I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel (15 page)

He studied me for reaction but I was giving nothing away. At any rate it would have been hard to see anything in my red and puffy eyes.

“I shall be submitting Mulligan's incomplete memoir. Not a hint of suicidal depression. It's all rather gay, in fact. We're still awaiting the forensics from the serums and firearms chaps, but the pink panties are a little gay too, don't you think? Now, what else
can we help you with?” He exhaled a massive plume of smoke and sighed happily. “I have them sent up from Havana by diplomatic bag. It is worthwhile being a friend of Mr. Green.” The external affairs minister, presumably.

“Where are Mulligan's socks?”

“Someone must have walked off with them.” His belly bounced as he chuckled.

“Knepp is hiding critical witnesses from me.”

“An issue I am prepared to argue. A word of friendly advice, young Arthur. It would be unwise to raise your complaint, however legitimate, in front of a seller of rings and brooches. Your cold will only worsen if you spray yourself whilst pissing against the wind. I have appeared before this man, and he has the brains of a flea. Save your protests for a real magistrate.”

“Okay, let's bump it a week.”

He patted my shoulder. “We're transferring this entire shivaree down to Vancouver. We may get Orr or Scott – they have minds.”

A venue change was – finally – good news. For the week or so of the preliminary, the witnesses would be removed from hometown influences, and from Roscoe Knepp.

On our return to the court, the clerk, taking pity, passed me a box of tissues. Gabriel was brought in through a side door in cuffs and shackles. He waved to his mother, but she seemed worried about the proprieties and returned only a nervous smile.

I was given a few minutes to confer with him by the railing of the prisoner's dock, and warned him not to get too close. “Your prints are all over Mulligan's wallet. When I next see you, I will want an explanation of that.”

“I can give you one now.”

“You can think about it.”

“I was looking for a suicide note.”

I was confused, until he explained that he'd been ten minutes ahead of Jettles's posse. He'd made a quick descent to Mulligan's fishing spot, searched wallet and pockets, found no clue to the mystery, and scrambled back up in time to meet his pursuers.

The jeweller coughed, letting me know that the day was getting on. Smitty, though, was sitting back comfortably, his hands clasped over his waistcoat.

“You mention this to Ophelia?”

A long hesitation. “She didn't ask.”

“They also claim to have found two 30-30 shells there.”

“They're lying.”

“Okay. We'll talk more when I'm feeling better.”

“Our elders know some good medicines. Speak to my mother.”

We adjourned the matter to Vancouver to set a date for the preliminary inquiry. Smitty wished me well. The reporters filed out unhappily, snapping shut their empty writing pads. Knepp followed me to the door, but at a distance.

“Get better quick, Artie. That son of a bitch Jettles, eh? I warned him to take sick leave right away, but no.”

Outside I was taken into custody by Celia Swift and a few women elders and taken away to be treated with Sitka spruce pitch, boiled fir needles, and bracken rhizomes with fish eggs.

D
isappointingly, the glutinous tea didn't provide the immediate cure demanded by my fantasies. I was still sweating out my fever at home the next afternoon when I heard Ophelia and Craznik outside my door, he demanding identification, she offering rude advice relating to his rear orifice. She charged into my flat just as I was about to drag myself out of the bed in which we'd rutted and floundered.

As I subsided back onto it, she studied me from the bedroom doorway with a thorough lack of sympathy, then set on my table the documents from the Squamish
RCMP
, sorted and in labelled files. She chose one of them and airmailed it to the foot of my bed. “Covering memo and the copy of the memoir found in Gabriel's cabin, plus a letter from Schumacher's lawyer warning the deceased to stop fucking his wife.”

“Be good if you could talk to Professor Schumacher.”

“I've arranged to see him on the weekend.”

“Very enterprising,” I croaked. “Who's his lawyer?”

She aimed a manicured forefinger down her throat. Harvey Frinkell, obviously. With a quick exit line wishing me improved health, she departed.

