Needles

by William Deverell

  “Witness, there was a bonus, was there not, a further thirty thousand dollars that you received a few days later?”

  “Oh, God.” That was the only response from Cudlipp. “Yes, there was more from Franklin.” The voice was wooden. “I needed more to invest to earn enough to pay back the debt to him. I told him I had a good bet on some investments.”

  The lies were becoming palpable. Cobb turned to look at Au. There was no emotion that could be read, no bead of sweat, no tremor of the hand. Cobb saw a man in apparent control of himself.

  There was little point of playing about further with the apparition John Franklin. It was time to lay waste the December third alibi.

  “Witness, you claim to have been with the accused during the time that Jim Fat was killed. You claim to have been in Archie’s Steak House during that time.”

  “Ask Alice Carson, she was the waitress. As a matter of fact, it’s her I am going out with.”

  “And of course she will say anything you ask her to, will she not?” Cobb asked.

  “She will not lie.”

  “The fact is that she was not even hired there until a few days later, on December sixth. The fact is that she was not there at all, and I suggest that you have tried to use her to falsely corroborate your evidence.”

  “She was there, I swear it.”

  Cobb turned again to the sheriff. “Bring in Mr. Giulente.” Timorous Joey Giulente came in and stood by the door. “Do you know this man?”

  “Yes, that is Joey, the manager of Archie’s.”

  “And there is no question in your mind that Joey Giulente possesses the records to prove that Alice Carson was or was not employed there as of December third?”

  “I suppose you looked at them,” said Cudlipp. “I haven’t. I just recall Alice being there and seeing me and Dr. Au. I could be wrong. I am trying to do my best here. Maybe it was another waitress. I am not trying to play any games here. I am just trying to tell the truth as I remember it. People can make honest mistakes. You’re just trying to make me seem a liar.” But Cudlipp had lost spunk. He was becoming exhausted from the chase.

  Cobb dismissed Giulente, who would be prepared to testify, in rebuttal, that neither Cudlipp nor Au had been in the restaurant on December third. His memory was aided by the wiretap transcripts shown to him and by his desire to help avenge the killing of Jim Fat, a close friend. Cobb knew he would also confirm that Alice Carson had responded to his “Help Wanted” window card on Monday, December fifth, and started work the following day.

  “Can I say something else?” Cudlipp said.

  “You should just answer Mr. Cobb’s questions,” Horowitz said.

  “No,” said Cobb. “I’m interested in anything he has to say.” He was not, but the jury might resent the fact that a witness was not allowed to make a comment.

  “I happen to believe there is drug trafficking emanating from that restaurant. That’s one of the reasons I go there, as part of my job. And if I can add something else, I wouldn’t trust anything Joey Giulente says because he has a record of trafficking in heroin and he uses cocaine.” It was a wild roundhouse swing.

  “But you would trust anything Alice Carson says? Did she not tell you she was once a prostitute?”

  Cudlipp flared. “Where did you hear that? That is a cheap shot just because you know she has been subpoenaed to give evidence. I didn’t believe you would stoop to that.”

  “How do you know she was subpoenaed?” Cobb was unfazed.

  “She told me on the weekend.”

  “Were you with her?”

  “We spent some time together. We went off to Harrison Hot Springs on Saturday for a little break.”

  “And of course you discussed the evidence with her on Saturday, with this woman whom you say you love?”

  “I don’t say I love her. We both do. We care for each other very deeply. And no, I did not discuss the evidence. I know my duty as a police officer and a witness, and I do not disobey orders from a judge.”

  “Let’s go back to Archie’s Steak House. You took the accused there on Wednesday, December twenty-first, am I correct?”

  “I don’t know where you get your information from.”

  “Just answer the question.”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Try harder.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You were there that day trying to set up the alibi. That was the evening you had a meal with the accused and were served by your friend Alice Carson.”

  “I don’t know who’s telling you these things. I’m sure it was December third.”

  Cobb had in his hand the steak house telephone transcripts, opened to the conversation of December twenty-first between Joey Giulente and his friend Jingo, the cocaine dealer.

  “Refresh your memory from this,” Cobb said, placing the transcripts in front of the witness. “You may as well know that the telephone at Archie’s restaurant was being tapped —”

  That was all he got out before Smythe-Baldwin, slower than usual, scrambled to his feet. “Let me see those,” he demanded.

  “Order the jury out,” Horowitz said. Then, less brusquely, he turned to the jurors and said: “I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but something has arisen which might require discussion in your absence. You may as well retire to your hotel for lunch, and you will be returned here at two p.m. Mr. Sheriff.” The sheriff’s officer led them out, and Tann arranged about a dozen case books on the counsel table.

  “Ms. Tann will make the argument,” Cobb said, and sat down.

  “The crown’s position rests upon the combined effect of Section 178 decimal sixteen, Invasion of Privacy part of the Code, and Section Eleven of the Canada Evidence Act.”

  “Just a minute,” said the judge. “Let me get those. All right. Yes.”

