April Fool (24 page)

“To keep Gina installed here, I figure it costs a yard a night, and presumably it ain't the taxpayers of Sierra Leone who are footing the bill.”

“How does it work?” says Cat, seeing the potential, observing that Lansana's case has weight, it's not just full of papers.

Faloon explains Popov's wrinkle, how the maids hand in their computerized key cards to the desk clerk each morning, and how their cards get wiped and recoded. A careful observer can actually make out the master code being punched in by the desk clerk. The gizmo that issues this code is accessible to a guest who drapes a coat, a newspaper, whatever, over what he's doing. While two highly professional stalls give him shade, keep the clerk busy.

Cat smiles. Faloon knows he can count on her, her attitude is life is a dare, she'll go along with anything.

They watch Ambassador Lansana kneel at the rim of the pool, share a laugh with his mermaid. He picks up her key card from beside her Veuve Clicquot, gives her a thumbs-up sign: he'll be up there, waiting, have a nice swim.

If routine holds, Popov said, Lansana will put his dip bag in the hotel safe, until his meet on Saturday with the middler from Antwerp, Émile Van Doork.

 

While Cat's out shopping for clothes, Faloon and Willy have tea outside at the Carlton, watching the girls strut by the beach, showing off their bejewelled belly buttons. Willy continues to throw cold water on Operation Lansana, he thinks he saw
coppers hanging around the Belvedere, thinks there's heat, thinks maybe Faloon has been using too many stolen credit cards.

“Come on, I spent a whole week working this up. He could have half a billion in rocks in that dip bag, look how he lives.”

“Maybe he has piss all in it. Maybe there's nothing in it but documents. Or drugs. If it's narcotics, I don't want any part of it.”

“It ain't dope, you seen how heavy Lansana's bag is, if not raw diamonds, gold ingots.” Though it would be Faloon's luck to find three years' worth of
Hustler
, or parts for a guided missile system.

“Okay, chum, he's carrying this fortune, where's his bodyguards?”

“Omar's doing an illegal, he don't want attention drawn to him. All I'm asking is give me shade.”

Willy sips his tea, a long, crafty look, and quietly sets his cup down. “I'll make you a deal. After we do this job you will telephone Mr. Beauchamp. You will listen to his advice about beating this wrong rap. You will give him a chance to say if you can come home with confidence. You do that, and I am behind you all the way on this caper.”

The Owl is over a barrel. He agrees.

 

Faloon goes to his room to shower and change, wondering about the–what was the phrase?–“encouraging situation,” careful phrasing from the great Beauchamp, but what did it mean? Something to do with Adeline Angella? He keeps revisiting that evening in her apartment, the cognac, the come-on, her movie. She was Audrey Hepburn, he was Cary Grant.
You're not supposed to ask. Pretend you're a masked intruder
. And after the kiss, hoarsely, low,
Now I pretend to resist.

There wasn't much resistance there, or much of anything to tell the truth, the task interrupted when she went to get the condom, and Angella faking it, he thinks, faking that her
resistance was overcome, faking enjoyment, orgasm. It was a long time since his last release, and maybe as he was pumping and dumping a mother lode, that's when the Trojan slipped off. As he lay aboard her panting, his peter shrinking, she said, “What's the true story about the Kashmir Sapphire?”

She already asked him that a dozen times, he sensed he was being conned. It was like she gave him a favour, and now it was his turn. He pulled his pants on, not bothering to puzzle what happened to the skin, deciding to extricate fast from an unstable situation. Looking at his watch, patting his pockets. “Jeez, I must've left my heart medicine at home.”

He ended up looking like Wam Bam Sam. The eight lady jurors didn't like him for that, and when you add in his long record of stealing earrings and necklaces, they probably said what the hell and gave the benefit of the doubt to the wrong party, decided not to believe that Angella threw a bowl of plastic flowers at him as he bounded to the elevator.

