OUTSIDE THE COP SHOP, ALISTAIR CRAMM ASKED MAUREEN if she wouldn’t mind going down to Marty’s Snack Bar with him for a quick cup of coffee. He just had a few things to go over with her and it wouldn’t take long.
Maureen kept trying to say that she didn’t want to go into Marty’s, that she didn’t want a cup of coffee, but he just kept talking at her and nudging her along Water Street, and she could tell that even to get a word in edgewise with this guy would take an enormous amount of energy, and she didn’t have that energy. So she sat in one of the back booths at Marty’s and faced the lawyer who DAFT had on retainer, saying no, she didn’t want a coffee or a Coke or anything. She was desperate for an opportunity, an opening, to say what she really wanted to say, which was: Why didn’t Jack go into the cop shop this morning and confess, and why was I being questioned again by the cops? But Cramm wouldn’t shut up long enough for Maureen to get her questions out. He just kept talking. Talking in broad terms about his clients, talking about his need to protect his clients, and how now, of course, she was his client, not his major client, but a very important client, make no mistake about it . . . and on and on and on and on and on and on and on . . .
Finally, Maureen just put her head down on the table and gave up. She should have just gone ahead and told the cops the truth at the beginning, and the truth was she was guilty, if not of Bo’s actual murder, then certainly of trying to murder him, and you could do life for that—she’d looked it up—and what difference would it make if she did do life, because she had no life now anyway. Jack hadn’t shown up and confessed, so the boys weren’t going to keep their promise. How was she ever going to find her baby on her own, let alone get her baby back? What would she do? Move back to Princess Street and spend all those long, long years, years that stretched out in front of her now like a big empty void fighting with the Sarge? Even though the thought of prison terrified her, she felt in her heart of hearts that she would probably do easier time in a federal pen than living down with the Sarge; plus, in the pen, she’d probably learn French or something.
“Look,” she said, picking her head up off the table, “I don’t know why they sent you down—”
“That’s not important right now.” Cramm cut her off.
“Yes, it is important. To me, it’s important.”
“That’s what you think. But you see, I don’t care what you think. Nobody really cares what you think, Miss Brennan. As far as you’re concerned, the only thing that anybody really cares about right now is what you told those two police officers before I arrived.”
“Nothing! That’s what I told them: nothing. I was just waiting for them to tell me that Jack—”
Cramm’s eyes darted around the restaurant and then gave Maureen a warning.
“All right, that someone was in to the police station this morning and confessed. I never said anything. So . . .”
“So?”
“Well, I kept my part of the bargain.”
“Bargain?”
“Yes, bargain. I was going to shut up and someone,” Maureen said pointedly, “someone was going to confess, and the boys were going to help me find my baby.”
Cramm, silenced for the first time since he’d walked into the interrogation room, seemed to be taking Maureen’s measure. “I’m afraid that bargain may no longer be possible, not under the present circumstances. The boys, you see, who are so good at certain things—really, they seem to have a genius for turning small investments into huge profits—the boys really don’t have a solid grip on the law of the land. Now . . . Now finish up, Maureen.” Cramm stood.
Maureen looked down: she had nothing to finish up because they hadn’t ordered anything. Cramm was already at the door, holding it open for her.
“We’ll just scoot up over the hill to my office, where we will have more privacy, and then we can discuss your case.”
“My case?” Now Maureen’s flabber was well and truly ghasted. Everything used to ghast Carleen’s flabber back in Grade 9, and it used to slay Maureen every time she said it, like that cartoon “Cain Slayed Abel,” where Abel was lying on the ground, holding on to his sides for dear life because he was laughing so hard.
“And don’t you worry about costs, because they have already been covered. You are in good hands, young lady. And as long as you keep your wits about you and your mouth shut and do the right thing . . .”
Maureen’s mind wandered. She tried to interrupt him a couple of times, but she finally gave up and accepted that it was true: he wasn’t the least bit interested in anything she had to say.
Finally, they arrived at his office. It was right below Booman Tate’s loft. She couldn’t believe she was back there again for the second time, back where Bo had first hit her and thrown her down the stairs a lifetime ago, back before the permanent fog, before the half-life between being awake and asleep, between being drunk and sober and just about to get drunk again, before the dark dream world that Maureen had been stumbling through ever since. Of course, Maureen could have walked away that night and gone back to Princess Street with her black eye and her broken rib. But it hadn’t seemed possible then. Now, she could walk away and she turned to do just that, but Cramm had her by the arm and in through the door and sat down in a chair before she’d had time to tell her feet to get going.
“As the officers just informed you, they found trace amounts of chlordane in the body of your lover, the deceased.”
“You were in the room then?”
“I was in the room for quite a while. What will they find, Maureen, when they test the food?”
“How should I know, and what difference does it make? He was murdered. That’s what the cops said. Jack murdered him.”
“Uh, no. No, Miss Brennan. My client Mr. Dunne may be—and I say may be—guilty of the crime of manslaughter but certainly not of murder. If and when the alleged incident took place, presumably my client was in the heat of passion, provoked—”
“Provoked?” Maureen said.
