She leaned dumbly against the desk, breathing slowly in and out, full of Trixi’s pain — and something else: for the first time a niggling note of uncertainty about her Mr. Moodie.
***
Speeder impatiently cracked gum as he watched the slaves entering the G & C Trust building. He was in a van with the motor running. In the back were Deeley and Humphries and Nagler, the tech from Heliotrope, the movie studio Billy sort of owned, a silent partner.
Nagler was twisting wires, clamping them, futzing around, he was an electronics wiz. Deeley and Humphries were just killing time, yapping when they should’ve been quiet.
Nagler slid up to the front and handed Speeder a thimble-sized transmitter with a suction cup on it.
“There’s a stick-on chemical in the cup. Don’t touch it. It’ll hold for weeks.”
Speeder put it in his pocket. They’d got here an hour and a half ago, before the morning rush, and had watched the suits pouring into the building, pod people heading for their desks and their filing cabinets. Speeder had watched the lady lawyer Carrington Barr almost running in, all anxious to go to work. Man, that redhead with her big green eyes, a little tall for him, but okay in every other way if she wasn’t such a cold fish.
“Deeley, take the wheel. We’re in a no-parking, but don’t go nowhere unless you have to.”
He brushed off his sports jacket, which was flecked with dead skin and dandruff, straightened his tie, and said, “Here goes,” and stepped out of the van and joined the slaves marching into the building.
Accountants and secretaries, routine freaks, grind artists, what did they know of the rich funny fuck-up that was the real world outside their tinted windows? He made ten times as much as them guys for doing shit, just sucking around Billy all day, and he didn’t want no one messing with his good life, not this lady lawyer and not André Cristal.
He went to the washroom down the hall first, and drew some water into a plastic cup and knocked back two caps full of tiny bombs that would go off when the gelatin melted. He took a piss — it was fucking orange, maybe he was cleaning out his system.
How was he gonna be able to get under her desk? Hey, lady, mind if I crawl down there and look around?
He got into the elevator and went up to the tenth floor, staring at the back of a bunch of silent suits with briefcases, they didn’t know Speeder Cacciati was here, the right-hand man to one of the biggest business barons in the country, their lives were piddling in comparison. He could feel the cartwheels going off now, tiny surges of energy and good feeling.
Nice offices. Fancy furniture. Chinese chick at the front desk. Asked for his name and all, and if he had an appointment, and when he said he didn’t, she told him to be comfortable for a few minutes.
A beard with a long nose came hustling out of the offices, doing up a tie, one of the partners, Speeder guessed. “I’m off to North York,” the guy said to the Chinese dame. “Johnson, a rape. I’ll be back to help Carrie out with this Moodie thing. If I’m longer than a couple of hours, I’ll call. If the old bugger won’t adjourn me, I’m withdrawing from the record.”
When Speeder got sent into Carrington Barr’s office, there was a secretary in there, too, and they were talking about what sounded like a murder last night, a prostitute or something.
Speeder got sort of ignored for a while, just a “Please sit down, Mr. Cacciati,” so he took a chair and pulled it up in front of the big desk.
He saw his chance immediately, when the two women went to the door and their backs were turned, and he stuck the transmitter under the lip of the desk, a couple of feet in, nice and close to her chair. When Carrington Barr came back to sit down he was calmly scratching his elbow as if nothing happened.
“I’m in a hurry, what do you want?”
Hey, you could be more polite, lady, Speeder thought. But he was glowing now, her cold-ass shit didn’t bother him. He took an envelope from his breast pocket. “We took up another collection. A little advance on your fees and maybe something to tide him over.”
She gave him this kind of big wide-eyed look, and went and slit open the envelope with a letter opener. She brought out the money, fanned it, twenty grand and a ticket to the St. Francis of Assisi Charity Night, which she frowned at.
“What’s this all about?”
“Italian street carnival. André can win some prizes in the St. Francis of Assisi church hall.”
She just looked at him.
“Tomorrow night, Friday.”
“Why should he want to meet you?”
