Needles

by William Deverell

  Harrison smiled. “I don’t know, maybe shoot the prosecutors.”

  Her heart skipped. California-style courtroom shoot-out. Here’s innocent Jennifer Tann in the middle of some bloody melee, guns blazing, people screaming. She’s hit! And the career of the first great woman criminal lawyer nipped before the bud can blossom. . . .

  “Seriously,” Cobb said.

  “I don’t know. These cocksuckers — sorry, Miss Tann — aren’t likely to do something stupid like take a pot shot at Laszlo. Here for show, probably. The Surgeon might have brought them in to throw a little scare into Charlie Ming, keep him honest, or whatever. Leclerc, he’s been visiting Charlie in jail, giving him his lines, I’d guess. They’re here to seal Charlie’s lips, Plizit too if possible.” Harrison took a gulp from his whiskey glass. “Well, I’m gonna have them assholes checked out, get the sheriffs to shake them down, see if they’re holding, maybe catch them in the can fixing.”

  Tann watched Cobb as he fidgeted, staring down at his drink, puffing at his pipe.

  Harrison continued: “They’re junkies, you see. They’ll do anything for the Surgeon’s junk. Get all wired up on junk, they’ll do anything. We’ll sort of shake ’em up, let them know we’re here.” He drained his glass. “Gotta go.”

  Tann clutched at her glass of grapefruit juice. She was still and rigid.

  Cobb looked up and took Harrison’s arm to keep him there. “Just a minute,” he said. “Where the hell are those wiretap transcripts? Three weeks ago you promised I’d have them before the trial. I can’t wait until we all retire.”

  “Jeez, Fos, I haven’t the faintest idea. They’re being held up on orders from some brass upstairs. I got as far up as the deputy chief constable’s office, and got some story about a continuing investigation, and nobody wants to blow it. Ottawa is somehow connected. I don’t know what goes on. I’m just a homicide cop.”

  “Ottawa? I thought you told me the Mounties weren’t involved. It was a city police thing.”

  All this stuff was just blowing past Tann. Ottawa? Mounties? Special investigation? What was she doing here? She could have specialized in estate planning.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t know what’s going on,” Harrison said. “They don’t tell me bugger-all. All right. Apparently this clown Cudlipp’s name comes up, and the surgeon’s, and Jimmy Fat’s, and they’ve been tapping some hang-out of Jimmy Fat’s, maybe where he used to deal from — who tells me any of these things? Nobody tells nobody anything in a police department, Fos. I find from some poor bum in the street what the guy in the office next to me is doing, that’s how tight things are. I’m in a very paranoid business, right? I mean, cops are paranoid, drugs don’t trust homicide, homicide don’t trust morality, morality don’t trust community relations. Anyway. The guys upstairs say I’ll get the transcripts before Dr. Au takes the stand, and that’s not likely until next week, right? I’ll get after it again tomorrow.”

  “Do it in the morning, Honch,” Cobb said. “In the afternoon, I’m putting you on the stand.”

  “I’m ready,” said Harrison. “I got my lines. ‘I looked into the room, milord, and seen this chubby little guy on a hook, de-balled. Obviously, milord, only one man could have perpetrated the deed, and I identify that man sitting over there in the prisoner’s dock. High and mighty, ready for a fall.’” Harrison showed his teeth in a jubilant smile. “And when the little Hunkie takes the stand, there’s gonna be shit all over the Surgeon’s sweet little three-piece suit.” He glanced at Tann. “Aw, sorry, Miss Tann, about my language.”

  “It’s okay.” She thought she sounded like a mouse squeaking.

  The whiskey at the bar and another when he got home were now mixed with the heroin and the day’s adrenalin, and got him high. Deborah was in a strange mood, flashing, mysterious, expectant. She had been drinking, too, and came on to him in kittenish style, with a kiss from soft lips that tasted of sherry. She was grilling fat pork chops. Tossing a salad. Stirring a cheese sauce. Very domestic. Cobb had not seen her since Thursday night, because she had gone to Whistler on Friday and returned only this morning. The fight of ten days ago was out of her system now.

