I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel (22 page)

Ophelia and I had done well to miss the Diefenbaker rally. It was a circus, according to the news on my car radio, the Chief thrown off script as he contended in vain with heckling from infiltrating socialists. There'd been scuffling and, to top everything off, a baring of bodies by protesting Freedomites.

Silence reigned in the Volkswagen after I turned off the radio. We were too depressed over Operation Lorenzo to utter anything but the occasional expletive.

“Pricks,” she said. “They're pricks.”

With all the honest cops on the federal force, how had we managed to find ourselves tangled up with a clubby little ring of the debased and unscrupulous? Two senior officers, with that born follower Constable Jettles surely in the thick of it. I constructed a daydream of exposing them, disgracing them, hauling them into court in shackles.

Professor Mulligan had to pay for his crime
. That was the theme they'd chosen, apparently casting aside their cockamamie theory of a homosexual affair gone crosswise, knowing they couldn't sell it to a jury. And besides, such an approach would leave open a lesser verdict: non-capital murder, even manslaughter, a death caused in the heat of passion. That wasn't enough for Roscoe Knepp. Capital murder required proof of planning and deliberation, and Lorenzo had supplied that.

“They're all pricks.”

Maybe she meant men in general. Maybe not, but the comment dissuaded me from making even a subtle approach to her. I could have told her that she looked stunning that night. I could have asked what had transpired between her and Geraldson. I kept my mouth shut.

As I pulled up at her place, she kissed me lightly on that mouth. But she didn't invite me in.

I
ra and I returned to our lodging at one a.m. after rescuing his movie posters and other memorabilia from the Beanery. Closing night had been a lugubrious affair at which locals of middling talent took turns playing sad songs and getting drunk on the Andres we'd provided.

I had to help out; Ira told me Lawonda had “split from town.” Just as well, as I would have been ill at ease with her. She'd taken off for the South. “Memphis or New Orleans, where she has friends. Where they still have music.”

There was yet more to pack into my little car: Ira's clothes and keepsakes, his stereo and record collection. We worked in silence, avoiding the creaky third-from-the-bottom step, sneaking past the window of the snoring landlord.

Craznik had had one of his fits that day over the rent. “Due and payable one month before month just ending!” Ira had apologized for not making it to the bank on time. I paid my rent to date, and that mollified Craznik enough to enjoy an uninterrupted sleep while we smuggled out Ira's seizables.

We pushed the car down the alley until we were well away from the house, then started the engine and headed off to Lawonda's “pad,” as Ira called it. He was taking possession of it.

“She paid a month ahead. It's an illegal suite, so the landlords won't complain.”

“Why did she leave so fast?”

“Maybe because you broke her heart.”

“By not sleeping with her?”

“Bullshit. Give me the scoop – how was it?”

“All I did was walk her home.”

“Man, I've seen your tongue lolling. She has her pick of lovers and she picked you. Feel honoured. How was it?”

I gave up, and eventually we pulled into the driveway near her
side door and hauled his stuff into the suite I hadn't dared enter the week before. Kitchenette, bath, a small bedroom and a little sunroom, and a gorgeously decorated central parlour. Expressive African masks and brightly patterned tapestries on the walls. A sofa and armchairs covered with similar motifs. A seemingly authentic zebra rug. Sliding glass doors to a terrace and a bowered rose garden. No linoleum.

Lawonda had left it all untouched, hadn't even made the bed. Ira bounced on it. A waterbed – it sloshed. “This where you guys made out? Man, a guy could get seasick.” He chuckled at my discomfiture. “Listen, there's a cot in the sunroom if you want to crash here.”

“Crash?”

“Spend the night. Hell, you could move out of the internment camp and batch here. Don't worry, I'll stay in the closet.”

I demurred, feeling awkward, self-conscious. I tried to imagine Mother's reaction to my rooming with a homosexual.

“Hey, a glimmer of hope: I met a former sideman to Ronnie Hawkins. The Hawk can't keep his band together; he's looking for a manager, my name came up.” Then a sour face. “Rockabilly … it's come to that. Toronto.”

