The Long-Shot Trial, page 8
I pause on my way out to glance at the Island Bleat. Here is the leak, in the “News Nuggets” column: Word has it that retired mouthpiece A.R. Beauchamp has secretly lunched a new career as a famous mystery writer. Stoney is the likely leaker of this poorly edited exclusive.
* * *
I dare not take the transcripts to the house; Margaret will be appalled by their stink. So I follow a path through the forest to the cabin where “the Great Writer,” to use her snarky label, toils to chronicle the past.
My absorption in the art of the written word (as opposed to the spoken, at which I was famously adept) has triggered an obsessive state that Margaret finds annoying — the Great Writer is so focused on himself, past and present, that he’s neglecting his chores; his garden has become as weedy as his mind.
Not so weedy, however, to forget to immolate Taba’s postcard. Into the woodstove it goes, aflame. I don’t suppose any harm will be done emailing her a brief note wishing her a successful showing of her work. It would be the gentlemanly thing to do, and Margaret wouldn’t need to know.
Meanwhile, I haven’t found the courage to show Margaret my latest draft; I fear her sharply critical eye. She will not applaud my frank portrayal of gawky young Stretch, with his bumbling efforts to develop a rapport with his abused pregnant client. She will not admire this socially insecure oaf with his nascent drinking problem.
Why am I driven to expose in print my former self? Why am I reliving that daunting, fearsome trial from 1966? Am I merely seeking to correct the record, as sensationalized by Wentworth Chance in his revisionist history, “A Will to Die For”? Or is there a nobler, introspective purpose? A striving to acquaint myself with young Arthur, so that I may better know myself? Somehow, over the decades, I lost sight of this raw, anxious, yet ambitious twenty-nine-year-old. Only when I began to render you on the page, Stretch, did I begin to recognize you. And thus myself. This old man.
How I would love to be youthful you again. To start all over. Do it right, without the pain. Yet I am happy now. Am I not?
Enough.
The sour smell of mouse urine wafts from the box of transcripts, so I open it outside: five ring-bound volumes, legal size, double-spaced, some pages nibbled at the corners and margins, but otherwise intact.
Leafing casually through the pages, as I lay them out to air on the sunny deck, I sense memory cells reawakening, shedding light on scenes grown misty after fifty-six years. Defenceless will not lack for accuracy: every spoken word is in these five volumes, including my squabbles with the judge.
Also in the box, sealed in plastic, is a file folder with copies of exhibits, along with photos and various court documents and — a prize, unexpected — my own notes from 1966, my interviews and scribbled observations.
These will very quickly be put to use — young Arthur is about to get tipsy with, first, a folksy Fort Tom lawyer, and then a nervy, alluring prosecutor. I have a faded memory of the former, but will never forget the latter.
I settle into my desk chair, and roll another sheet into my typewriter. I spin back through the years to a blustery Friday in November 1966 . . .
1966 — Just Shake Your Head
It was just before noon, Angelina’s trial only three days away, and I was standing outside a storefront office at the corner of Second Avenue and Main, reading a gold-lettered window sign: Hogarth W. Johnson, Barrister, Solicitor, Notary Public. Conveyances, Mortgages, Contracts, Corporate, Wills and Estates. A Solicitor, a Generalist.
His secretary, a cherubic young woman with a shy smile, greeted me and called out: “Your lunch date is here, Hogey.” He hastened from an inner office: late sixties, lanky, with a Mark Twain moustache and a wide, gap-tooth grin.
“So you’re the young hotshot I been reading about in the paper. Welcome to the frozen north. I have a table at Rustlers, tenderest tenderloin west of the Prairies. You care for a wee dram of something first? It’s Friday.”
* * *
Hogey literally had a table at Rustlers — it was by the front window, a small plaque with his name fixed to it, honouring his four decades of dedicated service to the Rotary Club. Having got to know each other in his office over a tipple of Crown Royal, we got even chummier over our grilled T-bones.
He told a few picaresque tales about this cold, northern frontier, and I entertained with vignettes from my trials. He kept calling me “young fella,” making me feel I was eighteen.
