Barrington Street Blues (7 page)

The old man stabbed at the numbers, and the phone teetered precariously on his knee. “Willie!” he shouted down the line. “Willie! Yes, fine, fine. Why wouldn't I be? Listen. Go down to my gun cabinet and tell me if all my — tell me how many Lugers are there. Never mind that, just do it for Christ's sake!” He held the receiver away from his ear and shook his head in irritation, then rolled his eyes as he endured the long wait for his son. This had become, instantly, the most important thing in his life. “What? Well, speak up! Yeah? Good. No reason.” He banged the receiver down, and the phone clattered to the floor. I picked it up and replaced it on the table.

“They're all accounted for. I have four of them.”

“Do you know any other veterans who have this kind of gun?”

“Not any more.”

“Collectors?”

“Wayne Turpin is the only one I can think of. Out in Hatchet Lake. That doesn't mean there aren't collectors out there with Lugers, just means I don't know them.”

“Where were you in the war, Bill?”

“I was one of the Water Rats! Bet you never heard of them, eh, kid?”

“Scheldt Estuary, 1944.”

“Well, well, well! And do you know where we got that name?” I did. “Ever hear of a fellow by the name of Monty, Colin?”

“I've heard of a fellow named Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery.”

“Good old Monty! He gave us the name, you know, the Water Rats. So, are you a military buff?”

“Can't say I'm up on the military, but I'm a history buff. So, were you there right through until the liberation?”

“I sure was, and I never met finer people than the Dutch. The welcome they gave us, you can't imagine.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Well, when we went through the streets —”

“No, go back. Clearing the Scheldt.”

I was there for two hours. Spellbound.

There were other things I should have been doing, but they struck me as irredeemably dull after listening to Bill. So I cranked up Dutchie Mason on the stereo and went for a drive, west on Quinpool Road through the Armdale Rotary and out through the countryside to Hatchet Lake. I eventually found a shabby brown wooden house with a built-in garage. A ferocious-looking black dog planted itself in front of the garage door and barked, baring its fangs. A man with a shaven head, a goatee, and tinted aviator glasses came out of the house.

“Help you?”

I opened the car door a crack and set my left foot on the asphalt driveway.

“Don't worry about Biff; he's all talk.” How often had I heard that? The man turned to the dog and bellowed something at it; the dog sat and panted.

I approached the garage and patted the dog on the way by. “Nice kitty,” I crooned. The aviator glasses turned and glinted at me, as if to say:
What kind of nutbars are coming out from that city now?

Turpin had two Lugers of his own; they were still in place, and he didn't know who else owned a Luger P-08.

†

I was at Video Difference that night, picking up a couple of movies to watch with my daughter, Normie, and I noticed a new National Film Board production about Canada's role in the liberation of the Netherlands in 1945. I tried to remember whether Bill Groves had a
VCR
in his room. I didn't think so, but surely there was one available in the hospital. It was a seven-day rental so I decided to get it. Normie and I watched our shows, and bloated ourselves with popcorn.

I stopped by Camp Hill Hospital the next morning. Bill was lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling, when I arrived.

“Morning, Bill.”

He turned and looked at me blankly for a few minutes, then wheezed: “Hi, kid.”

“I brought you something.”

“Oh, yeah? What?”

“A new documentary on Holland. Would you like me to ask somebody to set it up for you? No hurry. It doesn't have to be back till next week.”

“Sure.”

“I checked with Turpin about the pistols, but no luck.”

“The Lugers, right. That's too bad.”

“When you brought those guns over here, did you have to —”

“Not guns. Gun.” He paused to take a few desperate breaths. “I only brought one over myself.”

“Is that right? I thought you had several of them.”

“Yeah, I do. But that's because I bought them off other guys.”

“Oh. Other soldiers.”

“Yeah. Frank MacInnis, Archie Campbell, another fellow I can't remember now. MacInnis traded for another piece I had. Campbell sold me one. He had two. Used to twirl them on his fingers and aim them like in the westerns. ‘Stick em up, pardner,' he'd say with a German accent. What a card, old Archie.” Bill went into a fit of laughter, which exacerbated his breathing difficulties to the point where I considered calling a nurse. But he recovered. “Dead now, him and Frank. Archie died back in the seventies, Frank just last year. Dropped dead in his driveway. Nobody even knew he was sick. Poor old Frank.”

“Campbell,” I asked him, “wasn't he the father of Darren Campbell?”

“Who?”

“Darren Campbell, the lawyer. Everybody called him Dice. Was Archie his father?”

