Needles

by William Deverell

  “And at the same time you were also convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and sentenced to three years, also concurrent?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You threatened somebody with a gun?”

  “Had to defend myself,” Plizit said. “Didn’t shoot him, just hit him a bit.”

  “And there was a common assault before that, in September 1958, in Winnipeg, two hundred dollars fine or thirty days in jail?”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “And another one in Calgary, January 1959, five hundred dollars or two months?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It sounds as if you were a violent man, Mr. Plizit, or was all that just youthful exuberance?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Never mind. Now, again in 1961, in July, you were convicted of possession of a weapon for a purpose dangerous to the public peace and sentenced to two years less a day in Sudbury, Ontario?”

  “Yeah, I guess. I don’t know date. You have all the dates on that paper, I guess.”

  “Oh, yes, it’s all here, Mr. Plizit. All except the things no one ever caught you at.”

  Cobb stood up. “There is a proper way of putting a record to a witness.”

  “I won’t interfere,” the judge said. “This is cross-examination.”

  “You say you were working with a carnival in 1967,” continued Smythe-Baldwin.

  “Around there,” replied the witness.

  “Is that when you were caught attacking a little teen-aged girl?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Behind your Tilt-a-Whatever, no doubt. You were convicted in September 1967, in Toronto, of attempted rape and sentenced to three years in the penitentiary?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “And in July 1968, in Halifax, Nova Scotia — you get around, don’t you? — you were convicted of a breach of parole and a common assault, and your parole was revoked and you were sentenced to an additional three months’ imprisonment?”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “What else do we have here? Let’s see, July 1972, common assault, two months. January 1973, common assault, four months. I won’t bother with all these minor things. Let’s see, I’ll go down the list here. Here’s a good one, October 1975, in Vancouver, possession of stolen bonds, six months, is that right?”

  “If you say.”

  “Witness, is that right?” Smythe-Baldwin shouted.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Then in February 1976, for trafficking in methamphetamine, you were given nine months. You must have hit the judge on a good morning. What’s this methamphetamine? Is that what you call speed?”

  “Meth, speed, yeah.”

  “You were doing that for a living?”

  “I had to sell, to be honest.”

  “Yes, please be honest. You were selling speed in large quantities?”

  “A little, yeah.”

  “I guess you know a little about this drug,” said the lawyer. “You told us you were high on it a couple of weeks ago when you shot somebody, is that so?”

  “Yeah, I was stoned.”

  “‘Speed kills,’ you’ve heard that?”

  “Yeah, I heard.”

  “Gets you all confused and mixed up, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, you can’t think straight.”

  “Are you an addict?”

  “Not now.”

  “What about two weeks ago.”

  “I used a lot, yeah.”

  “It makes you all dopey, does it? Makes everything fuzzy?” Smythe-Baldwin’s eyes glinted. Cobb had an idea of what was coming.

  “Makes everything pretty clear sometimes. You just don’t have control, is all.”

  “Everything looks distorted?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “You see things that aren’t there?”

  “Well, maybe.”

  “Just as on December third in H-K Meats you saw Dr. Au and he wasn’t there?”

  “I ain’t so high I see Dr. Au if he isn’t there. I was just feeling good, is all.”

  “You were feeling good?” Smythe-Baldwin’s tufted eyebrows were raised in shock.

  “Yeah.”

  “Jim Fat was having his throat slit, you say, and you were feeling good?” The lawyer appeared goggled-eyed in amazement.

  “I think you is twisting what I say.”

  “I am not twisting anything at all, Mr. Plizit. The only twisting being done here is being done by a lying, twisted mind.”

  Cobb stood up to object, but Horowitz looked down at him coldly, without sympathy, and Cobb flopped back into his chair.

  “Let’s get down to simple realities, Mr. Plizit,” said Smythe-Baldwin. “You’ll say just about anything to protect your own skin, won’t you, even if it means sending an innocent man away for life?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Don’t play the innocent here!” he barked. “You cooked up a story about Dr. Au killing Jimmy Fat in order to beat a murder charge.”

  “No.”

  “You have falsely sold the accused to the police, who are always ambitious to convict a prominent citizen, in order to purchase your own freedom.”

  “I do not think so. I think maybe they export me to Hungary to do my time there.”

  “Ah!” Smythe-Baldwin affected surprise. “So there was some other conviction in Hungary. What was that for?”

  “They accuse me of anti-socialist activity, and want to put me in communist jail for ten years, you see?”

  “And what was this so-called anti-socialist activity, Mr. Plizit?”

  “They have frame me, call me enemy of the people.”

  “And what were you jailed for, trying to cause a revolution?”

  Plizit shrugged. “The secret police claim I rob a store, but they lie.”

  “Robbery, was it? I suppose those poor misguided communists think robbery is some sort of revisionist crime, when of course we all know that you were just engaging in an innocent act of free enterprise.” Jurors were chuckling. Smythe-Baldwin had most of them in his corner. “Let us seek some information about this murder charge you face. It was a week ago Friday, I believe, that you shot Constable Jake Moeller through the neck with a pistol equipped with a silencer, am I correct?”

