April Fool (20 page)

“I thought you were quitting.”

“Tomorrow. Cold turkey Tuesday. Last time I quit, it was the headless scene from
Scream Seven.
Be happy I won't be in your hair.”

“In whose hair will you be?”

“Not sure how to answer that.” She flips through a notepad, quick to change topics. “I told Nick he'd better fess up to Claudette about screwing Holly. It's important, I said. You used a safe, what happened to it? He can't remember, thinks Holly trashed it.”

“The sleepwalking?”

“He downplayed it.” Imitating his soft voice: “‘I'm dreaming I'm in the cage like a animal, I wake up and I been wearing out the carpet, it ain't nothing to bother Mr. Beauchamp about.'”

One suppresses the truth one fears–another reason for Arthur to see him soon. He once ran a sleepwalking defence after learning, from his expert, that people can do complex tasks when disconnected from reality. But he has no taste for arguing his client acted unconsciously; it implies a savage murderer hides within.

“I phoned Claudette to confirm he paced up and down in his sleep, and she said, yeah, it was like he was locked in a cell. He also talked in his sleep.” Examining her notes. “Things like: ‘Let me out of here. What's your badge number? I'm clean, ask Corporal Johnson, he handles me.'”

He interrupts. “Ah, so let us assume Réchard
isn't
lying.” She is getting a little too overweening with her brilliant deductions. He's not too senile to see the logical premise. “Nick was trying to justify his night with Holly Hoover. ‘I couldn't help myself. She was beautiful.' He'd suppressed it and it came out in his dreams.”

“Good for you,” she says, wetting an index finger and awarding Arthur an invisible check mark.

He drops her at the Woofer house, watches as she shouts a greeting to Kim Lee, retrieves her pack, kneels to shake Slappy's paw.
Lotis the nymph, if rural tales be true, as from Priapus' lawless lust she flew…

 

Adding to the Owl's misery, he's been expelled from Protective Custody and is back in the main monkey cage. He can't be in PCU at the same time as Father Yvon Réchard, according to prison regulations, because the aggrieved party might cause injury to what in police lingo is a co-operating individual.

Not that Faloon would be capable of such unprofessional behaviour, but others in the main wing definitely are, for instance the burly person he's talking to in the yard, Greg McDeadly they call him, though it's really McDade. You don't want to call him McDud, which a loudmouth did years ago and has the knife scars on his ass to prove it.

McDeadly is a connected guy who works for the d'Anglio family and can get you favours. When he's on the street, which isn't often, his job for Tony d'Anglio is to put the rub on competing crime czars and traitors and rats. He recently got collared for an attempt on Twelve-Fingers Watson, which is why he's here.

McDeadly insists he can get transferred easy to PCU, with his connections, it's in his field of expertise to take down Father Réchard. “I will do you justice. Pay me when you get out, Nick, I know you're good for it. For me it's a matter of principle when it comes to squealers. The practice should be discouraged.”

“It's very kind of you to offer, but Mr. Beauchamp isn't worried about this fish, he'll serve him up to the jury with pickles on the side.” Which is a load of bravado, because Faloon isn't sure that will happen, not at all. Not with him having flunked
the DNA retest, according to Beauchamp's new student, who came out here yesterday with a sackful of bad news.

She asked him if he'd ever slipped anyone what they call rochies or roofies, for instance to immobilize the mark before putting on a snatch, and he was offended. He has ethical standards when it comes to drugs, like guns.

Claudette is due this afternoon, and he's tense with wanting to see her big smiling face. He has to be cheerful for her, he doesn't want her to know how hopeless things feel.

“What was you supposed to have told this songbird?” McDeadly asks.

“‘She was beautiful, I just couldn't help myself.'” Phrases that feel foreign to his tongue, yet why that distant niggle of memory that he spoke them?

“That don't sound too bad, you could've been asking the father for forgiveness over jacking off.”

“It's bad enough.” Faloon looks like a schemer, playing along with Réchard that he was Catholic–how is that going to look to a jury? The Arab infiltrator. Maybe that's the whole deal, it's why the government has zeroed in on him like a laser-guided missile, he's Lebanese, an Arab, a terrorist.

