“Eric Schultz wants to talk to you.”
The turncoat Tory. Arthur doubted he was a good influence on Margaret; he played by the old rules.
“Ah, Eric, how goes the campaign?”
“Tight, very tight. NDP’s done, but we’re still a few points behind O’Malley. Problem is we’ve got three parties courting the environmental vote, and O’Malley’s cornered the rest, the global warming deniers. Outspending us ten to one.”
“Dalgleish Ebbe popped into court today.”
“Still sore about being passed over for Whynet-Moir, hopes you’ll be his instrument of vengeance, that’s my take. Might be an idea to talk to him; he and Whynet-Moir were in law school together, he may be able to confirm rumours Raffy had a few same-sex dalliances in his college days.”
“How would that be relevant?” Arthur wanted to say he’d left his shovel on the farm.
“Just a thought. Not here to tell you how to run your trial, but we could bridge the gap if you keep hammering away at the payola issue. Polling tells us it’s a growing factor. The latest: a reliable blog with Ottawa sources says an audit of Jack Boynton’s books will show he and Whynet-Moir were up to their eyeballs. Rumours of a numbered account in the Bahamas.”
Arthur wondered if some crafty campaigner was feeding the blogs with that sort of tattle. This brave new form of communication had potential for villainy. “I’d hesitate at this point, Eric, to make accusations based on rumours. It would be a terrible thing if we’re proven wrong.”
“Of course. I understand. Tricky business, politics. Mind you, one can’t defame the dead, and you’re in a libel-proof venue anyway. Not saying something you don’t know. Wouldn’t dream of suggesting anything against your client’s best interests. Getting Brown acquitted, that’s the main thing, it’ll go a long way to muzzle O’Malley and his insinuations. Best of luck, Arthur.”
Arthur couldn’t get rid of a sour taste as he slid the phone into his pocket.
“Here’s a scurrilous election ad.” The Goatee, at his laptop. “Calls our man a dirty rotten chicken plucker.”
“They’ll stop at nothing.”
Arthur went to bed early, but a bout of indigestion made for a night of phantoms. Dreams fuelled by his distaste for politics. A mini-nightmare in which a man dressed as a chicken asked him to accept a judgeship. And this truth-based oddity: he was cross-examining Astrid Leich, with Kroop running his usual interference-but it was a film set, cameras on cranes and dollies, and he was an actor playing a lawyer. On the director’s stool, with a clipboard, was Brian Pomeroy. The dream awoke him.
His fretful night stayed with him as he read a newspaper piece about those chicken plucker e-mails from some renegade geek. Though they carried no virus, they’d riled computer users. The Green Party had denounced their author but was still getting the blunt of the blame, accused of sleaze, of being anti-business.
He perked up over coffee with Wentworth in his firm’s lounge, with its lovely view of the North Shore’s snowy peaks-a brighter space than Pomeroy’s office, with its patrolling pigeons and views of junkies, bums, and tourists.
Arthur was a little confounded to learn Naught had met his end not by mischance but by a relatively polite form of homicide, a push into the drink by a faceless nondescript in, unusually, suspenders. Arthur himself was an aficionado of braces, as he preferred to call them, and typically so was Cudworth Brown. Not that he otherwise fit Ms. Lefleur’s description-Arthur couldn’t conjure an image of the proletarian poet in dress shirt and tie.
“That wasn’t a gun flash Ms. Lefleur saw?”
“She didn’t hear any noise. My guess is a camera. Um, I hope you won’t think this is way too bizarre, but I’m going to nominate another candidate for bad guy. Charles Loobie.”
Arthur didn’t scoff as Wentworth made his case, in fact was piqued at the hypothesis that the sleaze-seeking scribe had been lurking around the False Creek docks. Indeed, there was something almost compelling about throwing into the mix a fellow who insisted on calling him Artie. All those efforts at misdirection, putting them off the scent. His unfounded speculations about Naught: Maybe he had some corrupt dealings with Whynet-Moir…maybe Raffy personally rubbed him out.
In support of his case, Wentworth cited Loobie’s presence at the press table as Ruby Morgan and his cohorts were sent up the river-seven hours before the judge sank like a stone into the saltchuck. Add to that: Loobie knew Naught was being investigated for frequenting, as Loobie put it, “high-end pros like Minette Lefleur.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in suspenders, though,” Wentworth said.
“I’m almost sure I have.” Loobie was wearing a belt these days, but Arthur dug into memory and came up with an old snapshot of the pot-bellied reporter snapping his braces in the El Beau Room, a parody of Arthur beginning cross-examination.
A murder motive seemed entirely lacking, but according to Ms. Lefleur, there’d been a brief shoving match. Homicide without intent may not be murder, even in second degree, but could well attract a manslaughter conviction.
It seemed a long leap to connect Loobie with Whynet-Moir’s murder, but they speculated awhile about the possibility. A judge about whom floated rumours of corruption, newly married to a woman of wild reputation, a poet with a similarly loose history invited to a staid gathering-these were the spicy ingredients that might entice this maestro of yellow journalism to sneak onto private property. A confrontation, a push, presto.
Arthur put the matter to rest for now, asked about the late justice minister, whether Wentworth had found any skeletons in Boynton’s closet.
“It’s pretty bad.”
“How bad?”
“Twenty years happily married, adopted three refugee orphans, active in legal programs for the poor…”
“My God.”
“There’s worse: various charities, Christian Aid Society, the Darfur Hope Mission, honorary chair of the Children’s Literacy Foundation…”
“Enough!” Surely the ex-justice minister could not be such an unblemished saint. Maybe Wentworth hadn’t got past the protective layers of political boosterism.
On the desk, freshly couriered, was a recorded disk of Astrid Leich’s 911 call. Wentworth slipped it into his computer.
“Hello, 911, hello, are you 911? I just saw a horrible thing, terrible, terrible, I think I’ve just witnessed a cold-blooded murder!” Dramatic, yet not histrionic. The call came in at 3:11 a.m., according to the transcript.
There followed a quick question period: name, address, identity of victim, where, when, how. “Do not hang up, one moment.” A pause for a relay to police dispatch. Then:
“He was standing on a chair in a dressing gown, and he was…he was…oh, it was horrible…awful!”
“Please be calm, Ms. Leich. Police are on their way. Are you talking about your neighbour?”
“Yes, Rafael…he’s a judge. A judge! Another judge has been murdered, oh, my heart, and I’m the only witness!”
“Have you locked your doors?”
“Yes, but I’m terribly frightened.”
“The police will be there within seconds. Now tell me again what you saw.”
“A man came over and pushed him right over the railing of his deck, just like that. And I heard him scream, and…and then there was a crunch and then just silence, and I don’t know where the man went, he disappeared somewhere.”
Arthur wasn’t blind to her talent as a stage performer. Yet this frantic account of death cry and crunching bones seemed natural, unrehearsed. No hint of inebriation, no mental confusion, no dissembling. When asked if she might recognize him again, she said, “I believe I would, yes, I believe I would.” A troubling eagerness.