High Crimes

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by William Deverell


  Lara Peddigrew, hearing the commotion and the laughter at the front door, fluttered into the living room and greeted her husband. Peddigrew laid a delicate touch of a kiss on her forehead, then heaved the orange life jackets, one by one, through the corridor, into a pile on the living-room floor.

  For their seven years of marriage, Lara Peddigrew had maintained, in Peddigrew’s view, an innocence that verged on empty-headedness, and he preferred it that way. He never discussed with her, and refused to involve her in, his varied matters of law and business. She was beautiful, she was upper crust, and when they had guests she was a marvelous entertainer.

  And what’s more, she loved him — the sexual encounter with Kerrivan notwithstanding. She was the perfect wife.

  His perfect wife fixed a trained eye on Larochelle, offering a smile that was expertly feigned. Larochelle was not her favorite person in the world. Entertaining her husband and his mistress was too much. Plus this smelly Colombian.

  “James,” she said, “there’s someone here to see you. I told him that you had just called from Port Hope to say you’d be here in an hour and a half, and I suggested he might have some tea while I made dinner for you and our guests. Was that all right?”

  Peddigrew was so scared he felt his testicles rolling. “What do you mean, someone is here?” he said in a low voice. “I told you not to talk to anyone while I was gone. Who is it?”

  “A Mr. . . . Dooley?”

  Peddigrew put his head around the corner of the vestibule. Beside the pile of life jackets there was an armchair, and in that armchair was Theophile O’Doull, a briefcase on his lap. He looked sad.

  “Lara,” said Peddigrew, “would you go into the kitchen and make some hors d’oeuvres?”

  She went without a word to the kitchen.

  Peddigrew assumed a haughty bluster. “Sergeant, I don’t receive business visitors at my home at seven o’clock in the evening. You may call my secretary and make an appointment for tomorrow in my office.”

  O’Doull ignored him. He was looking at Larochelle.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Hello, Theo,” she said. That was all. That, and her quiet smile.

  O’Doull felt pain beat through him. It was a pain that had never been there in his daydreams, where the hero felt no pain, no hurt, where the hero, the brave Detective O’Doull, was a man emotionless, controlled, capable of any special assignment —

  “Would you please leave? Peddigrew said. “I don’t wish to seem rude or inhospitable, but I am entertaining friends for dinner, and we are tired and we need a chance to clean up.” With a gesture of his arm, he showed O’Doull where the door was.

  O’Doull looked wearily at the door, looked at Peddigrew, and said in a soft voice, “You’re under arrest, Mr. Peddigrew. The fellow who is standing behind you — I take it that is Juares? Mr. Juares, you are also under arrest.”

  He cleared his throat. “And so are you, Marianne.”

  He watched their faces change.

  “The charge is importing cocaine into Canada.”

  “Cocaine?” Peddigrew engineered an expression of astonishment.

  “Is it in the life jackets?” O’Doull asked. “Oh, don’t answer yet. It is my duty to warn you that you need not say anything, but anything you do say may be used as evidence at your trial. Now you can answer. Is the coke in the life jackets?”

  The only sound was heavy breathing. O’Doull shrugged. He opened his briefcase, removed a cassette tape, inserted it into the tape deck of Peddigrew’s stereo system, and turned the power on.

  “I have your party, ma’am.”

  “James, it’s me, again.”

  “Yes.”

  “They’ve let us go!”

  “What?”

  “With the ship. With everything. I’m going to lay low. I’ll be up in a few days. Pete is taking the ship up, but with the way this trip is going, they’re sure to be caught.”

  “Did you unload the ship?”

  “No, it’s all there.”

  “I mean the . . .”

  There was the sound of him blowing into the receiver. “That’s your charade for blow, I think, Mr. Peddigrew,” O’Doull said. “Blow, snow, cocaine.”

  Larochelle voice: “I know what you mean, the Hoagy Carmichael. It’s still on the ship.”

  “Stardust,” O’Doull said. “So I have heard it called.”

  Peddigrew’s voice: “Telephone down to our friend. He is to meet us here in two weeks. Don’t worry. Even if the ship gets busted, everything will be all right.”

  “That is so,” said O’Doull, “because even if we did arrest and seize the ship, you intended to get its contents released to you. That was your plan all along. In fact, it was just as easy for you if Pete actually did get busted. Then you could make a deal: the ship’s gear in exchange for a guilty plea from your client. And indeed that’s what you did. Like an Arab slave trader, you bartered him for the cocaine. And for Marianne’s freedom.”

