These disasters inspired much black humour in barristers’ hangouts like the El Beau Room and the law courts lounge. Judges became leery of going out in public. Security was tightened. Yet most thought the toll–two dead jurists, one unaccounted for, and one close call–was an unusual coincidence.
That consensus held until the second weekend of October, when Mr. Justice Rafael Whynet-Moir opened his waterfront manse at 2 Lighthouse Lane in West Vancouver to a fundraiser for the Literary Trust, which aids writers fallen on hard times. He had invited for dinner a dozen rich friends who paid handsomely for the pleasure of rubbing elbows with three published authors most of them had never read.
The evening seemed on its way to success. Whynet-Moir filled glasses with oleaginous charm. His partner, the capricious Florenza LeGrand, excessively wealthy heir to a shipping line empire, was at her effervescent best. At thirty-three, she was twenty years younger than Whynet-Moir, but he’d won her with his smooth good looks and false air of cultivation.
No one suspected that this posturing judge, this self-proclaimed connoisseur of the arts, this pander to performers, potters, and poets, would soon be crisping in hell…
Do not indulge in personal agendas, cries Horace Widgeon, Chapter Seven, “Creating the Credible Villain.” Avoid the temptation to put the black hat on your obnoxious boss or the civil servant who sniffily told you to come back after lunch. Otherwise, you may end up modelling your villain on a very dreary bloke. Likewise, subjecting those you abhor to cruel deaths may provide a fleeting thrill–but it’s a self-indulgent, masturbatory thrill that’s not shared with the reader.
Presumably, Widgeon considered masturbation shameful. His amanuensis, the constantly complaining Inspector Grodgins, had a favourite adjective for the dreary blokes he had to put up with: “wanking bureaucrat” and “wanking judge” and “wanking bloody chief constable.”
Obviously, Brian was in too much hurry to settle accounts with Rafael Whynet-Moir. But that might be the only way he could stop hearing his voice, which regularly percolated through the rumbling, the traffic in his mind. This court is emphatically of the view that the children need to be with their mother, particularly since the respondent hardly seems able to care for himself. All the time with an appraising eye on Caroline in the front row. While she looked right back at him, interested.
As a sidenote, Whynet-Moir’s dinner was but one of several such literary benefits staged that night at fine residences in Vancouver. The prize-winning author of Sour Memories attended one that was far less dramatic. (Too bad you weren’t assigned to your admirer’s house, Caroline, you’d have had raw material for a story in which something actually happens.)
Brian had gone as far as he could to appease Widgeon: He’d made this cloying judge more attractive than he actually was. He lit another Craven A and knocked back a slug of tequila to sharpen the wit.
Of the three writers whom Whynet-Moir invited, the most exotic was Cudworth Brown, a roistering poet who was a surprise nominee for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry for his second published collection, Karmageddon. A risky choice for any banquet table, this muscular ex-ironworker had a reputation for barroom brawls that was evidenced by a handsomely bent nose.
He was also a man of appetite who downed three martinis and a bottle of Bordeaux over hors d’oeuvres and dinner, and several cognacs afterwards.
By midnight, all guests had left but Cudworth Brown, who’d either imposed himself on the hosts, or, as the police surmised, hid somewhere in the house. A few hours later, neighbours on Lighthouse Lane were awakened by a metallic crash. They converged in a yard where a cypress tree had brought to a halt Judge Whynet-Moir’s Aston Martin. Its sole occupant was Cudworth Brown, passed out behind the air bag.
West Vancouver Police were quickly on the scene but couldn’t arouse anyone in the house. On the deck they spotted a metal patio chair, tipped over. They looked below the wraparound cedar deck and saw, thirty feet down, a nightrobe swirling in the waves and Whynet-Moir’s broken body being gnawed by crabs in the tidal wash.
Cudworth Brown was arrested and charged with murder.
After stuffing the reader with appetizers, now comes the meat of the story–the prosecution of Cudworth Brown. But again his guru feels offended.
