Rosie O'Dell (51 page)

“And that will be our defence against this attempted union takeover,
gentlemen,” he said. “What? you say, that’s not a legal defence? I agree. Then
why have I asked my high-powered legal advisers to assemble here today? Because
I want you to make sure that when I spread around this truth about Shit-dick I
do it in such a way as protects me from an action for libel and slander. And if
any of you have any doubts about my technique, talk to young Tom Sharpe there.
He can tell you from his experience with the infamous child-molester Dr.
Rothesay that when some of these Brits suddenly appear over here out of the
blue, sporting their empire accents to impress the colonies, it’s because they
are escaping from something criminal over there and trying to hide it over here
among us credulous good-natured colonials. Tell them, Tom: Rothesay’s arrival
here was suspicious, his activities here were suspicious, and his death here was
the most suspicious of all.” Brent’s father looked hard at me. I was so
gobsmacked that all I could do was nod in agreement.

After the meeting, Brent whispered to me, “Are you sure you want to practise
with a firm that would have him as a client?’

Not long after I’d been admitted to the bar, Brent’s father specifically asked
that I work with him on the sale of a piece of valuable property. During the
preparation of the documents, I realized that he wanted me to backdate the deed
of sale to the previous year because that would cause a large tax advantage to
him. He’d had some losses that year that the capital gain on the property could
go against. The purchaser didn’t mind, he said, because it made no difference to
him. There would have to be affidavits sworn before me containing the false
date. No, I told him, I wouldn’t do it.

Brent’s father couldn’t believe my attitude. The deal had, in effect, for all
intents and purposes, he argued, been concluded back then. What was the big
problem? Why was I throwing away a brilliant opportunity? There were thousands
of dollars in legal fees for me involved. There were tens of thousands of
dollars of tax savings for him involved. He’d be paying hundreds of thousands in
municipal, provincial, and federal taxes this year anyway. He deserved to be cut
some fucking slack on the taxable profits from this deal. If I wouldn’t do it,
he’d find someone who would. He went to the senior partner.

Samuel Squires, Q. C. called me in. The deal had been made
last year, he said. There had been a meeting of minds back then, but the parties
had simply neglected to reduce it to the proper documentation. He was ordering
me to follow the clear instructions of the firm’s top client. No, I said, what
about his good advice regarding clients getting caught and turning on their
lawyer like a rat? Jesus Christ, said Squires, that didn’t apply to clients of
the calibre, i.e., the value to the firm, of this one. No, I said, I was being
asked to aid and abet in a criminal falsehood.

The upshot was that, because I, a member of this firm, had raised a legal
objection, Brent’s father had no choice but to go to a lawyer in another firm.
It was deemed too risky for anyone inside our firm to act, because the
lawyer-client privilege and confidentiality could be pierced by the
investigating police as not applying to communications concerning a future
crime. Normally that would not be a problem among team players in the law firm
who could be counted on to stonewall the authorities, but now, God alone knew
what this goody two-shoes Tom Sharpe would feel he had to divulge to
investigators.

A few weeks later, Samuel Squires, Q. C. called me in and said that it had just
come to his attention from an inside source that a shadow of suspicion still
hung over my head at the Department of Justice about the Rothesay death. The
reputation of the firm could not countenance having an associate on board who
might bring the good name of the firm into disrepute. I would be given a
substantial severance to allow me to bridge the transition to another firm or
solo practice.

When I gave Brent the bare bones of what had happened, he put the whole
scenario together. “The old bastard tried to use you,” he said. “He tried to
exploit my best friend, and failing in that, now his displeasure is causing your
firm to scuttle your career. I’m going to have a hard time living with
that.”

Brent stayed on with his father for another couple of months. Then, when
Revenue Canada zeroed in on the registered deed with the backdate and started
asking the purchaser about the long gap between the signing and the registration
and intimated that he might be liable for any tax losses by the government, he
spilled all the beans. Both the seller, Anstey, and the purchaser blamed the
lawyer, saying he had advised them that it was okay to date it to the start of
negotiations, even if it was not really clear and certain that an effective
agreement had been arrived at back then. Criminal proceedings were contemplated
against the seller
and buyer but did not go ahead because it
would be hard to prove wilful intent on the part of clients simply following
legal advice. But disciplinary proceedings were brought against the lawyer by
the Law Society, which resulted in a heavy fine and his public suspension from
practice for several months.

