High Crimes Read online

  “I offered him immunity from prosecution if he assisted us. On that basis he disclosed that he and Kerrivan and certain other individuals he did not name had delivered the drugs to a warehouse. But when I asked him to give evidence, he refused. So I simply took it that he was withdrawing his offer of cooperation. I, of course, withdrew my offer of immunity.” Mitchell, his foot in the door, decided to try to open it all the way. “And may I say something else? Your Honor, we’re dealing here with a drug shipment ultimately destined for the mainland which, even wholesale, was worth fifteen million dollars . . .”

  Peddigrew angrily wheeled to his feet. “He’s giving a little self-serving speech. It has nothing to do with whether the confession is improperly induced.”

  “But you see, Mr. Peddigrew,” the judge said, “I am interested in this business. I’m really an innocent when it comes to drugs and such, and the more I learn, well, the better a judge I will be, don’t you think?”

  “It’s improper, irrelevant, and prejudicial. I object. I want my objection recorded.”

  Tilley leaned down to the official court reporter. “Will you record the objection, Mister Reporter? And would you be sure to get Mr. Peddigrew’s words down correct? Improper, he said, irrelevant, and prejudicial. Now, Inspector, would you carry on?”

  Mitchell could hear Kerrivan’s voice, growling low in the direction of the gallery: “Lord, living Jesus, and it’s the Spanish Inquisition.”

  “Mr. Kerrivan,” said the judge, “the proper attitude for a judge when he overhears an accused person make a derogatory comment is to pretend he did not hear. I am pretending I did not hear you. Don’t push your luck, boy. You’ll have time enough to talk in your own defense. Inspector Mitchell?”

  “As I was saying, Your Honor, drugs is a multimillion-dollar business along the Atlantic coast, especially in these waters now, with the U.S. southern coast being so well-patrolled. The big operators, the syndicates, are moving big loads into the Atlantic and north, then west, into the little coves and bays out here, where nobody lives anymore. What they generally do is offload from the mother ship into smaller boats, then truck it to central Canada and back down over the U.S. border.”

  “Syndicates, did you say?” asked Tilley.

  “Your Honor!” It was Peddigrew.

  “Sit down!”

  “Well, as you know,” Mitchell continued, “when there’s a lot of money to be made, it’s our experience that the mobs come in, and they run these operations like any big corporation. They hire local fellows, sailors like Kerrivan and Kelly, to make the runs from Colombia.”

  “A tool of the mobs,” said Kerrivan, softer this time. “Ah, will the Lord have mercy on my soul.”

  “The syndicates are run out of New York and Miami,” Mitchell added.

  “Being that these local boys aren’t smart enough to run their own show?” asked the judge.

  “Oh, they’re smart enough, but not . . .” There was a warning bell in Mitchell’s head. Be careful, he told himself. Avoid the Newfie put-down.

  Tilley completed Mitchell’s sentence. “Not as sophisticated as these big operators from the mainland, you might be wanting to say. That’s where the smart criminals come from, I guess. And the smart lawyers . . . and, for that matter, the smart police, too.”

  Mitchell was wary. “I’m sorry, sir?”

  “Don’t be sorry, Inspector. But I think it’s a shame our local police haven’t mastered all the clever tricks that a fellow like you uses to trap the wary criminal.” The judge was having sport, Mitchell realized. “Like getting Mr. Kelly there to reveal all of his secrets. Now, some of our local boys wouldn’t be bright enough for that.”

  Mitchell wished he were not lacking in the light, self-effacing wit that the occasion seemed to demand. Instead, to his discomfort, he found himself carrying on in ponderous police fashion.

  “What I’m trying to say, Your Honor, is that I can’t apologize for the manner in which I took Kelly’s statement. We have to use every legitimate device to stop the flow. If we couldn’t stop Kerrivan, the police would be laughed at. He’s the number-one smuggler on this coast —”

  “Peter Kerrivan there?” the judge interrupted. “A local lad from out of Bay D’Espoir?” He gently mimicked the brogue: “And how is it a b’y from Bay Despair l’arns the foine art o’smugglin’, Inspector?” He got laughs.

