Willy sips his tea, a long, crafty look, and quietly sets his cup down. “I’ll make you a deal. After we do this job you will telephone Mr. Beauchamp. You will listen to his advice about beating this wrong rap. You will give him a chance to say if you can come home with confidence. You do that, and I am behind you all the way on this caper.”
The Owl is over a barrel. He agrees.
Faloon goes to his room to shower and change, wondering about the–what was the phrase?–“encouraging situation,” careful phrasing from the great Beauchamp, but what did it mean? Something to do with Adeline Angella? He keeps revisiting that evening in her apartment, the cognac, the come-on, her movie. She was Audrey Hepburn, he was Cary Grant. You’re not supposed to ask. Pretend you’re a masked intruder. And after the kiss, hoarsely, low, Now I pretend to resist.
There wasn’t much resistance there, or much of anything to tell the truth, the task interrupted when she went to get the condom, and Angella faking it, he thinks, faking that her resistance was overcome, faking enjoyment, orgasm. It was a long time since his last release, and maybe as he was pumping and dumping a mother lode, that’s when the Trojan slipped off. As he lay aboard her panting, his peter shrinking, she said, “What’s the true story about the Kashmir Sapphire?”
She already asked him that a dozen times, he sensed he was being conned. It was like she gave him a favour, and now it was his turn. He pulled his pants on, not bothering to puzzle what happened to the skin, deciding to extricate fast from an unstable situation. Looking at his watch, patting his pockets. “Jeez, I must’ve left my heart medicine at home.”
He ended up looking like Wam Bam Sam. The eight lady jurors didn’t like him for that, and when you add in his long record of stealing earrings and necklaces, they probably said what the hell and gave the benefit of the doubt to the wrong party, decided not to believe that Angella threw a bowl of plastic flowers at him as he bounded to the elevator.
Does she then call 911 in a fit of pique? Or does a plan of revenge grow more slowly in her mind, as her perceived wound festers? Mr. Beauchamp’s brilliant speech just didn’t find enough buyers that day in Courtroom 67.
21
Arthur is surprised to find the parking lot empty at Nouveau Chez Forget and a sign saying “Closed. Fermé.” It’s Friday noon, a restaurateur’s busiest lunchtime. “So let’s grab a bite downtown,” says Brian. They’re en route to the Victoria courthouse, where Buddy’s application to try Faloon in absentia is on the docket.
Arthur bangs at the door. Through the glass, Pierre is seen emerging from the kitchen, tucking in his shirt. An impatient look as he opens up. “Anyone else, I put a bullet in their head.” In a lowered voice: “I ’ave something going on.”
“Arthur, there’s a really good Italian place on Wharf Street.”
Pierre looks disgusted, pulls each of them in by the elbows. “Something simple and quick. The sole, a bit of salad.”
They take a table. He returns to his kitchen. They hear a tinkling of female laughter.
Brian taps out a number on his cellphone, waits impatiently for an answer. “To talk to Caroline about the kids, I have to go through Lila, who doesn’t have a cellphone and only occasionally turns her machine on.”
Ultimately, he says, “Bitch!” hangs up, and lights a cigarette. “How is it someone who claims to be a marriage counsellor is never by her phone? They’ll pee in their pants when they learn I have proof of my innocence–‘you’re not supposed to smo-oke.’ When they finally hear that tape, they’ll be falling all over each other in grovelling apology.”
Brian has avoided Angella since that evening–because of domestic strife, because Faloon is no longer in the court system, but mostly in fear of her. She has continued to stalk by phone.
“You get, ‘Just phoning to say hi,’ and then she runs on about something so insubstantial I lose the thread. Finally cornered me yesterday at the Ritz. For your listening pleasure…” Out comes the computer, but his phone interrupts. Brian answers with a robotic voice. “You have reached the suicide hotline. Please leave a number…Lila? Don’t hang up, please I beg you, I just called you two minutes ago…You did pick up? Sorry, didn’t hear that. Anyway, it’s about Gabriella…I said what? I called you a bitch?” A pinking complexion, a man hearing harsh words. “No, no, I swore because I dropped a cigarette ember on my crotch. Lila, I can’t tell you how delightful it is to hear your non-recorded voice.”
