The Guilty (15 page)

A bit after
2 a.m. the phone on his night table rang, jarring them both awake. Bratt stretched his arm instinctively to his right to pick up the receiver from the night table, only to find he was sleeping on the far side of the bed. Nancy had already picked up the phone and reflexively answered, “S/D Morin.”

“Yes, this is the right number,” she said into the phone.
“Never mind, he’s right here.”

She turned and handed the cordless receiver to Bratt, who was leaning up on his elbow, watching with a
bemused expression on his face.

“Well I’ve just embarrassed the hell o
ut of myself,” she said to him.

Smiling, he leaned over and kissed her, totally unconcerned about whoever it might be ca
lling him at this late hour.

“Bratt here
,” he said into the mouthpiece.

“Bobby, it’s Kevin Geary at
Centre Opérationnel Sud
.”

Lieutenant Kevin Geary was in charge of the night shift at the downtown police operations center. He had known Bratt since the lawyer had been a young teen, hanging around his father’s office during summer vacation. In his younger days, Geary had been a bonafide hard-drinking, hard-hitting Irish cop. On one occasion those two predilections had led him to hire then-attorney Joseph Bratt to defend him. Since then, the Bratts had always got
ten special treatment from him.

“What’s up, Kev
? One of my guys get arrested?”

“Well, uh, kind
of…” Geary’s voice trailed off.

“What do you mean, ‘kind of?’ What’d you wak
e me up for then?”

“OK, it is an arrest. But, Bobby, listen, it’s…it’s not one of your clients.
Shit, it’s Jeannie.”

Bratt instantly sat up. “Jeann
ie? What’re you talking about?”

“Looks like she’s been here since this afternoon. She was with those crazy broads in
front of the courthouse today.”

Bratt remembered Kouri telling him to look out of the window at the demonstration going by, and his own indifference
to it. Maybe, if he had looked…

“So why am I just being called now?” he b
arked angrily.

Nancy grimaced at his harsh tone, then reached out a comforting hand to touch him, unaware of what had happened. Bratt pulled his arm roughly away from her and jumped out of bed, reaching for his
watch and glasses as he did so.

“Sorry, Bobby,” Geary said. “But I just got on duty at midnight and nobody else here knew who she was. She didn’t tell anybody. I mean, they let her call a lawyer of course, but I guess she was too embarrassed to call you. She called the Legal Aid phone service. I just now saw her name on tomorrow’s Municipal Court list. I called right
away. I’m really sorry, Bobby.”

As Geary spoke Bratt dressed hurriedly, his mind racing. He tried not to think of his precious teenage daughter locked up in a police holding cell, with all the junkies and prostitutes who were regularly scooped up in
the downtown core of the city.

“Look, just keep an eye on her for me, OK?
I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

With that he hung up, finally
remembering Nancy’s presence.

“It’s Jeannie,” he said, unable to say more. The look on Nancy’s face showed that she had understoo
d immediately. “I’ve gotta go.”

“Of course, go. Don’t wo
rry about me, I’ll take a cab.”

Haphazardly dressed, he headed for the door, then turned to look back at Nancy, regretting his earlier reaction when she had tried to comfort him.

“I’m sorry. About being…”

She waved him o
ff. “Just go to your daughter.”

“Thanks,” he said, th
en turned and ran out the door.

As he impatiently waited for the elevator he thought what every father thought at times like these:
God, I hope she’s all right. I’ll kill her for this.
    
       Once he reached his Guy Street destination, Bratt stopped his car in a tow-away zone right in front of the police station and rushed in through the glass double-doors.

Geary was standing just inside the doors, waiting for him. At the sight of Bratt rushing in, his face showed con
cern and even a touch of fear.

“
Take it easy, Bobby. Just calm down.”

“W
here is she? Is she all right?”

“She’s fine. She’s in the
holding cells, but she’s fine.”

“Jesus, couldn’t you at least
take her out until I got here?”

