Barrington Street Blues (44 page)

“What are you talking about?”

“Leaman and Scott. You commenced the action. Now un-commence it.”

“It's going ahead, Monty. I decided it was time to fish or cut bait. You weren't getting anything done, just raising a whole lot of dust. Dust that was obscuring the light at the end of the tunnel. And that is, for me and for you and for the firm as a whole, the payoff for the survivors of Leaman and Scott, and our thirty percent of the take. You were losing sight of that. I decided it was time to get you focused. Starting the litigation will do that.”

“There's not going to be any litigation, Ross. There's going to be a murder trial.”

“You're crazy. The police put it down as a suicide. End of story.”

“The police don't know what we know, do they, Ross?”

I heard Ed moving behind me, and I whirled around. “Don't move, Ed. Stay where you are.”

When I turned again, Ross had bolted. I heard him pounding
down the staircase.

“Ed! Watch where he goes! I'm calling the police.”

†

Three days later, we got the news: Ross Trevelyan, while on remand awaiting three charges of murder, committed suicide in his cell at the Halifax County Correctional Centre. Under his body was an envelope addressed to me. It took some persuading, but the prison authorities provided me with a copy of the letter. I opened it and started to read. There was a lot of crossing out, and the handwriting was shaky.

I'm telling you up front, Monty: this is a real suicide. No need to look for a smoking gun. You have the peanut shells! In morbid moments, or times of extreme stress, I always thought of my allergy as my own personal cyanide capsule. Why have I written this? Because I don't know how my father will spin the story after I'm gone. So let the record show I did it for him.

Things were going well at Dad's office when I was there, but not well enough. He had overextended himself and was going to have to cut some of the associates loose, maybe even me. But he kept putting it off; how would it look on his application for a judgeship if he couldn't even keep a mid-size practice going? Then the old lady called. Matilda Lonergan. This was ten years ago. She wanted to change her will. Dad asked me to look after her. So I sat her down, and she dictated who was to get the Belgian lace tablecloth, the grape shears, the Hummel figurines. I saw she had left a bundle to this youth shelter, Primrose House. And I had a brainwave. I knew of a better charity to leave her money to, something my father had been working at for years, or so I claimed. Old Matilda thought the world of Dad. But I had to make sure it was done right. No way our names were going on that will if our charity was going to benefit. So I thought of Dice Campbell. I knew he was in a financial tail-spin, and he wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty.

I told her I would, in all conscience, have to send her for independent legal advice so she could be sure she was doing what she thought best. I worked the conversation around to Campbell, and
set it up. Dice and I put our heads together and decided to resurrect this defunct corporation he had started a few years before: Spirit Safe Limited. Such an all-purpose name. Really it refers to a piece of equipment used in the distillation of Scotch whisky. So we made up a story about a Holy-Spirit-inspired charity that helps abandoned kids all around the world, with my illustrious
pater
as chairman of the board. I kicked back twenty percent to Dice. He wanted more, but I told him if it wasn't for me, he'd be getting zero, so like it or lump it. I talked Tilly out of leaving fifty K to Corey Leaman, some loser she'd lost contact with. I said he'd only piss it away on drugs. But Trevelyan and Associates, out of the goodness of our hearts, would try to find Leaman and set up a trust for him. Oops, we never managed to find him before the old lady croaked. Anyway, we revived Spirit Safe Limited, this time with me and my old man as the company officers. Which you apparently saw when you looked at the corporate records.

Yes, I had seen the names John and Ross Trevelyan when I finally looked at the records for the company's second incarnation; in its first run, Dice and Mavis had been the officers, and I had wrongly assumed their names would be there again. I read on.

