Street Legal

by William Deverell

  She had a memory of him then, his gravel voice, his boozy kiss. Why did you do it, Charlie? You went to jail for a few years, Mom died, what’s left of the world carried on. So why did you leave us?

  Did you lie to me, too, Charlie? Were you actually guilty? I would have forgiven. I would have forgiven.

  Or were you guilty?

  You were, goddamnit.

  And as she realized she could no longer lie to herself, as the truth about Charlie came to her with its full terrible force, she felt shattered. And the sun died while behind her banks of cloud rolled in and bathed her in reflected rose-pink light.

  I forgive you, Charlie . . .

  Suddenly she felt tears welling, and for a while couldn’t staunch the flow, and she was swimming in memories of her father, of Ted. She should go, she thought. Return home. To that empty house . . . No, she would wait for Captain Lachance, reassemble herself, and be dry of eye when he returned.

  Stupid to break down. It was the wine. Michel Lachance will return to find her staggering drunk. Give her that big neon smile as he gently escorts her to a taxi.

  Chilly, she left the patio railing to seek something warm to cover her. For the first time, she looked around: a well-furnished, expensive place. Jacuzzi in the washroom, fitness room and pool downstairs. But Her Majesty was paying for it, wasn’t she?

  In the bedroom were some barbells and weights. Fitness freak with a nicotine habit. In a closet she found his gear all stowed neatly. Here was his bed, made up, crisp and flat. She should have known. A soldier. Bore himself like a bloody soldier. Forward march, one, two, pick up your shoe.

  She put on one of his sweaters, large and woolly. It smelled slightly of him, a smoky fragrance she found horribly attractive. In a pocket, a packet of Drum tobacco and some papers.

  She went back outside to finish her wine, sat at the patio table and tried her hand at rolling cigarettes. Not to smoke, thank you. Only as art forms. Her fingers were like rubber. The first cigarette bulged at each end, was soft in the middle.

  She could have one little puff.

  No.

  She would tell him he could stuff his three hundred thousand dollars.

  The callous heel, he had seduced a young woman with improper intentions. He had lied with blithe insouciance to his lawyer. Had he lost his wife, as he claimed? What were the circumstances of that? Where did the lies end?

  She decided to resolve her bewilderment about him by hating him. The man was contemptible. Repellent. She despised him.

  She bent furiously to her task of rolling cigarettes, trying to perfect her art.

  The bastard.

  Her heart seemed to skip a beat as she heard him enter.

  “Carrington?”

  She didn’t look up, but he was beside her now. His hand appeared, retrieved one of her early, flabby efforts. She heard a match strike.

  When she did look up, he seemed comical, the cigarette limp and crooked between his lips, a little grin.

  “Perfect. Thank you. More wine?”

  “I’ve obviously had enough.”

  “But I need a drink.”

  He returned a minute later with a freshly opened bottle and two glasses. “In case you change your mind. An Australian Chablis, more smooth, the other had sharpness.”

  “Did you develop your taste for wine out on bivouac someplace?”

  “My father was a diplomat. Served in the embassy in Paris, mostly.”

  “Poor bugger. He sent you through architectural school and you went out and joined the army.”

  “I did actually study for a while at the Ecole Polythèque in Paris. I was too restless. Felt inactive. I switched to the military academy in Kingston.”

  “And have you been in lots of wars?”

  He laughed. “This is the most action I’ve seen since I joined. Hostile enemies all around me.”

  “You find this funny.”

  “You. The look on your face.”

  “You’re a bastard.”

  “I’m just ’appy to be alive. They had six or seven goons covering that place tonight. I t’ink they wanted to take me for a ride, like in the movies. And I was suppose to ’ave backup. Which never showed.”

  Carrie studiously ignored that bottle of Australian wine. She told herself she wasn’t interested in his close call.

  “What backup?”

  “Operation Sweet. They were supposed to ’ave someone there. Those guys could have taken me out right at the door. But Cacciati acted scared. He really believes there is someone inside.”

  “How did you convince him?”

