Needles

by William Deverell

  They shook hands to seal the deal. Despite himself, Pomeroy gloated a little: “You know, Fos, I think you’re getting a little soft in your old age.”

  Cobb and Harrison were into their fifth hand of pinochle when Pomeroy came back upstairs. He was breathing hard, and his face was red and traced with rigid lines. His voice had the dry, cracked sound of a man who had been arguing hard.

  “I can’t believe it,” he said. “He won’t go for it. He just won’t do it. Man, he is one scared son of a bitch. I told him I’m withdrawing. Aw, shit, what a night.”

  Cobb sagged. He was tired. It was five o’clock in the morning.

  “Okay, boys, let’s go home,” Harrison said. “It’s been a long hard night.” He had the look of an old ox bowed from the yoke. He took them to the door. “I’ll lock up here,” he said. “Have a good sleep, you guys. Hope we get some decent weather this weekend. Thought I might get the boat out and investigate a few salmon.”

  For a while Plizit sat on the bed scratching at sores — from crank bugs; insects of delusion that bummed-out speed freaks commonly think they see crawling across their bodies. As the sores scabbed over, he picked them again, until he was bleeding in several places on his arms and legs. There was no noise in this wing of the police cells. Normally the cells were occupied by other prisoners — drunks singing, or crying, or talking to themselves. But the other cells in the wing were empty, and the only sound was an occasional creak, or a clank of distant metal on stone, or a dim shout from far down the way. Plizit had yelled to the night guard for water several times, but the man was too far away, or deaf, or just didn’t care.

  So he was alone with his amphetamine withdrawal, with his crank bugs, with his forty-watt bulb in a wire mesh, with his toilet that smelled of lye, with his cot and its mattress and its blanket made of a material that would not rip into strips. There were no windows to this cell — except for a small square in the door, with a view to the cell door across the hall.

  And finally the ups relaxed their grip on Plizit, and he clawed his way into a kind of sleep. The dreams were of Billy Sam’s face dissolving in front of him, pouring blood through orifices. Then an Oriental face, impassive, cold. A scream. Explosions. He rolled onto his side, and the black images passed away. Strangely, suddenly, it was a green spring day, and he was a boy beside his father, sitting on a hayrack. Then he was running through the fields, and his father was calling to him. “Laszlo,” he said. “Laszlo . . .”

  “Laszlo!” It was louder.

  “Laszlo, you bag of slime, get up.”

  He felt something soft hit him in the face, and his left eye opened, and was not able to see. He realized then that some sort of garment had been thrown over his head. He groped weakly about and removed it. It was an overcoat, and as a matter of fact he recognized it as Detective Harrison’s old rumpled coat. Its owner was standing a few feet from him, his arms folded, glinting down at him. The cell door was closed. Locked, he assumed.

  The detective reached down toward the corner of the cot, grabbed the blanket, whipped it from Plizit’s body, and tossed it into a corner. Plizit’s clothes were stained with the blood of Billy Sam and the blood of his own crank bugs.

  “You’re the most disgusting piece of puke I’ve ever had to look at,” Harrison said. “Stand up. Let’s get this over with.”

  Plizit did not move.

  “Get out of bed.”

  Plizit lay still, keeping his eye on the detective.

  Harrison knelt and picked up the corner of the cot with one arm, turning it on its side, against the wall. Plizit felt himself sliding against the wall, slamming into it. Then he fell onto the floor.

  Harrison grabbed him by the ankles and pulled him clear of the wreckage.

  Plizit still did not get up. He looked up balefully at the policeman, who sighed, then kicked him lightly in the head above the hairline, where no mark would show. Plizit’s head bounced against the wall, and he cried for help.

  Harrison just shook his head, and a cold smile drifted across his face.

  His coat was on the floor now, in a crumpled heap beside Plizit.

  “Aw, Jeez, Laszlo, I don’t know why we can’t just be friends. Look, there’s a deck of smokes in the right-hand pocket. Get me one. Take one of yourself. Let’s try to get on sensibly.”

