Street Legal

by William Deverell

  “Do you know Herbert?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “Unfortunately?”

  “He’s a nothing, a no one, a useless little wart.”

  “I gather you don’t like him.”

  “Nobody does.”

  Poor Orff, Leon thought. Even his other personalities despise him.

  “Why don’t you like him?”

  “He . . . he makes me do the dishes, and all the boring routine work at the office. He won’t let me meet anybody nice. Just Franz, who is awful, and Hymie, who I don’t like even more.”

  “Why?”

  “Hymie’s pushy. You know.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “A Jew.”

  “I see.”

  “You’re not Jewish, are you? Most doctors are Jewish.”

  “And what about Franz? Why is he so awful?”

  “I know he likes to . . .” The voice descended to a whisper. “He does terrible things.”

  “Such as?”

  “I won’t tell you. It’s too awful, it’s sick. He . . . he . . . I can’t . . .”

  The struggle suddenly ended and Susie disappeared.

  “Franz?”

  No response.

  “Hymie?”

  No response.

  “Ah, Herbert, can you awake now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, please do so.”

  The eyes opened, blinked, then focused on Kiehlmann.

  “I told you, whatever you’re trying to do doesn’t work on me. I have a headache.” He whined: “You said you’d help my headaches and you didn’t.”

  And that brought the session to a premature close. Orff stubbornly refused his further co-operation. “I want to go home.”

  “I’ll get you some pills. Come with me.”

  ***

  Whatever was in the medicine worked, and Orff agreed — though reluctantly — to complete his tests. While a doctoral student helped Orff with these down the hall, Leon and Kiehlmann met in his office.

  “The Journal of Abnormal Psychology will be begging for my paper.” Kiehlmann rubbed his hands with glee. “The man is a veritable fruit salad of personalities in conflict.”

  “Orff doesn’t know about these other sides of himself?”

  “No, completely blank. He’s obviously amnesic during episodes when the others come out. That’s diagnostic of grande hystérie, bouts of amnesia. No record of being hospitalized that I can discover. He has just — somehow — slid through life like this. Some early emotional damage, that’s obvious, and also typical. Amazing. Might be the only such case in history where the therapy is to not integrate the personalities. Could be dangerous.”

  Later, driving Orff home, Leon asked him how the pills were working.

  “I feel okay now. That was a waste of time just to prove I’m not crazy.”

  “Dr. Kiehlmann thinks he can find a way to permanently cure your headaches. He wants to see you again this weekend.”

  “I don’t want to go back.”

  “Well, you’ll damn well go back.” Leon spoke forcefully — he’d learned this could work.

  But he just snivelled. “I don’t want to.”

  Orff still didn’t invite him into his house, and since it was late afternoon and the day had been taxing, Leon decided to go home and recuperate.

  On the ferry to Ward’s Island, he tried to blot Herbert Orff from his mind, and he sucked in the breeze from Lake Ontario: fresh, an intimation of cooler weather.

  His mother phoned as he was making his salad. She went on and on about the Nazi.

  “Leon, I have a theory. Not mine, actually, it’s Maggie Dennis’s, she’s a school counsellor as you know, and they have to take psychology. This is the theory: you are defending this . . . character out of some need to rebel against who you think are your stodgy parents.”

  “That makes real sense, Mom.”

  “We’re squaresville, right? Boring old farts with their lost causes, especially your mother who dedicated an entire lifetime to the struggle against fascism. So out of fashion these days. We’re not in. We don’t meditate, smoke pot, or listen to Pink Floyd.”

  Leon sighed. What was the point of protesting? So he just listened and continued to make his salad.

  That night he dreamed of Carrie. He was walking with her in the woods, unable to talk, words wouldn’t come. Someone else, formless, vague, seemed to be hovering in the background. It might have been his mother.

  22

  Carrie didn’t sleep well that night. The Llewellyns’ terrier, Bingo, was at it again, yap-yap, all night — she felt like phoning to tell them to put the dog inside. Midnight, that’s what her digital clock told her before she was finally conquered by sleep.

