April Fool (30 page)

“You felt it your duty to come forward. Pity you didn't feel such a citizen's duty about your own crimes. Look at me!” Réchard does so with difficulty. Arthur snaps his suspenders. “Witness, one of the reasons you're in jail is that eighteen years ago you sodomized an eleven-year-old boy who was in your care.”

“That's one of the…yes.”

“This occurred at a Native school where, among other subjects, you taught religion. The words of Jesus Christ.”

“Yes.”

“As well, you're charged with forcibly using a nine-year-old the following year.”

“I face that charge too, yes.”

“You're
guilty
of it.”

“Yes. I am. Yes.”

In this manner, occasionally seeking elaboration, Arthur takes him through each of his seven counts. Still sour at the priest's presumptuous lawyer, Kroop lets Arthur run unleashed. Jurors are looking askance at the witness. The press is busy, but
the gallery still. Neither Buddy, the pencil beaver, or the doodler dares look up.

“And you pleaded guilty to these seven charges?”

“I did.”

“There was a plea bargain? The Crown dropped another eight charges?”

“I would not say a bargain…Okay, yes.” This after a furtive look at his lawyer.

“When did you enter these guilty pleas?”

“I think maybe late in March.”

“Three months ago. Some in this room may be wondering why it's taken so long to get you properly put away.” A low rumble of assent from the public area. “If you perform for the Crown here today in Court 67, you'll earn a recommendation of leniency. Am I not correct?” His voice has been rising.

He doesn't catch Réchard's full response, only the words, “He told me to…”

“With the coin of perjured testimony, you expect to buy early freedom from your crimes against innocent children, is that not the deal?”

Arthur is building to a crescendo, but already there's surprising impact: the witness has turned white, is rising from his chair. He extends a shaky arm, points to the Dealmaker. “He told me to do it.” Réchard looks pleadingly at Arthur, at Kroop, like a friendless begging dog. “I didn't want to.”

“Hold on there, partner.” Howie Solyshn is back on his feet, fingers of both hands curled tightly, as if around a neck.

“Mr. Sheriff, please escort Mr. Solyshn from this courtroom.”

Solyshn glares at the judge, waves off Barney Willit, and strides angrily away.

“You made me do it,” the ex-priest calls.

“No more questions.” One of the great skills of cross-examination is knowing when to stop.

“Take him away,” says Kroop. He has the politeness to wait until Réchard is removed before saying, “Disgusting, Mr. Svabo. Disgusting.”

Arthur feels much recovered from yesterday's debacle. The jury must be wondering why Buddy would be so desperate as to call that fellow.

Buddy is fixed on the clock, as if willing the hands to move. Kroop has his pencil poised, ready to fill more pages of his journal. “Mr. Svabo, please get on with your case, we have twenty minutes of precious time left.”

“I thought Mr. Beauchamp would take up the rest of the morning.”

“Well, he didn't, did he? May I be so bold as to ask why you keep running out of witnesses?”

Arthur rises. “If I can be of help, I saw several of them in the witness room. U.S. citizens whom the Canadian taxpayer is lavishly hosting in the Hyatt Hotel.”

Buddy is boxed in. “Okay, call Mr. Karlsen.” He gives Ears a wag of the head, tells him to fetch. Kroop continues to glower at Buddy through the ensuing minute of silence before Ears leads in the first of the Topekans, a meaty businessman who keeps looking at his watch as if he has a plane to catch.

Arthur must concentrate, he is almost too buoyed up to focus on Karlsen's fishing holiday. He and his group booked five days of trolling in Barkley Sound and lounging at the Breakers Inn. They didn't otherwise bestir themselves except to explore the boardwalk shops and visit Brady Beach. On Friday, two strangers joined them for dinner. From photographs, Karlsen identifies the nondescript little man in the owlish glasses and the comely blond therapist.

Karlsen noticed Faloon wasn't drinking and Winters was only sipping wine, though it otherwise flowed freely. He and his wife retired at about ten o'clock. He can't remember
hearing anything that night but crashing surf. The thefts were discovered just before breakfast, the men comparing half-empty billfolds, initially blaming the owners and staff, demanding action, complaining about slow police response.