“He should make contact. We bailed him out, he owes us.”
“Maybe he thinks you owe him more.”
That stopped Speeder for a second. That’s what he and Billy had figured. Whom do you think he’s fooling, Billy had said, with this narc-on-the-inside stuff? He’s on the con, him and Big Leonard. And maybe this Mrs. Barr, too.
Speeder turned on the charm. “Listen, lady, I got too much respect to bullshit you. Sure, we’re worried. Look, we’re gonna pay all his legal bills, whatever, you name it in reason. We just wanna make sure, you know, like our investment is gonna be protected. Wanna ensure him we’re backing him all the way. Just a friendly meeting, me and André. A thousand people there. There ain’t gonna be no damage to nobody.”
She didn’t say anything, but Speeder could tell she was thinking clearer. Twenty grand and she could just shove it in her poke and no one’s gonna know, and that’s just a dribble to what’s coming. She’s figuring: if I play my cards I could be Billy’s full-time throat.
“I’ll tell him. But I’ll advise against it.”
“That’s a fair attitude,” Speeder said as he got to his feet. “Glad you could see me on short notice.”
“Next time, please phone.”
Speeder shuffled quickly out of there. What a bitch, all the time wrinkling her snobby nose at him, did he forget to wash his armpits this morning or something? Screw her, he felt powerful, these pills were really doing it, he felt taped, zappy, in control.
Mission successful, the boss won’t ask for his head. You got to worry about Billy, thinks everybody and his dog is out there to nail his ass. Uneasy wears the crown that fits the head. Or something. Sometimes he worried that Billy didn’t even trust him. Can I trust you, Speed? Speeder had done time for Billy, had shoved guys off for him. He wanted to tell the suit with him in the elevator he had greased three guys in his lifetime — what would he think about that?
Outside, he put sunglasses on, he figured he looked pretty dapper. The van was still in the no-parking, and he jumped into the back.
“Getting anything?” he asked Nagler.
“Yeah, we got quite a reach if I use the aerial.”
Speeder could hear two women’s voices from the receiver’s small speaker, he figured she had her secretary in the office with her again.
“So who was that guy?”
“Speeder Cacciati. Reminds me of a slug. Leaves a trail of slime wherever he walks.”
“He’s Billy Sweet’s head honcho? Yech!”
Speeder felt the cartwheels he’d done rushing to his lower gut, a kind of pain that settled in his bowels, magnified by the dope. He was looking at Humphries and Nagler, who were acting like he wasn’t there, pretending they hadn’t paid attention to the words.
“Yeah, that comes in real excellently,” said Humphries, “like they’re right in the room.”
Speeder wanted to go back up to that office, just wipe the fucking cunts out. This was all being recorded, Billy will laugh his head off. A slimy slug. The bitch.
They listened to Carrington Barr connect with a guy named Oliver McAnthony at the prosecutor’s office.
“Oliver, can we meet before court?”
They couldn’t hear his answer but it was some kind of long speech.
“Oliver, I know about it. Jock Strac
han phoned me. Let’s not jump to any guilty conclusions yet, okay? Maybe Mr. Moodie moved out of that room because he was feeling crowded.”
More conversation from the other end.
“Yes, I’m thinking about it, but I want chapter and verse on what you’ve got on André this time. No cagey little secrets, Oliver.”
Silence for a couple of seconds.
“No, I don’t quite have everything.”
Again, some kind of response.
“Do I have to spell it out? Our friend that you have on the, ah, inside. The mole.”
Speeder sat frozen, listening, wanting to hear more about this friend, the mole, the spy. There was one! But the conversation ended, with Carrington Barr simply saying, “Okay, see you in court.” Then nothing, maybe the sound of a chair being rolled back.
Cristal hadn’t been bluffing. According to Big Leonard the Frenchman had found out about the narc through his lawyer. This lady was obviously in the know, chummy with cops and with the prosecutor guy, Oliver. Yeah, she was in on the Frenchman’s scam, all right.