A silence.

“I'm sorry to rib you, man. You seem depressed.”

“My murder case. Do we have any of that wine left?”

H
orseshoe Bay is a pretty little outpost on the road to Squamish. I was in a small café there that offered a take-it-or-leave-it choice of all-day breakfasts or fish and chips. But I was without appetite, nursing a coffee. It was shortly after seven, the sun sucking the mists off the strait, a colourful clutter of boats in the harbour, a ferry grunting away from the dock for the run to Nanaimo, gulls gliding and squawking behind.

This altogether pleasant day failed to penetrate my gloom. Forty days before the trial, and Minerva, the goddess of justice, had done nothing to intercede with the malicious Gorgons who had conspired to hang an innocent man. Gabriel told Lorenzo he was being framed for murder. That, I would tell the jury, is the only essential fact the officer didn't make up.

I had no recourse but to make an all-out assault on the little clique of corrupt cops. But what jury was going to disbelieve senior officers of the world's only police force that was a proud tourist attraction? Even to make a dent, I would need the skills of a Branca or a Walsh.

I distracted myself by leafing through the morning
Province:
news from Monday's election. With all polls counted, the Progressive Conservatives were still in power, but with a minority. Dief the Chief, my chum, was bravely carrying on.

Today's oddball item: a right foot had washed up on Gambier Island, just north of Horseshoe Bay, torn off at the ankle but otherwise whole, within a size-eight running shoe. A woman, apparently, with remnants of polish on a toenail. Police were mulling over the missing persons lists.

Gene Borachuk came walking by the window and glanced at me. Hiking boots, a rucksack. He walked in, past me, taking a table in a windowless alcove. I joined him there with my coffee.

“If anyone sees me with you, I'm dead; they'll call it a hunting accident. We have a deal?”

I'd been talking to him by pay phone to avoid a trace to Tragger, Inglis. The deal: I would cross-examine him at the trial with gloves on, not compromise him in any way, not ask about the beating of Gabriel, from whom I'd got reluctant consent for these negotiations.

“Yes, we have a deal.”

“No loopholes, no backing down?”

“Of course.” I was impatient; this was the second time I'd sought to rescue this honest cop from his dilemma.

“Walt Lorenzo. Sixteen years on the force, the last seven with various city drug squads. Not too brilliant, I guess – still hasn't got a third stripe. Lots of commendations, though. Undercover specialist, pretty good at pretending to be a bad guy; he can talk the talk. Nothing smelly on his record. A complaint in Winnipeg two years ago about roughing up an Indian kid. It didn't proceed. Cops get that sort of hassle all the time.”

“What about the connection with Knepp?”

“He and Lorenzo are tight. Lorenzo did a tour with him in Grande Prairie, forty-seven through fifty. Kept in close touch since. Hooked up with Roscoe again last year – an undercover job in Squamish. I was part of it; we busted some swingmen running a heroin backend. Roscoe and Walt and their wives took a holiday in Reno after that.” He rose. “I'm hiking up Cypress. We never saw each other.”

“Hang on. Where's Monique Joseph?”

“Can't help you. Roscoe has stopped sharing.”

“I want you to tell me this whole thing is a fix.”

“What do you think?” He walked off.

I
had talked with Irene Mulligan on the phone a few times but had put off the distressful task of spending extensive time with her, preparing her for the courtroom. I dreaded the awkwardness of discussing Frinkell's letter and its claim of adultery. But Irene was key to launching a successful defence, the only Crown witness I could count on to speak glowingly of Gabriel. And so we arranged to meet at her home late on the day of the summer solstice, after she got back from her bridge club.

As I approached the old Point Grey two-storey, a well-timbered structure faced with stone, I saw a curtain move behind a bay window – Dermot's studio. Irene opened the door before I could ring the bell.

A powerful scent of perfume. Her face made up, a bounteous head of hair, some grey in it now. A black dress that would seem funereal except for the sparkles above her ample breasts. I supposed that's what one wore to duplicate bridge. The hallway through which she led me was dim, unlit, and so was the small salon where she bade me sit while she brought tea. She apologized for her cough: she was enduring the tail end of a cold. She said she hadn't been sleeping well, understandably.

