double sleeping bag while Skyler stayed up through the night, gathering wood, tending the fire.

  The storm didn’t abate in the morning, but at noon he led them out, carrying the injured man on his back though knee-deep snow. Late in the afternoon, they finally arrived at his lakeside cabin, where the RCMP rescue unit was waiting and provided emergency treatment.

  The two survivors had lost all their gear to the river and, according to an outdoors expert, could well have expired if Skyler had not found them. They were being brought out by snow tractor.

  Mr. Skyler wasn’t yet available to be interviewed by the press, but was reported to have told police he was merely doing the job he had trained for. A senior Mountie was quoted as saying, “This man deserves a medal for heroism.”

  §

  Back in the Tropicana, a strong urge to pee propels Arthur to the men’s room, where he braces himself with a hand to the wall, fumbling with zipper and penis. At the washstand, he composes himself, staring at the reflection of an old geezer running a comb through his hair, looking just as he feels: foolish.

  He goes back to the hall, where the speeches are winding down. He barely takes them in. Justice McDougall finally rises in response, with a speech so garbled that he earns applause and cheers with every incoherent phrase. Mandy must already have given her rebuttal, for she has liberated herself from Boynton and joined Brian Pomeroy beside a tropical sunset, where they embrace and begin sharing jokes and anecdotes.

  Arthur sidesteps the stampede to the bar and joins a group of colleagues from the Trial Lawyers AA Chapter. He pretends to listen to their reminiscences, but he’s lost in the Abitibi wilderness.

  He’s not sure what he ought to be feeling: shock, relief, embarrassment, joy, irritation at himself? He has a vague sense of having been gulled, played the fool, but can’t pin down why. The truth is hard to accept: he has misread Randolph Skyler. Arthur Ramsgate Beauchamp, who may be certifiably paranoid, has allowed obsessive, irrational fears to run rampant, feasting on him, a cancer.

  He realizes he’s being asked a question. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  “I asked, are you a DD, Arthur?”

  Designated driver. Thankfully not, he replies. He’s without a car and intends to leave before bedlam erupts. There are signs already. Abigail Hitchens is striding away from one of the tables, where Chuck Grimstover is wiping wine from his face and shirt.

  John Brovak is being bellicose, rehashing a manslaughter with its prosecutor, promising to beat his ass on appeal. Both are drunk. Insults are traded. Traditionally, East-End Bar events aren’t complete without a black eye or swollen lip. It is time to go. But first he owes a duty to Mandy Pearl.

  She’s in double trouble — the stalking Deputy A-G is plying her with another wine while she weathers the dreadful Waylis Rhodes — Endless Rhodes, they call him — who is forever recounting his life’s spiritual journey.

  This time, Arthur will not fail her. Her expression on seeing him approach is of unrestrained relief, and she quickly slips an arm into his, says, “Ta-ta, gentlemen,” and leads him away
. “Time to get out of Dodge.”

  They go out by a back door, where the smokers are gathered in the darkness. She clings to his arm, needing his support to keep her balance while still holding a not-quite-empty wine glass. “Okay, I’m an alcoholic,” she says. “But only when I drink.”

  They arrive at a side street, where she proves herself sober enough to point out her car: a sleek sedan of a certain age. She fumbles in her bag for the keys and hands them to him. “Let me unfreshen your wine,” he says, spilling it into the gutter.

  “Actually, I wasn’t going to. Then I saw you walk in, and decided, okay, just one, to slow my palpations.”

  “Palpitations, Mandy. Let’s find some coffee.”

  “I have my beans flown in from Costa Rica.”

  Arthur can call a taxi from her home, but he wonders if a stop-off there might prove tricky, given the signals he’s receiving. But he can’t deny he’s flattered and that he enjoys her playful company.

  She lives at the far end of Kitsilano, near Jericho Beach. Arthur and Margaret were there once, several years ago, at a dinner party that made his life companion uncomfortable. Bad vibes, she said later. But tonight, he will keep Mandy company for as long as it takes. It’s the AA code of honour.

  The car has a front bench seat, and despite his urgings Mandy won’t put on her belt. Instead she moves close to him, too close, to his ear, teasing him with the scents of light cologne and red wine. He suppresses wrong thoughts, his hands tightening like vices on the steering wheel.

  Keeping his tone light, he rattles on about Skyler: the empty threats, his own ludicrous concerns, Skyler’s release on parole, the headline rescue. “Oh, my God,” she says, repeatedly, absorbed now, withdrawing to a safe distance, occasionally laughing, maybe at him, at the absurd neurotic hole he’s dug for himself.

  Arthur finally persuades Mandy to belt up, but he continues to pour words, a venting, a release. He summarizes Hawthorne’s harsh dissection of Skyler, the glibness and grandiosity, the pathological lying, the need for stimulation. This from an expert in sociopathy who warned that the obsessively vengeful have long memories.