What makes him worry that he used those words is that at breakfast the next day Father Réchard came up to him with a knowing look and a lowered voice: “I know exactly what you mean.” After that the priest's counsellor came visiting, a dumptruck with a reputation for pulling off deals so he can go skiing.

Faloon has finally got round to facing the possibility of himself as the perpetrator. He walks in his sleep, talks in his sleep, so maybe he stalks in his sleep, kills in his sleep. Compelled by a force outside him.
I just couldn't help myself.

He didn't go that far when talking to Lotis Rudnicki, who's street-smart and too much of a knockout to be doing the ugly work of a lawyer. She must have seen he was dejected–the Father Réchard business, the ironclad DNA evidence. On top
of it all, Mr. Beauchamp never coming to visit. Obviously, that's because he doesn't believe in Faloon and can't look him in the eye. Out of loyalty to his most faithful client, Mr. Beauchamp has put aside his blissful life to take on a hopeless loser. Faloon owes it to him not to let his career end with such a dull thud.

McDeadly pulls out a packet of tobacco and papers. Smoking is illegal in the joint these days, even outside, but it isn't enforced to the hilt. He halves the rollie, one for Faloon, and they light up, the Owl going along even though he doesn't normally smoke.

“I want to get a private letter out,” Faloon says. He chokes, it's pipe tobacco.

“That can be done.”

“You have a reliable source for this fine product, McDeadly?”

“Yeah, one of the screws is my ex-brother-in-law, he kites it in. You want a lid?”

“Please.”

 

Waiting for the visiting hour, for Claudette, he washes his armpits, drags a comb through his receding hair, tries on a smile: the cool, confident, innocent look while inside all is torment. The killer who strikes in his sleep, will that be the headline? How does he share his terrible thoughts with the woman he loves–if that's what it is, love.

He's going to clear the air. For at least one brilliant holy moment of your life you have to be totally honest with the one lady who gives a shit about you. Who's prepared to make the great sacrifice of marrying you, even though he can't remember proposing.

He's been rehearsing the right words to tell Claudette about Holly, and even as he waits outside the visitors' room, he practises under his breath. “In case something happens to me, I don't want an event from the past to rear its ugly head between us.” Too formal. “She took advantage in my drunken
state.” Not true. The fact is Holly looked hot and she was offering, and he…well, he's human.

He is marched in, and there she is, the bountiful hostess of the Nitinat Lodge. Soon to be owner.

They both want to touch but can only put hands to the glass. “I sorely miss you, darlin',” she says with her lovely Maritime accent.

He asks how she's doing, and she's doing fine, the lodge is doing great, wait till he sees the flowerbeds she planted. She runs on about that, how they're going to have a great time running the Nitinat, a husband-and-wife team, she'll do the cooking and he'll clean the eaves and paint the decks.

He puts on a happy face. “Yeah, we'll be sitting fat.” Enjoying the idea of being in love is one thing, with marriage come chores…

“So how're
you
feelin'?”

“I'm tops. I'm going to be out of this coop soon. I always look on the sunny side.” She studies him dubiously. He asks if she had the papers notarized yet about putting the lodge in her name.

“I will, honey, what's the rush? You ain't going to die in the next couple of days.”

“I want the legalities done, I'll feel better if you're secure.”

She carries on about Bamfield, about the search for the loot, how one guy dug his way into an underground vault that had fifty gallons of stilled hooch, all of Bamfield partied. Faloon isn't sure if he even remembers where the treasure is. Sixty paces northeast of where the path breaks off for Brady Beach–or is it northwest?

Claudette also tells him there's a story going around about how Holly Hoover came calling on Mr. Beauchamp in the night. She doesn't believe there was an improper outcome to that, because he seemed really straight and proper.

The mention of Hoover releases a spring latch in Faloon, and his mouth pops open. “I fucked her.” No preparatory
text, nothing, just the blunt admission, and when he tries to explain and apologize in a low, scared voice, she puts up a hand to stop him.

“I kind of knew you did.” Her weary sigh means he could've saved a lot of misery by being honest from the start.

