I smoothed out the drying papers and read them again – Lorenzo’s brief of evidence. The first page described the set-up: his instructions, his cover as a longshoreman and heroin peddler, his attempted insinuation, over several days, into Gabriel’s confidence. Glaringly displayed was an undeserved sense of self-importance.
Subject and I had little conversation at first, as I pretended to want to keep to myself. There was no mention of the crimes he and I were “charged with” until Day Four, when he asked what I was in for. I related the cover story, and asked the same question of him. He said he was being “framed for murder.”
Verbatim notes of the aforementioned and following conversations were made daily by me, when I was taken from the cell to see my “lawyer” or a visiting “relative” or to make a court “appearance.”
The verbatim notes, a dozen Photostatted scraps of paper, were stapled to his quotation-mark-riddled brief. He and Gabriel had been together three weeks, from May 6 to 28, an unusually long time for an operation of this kind, giving rise to a suspicion this operative had been too proud to admit failure and cooked up a stew of lies.
On May 12 (Day Six) I broached the subject of politics, and he was pleased that I “supported” the aims of the Communist Party, whose programs and philosophy I studied in my training for this assignment. I also mentioned in passing that I was part Ojibwa, on my mother’s side, which I believe caused him to relax his guard further.
Those patent lies had done just the reverse. Gabriel had told me the man betrayed only a rudimentary knowledge of politics, let alone the history of class struggle. I’d chided him for even passing the time of day with him. “I was only feeling him out,” he said.
Lorenzo continued to try to engage him, claiming a tentative but growing friendship. He prided himself on his skill at chess, but “I made sure I lost most of the games.” Eventually he affected curiosity about Gabriel’s crime, claiming he’d heard “scuttlebutt about it in the joint.”
Gabriel had politely declined to respond, returning to a biography of Louis Riel. Thereafter, Lorenzo seemed not to have made similar blunt overtures, confining himself to denunciations of the rich. He tried to interest Gabriel in an “escape plan,” but he didn’t bite on that, either.
I sensed he was weakening. We had developed a bonding, especially as we agreed politically, and he took me to be a “comrade.” I didn’t have the impression he was a real “bad” person, and it’s my experience that people like him eventually have to get it off their chest.
Finally, on Day Nineteen, the previous Saturday, the frustrated spy must have realized his chances for promotion would dry up if he didn’t produce. Over the cribbage board that evening, he tearfully regurgitated to Gabriel a crime he claimed he’d bottled up. He had once killed a man, broken his neck in a back-alley fight, but escaped detection.
I told him my secret was torturing me and he was the first person I’d ever told this, because he was like a brother, and I felt deeply in my heart I could trust him. I said, “It was me or him, I had to kill him.”
Swift heaved a big sigh, and I could sense him giving way. Then he said, “I had to kill too.” He said he had no choice, Professor Mulligan had to pay for his crimes. He got very choked up so I didn’t get his full meaning, but he went on about children being strapped and beaten, sexually assaulted, at some Indian school in Saskatchewan. He told me he’d planned to confront the deceased at his fishing hole, and make him take his clothes off so he could fake a suicide, but the deceased tried to grab his rifle and there was a tussle and he hurled him down over the rocks, into the river, where he shot him as he flailed.
That was faithfully copied from one of his stapled notes, word for word. Signed and dated: 27-05-62, at 0910 hours.
I was of course floored by this unexpected, yet almost credible, scenario – credible at least to those who might see Gabriel as obsessively vengeful – but I couldn’t remotely see my client blurting out a full, quick, unadorned confession. Apparently nothing else was said, other than Lorenzo swearing he would never repeat those words. Gabriel was, to employ his cellmate’s compositional bad habit, “emotional.”
It seemed hardly plausible that on Ophelia’s visit two days later there’d been not a whisper of this. “Gabriel was just like … normal,” she said. “Anger-free, talkative in his cynical way – he’d actually been getting his hopes up.” She stood, put on her jacket. “This is going to be hard.”
“I’ll bet the farm that Roscoe Knepp knows Lorenzo, that they served together. Maybe Lorenzo owes him one.”
