April Fool (23 page)

But the reason for this visit, it appears, is not merely to say farewell. “A client of yours, that fellow Nick Faloon, fell ill. They rushed him to hospital.”

“When was this?”

“Maybe an hour ago. Head office asked me to pass the word on to you.”

“It's serious?”

“He was in the food lineup, and leaped over a railing and collapsed, clutching his chest.”

A heart attack? Arthur is stunned. He can't help feeling some blame, he should have visited him. Depressed, said Lotis, out of shape.
He thinks he's burdened you with a case you can't win.

 

Faloon connects only through flashes, glimpses of the living world: he's in leg irons, he's being trussed to a gurney, the ambulance is screeching out the gate, a rubbery scent from the oxygen mask. A hand on his chest, words coming like thunderclaps: “Heart's jumping all over the place.” Going out again, jerking awake, another voice, morose: “I hate to see guys die right in front of me.”

A flash of Claudette again. Solemn, in black. No, no, she's happy, an angel. Only snippets of memory are left. Eve Winters, smiling down at the Owl, so beautiful. A last sensation of circling the drain. Then oblivion.

 

Tension spices the tea and gingersnaps at Blunder Bay. Arthur, Lotis, and Corporal Al are listening to a news station. An excited voice: “We have a live report from hospital. Are you there, Clarice?”

“Yes, I am, Dale.”

A squawk from the radio on Corporal Al's belt. “Garibaldi, Staff wants to talk to you.”

“…in one door and out the other, to a waiting van,” Clarice is saying. “They wedged the door shut, so the jail escort couldn't pursue.”

Corporal Al, in Arthur's left ear: “Well, isn't that the darndest thing…On a gurney? Holy mackerel, Staff, that's pretty wild.”

“You're saying, Clarice, that we have an escaped killer somewhere out there.”

“Here's what I was told: he was foaming at the mouth when the ambulance pulled in. Two men came running from Emergency in surgical gowns and masks. They told the prison escort they'd take charge of the gurney, and somehow in the confusion they were allowed to wheel it through the ward and out another exit. Police gave this description of the van: a black early 1990s Econoline, B.C. plates, possibly stolen, fresh vomit spattering the right side. The men are considered dangerous. Back to you…”

Dazed and dismayed, Arthur nearly steps on Underfoot as he turns down the sound. Corporal Al clicks off, scratches his head. “Real embarrassing debacle, must have been something to see. No ID on any of the accomplices. Nicotine poisoning, they're guessing, makes the heart buck like a crazed horse.”

“Glad I quit,” Lotis says.

This is not something one ad libs, so Nick must have despaired of his chances some time ago. It's Arthur's fault, denying hope with his broken promises to show up.

Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit
, Cicero cried.
He has departed, withdrawn, gone away, broken out.
The master of disguise has donned the winged sandals and cap of Mercury, patron of travellers, shepherds, cheats, and thieves.

 

PART TWO

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.

Sonnet 18, Shakespeare

 

20

W
ithout planning to, but drawn by the morbid curiosity felt by a witness to a train wreck, Arthur finds himself taking Slappy up the Sproules's grasslands, the shortcut to the Gwendolyn Bluffs. He dreads what he is to see, a carnage of fallen trees.

He'd argued the appeal well, had those judges working. Five of them sat, as is common when judicial bias is claimed. They had reserved, and Arthur was optimistic. The ruling came two days ago. Arthur won just a single dissent. The majority opinion: Property rights prevail.

Then at dawn yesterday, through sound-muffling rain, came the vibrations of a falling giant, then another, birds in screaming flight. The Greenpeace climbers sped to the canopy, high enough to gain a pocket view of treetops disappearing.

The crew from Sustainable Logging had come on a landing craft, with saws and jerry cans of fuel. An ambush of the forest, site-clearing for Gwendolyn Village–as the mall is styled in Garlinc's brochure, “In Harmony with Nature.”

As Arthur scrambles up a mossy abutment, he zips up his rain slick–lowering clouds have begun to shed their burden. He looks at the eagles' nest, at one of the great birds taking flight. Then he wills himself to view the torn land below, splintered firs and cedars, tangles of boughs, uplifted to the sky as if in prayer.

Some twenty acres of old-growth were felled along the beach before protestors poured in, some through the Gap, others by sea, a convoy. There was a standoff, the crew foreman red-faced and sullen. The loggers retreated but the protest armada remains–Arthur counts thirty boats sitting at anchor or beached. Tents amid the driftwood, small figures milling about. No arrests yet, but warnings issued. And making its way toward the beach: an RCMP cruiser, officers with batons, guns, handcuffs.

Margaret is still in the tree in this unmerry month of May. Day Thirty-five! Emergency rations are sustaining its occupiers, three of whom are adept with pulleys, cable, and rappel line, one of whom raises goats and geese. She was to have rappelled down in a safety harness, but now she is staying, determined to defy capture.

