Street Legal

by William Deverell

  “God in Heaven, Thou hast been bountiful today to the firm of R., B., B., and T. I was worried we were going to have to stall the bank next week. I just saw our general account, not enough to keep us in dog food. Maybe we’ll get the mob business now, organized crime, people who pay their bills.”

  She could hear Ted approaching, with Royce Boggs in tow.

  “She’s a voracious cunt,” Boggs was saying. Carrie flinched.

  Ted’s voice: “Royce, I’m sure she’ll see reason after the discovery.”

  She could see Boggs now, florid and large. A corporate pirate with some major electronics holdings.

  Ted looked ravaged all right, but he was keeping himself together, being all Rotarian, clubbish, his hand on his client’s elbow.

  She saw that Boggs was giving her a once-over. “Mrs. Barr, you are looking radiant.”

  She barely acknowledged him, and began checking her mail.

  “Oh, I forgot, Mr. McAnthony’s office called,” said Pauline Chong. “He has a judge for your bail hearing tomorrow.”

  “Oh, good. I have to make a trip to Montreal. Book me for, let’s see, day after tomorrow, afternoon flight.” She didn’t expect that Mr. Big Leonard Woznick got up very early in the morning.

  Boggs seemed unaware that Carrie was ignoring him. “Still hotter than a bitch out there?”

  “Very hot, Royce.” Hotter than a bitch in heat, old sport.

  Oxfam, John Howard Society, Ban the Bomb, the firm was on everyone’s mailing list. Alumni newsletter, a reminder from her optometrist. Invitation to formal reception for Justice Clearihue, he’d just been raised to appeals. No scary letters today. Another legal aid referral, a pot pusher . . .

  Oh, God, she suddenly realized she had promised that rooster-tail, Blaine or Blair, that she was going to get a pass to see him. Tomorrow, she must do that, before he disappeared into the bureaucratic void.

  Boggs was speaking to Ted in some kind of arcane language. “Big recapture value.” “Achievement-oriented players.” Then: “We want you on board, Ted, on the ground floor.”

  “Let’s just concentrate on that divorce, Royce.” Ted gave him a squeeze on the elbow, flashed his famous crooked grin.

  Boggs disappeared, and Carrie returned to the main office, where Leon was standing beside the copier, studying it with an expression of dismay. He called to his secretary: “Shirley, the machine just ate Mrs. Urquhart’s will.”

  Carrie could sense Ted behind her, reproachful. She turned to face him.

  “Carrie, I know you’re still angry at me.” Ted spoke softly, but she could hear the stiffness in his voice. “I don’t know what I can say to convince you that I’m guilty of only the minor misdemeanour of not phoning you last night. For that, you have a right to be totally pissed off at me. But please don’t take it out on the clients. You did it again, honey, you gave a terrific cold shoulder to Royce Boggs.”

  Honey. It sounded odd. Too intimate right now, too casual. Hello, honey, I’m home. Sorry about the spat this morning. What’s for dinner? Carrie was confused, unsure whether to feel guilty and forgiving after hearing Chuck’s assurances, or still furious, or just stupid.

  “Boggs is a venal corporate manipulator, and a very boring one at that. And brutal. He beat his wife to a pulp. I hope she beats him to a pulp in court.”

  Ted bristled. “Behind the egalitarian facade, I sometimes think there’s something of the snob in you, Carrington.”

  Leon was taking this in now — their voices had raised. Shirley found the will, lying on the floor, and handed it to him. “You know, Leon, you’re really helpless.”

  “I side with Carrie,” said Leon, suddenly a part of their conversation. “I’m starting to wonder, Ted, what are you doing joining cause with corporate warlords like Boggs? What is this sudden obsession with money I am noticing?”

  “I’m tired of living in constant fear of the bank, Leon. I’m tired of this office being up to its eyeballs in debt. Listen, Boggs has leveraged Sky Electronics to the hilt. He wants me in for a piece of the action, I’d work with a crack team of lawyers. We’re talking some humungous money here.”