  It took little to flush out the remnants of his love for her. The smile, the hug, the kiss — past bitterness was dissolved. She chatted about her weekend as they set the table, and she asked about the trial. Cobb, nervous and hopeful, poured himself another drink, sat down at the table, sipped whiskey, ate salad, and talked about it. It was almost like the old days, when he would talk about his cases to her, fulfilling the demands of her fantasies for stark dynamics of good versus evil.

  At supper’s end, she squeezed his hand, then got up to get coffee. “You’re on the front page,” she said, returning with the pot and coffee mugs. “‘Prosecutor Says Murderer Hacked off Tongue,’ or something like that. Jesus, let’s go to bed early. You can help me get rid of my goose-bumps.”

  “You bet,” Cobb said.

  Cobb showered first, and was waiting for Deborah when the phone rang. He took it on the bedside extension.

  “How about an autograph, headline grabber?” Santorini shouted at him. “Good start. Your country and your queen are proud of you.”

  “Tell her I’m doing my very best.”

  “I don’t expect to be seeing much of her this weekend, unless she happens to be skiing the green chair at Whistler. Coming up this weekend, Fos? Boys’ night out Friday and Saturday. The commanding officer is going to be visiting Auntie Minnie in Victoria this weekend, so I thought the two of us might get together up at Whistler for a little skiing and piss-up. It’s time, you know. You’ll need a break from that trial by then. We can throw a few snowballs and make out with a few snow bunnies.”

  Cobb could hear various sounds in the background. He formed an image of Santorini at his telephone, a glass of burgundy in his hand, feet propped up, kids jumping on his chair, a television set behind him loudly booming its wares.

  “I’ll meet you up there Saturday evening,” Cobb said. “I want to get some work in during the day, but, yeah, I’ll be ready for a few drinks by this weekend.”

  “That’s my man.”

  Deborah walked into the bedroom then, wearing a towel, and smiling. She could hear the shouts from the receiver, held by Cobb a few inches from his ear.

  “Give him my love,” she said. “But not all of it, Mr. Cobb.” She dropped the towel and moved close to him.

  Santorni kept booming: “Until Saturday, Fossie, old friend, when we shall drink in celebration of justice, in celebration of the incarceration of evil men. I want you to give that jury hell, Cobb. Fire them up. Loose the hounds on that old fox Smythe-Baldwin. Let slip the dogs of war in there, Cobb. Passionate oratory, that’s what it takes. There is too little passion in our courts. Win for Her Majesty.” Cobb hung up, smiling.

  Deborah’s lean, firm body was already pressed against his, and her hands and her tongue danced over him wildly. Cobb was astonished, and ecstatic. She threw the covers off, and ran her lips and tongue down his chest and stomach, and for a while teased his cock with her mouth, offering wet kisses down its length to the base. In an agony of pleasure, he arched his back, and her head dipped between his legs, then came up again, and she took his cock deeply and hungrily into her mouth. Her tongue found the thousand centres of pleasure that were there, bringing his spasms on early and against his will.

  Afterwards, for several minutes he lay back weakly, his arm about her, her head on his shoulder, her russet hair damply covering his chest.

  And he wondered.

  He wondered from whom she had learned the technique so well. How often had she done it? How many men? He felt pain begin to pour into the empty places in his heart.

  But he did not speak.

  “Why have you started using again?” she asked softly. “You know I won’t stand for it.”

  He closed his eyes, and waited
until sleep overcame the pain.

  Tuesday, the Fourteenth Day of March,

  at Ten O’Clock in the Morning

  The first officer to arrive at the scene in answer to Dugald McTaggart’s call about suspicious goings-on across the street was James Penn, a traffic cop. Cobb took him through his evidence quickly, hoping Smythe-Baldwin wouldn’t notice the holes in it.

  The defence lawyer was smiling as he stood to cross-examine.

  “Okay, now you told Mr. Cobb you went across the street to H-K Meats, and there was a man there mopping the floor. Had you ever seen him before?”