That's what she declared in a note she floated to him.
Unable to talk without crying. That psychopath is holding Gwendolyn for ransom. He cut off one of her ears and mailed it as a warning. If we don't pay up, it'll be an arm or a leg.

Her savage metaphor rings true. The ransom fund is slow to build. Four million dollars has been raised from nature and philanthropic societies and corporate grants. A few hundred thousand from individuals, wealthy and poor. More is pledged but not enough. Clearihue continues to hint the price may go up: he has inquiries from investors in the States, from Germany, from Hong Kong.

The national government still refuses to chip in, offering a myriad excuses: money is tight; elected officials must be accountable; Garlinc's inflated price will have the Auditor General screaming for blood; it's political suicide if the state is seen as bowing to illegal demonstrators. Underlying all: Clearihue is a contributor to the Liberal party, the Opposition will say it's payback time.

The RCMP cruiser anchors. Officers pile into a Zodiac, and it casts off and heads to shore.

Arthur can smell the powerful odour of destruction. May, nesting time, a time for birth not death. A smell too pungent for Slappy, who turns, urges Arthur home.

The eagle swoops down the valley, screaming.

 

Arthur remains in a cantankerous mood that afternoon as Syd's Beaver lifts from Bungle Bay, wipers flapping, rain sheeting by. A misty glimpse of the mess at Gwendolyn Beach adds to his choler. As he was returning from his hike, ten young people were arrested–the maximum the police could handle on their Zodiac.

Lotis and Selwyn are in Victoria, where this first batch of accused are to be hauled before Wilbur Kroop. As part of his crusade against anarchy, he will punish them by setting an example, that's his style.

Arthur knows that he must compose himself, focus on the case of his truant client. Nick Faloon may have disappeared, but the case won't go away. Upset that a high-profile prosecution is sifting through his fingers, Buddy Svabo proposes to bypass a preliminary and go to trial next month by direct indictment. With or without the accused.

Arthur was given notice a week ago of Svabo's motion, which collides with the enshrined rule that a defendant must be present at his trial. His first reaction was to scoff. So might the presiding judge, Larry Mewhort, a former defence counsel, though not the brightest star in the firmament.

Arthur's second reaction was an inspired flip-flop. A quick trial could be to Nick's benefit. Especially were he to return suddenly–a surprise witness at his own trial. Buddy would be caught off guard, ill prepared to cross-examine.

The condom-in-the-trash defence may lack substance, but if combined with a clear motive and a vigorous confrontation with the siren of the Rhine…Arthur has earned reasonable doubts with less. Faloon may attract only a minimal
sentence for his escape if the defence can show he was wrongly accused, wrongly jailed. There is nothing but suspicion to tie him to the thefts at the Breakers Inn. But is Arthur thinking coolly, or is his mind too aflame over the logging at Gwendolyn Bay?

And how to locate this species at risk, this threatened Owl? Surely he hasn't flown the coop merely to hide in a dank hole somewhere nearby. A migration to more distant climes seems likely. To more profitable climes.

The Beaver descends low over the Fraser Delta and its swirl-patterned tidewaters to the river's south arm, brown and swollen with spring runoff. It's raining hard as they pull into the Fraser River seaplane dock.

Umbrella unfurled, he slogs up the road to a waterfront pub. She's sitting in a corner nook, eyes half-hidden by dark bangs. A wig, or she dyed her hair. Perrier in front of her, a packed suitcase beside her. She offers no sign of recognition as he approaches.

“Cat?”

She rises, gives him a perfumed, overfriendly embrace. “We kind of figured you'd call, Mr. Beauchamp. And just in time.” She beckons to an older gentleman finely dressed, who joins them from the bar, bringing his pint and a flight bag. Willy the Hook.

“And where are you two off to?”

“Le tour de France,” says Cat, patting his cheek and returning his wallet.

 

The Owl is playing poolside behind a
Herald-Tribune
and a coffee that costs a sawsky with tip while he waits for Willy and Cat, who are flying in first class thanks to Harold W. Stein over there, the lawyer from Boston, who is out here sweating away the kilos. Faloon weeded out a gold Visa from this gentleman's wallet a few days ago, the pants hanging on a peg while Stein was getting a rubdown. You've got to respect this fine Cannes
hotel, the Belvedere, its pool, steam room, changing room, big bath towels that hide a busy hand.

This has always been the Owl's forté, the play for the blooper, the plastic. In his system, you never lift cash, you don't touch the six other credit cards–Harold W. Stein might not notice one is missing or he might wonder if he left it in Boston, or maybe it'll be a few weeks before he gets around to calling the friendly folks at Visa. Or maybe he'll only notice when he gets his statement and suddenly loses his newly tanned complexion.

Faloon did a tester on the Visa two days ago, Wednesday, it held up, a $3,000 diamond from a
bijouterie
, a bauble. Then yesterday he went back and scored a sapphire-inlay ladies watch he said was for Mrs. Stein. Thirty-five K.

