Sing a Worried Song Page 7

  “I’d like to say I did it out of a sense of duty, Mr. Beauchamp. But I was freaking about getting implicated.”

  “Your name didn’t come out, but it might have.”

  “It wasn’t just about saving my ass, as Mr. Harrison obviously thinks.”

  “You’ll have to forgive him, Laurence. Old bull, breaks a lot of china.”

  That got a smile. Arthur lit his pipe, the smoke drifting straight up in the still air. The sun winked out behind the island hills, and lights winked on below. Wyacki tapped out another cigarette.

  “I hope you managed to finish your exams.”

  “I just have two papers to write. No sweat.”

  They talked for a while about law school — he was a scholarship student — about his career plans: civil rights, maybe some counsel work. Arthur commended him for that, talked of his own early career working pro bono for the poor. He didn’t have to play at being avuncular. It came naturally.

  “Laurence, would you mind doing another run-through? You were in Vancouver last summer for Expo. How did that come about?”

  “Well, my parents bought me a ticket. I was going to come with my boyfriend, but we’d had a squabble over something … not important, delete. And I was in a kind of third-rate hotel, it’s all I could afford. I had about a week, did the tourist whirl, around the park, up the mountains, a harbour cruise, and three nights of Expo concerts, did the whole extravaganza.”

  Arthur tamped his pipe, and they went inside to escape a sudden night chill. Wyacki kept talking, pacing the while. “Saturday night — it was my last night, a lovely night. I guess it was pretty late, around midnight, and I had a flight in the morning — and frankly I was lonely, and, uh, I’m walking around Gastown, and the bars are all open, full of happy people, and I don’t know what got into me — I don’t do that sort of thing — but anyway, there was this guy coming toward me, giving me a long look, and he said he was sure he’d seen me on the fairgrounds, and … I gave him a cigarette. We talked. I’m from Detroit. He’s from Ontario. Isn’t this a great town? How’d you like Expo? That sort of thing.”

  And they ended up in that third-rate hotel, not getting much sleep from midnight to seven a.m., when Wyacki had to check out and catch his airport bus.

  “We exchanged phone numbers. I kept his.” Wyacki had given it to the detectives. “I don’t know why. I liked him. We had great sex. It was a holiday romance sort of thing.”

  “But he didn’t call you.”

  “No, and I didn’t call him. I knew his situation. The officer training thing. The super-straight parents. He poured it all out — I had the impression he’d never opened up like that with anyone, it was like a catharsis. I was totally uncomfortable about maintaining contact with him, given his circumstances. It all looked pretty gruesome to me, and anyway I had something else going.”

  §

  “Well, gentlemen,” Arthur said, “I guess that rules out Manfred as the perp.” A comment that was met with silence from the front seat of the cruiser.

  Nordquist, at the wheel, clicked his seatbelt on, but Honcho let go of his and craned around — an effort for the bull-necked cop — to frown at Arthur. “Nobody told me we were thinking along those lines,” he said.

  “A wild speculation,” Arthur said, embarrassed that he’d mentioned it. “But what does Mr. Wyacki add to the case but embroidery? We’ve already proved Unger is an unremittingly bad liar.” Arthur was anxious not to expose the law student to the clamour and notoriety he would endure by testifying.

  “Bones and me think this is a situation that calls for a little killer instinct, Arthur.” Honcho was clearly frustrated by what he saw as Arthur’s limp prosecutorial instinct. “What we got fucking us around on the witness stand right now is a highly closeted homosexual, so the way we’re thinking, we use the kid as a jimmy.”

  “A jimmy?” Arthur said.

  “A lever,” Nordquist said. He was driving Arthur home, up Beach Avenue, by English Bay, grey and sombre in the late twilight.

  “A lever,” Arthur repeated, finally awake to the possibilities, aware that he hadn’t been thinking like a prosecutor, or a cop. Manfred Unger with his super-straight parents watching from their third-row seats. His entire world imploding, the world he’d struggled so hard to adjust to, the rugby team’s locker room, the halls and dorms of RMC. His army career shattered in disgrace. That doesn’t have to be, they would tell him, if he cooperated, told the truth. Laurence Wyacki wouldn’t have to testify; he could be put on the next plane home.