  “No, sir,” said Penn. “At least, I didn’t recall his face.”

  “And there was nothing at all extraordinary about a man — a janitor, you presumed — going about his chores, cleaning and mopping up a butcher store at around eight-thirty or nine o’clock at night? You did not take him into immediate custody and charge him with a murder?”

  “I was not aware any murder had been committed.”

  “Of course you weren’t. For the simple reason there was no sign of a murder having been committed, was there?”

  “I didn’t carry out a detailed search for clues.”

  “You saw no body?”

  “No, not at the time.”

  “You saw no blood?”

  “There might have been. It was a butcher store. I wasn’t looking.” The young officer was nervous and kept clearing his throat.

  “Oh, come now, constable,” Smythe-Baldwin said, his face expressing total disbelief, “do you wish us to understand that you have no eyes and no training in the art of detecting simple indicia of crime? If there was blood about the room, as some people want us to believe, you as a trained observer would have noticed it. Yes?”

  “I would hope so.”

  “And you didn’t, because there was not any there, and a trained observer like yourself would have seen it.”

  Cobb groaned. “Is he asking a question or giving his own evidence?” he said.

  Smythe-Baldwin turned to the judge. “If my friend has an objection, I wish he would frame it as such, or stop sniping from the sidelines.”

  “Please continue,” Horowitz said.

  Smythe-Baldwin shook his head ruefully and returned to the witness.

  “I put it to you, witness, that the circumstances at the time were such that you felt there was no problem in allowing this man, this janitor, to pick up his mop and pail and wander out of the office.”

  “I thought he would dump his dirty water, wring out his mop, come back and finish the job, and lock up,” said the constable. “When he didn’t come back, I got concerned and returned to Suite C to confer with my partner.”

  “And you didn’t lock the office after you?”

  “No, I didn’t have a key.”

  “And you went to the Chungking Rooms and waited for the detectives, and then you stood about with them for fifteen or twenty minutes, and you were gone from H-K Meats altogether for an hour or so before you led the detectives back there.”

  “I don’t think it was that long.”

  “Have you no memory of the time that passed while that office remained unlocked in your absence?”

  “It could be half an hour to an hour.”

  “I suggest you were at H-K Meats just before eighty-thirty, and then you left and didn’t return until at least nine-twenty-three p.m. with the detectives. I’ve seen their reports. That’s the time. What do you say?”

  “Well, it could be.”

  “And we also know, I should advise you, that the time of death was eight-fifteen p.m. to eight-forty-five p.m. So anyone could have entered that place during the lapse, committed some horrible crime, then wandered off?”

  “That would be speculation.”

  Smythe-Baldwin had his eye on the jury. “Since speculation is the substance from which the crown has attempted to build its case, why should you feel awkward about engaging in it?”

  Cobb could not help himself. “My learned friend knows the difference between cross-examination and self-serving rhetoric,” he said.

  “And my learned friend knows he should not interrupt when I am engaging in cross-examination. My lord, I seek a ruling enjoining my friend from his constant hen-pecking.”

  Horowitz said: “Well, my ruling is that it is now nearly eleven-thirty, and we should take our coffee break.”

  The old sailor Dugald McTaggart told his story well, although with too many words. On the key issue — identification of Au — he stood soldier-straight in the witness box and pointed a finger at the accused.

  “That is the man whose face I saw in the window,” he pronounced.

  “Thank you,” said Cobb, happily taking his seat.

  Smythe-Baldwin rose grandly from his seat, turned to the witness, hooked his thumbs in his belt, and began:

  “Sir, you were born in Glasgow in 1894, and you have seen nearly a century come and go?”

  “I was born on the fifteenth day of August, 1894, and I was a working man until a few years ago. I ha’ a strong body, but I ha’ a wee bit of arthritis now. I ha’ spent my life on the sea.”

  “Ah, a sailor. A merchant seaman, were you?”

  “I was, indeed, for fifty-five years,” said McTaggart. “But in the great war I served in the trenches in France.”