  “No, I have shoot blind,” Plizit said. “Indian was very drunk and come at me, and I have defend myself, and police shoot at us and I shoot back, was all mistake. I am not guilty of murder. I have made statement to police, yes, because my lawyer have said it will help me. I am not a fool.”

  “I have no doubt,” said the lawyer. “A fool will turn down such an offer while a dishonorable man might not. There is another motive for accusing Dr. Au of being a murderer, is there not?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Oh, come. Why do we play such games? The accused was miles from the scene, and you know it. You dropped him off somewhere on Kingsway, before the three of you proceeded to Chinatown, isn’t that so?”

  “No. Dr. Au, he came with us.”

  “You and Charlie Ming were alone with Jim Fat in the office, yes?”

  “No.”

  “Where did you go after you killed him?”

  “I went . . . That is a lie.”

  “You were going to say you went somewhere?” Smythe-Baldwin wore an innocent smile.

  “You try to make me say I killed him. No, I deny.”

  “You and Charlie Ming killed this man, and the both of you have tried to cover up by blaming the accused. Now, that is true, is it not? Be honest now!” Smythe-Baldwin stood in front of Plizit like a bull, nostrils flaring.

  “I know what you try to do,” Plizit shot back.

  “I put it to you that you took the life of Jimmy Wai Fat Leung!” Smythe-B
aldwin roared.

  “I put it to you I don’t.” Plizit tried a wan, fake smile, but his voice was cracking.

  “I am accusing you of the murder!”

  “This is lie, lie, lie.”

  “You have come before this court and you have sworn an oath before God to tell the truth. Do you swear now that you and Charlie Ming did not take this man’s life?”

  “I do.”

  “And you remember taking that oath?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And is your conscience bound by that oath?”

  “What do you mean, conscience?”

  “Do you have none, witness?”

  “What is it?”

  “Do you understand what an oath means?”

  “To tell truth.”

  “Did you swear before God?”

  “I guess, yeah.”

  “Does the Deity mean anything to you? Are you bound by an oath before God?”

  “It makes no difference. I tell truth anyway.”

  “It makes no difference that you have sworn an oath on the Bible to tell the truth?”

  “It makes no difference.”

  “An oath on the Bible means nothing to you?” There was horror on Smythe-Baldwin’s face.

  “No, I —”

  Smythe-Baldwin cut him off sharply. “That is all, thank you. Thank you very much. I am satisfied.” He sat down, looking over at the jury with a sad smile and shaking his head.

  Cobb, rising, sensed he had few friends in the jury box.

  “Any re-examination, Mr. Cobb?” Horowitz asked.

  “No,” Cobb said cheerlessly. “That is the case for the crown. I have concluded my evidence.”

  Court was adjourned until Friday morning.

  “Goddamnit, Cobb, it’s putrid, and I can’t stand it!” Deborah had gone on a hunt while he was in court, and found an outfit in his library, behind The History of the Industrial Revolution. She had drunk sherry until he walked into the apartment, then made great ceremony of dropping the syringe on the kitchen tile floor and smashing it with her heel. “I won’t have any goddamn needles in this place!” The book came whistling through the air at Cobb, and he dodged it and it struck the wall behind him and fell to the floor, old newspaper and magazine clippings fluttering out from between its pages.

  Deborah sat on a chair, livid, with tears coming. “That’s all I need in my life, a goddamn dope fiend! You bastard! You promised!” This time the half-empty bottle struck the wall and sent a sticky splash of sherry over the spice rack.

  Cobb put his coat back on and headed for the door.

  “I don’t want to see you!” she yelled. “I’m going to Whistler tonight. I don’t want to see you this weekend. Get your shit together.”

  Before going to the courthouse library, Cobb stopped in at a White Spot for a hamburger and read the newspaper accounts of Ming’s suicide. He then went up to his office and did up two caps of junk to get him through the evening. He had only two left.

  Friday, the Seventeenth Day of March,

  at Five Minutes Past Ten O’Clock in the Morning

  “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” the clerk asked solemnly.

  “Yes, sir, I do,” said Corporal Everit Cudlipp, his hungover head and body neatly composed for the defence’s opening round. He was dressed in a bright red dress uniform and stood tall, feet apart, hands behind his back. At ease, in the military.

  “You may be seated, corporal,” said the judge.

  “Thank you, my lord, I prefer to stand.”

  “You are wearing a uniform,” said Smythe-Baldwin, “but for the record, would you state your occupation?”

  “I am a corporal in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, stationed here in Vancouver. I have been a member of the drug squad for the last ten years and a police officer for going on seventeen years.”

  “And your duties now include what?”

  “Investigation of major heroin-trafficking operations, conspiracies to traffic and to import heroin, on-the-spot surveillance, telephone wiretap operations. I specialize in fairly big transactions, particularly amounts coming from Southeast Asia, Hong Kong.”

  “And you have served in an undercover capacity?”

  “Yes, sir. I was undercover for six months.”