So when old Matilda died — of natural causes — Spirit Safe acquired a small fortune. That meant a small fortune for John and Ross Trevelyan, and their suddenly thriving law firm. Dad thought it was all above board, that the Lonergan woman had really come up with the idea herself. Why not? Everyone else thinks the world of him. And of course I was the blue-eyed son, because I had got the job done legitimately, having found another upstanding member of the bar to shepherd the deal through. The sun rose and shone out of my ass, as far as the old man was concerned. I finally had his gratitude and admiration. But even though he thought it was legit, he did not want it known — outside a limited circle — that he had benefited so directly from an elderly client. Somebody might think he had influenced her improperly. God forbid. He spent the money discreetly, expanded the firm gradually, and eventually got his appointment to the bench. Everything was coming up roses.

Then, last January, there was a disturbance at the reception desk of Trevelyan and Associates. A young lout was demanding to see John Trevelyan. John had gone on to bigger and better things, so the receptionist called me. Turned out this was the very Corey Leaman I had cut out of Mrs. Lonergan's will. Leaman had been in the Baird Centre, and his mother had been in Kingston Penitentiary. So, with one thing and another, Leaman had only the night before found a letter from Mrs. Lonergan. The letter had been stashed, unread, in a box of papers at his mother's house in Sackville. Old Matilda had had a soft spot for Corey, who used to help her around the house. She had written a letter encouraging him to rise above his difficulties and become the man she knew he could be. To help him along, she had named him in her will, and he was to go see her trusted lawyer, John Trevelyan, when the time came. With Corey's luck, by the time he saw the letter and began wondering why he had never been contacted about his windfall, John T was on the bench, the will had been changed, and Corey was out of the money.

He ranted and raved, and I came up with a story to calm him down. I won't bore you with the details but, basically, I told him I would be out drinking that night with somebody who could help him find his money. And if he kept his mouth shut until then, he'd be able to get most of it back. He was to meet me beside the Baird Centre. If he was found dead on the Baird grounds, it would support my suicide cover story. And it was dark around there. I waited across the street by the Fore-And-Aft. Leaman showed up and I started across, but he came running over to the parking lot of the bar, bellowing about his money. I panicked and yelled at him to shut up. Then I got myself under control. I beckoned him over as if to whisper in his ear. Then I took out the gun — Dicey's gun — and put a bullet in Leaman's head. He dropped. Perfect. I was just getting him arranged and planting the gun on him when this other guy came flying around the side of the bar, zipping his pants up. Turned out he was getting serviced by a hooker who couldn't keep her mouth shut, in more ways than one. This guy obviously heard the shot and, poor schmuck that he was, came running to see what was happening. This was Graham Scott, who I later learned was peddling drugs to half the hookers in town. Though I didn't know
him from Adam when I blew him away. He didn't feel a thing. My advice to anyone who hears gunshots is: run the other way.

The Luger. We have to go back in time again for that. This was 1985, a few years after the will fraud, but way before Corey made his ill-fated appearance in my office. Dice got greedy. Or maybe just desperate. He had big gambling debts, and his law practice was going south. Then, in the middle of all this darkness, a light went on in his head. He called one night and told me to meet him at his office, pronto; there was a problem. I knew exactly what the problem would be, but I wasn't too worried. If he wanted money from me, he'd have to wait till I could produce it, and I couldn't do that in the middle of the night. I went to the meet to keep him happy till I figured out how to handle him.

So I go up to Dice's office on Barrington Street. As predicted, he tries to blackmail me about the will scam. If I don't pay him one hundred K he'll call the Bar Society. Then he pulls a gun to bring the point home! I start laughing. ‘Come on, Dice, let's not be cowboys here. We can work something out.' He was half-corked as usual and he looked kind of sheepish. He started to shove the gun back in his pocket, and I made a dive for it. Even as I was going for it, I was thinking: ‘This is stupid; it probably isn't loaded.' But he looked so terrified I knew the fucking gun really was loaded. I also knew this was the best and maybe the only chance I would ever have to silence the one person who knew about the will. Remember, this was years before Corey Leaman showed up. As long as Dice Campbell was alive, I would have to live with the fear of blackmail. With him dead, my secret was safe.

