Barrington Street Blues Read online

  “I know who you are,” she announced, after lighting up a smoke and appraising me for a few moments. “You used to play in a band with Ed Johnson and those guys. Blues, right? I used to go listen to you sometimes with Dice, at the Flying Shag.” That was the nickname for a dive called the Flying Stag, where my band used to have a weekly gig. “We were usually pissed by the time you came on, but I think you were good.”

  “Yeah, our band is called Functus. We still play, at least for ourselves.”

  “Functus, that’s it. Some legal word. What’s it mean, anyway?”

  “It comes from functus officio, which means that a judge is without further authority or legal competence because he’s finished with the case. But we just liked the sound of it.”

  “Okay. I thought it was Fucked Us. For years. But, as I say, I was piss drunk every time I was at the Shag. You always wore faded jeans and worn-out T-shirts. You were really cute. Still are. You were finishing law school when Dice started. Yeah, it’s coming back to me now. You married?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Yeah, right, never mind. Dickie!” She called to the bartender without turning around. “Did somebody come in and break your arms when I wasn’t looking?”

  “Coming right up, babe.”

  “What do you do, Mavis?” I asked her, when Dickie departed after delivering her fresh drink. “Where do you work?”

  “I’m a fed. Tax auditor.”

  I tried not to show my surprise but I was obviously unsuccessful. She looked at me, laughed, and raised her glass before downing half her Scotch.

  I decided to get to the point before it was too late. “I was just wondering about Dice.”

  “Weren’t we all!”

  “Did he have a gun?”

  “Oh, yeah, he had a gun. I was a little worried about it, that we might be in a fight some time and it might escalate to armed conflict. With me unarmed.”

  “You were seriously worried?”

  “Well, not really.”

  “So he had a gun. What kind was it, do you know?”

  “Something his dad took off the Hun during the war. A Luger, I think it was.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “I haven’t a clue. Why?”

  “You don’t have it.”

  “No. Why?”

  “Because a gun just like it turned up at the scene of a murder-suicide I’m looking into.”

  “Really. Well, I never saw it again, after . . .”

  “After he died?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know what happened to it. He kept it in a drawer in his office. Brought it out once in a while to use as a prop at party time.” Here, she let out a loud squawk of laughter. “Pointed it at people as a joke.”

  “Was it loaded?”

  “Yeah, at least sometimes it was, because one night he fired it at the wall of his office. The bullet’s probably still there.”

  “His office? Why?”

  She gave an elaborate shrug. “Who knows?”

  “Well, were there people with him at the time?”

  “Couple of friends. We stopped in there after the bars closed.”

  “You say you never saw the gun after your husband died.”

  “No. I never found it when I cleaned out his things. It wasn’t in the house and it wasn’t in the office.”

  “Can you remember when you last saw it?”

  “Oh, yeah. This office wall performance was shortly before he died. Maybe a couple of days before.”

  “So the gun went missing between then and the time he died.”

  “Must have.”

  “Did you report it stolen?”

  “No, I didn’t know if it was stolen or if he gave it away or what. And I didn’t give a shit one way or the other.”

  I had to wonder about the timing: the gun disappearing just around the time of his death. He certainly didn’t die of gunshot wounds, but perhaps there was some question about his suicide after all. I might as well ask his widow.

  “When you heard about Dice’s suicide, where were you?”

  “I was standing right behind him going ‘ha ha ha, it’s all mine now!’ Asshole!”

  “Who?”

  “Who what?”

  “Who’s an asshole?”

  “Dice!”

  “You and your husband didn’t get along?”

  She looked at me as if I were demented. “Get along? Who gets along? Do you get along with your wife?”

  She was asking the wrong guy. Or the right one. “There were problems in your marriage, then.”

  “Depends what you mean by problems. We fought. A lot of pricey china got smashed. He whored around behind my back. I cheated on Dice to get back at him but I passed out with the guy still on top of me. But what the hell? I liked old Dice; he was a few laughs.”

  “When you heard about the suicide, did that make sense to you? Did you think he would take his own life?”

  She shrugged. “Why not?”

  “Let’s look at why. Were you aware of any reason he would have wanted to end it all?”

  “He had money troubles, big time. That would be the only thing that would push Dice over the edge. It wouldn’t be a lost love, or a guilty conscience, or anything like that. But money would do it. If anything would.”

  “What was the source of his money problems?”

  “What do you think?” I didn’t answer so she continued. “It all went up his nose. Or he gambled it away. He mortgaged our house without telling me; took some chick in to forge my signature. I let him have it when I got wind of that. What a jerk.”

  “Did Dice have any enemies?”

  “Enemies?” She turned towards the bar. “Dickie! I’m going to need an IV here to replace my fluids if you don’t hop to it!”

  “On its way, Mave!”

  “You have to keep these guys on their toes. So, Monty, you think somebody pushed Dice off that balcony. Who would have done that?”

  “Well, you say he had a big cocaine habit. And serious gambling debts. That opens up a few possibilities.”

  She waved my speculations away with a bejewelled hand. “That was just for fun. He always came up with money for his coke. And as for his gambling debts, nobody was coming around to break his legs. He knew which creditors to pay first! Nobody cared about his lack of money but Dice himself.”

