Stung

by William Deverell

  This excoriation of Donald Trump takes place over coffee and tea in Khan’s commodious book-lined office, with chamber music playing softly from speakers on a shelf. Arthur and Nancy are in comfortable chairs; Khan is standing within easy reach of the coffee pot, ready to pounce on any opportunity to pour a refill. A screen has been set up in front of a video projector. Inspector Maguire and Sergeant Roberts are in view outside, guarding boxes of Crown exhibits.

  Declining to hear protests, Khan tops up their mugs. “Another touch of milk, Arthur?”

  “It’s fine as is, thank you very much.”

  “You may be pleased to know, Arthur, that I hold your co-counsel, the irreverent Nancy Faulk, to be among the most gifted in her field. It almost seems unfair that she is also among the most attractive. I hope that doesn’t sound sexist.”

  “It does, Azra,” she says.

  Khan has Arthur smiling as he mimics shooting himself in the head.

  “I feel particularly honoured to finally meet Western Canada’s most widely heralded criminal trial lawyer. I have encountered the best of the East so I am thrilled to be able to oppose you, sir. In anticipation of that, I reread A Thirst for Justice on Sunday while I was up at the cottage, supposedly fishing.”

  The book is on his desk, as if for show, Arthur’s face in profile on the dust jacket, his eagle’s beak dominant.

  Arthur seeks to frame an equally generous response, but Nancy butts in: “That’s why you pinched this file. This is an ego trip, isn’t it, Azra, you want to add a trial against Arthur Beauchamp to the memoir you’ll write when you retire from the Supreme Court of Canada.”

  Khan laughs ruefully, in the manner of one caught in the act. “I erred in assigning the case to the usually reliable Magnus Curlbotham, and I must pay the price.” He holds aloft a transcript of the bail hearing. “You two took him to the cleaners. With great panache, you managed to persuade Chuck Tchobanian that conspiring to attack and destroy a multi-billion-dollar business and causing it ruinous damage and the near-death of an inept guard was all a merry lark.”

  He smiles at Arthur during this hearty rhetoric, as if assessing him, testing him. Arthur senses trouble if he rises to this sport fisherman’s bait.

  Nancy, however, is fearless: “Yeah, you want to sidestep Tchobanian, so you’re indicting directly. Which is kind of sneaky — it’s judge-shopping in reverse. Is your case that weak, Azra, that you have to tilt the scales?”

  “His Honour showed extravagant gall in appropriating rights to a trial after having presided over the bail hearing. Unheard of. Rather greedy of him as well. Actually, our case is stronger than we knew.” Khan seems not to want to sit. He wanders to a window that looks out over bustling Bay Street. “Curlbotham didn’t have all the information.” He draws the shades, turns off the background music, points to the screen. “We want to show you a little video from the night of the takedown.”

  The police particulars had mentioned a micro-camera in a gap above Ivor Antiques’s backroom door. Arthur assumes technicians worked overtime on sound levels and image improvement and that the detectives have just got around to viewing it.

  “So let me invite in Jake Maguire and Gaylene Roberts.” Khan goes to the door. “Come in, come in, and bring your booty with you. And please join us for a coffee, tea, or juice before you set up.”

  The two plebeians are shown the serving table, but are on their own. Maguire doesn’t hesitate to pour his own coffee. He swirls it, sniffs it, sips, then nods, as if finding it reasonably tolerable. Arthur remembers him as a heavy smoker. Now he has a healthier addiction.

  Gaylene Roberts passes on both coffee and tea, produces a laptop, plugs in a USB drive.

  “Question them at will,” says Khan. “We shall be as transparent as the cloudless sky. And afterwards, we three can have another chat to help us resolve some issues.”

  * * *

  The camera’s pinhole lens has captured Ivor’s backroom in startling detail, at least in the area of Okie Joe’s computer station. He is seated at one monitor, typing commands, Helmut Knutsen beside him at another, scrolling through documents. Lucy is working at a printer.

  Arthur makes out soft music from somewhere, then spots a small radio near a copier. The music obscures low conversation. But when Knutsen approaches the camera with an empty coffee mug his voice is magnified.