  “Manfred may need to consult counsel,” Arthur said.

  Honcho groaned. “We’re supposed to hire him a mouthpiece? Maybe we could wait until he asks for one. Arthur, you got to stop stewing over all the little wrongs and rights. We got a savage murderer on the loose here. He’s a piece of shit, he deserves a lifetime bounce — you told us that yourself.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  §

  Before going off to a sleepover at a girlfriend’s, Deborah had confided to Arthur that she wanted to escape her mother’s loud friends and their “obnoxious tittle-tattling.” Arthur retreated too, early, to his bedroom, to a small lamp-lit desk, while Annabelle shared wine and gossip in the front room with a costume designer and an aging, foul-mouthed contralto.

  Their laughter kept intruding on his strategizing for Operation Wyacki. In broad outline, it involved acquainting Manfred Unger with the new situation and offering to recall him to the stand on the promise that he would not be outed or face perjury charges. Unger could then apologize sorrowfully to the jury and claim he’d only been trying to help out his long-time buddy.

  But there was a slight technical problem: Unger remained under Horowitz’s diktat not to discuss the case with anyone while under cross, including counsel. To be enabled to speak with him, Arthur would have to abort his cross-examination as the first item of business on Monday.

  Freshly showered and in his bathrobe, he was drafting his pitch to Unger. He would keep Wyacki nearby, in case he was needed as graphic proof.

  Again, Arthur was distracted by a peal of laughter from downstairs. They were talking about men, of course, and their multitudinous excesses and deficiencies. Arthur had overheard a partial anecdote while sneaking into the kitchen for a slice of their pizza. Something about a lewd basso taking liberties with a contralto.

  An ethics issue was bothering Arthur. Was he bound to alert the defence to the surprise witness? But then it wouldn’t be a surprise, would it? Why should the Crown be handicapped by giving away every little secret to the enemy, allowing them to repair breached defences?

  At any rate, Randy Skyler ought not to be entitled to any disclosure that rendered the Crown more naked than transparent. Even his parents — notably absent from this trial — seemed to doubt him. According to a memo from Toronto police, the Skylers were troubled that their son hadn’t testified at his first trial, that he hadn’t proclaimed his innocence on oath.

  Other useful reports were just coming in from the Ontario police. A retired Toronto high school principal remembered Skyler as “slick and quick” and Unger as his loyal sidekick. Skyler’s former girlfriends were being sought out.

  “In your efforts at normal sexual conjoining,” the inspector declaimed at no one in particular, “you were impotent, sir.” Arthur had begun to wonder whether he’d trapped himself in a false paradigm. Maybe Skyler’s problem was not satyriasis. Maybe the opposite.

  Randy, randy, Randolph. Had those taunters been mocking his ineffectiveness?

  Sounds of partying below became sounds of parting, and from his window Arthur watched a taxi bear away Annabelle’s guests. Moments later, she came into the bedroom, and began undressing, laughing to herself, tipsy. “Did we disturb you, darling?” From behind, she slipped his robe from his shoulders, kneaded them. She smelled of gin, vermouth, and lemon slices, prompting a swell
of double-barrelled desire: alcohol and sex.

  He tried to clear his throat. “Not at all.”

  “Can I disturb you now?” Her hands slid down his chest, his abdomen, the robe falling loose around him. Her tongue tickled his ear, and when he swivelled to meet her mouth, he was engulfed by the hot taste of gin. Her fingers circled his stiffening member, teasing it into a rare, glorious, rampant erection.

  “What a lovely surprise, Arthur.”

  She lowered her head, nuzzled his genitals, then drew his cock into her mouth, bringing him arching from his seat.

  MONDAY MORNING

  “You seem in oddly high spirits,” Jack Boynton said as Arthur jauntily slung his briefcase onto the counsel table.

  “Feeling in the pink.”

  “I don’t quite share that rosy feeling.”

  “I’d be surprised if you did.”