  In the morning, as she was dressing, the chimes rang, and she hurried downstairs, buttoning her blouse. Standing outside the front door was an ex-resident of these premises, a morose-looking Ted Barr.

  “Just a token visit,” he said.

  She didn’t know whether to say “how are you?” or “goodbye,” but decided to put on a pleasant face, tough it out, to prove to him — and perhaps to herself — she could handle this. “Come in for coffee.”

  In the kitchen, she put the coffee on, and Ted picked out his special cup, with an engraving on it, some minor athletic award.

  “I sort of miss this. Do you mind if I take it?”

  “Of course not.”

  She added just a little milk to his, automatic, three years of marriage. They sat across from each other in the kitchen nook. She could think of nothing to say and waited for . . . what? The Apology, she supposed.

  “I had a couple of good days with Chuck. We’re still friends. That hasn’t changed. He helped me. Kind of the way he helped you once, I guess. Underneath all those porcupine quills there’s actually a very tender guy hiding out.”

  “I know. Look, Ted, I’m sorry things went badly for you. I felt stupidly triumphant when I heard, but it’s past, it’s over.” She said that with emphasis. She was determined not to show tears.

  “I made two mistakes,” Ted said.

  “What was the other one?”

  “Boggs. I can’t stand him. He treats me like a paper-clip dispenser. I’m opening an office up on Avenue Road, Carrie, I’ll stick to family law.”

  “I think that’s a good idea.”

  “As long as I keep my hands off the customers, right?”

  Carrie said nothing.

  “Funny, I woke up this morning, and it was all gone.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Her.”

  “Mrs. Cartwright?”

  “I’m over her, Carrie.”

  “So quick.”

  “Her returning to her husband, it was the best thing that could have happened. Saved my career. I was bewitched and made a fool of. It wasn’t love. Infatuation.”

  What was infatuation but that special, undreamed-of love that people suffered? How could he make light of it that way?

  “Carrie, I know it’s not easy to forgive. I know I just reek of the egg that’s on my face. I . . . well, I don’t want you hating me for the rest of your life. I thought maybe we could talk, have dinner, see a show . . . I fell upon a couple of tickets for the Cohen concert at Massey Hall Saturday night . . .”

  “No, Ted. I’m having dinner with Leon.”

  “With Leon.”

  “At his house.”

  “Sounds serious.” Ted smiled.

  “Do you need anything? Linen? Dishes?”

  “Hey, no, I told you — it’s all yours.”

  “Your coffee cup, your trophies, a bunch of books of yours are here. Maybe you should collect a few things — honestly, I don’t need a lot of the stuff. Stick around and pick out what you
need . . . I have to get to the office.”

  “Sure. Well, uh . . . Let’s do lunch some time.”

  “Let’s do lunch.”

  ***

  Carrie stopped at reception to pick up her calls and sort through her mail. Second notice on her overdue car loan, that had to be looked after. Invitation to speak to the Status of Women group, maybe she should do that, get more involved, help woman the barricades. Brochures from a travel agency. Jamaica. God, that would be nice.

  Concert tickets. Appeals from worthy organizations. And here, a small plain envelope with her name in handwritten block print and no return address. This is the kind of envelope that the weird ones mail, she thought. On the lined sheet within were some words of poetry, carefully printed in pencil.

  “In the star speckled night,

  the moon darts among the darkling clouds,

  flows gold, alone,

  and in the remoteness of my heart

  becomes a dream of you,

  a dream of

  inescapable

  impossibility.”

  Rather nice. No signature. Mailed in Toronto. Who the heck? . . . Well, he didn’t seem dangerous.

  ***

  Chuck was strolling through the new office space on Queen West with his interior decorator, Charlene of Charlene’s Interiors. She had good ideas but they didn’t always coincide with his.

  “Naw, I like the big high ceiling,” he said. “I don’t want it to be lowered.”