“Yes, provoked. As I’m sure you’re aware, Miss Brennan, your lover, Mr. Trevor ‘Bo’ Browne, assaulted, kidnapped and held Mr. Dunne’s younger twin, Deucey, against his will in the trunk of that very same red Renault where Mr. Browne’s body was later found.”
“Yea. Someone told me about it. I didn’t know about it, like, when it was going on or anything.”
“My client Mr. Jack Dunne has always been fiercely protective of his younger brother—younger by five minutes. As you know, Mr. Dunne and his brother are identical twins, and what you probably wouldn’t know is that meant they shared the same placenta. But, tragically, in the case of the Dunne twins, it was shared unequally. Jack Dunne had a share that was too small to provide the necessary nutrients for him to develop normally or even survive. And that’s when David, in the womb, sacrificed himself and started sharing his blood supply with Jack, thus saving his brother’s life. Twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome is what it’s called. And because of that, the donor twin, David, was smaller than his twin brother at birth, anemic, fragile and unstable. The recipient twin, Jack, was born, thanks to his brother, larger, healthier and stronger. So you can understand, can you not, Miss Brennan, why this wrongful act against his twin, his saviour, this horrendous insult against his younger brother’s body and spirit was—and I know we can prove it based on the medical evidence—was sufficient to deprive any ordinary person of the power of self-control, let alone a person whose life had been selflessly saved by his brother in utero. The proof is there that Mr. Dunne’s retaliation is certainly proportional to the provocation, as he merely did to Mr. Browne exactly what Mr. Browne had done to Mr. Dunne’s brother. So there we have it, because of the irrefutable medical condition, it is eminently possible for us to prove provocation and thereby get the charges set at manslaughter.” Cramm’s smile was somewhat disturbing, and his pointy tongue darted out and actually licked his lips when he said the word “manslaughter.” “In R. v. LeFrancon 1965, ‘. . . if provocation does exist the verdict must be manslaughter and in—’”
“You know, I’m not really following you,” Maureen said.
“Provocation, Miss Brennan. In law, the act of provocation consists of three elements.” Cramm held up his hand and counted each on his fingers. “One, the act of provocation. Two, the loss of self-control both actual and reasonable, and three, retaliation proportionate to the provocation, all of which I believe we can prove. And if we go further and convince a jury that Trevor ‘Bo’ Browne was an individual who often provoked both friends and strangers to where they were deprived of the power of self-control and that Mr. Browne was indeed a man who made a meal of provocation and a vocation of vexation and torment.”
Maureen started to say something in Bo’s defence and then thought better of it.
“Did he not often provoke you, Miss Brennan, past reasonable thought, past thought altogether, past caring, provoke you to the point where you purposefully caused your lover to ingest the poison chlordane?”
Maureen wished he’d stop calling Bo her lover and tried to keep her face impassive around the whole poison thing.
“Isn’t that so, Miss Brennan? Wouldn’t you agree?”
“It’s like you’re putting Bo on trial.”
“Exactly. What a smart little bit of fluff you turned out to be, Miss Brennan, because that is precisely what I will be doing. And that’s why I, or rather we, need you as the star witness.”
“What?” Maureen squeaked. “No, Jesus, I said nothing to the cops. I already did what I was supposed to do. I said nothing. I found out from Mom where she brought the baby, and Fox said that I could go . . . and if you’re my lawyer—”
“Well, technically, I am not your lawyer yet. Not yet, at any rate. I could easily become your lawyer, but as of this moment, I am not legally engaged as your lawyer.”
“But you told McCarthy and Kent—”
“A little legal sleight of hand, Miss Brennan.” He raised his hand. “Now of course, if we can come to an agreement, then I will become your lawyer, and then we can prove that said Trevor Browne was a bad bit of business, a man who could provoke even those who loved him”—he looked at Maureen meaningfully—“provoke them to the point of”—he leaned across the table and lowered his voice to a stage whisper—“murder. Murder most foul.”
He sat back and looked well pleased with himself. Maureen was speechless.
Cramm continued, “You’ll appear in court, say you tried to poison him, tell the whole sordid little story of the relationship, the drunkenness, the violence, the constant brutality against your person—”
“I don’t want to,” Maureen finally got out, after trying to interrupt him a number of times.
“Of course, it will be humiliating. They, the prosecution, the Crown, they’ll try to prove, oh, that perhaps you deserved the beatings, that maybe you brought them on yourself, perhaps even welcomed them. Knowing the Crown and the good Catholic St. Bon’s boy that he is, he probably won’t go so far as to suggest that there was anything more depraved involved, anything of a sadomasochistic nature.” He looked at Maureen’s appalled and questioning face, and said, “Sado-masochism: mutually consensual sexual acts involving violence, one partner being the brute or sadist, the other a willing victim or masochist—very common, really, but not, I’m thinking”—he paused and gave Maureen a sardonic smile—“by the look on your face, among the downtown shopgirl set.”