  “I guess by daring him to kill me. Being cocky just enough.”

  “I see. An informer wouldn’t be so brazen. How suited to your role you are, Captain.”

  “I enjoy a little t’eatre.”

  “The audience laps it up. And innocent Lenore, do you think she’ll applaud after the final act?”

  Lachance stopped smiling. “Carrie, I ’ave been a gentleman with her. I made her no promise of love or of marriage. She will survive my loss and the loss of her father. I will pay them both back for that loss.”

  “Do you expect me to sit idly by while this continues?”

  “For twenty-four hours, Carrington. For the weekend. Please.”

  “I have to go. I’d like to see you in the morning when my head is clear.” She stood, grasped the railing for support, and Lachance quickly took her elbow.

  “Don’t fall over.”

  “I’m fine, thank you.”

  “You’re angry.”

  “Very.”

  Their eyes locked. His were sad, burning no longer.

  “Can I see you to a taxi?”

  “Yes.”

  But they just stood, immobile as statues. She felt rooted, paralyzed, held there by the force of him.

  Suddenly he moved toward her, kissed her on the mouth, and she found herself opening to his tongue, and their bodies came together in a deep, crushing embrace, and they were still kissing, still clinging to each other with the glue of passion as a large moon clambered from the clouds, and for some reason all she could think of was a line from that mysterious poem. A dream of inescapable impossibility.

  25

  She couldn’t be sure if she had slept. All she knew was that the room had been in blackness and now the grim light of dawn’s beginning was seeping through uncurtained windows.

  So there had been a blank, an hour or two perhaps, after he had kissed her lips one final time and closed his eyes and vanished into the void of sleep. Yet she couldn’t remember even napping, just a long time of turmoil as she lay naked on the bed and listened to the sounds of night, the soft clamour of the city, the distant wailing of sirens, the nasal beeps of swooping nighthawks.

  Her throat and tongue were dry, her head was throbbing dully. How much wine had she drunk? There’d been another bottle . . .

  He was lying on his side, toward her, his eyes closed but moving. Do you dream of fields of battle, Captain Lachance, more strenuous conquests than this? Then she remembered her own dream. He had shed his uniform, she’d been in his arms — or was that not a dream but a memory of the night?

  She felt sticky, embarrassed. The sex, she remembered vaguely, had been spectacular but the details of it were gone. She frankly couldn’t remember how her clothes came off. Somehow he must have undressed her, but had done so while they were still standing, still kissing, and suddenly his hands were touching every part of her and every living cell of her body was screaming for him.

  Lord almighty, what had happened to her? Cautious calm collected Carrington Barr, so proper, so reserved. In lust’s mindless, savage thrall. It is how I see you, close to the edge. But maybe you are not such a lady in court, eh?

  Or in bed . . . She remembered: oh, God, how awful: they had coupled st
anding up — was that possible? — then on the floor . . . It was terrible, that wild, jungle-animal scream of orgasm.

  Her scream.

  And later, in bed, he had brought her to another climax, with his mouth — her back arching, her hands clapped over her mouth.

  God, twice. Not even with Ted . . . How simply incredible.

  Three years of marriage. Of faithfulness to Ted. She doesn’t do these things.

  She remembered her ringing denunciations of Ted. “A client! He should be disbarred!”

  No. Not the same at all. Her client was André Cristal. This was a fellow by the name of Michel Lachance. A knave. He had duped her into thinking he was a client, causing her mysteriously to go to bed with him. To spend the night with. Say it. To ball. To screw.

  Why? . . .

  Okay, he was ridiculously attractive, had been recently close to danger. Aphrodisiac element there. And then all the wine and all the loneliness and add to that all the anger at Ted. Mix in a dash of pure insanity. Recipe for a complete lapse of control and judgment.

  Now how was she going to approach Oliver McAnthony with her grievance about being used as a tool of the state? During the subsequent inquiry, would she be asked how she enjoyed the oral sex?