The thief didn't touch Mrs. Karlsen's five-thousand-dollar necklace, and Karlsen lost only two of the six thousand in his wallet. “Heck, I probably wouldn't even have noticed the money was gone if Harvey hadn't asked me to check my wallet.”

Harvey Coolidge, who plunked himself beside Winters at dinner. Who likely asked where she was staying. Harvey Coolidge, who went out for a walk in the middle of the night. Arthur has no questions of Karlsen, he will wait for Coolidge.

 

At lunch break, while walking to the Confederation Club, Arthur feels the old craving, a memory of martinis at noon, a tradition with his cronies. He can hear the shaker even before he enters the lounge, like music, a tambourine.

He's no longer a member but is welcomed as one. Indeed the maître d'almost weeps to see him. “We thought you'd given up on us, sir.” Arthur is settled like an invalid into a plush chair beside his landlord, Hubbell Meyerson, just back from a trademark dispute in Shanghai. He raises his martini. “L'chayim.” Arthur orders a Virgin Mary.

Hubbell expresses greeting-card sympathy over Arthur's wifeless ordeal, but can't smother a smile. Arthur supposes it's quite a joke among the profession, this spectacular uncoupling that extended through the lush, fertile spring.
Day Seventy-six! Read all about it! Tune in tomorrow!

“Everything's all right with you and Margaret?”

“Yes, of course.” Blurted.

“She's having the adventure of her life. People need to do that. At least one adventure.”

What is he babbling about? Arthur regales him with Howie
Solyshn's bad day. He imitates Réchard's pointed, shaking, bony finger.
You told me to say it.

“Couldn't happen to a nicer shyster. Enjoying the apartment?”

“Better if I didn't wake every morning to the sight of engorged penises. I'm reminded of age and incapacity.”

“Speak for yourself.” Hubbell is a year older than Arthur, no fitter, but apparently lustier. “Early nineteenth-century art that inspires and instructs in the act of love. Pillow pictures, that's the term Anika uses. My designer, amazing woman.” He waits until Arthur receives his bloodless Mary, lowers his voice. “Hope you won't need the apartment for the weekend.”

“I shall be on Garibaldi Island.”

“Good. Your lips are sealed. I have a little thing going on the side.”

“Not with this Anika?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“How ridiculous, Hubbell. You're a happily married man. A grandfather thrice over.”

“She doesn't have a problem with that. She's married too. Very…hormonal woman. Hasn't been getting enough of the you-know-what.”

Arthur knows what. He's having another Annabelle moment. She had a voracious appetite too, but for young men. She was about Margaret's age when she married her conductor, fourteen years her junior…

He has little appetite for lunch and less for listening to Hubbell's
elogium
to his reinvigorated manhood, aided by Viagra. Only ten bucks a pop. There's some in the medicine cabinet of 807 Elysian Tower. Arthur is encouraged to try one. A tester. Guaranteed to get a bone on. Take a couple. Arm himself for his reunion with Margaret. She won't be climbing any trees after that.

Arthur is shocked speechless. Viagra has turned his friend into a lecherous fool. Or is Arthur the fool for lagging behind the times when a marriage might be saved for ten bucks a pop?

 

The parade of Topekans resumes at 2 p.m., portly middle-aged men and their thinner weight-watching wives, all dressed up for the occasion and anxious to please. Arthur senses their affront that Eve Winters ignored them at dinner in favour of Faloon, who in turn was ignored by all but a former insurance executive who recalls Faloon saying he was retired from the jewellery business.

His sharp-eared wife overheard snatches of conversation between Faloon and Winters. “Not that I was trying to listen, they were talking quite low. But she was going on about her hike, and the cabin where she was staying, funky, she called it. And she asked him if she could find any fun in Bamfield–that's the word she used, fun–and I heard him give directions to some kind of place with music. She gave him her card.”

“Dinner was very jolly,” another woman testifies. “When I learned what happened to that poor thing I was…well, I'm still in a state of shock. She was so…regal.”

Harvey Coolidge has yet to take his turn, and Arthur has few questions for the others, who seem disappointed, snubbed again. Ingrid Coolidge is the seventh Topekan to take the stand: attractive, mid-thirties, a trophy wife of the wealthy developer, her senior by two decades.

