Leper Tango (11 page)

W hile flipping through the classifieds of the
San
Francisco Chronicle
, I spotted an ad about a university in
Montreal with a law faculty, who accepted just about anyone who could speak basic French and hadn't been convicted of felonies. Law school couldn't be any worse than factory work. I'd at least figured out that, if you didn't have the guts for crime or the inclination to slave your life away for a medal and a pat on the back, it was important to get your paperwork in order, before someone else did it for you. I quit my job the next day, collected two weeks' severance, and returned to the cold country. I found a cheap walk-up on the Main located just beneath Cleopatra's, next door to Fong's Saigon Success.

I hadn't seen Richard in five years. Mother had arranged to have him placed in an asylum in Upstate New York under a nineteenth centur y “ward of the State” provision no one but her thousand dollar an hour attorney had ever heard of. After his release, he became a drifter, and more or less fell off the map for a while, then recontacted me, saying he'd found employment as a bus driver. I fell into a routine of sending a case a month off to Richard at a post office box address in Albany. They were a coded conversation between Richard and myself. One of our favourite Hall of Fame precedents was
Re
gina vs. Zont
, [1977] C.C.C. 2d 351, a murder case involving an 18 year old chess grandmaster with severe eczema who had stabbed his mother to death for trashing his onyx set of chessmen, then sliced off her ears and sold them to a wholesaler named Zont who specialized in Cambodian remedies and placebos. Zont claimed he was nothing more than a middleman, that the appendages were unrecognizable, as they had been brought to him inside two glass milk bottles filled with formaldehyde, labelled “Eustachian tubes.” The charge was possession of stolen property, a tough rap to beat, as no
mens
rea
had to be proven, but Zont's attorney succeeded in proving that an ear is not a chattel, and therefore “ipso facto outside the perimeter of the incriminating provisions, which, in any event, must be afforded a narrow reading as is customary with penal provisions,” another phrase which brought Richard reck lessly close to the precipice of a smile. In short, it had all the ingredients to please Richard. It was macabre, sordid, but most importantly involved arcane legal technicalities which were incomprehensible to the public at large.

The other case I had specially filed for sending to Richard was
Flint vs. Southall
[1973] A.C. 1184, Lord Denning dissenting, a civil matter. The owner of a prizewinning English sheepdog, Treanor, sued Southall, an East London Cockney for having sodomized his dog while under the influence. In his dissenting obiter, Denning J., as he then was, referred to the only bestiality precedent on the rolls of the Old Bailey, an incident which had occurred in Newfoundland, Canada forty-seven years earlier, involving a still operator and a barnacle goose.

I had no idea what was really going on inside his head, but I knew that
Regina vs Z ont
and
F l int vs
Southall
confirmed something for him, as it did for me. Sometimes R ichard would send me a one line note, speaking in scraps of
Regina vs Zont
obiter. “Not within my jurisdiction,” or “mens rea not having been demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt,” and the necessity of having a “narrow reading of the matter.”

Strippers performing upstairs at the Cleopatra were regulars at Fong's. They usually dropped in during the late afternoon. A mix of TVs and real girls, but their banter, as they ordered their coffees and lit their cigarettes, was more secretarial pool before the boss arrives. The trannies in particular were big on the things girls must have been big on forty years ago. Powder packs. Pocket mirrors. Furr y handbags and petticoats. The atmosphere was kind of Paris Music Hall, backstage. One big family of oddballs, rejects and genetic freaks.

I slid into the booth, ordered Fong's $3.25 pork vermicelli special and a pot of tea. Through the window, I could see a list of cheap Asian destinations at the KarWah Travel Agency across the road. At the bottom of the list, there was a gaudy poster announcing sex tours to Bangkok. The door to Fong's swung open, bringing in a gust of wind and five or six girls for coffee before the early evening revue.

One of the girls stood for a moment, lit a cigarette, then, spotting me alone in my booth, walked over and sat down across from me. She had a peasant ruddiness to her cheeks, looked like she had jumped out of a Millet painting or had her skin scrubbed off in a wooden tub. Her breasts were compressed together and upwards under the combined pressure of different parts of her push-up bra. She ordered tea, and waved Fong away when he pointed a menu at her. She tapped her cigarette twice on the table and pushed it into her mouth.