  “I’m talking about narcotics, Your Honor. Not rum-running.”

  “Marijuana,” said the judge. “Can it be as terrible as the stuff that comes in the casks from St. Pierre?”

  Mitchell sought a funny line that did not come. All that was in his head was the tired old speech about the war on drugs. So he said nothing, and sensed the judge was giving up the sport.

  “It’s getting late,” said Tilley, “and while it’s always interesting to engage ourselves in such discussions, we do have a jury waiting outside, and they are entitled to know what has been happening in here.” He turned to the court crier. “Bring them back.”

  Peddigrew, as if shot through with a bolt of lightning, almost knocked over a chair as he rose. “I have more questions. I have an argument to make. I’m not through.”

  Tilley looked at him wearily. “You are through. I do not need or want to hear any more cross-examination from you. As to your argument, my poor brain is sodden with argument and bored with words. No, Mr. Peddigrew, please sit and remain silent like the gentleman I know you to be.”

  “This is an outrage!” Peddigrew’s voice cracked. Mitchell began to fear that the judge, in the pleasure he enjoyed at putting the lawyer down, might commit appealable error.

  “Now, my son, calm yourself,” said Tilley. “It is very unprofessional for a member of the bar to have a fit in court. You are not back in Toronto, where no doubt such things go on.”

  “I don’t believe this.” Peddigrew turned to the Crown counsel, who did not meet his eyes. “Can you believe this?”

  “Mister Prosecutor,” said the judge, “you have been generous with your silence. I suppose I am bound to call upon you, as a reward, for any submissions you have to make. Unlike your learned friend, you have not used your full quota of words.”

  “I leave the issue to you, Your Honor.”

  “Thank you for that excellent submission. Let us have the jury.”

  Peddigrew slumped to his seat, turning his head to the people in the back, as if seeking aid. “I have a right to be heard,” he said.

  And the jury was filing in. Mitchell relaxed.

  This was finally it, the culmination of the last and best chapter of Project Seawall. Eighteen months of watching, waiting, hiding, running back and forth between Toronto and St. John’s, between Washington and Miami and Bogotá, compiling a file on Kerrivan that was now four feet high.

  He remembered the tension when Kerrivan’s trawler was out on the high seas — no one knew exactly where — out on the great expanse of ocean. The police had almost blown it. Newfoundland was a smuggler’s paradise, with thousands of deserted bays and inlets, and Kerrivan seemed to know them all.

  Now, with the convictions, Mitchell could return to Toronto, mission accomplished, future paved. He was not afraid to admit to himself that he enjoyed the spotlight of success. There would be newspaper and television interviews, talk shows.

  Intruding annoyingly into Mitchell’s thoughts was a feeling of some distress. The judge was addressing the jury. Mitchell knew he should be listening. A part of him was refusing to listen, as if there were some barrier, a quarantine protecting him from the words of the judge. His mind seemed to be working selectively, censoring. But messages penetrated through . . .

  “. . . tactics you might wonder at . . . so lacking in fairness . . . those who purport to enforce our laws . . .”

  Then everything clarified with a cold, sudden brilliance. Judge Tilley was looking dead at him. And the words
came rushing to Mitchell’s ears, as if a dam had burst.

  “. . . that frankly I am embarrassed, embarrassed for Inspector Mitchell, since he does not seem embarrassed for himself. The blame rests at a high level in his case, for he is a senior officer of our federal police force. And he has involved himself in a flagrant intrusion upon individual rights.”

  Mitchell was wrenched into full attention.

  “The evidence convinces me that this officer undertook the studied and deliberate course of deceiving an accused person in order to elicit a confession. He offered a clear inducement to speak, an inducement which was inherent in the promise not to prosecute, and it renders the so-called confession inadmissible in any form. That being so, and there being no further evidence upon which you can reasonably connect the two accused with the cache of drugs, I am directing you to enter a verdict of Not Guilty with respect to each of these two men.”

  And Mitchell was staring hotly into the eyes of the judge, who smiled at him like a satisfied cat.