Sitting across the pool from him is a lemon-haired looker by the name of Gina de Carlo–the “starlet,” people around here call her, but no one can put a finger on what film. She's leafing through a glossy called
Shape
, which she has in spades, a beautiful tall young creature, in a way she reminds him of Dr. Eve Winters, or what she would've looked like at nineteen or twenty. (Images keep returning of her dead body, and they bother him, like something is coming back that he doesn't want to remember. Something he doesn't want to think about at all.)

Ms. de Carlo has no visible means of support except from Sierra Leone's ambassador to France, who stops here, according to Popov the Russian, every other weekend, diplomatic pouch in hand, to visit her at the Belvedere. The pouch–a briefcase–will be full of the kind of ice that doesn't melt.

Popov is among the top five in the world, just ahead of the Owl. He was in his regular café in Marseilles, and planned to do the Belvedere himself until he got recognized by the desk. “I turn you onto nice wrinkle,” he said. Thus inspired, Faloon checked into the Belvedere five days ago, and he plans to skip out in the traditional way tomorrow. In the lexicon of the trade, no insult intended to the great man, this is called taking it on the Arthur.

Meanwhile, Stein, who bears an unnatural resemblance to Faloon, short and bald on top though pudgier, sits happy with one of his clients at poolside, not missing his Visa, billing everything to his room. He's pretending not to be looking at Gina de Carlo's tits as she dives topless into the water.

Maybe it's the image of breasts, it doesn't take much, and zap, Faloon is feeling pangs about Claudette. The tour Côte d'Azure is in honour of her, the Owl has vowed to get her a stake, in case he has to rot for the rest of his life in the crossbar hotel. It's the Love Tour, maybe the Last Tour, the Terminal Tour. The Reckless Tour.

Nick the Goods, the town booster–he's back in business, coming out of retirement after a miraculous flight to freedom. Faloon never escaped before, never skipped, he was an honest thief who always paid his bills, but he had no recourse, because this time they were going to nail him.

He doesn't remember much about his journey on a gurney from ambulance to hospital to side exit to waiting van, except the throwing up. He got the basic details on re-entry, while the guys took a hacksaw to his irons as he was throwing up in a motel room toilet. Three co-workers of Greg McDeadly from the d'Anglio family, whooping it up, ecstatic, everything went as planned, with their doctors' smocks and caps and surgical masks, and their calm, “Okay, fellas, we'll take over.”

Still peering over his
Herald-Tribune
at Gina de Carlo, he jerks when a hand tickles his thigh, and it's Cat McAllister, who has stolen up and sat down. When he folds his paper closed, Willy the Hook Houston is across from him.

He's happy to see them, but he has to restrain enthusiasm, which he restricts to a continental kiss for Cat and a handshake with Willy, followed by a sharing of how everyone looks great, and a funny anecdote from Cat about how she almost forgot the name on her passport at customs. But the three of them keeping it low-key, not drawing attention away from topless Gina.

He lets them know that the beer belly who's about to walrus into the pool after her is Harold Stein, whose generosity is helping fund this tour. He explains about how Gina is concubine to an ambassador of a land where diamonds flow like milk, who will be entertaining a dubious broker from Antwerp tomorrow at 3 p.m., when millions of euros could change hands, money that should be diverted to a nobler cause.

But Faloon starts getting obstacles to this brilliant plan. The Hook has a problem with blood diamonds, part ethical, part fear. “In such countries, they amputate arms and feet, old boy. And…and there's other concerns, right, Cat?”

Faloon realizes they have shown up with their own agenda when Cat opts for a massive change of subject. “Honey, we been asked by Mr. Beauchamp to persuade you to drop in for your trial.”

Willy hands him a note signed by the great man.
La situation est plus encourageante.
“It means you got a real good hope.” As if the Owl can't read French. “He says your presence in court would be very helpful, so you can tell the jury your side. Maybe you want to talk to Mr. Beauchamp, who is waiting by his phone.”

Going back there, sitting in the dock, waiting for them to convict him, it would be like a slow death. The Owl isn't going anywhere near that trial. He's broken out, he doesn't want to break back in. But he feels sorry about Beauchamp, it's like he let him down. “Is he mad at me?”

“He was philosophical. He was hoping to have a big win to end his career in a blaze of glory.”

Cat adds, “Call him. That's what pay phones are for, Nick.”

He doesn't want to talk to Mr. Beauchamp out of fear the silver-tongued orator will have him turning himself into the local gendarmerie for immediate transport to Canada.
Yes, sir, that makes absolute sense, sir, I'm on the next flight back.
He has better places to go, Brazil, Indonesia, some corrupt land.

A waiter hovers, so Faloon orders drinks, in English. Second-language ability is best not broadcast. Talk is suspended because here is a black guy in a white suit strolling around the bar to the pool, skin shoes, skin belt, Leonard tie, tooled black leather briefcase, a flashy Pepsodent smile for Gina. His Excellency Omar Lansana. Handsome, well built, young for an ambassador, maybe thirty-five.