“Thank God it's off my chest. I'm sorry, things have been piling up, they…” He brakes. “No, that's crazy, why am I saying that? You're here, I'm happy, this is the high point of the week.”

He's not going to tell her about Père Réchard, or about how there may be a monster inside him, the sleepwalking killer. He can't handle it, doing the book, forever looking at bars. It would destroy her too, visiting every week, then once a month, five times a year, growing older, sadder, lonelier…

“You okay, Nick?”

“Absolutely.”

“You sure?” Looking at him penetrating, maybe seeing the evil. “Don't do nothing stupid, okay?”

 

17

“G
oway bigpack,” Kim Lee says inscrutably, as Arthur spoons up granola in skim milk. She pantomimes a woman walking, followed by a four-legged creature: Lotis has gone off somewhere with Slappy. Arthur stuffs a basket with hot muffins and jam and a Thermos of vegetable soup, and pours a coffee for the drive.

A mile up Potter's Road, he comes upon Slappy waddling behind Lotis's big pack–strapped to it are a rolled foamy, sleeping bag, rain jacket, sweaters. She hoists this freightage over the tailgate, helps Slappy in, climbs in beside Arthur, and as he pulls away, she says gaily, “Hauling supplies to the front line.” She has dyed her hair green and painted her lips green. Green fingernails.

“Supplies for whom?”

“Well…me. I'm quitting smoking, it's my cold-turkey project. I'm going to have a dialogue with your life partner. I'm going to try a prisoner exchange.”

Arthur is torn: however much he longs for Margaret's return, he can't afford to lose his articling student to a tree. Or, as could well happen, to the Women's Correctional Centre. He reminds her that Corporal Al has been ordered to limit occupancy up there to two persons.

“I can handle Corporal Al. If Margaret wants an excuse to come down with head held high, I'm that excuse. I'll stay just long enough to get over the nic fits. Three, four days at the outset.”

She appears not to understand that a proper barrister doesn't dye her hair green and run off to join a forest sit-in. “Santorini's vanity is of the sensitive kind, he'll see it as a personal slap that a lawyer defies his order so deliberately.”

“Am I missing something? The Appeal Court voided his order.”

“I know this fellow. He will take pleasure in finding my articling student guilty of contempt. You will be made an example. You will be jailed. Denied admittance to the bar. You must not do this.”

“Yeah, well, having a law degree doesn't exempt you from the picket line. I'll handle Santorini. He
likes
me. I say that because he can't stop undressing me in court. This is my baby, this project. Spartacus didn't lead from behind. Nor did Joan of Arc. Or Ghandi.”

Arthur picks up a hint of grandiosity, a martyr complex, a disability that has been the downfall of revolutionaries throughout history. He plays to her vanity: a splendid career is at risk because of a flip and ill-considered decision.

A lazy shrug of unconcern. “‘Too rash, too unadvised, too sudden.'” Another of Juliet's lines. That riles him, her mocking tone of smug superiority, her lack of deference to a wise elder. His initial impression, the hippie schemer in the Rise Up T-shirt, may not be that far amiss.

“Sorry, I'm cranky, I'm on withdrawal. I am going to
do
this.”

He imagines it was like this with Saint Joan: one is arguing with a wall. He'll try not to appear self-righteous as they're handcuffing her; he'll try to ignore the roars of laughter in the Confederation Club: poor old Beauchamp, he had to go bail out his student.

He lets her off at Stump Town. More tents, more activists, more banners. Scantily dressed young people, some in green face paint, are performing a slow, ritualistic tableau. A modern dance company? A theatre group?

“You won't find a place to park,” says Baldy Johansson, at his car window. “There's gonna be a pagan ritual. Or something.”

“Snug yourself in here, Arthur.” It's Todd Clearihue, pulling out from Garlinc's reserved space. He's in an old Ford pickup and wearing a Budweiser cap.

Lotis has been busy with her pack, but now is looking icily at Clearihue. His unsubtle approach, after he picked her up hitchhiking, has quickly become a part of island lore.

“You want to be careful with that one,” Clearihue says as their trucks pause abreast. “We had her checked out. B-movie teen actress, flamed out at twenty-five. Divorced parents, drugs, sex, abortion, total crack-up, can't deal with her life, runs away to Canada. Professional shit-disturber, way out in left field. Commies in the family tree.”