“Every day, I come in here, and every day you are eating this same soup.”

“I live just under the club.”

She glanced at my bowl, half full of vermicelli and pork floating in a brackish consommé. Fong flashed her a smile through his stained gold teeth. She looked back at me.

“Quit staring. I know I need a facelift. What's your name?”

“Franck.”

“My name's Samantha. Actually, that's my stage name. You work, Franck?”

“Kind of between jobs.” “Sure.”

“I just finished law school.”

She sized me up, lit a cigarette, decided to smile.

“How old you think I am?”

A tall Haitian girl, standing at the counter, wearing a leopard skin top, like the top of a one-piece bathing suit, jean miniskirt, called over.

“Hey, Sam, he's just a kid. Leave him alone.”

“Fuck you, Geena.”

She turned back to me.

“Sorry. You want to meet me after the show tonight?

I only do the early show. Maybe we could have a drink together. At your place. Just pick up some beers and wait for me. I finish around midnight.”

Samantha's real name turned out to be Karin Van Der Velde. She stayed overnight. It was a waystation, and one of the things a girl hung onto was that eventually she'd get out. But, Karin also told me about Hervé Bourque.

It was appropriate that a whore would even be responsible for getting me my first job in a law office.

Hervé Bourque's office was on
rue Notre Dame
, bet ween a law yer's gown shop and the Court Bailiffs, within the shadow of the dismal brown building housing the
Palais de Justice de Montréal
. When I entered his office, it was a Friday afternoon. Six girls were in his waiting room, but the sleaziest looking of them all was a purple-haired harlot sitting at the receptionist's desk fielding phone calls. There was enough fishnet on her to outfit a trawler. If there were a police roundup, they would have gone for her first, although you could smell the street on the half dozen others curled up on the divan in the waiting area.

A man in his early sixties entered the office, sporting a set of eyebrows which hung like tarantula legs from an awning. He extended his hand towards me. “You must be Robinson.” He waved impatiently.

“C'mon in, I said, make yourself at home. How did you hear of me?”

“One of the Cleopatra girls recommended you. Sir.” “Not exactly a shining recommendation, Robinson.” One of his eyebrows arched into a triangular bivouac. “Do you know I've been in front of the disciplinary committee more times than I can count, Robinson. How do you feel about that?” “Ever been disbarred?”

Bourque peered intensely at me, as if my question had answered another question.

“I'm the one interviewing here. What's the most important word in the law, Robinson?”

“I don't know. Guilty?”

Bourque hummed the word “guilty,” until it buzzed out of his mouth like a bug on an African verandah.

“Not
guilty
, Robinson. They're all guilty. Retainer is the word. And what is the first rule of the practice of criminal law?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Never post bail for a client. They have all, without exception, been in shit up to their ears from the cradle onwards. Which is not a problem, provided you never forget it, and obey one or two ground rules. So, you live below a strip club. You have a taste for seed, Mr. Robinson?”

I shrugged my shoulders. It felt like an inter view where it didn't really matter what I said or didn't say.

“What would you say, Mr. Robinson, if one of those girls in the waiting room proposed to pay in kind for professional services rendered?”

“You mean sexual favours.” “For example.”

I considered the question. From the point of view of Bourque as a future employer.

“I'd tell her to post her own bail and a small retainer.

The balance we could work out in an instalment plan.”

Bourque looked at me. He had a way of looking at you sideways or even upside down without even moving his head. I could picture him in front of a witness box, lighting a cigar while cross-examining an international money launderer, or a cop on the take or a sweating politician.

“You're hired, Mr. Robinson. See you in the morning.”

Bourque used my services on a regular basis, i.e. from 10 to 12 on Mondays and 3 to 5 on Fridays in remand court, handling guilty pleas, setting down trial dates or posting bail for the Cleopatra girls. It was all about serving time or buying time. After three or four months of this, I answered a call in the office, asking for me. Who is it? “36th police precinct. Constable Lefebvre. Franck Robinson?”

