High Crimes

by William Deverell

  He had been about to say no to Edwards, but the superintendent made it clear there were distasteful implications to this. Such as murder. Murder in the name, it might be argued, of Her Majesty the Queen. Bishop had insisted on a free hand, and both the Solicitor General and the Minister of Justice had granted it. The only ground rule was no publicity. Keep the lid on. Bury the corpses quickly.

  That meant controlling O’Doull. And it meant controlling Mitchell as well. Soothing him. Appeasing him somehow with a taste of victory. He had invited both O’Doull and Mitchell to his suite to look them over, get a fix on them.

  Bishop watched them interact. O’Doull looked at Mitchell with contempt. Mitchell looked at O’Doull with a simmering hostility.

  Either of these two men could loosen the lid on the affair, and O’Doull had clearly threatened to do so. He was problem number one, a brush fire that had to be dampened before it spread into the political forests.

  “I have been appointed as inquiry commissioner,” Bishop said. “That gives me the power to subpoena records and witnesses. I am not anybody’s servant. I am playing footman neither to the government nor to the RCMP.”

  That was for O’Doull. Bishop had to have his confidence.

  “Let me begin by congratulating you, Sergeant,” he continued. “I doubt that anyone else has had the courtesy to do so.”

  The territory seemed friendlier than O’Doull had hoped. He had expected an inquisition, with Mitchell whispering venom into the inquisitor’s ears. The fact that Bishop had been hired, that the government had not sent a stooge, was a sign to him that he was not going to be written off as a mere annoyance.

  “Inspector Mitchell thinks you were out of line,” Bishop said. “That is a point of view. Another might say that you were exhibiting a rare quality in police officers. Enterprise.”

  “Have you read my report, sir?” Mitchell said. “I have another word for it.” O’Doull saw there were veins standing out on his forehead. His hands were clenched into fists.

  Bishop studied Mitchell with a puzzled expression as if he were a piece of abstract art. “I have read your report, Inspector. I have reviewed the whole of Operation Potship. I am not impressed.” It was sad that he had to do this, Bishop felt. The man, although wrongheaded, was no doubt a dedicated officer. He would worry later about mollifying him. He turned back to O’Doull.

  “Maybe you are also owed an apology, Sergeant. I know you feel this inquiry was a long time coming, and I know you feel, to use the current expression, that you were being stonewalled. But your report has been reviewed by the minister. And I am here to assure you that we intend to get at the truth.”

  O’Doull nodded.

  “Naturally, the minister hopes that things will not go beyond this stage, that matters will not be discussed outside the four walls of this inquiry. We don’t have to hang our dirty laundry in public.”

  “It’s him who’s been threatening to go to the press,” Mitchell said.

  Bishop kept his eyes on O’Doull as he spoke. He was hard to read. It was difficult to know what tack to take.

  “I am sure Sergeant O’Doull understands his duty,” he said. “As a servant of the government, he has taken an oath of secrecy, and he knows the penalties that apply to a breach.”

  O’Doull was impassive. Bishop had hoped for at least some gesture, a nod of the head.

  “The key to this thing is Meyers,” he went on. “You believe, Sergeant, that he committed a murder in the course of his, if you’ll pardon the expression, duties on behalf of the force.”

  “Two murders.”

  “The Miami police say homicide and heart attack. They do not accuse Meyers.”

  “He was in the hotel room,” O’Doull said. “I have his voice on tape. Before I confronted him with the tape, he had denied being there.”

  “That’s b.s.,” Mitchell said. “I’m sorry, sir, but that’s exactly what it is. I won’t dignify it with another expression. Meyers never denied being in the hotel room. He was there well before the murder. It’s in Detective Braithwaite’s report. Braithwaite interviewed Meyers after the bodies were found.”

  O’Doull’s mouth fell open. “That can’t be right. Braithwaite made no mention to me of that at all. I have his Xeroxed reports.”

  “Braithwaite gave O’Doull some stuff just to get him off his back. I’ve talked to him, sir.”

  “His voice is on the tape,” O’Doull repeated. “Just before the murders.”