  Plizit gained a sitting position on the floor, then fumbled through one pocket of Harrison’s coat, then the other. He did not draw out a pack of cigarettes. He pulled out Harrison’s snub-nosed .38 instead.

  So Harrison kicked his hand, hard this time, breaking a couple of fingers. The gun slid across the cell into a corner.

  “Damn it, I was wondering where I left that thing,” Harrison said. “Must of left my smokes in the office.”

  Plizit yelled a lot, but no one came. After a minute he quieted down and sat simpering and groaning, holding his injured hand.

  Harrison took a sealed envelope from his back pocket, and a letter opener, and tossed them down to Plizit.

  “Now, I want you to open that and see if I got it right.”

  Plizit was frozen.

  “Open it.” Harrison’s voice was calm and deadly.

  Plizit opened it, slipping the edge of the opener under the flap and slitting it lengthwise.

  “Now, you read that. I think I got everything, but I might have missed one or two details.” Waiting for Plizit to read it over, he lounged back against a wall, his arms again folded. He was wearing a white shirt stained with sweat. He also had a shoulder holster, but it was empty.

  Plizit’s shaking hands drew from the envelope five pages of lined paper bearing writing in Harrison’s hand. It began: “This is the statement of Laszlo Plizit. I have been warned by Detective Harrison that I need not say anything and that anything I do say may be used as evidence. The events here described occurred on Saturday, December third . . .”

  “Read it over, Laszlo,” Harrison said. “If you think there’s anything has to be changed, let’s do it quick. I’m tired and I’m dirty and I want to go home and have a shower and a couple hours sleep.” He yawned.

  Plizit glanced over the pages, taking very little in.

  “Okay?” Harrison said after a while. “Now sign it.” He threw down a fountain pen. Plizit stared up at him dumbly. “Don’t press too hard. It damages the nib.”

  When Plizit did not pick up the pen, Harrison picked Plizit up, wrapping his hands around the points of his shoulders, then throwing him hard against the wall, knocking his breath from him.

  Plizit sank down slowly on his knees.

  Harrison brought his right foot hard around in a circle, soccer-style, and embedded it in Plizit’s stomach. The gunman doubled over gasping, too much in pain to scream. He did not quite pass out.

  After a while Plizit untwined from his fetal position.

  Harrison kicked him again in the same place.

  “Please sign it, Laszlo. I still got the best corner kick in the police league.”

  Still Plizit made no move for the pen. He was huddled up in a ball, and was crying.

  He looked up when he heard the sound of fabric tearing. Harrison was ripping his own shirt. Plizit thought the detective might be going crazy. He was actually ripping his shirt with his hands. He was tearing it in two long lines, from collar to shirttail, until it hung from him in loose fragments. Then Harrison rended his undershirt with two similar long slashes.

  Even more strange, he then bent down and picked up the letter opener by its point, holding it between thumb and index finger. He drew two long superficial cuts down his chest, drawing blood, then wiped off the blade of the opener where his fingers had touched it. He placed it back on the floor beside Plizit.

  Plizit just watched all this, not putting it together.

  Harrison looked down at the man, smiling benignly.

  “Now, Hunkie,” he said
, “see what you done? You’ve gone and got your dirty fingerprints all over my nice clean gun, and all over my letter opener.” He took a step toward Plizit. “So I’m going to have to kill you.”

  On Monday the sixth day of March, Brian Pomeroy, back in the service of Laszlo Plizit, confirmed with Cobb that his client had had a change of heart. The deal was on. Two final terms were agreed upon: One, Plizit would be kept in protective custody while awaiting his plea to manslaughter and his sentence. The place of custody would be a country lock-up somewhere in the remote interior of the province, far from the reach of officers of the Vancouver city police, and far as well from the long tentacles of Au P’ang Wei. Two, after sentencing, Plizit would be transferred to a penitentiary in eastern Canada, several thousand miles from British Columbia.

  At two o’clock in the afternoon of that day Pomeroy delivered to Cobb a neatly typed statement signed by Laszlo Plizit and attesting to the murder and mutilation of Jim Fat by Dr. Au. Cobb was glad to see it. The hand-written version given him earlier by Detective Harrison was garbled, vague, and generally unreadable.

