Street Legal

by William Deverell

  “He’s out of the Dubois gang in Montreal. Big Leonard picked him up. I did the interview. You said you wanted another good iceman for Schlizik on this job, and that’s what I got you.”

  “Yes, and he’s hitting on us for a great deal of money. We are in a negative cash-flow situation, and I fear Mr. Cristal is not a very good investment. He is not worth the cost of his own release from prison. He will have to sweat it out.”

  “Big Leonard won’t be pleased. André goes out with his daughter.”

  “Tell Mr. Woznick to hire smarter people henceforward.”

  “What about the junkie? Hiltz had this cousin or somethin’, Normie the Nose, I think it’s him.”

  “Well, check him out. A junkie named Normie the Nose — already I don’t like him. Whom can you trust these days, Speed? I don’t trust Mr. Cristal, and I don’t trust Mr. Woznick neither. I don’t even trust my accountants. Should I trust you, Speed? But this is what business does to you, you lose your love of people.”

  11

  In his office, Inspector Mitchell and one of his undercover men, Hollis Lamont, were staring at a video terminal. On the screen: Carrington Barr walking along a sidewalk toward the camera, stopping, looking startled, maybe disgusted. In the background a sign: LAVANDERIE WOZNICK. Carrie turned her back to the camera, and entered the building.

  “Nice buns, huh?” said Lamont. He was brazen, a cocky man who liked to perform. “Had the camera hidden under my raincoat, lens just poking out.” The screen went dark, then showed Carrie leaving the premises, Big Leonard Woznick showing her to a taxi.

  “Where does this get us?” Mitchell said grumpily.

  “Cristal leads us to Big Leonard, Big Leonard leads us to Billy Sweet.”

  “Not enough. Where the hell is this Normie the Nose character?”

  “We’re still pulling blanks on that one, Inspector.”

  Mitchell didn’t want to tell Oliver McAnthony about Normie, but things could get dicey if he didn’t. Still, the prosecutor didn’t have to know all the details of Operation Sweet Revenge.

  ***

  At noon on Saturday when Carrie finally emerged from her house, the air was sharp after the night of rain. No clouds, a piercing sun. She was still feeling damaged, violated, still working through the pain, trying to pull the pieces together. Leon had been so good last night, generous in his understanding, letting her get it all out. But when she raised the matter of the firm’s future, he seemed at a loss, evaded, kept saying things like, “We’ll work it out.”

  From her house, Carrie walked the long stretch of Queen West, her favourite street, all the way to the other side of Spadina, wanting to walk, needing the exercise. She looked at the anonymous faces of passersby, stared bleakly into shop windows. Life was normal here, people busy, happy, in the Bohemia of Toronto.

  Where was she going? The office, that’s right, a crisis meeting with Leon and Chuck. She felt she could handle it, she could stifle her anger, her bile, and get through the afternoon. As long as Ted didn’t show up.

  She stopped for a bite at Le Select and stared for a long time at her quiche, unable to eat.

  Why had she been in love with him? What was there, after all? Great mind, wicked sense of humour, an athlete’s body, he was generous and open . . . but empty inside of all but a preening male vanity and self-centred ambition. Was it her competitiveness that made her want to beat out all those other women who panted after him?

  He’s left her for Melissa’s money — two and a half million bucks, that’s what he was suing for and that’s what he was selling himself for. He was a whore, not in the little leagues like Trixi Trimble — his immorality was for more exorbitant; Trixi sold her body much too cheaply. The Cattle Breeders’ Association of Ontario, her husband should join it.

  She could feel the doors of anger spilling open again, and when she took a sip from her grapefruit juice she felt nauseated. She rose as decorously as she could from her table, and walked to the washroom where she bent over the toilet and gagged several times, but nothing came out.

  Repairing herself, she examined her raw eyes in the mirror, red to match her hair. She took out her contacts and put on her reading glasses, hoping they would hide the hurt in those eyes.

  You’re tough, she told her reflection, you can get through this. You’re not going to have a stupid breakdown. You’re a trained courtroom lawyer, you take on murder trials. Be proud. Be happy. You’ve just got rid of some unnecessary baggage in your life: Royce Boggs’s pal, the achievement-oriented player.