What you have to understand, Monty, is that I could never, ever let this dirty deed come out in the open. I could never let my father know that his good fortune, which looked to the world like a natural outgrowth of his own accomplishment, had in fact come from a fraud perpetrated by his own son. What would that do to his chance of a seat on the Supreme Court of Canada? What would that do to his feelings for
me
? I don't know what your relationship with your father was like, Monty, but mine was such that letting this story come out was simply unthinkable. Couldn't be done. I'd kill to make sure that didn't happen. Which I wouldn't have had to do, if people hadn't got so greedy.

Let's just say Dice played his own death card. I forced him at gunpoint to jump off his own balcony. Dice was crying and begging and pleading but, really, he had left me with no choice. I thought it might be useful to keep his gun. Which turned out to be forward thinking on my part. I was ready when Leaman showed up six years later. Poor Graham Scott, I didn't want to do that. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The hooker, Wanda, didn't get a look at me, but she knew Leaman wasn't alone out there. Wanda got promoted. Out of province. Comes in handy to have a criminal clientele, doesn't it, Monty? I gave up criminal law years ago and was glad of it, but some of my old clients are still around. Always in need of pocket money, these guys. Can't seem to hold down a steady, seventy-hour-a-week job. Maybe they never had a father to give them a guiding hand. I call my old client the odd jobs man. Need somebody to break in and steal a bunch of papers from a house in Sackville? Need an escort for a young lady flying up to Montreal? As far as I know, Wanda's paralyzed with fear of coming back to Halifax. Otherwise, she's healthy.

At this point, Ross's writing was barely legible. The last few lines were a scrawl: “I can't do another night in this place. I can't face the old man. I can't face a trial. I can't face Elspeth. My next note is for her. Make sure she gets it.”

†

The next day, Friday, I saw Ed Johnson in the plaza outside the Law Courts.

“Ed! Hold on.”

“What do you want?”

“How about a lobster sandwich at the Bluenose II?”

“Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“What?”

“I don't want you around anymore, Collins. Not after all the stuff I blurted out the other day. I was so worked up about it all, I just couldn't believe you didn't already know. So there I was, blubbering away about how I made an ass of myself at that party. The
Colosseum. And thus made an ass of myself all over again in front of you. About the most humiliating experience of my adult life. Every time I see your face, I'll know that you know.”

“
You've
been humiliated? Those so-called Romans were people you have zero respect for, and with good reason. And to this day they don't know it was you.” He didn't have to hear that Felicia Morgan claimed to have “dirt” on him; that could be anything. “I, on the other hand, know something about real humiliation. I sat down in a room full of people I do care about — my son, my daughter, my in-laws, my friend Burke — I sat there grinning like a lovesick teenager at my faithless wife, who then told the whole room that she was pregnant with another man's child. Now she has that child for all the world to see. You don't
know
humiliation, Johnson. If you and I were to sit down and pen a twelve-bar blues on our stories, mine would have ‘em cryin' in their beer. Yours wouldn't even be heard over the drunken chatter in the bar. Now, Ross and John Trevelyan, there's a father-son story that
really
went out of control! So let's forget all about it, and have a sandwich and a beer at the Bluenose.”

No reply.

“Ed. Let's eat.”

“All right, all right.”

As we waited for the light at Hollis Street, I said: “Tell me something. Was Mavis Campbell there that night?”

“No. Mavis wasn't one of the Romans. She wouldn't go in for any of that filth.”

In the park I saw a daddy with a laughing little girl that he was swinging And I stopped beside a Sunday school and listened to the songs that they were singing. Then I headed down the street, and somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringing And it echoed through the canyons like the disappearing dreams of yesterday.

— Kris Kristofferson, “Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down”

I, along with the other members of the Stratton Sommers law firm, spent the last week of August dealing with fallout from Ross Trevelyan's arrest and suicide. The meetings spilled over into Saturday, and some of us ended up drowning our sorrows in time-honoured fashion downtown. The phone rang at the crack of dawn Sunday morning. No, not dawn; it was nine-thirty.

“I know you've been preoccupied, Collins. But it's a mortal sin to miss Mass on Sunday; have you forgotten?”