Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [178]
O’Hearne grinned as Lemieux put the cuffs on me, and I was taken to the police station in St-Jérôme, where I was fingerprinted and sat still for a mug shot. If I ended up entrusted to the hangman, I resolved to feign cowardice — just like James Cagney of blessed memory — as a favour to my priest, Pat O’Brien, so that the Dead End Kids would no longer regard me as a hero (or role model, as they say now), but instead would join the local Rotary Club. I was locked into a cell not up to the Ritz standards but an improvement on the dungeon that the Count of Monte Cristo had to endure. I was also blessed with a turnkey eager to supplement his meagre salary. Well now, it’s easy to joke about it today, but at the time I was terrified, given to crying jags and shivering fits. Charged with murder, I was denied bail. “It won’t go any further than a preliminary hearing,” said Hughes-McNoughton. “I’m going to plead a total lack of evidence.”
Later I learned that the Crown, their case weak, was not gung-ho to prosecute, even though O’Hearne had assured them it was only a matter of time before he dug up the body. But a rampaging Second Mrs. Panofsky had hired a fire-eater of a criminal lawyer, a man with political influence, who insisted I be charged; and naturally that yenta waived spousal privilege. Nothing would stop that chatterbox from enjoying her day in court. The hell with her. What worried me was Miriam, who flew in from Toronto and was allowed to visit me on my second day in the slammer. “Whatever happens,” I said, “I want you to know that I didn’t murder Boogie.”
“I believe you,” she said.
“I’ll be out of here in a week,” I said, hoping that saying it aloud would render it true. “Meanwhile, I’m making some useful connections. If I want my house or business burned down, I’ve got a guy here who will do it on reasonable terms. Something else. I’m not the only innocent man here. We’ve all been falsely accused. Even the guy who took out his wife with an axe because the eggs were supposed to be sunny-side up, not turned over. Actually what happened is she suffered a dizzy spell, tumbled down the steps to the cellar, and landed head first on the upturned axe. He got blood on his shirt when he tried to help her. Please don’t cry. They won’t keep me here long. Honestly.”
I had to wait eight days for my preliminary inquiry before a magistrate, who denied Hughes-McNoughton’s plea and ruled there was “sufficient evidence to justify a trial, namely evidence on which a reasonable jury, properly instructed, might convict.” The clincher, according to Hughes-McNoughton, were my initial lies to O’Hearne about the gun, which made me suspect. “Now Barney, old pal,” he said, “I don’t want any surprises in the courtroom. Is O’Hearne going to find a body?”
“Where?”
“How in the hell would I know?”
“I didn’t kill him.”
Five long weeks would pass before my case was scheduled to be heard at the autumn assizes in St-Jérôme. Miriam flew in every weekend, putting up at a local motel, and brought me books, magazines, Montecristos, and smoked-meat sandwiches from Schwartz’s.
“Miriam, if by some fluke I am sentenced to rot in prison, I don’t expect you to wait for me. You’re free.”
“Barney, would you please wipe your eyes. Nobility doesn’t suit you.”
“But I mean it.”
“No, you don’t, my darling.”
My good companions in the hoosegow included the idiot who held up the local grocery, making off with eighty-five dollars and change, and ten cartons of cigarettes, and was nabbed trying to unload his booty in a bar the same afternoon. There were a couple of car thieves, a guy who dealt in stolen TV and hi-fi sets, a small-time drug dealer, a flasher, and so on.
One glance at the trial judge