  Why had Leon been so timid about reacting to her threats to bounce Ted from the firm? Maybe Leon and Ted had been together for too many years; there was a cement there that her marriage never knew. And with Chuck, Ted was far too close and confiding. She was the outsider . . .

  She told herself she should do the noble thing: just quit the firm, let the guys carry on. She didn’t need Ted, she didn’t need Leon and Chuck, she was on her way. She could open her own office, here on Queen West, an area maybe a little too hip, but coming up, another gentrifying patch of this city of neighbourhoods. Yes, she could make it on her own.

  Alone. Single-O. The Carrie in the mirror stared at her with a bespectacled wide-eyed alarm.

  Tucked in, hair combed and fluffed, lips re-reddened, she emerged with some dignity. She paid for her food without touching it, and walked again into the heat of the day.

  ***

  The G & C Trust building was abandoned on this August weekend — a three-day holiday, she remembered, Monday was Civic Day. On the tenth floor the letters she had chiselled from the wall had been glued on again by someone. The custodial staff, she assumed, on orders from Mr. Barnsworth, the landlord.

  From the waiting room, she could hear a murmuring of voices, Leon and Chuck in debate somewhere in the inner offices.

  She spotted the tops of their heads in a corner of the library — it was as if they were hiding there, behind a barricade of pornographic paperbacks. She walked in quietly, and sat and waited for them to notice her.

  “Jesus, Leon, we have to stall this thing out, give her a chance to cool off. We’re all four of us tied to a lease which is like a goddamn albatross, we co-signed a loan that could keep all of Biafra fed for a year . . . Look, man, we drown separately or we keep each other afloat.”

  “Ted owns all the life jackets,” Leon said.

  “That’s what I mean — look at last month’s statements, he did almost 50 per cent of our billings. Carrie — let’s face it, hers is mostly legal aid, she did less than fifteen. The brutal fact is, Leon, without Ted we’re tits-up. We go bankrupt and lose our licence to practise, we become show salesmen and hardware clerks.”

  Carrie could just see the top of Chuck’s head, bobbing as he talked. It was amazing to think about it — this person had once been her closest male friend.

  “Carrington wants him out,” Leon said. “She is very resolved on that point.”

  “Look, a weekend in Bermuda, I’ll make some reservations for her, she just needs time to settle down, reconsider . . .”

  “Their marriage is kaput, Chuck. And maybe our office is, too.”

  “I’ll tell Ted to grovel, I’ll tell him to . . . Where the hell is he? I’ve been trying to reach —”

  “I’ll save you all this trouble,” Carrie said, and they looked around the pile of books and saw her. “I’ll make it short and painless. I intend to leave the firm.”

  A silence. The air-conditioning hummed softly in the background. Carrie glanced down at a book, a crudely illustrated woman’s face on the cover, her painted mouth oval and open. Fellatio Sue. She picked it up and hurled it in Chuck’s direction, missing him.

  “Oh-oh,” he said.

  “Carrie,” Leon began, “let’s —”

  Carrie shut him up. “I shall be giving notice of an extraordinary meeting under our art
icles of partnership. At that meeting I intend to give notice of dissolution. You may then reform the partnership among the three of you.”

  “Can we talk about this?” said Leon. “Can we discuss? Before you just go diving off the high platform?”

  “Yeah, Carrie, without checking to see if there’s water in the pool.”

  “Don’t interrupt me, Chuck, please.” Carrie spoke crisply, mechanically, as if she had thought the whole thing out. “I will easily survive on my less than 15 per cent of the billings. I plan a low-overhead practice. I don’t want anything from the firm — you keep the assets and all the files, and all of Ted’s fantastic billings, I just want out of the lease and the loan.”

  “Carrie —” Leon began again.

  “Please understand that the three of us will always remain friends. Close friends. I’ve forgiven you, Chuck, I believe Ted put you in a very awkward position, and you feel guilty about it.”

  “I haven’t forgiven either of them,” Leon said.