  Bishop seemed to think about it. Then he said, “But the taping was voice-activated, Sergeant. You know much more than I about such things, but let me ask you: Would it not be hard to tell from your voice-activated tape just how much time had elapsed between Meyers’s arrival and the occurrence of the deaths?”

  Of course, O’Doull thought, that would have been Meyers’s ex post facto offering. Meyers could have left the room. The tape conceivably could have stopped running. The deaths could have occurred sometime later. He felt himself sagging a bit, Meyers and Mitchell had really worked on this one, hunting for holes.

  Bishop was content for the time being to let the argument settle in with O’Doull. It was important to try to instill doubt in the man’s mind about the strength of the case against Meyers.

  “Marianne Larochelle,” O’Doull said. “She saw him leave the hotel. He had blood on his sleeve.”

  That brought Mitchell to his feet furiously.

  “Marianne Larochelle! He’s asking you to take the word of a known dope dealer, a pusher, a whore, over the word of a police agent. Where is she? She’s really interested in helping out, isn’t she? She’s on the run, that’s where she is. Let’s see her come forward like Meyers and take a lie detector test. If she’s got the guts.”

  “A lie detector test?” O’Doull asked.

  “If nobody told you, O’Doull, I will,” Mitchell said. “Meyers volunteered for one and he passed.”

  “He could lie about his own name and pass a polygraph,” O’Doull said. “He is a psychopathic liar.”

  “What the hell are you trying to do to me, O’Doull? Have you any goddamn idea of what you’re trying to do? You go to the newspapers or to some damn politician, and you’ll blow up Operation Potship.”

  Mitchell hovered like a standing bear over Bishop, talking loudly. “Can’t you see what he’s doing? He’s friends with these people, with Kerrivan and the rest of them. He’s got together some bullcock to attempt to embarrass us into pulling back from the operation. I’m not going to stand for it, goddamnit!”

  Bishop’s voice was hard and commanding. “You are standing, Inspector. I am going to suggest that you either sit down or leave this room.”

  “You’re going to let him get away with this?” Mitchell was shouting now, and seemed to O’Doull to be nearing a state of hysteria. “My God, Bishop, you’ve got my report! That bitch suckered O’Doull right into a bed with her. Maybe that’s something that’s not in his report!”

  O’Doull went red.

  “She was screwing his cock off in Miami. We found out they were staying in his motel room. I don’t know what happened when they got to Montreal. He probably blew her a kiss, patted her on the ass, and sent her off to hide out!”

  “Inspector —” Bishop began.

  Mitchell interrupted, ignoring him, turning to O’Doull. “If you tie the can to my back end over some misbegotten theory of yours, I’m personally going to get you drummed out of the force. What happened to your old man is nothing compared to what I’ll nail you with, O’Doull. Nothing! You’ve been fucking the ass off —”

  “Inspector!” Bishop’s voice boomed through the suite. “You’re not in a barracks room. Control yourself.”

  Mitchell, sweat streaming down his bare head, moved towards the door. “You’ve got a nut case on your hands, Mr. Bishop. I’m telling you, he’s dangerous!” And he strode outsid
e.

  There was a long, uncomfortable silence. O’Doull was staring at the floor.

  “I did sleep with her,” he said, finally. “I didn’t mention it in my report.”

  Viewed with the perspective of the passing days, those two fervent nights with Larochelle had taken on a manic quality. It seemed now he had been utterly crazy to have shared a bed with her, and yet he remembered the time as being magic. For the last week and a half his sleep had been thin, her presence overpowering in his dreams. A passing infatuation, he kept telling himself, a wave that had burst upon him, and that would subside and wash back to the sea. But the surge kept coming, kept coming.

  Bishop, studying the man in front of him — hunched over, head bowed, hands clasped — realized now that he had the key to O’Doull. That odd sexual episode had not been some haphazard plunge. O’Doull was not a cold or corrupt policeman who would take advantage of an attractive woman in distress. The woman was the key to controlling him. He was in love with her.

  “Meyers passed a polygraph test?” O’Doull said softly.

