The ferry to Garibaldi would not leave for several hours, so Arthur enjoyed a stroll to the old Gastown area, nexus between tidy, shiny uptown and the tourist no-go zone, the pocket of skid road known as the Downtown Eastside. In the eighties, he’d defected from his firm for several dismal years to run a practice for the poor here, defending losers and lushes while a loser and a lush himself. A time remembered patchily, scenes dimly returning of rowdy commotions in bars and restaurants, even courtrooms, the rest hidden behind an impenetrable fog of gin fumes and day-long hangovers.
Ah, but soon to be celebrated, those years of despair and cuckoldom, in A Thirst for Justice. He recoiled from thoughts of being stripped bare by his biographer with his probing, unanswerable questions. “But I want to hear about you, your feelings.” Unlovely images of his nakedness had been erupting in his dreams.
Gastown had been pimped up for the tourists several decades ago and hurriedly gentrified for the Winter Olympics, but retained a flavour of the past: cobbled streets and lanes, Blood Alley, Gaolers Mews, and that favourite of the pigeons, Gassy Jack’s statue, honouring the patron saint of West Coast drunks. Overlooking that statue was Arthur’s destination: a nineteenth-century brick building whose ground floor had till recently housed the Leap of Faith Prayer Centre, closed since its charismatic evangelist was arrested for bilking parishioners.
“Opening Soon,” said a sign posted on the door: “The War Room.” A martial arts training centre, a list of options ranging from karate and kick-boxing to “Commando Techniques” and “Disabling your Opponent.” Several husky men and women were inside studying floor plans. Mats piled against walls, materials for a ring, ropes, corner posts.
An anti-Bhashyistan poster was stuck to the window: “Bring ’Em On!” Arthur couldn’t tell if it was serious or a lampoon. Probably serious.
Entrance to the foyer and elevator was by a separate door bearing a shiny bronze plaque: “Macarthur, Brovak, Sage and Chance.” The feisty little criminal law firm had apparently disappeared its ex-senior partner, Brian Pomeroy, and added the biographer Wentworth Chance. Arthur was anxious to locate the former and avoid the latter.
In this preserved low-density neighbourhood, the firm’s third-floor offices claimed views of Maple Tree Square and Vancouver’s hustling deep-water port on Burrard Inlet. Beyond, the North Shore Mountains were already coned with snow.
The receptionist gave him a cheery welcome — Arthur was known here, had privileges; its lawyers had all worked with him. Max Macarthur III was in court, John Brovak with clients, Chance in the library, but Augustina Sage was in the coffee lounge staring morosely out the window. Still attractive in her forties, a cloudburst of curly black hair.
“Why so blue?”
She looked up, smiled. “You don’t have time to hear it, Arthur.”
Another love affair must have bottomed out. She went through men like a mower through weeds, a failed lifetime search for the sensitive male.
She bussed him. “All men are assholes. All but you.”
“You might benefit from a few rounds in the War Room, my dear.”
“That joint gives me goosebumps. A gym where psychopaths learn ways to kill. Just what we need in the neighbourhood.”
Some requisite chit-chat followed about the Bhashyistan crisis, the conspiracy theories, the government’s stunned, slow reaction.
“And that,” Arthur said, “brings me to Brian Pomeroy, hero of the Bhashyistani Democratic Revolutionary Front. Has he been ousted from the firm?”
“He ousted himself. That’s another depressing subject. Just up and quit the practice. He went bonkers last year, you know. Became a cocainiac when his marriage went kaput.”
Arthur knew all about it. Knew too much. He’d helped pick up the pieces, had to salvage a murder trial when Pomeroy fell apart in court and signed himself into a drug treatment centre.
“God only knows where he is. A cabin somewhere in the tundra of the Northwest Territories. He’s gone Indian. That’s not racist.” Not from her. She was Cree on her mother’s side. “He has a mail drop somewhere up there. I’ll try to find it.”
Arthur slipped behind the door as it opened. A high-pitched, excited voice. “Front desk says Mr. Beauchamp dropped by. Where did he get to?”
Augustina shrugged. “Search me.”
Wentworth scowled. “Damn, he promised to spend a few days with me.”
Arthur held his breath until the door closed again.
12
Abalmy ten Celsius on the last day of November on Garibaldi Island (ten below in Ottawa), the fields draped in mist, a splendid day for a jaunt to the General Store — a cherished routine: get the mail, buy groceries, catch up on island gossip, while away an hour of lazy afternoon.
From Blunder Bay to Potters Road to Centre Road, up the Breadloaf Hill hairpin, past the driveway to the handsome new community hall, and as one descends toward the flats a cinema-scopic view of scores of four-wheeled relics rusting in Stoney’s two acres. There was Arthur’s beloved 1969 Fargo, waiting in line outside the garage, waiting for the master mechanic to install the rebuilt transmission promised two months ago. From within that garage, the revving of an engine, an ugly spew of exhaust from a broken window. His helpmate, a stubby fellow known only as Dog, scrambled out, coughing.
Stoney claimed to be selling his crop for top dollar, and there was evidence of that in the yard, a boat trailer with a shiny twenty-foot cabin cruiser. As well, it was rumoured that he had bought a hot-air balloon from a mainland hobbyist. Arthur shuddered, almost uncontrollably, at the thought of going up in one of those things. With Stoney.
Next door, the Shewfelts, as usual, were rushing the season: Christmas elves had appeared on their lawn. They’d be garishly lit at dusk, a frightening sight to any tourists wandering by. Soon, Santa, Rudolph, Donner, Blitzen, and the rest of the herd would make their annual appearance upon their flat roof.
Arthur had pulled into Garibaldi late yesterday, in good cheer after his rescue of Zack Flett, looking forward to some repose at Blunder Bay. A few days, maybe, while a powwow was set up with Erzhan’s wife and landlord. He must engage with Brian Pomeroy too, who maintained a mail drop in Fort Malchance, a village in the Subarctic vastness, off the telephonic grid. Augustina Sage was trying to locate someone up there with a satellite phone, the mayor or chief or whoever was in charge.
Savannah Buckett, predictably, had been hosting a meeting when Arthur pulled in, lending her expertise to islanders opposing Starkers Cove, a condo development at the bottom of Norbert Road. That curling country byway was to be widened to highways standards, a waterfront acreage to be deforested. “When on Garibaldi, act locally,” she said. “Save Lower Mount Norbert Road,” said their stencilled signs.
Savannah had rewarded Arthur with a bone-crushing hug for freeing Zack, who’d called from Vancouver, where he was conferring with radical soldiers of protest in the inner city. He was off to the Kootenays next, taking on a larger role, organizing, speaking at rallies, seeking coalescence among eco-activists. Savannah seemed not to be pining for her mate — maybe she needed a break from their squabbles.
That night, while reading in bed, Arthur had been startled to see her enter his bedroom, in her pyjamas, looking confused. A sleepwalking episode. She’d confessed to bunking in his room after some chilly set-tos with Zack, so Arthur presumed she’d acted out of unconscious habit. After dazed hesitation, she’d reversed herself, descended to the main-floor bedroom.
He took a turn past the Bulbaconi vineyard, another failed enterprise by another hobby-farming dilettante, this year’s crop green and small and hard as pebbles. Another curve, and Hopeless Bay opened up, and he could see carpenters hoisting roof beams for Abraham Makepeace’s new tavern. The dour, skeletal postmaster-bootlegger was finally going legitimate.