Lotis smiles widely, amused by this Latin-rapping stuffed shirt. “Okay, sorry I cracked on you. Anyway, you’re right, Selwyn and I don’t have much courtroom experience. We’re hoping you’ll join us at counsel table.”
“I regret to say, Lotis, that I am retired. My role will be to applaud vigorously from the sidelines.”
She hesitates, as if considering a further appeal. “I heard you saw the eagles’ mating display. Will you sign an affidavit?”
“Of course, if it will serve a purpose.” He finds himself echoing a local refrain: “What is the law?”
“Section thirty-four of the Wildlife Act makes it an offence to take, injure, molest, or destroy the nest of an eagle, peregrine falcon, gyrfalcon, osprey, heron, or burrowing owl, or, for that matter–subsection c–any nest if it’s occupied by a bird or an egg.”
Recited from memory, it would seem. Arthur entertains a hope that a brain lurks beneath that horror-show hairdo. But he cannot remotely imagine her or this Loo fellow defending Margaret. He will hire a leading barrister, a battle-scarred labour lawyer at ease with injunctions.
Arthur calls to Slappy, but the dog returns to his station at the tree and lies down. Semper fidelis. Arthur must get back. There are arrangements to be made, chores to be done. Life will be lived differently for a while.
5
Nick Faloon is relieved to have wormed out of the main block to what they call Protective Custody, the wing for dangerous sexual offenders, the DSOs, as they call them, plus other unpopular people like gays and trannies and squealers doing a reduced bounce for co-operating with Her Majesty.
The deputy warden was not entirely convinced by the Owl’s exaggerations that a barbarian in the main wing threatened to cut his balls off, but the deputy didn’t want to take a chance on this prized catch, didn’t want to deliver him up to the courts without all his parts. Also helping Faloon’s cause was being a possible nutcase, though the deputy wasn’t buying that. Nor was the couch doctor who analyzed him a few days ago, a young guy, Dr. Dare, who was onto Faloon’s game, he brought a Dutch interpreter with him. Faloon didn’t try to come out as Gertrude, it would have blown up in his face. The shrinker spent fifteen minutes with him, asking a few questions that seemed innocuous but were probably loaded with double meaning, and walked out laughing.
Among the advantages to PC in addition to not getting castrated is that there’s a decent lounge for visitors, and some of the other guests are interesting and intelligent people. There’s a defrocked priest in here who has a problem with underage boys, and they talk about religion, Faloon playing along that he’s a Christian, and there’s a former jail guard waiting sentencing, looking to do both hands for manslaughter or, in his case, wifeslaughter. Faloon gets called Gertie by the gay guys.
Though he has a hope that DNA fingerprinting will clear him, he can see himself eating pressed turkey for all Christmases to come. He shouldn’t have panicked in Bamfield, should have brazened it out, now he’s dug a hole for himself with this Gertrude Heeredam act.
The only thing looking up is that he has a lawyer. Faloon asked Willy the Hook Houston to scratch around for one, but in the meantime out of nowhere Mr. Brian Pomeroy phoned, and he’s coming by this afternoon. He may not be in the league of Arthur Beauchamp, but comes highly recommended in the joint–though you have to look at the source of such endorsements, Mr. Pomeroy didn’t get them off. According to Willy, who is raising a defence fund, he’s a good talker, smart without being sleazy.
Claudette St. John hasn’t visited yet, but she sent a teary letter saying she knows he’s innocent. Faloon is buoyed by that, Claudie being so true-blue despite her suspicions about his night with Holly Hoover, the logging-camp tramp. He kicks himself for that mistake, Claudette’s a superior woman, he’s never known anyone with such an open heart.
He hasn’t been sleeping well, and a couple of nights ago he found himself sleepwalking again, banging into the cell door while unconsciously going out to the deck of the Nitinat Lodge to take a piss.
It is just after the morning count that his new mouth shows up, and the screws let them have an isolated table in the lounge. Pomeroy’s face is somehow familiar, maybe Faloon has seen him in court. He’s forty-five or so, looks a little depraved, maybe because of all the character lines in his face.
After opening courtesies, Faloon asks why Pomeroy has taken an interest in him, and learns a “concerned gentleman left a message.” Faloon doesn’t feel invited to inquire further, assumes it must be Jacoby, his financial adviser.