  He advanced the tape.

  Peddigrew had turned white and was staggering as he made for a chair. His hell seemed to be expanding by geometric progressions. There is no feeling worse in the kingdom of the mind than that produced by a rush of cocaine terror.

  Juares was still standing, uncertain, rubbing his hands. Larochelle had her eyes closed and seemed lost in space.

  “Juares? Como está?”

  “Señorita Marianne! How are you, my pretty princess?”

  “It will be up in two weeks. Come to Toronto then.”

  “Si.”

  “Call our friend at his office. Do you have that? Entiendes?”

  “Si. Sure.”

  “Good-bye.”

  “Very brusque and businesslike,” O’Doull said.

  Lara Peddigrew arrived with a tray of canapés. Her husband waved her away with an angry sweep of his hand, not looking at her. “This is business, dear. Leave us.”

  She looked around the room, left the tray on the table, and stepped quietly out.

  O’Doull ran the tape forward. “A few minutes later, Augustin Escarlata comes back from the sauna, and there is an erotic, if not exactly touching, love scene. Joy of Sex on tape. I’ll spare you that. You should have accepted his invitation to go to Cuba, Marianne.” She had her eyes shut tight, and seemed to be struggling against phantoms in the recesses of her mind.

  O’Doull continued. “Kelly comes in, and Escarlata, as a gesture of love for Marianne, blows Operation Potship, tells them about the Sat-Track. And Kevin calls the marine operator in an effort to raise Pete.”

  “Jesus! Yeah, this is the Alta Mar.”

  “Pete. Pete. Can you hear me? I can hardly hear you, boy. Can you hear me?”

  “Jesus . . . world can hear. What the hell . . .”

  “Pete, listen careful. The ship is bugged. They got a tracker wired up to a satellite —”

  “. . . can’t —”

  “Meyers is working for —”

  “— read you . . . can’t . . .”

  “— the narcs. It’s a setup.”

  “Repeat, I can’t read you!”

  “Just a minute. Stay with me. Hang on. I’ll be back to you.”

  “Meyers has just knocked on the door,” O’Doull said. “Kelly lets him in. I assume that Marianne and Augustin are hiding in the bedroom. Is that right, Marianne?”

  “Don’t say anything,” Peddigrew mumbled.

  “I’m sorry, I was hoping that Augustin would be here. Who are you phoning? I don’t want you using the phone.”

  “Just making a plane reservation.”

  “Okay, now Meyers leaves. That sound is the door closing.”

  “Kev? You there?”

  “Deep-six it, boy. Deep-six the cargo.”

  “Get off . . . and . . . off the fucking
phone!”

  “It’s almost all alfalfa, Pete. Alfalfa. Meyers did a gypsy switch on us.”

  “I can’t read!”

  “Jettison the cargo, Pete! Sink the fucker and take the longboats in. It’s a con. Scuttle the ship, Pete!”

  “Those are the last words Kevin ever spoke,” O’Doull said.

  “I’ve got to stop him!”

  “That’s your voice, Marianne. There was a mike in the bedroom. You were thinking: Scuttle the ship, and the cocaine goes to the bottom, too. You had lost the pot, and now you were going to lose the coke.”

  From the tape came the sound of a grunt, and a clattering noise, the kind a phone makes when it falls on its cord and bangs against a piece of furniture. O’Doull pushed the stop button.

  “I didn’t know until Pete told me at the hospital that you have a black belt in Tae Kwon-Do. It is among your many other accomplishments. Of course, the Miami police knew all along the murderer was you. That’s why they were playing with me, secretly laughing at me while I was insisting that you saw blood on Meyers’s shirt sleeve. Jessica Flaherty, who was taping all this, called the police up to the penthouse. She made a deal with Detective Braithwaite, Miami Homicide. The Miami police agreed to follow you, but not bust you right away, so Jessica wouldn’t risk compromising the investigation against Meyers.” O’Doull shook his head ruefully. “Problem is, you slipped away from them. Out of Miami. With my help.”

  “It was an accident, Theo.”

  “Marianne!” Peddigrew shouted.

  “Too much coke in me. I went snow-crazy. And . . . it gives you extra strength. You forget to measure your force. I meant to pull. I . . . I just wanted him to stop talking to Pete. I didn’t mean to kill him. Please believe me!”

  “Uh-huh. Well, we have Kevin lying there dead, now. Dead of the heart attack you caused. Then you placed the phone back on the hook. And then we have this.” O’Doull pushed play.

  “Mother of God, Marianne! What have you done?”