He isn't telling Arthur much he hasn't already heard or guessed.

Clearihue squints at the painted dancers. “This is starting to look like a bazaar in Kathmandu. You should move those kids out, Arthur, they don't enhance the image for the fundraising.”

Clearihue isn't aware Lotis is at his open passenger window until she says, “What did you do to
your
image, Todd? You were always so clear-cut. Sorry, I mean clean-cut. What's with this old beat-up truck?”

He makes no effort to turn toward her, says wearily, “Good morning, Lotis.”

“The new you just doesn't work for me. Local yokel with a beer commercial on his head. When you're trying to fake your way into the community, you don't wear five-hundred-dollar boots.”

Clearihue strenuously ignores her. “How's the fundraising coming, Arthur? I'm concerned, I mean it. I must've put in nine hundred myself, all told. Sunk at least sixty into the bingo last night.”

He alights from the cab. “A private word,” he says, finally glancing at Lotis in her bold maquillage, the Green Avenger,
then moving nose to nose with Arthur. “Between you and me and our tax accountant, I could persuade my associates to go as low as fourteen if we get the right charitable concessions. And here's the kicker: we may even be willing to carry mortgages for half of it. A monthly payment plan. We'd try to enlist the major landholders. Like yourself, Arthur.”

Arthur shivers, plays with the unspeakable concept of Garlinc foreclosing on the entire island, owning Blunder Bay. He contents himself with, “More foundations will offer more grants if the price is reasonable.”

“Can't do.” Clearihue steps back from Slappy, who is sniffing at his shiny cowboy boots. The green-face troupe is going single file up the Gap Trail. “Guess there'll be a lot more when university's over. I'm hip to it. I marched for peace, I was pretty radical back then.”

“Whoa, baby, I can see why
that
image had to go.” Lotis again. “Marching for peace at the wheel of a fifty-thousand-dollar topless Audi?”

“You keep coming from behind, don't you?” Clearihue says.

“I heard that's the way you like it.”

Clearihue returns to his Ford, his smile unwavering. “Okay, buddy, good luck. See you in court tomorrow.”

Lotis isn't through. “By the way, whatever happened to our little sail?”

Clearihue seems unfamiliar with his stick shift, can't find low gear. “You don't want to get too close to this one, Arthur. She's a bit of a tart. You wouldn't believe how much she was willing to extend herself for a ride in a fast car.” A glare at Lotis. “Quit stalking me.”

“You lying self-admiring sociopathic
freak
!” Lotis starts after him, but he is finally in gear and down the road. Arthur can see why her film career “tanked,” as she'd told Arthur, after too many scraps with directors and producers.

Glowering, Lotis hoists her pack and goes up the path with Slappy. Arthur follows with his food basket, joins a gathering by
the Holy Tree. “What's happening?” he asks a wild-haired teenager.

“They're tryna get the tree to vibe with love, or some hokey shit like that.”

News cameras are aimed at a circle of performers–some green-faced and clad in garments adorned with leaves, others wearing animal masks, all holding hands around the tree. Somehow they have coaxed Reverend Al into joining the circle, and he's flushed with embarrassment. The women holding his hands are protected from the elements only by sprays of leaves.

The vibes are more Vedic than pagan, if Arthur correctly interprets the chant. Hands go up. “O-mm,” intones the leader, who leaves the circle, flapping her arms. The others join her in a choreographed dance of birds flying, all chanting “O-mm.” Corporal Al, standing to the side, looks on approvingly.

Watching from above are Margaret, standing, wrapped in a blanket, and Cud, swinging in a hammock. Life is sweet for the poet laureate of Garibaldi. One of his short works has been quoted in the
New York Times
.
Liquor Balls
has gone into a second printing. Single women are writing letters to him.

The omming continues for several minutes, bystanders joining in, until even Arthur, enveloped in the hum, finds himself giving voice. A hush follows, broken by Cud. “What kind of horseshit was that?” Not loud, but carrying well in the silence. Margaret looks at him severely.