“I’ve been following your career,” Pomeroy says. “Impressive.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m hoping there’s a psychological basis for Gertrude, it’s not just a hustle.”
“I thought it was worth a try, Mr. Pomeroy. I lost my head.”
“I don’t want to hear that. I want to hear that you became Gertrude. Where did you get the women’s clothes?”
“Well, my job is a thief, and I keep different outfits depending on the occasion. I was arrested in a dress once before.”
Mr. Pomeroy was looking fairly bored, but now lightens. “Have any friends seen you playing dress-up?”
“I can probably locate some.”
“How are you fixed for funds?”
The lawyer is one who goes direct to the heart of things. Faloon tells him some allies are raising working capital. Freddy Jacoby in particular, who has got fat off the Owl over the years, with his fifty to eighty per cent lion’s share.
“Multiple personality is the old term, these days it’s dissociative identity disorder.” Pomeroy swings his briefcase up, pulls out papers that look like psychological studies. “Okay, assuming you have this disorder, I think it’s important that you understand it. Important if you’re to be cured.”
The fixer doesn’t wink, but might as well have. What he’s really saying is, I hope you’re a fast learner, because, it turns out, another psychiatrist is coming to see him this afternoon, Dr. Endicott Sloan. What Pomeroy wants, though he’s too ethical to say it outright, is for the Owl to read these case studies, learn the symptoms, get into the role.
Faloon tells him of his brief ordeal with Dr. Dare, who walked out breaking a gut.
“I’ll deal with Dr. Dare.”
“Let me ask you, Mr. Pomeroy, in the remote possibility this is going to work, where does it get me in the end?”
“The ding ward instead of the big house. You’re in a deep hole, Nick, especially since you’ve already been convicted of one attack on a woman. I watched some of that in court, by the way. The jury was lapping it up, she did an artful job on you.”
That’s where Faloon saw him, the Adeline Angella fiasco, lawyers would wander in and watch Beauchamp in action. He wants to ask Pomeroy what’s the story on the Topeka condo developer who was out till 2 a.m., and are there other suspects, but the counsellor is off on this insanity sidetrack.
“A reasonable scenario–you’ll correct me if I’m wrong–goes like this: You’re at that outdoors café having a coffee. Word comes down about the murder, you go into a panic state, you lose your real identity. The stress causes you to retreat into the role of Gertrude Heeredam. Again.”
“Again?”
“Like the night before.”
Faloon feels a chill. “I am carefully listening to this. Is our theory that the victim was snuffed by Gertrude Heeredam, and that’s going to make Nick Faloon not guilty?”
“You have a better idea?”
“Aren’t you going to ask if I did it?”
“I don’t want to ask.”
“I am anxious you should know. I am as innocent as an angel, Mr. Pomeroy, at least the murder part.”
“Okay, then you had better explain how your sperm managed to find its way into her vagina.”
Faloon goes into shock.
“You see, Nick, the Crown particulars have the semen coming up DNA-positive for you.”
Faloon can’t find words, his mouth opens and
shuts like a hooked, landed fish. He feels woozy. “That’s not…Mr. Pomeroy, there’s got to be a mistake! Or someone else has got the same DNA!”
“Do you have an identical twin, Nick?”
“No.”
“Then the chance of coincidence is roughly on a par with your winning this year’s Miss Universe Pageant. Let’s get back to Dr. Sloan. He’ll conclude it’s not important you don’t know Dutch, and that you’re probably fragmented into different women, as in this first case study…”
Distantly, Faloon hears the clanging of a cell door closing.
Fear concentrates the mind, and Faloon is absorbing his lessons, getting ready for Dr. Sloan. He’s even starting to think he may be sharing, as the text says, “two or more distinct identities that recurrently take control of the patient’s behaviour.”
This insanity bit might be his only hope. Guilty means the whole book. Pomeroy told him he could get out of the shrink tank after maybe a five-spot on condition he stays on Prozac, or whatever keeps you from dissociating.