  “Aw, come on, Leon,” said Chuck. “Carrie, let’s the three of us go out and have a cold beer. Man, you’re in a pretty upset state.”

  “I’m quite in control.”

  “Carrie,” said Leon, “I know right now you’re summoning everything you’ve got within you —”

  She lost it, began shouting: “Stop indulging me! I won’t be made a fool of! Go with him! Both of you! I am not going to change my mind, I am leaving this firm!”

  The sound of the front door being unlocked, then closed, was drowned by her outpouring, but now they could all hear the advancing footsteps, and in a few seconds Ted appeared at the library door.

  He had recently showered, and wore clean slacks and T-shirt — he hadn’t been home, so Carrie assumed he had just bought them. Brand new pair of shoes, too. His face looked ghostly, inanimate, and there were bags under his eyes.

  Carrie found, to her surprise, that his arrival seemed to calm her, to clear her head.

  “So what’s this?” he said. “The trial or the hanging?”

  “Oh, Ted, I’m glad you dropped by,” she said. “I’d like to settle the terms without a lot of fuss and bother. All I want is the house and the furnishings. I don’t want any of your money. Or hers.” She watched him for reaction, sought blood. But he seemed oddly unmoved. It was as if he was ready for this.

  “I don’t have a problem with that, Carrie. The house is yours.” She realized he wasn’t here to beg and promise amends — he had accepted their marital death, finito, the end, history. Already, they were divvying up the spoils of marriage.

  “I’ll have to decide if I need to subpoena her to the divorce hearing,” she said.

  “You will do what you must do, Carrie.” His remorseless expression caused the knife to go in backwards — it was she who was bleeding, from the wound of his blunt consent to the inevitable.

  She felt herself fighting for control, trying to be cool Carrie. She wasn’t dealing with a husband here, she was dealing with a divorce lawyer. “I’m dissolving the office partnership, too, Ted.”

  He nodded and took a chair. She realized he wasn’t going to argue about this, either — it was almost demeaning of him.

  “Who wants to go with whom?” he said.

  Chuck’s mouth dropped. “Hey! Pause!”

  “I am beyond redemption in Carrie’s eyes. What is broken will not be fixed. I know Carrie. I’m truly sorry — that is all I can say. I don’t want to quibble over paper clips, I have a lot of work coming in, and I intend to be generous whatever way we split up. Leon?”

  Stunned, Leon said, “What?”

  “Her or me.”

  “What is this,” said Chuck, “some kind of comic opera? It’s not funny.”

  Leon abruptly said, “I go with Carrie.”

  That silenced everyone like a rifle-shot. The deed had been done quickly, a bullet to the head, the firm had been executed.

  Ted seemed taken aback by the suddenness of it, then recovered. “Okay, Leon, yeah, I kind of thought you might . . . Sure, it’s better that way, it makes it easier, fifty-fifty.”

  Carrie saw that Leon was looking at her intensely, as if trying to send a message, something almost intimate. She felt a great affection for him just then.

  Ted turned to Chuck. “Okay, Mr. T, is it you and me? I’ve got enough stuff coming in to keep half a dozen people busy. I’ll be associate counsel on the Ace Electronics thing when it gets to court. Looks like I’m going to be swamped.”

  Carrie saw that Ted couldn’t meet her eye. Nor could Chuck meet anyone’s — his face was in his hands, hidden. “God,” he groaned. “This is nuts.”

  Ted seemed in a stall, he was waiting. “You can do some of the divorces, Chuck, I can’t handle them all.”

  “Shit.”

  “Choose,” said Ted.

  A long silence. Then Chuck spoke softly. “Carrie.”

  Ted turned ashen. He took a deep breath and slowly rose from his chair. Carrie closed her eyes — she couldn’t bear to look at him. Despite all he had done to her, at this terrible moment she couldn’t bear to see his pain.

  “I’ll . . . start making a check list of the files I’m taking.” Ted recovered slightly as he got to the door. “I guess you three, ah, can take over the lease. And the loan. Well, I’ll get to work.” He left.

  Carrie opened her eyes and stared into the empty space where his body had been. She didn’t cry. She felt the comfort of friends.

