He was a ghost in the moonlight. The stars were cold and brittle and lonely.
The sweats were coming hard, and his joints had begun to ache.
Saturday, the Eighteenth Day of March,
at Two O’Clock in the Afternoon
After another fruitless day of hunting Leclerc, Harrison visited Cobb’s apartment. Cobb received him in a kind of frenzy. He seemed as jumpy as an ant on a hot pan. The apartment had suffered ruin: glass was broken here and there, and clothing was piled in heaps near the door.
“God, it’s cold in here,” Cobb said.
Harrison narrowed his eyes and studied the apparition. “Are you sick?”
“Got a fever. Must have caught a bug. Working too hard. Got to slow down. Got to work on my cross. Jesus, it’s cold in here. Jesus.”
“You’re sweating.”
“Yeah, yeah. What is it, Honcho?”
“Got some people I want you to meet. RCMP Superintendent. Cop from the States. About Cudlipp. Stole some heroin from the RCMP. I told them we’d meet here tomorrow at ten a.m. But, Jesus, what a mess. Are you okay?”
“Dying, dying.”
“What’s wrong with your back?”
“Must have got into my bones. Bones ache. Back aches. Aw, fuck. Just don’t know if I can do it.” Cobb’s voice was like a croak.
Harrison was aghast. “The trial? You gotta do it. You gotta do Cudlipp. Hey, Fos, you gotta finish him.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I know. I don’t know, though. Don’t know if I can handle it. Ran out of aspirins.”
The old detective’s face began to show panic. “Jesus, we’re talking about Dr. Au’s trial! You seen a doctor?”
“Yeah. No. I don’t know. Doctor’s no good. Got to get some pills. Got to go out.”
“Better see a doctor, Fos.”
“Yeah. No. It’s Saturday. Shit. Broke some glass here.” Cobb was staring foggy-eyed at a shattered wine glass.
“A bomb go off in here?”
“No, no, I’ll clean up.” He gave Harrison an imploring look. “Adjourn the trial. Put it off. Tell the judge I’m sick.”
“Goddamnit, we can’t! We’ve got to get the Surgeon now, Fos. Look, I’ve got some written reports I want to bring up so you’ll be ready for these guys.” What the fuck! he thought.
“Aw. I don’t know. I can’t see anybody. I don’t know. I’m going to be sick.”
Harrison listened to the dry gasping sounds coming from the bathroom. Then he left.
The tourniquet, held tight by a flawed set of moulding teeth, went slack as the blood rushed up the tube. The junkie eyes of the man called Pogo were pinned and sharp by the time he pulled the point from the solid callus at his inner left elbow. The swollen vein that he had popped submerged like a retreating earthworm. An ooze of blood seeped out, and he wiped it off with the back of his hand.
Then he tied a tight knot at the end of the condom and stuffed it and its contents into the toe of a boot, which he shoved back under his bed.
The heroin that was in the capsules in the condom in the toe of Pogo’s boot had come from his middleman, by way of Dr. Au’s back end. Originally, it had come from Burmese poppy fields half-way around the world, through jungle trails by elephant and mule train, by trawlers and junks, and finally by body pack on a Ch’ao-chou seaman across the Pacific to Vancouver.
It had been cut only six times, and the hit that Pogo took had a stiff bite to it. The street and the junkie lifestyle had taken their toll by now, and Warren Leonard Possit — Pogo to his friends — was on a fifteen-cap-a-day habit, strung out half the time and dozing the rest. He was a skinny shrivelled little man with a grey pallor and the reek of death. He was waiting to go to jail. The next arrest would save his life, because although another trafficking beef would put him away forever, he would have a bed and food.
Pogo Possit’s beat was downtown south Granville. He looked after the hotels there around Davie and Drake. He had twelve caps left for sale tonight and he wanted to get rid of them fast so he could cash out with his dealer, who then would cuff him another bundle. That would ensure that Possit would have a few caps in the morning to get straight with. Unless he got popped in the meantime.