“Never been comfortable with the criminal end of things,” he said, pausing for a hearty belch. “I had a friend called Thomas — I’m lucky to still call him a friend — got charged with bootlegging homemade hooch out of his taxi business. Number one most popular guy in town. Thanks to me, he went down for two months plus a hundred-dollar fine. That pretty well sums up my criminal law career.”
“But you did a brilliant piece of defence work last May twenty-ninth.”
He nodded, distracted, absorbed in the dessert menu. “What do you say, young fella, coffee with a shot of brandy?”
“Of course.”
“The chocolate sundae tempts.”
“As you said, Hogey, it’s Friday.”
So far, Angelina Santos hadn’t been much discussed, other than that Hogey knew her through Rotary-sponsored community work. He also indicated, unhappily, that a faction of townspeople — not just Trudd’s cronies — had doubts that he’d raped and impregnated her. Many disputed the well-travelled rumour that he’d performed an indecent act as she was naked in the shower.
Presumably, these Trudd loyalists preferred to believe that Angelina, to use an ignoble banality, had got herself in trouble. It disturbed me that some skeptics with sexist and racist views might find their way onto the jury.
After his dessert and our drinks arrived, Hogey opened up about his brief role as Angelina’s counsel. He recounted how Marsha Bigelow tore him away from his barbecue pit, causing him to abandon his spouse and their dinner guests. “I’d already had a brew or two, just to numb the shock — it was all over town: F.C. Trudd gunned down by a girl everyone thought was an angel.”
At the police station, he learned Angelina had blurted out that she’d shot Trudd. “Because he’d raped her, that was the reason she gave them. This was my first inkling it wasn’t accidental and could be first-degree murder. Well, young fella, that got me more than a little flummoxed.”
Hogey was let into her cell, where he found her calmly reading the Bible. “I was surprised by that, you’d think she’d be in shock and fear, or bawling her eyes out. Anyway, I made her promise to button up, and if the policemen ask any more questions, I said to her, just shake your head.”
As to the rape: “Well, she confirmed that, but I didn’t ask about the how and the why, just told her I’d see her in the morning, and that’s about it, because I had to get back to my guests. On my way out I told Sergeant Trasov she ain’t gonna say anything without a lawyer present, and I guess that worked.”
“Shrewdly done. And you appeared for her Monday?”
“Just to ask the magistrate to remand her a week, so Marsha and Etienne could rustle up some moolah to hire her a real lawyer.”
“You mustn’t denigrate yourself, Hogey. You were Johnny-on-the-spot, very professional job.” I was priming his pump because I wanted more out of him. This popular practitioner had to know many tales about F.C. Trudd.
“I understand you also got a doctor to look at her right away. On a Sunday. That was quick work.”
He beamed. “Did what I could. I had them take her to Jim Mulligan’s clinic. Jim specializes in obstetrics and other ladies’ issues.”
That physician’s testimony at the preliminary had been less than helpful. Though Pappas pressed him hard, Dr. Mulligan claimed “the usual physical indicia of rape” were lacking. More worrisome, he had declined my overtures to meet with him pre-trial.
The Prince George prison doctor who later examined Angelina was more congenial and had just mailed me her report. Dr. Royce had observed genital bruising and other physical trauma that were “typically suffered by victims of forceful penetration.” She was also of the view that Angelina had suffered a “partial but significant amnesia” for particulars of the sexual assault.
Hogey was showing signs of being ready for an afternoon nap. When he struggled to wrestle his wallet from his pants, I got the jump on him, gave the waiter a twenty, told him to bring two more caffeinated brandies for the road, and keep the change. I wasn’t through with my lanky learned friend.
“As the premier solicitor in these northlands, I would imagine you did some work for F.C. Trudd?”
He took a moment, suddenly reluctant. “Well, I guess I did odd jobs here and there for Fred — small stuff, business licences, rental agreements. Mostly, I notarized deeds from his corporate lawyers in Vancouver.”
“By the way, what exactly was he doing in Pouce Coupe that weekend?”