Set up as quickly as you can. Get your body to the morgue, create a taste of mystery or intrigue–and then you can afford the luxury of relaxing with your protagonist. Develop him or her. Humanize your hero with a charming quirk or pastime. And don’t forget to describe him! (But be warned: it’s no simple task for the rakish, square-chinned narrator to describe himself without sounding vain.)
Ah, the hero. Here is where Brian screwed up last time. A dozen years ago, during a sabbatical from practice, he had written his first and only Lance Valentine mystery–with Caroline taunting him through the whole process. It never found a publisher but got encouraging responses. “Try again–this time with a credible protagonist.” “Most of it works except your main character. He’s a dud.” Lance Valentine, private eye, was a snore; the dashing name failed to deliver.
But this Pomeroy character seems even less attractive, an overwrought lawyer whose life has gone to shit. Who buggered up his marriage of twenty years. Who has to seek permission to see his children. Who has been fucking up his practice. Who hates himself.
Maybe he should rework his creative non-fiction concept, revise it with a protagonist who won’t disgust the book-buying public, recreate Lance Valentine, jazz him up, give him a vice or two. Look at the mileage Widgeon has got from his grumbling, rumpled, Meerschaum-pipe-smoking Inspector Grodgins. A grandfather, for Christ’s sake. Drives a beat-up Ford Escort, for Christ’s sake.
Brian has known only one hero. A grizzled, grass-chewing farmer who raises goats on a snoozy island in the Salish Sea.
THE ORANGE SUPERSKUNK OF HAMISH MCCOY
Bundled against the wind-whipped rain, slogging up a rutted road, briefcase in hand, Arthur Beauchamp recited loudly, con brio, to no ears but his own. “‘That time of year thou mayst in me behold, when yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang upon those boughs which shake against the cold.’” He stalled, struggled with the next line. Something, something…then, “Where late the sweet birds sang.” A sonnet half-remembered but fitting for this bleak mid-December Monday.
As he climbed, the rain became a slushy snow. Mists obscured the valleys. Usually he could see his farm, Blunder Bay, from here where he’d begun this trek with his grandson. Nick lasted half a mile, then announced, “This is crazy,” and jumped into the first vehicle to stop. Arthur refused several more rides, defying the elements, keeping his vow, four miles a day.
He was in fine shape for sixty-nine, with all his healthy walks and farm chores. No recent messages from the heart. This tall, beak-nosed barrister was still an imposing figure, unbowed by the years, growing his annual winter beard–white with handsome streaks of brown.
He was content to be away from the house today, since it would be hosting the usual company of earthy feminists and aging hippies who made up Margaret’s campaign committee. This was her latest adventure: politics, that despicable art.
Arthur had fled the city eight years ago, seeking rural peace on Garibaldi Island, then had astonished himself by falling in love with Margaret Blake, neighbour, organic farmer, former island trustee, inveterate letter writer to the weekly Island Bleat. He hadn’t foreseen the consequences of marrying a relentless activist. Two years ago, she’d spent eighty days on a platform fifty feet up an old-growth fir, defying clearcutters and developers. Now, famed for her crusade to save Gwendolyn Valley, she was threatening to run for Parliament, refuge of the scheming, the slippery, the sly.
Puffing, he advanced toward the crown of Breadloaf Hill, his goal finally in sight, the community hall, which served as a courthouse on the occasional visits by the circuit judge. He hoped they had a warm fire going.
An RCMP van was parked at the back of the hall, and several smokers were on the s
teps in front of the wide doors, among them Cudworth Brown, whom Arthur was eager to avoid. He did so by steering a course for Robert Stonewell, locally known as Stoney, the self-proclaimed best mechanic on the island. It seemed he was always up on some misdemeanour, usually relating to the roadworthiness of his vehicles.
“I thought this was a democracy, eh,” Stoney said.
“What is it this time?”
“They want to take away my beauties.”
