“Fascinating woman,” he says.
The quick change of subject startles. “Who?”
“Sorry, still caught up with Thirst for Justice. Annabelle. Your first wife. Gorgeous. Flamboyant. Reminds me a bit of my own first wife. Took me to the cleaners but I never got over her. Eudora. Remarried in haste, and that ended badly too.”
I am dismayed to have become a repository of this personal oral history. I feel I’m being pressured to share.
Caliginis now retrieves a copy of A Thirst from the cab – shall I assume he carries it everywhere, or is it being used as a prop? He flips the pages, finds what he wants. “This photo from the early eighties, you and Annabelle in tux and gown … Owns that camera, doesn’t she? Stunning.”
“She looks exactly the same today.”
Niko and Yoki are taking their time, so I see no recourse but to invite him to relax on the veranda while I wash up. In the course of changing into yesterday’s fairly clean pants, I draw from a pocket the invitation from Annabelle. In case you can’t make it, write something terrible about me …
Returning outside, I see the girls finally approaching, Yoki in a polka skirt and red bandana, and an old straw hat she must have found in the attic. Niko looks exotic in Daisy Mae cut-offs and a vest with a plastic sheriff’s star. Caliginis insists on taking my picture with them.
I can offer no explanation why, as I see him to his truck, I present him with Annabelle’s invitation. “Here’s your chance to meet her.”
An impetuous, mischievous act that haunts me the rest of the day. Was it motiveless or was I seeking to redirect Annabelle to him? Why wouldn’t she thank me for hooking her up with a discerning tycoon with a nose for essence of hazelnuts and tropical fruit? It was the least I could do, Annabelle – you reminded Stan of his only true love.
I ought to have mentioned Annabelle to Margaret. I tell myself I’m protecting the leader of the Parti vert from distraction, but wonder if it’s more complicated than that.
I have assumed Stoney will wait for the cover of darkness before returning my truck, but I don’t expect him before midnight. So I am pleasantly surprised when, just at bedtime, sharp-eared Homer barks, It’s back! It’s back! I go out in time to catch the Fargo rolling down the driveway and stopping by the barn, engine off, lights off. Dog is standing in the back, riding shotgun with a pair of garden clippers.
Stoney swings down from the driver’s seat in his slow, stoned way and waits for me to hustle over in my slippers. He’s standing under the dim light of a hanging bulb, checking out the barn, seemingly enjoying its dense fecal odours. “Got a message you were concerned about me, sire.”
My ruse seems to have worked, but I’m taking no chances, and I climb in the cab. The engine starts immediately, smoothly, its cough cured. Clutch, brakes, gearshift function; all the lights work except for the right bright, and there’s even a quarter-tank of gas. I pocket the ignition key and climb out, holding my position between Stoney and the Fargo. I shall not fall for the predictable ruse: We got no backup vehicle, man, so I’ll return it in the morning.
“Job one, as promised, eh, and it carries the usual warranty. As to the Mustang, I have arranged for a trusted emissary to retrieve it from the ferry monster. That will be Dog.” He’s still standing up there, his back to the rear window. “I have instructed him not to make inquiries about my cherished gargoyle pipe. Up until I heard about your altercation with the law, I was scratching my head over where I’d stuck it. I got too many things on the go – I get distracted, eh.”
“Of course, Stoney.”
He tamps out a cigarette. “So how’s the, ah, heat situation, as far as I’m concerned?”
“Ernst will lay off you. You might want to thank him.”
“I’ll ask Filchuk if he minds letting Ernst have his grow. He’s given up on it; it’s all gone to seed.”
Stoney blows a smoke ring that is whipped away by a gust, a wind change that sends the yard light swinging and causes the barn smell to be replaced by a sweet, pungent odour. I twist around, still protecting the driver’s door, and peer at Dog, who in fact is not standing. He has actually been sitting, on a tarp, newly reaped marijuana plants piled beneath it.
“I figured you wouldn’t mind,” Stoney says. “They were a week away from prime, but I figured cut and run, man, just in case. Not that I mistrusted you to squeal, counsellor, heaven forbid. Anyway, me and Dog figured this old barn would be perfect for maybe an overnight or two. If that don’t work out for you for some reason, we’ll look for a different stash-hole and return the old girl in the morning.”
