“And do you see that man here in the courtroom?”
“Yes.” The boy pointed. “There.” Au shook his head sadly.
“The witness is indicating the accused, for the record,” Cobb said, and faced the boy again. “And is that the same man you told us earlier you had frequently seen on your street, going up to the office of the Nationalist Benevolent Association above the butcher shop?”
“Yes,” said Selwyn Loo.
“Now, Selwyn,” said the lawyer, “did you go down to the police station later that night?”
“Yes.”
“And were you shown any photographs?”
“Yes. One was Au P’ang Wei.”
Cobb sat down.
“You suffer from astigmatism, don’t you, Selwyn?” began Smythe-Baldwin. “Do you know what that is?”
“Yes.”
“You have great difficulty seeing without your glasses?”
“Yes.”
“Are your eyes getting worse?”
“The doctor says I will be blind when I am older.”
“Oh, I am sorry,” said the lawyer.
“It is all right.”
“I am sorry, but I have to ask you these questions. Do you see that man over there in the sheriff’s uniform, about fifty feet away?”
“Yes.”
“Describe his face.”
“It is round. He has brown hair. He has a big moustache. He is smiling. I think he has a bald spot.”
“You can see that, eh?”
“I have to do eye exercises.”
“And you say you have seen the accused several times in the neighborhood?”
“Yes.”
“Has he ever talked to you?”
“No.”
“But you know his name?”
“Yes.”
“How is that? How did you find out his name?”
“My mother told me. He threatened to cut my mother up —”
“Now just a minute,” said Smythe-Baldwin, “that isn’t —”
“You asked,” said Cobb. “If you don’t know the answer, don’t ask the question.”
“I know what I am doing, Mr. Cobb,” Smythe-Baldwin said haughtily. “Now, Selwyn, you say the accused once had harsh words with your mother, so you don’t like him?”
“They were not harsh words,” the boy said. “He threatened her.”
“Well, I am sure there are two sides of that story. But you would be happy to see him convicted of this murder charge, is that so?”
“Yes. If he murdered a man he should be convicted.”
“That’s why you say you saw the accused in the window, because you do not like him? You want him to be convicted and go to jail for life, isn’t that right?”
“I saw him. He was in the window.”
“Describe the man you claim to have seen in the window.”
“He had smooth skin, no beard, no glasses. Straight nose. Black hair, with some grey at the sides. He wore a grey suit with a tie and a vest.”
“He looked like any ordinary well-groomed, well-dressed man you might see?”
“He looked like Au P’ang Wei,” said Selwyn Loo.
“But others look like him.”
“They don’t think like him.”
“You dislike him greatly, then?” said the lawyer.
“He sent a man to kill —”
“No, witness,” Smythe-Baldwin said, interrupting, his composure leaving him for a second.
Now we’re in trouble, Cobb thought. The whole trial could abort. Damn, he had warned Selwyn Loo not to mention the shooting. With the judge and jury looking on, Cobb had a quick, whispered conference with Smythe-Baldwin:
“Smitty, if you apply for a mistrial, I’m simply going to argue that the evidence of the Plizit shooting is admissible. We can show he was acting on Au’s orders to do away with the two witnesses. That makes the whole area of the shooting relevant.” Cobb prayed the bluff would work: Plizit had not been candid at all about having such orders from Au.
Smythe-Baldwin studied Cobb hard. If he were to apply to abort the trial, he had to seize the moment. But perhaps he could get Cobb’s undertaking not to call evidence as to the shooting. Were that to go before the jury, his client could be sunk.
“There will be no mention by Plizit that he was acting on instructions from Dr. Au?”
“If you don’t apply for a mistrial.”
Smythe-Baldwin calmly turned to Horowitz. “My lord, I think it might be wise to caution the jury that the boy’s last remark was careless and unintended, and that there is nothing remotely capable of proving any such suggestion.”
Cobb stood up. “I agree with that, my lord.”