  “You’ll get some noise from above,” Charlene said.

  Upstairs was the Hogtown Actors’ Workshop, that’s what the sign said out by their stairway door. Well, he’d seen some people go up there, and he couldn’t hear a peep from them, so actors couldn’t be that noisy. Didn’t sound like a long-term tenancy, anyway.

  Chuck looked around at the gutted interior, all the bookshelves gone now, rubbish piled in a corner. Didn’t exactly look like a thriving law office yet, but wait.

  Just then Harry Squire came through the front door, upset, waving a piece of paper.

  “What the hell is this? I been looking for you all over. I went to pick up the stock they seized and they gave me this.”

  As Charlene wandered away with a tape measure, Chuck examined the document. Correctly worded this time, did knowingly sell obscene books. “Appears to be a summons.”

  “It’s the same charge I was acquitted of. I thought they couldn’t try a man twice for the same crime.”

  Yes, faithful Lisa and her friends from W.A.P. had done their job.

  “Well, back to plan A, Harry, we’re just going to have to wear them down. I’m afraid it’s going to cost.”

  “Money isn’t the point. I have money. How much?”

  “Prelim and jury trial, two hundred days, so about two hundred grand.”

  Squire paled. “Two hundred . . . thousand? I expected maybe fifteen, twenty.”

  The cheap screw, Chuck thought.

  “Tell you what, Harry. I’ll do it for half that, flat fee in advance.”

  Squire’s face went blank, unreadable. Chuck bought him a coffee at Barney’s and spent half an hour trying to pump him up, promising him everything but the moon. The trial would be a great civil-rights case, witnesses would come from afar, democracy was at stake, he would beat up the Crown witnesses, the fascist feminists who laid this charge.

  “The issue really isn’t that important,” said Squire. “I think I may enter a guilty plea.”

  ***

  Chuck grumbled to himself as he drove back to the office: he hadn’t been able to dissuade Squire. W.A.P. had won. Freedom of the written word had lost. Criminal law, it’s full of cheapniks. Maybe he’d get out of it, do the civil side. Personal injuries, that’s where the bucks were, whiplashes and leg-off cases.

  Another tennis date with Ted tomorrow. Chuck got his clock cleaned last match, so the therapy was working, Ted was feeling more like himself. All his fantasies about patching up with Carrie — dream on, Bjorn Borg. Ted, despite the three years of marriage, seemed not to know Carrie as well as Chuck did. He wanted to tell him: don’t waste the effort, buddy.

  As for Carrie, all Chuck hoped was she wouldn’t go caroming off Ted into some disaster-on-the-rebound. He and Lisa would have to drop by this weekend with a bottle of wine and a pizza.

  Still depressed, he walked into the office, where Pauline Chong said, “There’s a Mr. Klovis here for you.”

  Chuck looked over at the young man sitting there, a long-hair with dazed eyes, staring into space. “Come on in, Mr. Klovis.”

  Chuck assumed he was right behind him, but about a minute passed before Klovis made it into his office.

  “I got lost a little, man.”

  Chuck could smell a familiar aroma from his clothes, essences of marijuana. This doubtless accounted for Klovis appearing so zoned out.

  “What’s your problem?”

  “Like, this guy, Blair, I was s’posed to put up a hundred dollars’ bail for him? Like, he’s my ace buddy, man, and I can’t find him, like he’s disappeared into the blue.”

  It took several minutes of halting explanation before Chuck could pick up the major threads of this apparent fiasco. Some character by the name of Blair Johnstone had disappeared into the maw of the system over a minor pot charge. That fact was confirmed for him when he phoned the Don Jail and found out the poor stiff indeed had been waiting in custody for two weeks.

  He called the federal prosecutors’ office and arranged to add Johnstone to this afternoon’s docket at the Old City Hall.

  “You got any money for fees?” he asked Klovis.

  “I spent the hundred bucks. I got fifteen.”

  “Give it to me.”