“No, I will drive you and your cargo home.”
Stoney is taken aback by that. “You okay with … like, driving a hundred K’s of bud around this island?” Slow to recover, he picks up speed. “On a Saturday night, when both island cops are going to be out in force checking for drunks coming from that booze bash up at the vineyard? I believe you reported this here vehicle missing, so won’t they be looking for it?” The disarming, apologetic smile says he thinks he has me.
And truthfully I am not at my sharpest, my mind clouded by Annabelle, still berating myself for pressing that invitation on Caliginis. But I am not going to stand here helplessly as Stoney disappears up the road in my 1969 vintage Fargo. “Haul those plants up to the loft behind the hay bales.”
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2011
The Point Grey cliffs, Spanish Banks, English Bay, Lord Stanley’s forest pass below, then the elegant arcs of Lion’s Gate Bridge, then we glide into Coal Harbour. I am once again in the heart of über-livable Vancouver, delivered by a Syd-Air Beaver on its noon flight from the Gulf Islands.
I wasn’t planning to be in Vancouver until tomorrow, and then only as a stopover to Ottawa. This sudden, unavoidable excursus also means I can’t carry out my threat to burn Stoney’s cannabis at sunset if it isn’t hauled out of my barn by then. It was to have been gone three nights ago.
I have hastened here because Gertrude phoned just after breakfast, to tell me Jimmy “Fingers” O’Houlihan is dying to see me. Literally – he’s in a hospice, on his deathbed. Soon as possible, he told her. His calendar was free for maybe the next few weeks. “He said it was about Dermot Mulligan; that’s all I could get out of him.”
I didn’t keep up my relationship with O’Houlihan after 1962, other than bumping into him outside courtrooms as he waited to give proof of adulteries, and those were strained moments. Where he had been effusive, he became guarded. No mention of Mulligan and his affair with Rita Schumacher, no mention of the Swift case – it was as if he was embarrassed to be seen with me.
After Harvey Frinkell, his main revenue source, was disbarred, O’Houlihan closed up his detective agency and began flipping real estate in Florida. I heard he went bust in the Great Recession and returned to Canada to avoid fraud inquiries. He will be in his early eighties now. Liver cancer, Gertrude has learned. She will be meeting me, taking me to him.
Syd-Air has a berth at the Bayshore Inn, and that’s where we four passengers alight. The hotel has had a few facelifts over time, a plush new tower, and though Trader Vic’s is just a memory, I can never avoid hearkening back, when I am here, to National Secretaries Day 1962, and the poor impression I made on nineteen-year-old Gertrude Isbister.
It’s something she remembers quite well too. In the lobby, after we buss each other and she takes my arm, she recalls how I earnestly described over mai tais what goes into a Salish aphrodisiac. “I must say, Arthur, I tensed up.”
She’s joshing me. I don’t remind her of her youthful feelings for me, embarrassingly revealed in my biography. I don’t know how many times I flashed him some leg. That constant straightening of stockings.
Gertrude has brought a laptop and a video camera. I don’t want to take a chance on O’Houlihan expiring before we record whatever relevant tidbits about Mulligan he withheld from me. The appeal is six days hence, and if Jimmy gives us value, we’ll have to make immediate disclosure to co
urt and Crown. Gertrude has assured me a DVD can be packaged and couriered in an hour.
Frinkell never did send me copies of the intimate photographs his private eye took from the balcony of the Schumachers’ bedroom. With the case closed, I gave up pursuing the matter. But I retain vivid impressions: Dermot and Rita in rut, a dark exposure; Dermot putting on his horn-rims, his stumpy penis at rest; Dermot helping heavy-breasted Rita into her clothes.
I also remember an odd comment by Jimmy Fingers: Missed out on a financial opportunity. “How so?” I say aloud.
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry, Gertrude. I have been talking to myself incessantly, another side effect of age.”
“Nonsense, you started doing that in your thirties. I do wish, Arthur, you’d stop making such a thing about your age. You really haven’t changed at all, just found new things to worry about.”
How true. A terrible scenario could develop if loose lips mention those hundred kilos of pot that Blunder Bay is harbouring. That has been bothering me all morning. How stupid of me, how unthinking – the repercussions for Margaret would be awful.