  The mouse, after all, had not been Peddigrew.

  “I make this further comment,” the judge continued. “The probity of a high officer of the RCMP is in question here, and I would expect that his conduct will be the subject of the most careful scrutiny by the minister of the Crown to whom he is ultimately responsible.”

  The muscles of Mitchell’s face had contracted like a white, balled fist.

  “Inspector Mitchell, you may now be excused from the witness stand. And Mr. Kerrivan and Mr. Kelly, you are free to go as well.” He paused. “But no credit to either of you. Had you been convicted, I would have given each of you fifteen years in the penitentiary.”

  The judge rose.

  The courtroom exploded.

  Chapter Three

  Johnny Nighthawk

  Testing. One, two, three, testing. Hello, this is the voice of Johnny Nighthawk, who is known as The Hawk. Testing.

  This is Tape One. I will mail you more cassettes as I complete them. Do not try to contact me, please. I mean no offense, but my meeting with you gave me the impression you are unskilled when it comes to such matters as the police. You might bring heat on me, especially if they know you are researching a book about Pete Kerrivan.

  If in the end you get it published: fine. I will be in touch with you and you can buy me a drink. I don’t want money. Just tell my end of it to the world. There are gaps in what I know, but you told me you have an excellent Deep Throat who has given you the cloak and dagger of it from the other side. The other side being the good guys. While I am with the bad guys. So to speak.

  I am, as I dictate, sitting on a wobble-leg chair in my cabana, watching a tropical sun melt into the Pacific. I am in a little village that the world has never heard of, in a little country that the world has happily forgotten. I have a cold beer in my hand. And that is all you need to know about me, a minor character.

  Pete Kerrivan is the major character. Pete Kerrivan, who treated me like a brother, not a Tonto. He had style and balls and luck. So much luck that Pete began to suffer delusions of his own invincibility.

  He enjoyed his own myth, and he liked to trade on it. He worked his ancestral legend, too, for Pete believed he carried in his chromosomes the seed of another Pete Kerrivan, the hero of the Masterless Men of Newfoundland two centuries ago. The original Kerrivan had led these press-ganged Irish boys to freedom in Newfoundland, and they lived like rebel-outlaws, raiding the rich, helping the poor, defying the muskets of Englishmen who tried to hunt them down.

  In the fishing villages of the southern shore of Newfoundland, the old uncles still recount the stories passed down to them about that bygone Pete Kerrivan. Just as I now recount the story of this twentieth-century reproduction, a somewhat flawed replica of the original, I must admit.

  Okay, let’s get started here. April the first last year — that’s a good date to start. April the first in St. John’s, Newfoundland, was a day as cold as a magistrate’s heart. It was one of those afternoons that cannot decide whether to snow, sleet, or slop. A “mausey” day, they would call it there.

  But it was one of the best days, too. It was the day that Pete Kerrivan and Kevin Kelly walked. When I say walked, I mean walked: out the front door of the old courthouse right onto the street and out of the arms of the horsemen, as they call the redcoats up in Canada.

  In court, this is the picture: I am standing up, and I am crying. I am not ashamed to admit it. At first, I am stunned. Then in a few seconds the whole wave and backwash drown me. What really does it to me is watching Kevin Kelly.

  Kelly is a little man with a fringe of long, red hair surrounding a bald top. We call him Friar Toke. He is sitting in the dock, like a swami, meditating, and he seems not to have heard the judge. He is just staring off into space.

  Now you have to understand that the courtroom is full of Kerrivan’s people. Not blood, but his family. (I am one of them by now, although I come from Oregon. Being an Indian I understand the concept of tribe.) And we are all smiling, laughing, hooting.

  Kelly stares back at us as if we are crazy. And then, as he catches on, he evokes a foolish smile as he looks for Merrie, his lady, and the two babies: Raja, a redhead just like him, and Estrella, which is Spanish for star. She had been born five months before, while her father was in the joint — in jail.