  “The crown also relies upon a line of authority going back to 1853 in England for the proposition that a witness may have his memory refreshed by writings not necessarily of his own making. I have passed to the clerk for your lordship a list of such authorities commencing with Rex and Isaacs in the Court of Common Pleas and concluding with Jamieson versus Marquette in the Ontario Court of Appeal, in 1972. There are citations in the Dominion Law Reports, and Ontario Reports. I should say, before dealing individually with the cases that your lordship will be asked to make an analogy between written documents and electronically taped recordings of human voices.”

  The argument was put with earnest precision. It had been worked over many times between Tann and Cobb. She had it nearly put to memory. Cobb saw Smythe-Baldwin eyeing her warily, but with respect.

  For the time, there was no work to occupy Cobb’s mind, and it slipped unreined and ran loose among thoughts of the perfidy of those too well loved, of the shame he had felt in his own betrayal.

  At some point during the long hours of the past weekend Cobb had decided that there were no more tears to be shed. He felt he had been tested, in the cruellest biblical sense. There was the heroin, and it eased the suffering, but it could palliate suffering in only the most fleeting and transitory way. Somehow, he must begin to survive without it. Somehow. Seven more capsules to go. By then, hopefully, at least the trial would be over.

  A revolution, still inchoate, was simmering now within the recesses of the soul of Au P’ang Wei. Even the closest observer, however keen to his perception, would not detect outward clues, so delicate was the subtlety of the change that was beginning. The grey stone eyes were hard set but had lost a glint, and perhaps a slight glaze now dimmed the sharpness. His composure was still serene and settled, but in the muscles near the lumbar vertebrae there existed a faint degree of tension now, a tension that despite the extraordinary resources of his will Au was unable to still — except momentarily by pressure of his fingers. There was a spot of phlegm in his throat which he was disinclined to clear, and
thereby give evidence of its existence. The pain recurred in the centre of his head at regular intervals, and was more insistent upon each return.

  Dr. Au, since he had left medical school in England, had never allowed himself to hate, but felt hatred breaking free within him as he watched Cudlipp’s poor efforts, watched the man’s credibility slowly erode under fire. The hatred was not felt toward the person of the helpless policeman — for him Au felt nothing, or if anything, contempt — but toward the prosecutor, whom Au now understood was effectively working to destroy him. As the danger to his freedom became more easily perceived, a dark mist began to discolor the clarity of the mirror of Au’s mind.

  The awesome fact was this: Au was at the edge of sanity, peering into the abyss. He had never been far from it, since those months of torment many years ago in England, and now he had been led to the precipice by Foster Cobb.

  Despite his show of outward composure, Au was growing ill inside with the hatred, and with a fear of a confrontation between prosecutor and accused, a confrontation that Cudlipp’s dissembling answers seemed now to make inevitable.

  Perhaps it was in response to the power of the massed, malignant energy that Au was focussing on the person of Foster Cobb that the lawyer suddenly felt a primal shudder rush up his spine. The spasm began at the lower end and ballooned in intensity as it climbed the cord, sending dark shivers through his synapses. Instinctively Cobb turned around, and his eyes met the eyes of Dr. Au, and they clashed and locked. There seemed to pour from Au a powerful thought transference, and although no lips moved, Cobb heard a message distinctly enunciated.

  It said: You will die at my hand.

  Monday, the Twentieth Day of March,

  at Twenty Minutes Past One O’Clock in the Afternoon

  Cobb spent the lunch break pacing the halls of the main floor of the courthouse. The silent words of Dr. Au rang hollowly, echoing still, whispering in his mind the curse of death. A delusion induced by drugs and pain? A kind of madness? He had known auditory hallucinations. . . . But the voice had been flat and toneless, and it was the voice of Au.

  He was too on edge to feel hunger. Tann had been unable to take his tension and had gone off somewhere for a sandwich.

  In all his years of prosecuting, Cobb had rarely failed to display the impersonality that is proper in an advocate of the crown, but he felt deeply and personally involved now — it was the first time that he had felt his own life might be put in danger by a failure to win conviction. Never before in his life had Cobb felt such a flow of energy or such intensity of malevolence from another being as that felt from the force of Au’s eyes when court adjourned. . . .

  It was the worst of times for Ed Santorini to attempt a rapprochement.

  “I hear you got the lying asshole on the run, Fos,” he said, catching up to Cobb near the annex hallway, and keeping quick step with him. Cobb did not look at him, and merely uttered a foul imprecation.

  “Fos, I’m sorry about the thing that happened. I want to clear the decks. I’ll be honest, it happened a couple of times, but it wasn’t Deborah’s fault.” Cobb quickened his step in an effort to escape. “I’m the original Lothario, man, and each time it happened, there was a lot of booze, and we just sort of fell into it.”

  “I could have given you some helpful hints, Eddie. She likes to watch you wet your finger and wiggle it up your ass.”

  “Come on, Fos.”

  “Did you use a safe? I’m sterile, so she doesn’t bother with contraceptives. Maybe she does now, I don’t know.”

  “Fos, the three of us can get together and talk like human beings.”