  “I would much rather she leave Canada altogether.” Responding to Lucy, it appears. “As I firmly advised her to do.”

  Khan lifts an eyebrow at Arthur. Proof, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that our brilliant scientist is running this show.

  Lucy, her voice raised: “And what about Chase? Shouldn’t he go with her?”

  “No way they’ll ever nab him,” Okie Joe shouts. “He knows that park upside down and backwards.”

  Arthur stifles a groan at this unexpected mention of Rivie’s sometime lover. Chase D’Amato, ex-Greenpeace stuntman, hadn’t made contact since dropping Rivie off at the airport — had he gone back to Algonquin Park?

  Knutsen returns to the computers with a filled coffee mug. Arthur makes out: “Why are these data taking so long?”

  Joe says something about “heavy traffic.”

  “This is one they want suppressed,” Knutsen says. He calls to Lucy: “Check the news.”

  Sergeant Roberts presses the pause button. The screen freezes on Lucy reaching across to the radio.

  “They’re about to listen to the three a.m. 680 newscast,” Roberts says. “We have the clip directly from the station, if you’d like to hear the relevant bits more clearly.”

  “Like what?” Nancy asks.

  “There’s a sound bite from a city councillor, opining that the investigation has stalled, and another from a doctor who’s at a loss to explain why Archie Gooch is in a coma, given the lack of apparent damage to his heart. Or what passes for his brain.”

  Arthur nods in agreement to Nancy’s suggestion that they get back to the video. It runs for only twenty seconds more, but they are awkward seconds for the defence: Lucy says something about “the oxy-head” smoking “super skookum shit, you could smell it from a hundred metres.”

  “Amazing that he stayed on his feet,” says Knutsen, who then refers to Gooch as a “casualty of war” with what seems an uncaring shrug.

  At which point the camera was removed. Seconds later the door was kicked open.

  Roberts passes them USB drives. “Copies of the video. And some security cam footage taken elsewhere.”

  “Let’s see the wiretap authorization,” Nancy says.

  With a beaming smile, Khan hands each counsel a copy. “All in order. Judge Gerlach was available to sign it.”

  “In what sleazy backroom did you find him at a quarter after two in the morning?”

  Khan ignores her, flips a page of the bail hearing transcript, quotes from Arthur’s pitch to Tchobanian: “‘The Crown can offer no proof Dr. Knutsen was among the group that entered the Sarnia plant.’”

  What is Arthur supposed to say? “Touché”? He is dismayed. That video, when played for a jury, could torpedo any reasonable chance of acquittal on the conspiracy and the breaking and entering.

  “Lest you think we booby-trapped you, the OPP’s digital sound technician was away for the weekend and only got to it late yesterday.”

  “What else has been inadvertently kept from us?” Nancy asks. “What’s this security cam shit?”

  “Ivor Trebiloff’s white van was recorded gassing up at Hickory Corner,” Sergeant Roberts says. “Tuesday, September eleventh, early morning. Knutsen pumping and paying cash, Lucy Wales dashing out for, I guess, a pee.”

  Jake Maguire hands out copies of photos and expert analyses of shoe and boot prints near the cut in the fence. Some matches were found with footwear seized from the defendants’ dwellings. No positives from soil particle analysis.

 
Roberts passes out the fingerprint charts. Matches to all Sarnia Seven were lifted from the backroom of Ivor Antiques. Similar matches were found in Ivor’s white van. An eighth person’s prints were also found in both locations.

  “The mystery man is Chase D’Amato,” she says. “He’s been booked several times, most recently for decorating Calgary’s Husky Tower with a banner saying ‘Oil Sucks.’”

  “So now it’s the Sarnia Eight,” says Khan. “Or will be when our stellar investigative team collars Mr. D’Amato. We suspect there may be others.”

  Arthur hopes Selwyn Loo has not been traced to the Earth Survival Rebellion’s war room — he’d paid it a few visits. As a lawyer, Arthur wants to believe, not a tactical adviser.

  Now Roberts is laying out various physical exhibits on Khan’s wide desk, which, except for Arthur’s biography, has been cleared to permit this display. Among them, the crowbar — Rockin’ Ray’s instrument of destruction — and his improvised masked-avenger gear. Rivie’s false passport. Various cell phones, tablets, and laptops.