Does she then call 911 in a fit of pique? Or does a plan of revenge grow more slowly in her mind, as her perceived wound festers?
Mr. Beauchamp's brilliant speech just didn't find enough buyers that day in Courtroom 67.

 

21

A
rthur is surprised to find the parking lot empty at Nouveau Chez Forget and a sign saying “Closed.
Fermé
.” It's Friday noon, a restaurateur's busiest lunchtime. “So let's grab a bite downtown,” says Brian. They're en route to the Victoria courthouse, where Buddy's application to try Faloon in absentia is on the docket.

Arthur bangs at the door. Through the glass, Pierre is seen emerging from the kitchen, tucking in his shirt. An impatient look as he opens up. “Anyone else, I put a bullet in their head.” In a lowered voice: “I 'ave something going on.”

“Arthur, there's a really good Italian place on Wharf Street.”

Pierre looks disgusted, pulls each of them in by the elbows. “Something simple and quick. The sole, a bit of salad.”

They take a table. He returns to his kitchen. They hear a tinkling of female laughter.

Brian taps out a number on his cellphone, waits impatiently for an answer. “To talk to Caroline about the kids, I have to go through Lila, who doesn't have a cellphone and only occasionally turns her machine on.”

Ultimately, he says, “Bitch!” hangs up, and lights a cigarette. “How is it someone who claims to be a marriage counsellor is never by her phone? They'll pee in their pants when they learn I have proof of my innocence–‘you're not supposed to smo-oke.' When they finally hear that tape, they'll be falling all over each other in grovelling apology.”

Brian has avoided Angella since that evening–because of domestic strife, because Faloon is no longer in the court system, but mostly in fear of her. She has continued to stalk by phone.

“You get, ‘Just phoning to say hi,' and then she runs on about something so insubstantial I lose the thread. Finally cornered me yesterday at the Ritz. For your listening pleasure…” Out comes the computer, but his phone interrupts. Brian answers with a robotic voice. “You have reached the suicide hotline. Please leave a number…Lila? Don't hang up, please I beg you, I just called you two minutes ago…You
did
pick up? Sorry, didn't hear that. Anyway, it's about Gabriella…I said what? I called you a bitch?” A pinking complexion, a man hearing harsh words. “No, no, I swore because I dropped a cigarette ember on my crotch. Lila, I can't tell you how delightful it is to hear your non-recorded voice.”

Brian wins her ear with a teary tale of how Gabriella came to his law office, wanted him to play hooky with her. Lunch, a movie, a stone-faced reception when he returned her to Caroline. The denouement, his lonely return to his hotel, is vaguely poetic in its telling, and seems to raise a reasonable doubt in Ms. Chow-Thomas's mind. “That's great, Lila. I'll come by when I get back from Victoria.” The cellphone clicks shut. “I think it's starting to dawn who's really to blame.”

Arthur imagines it is no easy task to be a relationship counsellor, an occupation inherently risky. Eve Winters must have known that, a lesson reinforced moments before her death.

“I'm getting a deal at the Ritz because I beat a beef for the owner for running a book in the back. The pub is done up with old movie posters and attracts the upper underworld, chisellers, top-of-the-line hookers. Internet scammers and spammers–you see them with their laptops, comparing notes. I am not friendless in this place, many are free to continue their crooked lifestyles thanks to me. The attention whore is all atwitter as she plops beside me.”

So this is where you're staying. I must say I was a little nervous coming into the rough part of town. It seems a little bohemian–is it an artists' hangout?

You're very perceptive.

You look so sad. Poor Brian.

He fast-forwards. “She orders a gimlet, a drink that causes confusion at the bar, the last time a gimlet was ordered in this joint, Jack Kennedy was boffing Marilyn Monroe. I deliver a stunning critique of ‘You Don't Have to Ask'–I'd grasped her brilliantly understated message about illicit love, it thrives on secrecy, grows with danger. This sets her heart aflutter, she carries on about how it must be lonely living in this hotel, and how is the current situation between poor me and poor…”

Caroline is her name, isn't it?

Yes.