Brian wins her ear with a teary tale of how Gabriella came to his law office, wanted him to play hooky with her. Lunch, a movie, a stone-faced reception when he returned her to Caroline. The denouement, his lonely return to his hotel, is vaguely poetic in its telling, and seems to raise a reasonable doubt in Ms. Chow-Thomas’s mind. “That’s great, Lila. I’ll come by when I get back from Victoria.” The cellphone clicks shut. “I think it’s starting to dawn who’s really to blame.”
Arthur imagines it is no easy task to be a relationship counsellor, an occupation inherently risky. Eve Winters must have known that, a lesson reinforced moments before her death.
“I’m getting a deal at the Ritz because I beat a beef for the owner for running a book in the back. The pub is done up with old movie posters and attracts the upper underworld, chisellers, top-of-the-line hookers. Internet scammers and spammers–you see them with their laptops, comparing notes. I am not friendless in this place, many are free to continue their crooked lifestyles thanks to me. The attention whore is all atwitter as she plops beside me.”
So this is where you’re staying. I must say I was a little nervous coming into the rough part of town. It seems a little bohemian–is it an artists’ hangout?
You’re very perceptive.
You look so sad. Poor Brian.
He fast-forwards. “She orders a gimlet, a drink that causes confusion at the bar, the last time a gimlet was ordered in this joint, Jack Kennedy was boffing Marilyn Monroe. I deliver a stunning critique of ‘You Don’t Have to Ask’–I’d grasped her brilliantly understated message about illicit love, it thrives on secrecy, grows with danger. This sets her heart aflutter, she carries on about how it must be lonely living in this hotel, and how is the current situation between poor me and poor…”
Caroline is her name, isn’t it?
Yes.
Still pretty rough going?
I’ve seen better days. Taking them one at a time.
“This is how to reach her, you fire the clichés with both barrels. I told her how on April Fool’s morning, as we were about to go for a family romp in the park, I reached in my pockets for my gloves, and out popped the unmentionables.” A sigh. “The cruellest memory is Amelia saying, ‘Oh-oh,’ as she looked at Caroline’s livid face. Anyway, the segué: I casually ask Adeline where she was at ten o’clock that morning.”
Why would you want to know?
This may sound silly, but I want to see if our signs were, ah, conjoined at that moment. I’m into that sort of thing.
That doesn’t sound silly at all. That was a Saturday? Oh, I was probably at bingo, the Holy Rosary Hall. Or was that the VOSA wine-tasting? Victims of Sexual Abuse. We share, we celebrate each other.
But what were we sharing at that moment, the lawyer and the writer? I, in the vestibule of a house in North Vancouver, you…where? There’s a spiritual reason I ask–well, there I go again, you probably think it’s one of those silly New Age things…
You goose, not at all. I hope that wasn’t the weekend I celebrated too much–my story in Tales of Passion came out on a Friday, and I had a teeny, teeny bit too much at the Wanderlust. I was probably still in bed at ten in the morning…Or was that the previous weekend?
Brian closes the computer as Pierre brings the matelot de sole. “Enjoy your lunch.” He hurries off.
“Enjoy yours,” Brian calls. “I’d pushed as far as I dared the concept of our two souls conjoining in an April Fool’s spiritual fuck. So we’re left with an array of possibilities, bingo, wine-tasting, getting pie-eyed in t
he Wanderlust, or–this is where I put my money–none of the above. The Wanderlust is a hokey bar in Whalley–I popped in last night. Four guys were on the stage. I thought they were doing a parody of a barbershop quartet. They turned out in fact to be a barbershop quartet. The Whalley Wanderers, who sing for their beer. The song that brings the house down is ‘I Love to Go A-Wandering.’ Valderee, valdera. Hiking and climbing gear all over the walls, pictures of the Alps. I didn’t figure Angella for outdoorsy. Maybe she followed Eve to Bamfield, the silent stalker of the West Coast Trail.”
None of her alibis are likely to prove ironclad, though they must be delved into. But Arthur wonders how she might have known Eve Winters would be in Bamfield, in Cotters’ Cottage, and that Faloon lived nearby, a handy local scapegoat. Did she do the deed herself, or hire an agent, a contract killer? But Angella is meagrely off, and hit men don’t come cheap.
