Trial of Passion (16 page)

He seems unusually edgy. Perhaps that is because he is without a life jacket today. Rising, he pats me on the shoulder, a public gesture of the camaraderie he believes we share. I have obviously been too subtle in my dealings with him.

But again I am in my courtroom. Patricia Blueman is at the other counsel table. A tense, striving woman whom I had always considered quite humourless. I am rather pleasantly shocked to know she has a repertoire of judicial impersonations. She's adroit enough. She certainly bested Cleaver at the preliminary, though that vulgar pouf would never dare admit it.

She must be handled with some delicacy, and more dignity than Gowan displayed.

Margaret Blake is on her feet now. “Kurt Zoller, do you deny you have an interest in this development?”

“You're out of order!”

“You're in bed with them, aren't you, Kurt? You have a house up there in the Estates. If you can call that ugly trailer . . . I just bet they paid you off.”

“This is a libel! I warn you, Margaret Blake, we have a lawyer here of high upstanding. Mr. Bo-champ will explain you are guilty

of libel.”

I decline his invitation for a legal opinion and lower myself a few inches in my chair.

“Oh, sure, you have
him
all snuggled up in bed with you, too.”

Zoller now launches into a shrill condemnation of the enemies of progress. I am somewhat alarmed, and conjure an image of the
Führer
in his bunker, railing against his many conspirators. After several minutes of this he recovers a semblance of dignity, and retakes
his seat. The developer, whose patch-on smile has become a strained
risus sardonicus,
clears his throat and says, “Does anyone have any more questions?”

Benumbed, no one rises, so Zoller hammers his gavel and adjourns the meeting.

I follow George outside, fumbling for my cigarettes. “Good God” I say. “Poor Zoller”

“A superb performance tonight,” says George. “Must be off his medication.”

“Mr. Beauchamp, I wonder if I can get a reaction from you” It is, of course, the man in the porkpie hat, Forbish of the
Echo. “
Not now, Norman.”

I am looking about for Mrs. Blake, hoping to satisfy her that I am not Kurt Zoller's bed companion, but the pesky, rotund reporter doesn't let up, and wants to know “my attitude” about the subdivision.

“Let's say I'm antipathetic.”

Spotting my quarry, I bolt from him. Margaret Blake is already in her truck, but sees me approaching, and studies me with an expression of either pity or disgust.

“Very interesting meeting, Mrs. Blake.”

“I'm glad you liked it.”

“In case you had the wrong impression, I am one with the chocolate lilies.”

“You seemed awfully chummy with Kurt Zoller.”

“Kurt is like a brother to me.”

She doesn't join with me in smiling. Perhaps she believes I am serious. I wonder: Why have I become so concerned that she think well of me? Truly, she is a pain in the behind, and lacks the redeeming grace of a sense of humour. Yet . . . I am growing to admire her spunk.

“Though we are neighbours, Mrs. Blake, I never seem to bump into you —”

“That's probably because I work from six in the morning until sunset.”

The implication: I am a layabout with my amateur's garden and my many hirelings. “I wanted to talk to you about eliminating one of the small frictions that seem to hound our relationship. As you know, Blake versus Beauchamp is set for Small Claims Court this month.”

“Mr. Beauchamp, I am only asking a hundred dollars for that animal. If I put in for all the hours I spent feeding, giving shots, building pens, and generally mucking about, I could be asking for about five times that.”

“Now, look, I've done some research. Betsy is worth sixty dollars on the hoof at fair market value. I'm prepared to dicker.”

“There's emotional pain and suffering. Betsy was like a pet.”

“Emotional …” I am lost for words. This woman will not be reasoned with. Again I feel my heart harden and my spine stiffen. It is becoming a matter of principle — I will not let this fierce farmer walk all over me in her mud-caked gumboots.

“Well, let's sort it out in court then, Mrs. Blake.”

“Okay, well, bye-bye then. Have a pleasant evening.”

I give her a resigned salute and she drives off. Very well, I will have some sport with this stubborn plaintiff. The judge will apportion blame fifty-fifty, but with a magnanimous gesture intended to shame her, I shall pick up the entire tab, including court costs.