“Maybe Knepp saved his life? This is so sick. Could a jury possibly believe anything so obviously cooked up?”
I wasn’t sure.
Gabriel was slumped in his chair, looking up at the walls of the tiny interview room as if wondering why they seemed to be closing in on him. I had waited for an explosion, tensed myself for it, but he’d just gone small, arms crossed, shoulders curled in. “Does Knepp know this guy?” he asked.
“We’re working on it.”
He must have wondered how hard we were working, Ophelia in her tight designer dress, I in a conservative dark suit. I was too embarrassed to explain we’d been at a Conservative Party function.
“He’ll be laughed out of court,” Ophelia said.
A wan smile from Gabriel. “I live in the real world.”
“What world is that?” she asked.
“Tell me how many Natives will be sitting on the jury.”
“I doubt there’ll be any.”
“That’s the real world.”
He seemed less despairing than resigned, settled, accepting of the worst. It’s never easy getting one’s hopes up, risking them being dashed; it even strips you of anger. If anything, he seemed more relaxed now that he was back in the real world.
“It’s crap, a transparent farce.” I tried to sound enthusiastic. “Let’s do a rerun. Everything that passed between you and Lorenzo on Saturday.”
He looked at his hands, sighed, straightened up. “Okay, I didn’t say a fucking thing to him all day, until maybe half an hour before lights out. Then we sat down to play some crib. And he went into this malarkey about killing someone. It was pathetic. I told him so.”
Ophelia was startled. “Why didn’t you say that when I saw you?”
Gabriel looked down again. “I didn’t want you to climb all over me about it. I just told him he wasn’t going to win an Oscar, that he was a lousy ham actor. That was all, and he went red and shut up. I honestly never thought he was a cop – he was too dumb.”
Ophelia made notes as I drew from Gabriel a detailed account of all his dealings with Lorenzo. He seemed contrite, as he ought to have been; humiliating Lorenzo may have incited him to devise that extravagantly false confession. My client’s quick tongue had again caused a self-inflicted wound.
I had him look again at Lorenzo’s statement. “He says you ‘went on about children being strapped and beaten, sexually assaulted, at some Indian school in Saskatchewan.’ So let me ask: did Dermot tell you his writing block had to do with Pie Eleven?”
“No, but I sensed it. I think he’d uncovered some abuse situation there. Maybe the Church told him to take no action and keep his mouth shut. Maybe that’s why Rome fell. I hope I won’t be asked in court if that motivated me to kill him. I would die laughing.”
I told him to make inquiries through the prison grapevine; another inmate might have encountered Lorenzo. I intended to seek out other sources.
“I guess I shouldn’t have belted Roscoe in the chops.” A cynical smile.
“Don’t give in to him,” I said.
“He wins. I hang.”
Ophelia: “Don’t even dream it.”
“Je n’ai pas l’espoir. Except to hope I have his courage. Riel’s.”
Ophelia and I had done well to miss the Diefenbaker rally. It was a circus, according to the news on my car radio, the Chief thrown off script as he contended in vain with heckling from infiltrating soci
alists. There’d been scuffling and, to top everything off, a baring of bodies by protesting Freedomites.
Silence reigned in the Volkswagen after I turned off the radio. We were too depressed over Operation Lorenzo to utter anything but the occasional expletive.
“Pricks,” she said. “They’re pricks.”
With all the honest cops on the federal force, how had we managed to find ourselves tangled up with a clubby little ring of the debased and unscrupulous? Two senior officers, with that born follower Constable Jettles surely in the thick of it. I constructed a daydream of exposing them, disgracing them, hauling them into court in shackles.
Professor Mulligan had to pay for his crime. That was the theme they’d chosen, apparently casting aside their cockamamie theory of a homosexual affair gone crosswise, knowing they couldn’t sell it to a jury. And besides, such an approach would leave open a lesser verdict: non-capital murder, even manslaughter, a death caused in the heat of passion. That wasn’t enough for Roscoe Knepp. Capital murder required proof of planning and deliberation, and Lorenzo had supplied that.