Dark thoughts intrude. Was it truly his DNA? What if there is a murderer inside the Owl, unrecognized, crawling from his skin? A rapist…He tells himself to get real. But this is far worse than the other false charge, Adeline Angella, the magazine writer. She inveigled to meet him in a bar after Beauchamp got him off the Kashmir Sapphire caper, wanted to know all about “the fascinating world of the jewel thief,” as if he was going to tell her. How had he been so sappy as to go up to her apartment?
In the lounge, where he’s reading the last of the case studies, Faloon is interrupted by the defrocked priest, a cherubic sixty-year-old, Father Réchard, who originally comes from Quebec and is impressed with Faloon’s French–his parents spoke it at home. “Something seems to be troubling you, my son.”
He wants to tell him Satan has fucked him from behind. Someone had to be lying about the DNA. Why?
“Should there be any troubles you want to relieve yourself of, I will be happy to extend an ear.”
Faloon likes Father Réchard, despite his disability, likes the well-mannered way he has of talking. He thinks of confessing to him. But to what? He’s not particularly religious, though he prayed to the Prophet, Jesus, Buddha, you name it, Krishna, to send him an angel. Hoping it might be Beauchamp.
“Faloon!” a guard calls out. “Medical visit!”
He is led through a series of buzzing doors to the clinic, where Dr. Sloan is reading a poster about correct condom use. He is overweight, has the jaded look of a man who hasn’t gone far in his choice of career. Faloon is urged onto a plastic chair–everything is fixed to the wall or floor, maybe in case of tantrums.
Sloan doesn’t want to waste time, the hearing is tomorrow, he has to get his report written tonight. He asks Faloon about his medical history, which is uneventful until the shrinker asks him about any strange occurrences in his past. Faloon explains he has been bothered since a teenager about a series of lapses–he isn’t sure what to call them–in which he found himself wearing women’s clothes.
He knows the shrinker will test this against other evidence, and when asked about witnesses to these episodes he gives a couple of names he already supplied to Pomeroy, old friends. Sloan wants to know about his parents.
“There’s only me, I lost my…it’s something I’d rather not talk about.”
Sloan’s appetite is whetted, so Faloon tells him the story, haltingly, as he fights emotion, about how when he was a child in Lebanon, the Falange came into his village and shot all the men, including his father. Only the women escaped. Sloan’s brow furrows, and he begins making notes.
“But many were raped, including my mother…I’m sorry, I can’t, I…Oh, goodness, he does carry on, that weakling.”
Upon hearing this feminine lilt, Sloan looks up. Faloon can’t tell from his expression if he’s buying or not, but ploughs on. “He just has no spine, can’t face the harsh realities. That’s why he became a crook, doctor, without his parents there was no moral upbringing.”
“Who are you right now?” Sloan is squinting at him.
“I’m Samantha, I think…I’m confused.” He begins shaking.
“Mr. Faloon…”
The Owl perks up. “Yes, doctor?”
“Who are you?”
“Same guy I’ve always been.”
“Did you just have one of those, as you call them, lapses?”
“Not that I’m aware. Except I forgot what we were talking about.”
Sloan pulls some diagrams from his briefcase. “I’m going to put you through some tests.”
As Faloon stares at an ink blot, he wonders if he should add about the sleepwalking, but decides not to press it.
“I’d say that looks like a woman dancing.”
“Hmm,” says Sloan.
That evening, the Owl is in the lounge watching the news with the guard who threw his wife off a balcony and one of the squealers. The violent images from the Middle East disturb him, make him queasy. Another suicide bombing.
“Fucking Arabs,” says the guard.
“They don’t respect life,” says Faloon, who doesn’t advertise his heritage in these difficult times.
He is happy when the TV switches to local news, a bunch of people waving placards that read, “Save Gwendolyn.” His seatmates are bored by this and start talking, so he doesn’t pick up why Gwendolyn needs saving, maybe she’s also up on false charges.
“What was all that shit you were studying?” asks the squealer, whose name is Mario, and they call him Lanza. Except to be polite, Faloon doesn’t make efforts to relate to him, a guy who’s looking to get reduced to a deuce for ratting on a big-time dealer in nose product.
“Correspondence course.”
“Look at those horses’ asses,” says the guard.