He was heading for the Alberta Hotel, and if he could find ten or so hypes there with bread, that should do it.
A Pacific low had moved in during the day, and chilling rain penetrated through the cloth coat he had boosted earlier that week from the racks of the Army and Navy. A hustler stared at him with drawn eyes as he went toward the door.
“You got, Pogo?” she said.
“Yeah, you ready?”
“Aw, man, ain’t no tricks happening tonight. Too cold. You got a spare, maybe, for an old friend?”
“No, nothing. I ain’t got nothing to donate.”
“Come on, Pog. Get your rocks off. Free for a cap.”
“Hey, Cheryl, you kiddin’?” When you’re doing fifteen caps a day, you don’t exactly burn with unrequited desire.
He walked in and waved to one of the waiters, who dropped a beer on the table for him. You don’t buy a beer, you don’t sell dope — that’s the rule. Possit sat down and had a little sip, and looked over the tables. Two or three persons nodded to him, giving him the sign. After a while he got up and began to cruise.
“You want?”
“Yeah, one, Pog.”
“You?”
“Couple.”
“You want?”
“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
“You lookin’?”
“Take a sawbuck? I’m short five.”
“You owe me already. A fin from this afternoon.”
“Please, Pogo.”
“Split one with Jerry. . . . You want? Yeah, I got you. You want?”
“Strapped kinda shitty right now. Front me on, I’ll catch you tomorrow.”
“Need the cash, Sandy. You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Take a cassette deck? Came out undamaged, radio, too, it’s like new.”
“Let’s see it. All right; if I can deal it, I have you down for a cap. Fritz okay? . . . ”
“See Pat. He’ll get you ten or fifteen for it new.”
“Fritz okay? Wake him up. You okay? Hey, you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Phyllis?”
“Yeah, a couple. Arlene’s up in the room sick. One for her.”
“Hey, Pogo.”
“Yeah?”
“Man’s in the corner.”
“Uh-huh.”
“The big Fosdick reading the paper.”
“Know him?”
“Homicide dick.”
“He ain’t interested in me, then. You guys okay?”
“Fuck off, heatbag.”
“Awful bright and cheery, ain’t you? How about you, Glen?”
“How long you be?”
“Few minutes.”
“Okay, a single.”
That was eight, maybe nine if the car radio sold. Good enough. A fair tour. Possit went back to his table, took a couple of sips, and left the glass half-empty. He went out toward his hotel, for his stash.
In the corner, Honcho Harrison put his newspaper down, drained his glass, left fifty cents on the table, and strolled out the door, too. Cheryl was still standing outside, shivering in a short skirt that showed thin legs and knobby knees. “Sure wet out,” she said. “Would you like to warm up a bit?”
“Get outta here or I’m gonna run you in.”
“Let’s see your badge, asshole.”
Harrison took her by the wrist, twisted it, and pushed her out, away from the hotel doorway and onto the sidewalk. She cursed at him, and he returned to the beer-parlor doorway, then edged off a few feet to a point near the steam-bath sign where it was dark. He waited for Pogo
to return.
He waited for about ten minutes. It was nearly ten o’clock. Then, from the alley, the pusher came in view.
There were eleven caps of heroin in the condom in Pogo Possit’s mouth. He had done the twelfth up in his room. Possit saw the burly man standing in the shadows near the door, and wondered if the bust were finally, at long last, about to happen. When he saw the man start to walk toward him, his old dope-dealer instinct told him to swallow the stuff, but he saw his chance to get back to the safety and order of the B.C. Penitentiary. The condom was tucked between his tongue and palate when Harrison grabbed him by the throat.
“Vancouver police. Spit.” Harrison’s hand had choked off Possit’s gullet. “Spit.”
With his tongue, Possit pushed the bag from between his lips, and it fell to the pavement. Harrison picked it up and let the man go.
“There’s only eleven.”
“What’s your name?”