  “And now you have earned your rest and are on a pension, is that so?”

  “It is a poor wee pension.”

  “And you spend your time watching television in the evenings, perhaps, or reading books?”

  “The eyes become tired at the end of the day, so I canna read much at all. I play a little chess with the boy, or listen to the radio, or watch television, like you say.”

  “And were you listening to the radio that night? December third, while you were playing chess?”

  “Aye, I play it for the music.”

  “And loudly?”

  “I dinna hear you.”

  Smythe-Baldwin raised his voice. “You play it loudly, because you are hard of hearing, are you not?”

  “I wear a hearing aid.”

  “You talked to Selwyn Loo that night, and he told you what he heard?”

  “I heard the poor man screaming, Mr. Smythe-Baldwin.”

  “And you say you also saw persons. You do not wear glasses.”

  “I see what I need to see.”

  “Do you see this calendar?” Smythe-Baldwin pointed to the calendar on the wall.

  “Aye.”

  “Can you see these words on it?”

  “My eyes are not perfect, if that is what you are asking.”

  “What are these words?”

  “Ah, you ha’ me there.”

  “I think we can all read these words, Mr. McTaggart. They say ‘Royal Bank of Canada.’ I see them. But then, I am wearing my glasses.”

  “Ah, well, my eyes get tired.”

  “Have you had your eyes checked recently?”

  “Aye. In the last few seconds.” Even Cobb laughed, but it wasn’t easy.

  “Well, it’s no shame to wear glasses, sir. You’d still be the same handsome man with them, Mr. McTaggart. Still please the ladies.”

  “I’ve pleased a few, Mr. Smythe-Baldwin.”

  “In many ports, I daresay. Now, we are being candid here, Mr. McTaggart, and no doubt you saw a face in the window on the night in question, but not clearly, I suggest.”

  “Well, now, I’m afraid to answer, sir.”

  “You need not call me sir. I think you have seniority.”

  “Ah, but you have the rank. Rear admiral, were you not?”

  “We are all simple sailors in this courtroom,” Smythe-Baldwin said, beaming. Cobb thought the jury were enjoying this too much. “Now, it is true — you did not clearly see the man’s face in the window
?”

  “I am pretty sure it was the accused, Mr. Smythe-Baldwin.”

  “Pretty sure? You had a glimpse for just a few seconds.”

  “Not long. He opened the curtains and peered out and made a signal with his hand —”

  “Did you see what he was wearing?”

  “I thought a suit. Very natty, I recall.”

  “It was an ordinary face, then?” said the lawyer. “Nothing unusual about it?”

  “He was an Oriental, I am sure of that.”

  Smythe-Baldwin gave the witness a group of photographs and asked him to study them.

  “Is the man you observed in the window pictured in those photographs, sir?” the lawyer said.

  “Well, now,” the witness said, “I am not so sure.”

  “There is no one you can pick out? Please, don’t look at the accused.”

  McTaggart held out two pictures. “It may be this one,” he said, “or it may be that one.”

  Smythe-Baldwin took the two photographs and held them up. “For the record,” he said, “of the twenty photographs here, the witness has tentatively pointed to two. One is a photograph of one Gordon Yuen, and the other is a photograph of one Robert Wong. Neither man is on trial in this courtroom. A photograph of the accused is also in the group — number sixteen. I tender these as exhibits.”

  Selwyn Loo blinked nervously behind his thick glasses.

  “Can you describe for the jury the sound you heard after the screams?” Cobb asked.

  “It was a choking,” said the boy. “A gasp, like. Or a gurgling in the throat. I don’t know how to say it.”

  “Was that before or after you saw the face come to the window?”

  “Before.”

  “Was your window open?”

  “Yes, then.”

  “Did you hear any words before that?”

  “He was pleading,” said the witness. “I do not know his dialect. He called out a name.”

  “What name?”

  “‘Dr. Au P’ang Wei,’ he said.”

  “Then you saw the face?”

  “Yes.”

  “And whose face was it?”

  “Dr. Au P’ang Wei.”