  Monday, the Thirteenth Day of March,

  at a Quarter to Ten O’Clock in the Morning

  An electric tension swirls through the corridors. The many citizens summoned here for jury duty form a line. A sheriff’s officer checks them off a list. Lawyers, wigless but wearing long black robes and vests, tabs, and wing collars, grandly weave their way through the crowd. Court workers drift through the hallways. Plaintiffs and defendants and witnesses slowly disperse in the direction of one or other of thirty courtrooms in the building.

  Behind a pair of oak-and-stained-glass doors is the assize court — locked, empty, and still. The high, massive judge’s bench dominates one end. To its left is the jury box with twelve chairs: simple, uncomfortable accommodation. To the right is the witness box; behind it, the press table. In front of the bench are the desks of the court clerk and official court reporter, and a step below these are the counsel tables where the lawyers will spread their books and make their notes. The defendant will sit in the prisoner’s dock, an enclosed dais in the middle of the room, a centrepiece surrounded by high leaded-glass windows through which the cool March sun sends dancing filaments of light. For the spectators, there are rows of seats in the back of the courtroom, and a gallery above.

  It is a theatre.

  There is no curtain, and the lights do not dim. The players and the watchers filter in and take their places. First, the old-timers, the seasoned veterans of this show. They come in as soon as the brown-uniformed sheriffs unlock the doors, and they find the best seats, where the players can best be seen and heard. They are here in numbers because M. Cyrus Smythe-Baldwin will be working this house for a run of two weeks. Foster L. Cobb, who thinks fast on his feet and questions sharply and is a comer, gets second billing. A group of high-school students files noisily into the upper gallery, then is cowed into silence by the bulldog scowl of a tough old sheriff’s officer.

  Now three thin men file in quietly. Two of them are very young. The three sit together in the front row of the lower gallery. They are bony, emaciated-looking, and they seem nervous or ill. Their face muscles twitch. These men are junkies on big habits. Several policemen in the courthouse have seen them and know who they are. Their presence has been noted, and they will be watched. . . .

  It is a few minutes before the hour, and Cobb comes in, striding hard, his books under his arm and his robes sailing behind him. He is exasperated because his collar stud broke, and he had to borrow another in the barristers’ gowning room. He is, as well, anxious, and this shows in the set of his face. He has first-act jitters, an edginess fuelled by a fourth cup of coffee, tempered only lightly by opiates. His weekend has again been lonely, his bed empty, his dreams ravaging. He had filled the loneliness with work, and now his mind is crammed with submissions, precedents, and case references compiled in the law library. He has prepared arguments for a defence adjournment application, promised for this morning, together with a battery of arguments upon issues that might or might not be raised during the trial. His body and mind are running on caffeine and heroin. Over-prepared for this trial, he is exhausted before it is even to begin.

  Following Cobb, cool, slender, graceful, and awed, comes Jennifer Tann, afraid of Cobb’s mood, feeling vibrations from his tension, overpowered by the energies pulsing in this room.

  Au steps calmly to the prisoner’s dock. The gate is held open for him by a sheriff, and he sits. He will remain there while the trial proceeds, but will stay free on bail during the trial. He is serene. No flicker of emotion touches his handsome dark face. He wears a silk shirt, a grey light-patterned tie, and a grey suit, but he has accepted the advice of counsel and is without expensive jewellery.

  As Au looks about him he sees the three edgy men in the front row, and for a second or two his eyes seem to speak words to them. They look at him too, but show no expression. Then Au looks ahead and folds his arms. For another man, guided less cerebrally, more emotionally, these last weeks might have been trying, but Au has mastered the art of self-control and through it the art of controlling others whose minds and wills are weaker. Charlie Ming is one of these, and Au takes pride in the knowledge that Ming will be loyal to him. He had expected more of Plizit, but also knows strength of character is not that disloyal man’s great virtue. One day, of course, Au would make appropriate reward to the man for his failing. In the meantime, the trial is about to commence, and his mind will remain as clear as a mirror. He is a businessman and has wisely invested in the services of M. Cyrus Smythe-Baldwin, Q.C.