After retiring to bed, her husband became restless–too much wine, an acid stomach–and went out for a walk. She stirred awake when he returned. She can't say how long he was gone. Nothing else disturbed her in the night. In the morning, he pulled his moneybelt from under his pillow and, upon discovering a “considerable sum” was missing, raised a hue and cry.

“How much was this considerable sum?” Buddy asks.

“I…can't be sure. Harvey handled all our financial matters.”

Forty thousand dollars, by his account. Twenty-five by Faloon's. A hint of cozenage. Arthur will ask if he had theft insurance–he may have hoped to cover a hefty deductible. One who is dishonest in small matters may be unscrupulously venal when larger issues are at risk.
Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus
.

In cross, Arthur hones in on the amount lost: “I expect your husband will say he was out of pocket by forty thousand U.S. dollars. Does that sound right?”

“That's what he said.”

“Do you doubt it?”

“I don't know.”

She doesn't always trust his word. “Some twenty-five thousand remained in his moneybelt the next morning?”

“Yes, he counted it out.”

“So altogether he was carrying sixty-five thousand. Where in this tiny village could anyone expect to spend that much?”

“I think he just closed a deal on a condo unit.”

“A down payment in cash?”

“He never bothered me with the money aspects of business.”

“One assumes he keeps a bank account.”

“I don't know much about it, I'm sorry.”

Arthur shares the suspicion that shows on many jurors' faces. The conclusion seems unavoidable that Coolidge treats the IRS with jaunty disregard.

“At dinner, your husband was seated to the right of Dr. Winters?”

“Yes.”

“He talked with her?”

“Oh, he always has a lot to say.”

“Witty and engaging fellow, is he?”

“Well, he…likes to entertain. Tell jokes.”

“He's about sixty?”

“Sixty-one.”

“Big rangy fellow?”

“He's a big man. He keeps in shape.”

“If you are an example, madam, he obviously has an eye for a good-looking woman.”

She seems flustered. “Well, I suppose, I don't know.”

“And he was giving Eve Winters quite the once-over, wasn't he?”

Kroop tires of waiting for Buddy to object. “Mr. Beauchamp, I would suggest that you take care not to overstep the bounds of decency.”

“Thank you, milord. I'll reword that. He was ogling her all through dinner, wasn't he?”

“Don't answer that question,” Kroop says, his dentures clicking.

Arthur ploughs ahead. “And later, in bed, he was restless, sleep wasn't coming.”

“I guess so.”

“He often has difficulty sleeping?”

“When he overdoes it.”

“Occasionally takes a sleeping pill?”

“Yes, but…I don't know if he brought them.”

Fine. Arthur will let the matter rest there. “And he went out for his walk?”

“Yes.”

“In the rain.”

“I'm not sure if it was still raining.”

“And he disappeared into the small hours of the night?”

“I…suppose.”

“Did he shower before returning to bed?”

“I don't…” A hesitation. “Yes, he must have.”

Because he'd been rooting in the Nitinat's garbage for a discarded safe? Arthur will shelve that farfetched possibility, Coolidge is not his real target.

Kroop sighs impatiently. “These questions are much better asked of her husband, Mr. Beauchamp.”

Buddy, who has been stirring restlessly, winces. “On that matter, milord, there's a slight problem. Mr. Coolidge suddenly had to return home to attend to some financial matters.”

Arthur exclaims, “He
what
?” This is the glitch the Crown has been trying to conceal.

“He's coming back in a few days, after he straightens out his problem.”

“A problem?” says Arthur. “What problem?”

“Some tax matter,” Buddy says.

Arthur cocks his ear. “Taskmaster?”

“A
tax
problem.”

“We can only hope Internal Revenue will allow this ogling undertaxed Topekan to come back. And I'll bet he had a far graver reason to flee the jurisdiction.” Full and roundly said. Nobody has thought to send away the jury. They're smiling, enjoying him–he's on a roll today.

As he sits, Kroop looks at him like he would at a dog who'd fouled the rug. Buddy rises to re-examine: “You told Mr. Beauchamp your husband took sleeping pills–do you know what brand?”