"I was accompanied by the person who accompanied me."

The Globe fronts the story today that it buried yesterday: Gomery witness asked for protection. It adds a magic moment from Tony Mignacca's testimony yesterday:

In another revelation about Mr. Morselli, another Gagliano confidant, former party regional co-ordinator Tony Mignacca, reluctantly conceded in testimony yesterday that he was in Mr. Morselli's company just before he got involved in an alleged incident of intimidation. Mr. Mignacca allegedly made a veiled warning to ad executive Jean Brault that he would lose a lucrative contract, the inquiry had heard previously. Yesterday, Mr. Mignacca denied making any threat but had trouble explaining why he showed up to join Mr. Brault for after-dinner drinks one night. [Grappa, to be specific - AC] Mr. Mignacca tried to be vague when he was asked about his whereabouts before his encounter with Mr. Brault. He would say only that he was at Frank, a Little Italy restaurant in Montreal, but wouldn't say with whom. "I was accompanied by the person who accompanied me." Pressed by the head of the inquiry, Mr. Justice John Gomery, Mr. Mignacca finally revealed that it was Mr. Morselli.

As if that did not provide enough hilarity, there's this reminiscence from Daniel Dezainde, the man who sought police protection before he testified, the man of whom Morselli lately advertised his indifference if he "dropped dead":

Mr. Dezainde said that after his confrontation with Mr. Morselli, it became a "running gag" between him and party comptroller Daniel Cloutier over which of the two would start his car first in the party's parking lot, apparently an allusion to a possible car bomb. (When Mr. Morselli was a Montreal school board chairman in 1989, someone blew up his car in a crime that has never been solved.)

But all was not such levity. Sometimes the intra-party hostilities got serious:

Dezainde said when he attended Gagliano's annual fundraising golf tournament Aug. 21, 2001, in Montreal, he was shaken to see Wasjman [the fundraiser whose firing had so enraged Morselli] leading the foursome behind him. "It happened often that at the moment I went to hit a ball he would yell out and do childish things like that...

You know, it's all fun and games until somebody loses a leg.