That last remark drew the attention of some officers who were within earshot, congregated at the front
desk. Geary pulled Bratt aside.

“For cryin’ out loud, Bobby; you’re gonna get me in trouble. Listen, I went down there just now and tried to get her to sit in an office until you came
, but she wouldn’t hear of it

“What do you me
an, ‘she wouldn’t hear of it?’” 

“
Just that. She said she was going to stay with her girlfriends, and she didn’t want any special     favors just because she’s your daughter.”   

Bratt tried to pull
away from Geary. “Is she nuts?”

“Calm down,” said Geary, holding on tighter. “She’s just got a bit of her father’s mule
      headedness in her, that’s all. I’ll tell you what I can do for you: I’ll take you down to speak to her and if you can convince her, she can still wait out the night up here.”

“Why should she wait out the
night? Can’t I take her home?”

“I’m afraid not. She’s gotta appear in the
morning with the rest of them.”

“That’s bullshit!” Bratt pushed at Geary’s hands, which still
gripped his upper arms tightly.

“That’s not bullshit, Bobby. That’s the way it is. They’re all bei
ng charged with armed assault.”

“Armed assault? W
hy? What’re you talking about?”

“Geez, where you been all day,” Geary asked, as he tried to discreetly walk Bratt past the front desk and toward the elevator that would take them down to the holding cells. “The problems began when some demonstrators started hurling snowballs at lawyers going in and out of the courthouse. Then they all got in on the act. That’s when
our boys moved in.” Geary shook his head and laughed to himself. “Snowballs! Only dames would do that.”

“I had no idea. I don’t even know what they were demons
trating about,” Bratt admitted.

“Oh, the usual stuff that pisses women off. They’re some sort of victims’ rights group, and I guess they think the courts aren’t protect
ing them enough, or something.”

Bratt tried keeping himself calm as they rode the elevator down to the basement cells. He knew that making any more scenes wouldn’t help Jeannie, and would only embarrass Geary. He wasn’t the least bit surprised to find out that Jeannie was one of the demonstrators throwing snowballs at his fellow lawyers. If it hadn’t been his daughter, he would ha
ve found the idea quite funny.

Once in the detention area, Geary directed Bratt into a small interview room and closed the door behind
him as he went to get Jeannie.

Bratt stood nervously, his back to the far wall of the room, thumping his head lightly against it. He had been in a near-panic when he heard that Jeannie was in jail. Now she didn’t want any
favors because she was his daughter.
Well, want them or not,
he thought,
you’re going to get all the special treatment I can possibly get you.

The door finally opened and Jeannie stepped into the room, Geary closing the door behind her and waiting outside. Her face sported a nasty bruise above her right eye and her lower lip was slightly swollen, making Bratt wonder what she had gotten herself into. He wanted to run to her and hold her protectively, but she let him know right
away that she had other ideas.

“What’re
you doing here?” she demanded.

“What do you think I’m doing here? For C
hrist’s sake, I’m your father.”

“Nobody else was allow
ed a visit from their parents.”

“Well, you are allowed to
see a lawyer, you know.”

“I already
have
a lawyer. I don’t need you.”

“Dammit, Jeannie, I know you’re pissed at me, but I’m trained to help people in these situations. This is what I do for a living, so why not just let me do it? You can’t say you’re pissed at all lawyers if you’ve g
ot Legal Aid representing you.”

“I’m not pissed at
all
lawyers, Daddy.”

“Can you at least be consistent,” he said, trying to control his frustration. “How come what I do is so bad, but you’re willing to be defe
nded by another lawyer anyway?”

“Because I’m not going to ask him to lie
for me,” she spat the words out.

“Is that what you think I do? You think every other lawyer can’
t be accused of the same thing?

“Yo
u’re going to be in for some big surprises when your lawyer starts defending you in court.”

“Fine, I’ll be surprised. But I’ll find out for m
yself, and not with your help.”