“I don’t think everyone heard it in any event,” the judge said. “Please ignore that last reference if you heard it, ladies and gentlemen.”
Smythe-Baldwin went back to work.
“Now, Selwyn, I put it to you,” he said. “It was dark on the night of December third, and the face you saw in the window was a face in the shadows.”
“There was light enough. There was light on his face. I could see him.”
“There is very little light from those windows. Now, I’m asking you to be fair and tell us that the face could not be seen distinctly.”
“It was Dr. Au,” said the boy. “I know his face. . . .”
As a witness, J.O. Harrison could be cocky and bull-headed, too convinced of the rightness of his cause. Smythe-Baldwin knew that fact well:
“. . . But Constable Penn tells us he saw no sign of a body, and no blood in the butcher store — on the floors, on the walls, under the table, anywhere. Does not that suggest that the murder occurred between the time he first visited the premises and the time you arrived, perhaps half an hour to an hour later?”
“All it suggests is that Constable Penn may not be very observant.” Harrison was reacting as if answering questions was a distasteful part of his duties.
“You don’t think Penn is a very good policeman?”
“He doesn’t do murder investigations. Maybe he’s better than me at seeing cars run red lights.”
“He’s not a very smart cop?”
“I haven’t run an I.Q. test on him. He’s young. He’s learning.”
“Let us move to something else. You say the accused had a small injury on his left hand when he turned himself in. I take it you wish us to draw some sinister inference from that fact? Have you ever injured your hand?”
“Of course.”
“Perhaps you have suffered an injury to the area of your knuckles upon occasion?”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Harrison glowered at the defence counsel.
“I am suggesting that one can injure his hand in any vast number of ways — cut it, scrape it, scratch it, bang it.”
“Oh, sure. It’s even possible to bite your own hand, if you get the urge, Mr. Smythe-Baldwin.”
“Oh, come. It is the suspicious police mind at work. Now, you say you recognized the body, had known the person as Jimmy Wai Fat Leung. His nickname was Jim Fat, is that right?”
“He was known as Jim Fat.”
“And he was known in police circles?”
“He was known in my police circle.”
“He was a criminal with a long record for everything from pushing heroin to running a gaming house, is that so?”
Cobb stood up. “The deceased is not on trial,” he said. “His character is irrelevant here.”
“The crown would seek to suppress some sordid truths,” said Smythe-Baldwin, pleased that Cobb had risen to the bait. “Very well, I can’t do much about that kind of stone-walling. Now, I understand you engaged the, er, cooperation of one Laszlo Plizit. Or, should I say, purchased his evidence.”
“Wel
l, I resent the insinuation,” Harrison said stuffily.
“So do I,” said Cobb. “Put it correctly.”
Smythe-Baldwin was grinning. “We have touched on some nerve endings. Let me put it this way: Mr. Plizit has agreed, as our American friends put it, to turn state’s evidence in order to avoid a just and proper murder conviction for the first-degree murder of a Vancouver city policeman, is that so?” Smythe-Baldwin had Cobb’s undertaking that Plizit would not mention his motive for being in the Chungking Rooms. He could now paint a sordid picture of Plizit without it coming back on him. “That is so — you did a deal with Plizit?”
“That is a way of putting it,” Harrison said grumpily.
“Is that the way you operate? Trading off your own people like so many pounds of flesh? You’re prepared to barter off a brave officer’s memory for a promise of perjury?”
Cobb exploded from his chair. “Goddamnit, I’m not going to sit here and —”
“Mr. Cobb, please,” Horowitz admonished. But Harrison held out his hand. “Let me answer . . . let me answer.” Cobb slid back into his seat. “You see, Mr. Smythe-Baldwin, I’ve been doing this for nearly as long as you’ve been practising law, and at my level I’m not dealing with some spoiled momma’s boy stealing chocolate bars. I have to make some hard decisions when I’m dealing with certain types of crime — and certain types of people. I won’t say anything more about that end of it, it’s a hell of a thing when a young kid just learning how to wear a uniform gets blown away. I’ll tell you, it makes my heart ache. But there were unusual circumstances here. We’re not hiding anything. It’s open. His lawyer was involved in everything, and we got nothing to hide. He came forward. We took his statement. That’s it.”