Dear Mr. Brown,

It was a pleasure to meet you, and I will try to carry out your wishes the best I can. The fee we discussed is agreeable.

May I confirm my instructions, so there will be no misunderstandings.
I
. Never are you and I to meet while the investigation is in progress. 2. Our only contact will be through a post-office box for which both of us have
keys. 3. I will gather information on Professor Jonathan O'Donnell to aid in his conviction of the rape of your fiancé, Miss Kimberley Martin. 4. Miss Martin must not be made aware that I am making these inquiries on your behalf.

However, I must advise you that without access to the central figure in this case I will be working at some disadvantage. I will try to be discreet, but I am well known to the police and to many lawyers.

I would much prefer that you consulted with Miss Martin about my role. However, you are the client, and mine is not to reason why.

My activities to date may be summarized as follows:

Having read the complete newspaper files about the case, I drove Wednesday morning to Professor O'Donnell's home in West Vancouver.

Watching from my car, I observed Professor O'Donnell leave the house in shorts and sweatshirt, and begin running down the street. He returned half an hour later and went into the house.

It was not long before he reappeared, dressed in a shirt and slacks, and he backed his Jaguar car from the garage and drove past me while I hid below the dashboard. I then pulled out and followed him over the Lions Gate Bridge, into downtown, and ultimately to the False Creek area, where he parked beside a three-storey medical office building. I saw him standing at the building's door, checking his watch. I observed his hands were shaking. (The time was 1:50 p.m.) I deduced he had an appointment or meeting of some kind, but he seemed to lack courage, for he did not go directly into the building but into a cocktail bar down the street. However, he only consumed a tomato juice.

He then proceeded outside and returned to the medical building, taking the elevator to the top floor, which houses a dentist, a physiotherapist, an ophthalmologist, and a psychiatrist, Dr. J. M. Dix. It was in the waiting room of this office that I saw him talking to the receptionist. I do not know what the problem was, but he did not wait to see Dr. Dix, and almost immediately left. I sense the subject is trying to come to grips with a drinking problem and perhaps has enlisted a psychiatrist to help him.

I then followed his car to the University of British Columbia, where he went to his office, remaining until evening, when he returned to his home.

My next task will be to seek out among Mr. O'Donnell's acquaintances someone not fond of him. I find that enemies are often productive sources.

I remain yours truly,
Francisco (Frank) Sierra,
Licensed Private Investigator.

I rise this Tuesday morning after another dream of impotence, myself on bended knee before the Roman magistrates,
in puris naturalibus —
stripped bare, humiliated, begging them to censure me. Somewhere in the shadows of this dream a woman lurks, probably Annabelle — but I am not sure.

After I bathe, I study in my bathroom mirror the naked hero who plays the starring role of my dreams. The news is not so bad. Clearly I am trimmer — the exercise and the fresh salads are working well. Here we see evidence of outdoorsmanship: the stark outlines of a farmer's tan. Truly, I have become a redneck — though the nape of
that neck is hidden by an untended garden of unruly hair. Roberto, my barber, who is waiting in Vancouver with his clippers, will have a fit that will rival the tantrums of Kurt Zoller. But Judge Pickles must not think he is dealing with some old hippie lawyer.

It's eight o'clock. Outside, I hear an aircraft throttling down, gliding into Beauchamp Bay.
Alea iacta est.
The die is cast. Today I shall cross the Rubicon — or at least the Strait of Georgia, beyond whose swirling waters lie the brutish city, its predators, its victims, its ruthless courts of law.

But my visit will be short, time enough to be reminded of the useless things I left behind.

I attend at my bedroom closet, seek out underclothes and matching socks. I have but one suit here, the one I wore when I arrived, though fifteen others grace my massive closet in Vancouver.

As I don my suit, I am overcome for a moment by a mental picture of Kimberley Martin: Joan of Arc in male armour. Maybe I should buy a garish tie for today's hearing. That would certainly set a nervous tone.

I take up my briefcase. I grit my teeth.

Gowan Cleaver, weighted with his burden of anxious city energy, is at the ramp beside the chartered float plane.