Arthur presumed he meant the broken-down vehicles that cluttered his one and a half acres on Centre Road. The bylaw enforcement officer must have ticketed him.
“I’m a collector. Some people collect stamps. I collect cars. It’s my hobby, man.”
“I don’t think that will wash, Stoney.”
“Don’t give him no advice.” This was Ida Shewfelt, who’d circulated a petition to get rid of the rusting, property-devaluing eyesores.
Stoney glared at her. “Madam, I cannibalize them cars for spare parts. I’m a mechanic, they’re trying to take away my home business…”
An imbroglio was brewing; Arthur should not have tarried here. And now Cud Brown was advancing with his smelly cigar.
“Arthur, padrone, give me half a second.”
Arthur pretended he hadn’t heard, ducked behind the RCMP van, mounted the stairs. He had nothing to say to Cud, he didn’t want to deal with the infamous fellow, with his bloated sense of self-regard. The island’s resident poet had competent counsel: Brian Pomeroy, who had done well to get him out on bail.
He escaped into the hall, an old frame building that impersonated a courthouse poorly–even Her Majesty hung lopsided, partly obscured by a fifteen-foot fir crowned with an angel and laden with lights and glitter. Christmas banners and balloons hung from the ceiling. To the side, on tables, were unsold leftovers from a weekend craft fair.
About forty Garibaldians were here, a few standing but most sitting in folding chairs. A few reporters from the city were present too, on a bench behind a press table, feeling crowded by Garibaldi Island’s resident news hawk, Nelson Forbish, editor of the Bleat, weighing in at three hundred pounds.
The offensively sweet smell in the room recalled to Arthur the time a skunk moved into his farmhouse’s crawl space. It was likely the superskunk from Hamish McCoy’s cannabis crop, in burlap sacks piled against the back wall: two hundred kilograms of a variety listed in Exhibit 5, the Grow-Your-Own Seed Catalogue, as “Orange Superskunk (Indica).” Standing guard was Constable Ernst Pound, not one of the brighter lights of the federal force, whose vacant look hinted he’d been in close contact with these exhibits for too long. He’d raided McCoy at harvest time, catching him bagging up his resin-laden pot in an underground grow room.
Arthur paused by the sacks, puzzled because he felt heat coming from them. They’d been stored in the rain, in the compound behind the RCMP detachment office, so it’s likely the superskunk had started to compost, a process now aided by the nearby wood-fired barrel stove. Among those who’d jockeyed their chairs close to the stove was gnomelike Hamish McCoy, bright eyes and stubby nose haloed by full white hair and beard. He was Arthur’s age, a mischievous rascal but a talented sculptor whose case had attracted the off-island press.
He was up for sentencing today. That is why Arthur was here, even though he’d sworn to Jupiter, Juno, and Apollo he would never return to a courtroom. McCoy had leaned on him hard. He would have no other counsel, he mistrusted other lawyers, and if Arthur wasn’t available, he would defend himself. Arthur caved in. His fee was to be The Fall of Icarus, a twelve-foot-high fusion of wings and tortured body of which Arthur had spoken admiringly. McCoy has promised to deliver it on a flatbed. Arthur had no idea what to do with it.
McCoy’s pieces were large and expensive, and sold only sporadically. For the last two years the art market had been depressed. Many locals knew how he was augmenting his income, but there was an island tradition of omertà; it was considered dishonourable to rat on a neighbour.
Plump and amiable Mary something, a Sinhalese name Arthur couldn’t begin to pronounce, was here representing the state. Last month she’d listened to his proposal, then said, incredibly, with barely a shrug, “Sure, let’s do it.” McCoy pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of simple possession, and she dropped the trafficking charge.
Arthur didn’t believe she’d been afraid of going up against, as she put it, “the legendary Beauchamp.” Maybe she was a pothead. Maybe she had an eye for art. Arthur had shown her a catalogue of McCoy’s tall bronze figures, inspired by ancient legends, captured in exaggerated motion.