“They’re all pricks.”
Maybe she meant men in general. Maybe not, but the comment dissuaded me from making even a subtle approach to her. I could have told her that she looked stunning that night. I could have asked what had transpired between her and Geraldson. I kept my mouth shut.
As I pulled up at her place, she kissed me lightly on that mouth. But she didn’t invite me in.
FRIDAY, JUNE 1, 1962
Ira and I returned to our lodging at one a.m. after rescuing his movie posters and other memorabilia from the Beanery. Closing night had been a lugubrious affair at which locals of middling talent took turns playing sad songs and getting drunk on the Andres we’d provided.
I had to help out; Ira told me Lawonda had “split from town.” Just as well, as I would have been ill at ease with her. She’d taken off for the South. “Memphis or New Orleans, where she has friends. Where they still have music.”
There was yet more to pack into my little car: Ira’s clothes and keepsakes, his stereo and record collection. We worked in silence, avoiding the creaky third-from-the-bottom step, sneaking past the window of the snoring landlord.
Craznik had had one of his fits that day over the rent. “Due and payable one month before month just ending!” Ira had apologized for not making it to the bank on time. I paid my rent to date, and that mollified Craznik enough to enjoy an uninterrupted sleep while we smuggled out Ira’s seizables.
We pushed the car down the alley until we were well away from the house, then started the engine and headed off to Lawonda’s “pad,” as Ira called it. He was taking possession of it.
“She paid a month ahead. It’s an illegal suite, so the landlords won’t complain.”
“Why did she leave so fast?”
“Maybe because you broke her heart.”
“By not sleeping with her?”
“Bullshit. Give me the scoop – how was it?”
“All I did was walk her home.”
“Man, I’ve seen your tongue lolling. She has her pick of lovers and she picked you. Feel honoured. How was it?”
I gave up, and eventually we pulled into the driveway near her side door and hauled his stuff into the suite I hadn’t dared enter the week before. Kitchenette, bath, a small bedroom and a little sunroom, and a gorgeously decorated central parlour. Expressive African masks and brightly patterned tapestries on the walls. A sofa and armchairs covered with similar motifs. A seemingly authentic zebra rug. Sliding glass doors to a terrace and a bowered rose garden. No linoleum.
Lawonda had left it all untouched, hadn’t even made the bed. Ira bounced on it. A waterbed – it sloshed. “This where you guys made out? Man, a guy could get seasick.” He chuckled at my discomfiture. “Listen, there’s a cot in the sunroom if you want to crash here.”
“Crash?”
“Spend the night. Hell, you could move out of the internment camp and batch here. Don’t worry, I’ll stay in the closet.”
I demurred, feeling awkward, self-conscious. I tried to imagine Mother’s reaction to my rooming with a homosexual.
“Hey, a glimmer of hope: I met a former sideman to Ronnie Hawkins. The Hawk can’t keep his band together; he’s looking for a manager, my name came up.” Then a sour face. “Rockabilly … it’s come to that. Toronto.”
A silence.
“I’m sorry to rib you, man. You seem depressed.”
“My murder case. Do we have any of that wine left?”
TUESDAY, JUNE 19, 1962
Horseshoe Bay is a pretty little outpost on the road to Squamish. I was in a small café there that offered a take-it-or-leave-it choice of all-day breakfasts or fish and chips. But I was without appetite, nursing a coffee. It was shortly after seven, the sun sucking the mists off the strait, a colourful clutter of boats in the harbour, a ferry grunting away from the dock for the run to Nanaimo, gulls gliding and squawking behind.
This altogether pleasant day failed to penetrate my gloom. Forty days before the trial, and Minerva, the goddess of justice, had done nothing to intercede with the malicious Gorgons who had conspired to hang an innocent man. Gabriel told Lorenzo he was being framed for murder. That, I would tell the jury, is the only essential fact the officer didn’t make up.
I had no recourse but to make an all-out assault on the little clique of corrupt cops. But what jury was going to disbelieve senior officers of the world’s only police force that was a proud tourist attraction? Even to make a dent, I would need the skills of a Branca or a Walsh.