  She thought she heard the city slowly awaken. She could smell their sweat, could smell the funky odours of spent sexuality. And she was . . . off the pill. No protection, my God, she’d been utterly mad.

  Her unaccountable lust for him now satiated — at least she hoped it was — she lay there in the sobering light of dawn and wondered if she should dress and flee.

  He could make an appointment to see her during usual office hours. She could pretend it never happened.

  She urged Lachance to continue dreaming, slipped her legs off the bed, and looked around for her clothing. Not here.

  She softly padded out to the living room and saw their sprawl of clothes, her blouse, her skirt, his pants and shirt. Bra and panties where they fell. She tiptoed to the kitchen and drank glass after glass of water. The drums in her head were easing now. She was exhausted — two hours’ sleep, if that, but she’d get through the day.

  She knelt to gather up her things and heard his voice.

  “Carrington.”

  “I have to go.” She stood, holding her clothes, not turning to look at him, sensing him close now, behind her.

  “It is five-t’irty.”

  “It was a bad idea. It’s my fault. I never do this.”

  His hands circled her waist and slid gently up to her breasts.

  “Michel, please.”

  “Stay.”

  His body against her, his hardness. His hand now between her legs, finding her again so quickly in ripeness.

  She turned, joined her nakedness to his, and kissed him deeply, with a hunger for him that she couldn’t conquer.

  ***

  Speeder saw that Billy had somehow got himself together this morning. Yesterday it was: “Half my business?” Screaming, totally demented, kind of foul-mouthed, which wasn’t normal. “He can eat fuckin’ shit! Bump him off!”

  Then when he couldn’t argue with the facts, that crazed, scary look came on. “Did they buy you, Speed? Did they buy you? Whom did they buy then? Give me a name, Deeley, Nagler, one of the accountants — whom did they buy?”

  But Billy was almost like his old self at this morning’s brunch, all business, no emotion: somehow he fought back from the brink. Courteous, even. He welcomed everybody, told them to jump in and have a swim if they wanted after.

  Brunch was a kind of council of war out by the pool, with the core of loyalists Billy had brought in: Vinnie Eng out of Bogota, a skinny little guy, a cutthroat, and Tommy Bogue from Amsterdam, the big ex-enforcer with his beat-up face and crooked nose. They’d both flown in last night. And also Shadow was brought out of retirement from Florida, Billy’s old bodyguard who was getting a pension. Shadow was about sixty-five, the only human being Billy really trusted, and he was a real pigsticker, mean as a knife.

  So including Speeder, there was five of them, and he was happy to see he was still on the inner circle after Billy’s paranoid rantings yesterday: “How do I know you aren’t lying? How do I know you weren’t plotting with him?”

  He got into this real fixation for a while about Speeder, who got kind of shook up and decided to wean himself off a little from the speed, did some downers instead. Nembutal, Billy always complaining he had a garbage habit.

  But being cool as a pool shark now, Billy was laying out the whole thing over coffee. He played for them that tape of Carrington Barr talking to the prosecutor: “Do I have to spell it out? Our friend that you have on the, ah, inside. The mole.”

  “One,” Billy said, “it is no longer safe to assume Mr. Cristal is lying or bluffing. Two, he is looking for a big payday — I don’t know how much he’d settle for, some number in the millions. Three, his lawyer also knows who the fish is. These are the factors we work with, gentlemen. Did he say when he’d call, Speeder?”

  “Some time today.”

  “Stall him. Get a couple of days off of him. We still have that little ear in the lawyer’s office, maybe it’ll hear something.”

  “Why don’t we just pick him up,” said Tommy Bogue. “Make him talk.”

  “I think he’s got that figured out. Because it’s obvious the lawyer’s in it with him. Squeeze him and she goes to the police, and they pull out their stoolie, and then it’s too late.”

  “Go after the lawyer, then,” said Elvis.

  “Then Mr. Cristal tips the men at headquarters. No, the bug will tell us when the time is ripe, when we can jump them together. I would like them brought here, downstairs to the soundproof rooms. You put people in separate rooms where they can hear each other screaming, that’s when people talk.”