“I commend you for your honesty,” Smythe-Baldwin said. “I suppose we cannot expect equal candor from your good friend Mr. Plizit? You will agree he is the type of person who will say anything, make up any kind of fable to curry favor from the crown and save his skin.”
“You have your opinions on that; I have mine.”
“Well, what is your opinion?”
“Under the circumstances, I think he’ll tell the truth. He had stuff in his statement he couldn’t know unless he was there.”
“Let’s put it baldly, detective — the deal allows him to plead to a lesser charge if he puts the finger on Dr. Au.”
“It could be put in fancier words, Mr. Smythe-Baldwin, but that don’t mean he’s lying.”
“Perhaps some physical inducement was also tendered, Detective Harrison.”
“You got me there. I took a statement. The lawyers did the rest.” Harrison looked the soul of innocence.
“But I am given to understand he first expressed a reluctance to say anything about the December third matter.”
“He made a statement after he spoke to his lawyer.”
“Now, officer, we have known each other for thirty years, and I would not be mis-stating the matter if I suggested that you have a very persuasive way of dealing with people. Would that be fair?”
“I try to be a little fatherly and understanding sometimes.”
Smythe-Baldwin snorted. “Oh, come on, detective. You’re not suggesting you were treating Plizit like a father!”
“Well, no . . .”
“I think we would all be very much relieved if I were allowed to talk to Mr. Plizit before he gives evidence so that I might resolve some of these questions. But I understand you have hidden him away on us.”
“He is in custody.”
Cobb began to rise. Plizit’s whereabouts had to be kept from Au at all costs.
“Well, where?” said Smythe-Baldwin. “Is it a great secret of state?”
“Yes,” Cobb said.
“He’s out of town, that’s all I can say,” said Harrison.
“I won’t embarrass you by pressing the matter,” Smythe-Baldwin said. “This gentleman Mr. Plizit had, to use your words, stuff in his statement he would not have known unless he was there when Jim Fat got killed. Now, there is a simple way to account for that fact, is there not? Laszlo Plizit killed Jim Fat.”
“You got a right to your theories.”
“Do you not think it a great tragedy that a killer like Plizit could be using the Vancouver police as pawns to shift blame for Jim Fat’s murder from himself to an innocent man, while paying a penalty of only a few years in jail for the murder of a policeman? Perhaps that sort of business doesn’t raise the hackles of a grizzled veteran like yourself.”
That propelled Cobb to his feet again. “My friend engages in argument, supposition, rhetoric, and sarcasm,” he said. “Everything but cross-examination.”
“If there is an objection, please frame it as such,” Smythe-Baldwin said.
“I think you are being argumentative, Mr. Smythe-Baldwin,” the judge said.
“There seems a great deal about the crown’s case to argue about, my lord, but I shall move on. Detective, you have also made the acquaintance of one Charlie Ming, whom all of us in this courtroom will have the pleasure to meet in a day or so. You arrested him in the early-morning hours of December the fourth?”
“About two o’clock in the morning. We found him hiding under a bed at his home.”
“And you conveyed him to that sumptuous hostelry you operate on Main Street, and there proceeded to interview him?”
“Yes.”
“In your own inimitable fashion?”
“Whatever that means.”
“I think we know what it means. You have a reputation of possessing, I think it is put, a hard nose?”
“It’s no harder than yours, counsellor.” Harrison was impassive.
“I, however, have never engaged in the dubious thrill of dragging a manacled man to the police station in his pyjamas at two o’clock in the morning, then proceeding to extort a false statement from him.”
“He was wearing a coat over his pyjamas. He resisted arrest. He wouldn’t put his clothes on.”
