“I thought you were quitting.”
“Tomorrow. Cold turkey Tuesday. Last time I quit, it was the headless scene from Scream Seven. Be happy I won’t be in your hair.”
“In whose hair will you be?”
“Not sure how to answer that.” She flips through a notepad, quick to change topics. “I told Nick he’d better fess up to Claudette about screwing Holly. It’s important, I said. You used a safe, what happened to it? He can’t remember, thinks Holly trashed it.”
“The sleepwalking?”
“He downplayed it.” Imitating his soft voice: “‘I’m dreaming I’m in the cage like a animal, I wake up and I been wearing out the carpet, it ain’t nothing to bother Mr. Beauchamp about.’”
One suppresses the truth one fears-another reason for Arthur to see him soon. He once ran a sleepwalking defence after learning, from his expert, that people can do complex tasks when disconnected from reality. But he has no taste for arguing his client acted unconsciously; it implies a savage murderer hides within.
“I phoned Claudette to confirm he paced up and down in his sleep, and she said, yeah, it was like he was locked in a cell. He also talked in his sleep.” Examining her notes. “Things like: ‘Let me out of here. What’s your badge number? I’m clean, ask Corporal Johnson, he handles me.’”
He interrupts. “Ah, so let us assume Rechard isn’t lying.” She is getting a little too overweening with her brilliant deductions. He’s not too senile to see the logical premise. “Nick was trying to justify his night with Holly Hoover. ‘I couldn’t help myself. She was beautiful.’ He’d suppressed it and it came out in his dreams.”
“Good for you,” she says, wetting an index finger and awarding Arthur an invisible check mark.
He drops her at the Woofer house, watches as she shouts a greeting to Kim Lee, retrieves her pack, kneels to shake Slappy’s paw. Lotis the nymph, if rural tales be true, as from Priapus’ lawless lust she flew…
Adding to the Owl’s misery, he’s been expelled from Protective Custody and is back in the main monkey cage. He can’t be in PCU at the same time as Father Yvon Rechard, according to prison regulations, because the aggrieved party might cause injury to what in police lingo is a co-operating individual.
Not that Faloon would be capable of such unprofessional behaviour, but others in the main wing definitely are, for instance the burly person he’s talking to in the yard, Greg McDeadly they call him, though it’s really McDade. You don’t want to call him McDud, which a loudmouth did years ago and has the knife scars on his ass to prove it.
McDeadly is a connected guy who works for the d’Anglio family and can get you favours. When he’s on the street, which isn’t often, his job for Tony d’Anglio is to put the rub on competing crime czars and traitors and rats. He recently got collared for an attempt on Twelve-Fingers Watson, which is why he’s here.
McDeadly insists he can get transferred easy to PCU, with his connections, it’s in his field of expertise to take down Father Rechard. “I will do you justice. Pay me when you get out, Nick, I know you’re good for it. For me it’s a matter of principle when it comes to squealers. The practice should be discouraged.”
“It’s very kind of you to offer, but Mr. Beauchamp isn’t worried about this fish, he’ll serve him up to the jury with pickles on the side.” Which is a load of bravado, because Faloon isn’t sure that will happen, not at all. Not with him having flunked the DNA retest, according to Beauchamp’s new student, who came out here yesterday with a sackful of bad news.
She asked him if he’d ever slipped anyone what they call rochies or roofies, for instance to immobilize the mark before putting on a snatch, and he was offended. He has ethical standards when it comes to drugs, like guns.
Claudette is due this afternoon, and he’s tense with wanting to see her big smiling face. He has to be cheerful for her, he doesn’t want her to know how hopeless things feel.
“What was you supposed to have told this songbird?” McDeadly asks.
“‘She was beautiful, I just couldn’t help myself.’” Phrases that feel foreign to his tongue, yet why that distant niggle of memory that he spoke them?
“That don’t sound too bad, you could’ve been asking the father for forgiveness over jacking off.”
“It’s bad enough.” Faloon looks like a schemer, playing along with Rechard that he was Catholic-how is that going to look to a jury? The Arab infiltrator. Maybe that’s the whole deal, it’s why the government has zeroed in on him like a laser-guided missile, he’s Lebanese, an Arab, a terrorist.
What makes him worry that he used those words is that at breakfast the next day Father Rechard came up to him with a knowing look and a lowered voice: “I know exactly what you mean.” After that the priest’s counsellor came visiting, a dumptruck with a reputation for pulling off deals so he can go skiing.
Faloon has finally got round to facing the possibility of himself as the perpetrator. He walks in his sleep, talks in his sleep, so maybe he stalks in his sleep, kills in his sleep. Compelled by a force outside him. I just couldn’t help myself.
He didn’t go that far when talking to Lotis Rudnicki, who’s street-smart and too much of a knockout to be doing the ugly work of a lawyer. She must have seen he was dejected-the Father Rechard business, the ironclad DNA evidence. On top of it all, Mr. Beauchamp never coming to visit. Obviously, that’s because he doesn’t believe in Faloon and can’t look him in the eye. Out of loyalty to his most faithful client, Mr. Beauchamp has put aside his blissful life to take on a hopeless loser. Faloon owes it to him not to let his career end with such a dull thud.
McDeadly pulls out a packet of tobacco and papers. Smoking is illegal in the joint these days, even outside, but it isn’t enforced to the hilt. He halves the rollie, one for Faloon, and they light up, the Owl going along even though he doesn’t normally smoke.
“I want to get a private letter out,” Faloon says. He chokes, it’s pipe tobacco.
“That can be done.”
“You have a reliable source for this fine product, McDeadly?”
“Yeah, one of the screws is my ex-brother-in-law, he kites it in. You want a lid?”
“Please.”
Waiting for the visiting hour, for Claudette, he washes his armpits, drags a comb through his receding hair, tries on a smile: the cool, confident, innocent look while inside all is torment. The killer who strikes in his sleep, will that be the headline? How does he share his terrible thoughts with the woman he loves-if that’s what it is, love.
He’s going to clear the air. For at least one brilliant holy moment of your life you have to be totally honest with the one lady who gives a shit about you. Who’s prepared to make the great sacrifice of marrying you, even though he can’t remember proposing.
He’s been rehearsing the right words to tell Claudette about Holly, and even as he waits outside the visitors’ room, he practises under his breath. “In case something happens to me, I don’t want an event from the past to rear its ugly head between us.” Too formal. “She took advantage in my drunken state.” Not true. The fact is Holly looked hot and she was offering, and he…well, he’s human.
He is marched in, and there she is, the bountiful hostess of the Nitinat Lodge. Soon to be owner.
They both want to touch but can only put hands to the glass. “I sorely miss you, darlin’,” she says with her lovely Maritime accent.
He asks how she’s doing, and she’s doing fine, the lodge is doing great, wait till he sees the flowerbeds she planted. She runs on about that, how they’re going to have a great time running the Nitinat, a husband-and-wife team, she’ll do the cooking and he’ll clean the eaves and paint the decks.