  And more paperwork: binders are handed out with copies of relevant documents, texts, emails, notes, photos, and calendars printed from seized computers. Arthur will have something to say to the jury about his clients’ ineptness: true terrorists know enough to wipe everything clean.

  Khan riffles through his copies: “You’ll find several references to Operation Beekeeper and some to ESR, or Earth Survival Rebellion. Your allegedly well-meaning idealists are allied with an international subversive organization that condones violent action. La Résistance Planétaire.”

  He wanders again to his outlook over Queen’s Park, the heart of the government that he serves. “Resistance. Rebellion. This is not the language pacifists use, my friends.”

  Arthur senses worse to come. Khan wants to regain Curlbotham’s lost ground, and more, with a quick counter-offensive. That seems imminent, as he asks the two officers to wait outside again, escorting them, expressing the kind of indulgent gratitude one offers for excellent service.

  Arthur says to Nancy, sotto voce: “Is he trying to set us up for a plea?”

  “He’s about to shit on us. Watch this.”

  “A line has to be drawn,” Khan says, returning to the table, refilling his own mug. “It’s terrorism, my friends. That they don’t wear Nazi tattoos or taunt with the black flag of ISIS doesn’t make them good terrorists. In the government’s view, there are no subcategories of good and bad terrorists. Our solemn duty is to set an example, to deter others who may be inclined to more monstrous evils.”

  He smiles, realizing he’s being florid, as if rehearsing for a jury.

  “And our solemn duty,” says Arthur, “is to defend our clients from the audacious imputation that they are terrorists of any shape or cut. A conviction on that basis would set a frightening precedent, equating acts of civil protest with mass murder. Is that where you wish this country to go? Down the road paved by Mr. Trump?”

  That taste of Arthurian rhetoric catches Khan up, and he hesitates too long before framing a response, allowing Nancy to butt in: “What’s your game, Azra? Where is this leading us?”

  “To a judicial review, my dear. I will be urging the high court to reverse the interim release orders for Helmut Knutsen, Ray Wozniak, and Rivke Levitsky. They’re likely to get rapped hard, up to ten or even fourteen years, so they may as well start doing their time now. I may decide to add to the mix Joe Meekes and Lucy Wales — God knows how that scheming young anarchist got out on her mere undertaking.”

  He pauses, as if expecting a response. He doesn’t earn one and carries on: “Knutsen ought to be held at Her Majesty’s pleasure because he’s clearly the prime mover and a powerful influence on lesser minds. Levitsky for obvious reasons. She’s lucky she hasn’t been charged under Section 246(b). A conviction attracts a life sentence.”

  Arthur struggles. He used to know the Code backwards and forwards. Khan helps him out: “Administering a stupefying drug.”

  “Ah, yes, of course. And where are your proofs of that?”

  “Currently unavailable, but a logical presumption. Hopefully, Mr. Howell Griffin will decide to be more candid with us so we can add that count to the indictment.”

  Arthur tries not to show discomfort. Griffin claimed to have no memory for what transpired in his apartment on that critical night. What if his memory miraculously improved?

  Khan continues: “Now, as to the alleged enchanter, Mr. Wozniak, let us eliminate some surplus items. His varied collection of narcotics doesn’t interest us, and we can dispense with the comic relief of the accusation that he took a whizz on the head of one of Her Majesty’s finest. However, he may be guilty of homicide. I am given to understand Archie Gooch could be on his way out. If that happens, we shall be indicting Mr. Wozniak for manslaughter and seeking a term of life imprisonment.”

  Arthur stifles a profanity. Surely no sane judge would see a probable manslaughter here. This judicial review will delay his return home to harvest his beans and cukes.

  Nancy is seething. “And when will these appeals take place?”

  “Friday. I am bound by law to give two clear days’ notice. Documents are being prepared for service as we speak. I shall be showing His or Her Lordship the incriminating video.”

  “Azra, you seriously think that when all our clients show up on Friday, His or Her Ladyship won’t wonder why all these security risks haven’t already fled for the hills?”