“And I suppose it was while he was resisting arrest that this otherwise perfectly healthy man developed an enormous pain in the abdomen area.”
“He had to be subdued, but I don’t think I would have hit him.”
“Now, officer, we’re all adults in this courtroom, and we can all handle a little honest admission. You threatened Charlie Ming, and badgered him, and beat him to elicit a lying statement in an effort to put the accused at the scene of the crime.”
Harrison, looking uncomfortable, cleared his throat. “Well, I just disagree with all that, Mr. Smythe-Baldwin. If Charlie Ming says something like that, I feel sorry for the man.”
“And he’s being held in the cells of the city lock-up as a so-called material witness, is he not?”
“Yeah, he isn’t going anywhere for the time being.”
“And you know that he has repudiated his statement?”
“I heard something about that, yeah.”
“And yet you plan to bring him into this courtroom in an attempt to get him to lie again as part of your vendetta against the accused?”
“He’ll say whatever he’s going to say. I don’t know what he’s going to say. . . .”
Tuesday, the Fourteenth Day of March,
at a Quarter Past Ten O’Clock at Night
The clouds that had clung all day to the snowy peaks above Vancouver spread softly over the city in the evening, drifting down from Hollyburn and Grouse and across the inlet and the city, across the great flood plain of the Fraser River. With the clouds came the tender coastal rain, given passage by westerly winds from the Pacific Ocean. These are the winds that soften this northern climate and bring an early spring.
Jennifer Tann allowed the slow flic-flac of the windshield wipers to lull her and blunt the strain of the day in court and the strain of the long hours later in the law library helping Foster Cobb track elus
ive precedent. Now Cobb was driving her home. The obtrusive, gaudy lights of Kingsway car lots gleamed at them through the rain, and colored the slick pavement with reds and yellows. There was warmth and comfort in the front seat of this man’s practical old Volvo, and she felt a gentle, elusive energy flowing from him. She studied his face, staring, searching. His face glowed, then darkened as the light from the electric signs touched and colored him. She wanted to reach to him, to touch him. She had found herself starting to want this man — this had been happening for several days now — but she did not have the key to him. There was a hidden source of energy in him, and something closed and secret. . . . She wanted to rummage through him, to explore his strange fusion of knowledge and strength and sensitivity . . . and fear.
Preparing for the trial, they had often exchanged thoughts during breaks from their work, but he rarely spoke of himself. He seemed so outwardly cool, so detached, so . . . professional. Today he had talked easily about the ebb and flow of the trial — mostly ebb this day, because Smythe-Baldwin had disarmed McTaggart and brought out the rancor felt by Selwyn Loo toward the accused, an ill-will that might suggest to the jury the boy had wrong motives for identifying Dr. Au. Cobb spoke admiringly of Smythe-Baldwin, who had tempered so well the impact of the day’s witnesses. And these, Cobb lamented, were honest witnesses. What would the old sharp-shooter do to Ming and Plizit?
On the whole, Cobb complained to Tann, his efforts had been flimsy, and he felt himself a puerile beginner beside Smythe-Baldwin.
But Tann, although an inexperienced observer in the artistry of counsel, knew already from her two days in court that Cobb, a good trial lawyer — quick, with wit, finely tuned — was moving toward the apex of his career as obviously as Smythe-Baldwin was declining from his. She worried, though, that Cobb had not drawn himself apart sufficiently from the emotion to the trial, and his weakness might be his intense and undisguised hatred of Au, a hatred that flashed in his face each time he turned to look at the man in the prisoner’s dock. She feared his anger might breed error.
That anger was the only emotion Cobb displayed openly — in court, in the library, over coffee. Otherwise, a crust hid his feelings. What routes might she follow to break trail to those regions lying hidden behind the facade of the coolly professional trial lawyer? What was real behind the crust? The old pipes he smoked? The funny little grin that worked so hard to break out into a smile? The gentle crinkles in the corners of his eyes? The gold wedding band on his finger? Yes, that was real, she feared. Too real.
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