  A puzzled frown. “It’s my view that though we may be better armed now, with Mr. Wyacki, we haven’t convicted anyone yet, and there is no guarantee we will.”

  “I suggest we keep Wyacki in our pocket for now.” A peek at defence table, where Pomeroy and Mandy were conferring, readying themselves for Arthur’s continuing dissection of Unger.

  “We’ll have to disclose to them, of course,” Boynton said.

  “I think not. One only discloses witnesses one expects to call. Wyacki is just a lure, to get Manfred to open up. We have the weapons to turn him around.” The note on which he’d left his phone number for Wyacki, his outpouring in their shared bed about his straight parents and the complex masquerade of his closeted life.

  Boynton looked shocked. “Arthur, not six months ago, the Appeal Court reversed a conviction for lack of disclosure of a material witness.”

  The public galleries were filling. The sheriff called: “Ready, Mr. Beauchamp?” He was eager to fetch the jury.

  “A few minutes please.” Arthur felt he needed to settle Boynton down — he looked rattled.

  “Why is Wyacki material? He merely slept with a witness. He had nothing to do with Skyler.” Arthur realized he was getting loud, toned it down. “There’s no reason to expose him to the public glare.”

  “I presume, then, you will start the day by dealing Unger a final crushing blow.”

  “I shall be suspending my cross so we can talk to the fellow.”

  “Arthur, I hate to say, but it seems a very risky gamble to cut your cross short.”

  “Jack, trust me.” He called: “Bring in the jury, Mr. Sheriff.”

  Skyler stepped briskly into the dock, resuming his pose of earnest innocence. He’d been watched all weekend, covertly, and had spent much of it in a track suit keeping fit: two complete circuits of the Stanley Park Seawall, swimming, lifting weights in a gym. A long Saturday session in Mandy Pearl’s office.

  Unger was already on the witness chair, looking wan and depressed. His parents were a few rows behind him, his father perched stiffly, at a slight angle, his mother with the dulled look of the sedated.

  The jurors looked refreshed from their weekend leave, as did Justice Horowitz, who entered on the dot of ten, alert and businesslike. “Proceed, Mr. Prosecutor.”

  “M’lord, I have concluded my examination of Mr. Unger, subject to one issue we’d like to canvass with him, and to that end I ask the indulgence of the court for a recess.”

  Pomeroy may have been daydreaming, or at best fixated on Juror Number Twelve, the pretty store clerk, who was showing alarming signs of developing a crush on him. But Arthur’s words finally registered, and he rose to express puzzlement, then astonishment, and, finally, outrage at what he described as Arthur’s effrontery.

  “This is unheard of. He’s either closed his examination or he hasn’t. He isn’t entitled to sit down again with his witness, and help him out of his fuddle, then plunk him back on the stand with his memory conveniently refreshed. How dare he plead something as ambiguous as ‘an issue we’d like to canvass with him.’ I’m ready to go. This witness is under cross-examination, and unless I was suffering an auditory delusion, I heard Your Lordship distinctly forbid him from talking to anyone, including counsel …”

  Arthur interjected, trying to make the best of a plan gone wrong. “Okay, he’s no longer under cross-examination. I am concluding my cross-examination.”

  Pomeroy whirled to the witness. “Mr. Unger, do you understand that you are still under oath?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He’s under cross-examination now,” Pomeroy announced.

  Horowitz sat through this with the majestic serenity of a ship’s captain waiting for the squall to pass. Finally, he asked: “Is this your final witness, Mr. Beauchamp?”

  Arthur wasn’t prepared for that question. “I … as of this moment, he is.”

  The judge looked oddly at Arthur, who, unaccustomed to his role, had forgotten that prosecutors were rarely given the leeway extended to defenders, especially in Horowitz’s court. “After Mr. Pomeroy concludes his cross-examination, Mr. Beauchamp, you can decide if your case is closed.”

  Arthur assessed the implications. A full frontal assault by Pomeroy could bury Unger so deeply in his lies that he might balk at backtracking. Arthur might then be forced to put Wyacki into the mix. He finally sat, gritting his teeth in anticipation of an I-told-you-so from Boynton — who had the decency to hold off.