“Possit. Len Possit.”
“Dealer, huh?”
“Uh, no.” The lie was instinctive.
“For your own use, hey?”
“Yeah, that’s right. I’m an addict. I’ll show you my tracks. Fresh marks.” He rolled up his sleeve to show the needle marks.
“Yeah, well, eleven ain’t much. I’ll let you go this time.”
“What?”
“You got me in a relaxed mood this evening, Mr. Possit. Go home.”
“You’re not taking me in?”
“No. This good stuff?”
“Dynamite. White Lady. I don’t deal garbage.”
“You don’t deal at all, do you, Possit?”
“Er, no.”
“Okay, then beat it.”
“Yeah? Just go?”
“Yeah, beat it.”
Fifteen minutes later Harrison was at Cobb’s apartment with copies of Special Officer Flaherty’s reports. Cobb was still jerking about. He could hardly talk.
“Read these,” Harrison said. “We’ll see you tomorrow, ten sharp, here.”
Cobb just hugged himself with his arms crossed over his chest. He stuttered some words: “C-c-can’t, d-damn it.”
“You’ll be okay in the morning. Here, somebody must’ve left this on your doorstep.” Harrison handed over an unmarked manila envelope, the kind police use to place exhibits in. Then he quickly left.
The envelope contained a condom and eleven number-five gelatin capsules filled with good white heroin donated to Cobb by Pogo Possit pursuant to the merciful sponsorship of Honcho Harrison — by way of Dr. Au P’ang Wei’s shipping lanes.
Monday, the Twentieth Day of March,
at Ten O’Clock in the Morning
Cobb started out bluntly.
“The whole of your evidence has been purchased, Corporal Cudlipp.”
“What?”
“I am suggesting that to you.”
“You can suggest anything you want, sir.”
“Very well,” said Cobb. “I suggest you are a bought liar.” He let the words hang out heavy and hard. He knew the accusation would bring Smythe-Baldwin to his feet, and he was right.
“That is infamous and high-handed,” shouted the defence lawyer, an expression of hurt on his face. Cobb did not mind a brief display of injured innocence. It would be useful.
Horowitz, of course, agreed that Cobb had gone too far. Such accusations are required to be more subtly put in a courtroom. “Please avoid epithets, Mr. Cobb,” the judge said.
Tann looked up at Cobb as he glared at Horowitz. She knew Cobb was angry and she worried that he would tangle with the judge. She wondered at the reason for the anger.
Tann had not seen him since Friday night. She had called a half-dozen times on Saturday, but he did not answer. Finally she went to his apartment and buzzed him from the loudspeaker panel at the front door. He excoriated her, warned her to leave him alone, refused to release the automatic lock. Then, late on Saturday night, he phoned her, and he was calm and gentle on the phone, remorseful and apologetic. He gave her instructions to research the law of rebuttal evidence. And this morning, when he met her near the courthouse for breakfast, she studied him hard, saw the anger and tension in his face. But that dissolved for a moment or two as he came up to her and put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her on the cheek. He put up a warning hand and said: “Don’t ask. We’ll have time later.”
Cobb, staring hard at the witness, now changed direction.
“Corporal Cudlipp, I think you have told us that you are well qualified to give us information about the world of heroin trafficking,” Cobb said. “That is true: you are an expert in that field?” It was usually easy to play to a witness’s sense of his own small majesty.
“Some consider me an expert,” Cudlipp said. “I have been accepted as such in court many times by many different judges.”
“Yes. You know as much about heroin dealing as any policeman in this country.” Cobb was standing beside the jury, not moving about the courtroom, disciplining himself to stay put and concentrate the jury’s attention on the exchange between him and the witness. He had funnelled all his sorrow and anger into this cross-examination.
“Heroin trafficking is my field, Mr. Cobb,” the witness said. Cudlipp was standing soldier-straight and unblinking.