I looked at Frinkell's letter, ominously dated Friday, April 13, eight days before Mulligan vanished. Addressed not to his Vancouver residence but to Squamish Valley Road. The standard cease-and-desist language of a lawyer's demand letter: a warning of severe consequences in the courts of law, a reference to incontrovertible proof of adultery, a claim for unstated general damages for alienation of wifely affections.

Ophelia's memo indicated that it had been found in a basket on Mulligan's desk, among other correspondence less volatile: a bank statement, an invitation to a faculty meeting, a note from his
publisher about a reissue of
Myth and Morality
. Odd that he hadn't secreted Frinkell's intimidating letter, or at least hidden it from Irene. No sign of its envelope.

I
had to get dressed because the river was calling, but I was naked and had no idea where I'd put my clothes. Scrambling through dresser drawers, I found only female garments – panties, slips, blouses. A woman was crying somewhere but I couldn't see her. Bells were tolling, telling me to wake up …

It was the phone. Alex Pappas, with a noticeable lack of tender concern. “Given that it's half past nine, should we assume you're still flat on your ass, Beauchamp?”

“A minute ago I was.” I had raced naked into the main room. To my surprise I was no longer sweating.

“We don't want you spreading germs. Take off tomorrow too. I'll kick your burglary over a week to fix.”

I wrapped a towel about me and stepped carefully down to the shared shower, testing my state of health. So far, so good. No fever, no runny nose, no cough. I was lightheaded, though – a sense I was floating at peace, as if opiated. As I slid under the shower I gave thanks to the Squamish elders and the power of their medicines.

Having floated through my morning routines, I found myself suited up and heading off in the Bug. I was wending my way east on the Number 1 to Burnaby, to that institution of incorrection that housed Gabriel Swift. I felt impelled to that place, to him, by a force then ill comprehended, though I have since realized it was a need to believe I was on the side of the gods. This was, wonderfully, the kind of trial honest lawyers yearn for – defence of the wronged, the truly innocent, a man framed. And I needed to put to rest those niggling hints that Gabriel hadn't been wholly candid. Why, during Ophelia's extensive debriefing, hadn't he mentioned probing through Mulligan's things by the river?

I asked him that right off, as we sat facing each other in Oakie's visiting hall.

Gabriel shrugged. “
Mea culpa
. An unintended lapse. It was logical, since I was searching for Dermot, that I would haul my ass down there. Obviously, on seeing his clothing, I would look for a note, some clue. I am not so stupid as to be unaware I would leave fingerprints.”

Still enjoying the pleasant after-effects of my recovery, I needed little convincing of Gabriel's sincerity. The fact that he left prints actually counted in his favour. An assassin would not be so careless.

“Let's move along to matters of greater moment. As you see, I am restored to robust health. Those wise women of the Squamish band ought to patent that curative potion of theirs.”

“Spoken like a true capitalist.” A slight jab, but he added, “I'm glad you're well.” He seemed well too, no sign of ill temper, and he seemed pleased with my tribute to Native medicine.

When I told him about the nobility robe, he smiled broadly. “If you dress Indian and take Indian medicine, maybe you will begin to think Indian.”

“How does one think Indian?”

“With your soul.”

Too enigmatic. Gabriel remained intent, focused, occasionally making a note, as I delivered a travelogue of the past weekend's tour of the Squamish Valley. He smiled as I recounted Thelma McLean's references to the red Indian next door and her missing clothes. He frowned as I told him about Knepp and Jettles walling off the Joseph family from me. He showed surprise that Mulligan had been accused of adultery. “I never knew.”

I asked him when Dermot gave him the carbon of the memoir.

“The week previous. It was a burden. I was supposed to discuss it with him but never did. Who was I to critique it? I felt incapable of that, or of helping Dermot resolve his writer's block.”

“Out of interest, what did you think of the completed six chapters?”

“I picked up a struggle, not always successful, to be open, intimate – as I assume memoirs are expected to be. There was humour, some sadness. He'd never talked to me about the early death of his
sister, and I was moved by that. I was trying to find the courage to express those thoughts. I never got the chance.”