  ***

  At the Old City Hall, Chuck found Leon having a coffee at the main-floor concession.

  “What’s up?” Chuck said.

  “Waiting for Orff. He’s late. Just a fix-date.”

  “Yeah, I got a quickie here, too, if they bring him in. Hey, what happened to your rape trial?”

  “Complete schemozzle, I’ll tell you over a beer tonight.”

  When Chuck went down to the cells to seek out Blair Johnstone, he found Horse Kronos at his desk, flipping through one of the beaver magazines the guy was addicted to. Maybe he’d like to pick up some of those porno books in the library.

  Kronos looked like a uniformed pirate today, a black patch over his left eye.

  “I told you, Horse, too much whacking off, it makes you go blind.”

  “It’s healthy, smart-ass. I do it regularly three times a day, after meals.”

  “What happened, you stick a thumb in your eye?”

  “Ah, a fuckin’ infection.”

  “Wash your hands after, Horse, and don’t rub them in your eyes. Blair Johnstone, narcotics possession, they brought him in yet?”

  “Think he’s in the bullpen. Johnson!”

  A man came to the wire mesh, stocky, in his forties. He didn’t seem like the guy Chuck was looking for — a hippie, he’d figured, someone younger — but he answered to the name.

  “I’m going to get you out of here,” Chuck said.

  In One-Eleven Court, Judge Revere was nearing the end of his list, cranky, hustling things along — like most of his brethren he liked to get away early on Fridays.

  When the case of Blair Johnstone was called, Chuck kept it short and succinct: the man was without a record, he had already served two weeks when normally you get a slap on the wrist for this, the court might see its way to letting him go with time spent in custody. He knew his judge: Revere, a time-and-motion freak, doesn’t like it when the system snafus.

  The drug prosecutor said he had just been given the file and wanted more time to look at it.

  “This is Friday,” said Chuck. “We want to get away. My friend
isn’t suggesting, I hope, that my client stay in jail all through Saturday and the Holy Day.”

  A man has a right to go to church on Sunday, Chuck might have added. Fifteen-dollar fee for this brilliant submission for a big ugly twerp who’s probably not even going to thank him.

  “Read the charge,” Judge Revere said.

  Chuck’s client pleaded guilty to possession of cannabis and the judge have him an absolute discharge.

  The guy almost bolted from the courtroom, not looking at anyone. Chuck quickly followed.

  In the corridor, he shouted to a fast-retreating backside, “Hey, pal, I’m sending you a bill.”

  Chuck had his address; he’d sock it to the asshole.

  ***

  Orff arrived late at Judge Singh’s court, looking unusually foggy.

  “What took you?” Leon asked.

  “Those pills made me feel good, so I ate a couple of them. I think they slowed me down.”

  The bandage on his hand was gone now — the cut was healing. It looked like more of a bite than a cut. Maybe, Leon thought, Hymie or Franz bit him out of spite.

  “You weren’t off seeing your girlfriend last night?”

  “What girlfriend? I don’t have a girlfriend and I don’t want a girlfriend.”

  That’s right, Leon thought, he’d gotten confused: Dottie, the skinny girl staying at Mrs. Pinkerton’s house, was Hymie’s friend. Presumably Orff had never met her.

  Leon led him into court. “When your name is called, come forward and say nothing.” Leon planned to apply to put Orff over for another month, time enough to allow Dr. Kiehlmann to get a better fix on him.

  Judge Singh was rendering one of his meticulous oral decisions on the law, and Leon waited at the counsel bench for the half-hour it took the judge to complete it. He turned around once, and saw Orff, seated directly behind him, grinning oddly at the court reporter.

  “I have a doubt to be resolved in favour of the accused,” Singh concluded. “Charge dismissed. Will you call Mr. Robinovitch’s case, please.”

  “Regina versus Herbert Orff,” the clerk announced.

  Leon turned. Orff didn’t move from his seat, was looking around, as if studying the courtroom.