  Arthur rises, strolls to the desk, looks over the cell phones, locates the one tagged “Lucy Wales.” He doesn’t touch it, but asks Khan if her photos were reproduced.

  He seems unsure, and puzzled. “I can ask the detectives.”

  “It would be better not to,” says Arthur. He doesn’t want Khan to learn Arthur had hinted to Maguire he was amenable to suppressing this evidence.

  “Binder eight,” says Nancy, quick to sense where this might lead. “Under the Wales tab.” Arthur flips through his copy of the binder, locates several ten-by-eights printed from Lucy’s phone. Khan flips through his own binder, even more puzzled.

  Lucy had bought the phone, used, via Craigslist, to replace the one she garbaged after the Sarnia raid. She’d taken only six photos: a cat treed by a dog, a takeout menu from a pizza parlour, a selfie of her left nipple, a shady character looking lasciviously at her in a subway car, and, next to last, Maguire in the Buick, gaping wide-eyed at a camera flash through the windshield, and finally a shot of the police pouring into the backroom of Ivor Antiques.

  Arthur explains that Lucy snapped the second-last picture just as she passed the officers’ surveillance car. Khan studies it, then finally sits.

  “She’d already had a good look into the front seat,” Arthur says. “That’s when she made a comment to Jake.”

  “This has not been mentioned to me.” Khan’s face muscles have tensed.

  “The comment,” says Arthur, “had to do with an act of fellatio. His belt was undone, his pants open, and Sergeant Roberts’s face was in his groin. In the lower right is her toe in a brown sock. I can see why they never mentioned it to you, though it’s undeniably relevant to the chain of events leading to the arrests.”

  “I am gobsmacked.” Khan slumps but remains fixed on the photo, on Maguire’s face, which might indeed suggest he was in the throes of sexual ecstasy. He is not as good a detective as Maguire, doesn’t grasp the significance of the upraised toe. Still, Arthur is unsure whether this game can be won.

  He continues: “It would be tragic if this were to go public — both officers are married, she with young children, he with a loving wife of three decades and on the eve of a well-deserved retirement.”

  Khan looks out the glass partition, sees the two officers glancing in. He quickly closes the exhibit binder, then screws up his face as if in pain.

  Nancy finds her gentler voice: “We have to cross-examine
them on this, Azra. If they come up with something totally lame, like she was only having a nap on his lap, the jury isn’t going to believe them. Your two prime witnesses will have lost all credibility.”

  Khan hunches forward on his chair, locking eyes with Arthur. Finally, a little smile of resignation. “Surely we can find a way to withhold this from a jury. And the press, of course. What solutions do you see, my friend?”

  “It bothers me, Azra, that the Crown may be burdening the courts, and the honest taxpayers of Ontario, with futile appeals against the several orders for judicial release.”

  Khan’s smile widens. “Would Ms. Wales instruct you not to tender this photo in the course of these proceedings?”

  “Quite so, Azra. In writing, if you like.”

  “And the act she observed would not be canvassed should she take the witness stand?”

  “Provided the bail conditions stand.”

  “We are all three in accord?”

  “Of course,” says Nancy. “You have a good heart, Azra.”

  “Please understand that an indictment against Wozniak for manslaughter is not foreclosed even though he remains on bail.” Khan again looks out at the two detectives. “Those long surveillance shifts must be deadly boring. Attractive woman, Officer Roberts. I’m not sure how the old boy wangled that but he did well for himself, didn’t he?”

  6

  Arthur and Nancy take turns briefing the Earth Survival Rebels about the newly disclosed video and the Crown’s more muscular approach to the trial. In summary, Arthur advises, Ontario’s most feared prosecutor has entered the arena and seeks long prison terms by painting them as terrorists.

  “Azra loves headlines,” Nancy says. “You don’t get headlines playing softball.”

  This takes some air out of the accused, who are gathered this afternoon in the boardroom of Faulk, Quan, Dubois. Selwyn Loo is at the head of the table, directing traffic, and he seems tired or hungover. Perhaps he’d celebrated too well yesterday with their clients. Or maybe he’s been working too hard at devising some kind of workable defence.