Genevieve. Professor Winkle had called her Dermot's angel, had intimated her death had been a source of childhood trauma. I was keen to read those six early chapters.

I didn't press Gabriel about the 30-30 shells found at the site. I had no doubt that Knepp and Jettles planted them. They'd conspired, after all, to lie about the beating they'd given Gabriel. I kept to myself Gene Borachuk's affirmation of that; I had promised the constable discretion. I did mention, however, the pink unmentionables.

Gabriel responded carefully. “Okay, I occasionally got a glimpse of … that sort of thing. Like on a sunny day, when he'd change into shorts. Maybe it was just some kind of whimsy or impulse – silky underwear – maybe it felt good. I never asked about it and he never explained.”

I might have pursued the matter but felt uncomfortable about getting into a discussion of fetishes, afraid of where it might go. Some people liked fur, some leather, some silk. I liked armpit hair. Nothing sinful about that. A semi-erotic
divertissement
.

I lingered long with Gabriel that day, going well off topic, jousting with him. I told him I wanted to know him better, wanted to know how such a bright rebel had turned communist, loyal to such a monolithic, unbending ideal. I wasn't happy about his political views; it would be to his great prejudice to be identified as a communist. They were regarded by most as marginal, likely subversive, possibly dangerous.

He was not to be deflected from his beliefs. Capitalism, I was instructed, would collapse in the next century and be replaced either by socialism or fascism. “There will be a fierce struggle and no middle ground, so where will you stand?”

I could picture him as the leader of a college debating team. He was a natural, deflecting Stalin's excesses, the purges, the camps (“Revolution is not a perfect art”), throwing statistics at me, quotes from Hegel and Marx, confident in the unshakable logic
of dialectical materialism. He had been taught well. Jim Brady, I supposed.

We each stood our ground with all the sureness and arrogance of youth, but he had the last word. “At least there's something I believe in. What do you have?”

Touché – there wasn't much. A belief in justice, maybe.

As he was being led away for his lunch call, he added, “And after Rome fell, what was left for Dermot to believe in?”

I
t was a sunny afternoon, and Ira Lavitch and I were at the backyard picnic table playing cards – klaberjass, a game he'd taught me. Craznik was hovering not far away.

“Poetry night at the Beanery, so there'll be lots of empty seats. I got a cat on the bill named Cohen, from Montreal. Maybe you want to catch him before he's famous.”

I said the only famous poets I knew were dead, and so was the poetry of most modernists. Anyway, I had other plans. This was National Secretaries Week, I had phoned Gertrude Isbister to honour my promise, and dinner was reserved for this evening at Trader Vic's in the Bayshore Inn, a swank new waterfront hotel.

“Klaberjass. It's an old Jewish game,” Ira told Craznik, who was standing over us.

“You a Jew?”

“Yeah, but I cut off my curls. So is Arthur – you can tell by the nose.”

“No more loud music, you. And pay rent for May, overdue, or I throw you out.”

“The cheque is in the mail,” said Ira to Craznik's departing backside. I suspected Ira was broke; the Beanery was on its last legs. He mimicked, “No Jews! No ladies! Good thing he doesn't know I'm gay.”

I was shocked. Not just by the admission, but by the use of such a pejorative word. “You are?”

“Relax, I'm in the closet.”

“What's that mean?”

“That I'm not as obvious as Liberace.”

I guess I'd not read the clues, particularly Ira's lack of interest in women. But he didn't seem, to put it awkwardly, the type. Maybe I didn't know the type; maybe I'd lived too sheltered a life.

“Screw the May rent. Let's evacuate this shithole.”

We had talked about that. Our flats were cheap, with a choice location near Stanley Park, but there was the obvious downside.

“Jass, menel, and a run of fifty.” Ira totalled up his winning points, then left to ready himself for work. Gay? He seemed so normal.

I pulled Mulligan's memoir from my briefcase for another go at it. Smythe-Baldwin was right that it bore no hint Dermot had been depressed while writing it – though his upbeat language did seem forced – but clearly he had been severely distressed in his early years.