“Yes.”

“I'm calling you on a criminal matter. We require your presence at Royal Victoria hospital morgue. For an identification.”

“What's this about?”

“We have someone who says he is your brother in custody. Homicide.”

“I'll be right down.”

The receptionist in the emergency department of the Royal Victoria hospital wore her hennaed hair in a tight bun. Her name tag said Miss Catherine Jones, R.N. She was attractive enough, but there was something about the thick breasts bulging under her uniform that triggered a whole range of disconnected thoughts. She had somehow managed the female hospital staff trick of being pulpous, feline, servile, friendly and hygienic all at once. But, with a little imagination, and adding ten years to her age, it was easy enough to project her into another time and place. Northwest Wales on a pig farm, surrounded by sows and her own offspring, with a constant drizzle pouring over her head, her absentee husband leaning drunk against a rotting beam of the local village pub. Somewhere near a coal mine. Circa 1965. Miss Catherine Jones directed me to an elevator, where I was instructed in a friendly but firm tone to descend into the sub-basement. A Doctor Giguère would be waiting for me. He would tell me what it was about.

I stepped onto a long, rectangular freight elevator. A reedy man in orderly's uniform stood behind a stretcher. The stretcher had a body on it. The body was covered with a creased, white bedsheet. The orderly's nametag displayed the name Eric Chomsky, L.P.N., but since I didn't feel like looking at Eric Chomsky's face, or the body he was tending, or the cigarette he was making a half-hearted attempt at concealing, I focused on a metal plaque affixed to the wall of the elevator, which identified the manufacturer: Otis Elevators, Chicago, Illinois. The body halted at SSB, two floors underground, and Eric Chomsky wheeled his stretcher out of the Otis lift, just ahead of me.

A tall gangly man stood in the corridor, his hair curly and boyish, as if he were the understudy to the conductor of the city symphony orchestra.

“Doctor Giguère.”

He motioned with a palm to the room behind him.

“Come.”

The room was bordered by an L-shaped counter containing three sinks, and a set of cupboards. The floors were tiled. In the centre of the room, a bed, fixed to the floor. An overhead neon light, and the low-grade buzz of an air ventilation system. In the rear of the room, an open entrance to an alcove, containing three walk-in doors.

“Wait here, Mr. Robinson.”

He walked into the alcove, and pulled open the latch.

He opened the door, bent over, and walked inside, disappearing. Several moments later, a stretcher emerged, looking similar to the one which had accompanied Eric Chomsky down to the sub-sub basement. He wheeled the stretcher into the main room and aligned it beside the bed.

“Before I can proceed, I require an identification.

You, apparently, are the only person in a position to provide one.”

He pulled back the bedsheet.

“Recognize her?”

“It's my mother.”

Mother's torso had been stabbed repeatedly, but her face was intact, and even in death, I thought it had a trace of that wry, tight-lipped grimace Richard and I had looked up to for the first twelve years of our lives. Dr. Giguère pointed at one long scar tracing a vertical line up the centre of her abdomen.

“The weapon used was a rapier, similar to the scythes used by Sikhs in ceremonial rituals. There is clear evdence of a sexual assault both prior to and following death.”

The Honourable Mr. Justice Aznar of the Superior Court presiding over Courtroom 4.13, formerly Aznar, J. of Remand Court, in Courtroom 4.14 next door, briefly examined Richard, peered over the court record, and ordered an assessment to determine “whether the accused was, at the time of the alleged offense, suffering from a mental disorder so as to be exempt from criminal responsibility.” Etc. etc.

The following day, I drove to the Pinel Institute to see Richard. I reviewed the proceeding and decided it had gone well, all things considered. Richard's life as a free man was over, but Richard wouldn't make a scene in the courtroom, and would generally allow the judge to expedite the matter.

When I entered the visitors' room, Richard seemed a little absent. I assumed he was comparing his own experience with
Regina vs. Zont
, and coldly assessing whether he had done anything unusual, i.e. unusual from a legal point of view, the only one that mattered if your aim in life was to become binding legal precedent, and be immortalized in the legal gazettes.