“The old prick,” said Brent. “That’s what would have happened to you if you had
done what he wanted. I’m out of there.” He left his father’s business after a
vicious verbal scrap and spent months looking for a new job, finally landing one
as office manager-bookkeeper with a small concern at a severely reduced income.
It wasn’t long before Brent’s wife, Debra, decided she wanted to move back to
her hometown in Oregon, and Brent was only too happy to get as far away from his
father as he could.

SEARCHING AROUND FOR A
wall to hang my law degre eon, I was recruited
by the Department of Justice in St. John’s, or, more precisely, by Lucy Barrett,
now assistant deputy minister of the department. Part of the attraction, I could
not deny, was a desire to get on the inside, gain access to police reports, and
have a good gawk at whatever file existed on me and Rosie up there.

After my interview for the job of Solicitor One—low man on the totem pole—Lucy
Barrett invited me into her office for a chat. She wanted, she said, to catch up
on my activities since the trial. She was aware, she added, that I’d been kicked
out of my law firm for the sin of integrity. They called it “naive integrity”
down there, I replied. She sat me down in front of her desk and she then came
around to the front herself, but instead of sitting in the other chair, she
leaned back and partially sat on the edge of her desk. She looked very good.
“Whatever it’s called on Duckworth Street,” she said, “I want a piece of it up
here.” Well into her forties now and recently divorced, Lucy was one extremely
attractive woman. “I expected you and Rosie to go on forever, the way you stood
by her through that Rothesay nightmare. And she was so in love with you.”

“When you’re young,” I said, “physical separation puts a big strain on a
relationship. And the earlier tragedy of Pagan and then Rothesay’s suicide, with
all its suspicions, affected us more than we thought at the time, too.”

“The whole thing was insufferable, wasn’t it, the hung jury, and then Rothesay
going over the cliff before we could nail him judicially? I suppose he got his
comeuppance extra-judicially, you might say, although I shouldn’t wish that on
anyone, even a rat like him.”

“Well, I’d be lying, Ms. Barrett, if I said I was
broken-hearted when I heard about it.”

Lucy pushed her buttocks off the edge of her desk and came close to me with a
big smile. “Dropping our professional masks for a moment,” she murmured
conspiratorially, “me too. I said to myself at the time: If it was an accident,
then there is a God. If it was suicide, then he finally did the right thing. If
it was foul play, then let’s award the perpetrator the Order of Canada.”

We laughed, and I said, “One of the reasons I’m a lawyer today, Ms. Barrett,
was because of you at that trial. It’s amazing in retrospect how close you came
to winning that virtually impossible case.”

“I never had any regrets over giving that one a shot,” said Lucy, extending her
hand. “Thank you and welcome aboard, Mr. Sharpe. My door is always open to you.
I trust you will enjoy yourself here.”

The first chance I got, I went into the confidential files and looked at the
police report on the death of Heathcliff Rothesay. In brief, it said that if
Thomas Sharpe had been alone with Rothesay on Red Cliff, there might be reason
to pursue the investigation in the hope of obtaining an admission from him. As
it was, he did appear uncomfortable and evasive and certainly had the motive.
This motive, entailing details of Rothesay’s sex with Rosie, filled two pages,
single-spaced. But because Ms. Rosie O’Dell was there too, who impressed the
investigators with her forthrightness and transparency, and who had had ample
opportunity for years past to commit homicide on Rothesay at home and elsewhere,
had she been so motivated, the case remained unproven. The presence of lawyer
Barry, Q. C. also presented an obstacle to confession or use of an informant or
an effective sting operation to implicate the male suspect. The upshot was to
leave the file open with a tentative conclusion of death by misadventure,
bearing in mind, the report concluded, that there was no statute of limitations
on the laying of a charge of murder.