Billy was going to shit green. Billy, he won’t have no time to laugh at Speeder Cacciati’s expense, he was gonna go berserk.
***
Carrie was in grief for the entire walk from Bloor Street to the Provincial Courts — like too many of her clients, Trixi Trimble had been a friend. And a sick feeling that she may have grossly misjudged Edwin Moodie had settled on her and stayed with her.
Could Moodie in following Trixi have found out she worked in that strip joint? Her body had been found only a block and a half from there. Had Carrie been taken in all along, blinded by her refusal to accept the ugly truth of guilt?
If she had won freedom for a serial killer, did she share blame for the death of Trixi Trimble?
Reporters outside the Old City Hall harassed her with questions about the Midnight Strangler, about Moodie — where was he?
She politely shrugged everyone off and escaped into One-Eleven Court, where the impatient Judge Revere was presiding. She saw André Cristal in the back row. He winked at her, and she waved back.
She seated herself on defence-counsel row. The judge was listening — barely — to a long-winded submission on behalf of a B-and-E expert. The tic in Revere’s eye kept beat with the tapping of his finger.
McAnthony strolled in and took an empty seat beside Carrie.
“Your Mr. Moodie is behaving very unlike an innocent man. Disappearing as he did.”
“It’s just not like him.”
“He’s a drifter, though, isn’t he? Though as your gentle bleeding heart would probably prefer it, a socially displaced person.”
“Don’t be sarcastic, Oliver. What do you think, three weeks be enough for the prelim?”
“M. Cristal is not enthusiastic about our offer?”
“He thinks you should sweeten it.”
“Carrington, we are prepared to go to trial on this one.”
“Prove to me you can win it. What does your so-called spy say about my client?”
McAnthony sighed. “I have to talk to Harold Mitchell about that.”
“I think it’s all a fairy tale, frankly. Oliver, what’s the cost of keeping a thirty-three-year-old man in protective custody for the rest of his life?”
“Around a million dollars, I would suspect.”
“More like a million and a half. What if we take it in cash?”
“And you will give us Billy Sweet?”
Carrie thought: what am I getting my client into? But these were his firm instructions. Still, she hedged: “We would try.”
“I’ll discuss it with the inspector.”
Judge Revere sentenced the miscreant who was before him, intoning: “Though the mills of justice grind slowly, they grind exceeding fine. Thirty months.”
McAnthony stood up, and spoke to the regular prosecutor: “May I play through?”
Cristal was called, and he came forward beside Carrie. He was dressed like a man on the way to a board meeting: a grey, expensively tailored suit, a conservative silk tie with just a dash of colour.
The judge granted a one-week remand. Carrie waved a goodbye to McAnthony and led Cristal from the Old City Hall courts. Outside, they talked in the shade of a tree.
“I think they’ll go for it,” she said .
“Then it is up to me. Has any of Billy’s friends called you?”
“Speeder Cacciati.” She handed him the ticket to the St. Francis of Assisi Charity Night. “The Italian community holds a street carnival every year out there and a fund-raiser in the hall.”
“Tomorrow night I will turn up the ’eat for them.” He smiled.
“You’re not at all afraid?”
“Of course. But it is ’ard for me to explain — I enjoy the fear.”
Was he suicidal? Again, she remembered those intimations of his own death as they talked about his bail money: If I die, you can keep it all.
“Cacciati also gave me twenty thousand dollars.”
“Good. You can buy lunch.”
It was nearly noon. She didn’t have to scurry back to the office. Yes, a pleasant Thursday lunch with M. Cristal.
They went to the Courtyard Café at the Windsor Arms, a favourite haunt of glitterati wishing to be seen in public. She saw other lunchers glancing at them — at Cristal, mostly, perhaps mistaking him for some mid-level movie star, the kind of person you’re not sure about, but think you should recognize. The food was good, especially the Caesar salad. The forty-five-dollar bottle of Beaune that Cristal ordered wasn’t bad, either. She normally didn’t drink wine at lunch, she explained a little stiffly. Miss Priss.