  “It was inconclusive. They couldn’t prove he was lying, couldn’t prove he was telling the truth. As you say, the machine doesn’t work well with some people.”

  O’Doull looked up and fixed his eyes hard on Bishop. “I know he killed them, sir. And I think the Miami police know it, too. There’s a game being played down there, a mini-Watergate. The DEA team leader, Jessica Flaherty, has been kept on the outside, too. I think the U.S. State Department or the CIA is behind it.”

  “Sergeant, in my time I have prosecuted two hundred murder trials. I will be blunt. I think it is doubtful that a jury would convict on the evidence you have gathered. It is impressive, but it is not enough. In any event, the problem belongs to another country.”

  O’Doull shook his head. “I have never been so certain of anything as I am that Meyers is a murderer.”

  “Okay, you’re right. He’s a killer. Let’s assume that. Where does it get us? Does that excuse these fellows of the crime of importing drugs? I’ll be frank, Sergeant, I think Operation Potship reeks. But there is still the question: Does improper police behavior justify excusing the importation of nearly a third of a billion dollars’ worth of illicit narcotics? It’s a hard question, isn’t it? A disturbing one. But I think you know the answer.”

  O’Doull said nothing. The dilemma seemed to muddle his mind.

  Bishop tightened the pressure. “You have feelings for Kelly. I understand that. But you are a police officer, and you know what your duty is.”

  O’Doull found himself nodding.

  “And you have a duty to the police force you represent. The RCMP, like any police organization, is made up of human beings, and human beings are frail. But it is a proud force with a proud history. I think you and I would both hate to see all of its pride sapped.”

  O’Doull shook his head quickly as if to clear it out. He took a deep breath. “Mr. Bishop, I have pride in this police force. I am going to do my best to maintain that pride.”

  Smiling, Bishop made an expansive gesture with his hands as if to say that they were of one mind about the important things.

  “And the best way to maintain that pride,” O’Doull continued, “is to root out such things as cause us to feel shame. I can’t sustain pride if I play a role in a . . . cover-up.” He had said the forbidden word.

  Bishop sat back and let a cloud of fatigue wash over him. This was going to be very hard, after all.

  “I am prepared to breach my oath of secrecy, Mr. Bishop. If that means breaking the law, then I will break the law. I don’t know who is giving Detective Braithwaite his orders, but if he does not arrest Meyers and charge him with murder, I will personally go down to the state attorney’s office and lay a complaint. And if that does not work, I will go to the press and embarrass a murder charge out of the Miami police.”

  ***

  After O’Doull left, Bishop met with Edwards.

  “Arrest the girl,” he said. “And arrest her right now, I don’t care where she is hiding — Montreal, Toronto, or Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. Arrest her.”

  ***

  In his darkened office at Potship headquarters, Harold Evans Mitchell stood staring bleakly out a window into the gray, unmoving nothingness of fog, his right hand clenched around a large tumbler of scotch and water.

  One of his men rapped softly on his door, opened it, and cleared his throat.

  “Problem, sir.”

  “Problem?” Mitchell’s voice was husky with drink.

  “We’ve lost them.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Johnny Nighthawk

  I am panting hard. I have chuffed up to the bridge as fast as my legs will go.

  “I have been meaning to have this talk,” Billy Lee says, motioning to me to sit down. He makes the motion with a .32 revolver, one of the chunks that Meyers had left with us. In case of pirates.

  “I’m the man,” he says. “I’m the fuckin’ man.” He snorts. “Ah, Jesus, can you believe it?” His chest heaves with silent, dry laughter.

  Pete is wilted, collapsed, sitting by the wheel and staring blankly at Billy Lee. He looks like he did when Marianne walked out with Escarlata. Only worse. As for me, my brain has locked up.

  “It’s got so I can’t handle this no more without talkin’ about it,” Billy Lee says. “So I want to talk.” He is not wearing his shades, and although all the ship’s lights have been doused, I can see his face from the twinkle of the lit dials on the control panel. His eyes seem socked back into his head. He is studying the gun as if curious to find it in his hand.

  “Sorry about the firearm, man. Sorry about the whole scene. It’s the way it is, you know.” He is wrecked on weed, and his Alabama drawl is stretched and pained.