Still pretty rough going?

I've seen better days. Taking them one at a time.

“This is how to reach her, you fire the clichés with both barrels. I told her how on April Fool's morning, as we were about to go for a family romp in the park, I reached in my pockets for my gloves, and out popped the unmentionables.” A sigh. “The cruellest memory is Amelia saying, ‘Oh-oh,' as she looked at Caroline's livid face. Anyway, the segué: I casually ask Adeline where she was at ten o'clock that morning.”

Why would you want to know?

This may sound silly, but I want to see if our signs were, ah, conjoined at that moment. I'm into that sort of thing.

That doesn't sound silly at all. That was a Saturday? Oh, I was probably at bingo, the Holy Rosary Hall. Or was that the VOSA wine-tasting? Victims of Sexual Abuse. We share, we celebrate each other.

But what were
we
sharing at that moment, the lawyer and the writer? I, in the vestibule of a house in North Vancouver, you…where? There's a spiritual reason I ask–well, there I go again, you probably think it's one of those silly New Age things…

You goose, not at all. I hope that wasn't the weekend I celebrated too much–my story in
Tales of Passion
came out on a Friday, and I had a teeny, teeny bit too much at the Wanderlust. I was probably still in bed at ten in the morning…Or was that the previous weekend?

Brian closes the computer as Pierre brings the matelot de sole. “Enjoy your lunch.” He hurries off.

“Enjoy yours,” Brian calls. “I'd pushed as far as I dared the concept of our two souls conjoining in an April Fool's spiritual fuck. So we're left with an array of possibilities, bingo, wine-tasting, getting pie-eyed in the Wanderlust, or–this is where I put my money–none of the above. The Wanderlust is a hokey bar in Whalley–I popped in last night. Four guys were on the stage. I thought they were doing a parody of a barbershop quartet. They turned out in fact to
be
a barbershop quartet. The Whalley Wanderers, who sing for their beer. The song that brings the house down is ‘I Love to Go A-Wandering.' Valderee, valdera. Hiking and climbing gear all over the walls, pictures of the Alps. I didn't figure Angella for outdoorsy. Maybe she followed Eve to Bamfield, the silent stalker of the West Coast Trail.”

None of her alibis are likely to prove ironclad, though they must be delved into. But Arthur wonders how she might have known Eve Winters would be in Bamfield, in Cotters' Cottage, and that Faloon lived nearby, a handy local scapegoat. Did she do the deed herself, or hire an agent, a contract killer? But Angella is meagrely off, and hit men don't come cheap.

Buddy Svabo bobs and weaves outside the courtroom to let Arthur know he's feisty, up for another battle of wits, then cracks open the door, to show him Larry Mewhort within–he is yawning, listening to a lawyer's catalogue of spousal sins.

 

Buddy closes the door. “He's yours for the taking. He has a big hole next month, he was supposed to do the last trial of the Vancouver assize, a two-weeker, it blew up. He doesn't want to get stuck in divorce court cleaning out the backlist.”

Arthur isn't sure how Mewhort, with his legendary slowness of mind, ever got raised to the bench. But accidents happen. As a criminal lawyer, he often stumbled into legal potholes, and leaned heavily on Arthur for advice.

“You don't have to sell me on Larry. You have to sell me on going to trial without a client.”

“What've you got to lose, Artie? You're not going to put Faloon on the stand anyway, because with his record I'll freaking tear him apart.” Buddy's afraid this file will drag out and be pulled from him–a missed chance at a sure winner, a chance to better Beauchamp, spoil his return. “We together on this? I've got a solid argument, section 475, an absconding accused waives his right to be present.”

Mewhort, a small, puffy man with a shock of white hair that resembles a fright wig, looks on with dread as Svabo rolls a trolley of casebooks into court and lines them up on counsel table. Arthur isn't similarly armed, and wins a hesitant smile of gratitude.