  “My God,” said Leon, “this is what we’ve descended to. That poor but proud civil-rights firm we founded in 1971. My partner, a mere decade later, grovelling for Mammon. The other two leading lights of the firm acting for purveyors of heroin and pornography.”

  “We pay ten grand a month in rent, and more than that on interest payments,” Ted said. “Civil rights doesn’t buy paper clips. Nor does criminal law, Carrie.”

  “We have some big fees coming in,” Carrie said.

  “Carrie,” said Leon, “it may be hard to visualize this, but try. Picture your husband as he was a dozen years ago, hair down to his fourth vertebra, in sandals and leather fringes, expanding his consciousness on mescaline and shouting ‘Off the fascist pigs’ while police arrest him and me and our brother and sister sit-ins at Rochdale College.”

  “Leon, times change, so do people.” Ted studied Leon for a moment, the beard, the baggy old corduroy jacket. “Some people,” he said.

  “Taste in clothes and hair lotion changes,” Leon said. “Sometimes we change a politician or two. But some things never change.” With that announcement, Leon returned to his office.

  Watching Leon leave, Ted seemed lost in some private world. Carrie felt shut out.

  “Ted, we have to talk.”

  Ted sighed. “Carrie, I’m truly sorry for last night. I should have just abandoned her, but she was drunk, she was making a scene. I should have called, I know. It’s just . . . things got out of hand, and then it got too late.”

  His eyes looked raw, sunken; suddenly she felt a compassion, a sadness.

  “Yes, let’s talk,” he said. “Tonight.”

  ***

  At home that evening, they ordered in. They talked over curried fried rice and sweet-and-sour shrimp. Ted had a couple of drinks, became charming, got the smile working. He went out into the roses to look for her ring. Carrie thought of going out there with him, but the act would have been too forgiving, almost obsequious.

  Ted came back scratched from the thorns after a fruitless search in the dark.

  Carrie laughed a little. She couldn’t help but observe he still wore his matching ring, prominently, flashing it: the vows still bound, he was announcing. Again, he reassured her: he was not interested in anyone else; he was committed to Carrie.

  Committed. It sounded like someone being sent to an institution. Love. Just say you love me.

  “She came on, didn’t she?”

  Ted was silent for a moment. “Yes. She had her hands all over me in the car. And I was a little drunk, and I . . .” He seemed lost now, Carrie thought he was going to blurt something out, something awful. Okay, I admit it, I did it, you got me. And Carrie would have forgiven him then, she knew that, a drunken act of lust, regretted, forgotten, thrown out with the rest of life’s casual garbage.

  Get it out of the way. Now. “Did you . . . do anything, Ted? With her? Just tell me. Honestly.”

  “No,” he said firmly, looking at her square and hard. “I absolutely did not.” Then he smiled. “I suppose now she’s very embarrassed. Poor Melissa. You’re right, she’s really quite ridiculous.”

  For some reason, finally, Carrie found herself wanting to cry, maybe a surge of relief. But she collected herself, changed the subject, told him all about the Cristal case.

  “It sounds a little fishy to me,” Ted said at the end of this. “You’re sure they’re not holding something back?”

  “Not Oliver McAnthony. He’s fair, a professional.”

  “Carrie, it’s great, it’s a big case. The only thing . . . I worry, you know, all these murder trials, aren’t they putting you under a little strain?”

  “It’s not the work that’s doing it, Ted.”

&n
bsp; “Yeah, well, touché.” He paused, then continued in the same vein: Was this really what she wanted to do for the rest of her working life, defend social misfits? Criminal law — it was ill-paying, and rather . . . dirty. It had left a trail of victims.

  Ted didn’t mention her father, of course.

  She didn’t argue with him. Sure, the criminal courtroom was stressful — she silently admitted that to herself. Sure, you see the seamy side of things. It wasn’t easy. But she owed.