  “Ol’ Rudy. He kinda has a gun on me, too. Lemme jus’ talk about it. We met in ’bama, Rudy and me. Like I told y’all, only different. I am flyin’ in carrying half a ton. Comin’ in on Mary Jane, my ol’ B-26. I guess I told you it was broke down. It ain’t, and that was jus’ a ruse, an excuse to go on your ship. Anyway, never mind. I am comin’ in, and ol’ Rudy-Tootie is waitin’ for me at the field, after chasing my people away. I mean, he squeezes me, man. He’s got my buddies’ names and license numbers and pictures, and he takes samples of dope from the plane, and he’s able to turn us all over to the narcs. I’m lookin’ to fifteen years in the joint, man. Plus whatever else for the desertion rap.”

  “He’s working for Meyers,” Pete says to me, explaining the obvious. “And Meyers is working for The Bullet. And Meyers bought Billy Lee with his own planeload of dope.”

  Billy Lee can’t look either of us in the eyes, and he is still looking down, studying the handgun. “It’s a real tight squeeze play, jus’ so y’all unnerstan’.” With his free hand, Billy Lee turns an imaginary screw. “Real tight, man.” He is really wigging out.

  I think: I could jump him. He is so torn up on weed he might not see me coming. But I am so weary, so depressed. And Pete would be no help.

  “Wal, ain’t it the shits,” Billy Lee goes on. “Anyway, lemme talk this here thing out a bit. Don’t nobody get strange. Jus’ lemme talk. I been meanin’ to have this talk, man.”

  I have shut the engines down completely, and we are sitting in the fog, enveloped in it, enveloped in a silence that is disturbed only by Billy Lee’s soft voice.

  “That plane that was settin’ up there earlier, before the sun went, that was an Argus. That means Coast Guard.”

  “You been talking to them, Billy Lee?” Pete asks wearily.

  “Naw, naw, nothin’ so blatant. You see this here countermeasures pod that’s supposed to jam the enemy radar? It don’t work. What they got, built right into it, is a kind of like a bumper-beeper, only we got it antennaed right up to — now, y’all ain’t gonna believe this, man — right up to a NASA satellit
e. I mean, this is high technology. This fuckin’ boat is wired up like the Starship Enterprise. The S.S. Sittin’ Duck. They’re gonna track us right into Judas Bight. They’re gonna bust you guys, bust the whole landin’ crew. Bigges’ fuckin’ bust in history, man. And I’m the cops’ main man, and I got a free ticket after it’s over.”

  “You’re a shithouse rat, Billy Lee,” Pete says. He does not raise his voice. Just a low, even tone.

  “Yeah, well . . . you know.” His voice drifts off, and he swallows. “Lemme work this out, man. Lemme jus’ talk a little. Miami. That scene was all bullshit. Pura paja. They sent you up the Florida Strait so they could pull you into Miami, stage that phony courtroom drama, all jus’ so’s they could install this here satellite bug.”

  He waves the gun at the navigational equipment. “All this here hardware, this is all jus’ decoration to make it look good. Remember when we was taken out separately for questioning? I said to Meyers, what the fuck are we doin’ in Miami, man? He said we been hookin’ you guys into a satellite. Real military operation.”

  A hoarse laugh. “I mean, man, what an operation. It’s been a setup right from go. Meyers, he got Ugarte to blacklist you in Bogotá, told the ol’ bastard some lies about y’all payin’ off the cops in Canada, stealing his dope, man, and sellin’ it. That’s ’cause Meyers and the cops had somethin’ bigger in mind for you. Paez. The sinsemilla. They didn’t want to catch you in no penny-ante deal. The narcs want you real bad, Pete.”

  “It’s a rigged game, hey, Billy Lee?” Pete says. “Mitchell sends the plays in. Meyers runs them. You steal our signals. I never knew you played that game. I always thought you played honest with friends.”

  “Stacked deck, y’know. You’re a gambler, Pete. You know about a stacked deck.”

  The fog seems to grow denser. It encases us like a heavy wool quilt.