“What the hell is it about getting
my help that you won’t accept?”

“Because you think you’re so goddamned important that you can just walk into a police station and all your connections will get you whatever you want. Well, I’m not a child anymore. I make my own decisions and I take the consequences for them. I believed in what we were trying to do out there, and I’m not lo
oking to take an easy way out.”

She turned her back on him, opened the door and stormed out, turning to Geary as she passed him. “I’d like to go
back to the cell now, please.”

Geary gave Bratt a pained look and shrugged his shoulders, then ran after Jeannie, key in hand.

Bratt tossed and turned, trying to block out the constant ringing in his ears, until finally his eyes snapped open and he realized he was back in his bed and the ringing was his phone. A vague memory of Nancy’s warmth faded quickly from his sleep-deprived brain as he reached out and grabbed the receiver.

“Hello.”

He was surprised to hear the familiar voice of Senator Roger Madsen on the other end.    

“Robert, did I wake you?”

Bratt glanced at his watch and saw that it was well after nine. He quickly sat up, like a slouching student who was surprised by the entrance of the school principal into his classroom. Roger Madsen was an old classmate of his father’s, as well as Bratt’s godfather. His family was one of the oldest and richest in Montreal, and he had been an elder statesman in the Liberal Party ever since Bratt could remember. He was one of the few people in the world, other than his late father, in whose presence Bratt felt anything akin to intimidation, and he had always addressed him as “sir” because anything else was inconceivable.

“No, no,” he lied. “Just, uh, just going through a file. How are you doing, sir?”

“Doing well, thanks. I tried you at the office.”

“Oh, I was just finishing up here before heading off.” He thought of the trip down to the police station that had cost him most of his night’s sleep, and, with an inward groan, he dropped his head back onto his pillow. Trying to keep his voice as casual as possible, he asked, “How’s the Senate these days?”

“Same as always. A bunch of spoiled, old men playing at government, pretending to themselves that they’re relevant.”

“Don’t say that, sir,” Bratt protested. “You’ve always been very important in the party.”

“I suspect my money was more important than my opinions, but that’s neither here nor there. I’m coming in to Montreal today, Robert. I’d like to see you when I get in. Perhaps tonight.”

This was a distraction Bratt didn’t need, and he tried to find a way out of it.

“I’ve got a lot of work to do on this trial that’s coming up. I don’t have much time, I’m afraid.”

“I won’t take too much of your time, Robert. And I think you’ll find this visit particularly pleasurable.”

“Well, I-”

“See you at my home tonight, Robert. Make it about nine. Goodbye.”

Madsen hung up and Bratt moaned out loud. He was going to have to make at least a courtesy call. He wondered what Madsen had meant by ‘particularly pleasurable.’ He was a fairly staid and conservative gentleman by nature, not given to surprises, so the enigmatic comment piqued Bratt’s curiosity, although not enough to make him look forward to the visit.

He jumped out of bed and quickly got dressed. Jeannie would be appearing at the Municipal Court later that morning, and this made any surprises that Madsen had in store for him irrelevant.

Once at the office he told Kouri he wouldn’t be able to go see Small that afternoon, they’d have to go the next day. Although they could have gone to the detention center right after Jeannie’s arraignment, with all that was on his mind he just couldn’t stomach facing this particular client.

As for Jeannie’s arrest itself, as much as he could have used the advice and consolation of his friends just then, he didn’t mention it to anyone. He was embarrassed and angry about her rejection of his help, and he didn’t relish having to try and explain her decision.

He was heading out the office door at 11 a.m., on his way to the Municipal Court for the arraignment, when Sylvie told him there was an S/D Morin on the line for him. He felt a small, empty ache in his heart. He regretted how he had run out on Nancy in the middle of the night, but there was really no time to talk to her now. After Jeannie’s court appearance, when he was sure his daughter was out of jail and doing fine, he’d be in a better frame of mind to talk to Nancy and make plans to spend some more time with her.