  7

  That evening, Chuck somehow just couldn’t get around to talking to Lisa about Harry Squire. He had planned to have his heart-to-heart after dinner, but the Sisterhood came over, the coalescing women, a strategy session. Chuck should have interrupted then, just when they were starting merrily to put Harry Squire to the sword.

  Chuck listened to them, spying from the kitchen, sipping a beer. He would find out what the enemy was up to, and when the troops left he would confront Lisa with the unhappy fact of her conflict of interest, tell her about the thousand a day, what it could buy.

  Women Against Pornography, that was what they called themselves. W.A.P. These Wappers seemed malevolent women. There was much evil laughter, they were stoned on the drug of their mission. How had Lisa begun to run with this pack? She’d been such a homebody. Why do people change? It was those socialist artsy friends of hers, man-haters.

  He heard Lisa say she couldn’t possibly make it to the bail review tomorrow.

  “We want that courtroom packed,” said one of the Wappers.

  “Maybe I can try to pop in. But I just have to show up at work. I’ll do some of the phoning.”

  “Give us all your clothespegs.” A peal of laughter.

  After the conspirators left, Lisa spent two hours on the phone. Chuck knew he should interrupt, things were going too far, but he drank another couple of beers instead.

  By the time he’d summoned courage, Lisa was in the bathroom. He had another beer.

  When he went up to the bedroom she was fast asleep. The sleep of the innocent, the righteous.

  ***

  Chuck showed up in County Court the next morning with a bit of a head. He was late, and had flown right out of bed to the courthouse. No picketers outside — maybe they’d gone to the wrong building. No, they’d all be in court, waiting, with clothespegs over their noses. Lonely, empty, cynical women, what right had they to tell citizens what they could read? Chuck was finding comfort in his cause, identifying with it.

  Tyrone Slocum, a prosecutor, was in the barristers’ lounge when Chuck went up to change into his robes.

  “I just popped into Judge Blake’s courtroom,” Slocum said. “The libbers are there in force.”

  “I’m telling you, Ty, it’s not going to end here. The intended final result is emasculation of the whole male sex.” He could talk like that to Slocum, a man, like Chuck, confused by women, not sure why a whole generation of them seemed so mad at everyone. “I’m acting for the poor bugger.”

  “I’m prosecuting him,” said Slocum. “The boys at the top want your guy’s balls served up on a platter before the next election.”

  A warm glow began to suffuse Chuck. Ty Slocum — this was great — a comrade in the camp of the enemy.

  “You well retained?” Slocum asked.

  “A fair per diem.”

  “Well, I’m happy to spin this thing out.”

  Chuck liked this idea. “It’s going to be hard to do that if he’s not on bail.”

  “I’ll agree to twenty-five thousand, his own recognizance.”

  “Hey, ah, do you think we can slip this thing into O’Leary’s courtroom?”

  “It’s posted for Court 2-4. They got a murder thing in there first in front of Justice Blake.”

  “I want to do an end run around those ladies.”

  “Right. Good idea.”

  ***

  When Carrie walked into Court 2-4 she saw all the women there, clothespegs at the ready — a few already had them on their noses. One of them was pretending to spray the room with a deodorizer, guerrilla theatre.

  Fortunately, the judge wasn’t there yet: Blake didn’t like shenanigans. Poor Chuck, she thought, Lisa probably had kittens when he told her about the new client. Lots of reporters in court, too — she and Chuck would make the papers again.

  Oliver McAnthony was at the counsel table with one of his juniors. On the front bench sat Inspector Mitchell and Jock Strachan from homicide. There was a third man, obviously a cop, thin as a pole, with animated clever eyes.

  Carrie guessed he was the off-duty officer who made the collar on Cristal. Lamont, that was the name. He was looking mighty proud, surrounded here by brass, a hero. Heard a shot, they said, ran outside the Roll-a-Bowl, saw the car with its engine running, grabbed Cristal as he was heading out. Cristal hadn’t resisted, which was good.

  They had a feeble case, even tough old Blake would see he had to give him bail, though this wily judge was Crown-minded and ungenerous.