  “How was his law practice going?”

  “Down the toilet.”

  “It was a one-man practice, right?”

  “It was a no-man practice. He was a good lawyer but he just let it slide.”

  “Do you think he ever did anything desperate in relation to his law practice?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like dipping into his trust fund, his client’s money, to cover gambling debts?”

  “Not that I know of. But he wouldn’t have told me anyway.”

  “So, no problems with the Bar Society? An investigation or anything of that nature?”

  “The only investigation he was ever subject to was a raid on one of our parties!”

  “Really.”

  “I just took the whole thing as a joke. These two grim-faced cops showed up. I yelled out something like ‘Scatter, everybody, Vice Squad!’ Or ‘Panty raid!’ Or something. They weren’t amused. But they didn’t find any blow, or illegal games, or corrupted minors, or anything else. They left with a warning to keep the noise down. But hell, when you’re on the tenth floor of a downtown building, who’s worried about noise? Stuffy pricks, the two of them.”

  “Who were the cops? Did you know them?”

  “No. One was named Tulk. I remember that because my brother had just got married to a girl named Tulk. No relation; she’s an American. But we never saw the plods again.”

  “How were you left financially after your husband’s death?”

  “Do you mean, did I just take out a great big fat insurance policy the day before he got splattered all over the pavement?”

  “Right.”

 
; “No, neither of us ever bought insurance. We had no kids, we were fairly young. We didn’t want to waste any money on insurance. I was fine afterwards. My salary was good. I sold the big house in Clayton Park and bought a fixer-upper downtown.”

  Mavis was still at her table when I left the hotel.

  I wasn’t a ballistics expert, though I could certainly find one. But lawyerly caution told me that any evidence, whether it was related to my case or any other matter, had better be collected and logged by the police. If it was significant and somebody like me or my expert tampered with it, the evidence would be useless. So I made a call to Constable Phil Riley and told him there might be a bullet lodged in the wall of Dice Campbell’s old office. A bullet that might or might not prove to be of interest in the Leaman-Scott double shooting.

  †

  Ross Trevelyan appeared flustered when I stopped by to discuss the case with him Friday morning.

  “Rough day at the office, Ross?”

  “Oh, hi, Monty. No, I . . .” He glanced at his watch.

  “I’ll come back another time. It’s nothing urgent.”

  “No, no, come in. I’m just reading this article in Canadian Lawyer. It’s about the superior court judges across the country, which ones have been most influential in taking the law in new directions. I’ve been trying to get to it all morning. I was hoping to have it finished before I —” He looked at his watch again. “Shit. My father is coming by and we’re going to the Halifax Club for lunch. Well, you know how it is.”

  I wasn’t sure I did. The Halifax Club had been catering to the business elite since 1862; I rarely entered the elegant Italianate building. And lunches with my father had not been occasions I felt I had to prepare for. I decided to let him cram for his noontime encounter and turned away, nearly bumping into John Trevelyan as I did.

  “Good morning, Justice Trevelyan.”

  He was tall and broad, dressed in an immaculately tailored suit. His head was large and crowned with wavy hair that was going from auburn to grey. The judge peered down at me. “Do I know you?”

  He should. I had spent three days trying a narcotics case before him two months before. Well, if he didn’t know me now, he’d know me later. I had filed a sixty-eight-page factum with the Court of Appeal, citing fourteen grounds for overturning his decision. He was a very good judge in the civil courts, but he was inexperienced in the world of criminal law.

  Either he read my mind or he suddenly decided to acknowledge my existence. “Oh, yes, Mr. Collins. Excuse me. Ross! Aren’t you ready? So this is where they’ve put you. Is there a shortage of office space on this floor? I’ll speak to Stratton.”

  His face reddening, Ross answered: “They offered me an office with a harbour view but it was on the south side. Sun streaming in all day. I’d bake in there, so I took this —”

  “Is that a piece of jewellery I see on you?”

  Ross looked at his right wrist. “It’s a Medic-Alert bracelet, Dad. You know, for my peanut allergy. Elspeth wants me to wear it.”

  “That girl has you whipped.”

  I looked at Ross, who wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Let’s go,” he said.

  “Good news,” the father announced, as I made way for them.

  “Oh, yeah? What’s that?”

  “Your brother’s coming home.”

  “Great,” Ross lied. Was the brother a lawyer too? No, I remembered, he was some sort of international finance wizard who had bought a large country house outside London. It had been in the papers.

  I suspected that my ruminations on the Leaman case would not be greeted with enthusiasm by Ross that day — and perhaps not any day soon — so I decided to continue my own discreet inquiries. If it was going to be tilt, game over, I wanted to know about it sooner rather than later. There was no point in adding to the stress in Ross’s life unless things took a clear and unmistakable turn for the worse.

  Chapter 3

  Now the only thing a gambling man needs is a suitcase and a trunk. And the only time he is ever satisfied is when he’s on a drunk.

  — Traditional, “House of the Rising Sun”

  “Collins was a son of privilege.”

  “Hardly.”