They wait until an uncontested divorce wends tediously to its foregone conclusion, then Buddy files his direct indictment and passes ten pounds of photocopied cases up to the bench. Mewhort blanches. “Do we need all that law, Mr. Svabo? Tell me in simple words what this is all about.”

Buddy begins with a recitation of intended proofs so indisputable, he implies, that obtaining a murder conviction is akin to filling out an order form. The Crown will allege Faloon knew Winters was staying in Cotters' Cottage. The murder came on the heels of four burglaries. Faloon is a notorious professional thief with a rape conviction. An underworld figure with easy access to Rohypnol. He avoided detection and arrest by disguising himself and stealing a truck. He escaped from jail, further proof of a guilty mind. A priest will recount his solemn confession:
She was beautiful. I just couldn't help myself.

But it is the DNA, ah, the DNA, that Buddy revels in, splashing about in its perfumed waters. “And when the semen
was tested by my learned friend's very own scientific expert, whose profile did she find? My goodness, it's Nicholas Faloon. Surprise, surprise.”

This florid display is for the press. Arthur is still feeling leakages of anger over the sneak attack at Gwendolyn Bay, and it's puddling at Svabo's feet. Let this overconfident peacock rush the trial ahead, then Arthur will unmask Angella as Lorelei, who swore vengeance against Doctor Eve. Faloon will be sitting there looking innocent as a cherub. Surprise, surprise.

Buddy makes an issue of the advanced ages of the Cotters, they may not be available in five, ten years, whenever Faloon is hauled back into the system. There are cost factors, witnesses are subpoenaed for the third Monday of June, the Hyatt has been booked for the out-of-towners, if the trial doesn't go ahead a jury panel of seventy will be sitting around twiddling their thumbs.

The final incantation, the burdened-taxpayer theme, is again for the press. Their presence in such numbers seems to cause Mewhort anxiety. His gaffes have been frequently reported.

When Buddy spreads open a thick volume of the
Chancery Reports
, the judge raises his hands protectively. “Just a minute here, I don't get this, doesn't section 475 only apply when an accused absconds in the middle of the trial? He's out on bail, sees his trial going badly, and walks out in the middle of it. I think I had a case like that.”

Buddy argues that the word
trial
needs a liberal interpretation, it begins when an accused is charged. He picks up the thick casebook.

“Hang on, before we get into that, what's your position, Mr. Beauchamp?”

“I am prepared to choose a jury on June 19 and go to trial.”

“Without the accused?”

“Let's hope he'll show up.”

A sigh of relief. “Problem solved. Well, that wasn't so bad. And we do it in Vancouver, right? Victoria's too tea, tweeds, and
tourists for me.” An offhand civic insult that will doubtless make the news columns. “Okay, there are no more pre-trial issues?”

Buddy looks at Arthur, expecting him to make robust complaint about Adeline Angella being called, but Arthur feigns a lapse, frowning. “No, I can't think of any.”

“Call the next divorce.”

 

Faloon is up before seven, without his regular sleep, coming down from nightmares, but he has to keep up his routine, today especially. The overnight clerk, Gaston, knows he shows up early for a newspaper and a coffee, reads it standing up at his favourite spot by the potted palm, the shady end of the burnished walnut check-in counter.

Gaston's final task before he goes off shift is to sign in the cleaning staff and activate their master-key cards, punching in the magic number that opens all doors. This process is underway as Faloon settles in under his palm tree, coffee and
Herald-Tribune
at hand. He engages Gaston with his standard opening, “How're you doing today, partner?” as he watches Gaston's pudgy index finger peck out today's master code.

One big score, that's all Faloon wants, then take it on the Arthur before the town heats up. But Cat and Willy have got to lay off him about that murder beef, he doesn't want to explain for the umpteenth time they'll be going home without him, he's heading in the opposite direction, to the exotic lands of the East.

But he has to honour his deal, phone Mr. Beauchamp, if only to apologize. He'll be respectful but firm about his decision. He'll explain about the sleepwalking, the monster that hides inside his skin.
Small man but strong like a cougar.
That phrase comes back, but from where?