Buddy Svabo bobs and weaves outside the courtroom to let Arthur know he’s feisty, up for another battle of wits, then cracks open the door, to show him Larry Mewhort within–he is yawning, listening to a lawyer’s catalogue of spousal sins.
Buddy closes the door. “He’s yours for the taking. He has a big hole next month, he was supposed to do the last trial of the Vancouver assize, a two-weeker, it blew up. He doesn’t want to get stuck in divorce court cleaning out the backlist.”
Arthur isn’t sure how Mewhort, with his legendary slowness of mind, ever got raised to the bench. But accidents happen. As a criminal lawyer, he often stumbled into legal potholes, and leaned heavily on Arthur for advice.
“You don’t have to sell me on Larry. You have to sell me on going to trial without a client.”
“What’ve you got to lose, Artie? You’re not going to put Faloon on the stand anyway, because with his record I’ll freaking tear him apart.” Buddy’s afraid this file will drag out and be pulled from him–a missed chance at a sure winner, a chance to better Beauchamp, spoil his return. “We together on this? I’ve got a solid argument, section 475, an absconding accused waives his right to be present.”
Mewhort, a small, puffy man with a shock of white hair that resembles a fright wig, looks on with dread as Svabo rolls a trolley of casebooks into court and lines them up on counsel table. Arthur isn’t similarly armed, and wins a hesitant smile of gratitude.
They wait until an uncontested divorce wends tediously to its foregone conclusion, then Buddy files his direct indictment and passes ten pounds of photocopied cases up to the bench. Mewhort blanches. “Do we need all that law, Mr. Svabo? Tell me in simple words what this is all about.”
Buddy begins with a recitation of intended proofs so indisputable, he implies, that obtaining a murder conviction is akin to filling out an order form. The Crown will allege Faloon knew Winters was staying in Cotters’ Cottage. The murder came on the heels of four burglaries. Faloon is a notorious professional thief with a rape conviction. An underworld figure with easy access to Rohypnol. He avoided detection and arrest by disguising himself and stealing a truck. He escaped from jail, further proof of a guilty mind. A priest will recount his solemn confession: She was beautiful. I just couldn’t help myself.
But it is the DNA, ah, the DNA, that Buddy revels in, splashing about in its perfumed waters. “And when the semen was tested by my learned friend’s very own scientific expert, whose profile did she find? My goodness, it’s Nicholas Faloon. Surprise, surprise.”
This florid display is for the press. Arthur is still feeling leakages of anger over the sneak attack at Gwendolyn Bay, and it’s puddling at Svabo’s feet. Let this overconfident peacock rush the trial ahead, then Arthur will unmask Angella as Lorelei, who swore vengeance against Doctor Eve. Faloon will be sitting there looking innocent as a cherub. Surprise, surprise.
Buddy makes an issue of the advanced ages of the Cotters, they may not be available in five, ten years, whenever Faloon is hauled back into the system. There are cost factors, witnesses are subpoenaed for the third Monday of June, the Hyatt has been booked for the out-of-towners, if the trial doesn’t go ahead a jury panel of seventy will be sitting around twiddling their thumbs.
The final incantation, the burdened-taxpayer theme, is again for the press. Their presence in such numbers seems to cause Mewhort anxiety. His gaffes have been frequently reported.
When Buddy spreads open a thick volume of the Chancery Reports, the judge raises his hands protectively. “Just a minute here, I don’t get this, doesn’t section 475 only apply when an accused absconds in the middle of the trial? He’s out on bail, sees his trial going badly, and walks out in the middle of it. I think I had a case like that.”
Buddy argues that the word trial needs a liberal interpretation, it begins when an accused is charged. He picks up the thick casebook.
“Hang on, before we get into that, what’s your position, Mr. Beauchamp?”
“I am prepared to choose a jury on June 19 and go to trial.”
“Without the accused?”
“Let’s hope he’ll show up.”
A sigh of relief. “Problem solved. Well, that wasn’t so bad. And we do it in Vancouver, right? Victoria’s too tea, tweeds, and tourists for me.” An offhand civic insult that will doubtless make the news columns. “Okay, there are no more pre-trial issues?”