  She had a lot else going for her. Cristal, she had been surprised to learn, had gone through college, had been an industrial architect, then worked five steady years with a construction company in Montreal. When it went bankrupt six months ago, he became manager at Lavanderie Woznick, industrialized dry-cleaners. Not a portrait of a criminal. A bachelor all his life, but a long-time address, a normal, hardworking, taxpaying citizen. On the surface, anyway.

  “Oliver, I know you pride yourself on being fair. What are you asking for?”

  “Carrington, do you really think I can be swayed by an appeal for fairness? I am not paid to be fair. Judges are paid to be fair.”

  “How did we end up in front of Blake?”

  “I asked for the meanest son of a gun they had available.”

  “We can post a property bond of thirty thousand. He owns a cottage in the Eastern Townships.”

  “My dear, he will be on the first plane to Amsterdam, where one can purchase a new identity.”

  “How much bail do you want, Oliver?”

  “Three hundred thousand dollars.”

  “That’s . . . that’s crazy.” Carrie looked over at the Bullet, who was absorbed in his notes. What was his game? Why was McAnthony playing the servile court jester to him?

  “Order in court!”

  Justice Blake came in scowling at everyone, especially the women in the gallery.

  “I don’t want any scenes in this courtroom. Take those ridiculous things off your noses.”

  There were murmurs of protest, but the women complied.

  André Cristal was led into the prisoners’ box, a police guard close behind him. They’d returned his clothes: Carrie didn’t like his outfit, all black, the uniform of a man who does bad things in the dark. He looked like a hit man. She was irritated at herself — she should have found him something else to wear.

  Cristal looked around the courtroom, detached at first, then sort of bemused, she thought, as he saw all the women there.

  Carrie went up to him, waiting for the judge, who seemed to be looking for something in the Criminal Code.

  “Those women aren’t here for you, M. Cristal.”

  “T’ank God for that.”

  “How do you feel?”

  His dark eyes shot through her. “I am never better.”

  “Okay, Mr. McAnthony,” said Justice Blake, “this is a bail application on a first degree?”

  “Murder one, m’lord. Planned and deliberate.”

  “I see.” Blake took the measure of the alleged hit man, and frowned.

  Already, Carrie wasn’t liking the way this was going.

  McAnthony delivered a précis of the evidence, pitching it in a relaxed and offhand way: the Crown had a reasonable circumstantial case, important facts were soon to come to light, police were still investigating, there were “ties�
� with organized crime.

  In her turn, Carrie said all the good things she could think of about Cristal, then suggested that the case for the Crown was so bad maybe the clothespegs were appropriate.

  Blake smiled at that, but began to give her a rough time.

  “Mr. McAnthony says the accused has ties with organized crime, as I think he put it.”

  “Works for a man with a long criminal record, m’lord,” McAnthony said. “A Mr. Leonard Woznick.”

  “My learned friend believes in guilt by association.”

  “He was on the stairway, Mrs. Barr,” the judge said. “It leads to only one place.”

  “I’m not about to reveal our defence.” She was being too abrupt. “There could be many explanations.”

  “What about the gloves?” The judge was looking at Cristal again, appraising this man in black.

  “Well, he had gloves in his pocket. The important thing is he had no gun.”

  “You make a big thing about his fingerprints not showing up. What’s he doing with gloves on a hot summer night?”

  ***

  Afterwards, Carrie went quickly down to the lockup to see Cristal before he was moved back to the Don Jail. She was trying to still her fury.

  “Three hundred thousand dollars! That miserable son of a . . . the old Scrooge.”

  Cristal seemed unperturbed. “Will they take a post-dated cheque?”

  “I can try to get it reduced on appeal.”

  “I do not have the time.”

  “I’m afraid you may have plenty of time.”

  “What if suddenly they find a witness?”

  “What witness?”

  “When I went up there, I saw there were washings in the sink.”

  Washings? Heroin residue. What was all this?

  “A cotton swab, a little blood on it. I t’ink somebody just do up, and maybe he will say he see me in there.”