I sat near a window so I could see to make notes. As she returned with tea and oatmeal cookies, she apologized for not having anything more elegant on hand. “I don't get many callers.” A little bout of coughing. I imagined she was lonely. Probably her friends, such as they were, had tired of soothing her way into widowhood.

After a few pleasantries, I gave her a rundown on what to expect in court, then spent an hour rehearsing her for the witness stand. She answered my questions directly, and even fed me some ammunition against Doug Wall and some useful observations as to how Dermot and Gabriel related. But I felt tension from her throughout, or at least discomfort. I saved the hardest part for last.

“Irene, when you were first questioned by the police – Constable Borachuk, I think – you said Dermot hadn't seemed depressed. I'm sure Mr. Smythe-Baldwin will remind you of that. It does complicate the defence of suicide, I'm afraid.”

Gabriel, too honest for his own good, had agreed that his employer didn't appear depressed. However, it would seem Mulligan hid his feelings well. He certainly hid his personal life – Gabriel had been as shocked as I to learn of Professor Schumacher's threatened court action.

“I'm sorry, it's what I said. I didn't know then that Gabriel would be a suspect.”

“You had no reason to think Dermot was facing an awkward situation?”

Even in the dimness of the room I could see her eyes widen. “What do you mean?”

I showed her Frinkell's letter. She studied it, read it twice, in a seeming state of shock. Then she broke down and wailed, “That's why he did it, isn't it?” Suicide, I supposed she meant. “I didn't know, I didn't know …” She went into a coughing fit, and was in such a disconsolate state that I offered to adjourn the interview.

She merely said, “Please,” and swept from the room.

“Good Night, Irene” was in my head again as I drove off in search of the nearest bar.
Now me and my wife have parted
.

I
'd been in the Crypt for an hour, doing little but brood. I could not possibly have handled matters with Irene more clumsily. I ought to have led up to the letter, prepared her for it with some sympathy and dignity. I was shocked by the surprise she'd shown. Hadn't she been aware of Dermot's many liaisons?

Irene let him have his affairs
, Professor Winkle had asserted.
That was their deal
. Maybe he was just mouthing off; he was drunk. Or maybe that was the story Dermot told himself to assuage his guilt. I hadn't mentioned to Irene my session with Jimmy “Fingers” O'Houlihan, the photos showing Dermot
in flagrante delicto
. I saw absolutely no reason why I should, even if I could bear to do so.

I jumped when the phone rang. Gertrude told me Mrs. Mulligan was on the line.

I composed an apology before taking the call, but Irene seemed uninterested in hearing it. It was she who apologized. “I can't blame you for thinking I was aware of Mr. Frinkell's letter. It came as a shock. The police never said anything, or the prosecutors.”

I explained to her where it was found: the in-basket.

“Truly? Why didn't he confide in me?” Distress in her voice, but she regained control. “Arthur, I've had … well, time to think, and I've decided I haven't been entirely honest with myself, or with the police, or you. The truth is, Dermot was becoming increasingly moody as Easter approached. Maybe not depressed, but distracted, thoughtful. It was so unlike him …”

We discussed how she might phrase those observations in court. Though her second thoughts smacked of invention, she was clearly onside with the suicide defence. I suspected she hadn't yet abandoned hope that Dermot was still alive, but that it had receded. More important, her faith in Gabriel's innocence had deepened.

I
t was early evening, and Ira was packing his clothes and toiletries as he prepared to leave Lawonda's former flat after only three weeks. He had landed the job of jumpstarting Ronnie Hawkins, and was heading off to Toronto on
TCA'S
midnight express.

“Don't stack them flat – they'll warp.” He gently eased an
LP
into its sleeve, then paused to kiss Harry Belafonte on his cardboard lips before placing him on the shelf, alphabetically, beside Chuck Berry. “I'll be coming back for them in a limousine.” He settled the needle on another album. “Early Bo Diddley sessions. You will die an ugly death if this goes missing.”