“I am not a shopgirl!”
Cramm continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “You will tearfully inform them that in a moment of deep desperation, fearing for your life, in a passion of fear, in fact, you blindly reached for the deadly poison and dot dot dot.”
“No, no, I’m not saying that. I’m not doing it. Jesus, they’ll charge me with attempted murder!”
“No, they won’t. Simply because Section C5 of the Canada Evidence Protection Act states that with respect to any question that a witness is compelled to answer, if that answer could tend to incriminate him, the answer given shall not be used and shall not be admissible in evidence against the witness in any criminal trial or in any other criminal proceeding against such witness. Except, Maureen, if they prosecuted you for perjury if you lied on the stand, that’s the only thing for which you could be prosecuted. So you can see, Miss Brennan, how necessary it is for you to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and so on, and so forth.”
By this point, Maureen was so completely rattled by him, how he never shut up, how he just kept going on. No wonder they said he was a good lawyer; he was so confusing, he could trip up a church, for Christ sakes.
“No, no, I’m not doing it! I’m not sayin’ that I tried to poison Bo. I’ll never get another boyfriend. Besides, you can’t pin anything on me. I didn’t do anything. You have no proof.”
“But if the police find poison in the food in the refrigerator—”
“So what does that prove?”
“Reasonable doubt, and I’ll convince a jury that Mr. Browne provoked you to the point of attempted murder in the same way he provoked my clients.”
“Yea, well, I’d like to see ya try,” Maureen said in desperation. Whenever she was really afraid, she got as saucy as a shitfly. “Come ahead, ’cause if you do, I’ll tell everyone about . . . I’ll tell them all about DAFT, the boys and what they’re up to, all the big investors and the big catch they’ve got planned off the coast of Colombia, plus I’ll tell them where Jack kidnapped me and tied me up in the DAFT office and stuck a dirty sock down my throat just like he did with Bo, so that will pretty well blow your whole defence of ‘he was provoked and driven cracked in a passion of anger.’” She looked him straight in the eye. “Is that important enough for you?”
“What big catch off the coast of Colombia?”
“I don’t know. It’s just something I saw in a telegram down to Deucey’s.”
“And the big investors?”
“Fox said it to Jack, said they couldn’t afford to have the cops sniffing around now that they got the big investors.”
“And who are they?”
“How should I know?”
“Well, you seem to know a good deal, don’t you, for someone who ‘knows fuck all about fuck all’?” He paused. “Were you threatening me, Miss Brennan?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know. I just know we had a deal.”
“Did we?” Cramm asked, his eyebrows flying up.
“Not me and you—me and the boys. And I kept my part of the bargain. I never said not the one word to the cops. I risked life and limb to find out where Mom brought my baby to, and now all I’m saying is why should I keep my part if yer not gonna do yer part?”
“Hmm, yes, a compelling argument. We seem to have reached a classic standoff here. To my mind though, Miss Brennan, you would be much better served to do exactly as I have asked.”
“Well, of course, that’s what you think. You think I should do just what you want, but I don’t think that.”
“Look at it this way: either way, you will be exposing yourself to public humiliation, cross-examination on the witness stand—”
“Yea, but at least I won’t be getting up down to the courthouse and saying that I tried to murder my boyfriend, which I never by the way—that’s just you suppositioning or whatnot. All I’ll be saying is that someone, Jack Dunne, kidnapped me, tied me to a chair and shoved a dirty sock down my throat just like he did to my boyfriend. And I’ll be saying that DAFT is not just a plain old above-board business, and that will put a big spotlight on all their investors, just when, according to what Fox said anyway, they can’t afford to have anyone looking at ’em because some of the investors are—whatcha call it?—a bit skittish. I don’t know what word Fox said, but that’s what it meant.”
“Well, like I said, it’s a bit of a standoff, isn’t it? But I would ask you, Miss Brennan, to remember your lover, Mr. Browne, and what happened to Mr. Browne when he attempted to do harm to one of my clients.”
“Now it’s you threatening me.” Maureen stood up. “I think you are anyway, but I’m that confused now I don’t know what to be at. I’m just going to go home and think about it.”
“Well, don’t take too long. None of us have any guarantees.”
“You are, you are threatening me.”
“It’s just today; that’s all we’ve got, Miss Brennan.”
“Oh, are you one too?”
“One—one what?”
“You know.”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t.”
“An alcoholic.”
“No, I am not.”
“Oh, ’cause they’re always talking about just having the one day.”
“I’m merely suggesting that Mr. Browne would probably not have been aware when he woke up that fateful morning that the end of that seemingly ordinary day would find him bound and gagged and dead in the trunk of his own car. If he only knew that was his last day on this earth, who knows what he might have done differently.”
“Yea, I’m going.” Maureen was moving fast toward the door.
“Well, be my guest,” Cramm said, standing up and going to open the door for her. “I will contact you in the morning.”
“How do you know where I’m going to be?”
“Oh, I’ll know. Don’t you worry your fluffy little head about that.”