FOUR YEARS WENT BY
before I saw Brent again. He came home from
Vancouver, where he had moved after he split from his wife, for his mother’s
funeral; she had died in her early fifties from lung cancer. After the funeral,
from which I excused myself on the grounds that his father would be present, an
action which Brent said he understood profoundly, he and I had a drink and
filled in the gaps between our infrequent and unnewsy letters. “Poor Mom,” he
said. “She never had a cigarette in her life.
The old man
killed her with his second-hand smoke. He’s still smoking like a tilt and he’s
still alive. Where’s the bloody justice?”

I knew that Brent and his wife, Debra, had split up by mutual consent. He
probably would have stayed with her forever, he told me, but she said that
because of his emotional indifference to her, she’d be happy living by herself
with their two sons. Meanwhile, Brent informed me that a few months ago he had
moved to Vancouver, even though it made visits with his beloved sons difficult.
Brent never liked living in the States, he said. He’d much rather be in Canada.
“I didn’t realize you had moved to Vancouver,” I said. “Do you get a chance to
see Rosie and Suzy there?”

“Yes, the three of us get together quite often.”

“How are they making out? Are they still an item?”

“An item? What do you mean? Who?”

“Her and Suzy. Aren’t they living together?”

“No. Why would they be? They have their own apartments about a mile apart.
Rosie’s mother lives with her.”

This intelligence from Brent started me on my campaign again. I wrote Rosie
letters and I telephoned her, but I never got an answer except once. In the last
letter I wrote I ended it nastily: “I know I hurt you badly and you can’t
forgive me, so I suppose I should thank my lucky stars that I’m still alive.”
The typewritten reply came back unsigned in an envelope postmarked Vancouver:
“That was uncalled for. And besides, it was all your big idea. Please stop.” The
next staggering news I got from Vancouver a few months later was that Rosie had
married Brent.

When I ran into Suzy later in St. John’s, back to visit her mother, I asked her
why Rosie had done such a thing. “Because,” she said, “she knows she can depend
on Brent. Brent is a good man. Brent will never let her down. Brent is loyal
like me.”

“Loyal? He let a sick friend he was supposed to be looking after die of
exposure. He left his own father’s business in the lurch. He left his wife and
children. And now he marries his best friend’s girl. Yeah, that’s real loyalty
to everyone.”

“He took in his drunken, drug-addled, so-called friend, really his enemy, to
try to help him and at the same time save your ass from criminal charges. He
left his despicable father because of what he tried to do to you. He didn’t
leave his wife; she left him as soon as she decently could when he was no longer
the merchant prince. He married his best friend’s girl years
after his best friend had broken her heart in pieces and lost her forever.
Get the fuck over yourself, Tom.”

“All right, I will. Rosie has gone to bed with my best friend, so it’s only
right and proper that I go to bed with hers. What do you say, Suzy?”

“Don’t worry, I would, Tom. I gathered from Rosie you weren’t that bad in the
sack. But my Fred mightn’t like it.”

“Who the hell is Fred?”

“The gronk I’m engaged to. Are you cut off and out of the loop over here or
something?”

“I seem to be,” I said. And I never felt more alone in my life.

A YEAR AFTER THAT
, I escaped into marriage. Looking back at it
afterwards, I could see it would not have mattered whom I had married. My first
bride happened to be a young teacher named Jenny. She was sweet and pretty and
intelligent and had always chosen such nice lads as her beaux before me that
she’d had no prior practice in dealing with a heart mindlessly broken by her
beloved’s lack of love. She could not comprehend what was befalling her.

“You can’t even hide it,” Jenny told me. “You don’t love me, you love someone
else. I felt something was missing even before we got married. I was just too
stupid to realize that a man could go ahead with marriage in spite of feeling
like that.” When I didn’t deny anything, she demanded, “Why did you marry me in
the first place?” When I couldn’t answer the question, she screeched through her
tears, “Who is it, for God’s sake? Will you at least tell me that?” When I
wouldn’t supply a name, she said quietly, “I can’t live like this, Tom, I’m
sorry.”