Maybe if I don’t get stuck at Madsen’s too long tonight,
he told himself.

He mouthed to Sylvie that he’d call Nancy back later and quickly strode to the elevators without telling the receptionist where he was going. If he had told her that he was headed a few blocks east to the Municipal Court it would have raised more than a few eyebrows in the office and questions would definitely have been asked.

Robert Bratt going to Municipal Court was something that few of his colleagues had witnessed in recent years. Despite the court’s physical proximity it might as well have been in a different time zone as far as he was concerned. Every other attorney in the office, even Leblanc, went there from time to time. For him, though, it was a point of pride and ego to refuse to take on what he considered to be the less-important cases that came before that court.

On this day, however, he wasn’t going there as a lawyer, but as a concerned citizen. His
services were not wanted, but if Jeannie knew him as well as she claimed to, she wouldn’t be surprised to find him sitting in the courtroom at her arraignment.

Struggling along the icy sidewalks it took him a quarter of an hour to get to the Municipal Court of Montreal, an aging yellowish-beige building, five stories high, that used to house police headquarters.

When he entered the building he was struck by how much things had changed since he had last tried a case there. Back then, the building was rundown, dimly lit, bleakly furnished, and had all the technological advantages of the Stone Age.

He was surprised to find computer terminals lined up along the side of the brightly-lit corridors, freely available for lawyers and members of the public to check on the state of their files. New offices had been built for the various organizations that had set up shop there, such as AA, Legal Aid, and Social Services. Gone were the thin-walled cubicles that had provided all the privacy of an open-window to the people who had gone in seeking help of one sort or another. In the courtrooms themselves, the city had clearly spent the most money, putting in new benches, desks and chairs, and buffing and sanding the marble walls.

All the external changes held Bratt’s attention for just a few seconds as he walked toward Room R30, where the group of protesters was scheduled to appear just before lunch. Once inside the large courtroom he sat at the back, and spoke to no one.

Most of the
defense lawyers here were much younger than he was, just beginning their careers, looking to make names for themselves in the hope of moving on to bigger things. As for the prosecutors, he didn’t recognize any of them either. The ones he had battled with in his day had either been named judges, moved up to higher courts, or been burned out by the heavy workload and lousy pay.

He wondered which of the lawyers gathered near the front was going to represent his daughter. The logical side of his brain told him that there was little chance for anything to go wrong; after all she was an eighteen year-old first-offender. He doubted the prosecution would be objecting to her release, probably even on her own recognizance. The more emotional side of his brain, however, fretted about the million things that could result in her further detention, although he was hard-pressed to come up with one.

The sight of Jeannie appearing in the prisoner’s box a few minutes later with a guard at her side brought sudden tears to his eyes. He wiped them away with the palm of his hand, unconcerned about who might see him in this emotional state.  His daughter looked haggard, as if she had hardly slept, which he presumed to be the case. For a brief moment, she made eye-contact with him from across the courtroom, then she turned away, stubbornly keeping the wall up between them.

As was the case with all the other protestors, she was released upon a promise to abstain from taking part in or attending any further public demonstrations
. It had taken less than two minutes for Jeannie to appear in front of a courtroom full of people, be arraigned and disappear again. She would be released from another door later that morning, and then she’d go join her protestor friends, or go find Claire, or go see that André guy, whoever he was.   

Bratt sat there a while longer, feeling lost and trying to find somebody to blame for the way things had tur
ned out. Dejected and knowing this was pointless, he got up and walked slowly back to his office.

Once back in his office, Bratt dumped his coat onto the sofa and turned to find Leblanc walking in, a half-eaten chocolate donut in his hand and some jelly from another donut still staining his lips.

“Hey, Bobby, we all just heard,” Leblanc said, a look of concern on his face. “Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

“Tell you what?”

“About Jeannie. It was on the radio. You know, ‘daughter of noted criminal lawyer, Robert Bratt,’ blah, blah, blah.”