Faloon focuses on the image on the screen, two people up in some kind of tree fort, the announcer carrying on about an injunction tomorrow. Then he is startled to see Arthur Beauchamp, in ragged coveralls, sitting on a small tractor, being interviewed, the ocean behind him, a nice house.
“Clem Keddidlehopper,” says the guard.
Faloon sends him a nasty look.
“I will be there to support her,” Mr. Beauchamp is saying.
“Will you be defending her in person, sir?” asks the interviewer.
“No, it is always a wise practice to hire lawyers for this sort of thing. I am a simple farmer.” Faloon knows he’ll have to give up on any daydreams that Mr. Beauchamp will come to his rescue.
6
Arthur rises late after a night of tossing, of dreaming of Margaret as a tree, growing out of sight. He grabs a suit and tie from the recesses of his closet, then races to his Fargo, hoping he won’t miss the early ferry. He finds time to buy a muffin from the Winnebagel, the ferry roadside stand, because the boat is late by twenty minutes: a problem with the engines this time.
As the Queen of Prince George limps toward the dock, he examines his suit for moth damage. He finds none, but it’s unfamiliar wear, he feels strange in it. He forgot his brogues; he’d slipped on his worn loafers. Again he wonders if his brain is not working to former capacity.
On the upper deck, armed with a cup of glutinous coffee from the dispensing machine, Arthur tamps tobacco into his pipe and watches the gulls glide in the slipstream. He wonders how long this hiatus in his comfortable routines will last. He will soon tire of tofu. Again he chides himself. Margaret will be eating dried cereal for twenty-one days, while putting up with a buffoon. (How are their sleeping quarters set up? He’d like to see the blueprints for this platform.)
The affidavits filed by Selwyn Loo, whom Arthur has yet to meet, seem competently prepared, but he’s had his ticket for only six years. “We’re green but mean,” said the spike-haired imp, Lotis Rudnicki. She has ginger, stood toe-to-toe with the right-wing opposition, the shallow icon Arthur Beauchamp. A former actress, he’s learned, minor Hollywood roles.
For now, Arthur has decided against hiring an ol
d hand–he doesn’t want to be seen as demanding special attention for Margaret. Nor would she want it.
It’s Friday, day two of the Battle of the Gap. The loggers are still waiting by the trail. Reporters are squeezing out every saccharine droplet of human interest: Felicity, grounded but in a state of doe-eyed devotion for her Lord Byron, and a stuffed shirt stoutly defending his tree-hugging wife. Yesterday, Arthur escaped from a TV crew on his old John Deere.
He hopes the judge will be fair-tempered, and not one of the many he offended in the course of boisterous debate. He hasn’t been in a courtroom for years, but feels the old tension, his heart working harder. He tells himself to relax, he will be but a spectator today.
Chugging down the street to a loud thrum of engine–his muffler is loose–Arthur arrives in the capital of British Columbia. Victoria is lush with flowering plum and cherry trees, gardeners sprucing up the boulevards for the Americans and Japanese who will flock here in season to imbibe the floral gardens, winding streets, and tea rooms serving scones and Devonshire cream.
The courthouse is a drab, boxy affair, six storeys on half a city block. Arthur has defended many cases here, but he can’t bring any quickly to mind: yes, the bribery scandal, of course. The Beacon Park murder. But his triumphs are starting to lose shape, to blur in memory.
He hurries through a side door, avoiding the news cameras at the front. He utters a mild epithet on reading the posted docket: Edward Santorini is presiding in contested chambers–former chief Crown Attorney, loser of five straight murders against him. One time, while racked with a ferocious hangover, Arthur lashed out at Santorini, called him a horse’s ass.
He glances over the criminal list, sees Nicholas Faloon’s name, murder in the first degree, Provincial Courtroom 5. The crush of events has squeezed Faloon from his thoughts–this must be the mental fitness hearing.
Brian Pomeroy was on the answering machine: “I’ll do what I can, Arthur, but I’m afraid Nick’s deoxyribonucleic acid was found in a most inconvenient place.” Arthur is pleased Brian jumped to the task but dismayed that somehow–impossibly, absurdly–the DNA fingerprinting found a match in Faloon. He wonders if there’ll be time to pop down to the criminal courts. But in the meantime he’s late for the Gwendolyn hearing.
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