The circle breaks up, and Corporal Al says, “Real interesting. Now I want everyone to kindly leave, except those with business.” The performers and onlookers go, but the press stays on, alert to human interest when Margaret's husband is mooning around.

Lotis sets her gear down beneath the platform's overhang, relieves Arthur of the basket, calls for the supply line. Cud, sensing food, maybe smelling the biscuits Arthur baked by hand, bounds from the hammock, lowers the rope.

Arthur asks Margaret about her health. She is focused on the green-haired, green-lipped waif below her. “What? Oh, I'm loads better. Temperature normal.” She says this with clogged nose. “The farm?”

“Hovering at the brink of disaster. I'll write the details.”

Lotis affixes both the basket and her heavy pack to the line, and Cud must work up a sweat hauling them up.

“Beam me up next,” Lotis says. Hearing this, Corporal Al walks smartly up to her, and they engage in a low, intense debate.

As Lotis pleads her case, Corporal Al glances at Arthur. Finally, he joins him, away from eavesdroppers. “Sorry, Arthur, I didn't realize you were falling apart that bad.” He bows, Tai Chi style, and leaves.

The rope ladder flutters down, followed by a safety line. Lotis hooks up to it, and climbs, hamming it up, waving to the cameras, falling into Cud's arms as he helps her over the railing. After hurriedly unravelling herself from his grip, she dares Margaret's germs, whispers words that, astonishingly, cause her to laugh. The two of them disappear from view. Cud pulls up the ladder with a broad, swaggering smile. Now he has a harem.

Lotis's ascent has reporters talking into satellite phones. Activist-lawyer defies courts. Arthur can only wonder what Santorini's reaction will be to this nose-thumbing by another agitator from the Blunder Bay farm team. It might take not much more than a stalled vehicle on the causeway to inspire another exponential sentence.

Vowing to return to his hike-a-day regimen, he trudges up the hillside. Slappy, twice deserted, scrambles behind. He pauses often to catch his breath and enjoy the panoramic views above the Sproules' pastures. “Splendid,” he pants. “Majestic.”

He wonders if the Sanskrit
om
, that spoken essence of the universe, has found its winged target, but he sees no eagles. He's still put out at Lotis, but supposes that was her idea of a noble gesture. Her mess, but he'll try to pull her out of it.

Near the top of the switchback, not far from the bluffs, he makes his way to a mossy granite ledge, and lies on his back to regain his wind. Slappy finishes a tour of the area, and settles beside him. The day is warm, the sun high, and doves moan in the trees. The moss is warm and soft, and his body tired, and he allows sleep to come.

 

On awakening, he is disoriented by many things. First, by a remembered dream of Promethean death: he was bound to a cliff-face, an eagle flying off with his innards to Margaret and Cud in the nest, mouths wide, demanding to be fed.

An awareness even more morbid: Doc Dooley is kneeling beside him, taking his pulse.

Add to that a distant, disturbing shout: “There's a good shot from here.”

Arthur becomes aware that evening is nearly upon them, a crepuscular light. Another call from afar, a woman: “A better shot over here.”

“What are they shooting at?” Arthur asks, rising to his elbows.

“How many fingers?” Dooley's bony hand is in front of Arthur's face.

“Five. I'm in fine fettle.”

“How is he, Doc?” Corporal Al's voice, from a radio on Dooley's belt.

“Rumours of his death are greatly exaggerated. The bugger was asleep.”

“Sorry if I'm a worrywart,” says Corporal Al, “but he's been having an emotional crisis.”

Dooley frowns. “What were you doing out here, Beauchamp? Spread-eagled on the moss, you were, like a human sacrifice.”

Arthur sits up. “I stretched myself a bit, took a nap. What's all that shouting?”

Now it's Reverend Al on the radio: “Doc, a television crew is heading your way.”

“What's happening?” Arthur asks.

“What's happening is…” A pause to build suspense. Arthur takes pleasure in watching the doctor's face crease into a rare smile: so rare that he wishes he had a camera. “We have an eagle pair. The mate has returned to the nest.” Arthur is astonished to see him take a few light steps, as if from a long-remembered Irish jig.