“We're set for ten-thirty, Arthur. Not much time. We should go over some things.”

We climb aboard, and the pilot taxis into deeper water, then throttles, and we are airborne. I watch my little farm shrink into the distance, and the island recedes, and a sadness overwhelms me. I shall return
sine mora.

As the aircraft churns across Georgia Strait, the muddy outpourings of the Fraser River pass below, then its diked embouchure and alluvial plains, the flat, squared suburbs, Lulu Island, Sea Island, the international airport, and now the great clay banks of Point Grey, the buildings of the university perched high atop them. I can see the law school, where Jonathan O'Donnell and Kimberley Martin took their
first faltering steps towards their ultimate strange encounter.

We sweep over the steel filaments of the Lions Gate suspension bridge, then coast into Vancouver's busy inner harbour to the floatplane dock. Surrounded as I am by monoliths of glass and concrete, immersed within the city's roar and clatter, I feel an ill foreboding, a loss of bearing and balance, a queasiness. The passage was too quick; I have been thrust within minutes from field and forest into the unforgiving bowels of the city. I step from this flying Wellsian time machine onto the dock, where Gowan, haranguing me like a high-school coach, leads me to one of the firm's limousines.

“Don't use kid gloves, Arthur. I think we have to work on the reasonable assumption she's lying through her teeth.”

“I think we ought to try to avoid bloodshed, Gowan.”

“Au contraire.
You should do the slice and dice. Look, let's say O'Donnell
does
get committed — you do a job on her today she'll be shitting in her drawers, she won't want to push this thing to trial.”

He carries on in this scabrous vein all the way to the Commonwealth Tower, the forty-three-storey phallic extrusion on Georgia Street wherein the minions of Tragger, Inglis, Bullingham perform their daily drudgery. Five entire floors we occupy; I have met but half the lawyers we employ.
We
. I am back in the firm. But I am not stopping at the offices this morning. Roberto's Salon is just off the lobby, facing the street. He has been barber to the firm for thirty years.

Gowan tells our driver, “Pick us up in twenty minutes, no later,” then continues to offer advice as we walk to the building. “Don't be fooled by her. I think she'll probably come on all batty-eyed and winsome.”

“I have done this before, Gowan.” I am becoming brittle of temper. It's the city. I can hear its tin music, its sirens, its loud, back-slapping laughter. I can smell its dense air.

Roberto, whom I remember when he was Bob and his salon a shop, has cancelled a morning appointment to squeeze me in for twenty minutes. Upon recognizing me — after some early doubt
— he indulges in an effulgent display of nose-crinkling, hand-wringing, and stricken moans.

“Mr. Beauchamp, we simply don't want you looking like they found you wandering about in the Sahara Desert. I'll never do this in twenty minutes, it's impossible. That beard is utterly immoral, it ought to be against the law.”

“I'm keeping the beard, Roberto. Just trim it and tidy me up on

top.”

He settles me into his chair with a great show of disdain, enshrouds me with a rubber cloak, and takes one last despairing look at the tragedy of my hair and goes to work with scissors and clippers.

“We
could
make a nice ponytail.”

“That will not be necessary.”

Gowan hovers near. “You want to go over your cross-examination notes while you're sitting there?”

“No, thank you.”

“You
made
notes”

“Ah, yes, well, they're mostly in my head.”

“Pat Blueman, I should warn, is very pissed off that I got hold of those tapes of the complainant. Wait till Judge Pickles hears them. When his honour finds out Blueman's been doing sendups of him, he'll want to send
her
up. Roberto, you're not listening to this, okay? We're short of time, I have to go over some tactics”

I say, “A man ought to trust his barber.”

“Oh my, cut out my tongue,” Roberto says.

“Okay, the scenario plays out like this,” says Gowan. “Kimberley Martin is engaged to a wealthy bore. She's in love with Remy's money, so she doesn't want to blow the marriage, but at the same time she's developed this infatuation with a prof — from whom, by the way, she needs a passing mark to get her into third year. She gets drunk, she gets loose, her hormones start to rage out of control, and before she can think about the consequences, she's busily humping the acting dean of a prestigious law school.”