  “Suck off, Eddie. ‘Fellatio,’ from the Latin root felare, ‘to suck.’”

  “Goddamnit!”

  “You still bucking for judge, Eddie? Wait until those nervous Nellies in Ottawa find out you’re named as adulterer in a divorce action. Good luck, judge.”

  “Damn, you’re my best friend.” Santorini stalked off.

  Horowitz had worked on his ruling over the noon hour, and by the time court resumed at two o’clock, he had it ready: Cobb would be allowed to put the wiretap transcript to the witness to refresh his memory. Horowitz would defer until his charge to the jury any instructions as to what parts they might consider in evidence. It was a crown victory, and Cobb felt pleased for Tann.

  When Cobb approached Cudlipp to put the transcript again in front of him, he detected the rankness of alcohol on the man’s breath. It had been a lonely, wet lunch for Cudlipp.

  Cobb addressed the court: “My instructions are, and I will undertake to prove this, my lord, that certain conversations were taped on the restaurant’s telephone by the Vancouver city drug squad.” He then turned to the witness: “I gather you were unaware of any wiretap surveillance at the time by the city police?”

  “I didn’t know about it, but I’m not surprised. The place is a hotbed for drugs. The Vancouver police, for reasons of their own, don’t always let us know what’s going on.”

  “Now, you’ve read this conversation recorded on December twenty-first, and you will agree that it refers to your visit to the restaurant that evening with the accused?”

  “I take your word the transcript is accurate. So it looks like we were in there.”

  “The accused apparently gave Alice a twenty-dollar tip, is that right?’

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “You pinched Alice on the behind?” A laugh escaped from the gallery.

  “We were very friendly already by then. It was a joke.”

  “Now, does this transcript help you to recall that December twenty-first was the first date you ever went with the accused to the restaurant?”

  “No,” Cudlipp said, “it doesn’t. There’s nothing in there to say that. We were there the night Jimmy Fat died, and I’m sure of it.” The drink had given Cudlipp fight.

  “Because you had checked your watch that night with a waitress who wasn’t even working there at the time?”

  “I checked my watch with a waitress. Maybe it wasn’t Alice.”

  “Witness, I want you to admit now that you were never present with the accused on December third at Archie’s Steak House.”

  “I was there.”

  “If I am forced to embarrass you, I will. I shall put it to you one time more: you were not with Au that evening at the time of Jim Fat’s death.”

  “Well, by God, I was.”

  “Okay.” The rest Cobb would do in good conscience. “You told Alice Carson on December thirty-first, at her apartment, that you were prepared to lie for the accused in court.”

  “I deny it.”

  “At that time and place you told her you would lie about being at Archie’s restaurant with the accused that evening.”

  “I deny that.” Cudlipp’s face had reddened.

  “You told her you received twenty-five thousand dollars from Au for letting him know that there was heroin in his automobile.”

  “That is not true.”

  “You told her you received a further thirty thousand for telling Au that Jim Fat was a police informer.”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “You said you were negotiating for a large sum from Au for the favor of giving perjured testimony on his behalf.”

  “No.” He croaked the word.

  “You urged her to give false evidence that she, too, was in the restaurant on the night Jimmy got killed, and she agreed to it.”

  “No.”

  “To give you some small measure of credit, you told her that you wished you had never gotten into the situation and regretted your responsibility in the death of Jim Fat.”

  “No.”

  “On subsequent occasions you reiterated each of the statements I have put to you.”

  “I deny it all.”

  “On February seventeenth last, you discussed the amount o
f the bribe with her, and you settled on an asking price of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

  “No.”

  “She agreed also to give perjured evidence as an inducement to the accused to pay that amount.”

  “That is not true.”

  “On March twelfth, just over a week ago, you were again in her apartment and you said Au had agreed to pay the whole amount, a quarter of a million dollars. All cash.”

  “That is a damn lie.”

  “You told her you would get fifty thousand dollars on the day you showed up to give evidence, and the balance before or after you concluded your evidence.”

  “It’s a lie.”

  The courtroom was still, almost in shock. The reporters were huddled over their notepads, writing furiously. Cobb could see Charrington leaning forward on his chair.

  “You said you would quit the force after the trial and take her to Australia and buy a business.”

  “No.” Cudlipp was standing forward in the box, leaning hard on his hands, looking down.

  “Oh, yes, somewhere along the way you admitted stealing four ounces of heroin from the RCMP exhibit locker. That was the heroin which you had Jim Fat plant in Au’s car.”

  “No, no, no.”

  “Let me go back. In a conversation with Alice Carson on February twelfth, you said you would try to implicate Ming and Plizit as the murderers of Jim Fat.”

  “All lies. You are trying to trick me. Her apartment wasn’t bugged. . . .”

  “How do you know?”

  “I . . . I just know.”

  “You mean to tell us you searched for bugs?”

  “No, you’re putting words in my mouth. You’re trying to trip me up and admit something that’s not true.”

  “You are only hurting yourself. Last Thursday you received fifty thousand dollars in bills from Au.”

  “I deny it.”

  “He delivered the money to you in Carson’s apartment that evening.”