Gertrude turns north on Georgia, toward the park and Lion’s Gate. The hospice is in the North Shore’s hilly suburbs.
“I may have to delay tomorrow’s flight to Ottawa.”
She asks me why. I withhold details, explain it’s about an unfinished matter on the island.
“Arthur, you’re on WestJet out of YVR at ten. You will be just in time for dinner with Margaret at her favourite restaurant, La Bretonne. Afterwards she is taking you to the National Arts Centre. Carlos Prieto is performing Dvořák’s cello concerto and they’re doing Beethoven’s Sixth, one of your favourites. It’s all laid on. You will be on that plane.”
The Loving Interlude Hospice is in Lynn Valley, down a wooded ravine – at a dead end, fittingly. A Cancer Society facility where patients end their days in as much comfort as their ravaged bodies will permit. Most of those in the sitting room are in wheelchairs, dolefully reading or playing cards. On a bulletin board, a tattered Kestrel Dubois flyer. There has been a tentative recent sighting of the young Cree, a dubious one, on the UBC campus. The story is slipping from the headlines.
A care worker takes Gertrude and me down a wing of suites, knocks on A-14, and pokes her head in. “Are we presentable?” Apparently, because she ushers us in. A small room with a balcony overlooking a mix of conifers. O’Houlihan is in his robe, sitting up in bed on a drip, bald, skeletal, but sharp of eye. He’s been writing on a pad. Beside him, a few shelves with books, files, memorabilia.
“You have some guests.”
“I will receive them.”
“Is there anything we need?”
“We could use a hand job.”
“You are being very bad. No more smoking. You’ve been warned.”
“Hey, gorgeous, I ain’t had a cigarette in forty years before I came here. It ain’t going to kill me. Give a man his dying wish.”
He blows her a kiss as she departs. “Bring a bottle, Artie?” Rattling laughter. “Forget it, morphine rocks. Anyway, I heard you sobered up, went AA. Tried it, couldn’t stomach the rampant sincerity.” To Gertrude: “He’s my saviour – got me off a tough beef.”
I ask, “Did you pay off that witness, Jimmy?”
“Sure did. That’s a dying declaration.” He cackles. Refusing help, he works his way off the bed and into his wheelchair. “Cirrhosis. I maybe got a month. But I ain’t complaining. Never figured to make it to sixty, let alone eighty-one.”
He picks up an inch-thick file folder and wheels past Gertrude as she sets up her computer and camcorder. “Can you help with the balcony door, love?” As she opens it, he switches on a desk fan, puts on a slouch hat, and pulls a pack of Rothmans from the pocket of his robe. “Trouble with morphine, it ain’t addictive enough.”
An eight-by-ten slides from the folder as he lights up, and he tucks it back. “Harvey and I figured to earn at least a champagne cruise off of this. He did the paperwork while I did the dirty. Phoned Mulligan, told him I wanted to avoid him some embarrassment. When he had the kindness to come to my office, I explained I was raising money for a highly recommended charity for the hungry.” Another croaking laugh. “Frinkell set it up – all legit, even a bank account.”
That speech was a physical effort, and he pauses awhile to wheeze out smoke, enjoying this, the story he’d kept cooped up.
“I suggested a substantial mortgage on his lovely house could help feed a lot of tummies. Mulligan looked them over, my photos, and went off to think about it.” A theatrical sigh; he’s playing to Gertrude’s camera. “Our dreams of Caribbean cruises dissolved when he joined the choir eternal. Suicide, I figured, soon as I heard they found his clothes.”
O’Houlihan flicks the remains of his cigarette over the balcony railing onto the grass, then navigates back to the bed, leaving the folder of photos with me. A dozen black-and-whites, all poorly lit because only a bed lamp had been left on. They disclose that Dermot did not go directly out the back way, as Rita had advised. Instead he dallied, trying out her clothes. Stockings, panties, garter belt, a full-figure bra into which he stuffed socks. A girdle. A slip. A white blouse and dark pleated skirt. A splashy-looking party dress. Looking at himself in the mirror.
“These were real slow exposures. The perv was taking forever. My balls almost froze off. Last one’s a beaut.”