Buddy looks at Arthur, expecting him to make robust complaint about Adeline Angella being called, but Arthur feigns a lapse, frowning. “No, I can’t think of any.”
“Call the next divorce.”
Faloon is up before seven, without his regular sleep, coming down from nightmares, but he has to keep up his routine, today especially. The overnight clerk, Gaston, knows he shows up early for a newspaper and a coffee, reads it standing up at his favourite spot by the potted palm, the shady end of the burnished walnut check-in counter.
Gaston’s final task before he goes off shift is to sign in the cleaning staff and activate their master-key cards, punching in the magic number that opens all doors. This process is underway as Faloon settles in under his palm tree, coffee and Herald-Tribune at hand. He engages Gaston with his standard opening, “How’re you doing today, partner?” as he watches Gaston’s pudgy index finger peck out today’s master code.
One big score, that’s all Faloon wants, then take it on the Arthur before the town heats up. But Cat and Willy have got to lay off him about that murder beef, he doesn’t want to explain for the umpteenth time they’ll be going home without him, he’s heading in the opposite direction, to the exotic lands of the East.
But he has to honour his deal, phone Mr. Beauchamp, if only to apologize. He’ll be respectful but firm about his decision. He’ll explain about the sleepwalking, the monster that hides inside his skin. Small man but strong like a cougar. That phrase comes back, but from where?
“I ’ave migraine,” says Gaston. Yesterday it was a pain in the bowels.
Faloon tries for a light subject, his plans for the day, a boat cruise that’s supposed to stop at some great nude beaches. This is interrupted from down the counter by, “I wonder if it’s possible to get some service here.” Willy, impeccable in a five-thousand-euro suit he clouted yesterday from a men’s store. And then Cat, at the far end of the crescent, in her new finery, indignant: “I believe I was next.”
Gaston is frozen for a moment in mid-stride, he doesn’t know who to attend on first. But somehow he pulls it off, asking if the gentleman would mind if he first met the needs of the lady. Cat wants tourist information, Willy wants directions to a complex destination. It’s a little scene, just enough to distract the attention of the few earlybirds by the coffee urn.
Less interesting to everyone is that Faloon has accidentally dropped the sports section over the counter, and has to reach way over it for twelve excruciating fumbling seconds, hitting a digit too few, having to insert his key card again to get it right.
He heads up to his room, 516, just down from 508, where Omar Lansana and Gina de Carlo share a bed. The master key card works fine. He worries about having
to brace Ambassador Lansana, an athlete, the legs of a racer, fiercely protective of his jewels.
It’s three o’clock. Cat is hanging by the pool, in a bikini under a sarong. The Hook is near the pool elevator, with a view into the lobby, where Faloon planned to nest behind a newspaper. But his choice spot is gone, a stuffed Louis Quinze in an alcove. A casually dressed young man is occupying it, studying photographs under a lamp. Strips of photos, like from a surveillance camera. Faloon sees another husky man, leaning against a pillar, equally obvious. With him is the manager of the jewellery store where he poached those watches off Harold Stein’s card. Something has gone kerflooey, maybe Visa put out an alert on that transaction.
Before the Owl can change his mind about Project Lansana, Willy strolls from the pool area, giving the office, two arms crossed, a go, which means Omar and Gina are poolside. Faloon flashes him that bulls are on the scene, three middle fingers down, thumb and little finger up, like horns. Willy hesitates, takes a turn into the can to give Faloon a minute to make up his mind.
He puffs himself up with courage, he’s going to do this, he’s going to take the elevator to the fifth floor, and if there’s a cop waiting outside his room, he’s going to nod and smile and unlock Lansana’s suite down the hall, 508, and he’s going to walk in like he’s Jacques Chirac. And he’s going to hide under the bed. And he’s going to wait.
At this point, something happens to make this gamble better than a sheer impossibility. Harold W. Stein walks from the street with his client. They’re in a jokey mood, this is their tax write-off holiday on the Riviera, Faloon overheard them, some kind of commodities deal.
Before they reach the elevators, the two dicks in the lobby converge followed by two more from outside. Badges come out, and identification is demanded. You can tell Stein and his friend are put out, with their stressed speech patterns. Stein makes a point of not showing his passport, affronted, do they know exactly whom they are addressing?
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