“Some kind of screwed-up mediation thing with the Tribal Council. A land dispute. I heard tempers got pretty raw, Chief Sayaga got pissed off, and apparently Johnny Blue took a swipe at Trudd.” He caught himself. “Well, I better not say what I heard, it came from a client. The Wolf River Band has a pretty good gripe, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Who is Johnny Blue?”
“Ah, that would be the chief’s nephew . . . Actually, all I heard was rumours.”
Why the equivocation, I wondered, why the secrecy? Hub Meyerson had connections, and was on it. “Anyway, back to your odd jobs — did Mr. Trudd ever ask you to draft a will for him?”
Sudden silence. The pained look betrayed a struggle to come up with a credible evasion. “Well, that would normally be something his Vancouver lawyers would do.” Pausing. “Now it seems to me, young fella, this gets into the, ah, tricky area of privilege.”
“Of course, and I don’t mean to pry, but I can’t imagine that he died intestate. Not with such a substantial estate. Millions of dollars.”
Hogey swirled his brandy, buying time, maybe having a problem restraining an alcohol-loosened tongue, maybe wondering how much he could trust me. I was a bit tiddled myself, and I left my brandy untouched.
“Okay, he had a will as of when his last wife divorced him. I had a hand in that. The will, I mean, not the divorce — he had the province’s top divorce lawyer for that, Neil Fleishman.”
“And who were the beneficiaries of that will?”
“Well, the wife, of course, his sisters and their offspring — he never had kids of his own. The local veterinarian, Dr. Muggins, was well rewarded — he’d patched together one of Fred’s little gals, Fluffy, who got mangled by a fox. Also some good causes, SPCA, Ducks Unlimited, local Chamber of Commerce, Gun Club. The divorce was three years ago, and of course a divorce revokes any gifts to an ex-spouse.”
I vaguely remembered that from law school. The remaining clauses of the will would survive intact, doubtless to the benefit of Trudd’s sisters.
“Fred did pretty good on the alimony, on account of she deserted him. Anyway, I don’t think he ever got around to updating his will, and, ah, his estate is still kind of languishing in probate. Too complicated for me, his big-time lawyers are handling it.”
I apologized for my drilling, and we became chums again. He offered the facilities of his law office for phone calls and meetings. He proposed that I come over for a home-cooked dinner during the trial — his wife would love my stories about defending the mob. I said I’d get back to him on that.
I helped him into his coat and held the door to let him out into the frigid, windy day. “When I retire,” he said, “it’s gonna be in a cottage under the palms where the sun always shines.”
I wasn’t ready to brave the weather, and took my brandy — barely sipped — to the long, wooden bar, and started scribbling an aide-memoire of our conversation.
Hogey’s quibbling had my antennae wiggling — it hadn’t struck me till then that Trudd’s will might factor into the case. Why had the jovial Rotarian been so vague about the status of Trudd’s estate? I assumed he was too polite to say it was none of my business.
I was suddenly aware of a presence on my immediate right. Oddly perfumed, something herbal. Or maybe it was the cigarette she was smoking. As my eyeballs swivelled to the right, they recorded a denim jacket decorated with a peace symbol, open to a well-filled-out work shirt.
“I’ll have what he’s having.” The contralto voice seemed oddly husky from someone so young. I turned to her, took in a profile of fuchsia lips, a thin, plumb-straight nose, and round, metal-framed John Lennon glasses hooked over an ear from which dangled a silver earring that spelled “FREE.” All topped by a tousled auburn mop. Suitable for San Francisco’s Haight Street or Vancouver’s Fourth Avenue. In Fort Tom, it seemed an improbable fashion statement.
When she turned to me, I decided that despite her showiness she was, if not a great beauty, quite striking with her dark, wise eyes and wide, confident smile. “I don’t mean to interrupt your diarizing, Arthur, but I thought we should meet.”
She reached into a cluttered handbag. The card she produced read “CLARA MONCRIEF, MA, LLB., CROWN COUNSEL.”
Eddie Santorini’s advance guard had arrived from Vancouver.