But, still in turmoil over Trixi’s death, she ended up drinking more of it than he, and she felt, if not giddy, certainly slack-tongued by the end of the meal.
Oddly, their conversation didn’t touch on the case, or on anything to do with the law, but was mostly . . . well, about her life. She found herself telling him about her early years, the loneliness of an only child. She told him about her parents, about Charlie Connors, his brilliance, his alcoholism, his final trial in defence of himself, and the terrible wrong that was done to him.
“It was eight years ago. I was twenty, studying law, here in Toronto. It was a terrible time, I kept flying back and forth to help Mother — she was sick, an awful cancer. I almost had to repeat the year. And then Mom died. He’d got compassionate leave from jail to be with her, but it was too late, she’d gone, and he . . .” She took a breath. “After the funeral he stuck a hose in his car.”
Here she was, wet-eyed, babbling to a near total stranger, an alleged contract killer, a heroin trafficker.
“If it hadn’t been for . . . Well, I had friends.”
His silence forced her to continue. “Chuck Tchobanian — he’s my partner now — he mostly got me through it. Worst time of my life, worse than what I’m going through now.”
Whoops, her tongue had fashioned words without the benefit of thought.
“Worse than now?”
His intense eyes looked beyond her blushing face, through her sockets, into her soul.
“I’ve had a little marriage crisis.”
“I ’ave notice the missing ring.”
“I threw it out the window.” Oh, just say it. “We’re estranged.” That was a namby-pamby way of putting it. “I’m seeking a divorce.”
“I am very un’appy for you. It is sad when love is lost.”
She remained silent for a while, then finished her wine and became brave and stubborn, and said, “He actually fell in love with someone else.”
“Calice! He should see a psychiatrist.”
“You’re absolutely right.” She felt better now, had got through it, she wasn’t going to blubber.
“Can we offer a dessert?” said the waiter.
&nbs
p; “Coffee,” she said. The hard edge of caffeine to set her back on an even keel. Cristal must think she lived a life of misery. Not so, she wanted to tell him. I’m basically happy, happy, happy.
She became Carrington Barr, barrister. “Call me at the office tomorrow, will you, in case there are any developments? If Billy does make contact tomorrow night — please phone me afterwards.”
And take care, she wanted to add.
Outside the restaurant he bussed her on each cheek.
“The French way,” he said.
At a news kiosk she saw Edwin Moodie’s picture beneath its Strangler-Strikes-Again headline, “WANTED! CHIEF SUSPECT, ONCE ACQUITTED, DISAPPEARS.”
21
Leon assumed he was going to take a beating today from Judge Elliot Packer over his bid for an adjournment of his rape trial. The judge, in his mid-seventies, only a year from retirement, had all his wits but suffered a severe case of choler. Thankfully, the irascible old fellow was just as hard on the Crown as the defence.
Leon had to wait a couple of hours for his case to be called at the North York courthouse because a commercial fraud case was still being heard, a non-jury trial. Judge Packer spent most of the morning berating a police witness.
“‘Attend at’? ‘Had occasion to make examination’? Talk English. You went to McLean Motors and looked at their records. When I went to school they taught English. Have they stopped doing that?”
While the police witness tried to reorganize his thoughts, Judge Packer turned on the prosecutor, who looked like a man on the rack. “Perhaps some time before this case concludes you will be good enough to tell me what it is about. I’ve never seen a more haphazard prosecution.”
Leon’s client, Johnson, the alleged rapist truck driver, had not yet been delivered to the building. A lot of people around here were nervous that his continuing absence, as Leon had begun to suspect, might result in a major cock-up. If Leon had not been able to locate Blaine Johnson, maybe the police couldn’t either. Packer would go on a rampage.
The plan was that after this witness was finished on the stand, the fraud trial would be adjourned for several days. The rape, a jury case, would be late in getting under way if it got under way at all, and Leon had a feeling that Judge Packer, in an especially acerbic mood, might refuse to adjourn it — a panel of jurors was waiting outside.
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