  Ed Johnson, Brennan Burke, and I were at the Midtown on Friday night for a steak and a pint. Ed was rewriting my biography.

  “His dad was chairman of the math department at Dal.”

  “You make it sound like His Lordship upon the Woolsack.”

  “Well, your mother came from money. A real lady. Good thing she didn’t know some of the stunts you pulled, eh, Collins? You didn’t spend your youth with Mummy and Daddy looking on at the tennis club. You knew there was a better time to be had hanging around dives listening to the blues. And then when you took to the stage yourself, well, the less said the better.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Johnson. I’m a fine upstanding citizen just like everyone else at this table.”

  “He could get away with anything, Brennan. Just look at him. Face of an angel. Every night of dissipation and debauchery shows up on me, but not him. Even after that road trip.”

  “Ah. The road trip,” the priest remarked.

  I flapped a hand at Brennan to indicate that it was of no importance, but Johnson ignored me.

  “This was the band our Monty was in before we got together as Functus. From what I hear, he was lucky to be in one piece at the end of their U.S. tour. Got out of the country with little more than the T-shirt on his back, if my information is accurate.”

  I had to get him off that subject. “I thought you were extolling the virtues of my family for Father Burke; now you’ve got him thinking I need an emergency trip to the confession box.”

  “Oh, your family, right. What was that story about your parents’ marriage? Your father piloted a plane back from wartime England to claim his bride? What was it?”

  “You’re exaggerating again. He sent a telegram.”

  “Oh. But I know there was a whiff of scandal.”

  “Apparently. That’s why my mother never alluded to this herself. Her parents had somebody else in mind as a son-in-law, someone more —” Johnson butted in by saying “Right” and rubbed his fingers together in the commonly understood sign for money. I went on: “Someone with more certain prospects, let’s say. Dad was a graduate student in math while he was courting my mother. When he went over to Cambridge for his doctorate, she told him, no doubt at her parents’ prompting, that he should not expect her to wait. He said she might not be waiting for him but he would be waiting for her. And off he went into a cloud of equations. He got his Ph.D. and ended up working at Bletchley Park, the code centre in England, during the war. Anyway, the news reached him that my mother was about to be married to her other suitor, and he sent a telegram. But it didn’t arrive until the day of her wedding, and was not read until afterwards, at the reception, with the other congratulatory messages. The telegram said: ‘Dear Evelyn Stop Marry me Stop Yours Marshall.’ And she did. She flew over to England to tie the knot. But not before a big fuss with the church, annulment proceedings, whatever. Her family was scandalized. Dad’s family all had Cheshire Cat grins on their faces over the whole affair.”

  “What a sweet guy, your father. You wouldn’t hear boo from him, then he’d come out with a sly little remark that would crack you up.”

  Brennan turned to Ed. “I take it from our previous conversations that your own father was something of a —”

  “Apart from the odd sneering comment, we don’t hear anything about your dad at all, Johnson,” I interrupted. “Nobody’s ever met him. Bit of a shadowy figure, it seems.”

  “And the more fleeting the shadow, the happier we were. The best times at our house were when he was off on a binge somewhere. Let’s just say the old man had some bad habits.”

  “How bad?”

  “Trash. We were trash.”

  On that note, we all turned our attention to our beer and drank in silence for a few minutes. />
  Then I brought up a new topic of conversation. “Ever hear of a cop named Tulk?” I didn’t want Ed to know why I was interested, but I wondered if I could track down one of the cops who had raided Dice Campbell’s party, see if he knew anything about the gun.

  “Warren Tulk,” Ed replied. “He’s nuts.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They drummed him out of the force after he got religion.”

  Brennan rolled his eyes heavenward and picked up his draft.

  “Got religion how?” I asked. “What was the problem?”

  “‘Why aren’t Baptists allowed to fuck standing up? Because it might lead to dancing.’ That kind of religion. He joined some wacky sect that outlaws everything, and so everybody he saw when he was on the job was a sinner. Arrests went way up, but convictions went down. The Crowns wouldn’t prosecute half the stuff he brought in. Really petty drug offences — one joint — or liquor offences, or questionable solicitation charges. He busted a card game and it turned out the police chief’s brother was sitting there with a big pile of chips in front of him. They eased Tulk out. He became a preacher or a Bible salesman or something. I think he’s the one who runs that Christian bookstore a few blocks over. Why are there so many nut-bars among the religious, Brennan?”

  “I have no idea.” He smiled across the table. “I can’t speak for those who are not adherents of the one true faith.”

  “Well, at least old Tulk has the courage of his convictions,” Ed retorted.

  “As so many nutbars do,” Brennan replied.

  “Come to think of it, you’re kinda slack, aren’t you, Brennan?”

  “What do you mean, slack?”

  “Isn’t it your job to spread the word?”

  “Yes, that’s part of my job.”

  “Well then. You’ve got an unrepentant atheist singing the best parts of the repertoire in your church choir, and you don’t lift a finger to try to convert him.”

  “They say a stiff prick has no conscience, Ed. Well, neither does the prick who runs the St. Bernadette’s men’s choir. You’ve got the best bass voice, you get the bass solos.”

  †