Shit,
Bratt thought.
So much for keeping this quiet.

“I just didn’t want to talk about it, J.P.,” he said. “I didn’t know how I was going to explain it.”

“I know, I know. Stupid kids, always getting themselves in trouble. Hey, it’s better than getting busted for drugs.”

Bratt nodded, aware that Leblanc was referring to his own teen-age son’s arrest, two years earlier.

“You didn’t represent her, did you?” Leblanc asked.

“No. Legal Aid.”

“Why didn’t you get someone from the office down there for her?”

“Oh, you know,” Bratt searched for an answer other than the truth. “I figured since I was in a conflict of interest being personally involved, it would be the same for the whole office. Besides, it’s good for her to learn a little independence.”

Leblanc nodded thoughtfully, unaware of how Bratt had almost choked getting those words out. They both stood there awkwardly, unsure what to do or say next. Bratt moved to pick up some papers from his desk.

“I’m going to head home,” he said. “I hardly slept last night. Peter can draft the motion to exclude the videotape on his own. I’ll review it in the morning.”

“Yeah, sure,” Leblanc said sympathetically. “Let me know how things go with her, OK?”

Bratt nodded wordlessly, stuffing whatever papers he could get his hands on into his briefcase. He picked up his coat and walked quickly out, fighting the urge to break into an outright run to the elevator. All of a sudden, his office had begun to feel quite claustrophobic.

Once at home, Bratt trudged into his bedroom to change out of his suit and tie. The red message light was flashing on his answering machine.
Not much chance that would be Jeannie,
he thought.
Then again, she did see me in court, so maybe...

It wasn’t Jeannie, but Nancy, whom he hadn’t had the chance to call back after going to the arraignment. He managed to feel both glad and disappointed at hearing her voice.

“Robert? Are you playing hard to get? Don’t forget, I know where you live,” she said, followed by her soft laugh. “Listen, I hope everything’s OK with your daughter. Please call me as soon as you can and let me know. Also, it looks like we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other the next little while, so I really have to talk to you.”

Yes, we will see each other a lot,
he thought.
But first, I’m going to have to get my head together and figure out how the hell to get off this emotional roller-coaster I’ve been on.

Upper Westmount’s steeply-angled streets wound along the side of Mount Royal and the midwinter snow narrowed them to a barely passible width. More than once in his life Bratt had wondered how the horse-drawn carriages, the main mode of transportation at the time the stately mansions were built, had been able to make their way up these icy slopes. 

That night he took a cab to Senator Madsen’s home rather than risking the pristine condition of his beloved sports car by driving it on the narrow and slippery roads.

Madsen didn’t think there was anything fashionable about being late, so Bratt made sure the cab arrived at the large, wrought iron gate at a few minutes before nine.

At the front door he was greeted by Maria, a tiny, gray-haired woman who seemed to have been with the Madsen family since the War of 1812. She greeted him so quietly he hardly heard her voice and, just as quietly, she ushered him into the study. She asked him to wait there a moment before she headed back out of the room with small, mincing steps.

Bratt looked around at the large room and thought that the word “study” had never done it justice. The walls were lined with ceiling-high mahogany bookshelves that held countless ancient, leather-bound volumes he doubted anybody had ever read. There were two long, brown leather sofas facing a huge fireplace where several logs were burning fiercely. Prominently displayed over the mantelpiece was a large portrait of the first Madsen to land on the shores of North America, a man who had made his fortune by buying beaver and fox pelts from native tribesmen in exchange for worthless trinkets.

There were also a large oak desk, armchairs, end tables, and floor lamps placed neatly about the room. All the furniture gave off the odour of the wax and polish with which it was regularly treated. It was a smell that distinctly said, “old money.”

It wasn’t long before Senator Madsen strode into the room. He was a small, trimly-built man, whose robust health belied his seventy years of age. He stepped quickly forward, his hand outstretched toward Bratt, a large smile on his face.