“There are great sums of money to be made from heroin. Fortunes can be earned, is that not so?” Cobb knew that Cudlipp would now be alert to the direction Cobb was headed in, but the witness had frequently given such evidence and would be consistent.
“Yes, sir. A pound of heroin worth fifteen thousand dollars in Hong Kong can be broken down here into thousands of capsules and be worth maybe a million or two million by the time it all reaches the street. An importer or a top man in the business can get a pretty big chunk of all that money.”
“And there are certain persons in Vancouver who have amassed great wealth in that business?” Cobb turned and let the jury see he was looking at Au. The accused returned the look, cold, without expression.
“Some people live very well,” Cudlipp said. “Until we catch up with them. They are always caught in the end.”
“The big criminals always end up getting caught, is that so? That is reassuring, corporal.”
“I think we have a good record in that regard.” The pride of the force was in Cudlipp’s voice.
“And sometimes there are . . . smaller criminals who attach themselves to these big criminals?”
“Of course.”
“And do these fellows get found out all the time as well?”
“You can’t remain for long in the business of crime and not get caught out.” There was a distant note of strain in Cudlipp’s voice.
“And the big operators, the organizers of crime, the men on top of the heroin syndicates, do not these men have the financial resources to avoid conviction in the courts?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“They can pay for very expensive defences, employ the best lawyers that money can buy, that sort of thing.” Cobb knew Smythe-Baldwin was smoldering, but would have to sit still.
“I suppose that’s true.”
“And they can bestow largesse upon those easily corrupted, and purchase the lies of witnesses for alibis in court?” Cobb was close to the line, but still on the safe side of it.
“I suppose that can happen,” Cudlipp said. “There are people who would stoop that low.”
Both witness and lawyer were masking pain. Cudlipp’s pain was of a milder form, and he had received a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of relief for it. Cobb’s pain was not physical now, just emotional — he would have preferred Ed Santorini to be at the receiving end of this cross-examination, but Cudlipp would have to do. And the task he had embarked on this morning had one goal: the ruin of Cudlipp beyond repair or healing. Cobb had the power to achieve
that goal, and the resources. They had been delivered to him on the weekend, at his apartment.
“That is so, is it?” he said. “There are actually persons who will accept money to give perjured evidence?”
“I believe it happens.”
“Has it happened in your experience?” Cobb hoped to taunt Smythe-Baldwin into a further objection, but the defence lawyer would sit through this, knowing it would not look good to protect his witness.
Cudlipp said: “I have known of cases in which I believe a man has been paid to give false evidence.” He paused, glanced at Cobb, then away. He plunged ahead. “If you are inferring something of that kind about me, I just feel badly for you, Mr. Cobb. For someone with your experience as a prosecutor, I think it is cheap.”
Smythe-Baldwin smiled at the jury and said: “Well, the witness said it, not me.” Cobb knew that it was Smythe-Baldwin’s act, however, and that the old lawyer smelled something bad.
Anger and strong heroin were carrying Cobb through this day.
For a moment Cobb allowed himself to be distracted, and an image, almost hallucinational, intruded. He saw Deborah on the bed, sleeping, her head on Santorini’s shoulder . . .
He switched channels quickly, returning to Cudlipp. “Corporal,” he said, “I am accusing you of selling your evidence. If it turns out that I have slandered you, it will be my solemn obligation to apologize and beg your forgiveness.” Cudlipp said nothing to that and looked stonily ahead into space, looking not at his questioner, or the judge, or the jury. Cobb continued. “Are they ruthless?”
“What do you mean, exactly?”
“It is a dangerous business, is it not?” said Cobb. “Big-time traffickers can go to jail for a long time — twenty years, even life imprisonment is not uncommon. That is so, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir, it is a very serious crime.”
“So although the money is good, the risks are high, yes?”
“Yes, sir.”
“One is always in danger of discovery, and one is always wary that there may be informers close to him, am I correct?”
Cudlipp had no alternative but to follow the prosecutor’s lead. “Yes, I have already said I deal with informers.”
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