  At thirty seconds before ten o’clock, Smythe-Baldwin walks into the courtroom and pauses. All eyes except those of Cobb — who will not play the old barrister’s game, who knows that Smythe-Baldwin never enters a room until the stage is set — turn to the dignified don of the criminal bar: a magnet controlling fields of force. He revolves his head slowly, and offers a warm smile to Tann, who, recalling her earlier impudence, blushes and feels herself an intruder in this place where the old lawyer exercises his territorial prerogative.

  Smythe-Baldwin now turns to the senior sheriff, taking his arm as if with a trusted friend, and speaks earnestly to him. The sheriff nods and turns to the spectators, and his voice rings out, temporarily silencing the buzz of quiet conversation. He demands to know if there are members of the jury panel in the courtroom, and if so, he asks, would they kindly leave. Three or four persons rise and depart to join others on the panel waiting outside the courtroom doors.

  Another sheriff enters from the judge’s door.

  “Are you ready, gentlemen?” he said, addressing counsel.

  They nod, and the sheriff ushers in Mr. Justice Selden Horowitz.

  “Order in court!” the sheriff shouts.

  There is a shuffling as everyone rises to his feet. Selden Horowitz, gowned in crimson-and-black robes, peering over his glasses at the full courtroom, mounts the steps, smiles and nods to counsel, and sits.

  Then the sheriff, standing stiffly, speaks the words that for long centuries of the English common-law have heralded the beginning of the criminal jury assize, the trial of citizen by citizens:

  “Oyer, oyer, oyer. All persons having business at this Court of Oyer and Terminer and General Gaol Delivery holden here this day draw near and give your attention and answer to your names when called. God Save the Queen!”

  Smythe-Baldwin rose to his full bearing. “My Lord,” he began. “I apply to traverse this trial to a future assize.”

  Cobb had met with him last week, fought the issue in solitary combat, and had not relented. Smythe-Baldwin, professing anger and indignation, promised he would place the item first on the agenda before Mr. Justice Horowitz on the opening day of trial. The lawyer had been astounded by the events of the week before: Plizit’s arrest in the course of an apparent attack on two witnesses, then the delivery by Cobb on Wednesday, five
days ago, of a copy of Plizit’s statement. Smythe-Baldwin’s private urgings to Cobb for an adjournment had to do with his concern that the defence had insufficient time to prepare to meet the fresh evidence. He also complained that prospective jurors might be biased as a result of the excited newspaper accounts of the shoot-out in the Chungking Rooms. Cobb answered that the press had not uncovered a link between the shooting and the Au trial, and the jury would undertake their tasks in virginal innocence.

  At ten-thirty, Smythe-Baldwin was still on his feet, punctuating his points with an index finger that sliced the air. The large courtroom was filled with his rich baritone. Cobb was anxious, and knew he would show nervousness until he had plunged himself into the thick of his submission. When Smythe-Baldwin sat down, Cobb stood up, almost knocking his chair over backwards, grabbing at it awkwardly with a hand still swathed in his robes. Then there were some moments of hesitation, a little stammer, some words repeated, an “uh” and an “er” as his engine coughed and warmed up. Slowly he drew himself into the current, and began not to think of the words he was speaking or of the phrases articulated, but of the sense and meaning of his argument.

  “Certainly the man Plizit is a witness central to the crown’s case,” Cobb said. “But my learned friend has had his evidence for five days — ample time for a lawyer of his ability to prepare a cross-examination. A delay in the trial further threatens the lives of witnesses who have offered to come forward, responding to their duties as citizens.”

  Near the end of his submission, Cobb realized his words had connected with Horowitz. The judge said nothing, but there had been an almost imperceptible nod of the head, a pursing of the lips, a movement forward in his seat. As the judge tuned in more to Cobb’s argument, he became a receptacle of a surge of persuasive energy that Cobb, encouraged, directed to him.