  “Oh, my God, I don’t know.”

  “He’s not breathing!”

  “Augustin, please, come here. Hold me. I love you and I’m afraid.”

  O’Doull cut the tape in the middle of a terrifying shriek.

  “And then there were no witnesses,” he said.

  He began passing around arrest warrants. There was an extra one for Larochelle, for her extradition to the State of Florida.

  Larochelle wept. “How can you do this to me?”

  “It isn’t very easy, Marianne.”

  ***

  From her front window, Lara Peddigrew watched with dry eyes as O’Doull and two other policemen walked the three prisoners across the street to the unmarked cars that had been sitting in the shadows, waiting for Peddigrew and his friends to return from Halifax.

  She had mixed feelings. She was glad to see Larochelle get hers. But she felt sorry for her husband. This was a hell of a price to pay for getting yourself hooked into a female spider like Larochelle. Greed and infatuation make a poor mix.

  But Lara Peddigrew wasn’t all that unhappy to have her freedom from the man. As she had him figured out, he was basically a fool.

  Johnny Nighthawk

  Last tape. This is really a postscript.

  I will be going back to Colombia in a few days. I have half a ton of high-grade mona, blonde, which is on its way down from the mountains. I will be hanging out by the Guaviare River waiting for the canoas to come. Sometimes it seems they take forever to bring it to you. But, of course, I am a gringo, and for gringos it is always rush, rush, rush. The Latins do not understand what the point of hurry is.

  I will probably still be sitting on the banks of the Guaviare when your book gets published. With my luck.

  Send me a copy. That is all I want. No money. (I know writers are poorly paid. You have explained that to me.)

  As I say, this is a postscript. The aftermath won’t be of interest to you for your story. But let me fill you in on everybody just for your own curiosity.

  As far as Johnny Nighthawk is concerned, he cannot get out of the smuggling business. Hell, I am not even trying. It is what I do well.

  Same with Billy Lee. He is still flying stoned. When I last saw him he was heading for Thailand. Different people, different scenery. He says he is going for the big one this time. A four-ton cargo of Thai stick. I wish him well.

  I met O’Doull when we both happened to be visiting Pete’s farm at the same time. He is all right. He was thinking of quitting the force, but it looks like he is staying in, waiting for a transfer to come through to cid. He is a cop, that is what he is. I do not mean pig. I mean cop. He says he believes in the system. In the long run, as he puts it.

  The Bullet, though, has quit the RCMP. I hear he is executive manager of the Canadian subsidiary of a U.S. home-burglar alarm company.

  The only person the courts are through with so far is Juares. He got fifteen. There was twenty million dollars’ worth of coke involved, I hear.

  Peddigrew is out on bail, fighting some technicality — a writ of prohibition? — and appealing his case to the Supreme Court of Canada. I understand that the old lawyer Knowlton Bishop is prosecuting him. I would sure like to sit in on that one. I can go back to Canada. They dropped my charge, of course, and quashed Pete’s conviction.

  Marianne finally got extradited to Florida. She has some hotshot Texas lawyer working for her. He is probably working for nothing, having, doubtless, fallen in love with her. She had me going, too. I am not ashamed. The female of the species is more deadly than the male. True of hemp, true of humans.

  Meyers is sitting in a federal prison writing detective novels. I am told he is appealing a ten-year sentence on the basis that the marijuana was seized illegally on the high seas. They say he has raised a convoluted argument about entrapment. But they got him for trafficking, for sure.

  As far as Captain Jackpot is concerned, he has thirty-five acres in New Brunswick, an old lady, some farm animals. Sometimes I think he is okay. Sometimes I am not sure if he has permanent head damage. Mostly he sits out on his rowboat on a lake, fishing. He seems happy. He smiles. He does not talk much. I note that he does not smoke much grass anymore. He is more or less stoned anyway, without it.

  I hope Kevin Kelly is somewhere around, too. Enjoying an altered state of consciousness.

  Copyright © William Deverell, 2006

  Published by ECW Press

  2120 Queen Street East, Suite 200, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4E 1E2

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW Press.

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Deverell, William, 1937-

  High crimes / William Deverell.

  First published: Toronto : McClelland and Stewart, 1981.

  ISBN: 978-1-55022-697-3 (print); 978-1-77090-545-0 (ePub)

  i. Title.

  PS8557.E8775H5 2005 C813’.54 C2005-904299-0

  Cover and Text Design: Tania Craan

  With the publication of High Crimes ECW Press acknowledges the generous financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

 

 

 


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