  “And you received a commendation from the force for your efforts in that regard?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Smythe-Baldwin asked for his credentials. Cudlipp, in his best poker-faced police-witness style, listed them: he had taken specialized courses in Ottawa and Regina in drugs and organized crime, headed up RCMP tactical squads in major investigations, worked with the FBI, the DEA, Interpol, the Royal Hong Kong Constabulary, and he had given expert evidence on drugs at least a hundred times in court.

  Cudlipp spoke precisely and with practised ease. He had gone through a package of Clorets this morning, because Dr. Au’s down payment had arrived the previous night, and a little of it had bought a lot of Heinekein beer. He and Alice Carson had celebrated wildly.

  “You say you specialize in Far Eastern heroin exports,” said Smythe-Baldwin. “Where does most of the heroin come from that is the subject of your work?”

  “Hong Kong is the major Eastern embarkation port,” Cudlipp replied. “It is refined there or in Thailand. Most of it comes from Thailand or Burma originally. It used to come from Laos as well, and Vietnam.”

  “How dangerous is the work?”

  “It is a deadly serious business to those who traffic in large amounts. There is gunplay, and people do get killed. I have had to defend myself on more than one occasion.”

  “Do you use your informants as an investigative tool?”

  “Yes, sir. I have private sources of information. I make it a policy not to reveal their names, of course.”

  “Are these informants known to other members of the drug squad, or other police officers?”

  “Some. I have used a few who trust me and I have not given away their names to anyone, even to officers I work with.”

  “I am going to ask you to name one of them here. Will that be all right?”

  “I understand it will be necessary for this trial,” Cudlipp said. He looked straight ahead of him, his eyes unwavering.

  “His name?”

  “Dr. Au P’ang Wei. The accused, sitting in the dock.”

  “How long have you known the accused?”

  “Seven or eight years, sir.”

  “And when did you begin to use him as an informer?”

  “It was a year ago at least that he first became an informer. He came to me.”

  “Explain the circumstances of that.”

  “I had been in his office one or two times during investigations of some of his business associates, and I guess at first I thought Dr. Au, because he was close to these fellows, might also have something to do with the narcotics trade.”

  “What office had you been visiting?”

  “Well, I know Dr. Au has several businesses, mortgage and land, that sort of thing. I had met with him a few times in a place on Cambie, the Inter-Pacific Loan and Mortgage Corporation, I think it is, and I got to asking him about the movements of some of his employees, and he told me he was suspicious about them, and thought maybe they were using his name to gain respectability.”

  “What employees are you referring to?”

  “There was one fellow in particular, Jimmy Wai Fat Leung, and we were watching him because we had reason to believe he was bringing in large quantities of heroin from the Far East. Jim Fat.”

  “Tell us about this Jim Fat, officer. What had he been doing?”

  “We weren’t sure about the extent of his operations.” The witness appeared to clear his throat again. Cobb thought he was covering up a bel
ch. “He was bringing stuff in under cover of Dr. Au’s business, I knew that. We got a tip last year, and I’ll be honest with you, it was Dr. Au who steered me onto this, that Jim Fat would be receiving a large shipment of contraband, and we did in fact find him with a big supply, about thirty thousand dollars’ worth, uncut. Now, we decided not to arrest him then because we were interested in infiltrating his organization. We had no idea how big it was. So Jim Fat gave us information on the understanding we would not charge him, and it was through him ultimately that we made several major arrests, major importers from Hong Kong, and we broke the back of the Asia connection through Vancouver. I have to credit Dr. Au with the initial breakthrough here. He helped us stop, oh, I don’t know, fifteen, twenty million dollars’ worth of heroin from reaching the streets.”

  “Yes.” Smythe-Baldwin looked at the jury. Some were nodding their heads. Others merely looked curious. No one looked as if he disbelieved the witness.

  “Dr. Au told us he also suspected two other men who were working with him,” Cudlipp continued. “And through my contacts with Jim Fat I confirmed that these two men were fairly high up in the syndicate.”

  “Who were they?”

  “Charlie Ming, Laszlo Plizit. We placed these men under surveillance. We were hoping ultimately to catch them moving a large amount of narcotics.”

  “Yes?”

  “I would meet secretly with Dr. Au several times a month, and he agreed to keep track of the movements of these two men. I gave my word to him that no one, absolutely no one, including men I worked with, would be told that he was a secret informer. I gave him my word, and it is important to me in my business that my word be trusted.”

  “I’m sure we can all understand why that has to be,” said Smythe-Baldwin. “Why was Dr. Au so adamant that you not tell even your brother officers that he was working with you?”

  “Because if there had been any leak, he would have been killed, just like that. These people don’t fool around.”

  Smythe-Baldwin paused to let this sink in. Cobb was bothered by two of the jurors particularly. They were leaning forward, concentrating hard.

  “I want to take you to the month of December last year,” Smythe-Baldwin said. “I understand you met with Dr. Au then.”

  “Yes, sir, the third of December, a Saturday, I received an urgent call from Dr. Au asking me to meet him. He sounded very excited.”