I distracted myself by leafing through the morning Province: news from Monday’s election. With all polls counted, the Progressive Conservatives were still in power, but with a minority. Dief the Chief, my chum, was bravely carrying on.
Today’s oddball item: a right foot had washed up on Gambier Island, just north of Horseshoe Bay, torn off at the ankle but otherwise whole, within a size-eight running shoe. A woman, apparently, with remnants of polish on a toenail. Police were mulling over the missing persons lists.
Gene Borachuk came walking by the window and glanced at me. Hiking boots, a rucksack. He walked in, past me, taking a table in a windowless alcove. I joined him there with my coffee.
“If anyone sees me with you, I’m dead; they’ll call it a hunting accident. We have a deal?”
I’d been talking to him by pay phone to avoid a trace to Tragger, Inglis. The deal: I would cross-examine him at the trial with gloves on, not compromise him in any way, not ask about the beating of Gabriel, from whom I’d got reluctant consent for these negotiations.
“Yes, we have a deal.”
“No loopholes, no backing down?”
“Of course.” I was impatient; this was the second time I’d sought to rescue this honest cop from his dilemma.
“Walt Lorenzo. Sixteen years on the force, the last seven with various city drug squads. Not too brilliant, I guess – still hasn’t got a third stripe. Lots of commendations, though. Undercover specialist, pretty good at pretending to be a bad guy; he can talk the talk. Nothing smelly on his record. A complaint in Winnipeg two years ago about roughing up an Indian kid. It didn’t proceed. Cops get that sort of hassle all the time.”
“What about the connection with Knepp?”
“He and Lorenzo are tight. Lorenzo did a tour with him in Grande Prairie, forty-seven through fifty. Kept in close touch since. Hooked up with Roscoe again last year – an undercover job in Squamish. I was part of it; we busted some swingmen running a heroin backend. Roscoe and Walt and their wives took a holiday in Reno after that.” He rose. “I’m hiking up Cypress. We never saw each other.”
“Hang on. Where’s Monique Joseph?”
“Can’t help you. Roscoe has stopped sharing.”
“I want you to tell me this whole thing is a fix.”
“What do you think?” He walked off.
THURSDAY, JUNE 21, 1962
I had talked with Irene Mulliga
n on the phone a few times but had put off the distressful task of spending extensive time with her, preparing her for the courtroom. I dreaded the awkwardness of discussing Frinkell’s letter and its claim of adultery. But Irene was key to launching a successful defence, the only Crown witness I could count on to speak glowingly of Gabriel. And so we arranged to meet at her home late on the day of the summer solstice, after she got back from her bridge club.
As I approached the old Point Grey two-storey, a well-timbered structure faced with stone, I saw a curtain move behind a bay window – Dermot’s studio. Irene opened the door before I could ring the bell.
A powerful scent of perfume. Her face made up, a bounteous head of hair, some grey in it now. A black dress that would seem funereal except for the sparkles above her ample breasts. I supposed that’s what one wore to duplicate bridge. The hallway through which she led me was dim, unlit, and so was the small salon where she bade me sit while she brought tea. She apologized for her cough: she was enduring the tail end of a cold. She said she hadn’t been sleeping well, understandably.
I sat near a window so I could see to make notes. As she returned with tea and oatmeal cookies, she apologized for not having anything more elegant on hand. “I don’t get many callers.” A little bout of coughing. I imagined she was lonely. Probably her friends, such as they were, had tired of soothing her way into widowhood.
After a few pleasantries, I gave her a rundown on what to expect in court, then spent an hour rehearsing her for the witness stand. She answered my questions directly, and even fed me some ammunition against Doug Wall and some useful observations as to how Dermot and Gabriel related. But I felt tension from her throughout, or at least discomfort. I saved the hardest part for last.
“Irene, when you were first questioned by the police – Constable Borachuk, I think – you said Dermot hadn’t seemed depressed. I’m sure Mr. Smythe-Baldwin will remind you of that. It does complicate the defence of suicide, I’m afraid.”
I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel Page 15