* * *
Clara and I got along rather well over our two rounds of Irish coffees. She was twenty-five, two years out of law school, and liberated (as one said in the sixties) from false values. I was afraid to ask her what was in her odd-smelling cigarettes — surely she wasn’t brazen enough to openly smoke marijuana, an indictable offence in the 1960s. Herbal, I learned, when she apologized for the odour — she was trying to kick nicotine.
When she caught me trying to X-ray through her tight shirt, she boldly let me know she had just checked in to a corner room on the sixth floor of the Fort Hotel. “With entrancing views of downtown Fort Thompson,” she added, with a deadpan look that made me smile.
She had “boned up” on me, by which I assumed she meant my track record as counsel. She recalled chuckling over Jack Wasserman’s item in the Vancouver Sun: “A crackerjack young shark with a growing rep, and not just in the courtroom.” And of course she was one of the boundless masses of West Coast lawyers who’d heard about my alleged bacchanal with two women of the night.
I had given up trying to refute this rumour mongering — why spoil everyone’s fun? — and in response to Clara’s teasing inquiries I merely shrugged helplessly and changed the subject to my nightmare odyssey by bus, a tale that prompted her to apologize for laughing.
In contrast, Clara’s trip had been, as she put it, “a trip”: a commercial flight to Prince George, then by RCMP Twin Otter to Fort Tom — along with the Crown’s ID team and two detectives. They’d taken over the ten-room Alaska Highway Motel, near the airport, and she was to spend the weekend rehearsing them for their supporting roles in court. Lead counsel Eddie Santorini wouldn’t be arriving until late Sunday.
I was eager to talk with their ballistics expert. Clara was fine with that as long as she was present. I would be welcome to join her and the Ident officers at the crime scene on Saturday morning at ten.
Clara confessed she’d signed on with the Crown as a short-term lark, so this feminist liberal was doubtless stewing over having to prosecute a pregnant rape victim who’d rubbed out a drunken, sexist, capitalist pig. A clever counsel would encourage such doubts, perhaps bring the doubter onside.
I was glad to be able to focus on business instead of the attractions of this upfront, unreserved woman. I was as much flustered as tempted by her implied offer to check out the views from her corner room. I had serious misgivings about the proprieties, ethics, and wisdom of a defence counsel becoming too friendly with a female Crown counsel in advance of a capital murder trial.
Also, she made me nervous. That reaction was not unusual whenever I found myself in close company of confident, attractive women. I was unsure of the rules of conduct. And Clara was especially forward, offbeat, intriguing — and therefore all the more dangerous. Especially because I was more than a little tipsy. Too often, during my young life, I had drunkenly wandered off the track into the uninhibited zone.
I walked her to the hotel, just a block away, and even stepped into the lobby for a reprieve from the cold. A busy cocktail lounge beckoned, with its roaring, log-filled fireplace, but I wasn’t keen on being pulled over for impaired driving.
“Want to come up?”
“I . . . I don’t think so. I mean, I would normally, but, ah, I have to sober up a bit. I’m meeting some friends to go over the jury list.”
“Sure, I’ll see you tomorrow at ten. Good luck with Miss Santos. Luck might not be enough. Maybe a miracle.”
“Victurus te saluto.”
“Means?”
“‘He who is about to win salutes you.’” A boastful parting shot, which I regretted. I guess I needed to display confidence in my client’s innocence.
1966 — The Shit End of the Stick
I felt weary, and headed back to the Harrises’ resort for a late afternoon nap. I had slept poorly for the last three nights, and needed a few hours to sober up and rest the brain so I could be reasonably sentient that evening. Buck and Lorraine had invited Etienne and Marsha Bigelow for dinner, and we planned to review the forty-four names of those subpoenaed for jury duty.
When I arrived, Lorraine was in the cabin, firing up the woodstove. She had also vacuumed, made my bed, and laundered my clothes — she was like the mother I wished I’d known. I voiced a vigorous protest against her generosity and kindness, but she scoffed. It was no trouble. Ten members of a Montana hunting club were arriving on the weekend: that was trouble.