  Kelly gets up from the box and starts moving through the crowd, people grabbing at him, slapping him on the back. They open for him like the Red Sea, and then he is with Merrie, and he has little Estrella, and is touching her gently, her face, her little fingers that curl around his hair. This is the first time that he has ever held her. He is crying. And that is when I start crying, too.

  Very mellow drama.

  Pete Kerrivan, unlike Kelly and me, takes it all in stride. This is a moment of theater for the Errol Flynn of Bay D’Espoir, and he vaults with one hand out of the prisoner’s dock, blowing a good-bye kiss to the pretty court clerk, and plunges into the crowd.

  Pete Kerrivan. You have to know him.

  Let me describe him, first of all. You may have seen pictures; they do nothing. His hair is rough-cut auburn, his face lined with scars from the sea. He is six feet, not quite as tall as me, not built like me at all, not heavy around the chest. Your first impression is that he is lean as a flagpole, but he is made with long muscles as taut as wire stays. The only thing weak about him are his eyes, which are about as strong as a mole’s, and so he sees the world through plastic lenses in skinny metal frames. He has bad stigmatism, but the point is not how well he sees with his eyes, but what others see in them. Women, I refer to particularly. He has these gray eyes that can freeze, melt, and undress a girl all in, say, five or six seconds.

  If you are with a woman, don’t let Pete Kerrivan come within range. He doesn’t mean any harm, but he will innocently disrupt your relationship. Especially if you are like me, not handsome, and with a nose broken more than once.

  In court Pete Kerrivan is surrounded by three or four pretty groupies. I don’t think Pete even knows any of these girls. They are new, from the mainland, maybe secretaries with the oil companies, but they look like dope-smoking girls, and dope-smoking girls have all heard of Pete Kerrivan, and dope-smoking girls tend to be very romantic. In my limited experience. (My history is one of swinging at third strikes.) Anyway: Exit Pete Kerrivan from the courtroom, arms around two of the girls, through the big turret doors that go out onto the street.

  I am slow to leave the court, savoring the scene, quaffing it like draft beer in August. Almost everyone has gone now: judge, jury, most of the police. A few reporters are still there, talking to the lawyer, Mr. James Ramsay Peddigrew. I cannot hear the words Peddigrew is speaking to the reporters, but no doubt they are about himself.

  There is one other important person left in court, Inspector Mitchell. He is a stern, unsmiling man, not exactly a stand-up comic, and his head is as bare as a b
ullet. Ergo: The Bullet. That is how we know him. He is legend. A cross between Wyatt Earp and the High Sheriff of Nottingham. When we get stoned, we make anxious jokes about him coming to the door.

  Inspector Mitchell on that afternoon has the expression of one who’s discovered he’s been marching all day at the head of the Shriner’s Day parade with his fly open and his cock hanging out. He is still on the stand, with a sad, faraway look.

  One of the reporters, from the Telegram or somewhere, comes up to him with pencil and pad. Mitchell ignores him, steps down from the stand, and starts to walk away, past me. The reporter calls after him. “Sir, just a few words.”

  And Mitchell whirls around, and he shouts. I do not know if I have his voice right; it is heavy, the voice of a man used to giving orders.

  “All right, I have a comment! If this is justice, you can shove it up your ass. The law, the lawyers, the judges, you can shove the whole thing up your little red rosy.” Yep, that’s what he says. And he walks out.

  I say to the reporter, “You got that?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know if I can spell all them big words.”

  I run outside. I don’t want to miss any of this. Everyone is grouped around Peddigrew’s fat little XJ12 Series III Jaguar four-door sedan, except Peddigrew, who goes running after Mitchell. I can smell Peddigrew’s cologne as he runs past me, puts his hand on The Bullet’s shoulder, real friendly, and makes him stop. Mitchell turns around, cold, and the lawyer starts talking in this jerky, intense voice of his.

  “We’re professionals, Inspector,” he says. “I don’t like to lose; neither do you. You did a hell of a job, whatever the judge said.” And he goes on, blah, blah. Magnanimous in victory, I think is the expression. “I get paid for defending guys like this,” he says. “That doesn’t mean I like what they do, but I will give my personal guarantee that these boys are going straight from now on.”