  While Arthur flagellated himself for his miscalculation, Pomeroy began his cross by being excruciatingly helpful to the witness. “You were fuzzy with sleep when Randy woke you that morning.” “Randy was so animated, talking so quickly, that you simply misheard much of what he was saying.” “You’d gone to bed reading a murder mystery and woke up with that plot spinning in your head.” “You had trouble assimilating fact and fiction.”

  Statements, not questions, but to each Unger responded with a quiet and obedient yes.

  “And you were stoned on marijuana when the police fired all those questions at you, and you gave an account that you felt obliged to repeat at the trial last December.” “And on reconsideration you realized you’d wronged Randy terribly, and you have shown up here out of a sincere duty to set the matter straight.”

  “That’s right, sir.” Or, “That’s what happened, sir.” Unger seemed to grow more composed under this pampering, returning Pomeroy’s kindness by declining to reprimand him for calling Randolph “Randy.” Occasionally he glanced at Arthur, as if wondering why he’d been spared a further trouncing.

  Pomeroy sifted through his notes. “I’m not sure if you told us how Randy met the deceased.”

  Unger hadn’t, and now repeated, almost word for word, his testimony of December: “He told me he bumped into him while he was looking for a strip club and Mr. Chumpy offered to show him the best stripper bar in town. He was an interesting character, a kind of professional clown, so Randolph accepted his offer to have a beer at his place.”

  “You never saw him with Chumpy?”

  “No, sir, I’d gone straight back to our hotel.”

  A nudge from Boynton, in case Arthur had missed that palpable falsehood.

  Having bandaged Unger’s credibility as best he could, Pomeroy focussed on the core of the defence case, the third-man theme — Chumpy’s occasional visitor, whom Jimmy Gillies had so helpfully and explicitly described.

  Pomeroy embellished the scenario. “You got the impression, as I understand, that this tough-looking fellow in a toque burst into Mr. Chumpy’s room.” Unger agreed. “And from what Randy said, you assumed this man had a close relationship with Chumpy.” “That he was his boyfriend, in fact.” “And that’s why Randy got the heck out of there when the man erupted in a jealous rage.” “Which is why Randy told you he could have got someone killed.”

  Yes, sir. Exactly, sir.

  Arthur couldn’t find the energy to object, to stand and fight; he was being beaten into submission by this
blatant puppeteering. So he sat back with a wry smile, pretending to be amused.

  Pomeroy finally consulted with Mandy, a sign he was out of ammunition. For the first time in his seven hours of testifying, Unger glanced at his parents — a glimpse, no more, at the frowning colonel with his bad back and the decent, upright lady who ran the children’s program at the Gagetown Presbyterian Church.

  “No more questions.” Pomeroy sat, obviously pleased with his morning’s work. The jealous, swarthy boyfriend was his reasonable doubt, and his glib client would be well-rehearsed to enhance it.

  “Any questions in redirect?” Horowitz asked Arthur.

  Arthur was still focussed on Unger, who had suddenly gone open-mouthed, a jolting expression of shock, which he tried to blink away as if it were a dream. He was staring at the back of the court, at the slender, sandy-haired young man who had just entered. And who nodded to him familiarly as he took a seat.

  “Any redirect, Mr. Beauchamp?”

  Arthur leaned to Boynton. “Get Wyacki out of here.” To the court: “No, sorry, My Lord, I was distracted.”

  “The witness is excused for now. Mr. Sheriff, you may take the jury for an early lunch. I’d like to see counsel in my chambers.”

  The gallery emptied, led by Boynton towing Wyacki. Unger stepped zombie-like from the stand, watching them, then passed within inches of his parents without seeming to notice them, though his mother reached out to touch his arm.

  Pomeroy had been too busy receiving kudos from his junior to notice either Unger’s startled look or Wyacki being escorted out by Boynton, in his obvious role as guest of the Crown. He descended on Arthur, bumptious, jovial. “Horowitz is going to tell you to close your case and quit dicking around. Shit or get off the pot.”