“Yeah, the son was a lawyer. Full of piss and vinegar, that kid. A bit of a bad actor, caused Archie and the wife to pull their hair out sometimes. But at least he wasn't a deadbeat, sitting on his arse all day collecting pogie.”

“Bill, I'm going to leave this video and I'll ask one of the nurses about playing it for you. I'll come by to pick it up next week. See you then.”

“Sure. Thanks, Colin.”

Darren “Dice” Campbell was a bit of a legend in legal and party circles in Halifax. He was a couple of years younger than I was, which would have made him forty-two if he hadn't leapt to his death from his tenth-floor office back in 1985. If he had inherited his father's Luger, somebody might remember it. I called Ed Johnson. His secretary told me he was out of the office, and he had a trial at the provincial courthouse in the afternoon.

Johnson was slouched against the wall of the courtroom when I arrived. He looked hungover.

“Ed. You're not a well man.”

“A long night of booze, smoke, and bad cards. I get the shakes just thinking about it. Maybe I'll plead my guy guilty and go home for a snooze.”

“You might be doing him a favour.”

“For sure. So, what's up?”

“You knew Dice Campbell, didn't you?”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you mean, what do I mean? You knew the guy, right?”

“Didn't everybody?”

“Well, didn't you do some cases with him?”

“Yeah, a couple.”

“You guys did some partying together?”

“Early on.”

“Early on in what?”

“I mean Dice's parties got a little, well, I don't know. I wasn't there.”

“You're not making any sense, Johnson. Maybe your client should throw himself on the mercy of the court before it's too late.”

“It's just that, yeah, Dice and I and some other people used to drink and party together once in a while but then I heard the parties got a little out of hand.”

“And a blushing wallflower such as yourself would not want to be present for anything too
outré
.”
Or you wouldn't want your wife to know you were there
. “But it's not Dice's party escapades I'm interested in.”

I thought I could read relief in his thin, pallid face. “So, what's all this about Campbell?”

“Did he have a gun?”

“Whoa! Where did that come from?”

“Just, do you know whether he ever had a gun?”

“He did have a gun. Or I heard he did. Dicey all looped up, waving a gun around. I was just getting over the shakes and now I have to deal with an image like that.”

“What kind of gun was it?”

“How the fuck would I know? Do I look like some kind of gun goon?”

“You do, actually, now that I think of it.”

“Well, I'm not.”

“But you'd know a handgun from a long, pointy thing like a rifle or a shotgun.”

“What I heard, it was a handgun. No idea what kind. Why this interest in Campbell and his weaponry?”

“The Leaman case. The weapon was an old German pistol, a Luger. Dice Campbell's father had a Luger that he brought over from the war.”

“I gotta go, Collins. You're making even less sense than I am. Tramaine?” Johnson had spotted his client. “Get rid of that headgear and divest yourself of all that gold. Lose the pager. We're claiming you're
not
a drug dealer. Remember?
Not
a drug dealer.” Johnson waved me off and advanced on his client.

So Dice Campbell had owned a gun. It may or may not have been his father's Luger. Until I learned otherwise, I would proceed on the assumption that it was. That left me with a big coincidence: a murder-suicide effected by the same type of German handgun that had been owned by someone who had also, a few years back, committed suicide. Of course, Campbell had not used the gun to kill himself. Why not? I couldn't recall any questions being raised about the lawyer's death, and I had no reason to raise any now, but it did strike me as odd. And I wanted more information about Dice Campbell's gun.

†

Mavis Campbell was a real case. Until that Thursday afternoon I had known Dice Campbell's widow only by reputation. Now I was sitting across from her in the bar of the Holiday Inn on Robie
Street. We were at one of the low tables along the bar's enormous windows overlooking the Halifax Commons. She was obviously a regular; when I called her she said: “I assume you know where to find me when the five o'clock whistle blows.” She was already in place, with a double Scotch in front of her, when I arrived. I ordered a beer.

“So. Mavis. I'll try to explain why you might be able to help with this murder-suicide. You didn't want to meet in my office.”

“Do you keep a bottle of Glenfiddich in your desk drawer?”

“Used to, but I just couldn't keep it in stock.”

“Yeah, that's what I figured.” She sipped her drink, and sipped it again.

The widow was about five feet four inches tall, with a hefty build that must have been voluptuous a few years back. Mavis's hair was an unlikely shade of red and was pouffed to look as if it had been blown by the wind. Her eyes were done up with gobs of mascara, her large mouth painted a fire-engine red. She had an elaborate scarf draped over her shoulders.

“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.”