  ***

  Oliver McAnthony’s office, in the downtown courthouse, was all oak and mahogany, dark, muted, like his mood today. He had placed Mitchell square in front of him, on a heavy leather chair.

  “It is unclear in my mind why you have withheld this from me,” McAnthony said, trying to remain calm.

  “There are complications,” said Mitchell.

  McAnthony found this evasiveness odd and distasteful. “And why have you just now come forward with this information about a certain possible witness? Norman . . .”

  “Norman Shandler. Normie the Nose, they call him. We were hoping to pick him up before this, Oliver. I don’t know why we haven’t, he must stick out like a sore thumb. He’s a mainline junkie, no fixed address, but we know him from around Queen and Bathurst. If he was the tester for Hiltz and Perez, they paid him with enough smack to blow a billion brain cells, maybe he did an OD . . .” Mitchell was rambling, squirming a little.

  “Are we working on the same case, Harold?”

  “I wanted to keep things quiet, Oliver, not that I don’t trust . . .” Mitchell may have realized he was heading in a dangerous direction, and changed course. “I’ve got a general pickup on him. They’re supposed to do just a standard fan and tag — they’ll find he’s dirty — and bring him straight to me. I have a deal ready for him, witness protection.”

  “Very enterprising of you.” The tone was ironic.

  “Listen, I have the greatest respect for you, Oliver, but I’ve been constrained . . . I have to clear everything with my boss on this.”

  “I shall take this up with him. Perhaps with the solicitor general himself, a charming man with whom I have dined on many occasions. He will be vexed to learn that five days after the murders the prosecuting counsel was finally informed that a witness may have been in that loft. I have been acting in these courts for king and queen for more than forty years, and this is the first time I have ever been deceived by a senior advising officer.”

  “It’s not deception, Oliver. I was always going to tell you — as soon as I could. Look, we had to put a clamp on it — Billy Sweet gets wind of this guy, he’s toast, end of witness, end of case.”

  “And with your witness secured, you would never have had to apprise me of the fact you knew of his existence all along.”

  “I’d like to say we just got word on him from the street, Oliver, but it isn’t
the case.” Mitchell looked hangdog.

  McAnthony suddenly understood. He should have guessed — it wasn’t the first time for Mitchell. “You employed an illegal listening device.”

  Mitchell said nothing.

  “That is how you know Normie the Nose was at the scene of the crime. That is what you really didn’t want me to know. Wiretap obtained without a judicial order often causes cases to be thrown out of court. The fear is I would have told Carrington Barr. And let me tell you something, Inspector, I damn well will.”

  Mitchell went open-mouthed in alarm. “Jeez, Oliver, put a hold on that. I mean, not yet — I understand the principles of disclosure — you’ve got to give her everything. But a man’s life is at stake here, just give me more time to locate him.”

  “Tell me about, as you put it, the complications.”

  “We had a bug in there. We were tipped there might be some action.”

  “This place above the bowling alley was under surveillance throughout?”

  “Everything happened too fast, Oliver — gunshots, yells, you can’t make much out, and then this André Cristal was walking out the door.”

  “And your man who was posted in the bowling alley made the arrest.”

  “Yeah, exactly. I was covering him.”

  “You?” McAnthony was truly astonished at the extent events had been misrepresented to him. “You were there?”

  “I had Hollis Lamont in the van with me, and I sent him into the Roll-a-Bowl. Hollis is a top-notch undercover, does some amateur stage. I’m running a special unit, Oliver, it’s not generally known. Operation Sweet. Anyway, Perez and Hiltz go up there together . . .” He checked his notepad. “At twenty hours, twenty-three minutes. Norman Shandler enters premises at twenty-one-thirteen. Stolen 1978 Bel Air pulls up at twenty-one-forty.”

  “What is that in my time, Harold?”

  “Nine-forty p.m. Cristal stays behind the wheel and Schlizik gets out. Schlizik enters the premises. Cristal follows five seconds later. Three shots, the first two in quick succession. By the time we get our wits together, Normie the Nose has cut out the back way. We collar Cristal.”