The last one, if I make it out correctly, has Mulligan wearing what look like stretch nylon panties and masturbating into them while standing before the mirror. I study it numbly, the literal climax to a sad little show.
Dermot finally got into his own clothes and made his exit, allowing Jimmy Fingers to come in from the cold. He retrieved the soiled panties from the laundry hamper, stuffed them in his camera bag. “Embroidered with little daisies, I remember. No idea what I did with them.”
“Did you show these photos to Professor Schumacher?”
“Just the ones of them fucking. I still wanna laugh when I think of his expression.”
“When did Mulligan come to your office?”
“Maybe four, five days before Easter, as I best recall.”
“He came down from Squamish?”
“Yeah, that’s where I phoned him. I was up there once, nosing around.”
“Find anything?”
“Nope. Walked past his old lady but she had no clue who I was. Just a birdwatcher with his camera and field glasses.” With that, he closes his eyes in sleep.
“A bird does not sing because it has an answer,” I say, placing the photos in my briefcase. Gertrude gathers her equipment and follows me out, giving me a puzzled look.
“It sings because it has a song.”
“Oh.”
“Call Tim Dare at his unlisted number. Tell him I must see him today.”
“Yes, I think it’s about time you checked in with a psychiatrist.”
From “Beauchamp Behind Bars,” A Thirst for Justice, © W. Chance
YOU WILL NOT HEAR BEAUCHAMP ADMIT IT, but his well-known antipathy to Ottawa stems mainly from a significant loss of face he suffered there. Until then he’d been rather a popular figure in the capital, beloved by the media, always ready with a quip, and he’d been garlanded for his international heroics in the Abzal Erzhan case.*
Beauchamp had been brought (dragged is how he put it) before the royal commission inquiring into the case and was accused of hiding vital information in an email from his deceased client. In declining to breach solicitor/client privilege, Beauchamp got into a spat with the chair and was ordered incarcerated until he purged his contempt of court.
No one expected that order to stand – expert consensus was that it would be quashed within the day. But unfortunately a supposedly respected counsel retained by Beauchamp turned out – and I choose my words carefully – to have a problem involving chemicals, and the motion to quash was fouled up. So poor Beauchamp spent three nights in a cell before matters were put right.
&nbs
p; The whole episode has taken on the flavour of humorous folk tale told and retold where lawyers gather. All in all, a rather tragicomic note on which to end the legal career of Arthur Ramsgate Beauchamp, Q.C.†
* Detailed in Chapter 62. For a fuller history, see the appendix under Snow Job.
† For updates on his retirement years, see ThirstForJustice.ca/blog.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2011
I am thirty-five thousand feet above the golden wheat fields of Saskatchewan. Far to the north is Torch River and the rubble of what was Pius XI Residential School, demolished two decades ago. Relics from the discipline room were retrieved for display in a Native museum.
April Wu has hit a roadblock in trying to track down a woman who may be the last remaining descendent of Dermot Mulligan. Marie Snow, born in Fox Lake, Manitoba, in 1978, daughter of Sebastien, who was born of rape. Marie lost both parents at seven – Sebastien to suicide, her mother after a miscarriage – and was adopted. The trail ends there, adoption records closed to public view.
Open in front of me is a learned article by Dr. Timothy Dare in which he calls for a firm diagnostic distinction between openly gay transvestism and the cross-dressing fetish of heterosexual men. I am finding it hard to concentrate, however; unable to suppress images of a tactical drug squad combing through my barn.
I tried to reach Stoney last night but he seemed to be out of range. I will keep after him, despairingly. I don’t dare tell Margaret what I have allowed to happen. I already have a sense that over fine dining this evening she intends to explain why our marriage isn’t working. She will tell me a little about Les, so daring and brave, yet tender, this Greenpeace activist. She hopes the Beethoven and Dvořák will soothe the pain. She hopes we’ll still be friends.
No, that isn’t Margaret Blake; she’s more thoughtful than that. She will delay her announcement until the Swift appeal is done, knowing I am stressed enough. She has warned Les Falk not to contact her during the time I’m in Ottawa. Only two days. I have the stash-hole to worry about, and the appeal begins on Wednesday.
I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel Page 34