  Speeder was relieved to see Billy Sweet was back in harness. Billy wasn’t no dummy, that’s not how he lasted so long in this business. When the toughs get going, the going gets tough. Something like that.

  “Do you think he’s boffing her, Speed?” said Billy.

  Speeder almost swallowed his gum. “Naw, she wouldn’t . . . not with that guy.” The thought repelled him.

  “I think he’s boffing her. That will make it easier.”

  “Why do you think they’re . . . doin’ that?” Speeder said.

  “Because her car’s been outside his building all night. Right, Shadow?”

  “Still was at nine when I left to come here.” When he talked, which has hardly never, Shadow kind of wheezed like an old man.

  Speeder was suddenly in a bad temper, cheesed off. The cunt, he thought she had more quality. Balling Cristal. How long had that been going on? He felt the goofballs he’d been taking lumped up in his stomach, bringing him down, and his elbows were itching like crazy.

  “Maybe it’s her that’s running the play, Billy,” he said. “Not Cristal.”

  “That’s a thought.”

  “She’d be more co-operative to talk to than him. I think we should just grab her, and I could have it out of her in ten, fifteen minutes. I think I can deal with her pretty good.”

  “I spoke of the dangers.”

  “Yeah, but I say we take Cristal down. I don’t think we should fuck around with him. After he’s out of the picture, we grab her real fast. She’ll talk, Billy, I know it.” He blew a confident bubble.

  Billy puckered his forehead in thought. “Okay, if the chance comes, do it that way. Mr. Cristal first.”

  Speeder’s pager beeped.

  ***

  This time, when she awoke, his side of the bed was empty, and sunlight was pouring through the windows. Her headache, miraculously, was gone. She listened to the city’s buzz, listened to her heart, listened for the sounds of Michel Lachance somewhere in this apartment. Music somewhere, classical, the Bruch concerto.<
br />
  His bedside clock said ten-fifteen. Late for work. No, it was Saturday.

  But for a while she couldn’t get out of bed. She felt so . . . what did she feel? Complete. Good. Why the hell should she be feeling good? If it’s good it must be bad. She should be embarrassed. How awful. Bloody ridiculous.

  She finally pulled herself from the bed, this time with a rumpled sheet around her. She felt a patch of dampness on it, her own or his she didn’t know. In her mouth, a taste of saltiness.

  In the en suite bathroom she studied the mirror, seeking the madwoman in it, but saw only a frowning bright-eyed face, and . . . was that a smile? It’s not funny.

  Oh, God, how she had wanted a cigarette afterwards. But she hadn’t broken down. Carrington Barr was made of steel.

  A gentleman, he kept a spare toothbrush. A quality brand of shampoo. Big soft towels.

  After a hot shower, she wrapped towels around her hair and body, and made a grand entry into the main room. The music had been coming from the radio, the Radio-Canada FM station, voices now speaking a melodious French. No sign of her host. Or her clothes — no, here they were, neatly hanging in the front closet.

  The other detritus of the night had been put away, too, the wine bottles and the glasses, ashtray emptied. Compulsively clean, this soldier.

  No explanatory note. Well, he was out running, no doubt. She didn’t intend to tarry here. She quickly dressed and left.

  On her windshield was a big ugly ticket. Okay, first the office. Then try to track down Leon and Chuck. Seek the advice of friends. Decide whether to confront Oliver McAnthony. But she would not do anything for twenty-four hours to sabotage Operation Sweet — she had promised Lachance that.

  ***

  Outside the G & C Trust Building was a vending stand with the Saturday Star. Carrie looked at the big front-page photo of Edwin Moodie. The headline said: “HAS ANYONE SEEN THIS MAN?”

  She remembered, though it seemed from another life: Trixi, Mr. Moodie. The search for the Midnight Strangler.

  Mr. Moodie on the run. He’s so . . . obvious, she thought. How could he have disappeared? Fleeing from the law — it didn’t fit any picture she had of him. But how easily and often she’d been blinded of late.