He doesn’t catch Rechard’s full response, only the words, “He told me to…”
“With the coin of perjured testimony, you expect to buy early freedom from your crimes against innocent children, is that not the deal?”
Arthur is building to a crescendo, but already there’s surprising impact: the witness has turned white, is rising from his chair. He extends a shaky arm, points to the Dealmaker. “He told me to do it.” Rechard looks pleadingly at Arthur, at Kroop, like a friendless begging dog. “I didn’t want to.”
“Hold on there, partner.” Howie Solyshn is back on his feet, fingers of both hands curled tightly, as if around a neck.
“Mr. Sheriff, please escort Mr. Solyshn from this courtroom.”
Solyshn glares at the judge, waves off Barney Willit, and strides angrily away.
“You made me do it,” the ex-priest calls.
“No more questions.” One of the great skills of cross-examination is knowing when to stop.
“Take him away,” says Kroop. He has the politeness to wait until Rechard is removed before saying, “Disgusting, Mr. Svabo. Disgusting.”
Arthur feels much recovered from yesterday’s debacle. The jury must be wondering why Buddy would be so desperate as to call that fellow.
Buddy is fixed on the clock, as if willing the hands to move. Kroop has his pencil poised, ready to fill more pages of his journal. “Mr. Svabo, please get on with your case, we have twenty minutes of precious time left.”
“I thought Mr. Beauchamp would take up the rest of the morning.”
“Well, he didn’t, did he? May I be so bold as to ask why you keep running out of witnesses?”
Arthur rises. “If I can be of help, I saw several of them in the witness room. U.S. citizens whom the Canadian taxpayer is lavishly hosting in the Hyatt Hotel.”
Buddy is boxed in. “Okay, call Mr. Karlsen.” He gives Ears a wag of the head, tells him to fetch. Kroop continues to glower at Buddy through the ensuing minute of silence before Ears leads in the first of the Topekans, a meaty businessman who keeps looking at his watch as if he has a plane to catch.
Arthur must concentrate, he is almost too buoyed up to focus on Karlsen’s fishing holiday. He and his group booked five days of trolling in Barkley Sound and lounging at the Breakers Inn. They didn’t otherwise bestir themselves except to explore the boardwalk shops and visit Brady Beach. On Friday, two strangers joined them for dinner. From photographs, Karlsen identifies the nondescript little man in the owlish glasses and the comely blond therapist.
Karlsen noticed Faloon wasn’t drinking and Winters was only sipping wine, though it otherwise flowed freely. He and his wife retired at about ten o’clock. He can’t remember hearing anything that night but crashing surf. The thefts were discovered just before breakfast, the men comparing half-empty billfolds, initially blaming the owners and staff, demanding action, complaining about slow police response.
The thief didn’t touch Mrs. Karlsen’s five-thousand-dollar necklace, and Karlsen lost only two of the six thousand in his wallet. “Heck, I probably wouldn’t even have noticed the money was gone if Harvey hadn’t asked me to check my wallet.”
Harvey Coolidge, who plunked himself beside Winters at dinner. Who likely asked where she was staying. Harvey Coolidge, who went out for a walk in the middle of the night. Arthur has no questions of Karlsen, he will wait for Coolidge.
At lunch break, while walking to the Confederation Club, Arthur feels the old craving, a memory of martinis at noon, a tradition with his cronies. He can hear the shaker even before he enters the lounge, like music, a tambourine.
He’s no longer a member but is welcomed as one. Indeed the maitre d’almost weeps to see him. “We thought you’d given up on us, sir.” Arthur is settled like an invalid into a plush chair beside his landlord, Hubbell Meyerson, just back from a trademark dispute in Shanghai. He raises his martini. “L’chayim.” Arthur orders a Virgin Mary.
Hubbell expresses greeting-card sympathy over Arthur’s wifeless ordeal, but can’t smother a smile. Arthur supposes it’s quite a joke among the profession, this spectacular uncoupling that extended through the lush, fertile spring. Day Seventy-six! Read all about it! Tune in tomorrow!
“Everything’s all right with you and Margaret?”
“Yes, of course.” Blurted.
“She’s having the adventure of her life. People need to do that. At least one adventure.”
What is he babbling about? Arthur regales him with Howie Solyshn’s bad day. He imitates Rechard’s pointed, shaking, bony finger. You told me to say it.
“Couldn’t happen to a nicer shyster. Enjoying the apartment?”
“Better if I didn’t wake every morning to the sight of engorged penises. I’m reminded of age and incapacity.”
“Speak for yourself.” Hubbell is a year older than Arthur, no fitter, but apparently lustier. “Early nineteenth-century art that inspires and instructs in the act of love. Pillow pictures, that’s the term Anika uses. My designer, amazing woman.” He waits until Arthur receives his bloodless Mary, lowers his voice. “Hope you won’t need the apartment for the weekend.”
“I shall be on Garibaldi Island.”
“Good. Your lips are sealed. I have a little thing going on the side.”
“Not with this Anika?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“How ridiculous, Hubbell. You’re a happily married man. A grandfather thrice over.”
“She doesn’t have a problem with that. She’s married too. Very…hormonal woman. Hasn’t been getting enough of the you-know-what.”
Arthur knows what. He’s having another Annabelle moment. She had a voracious appetite too, but for young men. She was about Margaret’s age when she married her conductor, fourteen years her junior…
He has little appetite for lunch and less for listening to Hubbell’s elogium to his reinvigorated manhood, aided by Viagra. Only ten bucks a pop. There’s some in the medicine cabinet of 807 Elysian Tower. Arthur is encouraged to try one. A tester. Guaranteed to get a bone on. Take a couple. Arm himself for his reunion with Margaret. She won’t be climbing any trees after that.
Arthur is shocked speechless. Viagra has turned his friend into a lecherous fool. Or is Arthur the fool for lagging behind the times when a marriage might be saved for ten bucks a pop?
The parade of Topekans resumes at 2 p.m., portly middle-aged men and their thinner weight-watching wives, all dressed up for the occasion and anxious to please. Arthur senses their affront that Eve Winters ignored them at dinner in favour of Faloon, who in turn was ignored by all but a former insurance executive who recalls Faloon saying he was retired from the jewellery business.
His sharp-eared wife overheard snatches of conversation between Faloon and Winters. “Not that I was trying to listen, they were talking quite low. But she was going on about her hike, and the cabin where she was staying, funky, she called it. And she asked him if she could find any fun in Bamfield-that’s the word she used, fun-and I heard him give directions to some kind of place with music. She gave him her card.”
“Dinner was very jolly,” another woman testifies. “When I learned what happened to that poor thing I was…well, I’m still in a state of shock. She was so…regal.”
Harvey Coolidge has yet to take his turn, and Arthur has few questions for the others, who seem disappointed, snubbed again. Ingrid Coolidge is the seventh Topekan to take the stand: attractive, mid-thirties, a trophy wife of the wealthy developer, her senior by two decades.
After retiring to bed, her husband became restless-too much wine, an acid stomach-and went out for a walk. She stirred awake when he returned. She can’t say how long he was gone. Nothing else disturbed her in the night. In the morning, he pulled his moneybelt from under his pillow and, upon discovering a “considerable sum” was missing, raised a hue and cry.
“How much was this considerable sum?” Buddy asks.