“Is that all the heat that stove’s capable of putting out?” The querulous tone of Provincial Court Judge Tim Wilkie, seated behind a wooden table. A former small-town practitioner, he did the island circuit, showing up here every other month with a court reporter and a clerk.
Everyone was looking at island trustee Kurt Zoller, uncomfortable in suit and tie under a life jacket–he always wore one, to be ready, he insisted, for any emergency. This one was a bright fluorescent yellow. He finally rose. “Your Worship, the community hall committee never got round to insulate the roof after the snow collapsed it last year.”
“And who chairs this committee?”
A hesitation. “Me.”
Wilkie put on his coat. “Call the next case.”
Arthur took a seat beside his grandson. He wanted to ask him if coming to court was as cool as he’d expected it would be, but Nick had headphones on and couldn’t be reached. Fourteen years old. A scrawny, unfathomable kid, given to long silences, and phrases such as “Yeah, I guess so” and “Sure, whatever.” The iPod generation, they’d lost the ability to communicate with humans.
Nick’s parents were amicably divorced. Deborah, only child of Arthur’s first marriage, was a school principal in Australia. The boy lived with her but was taking school holidays with his dad in Vancouver. When Nicholas Senior asked to deposit his son at Blunder Bay for a couple of weeks “to give him a healthy rural experience,” Arthur had pretended to be overjoyed.
Mary Something called Kurt Zoller’s name. “This is under the Water Taxi regs, Your Honour. Charge of failing to produce a safety gear certificate.”
Arthur sensed something rancid behind him, like last night’s beer. “I don’t get it, Arthur.” Cud Brown, at his left ear. “Of the two A-list creators on this island, one is busted for weed and gets the counsel of his choice. The other is wrongfully charged with murdering a fucking judge and gets Brian fucking Pomeroy…”
Arthur hadn’t been answering Cud’s calls. Now he was being stalked by him.
“What is it, man? I hope it’s not because I spent two weeks up a tree with your lady.”
Arthur turned, annoyed. “Of course not.” He felt a flush of embarrassment at this lie. “We’ll talk after court.”
He wasn’t going to take any more of this nonsense. Arthur had done his last murder trial. The previous year, coerced by the firm he’d supposedly retired from, he’d defended a wealthy financier, an adulterer who shot his wife on a hunting trip and pleaded accident. Arthur had to count it a victory when the jury compromised on manslaughter, but in his heart he believed his client deserved worse than seven years’ jail time.
Arthur felt sick after that case. He was going to retire from unretiring. Since quitting practice eight years ago he’d been dragged back to the arena half a dozen times, always swearing this would be the last time.
Nick removed his headphones long enough to hear Zoller droning on in his own defence. The boy’s expression said, I knew this was going to be bad, but not this bad. Back went the headphones. Arthur had insisted he come, to observe the consequences of illegal behaviour.
Having given up trying to follow Zoller’s convoluted logic, Judge Wilkie sat impatiently to the end, then fined him three hundred dollars–the man responsible for the cold drafts was getting no breaks in this courtroom.
“I see Mr. Beauchamp is in the audience,” the judge said.
> “Oh, I didn’t notice him hiding back there.” Mary Something smiled at Arthur, who motioned his client to join him at the folding card table set out for defendants and their counsel.
“I note here,” said the judge, “how your client told the probation officer he was growing this marijuana for his own use, four hundred and fifty pounds of it.”
“I was gonna freeze it, Your Honour. Enough to last me a lifetime.” McCoy got this out before Arthur could hush him, but no harm done. Wilkie was chuckling, maybe at the Newfoundland accent. Loif-toime.
“Mr. McCoy, you could grow as old as Methuselah and never smoke all that weed.”
“Aye, but I was going to give it a mighty try, Your Honour.”
Everyone was laughing, including the judge. “Stinks to high heaven, I guess that’s why they call it skunkweed. Let me see some of it, while I hear counsel make their submissions.”
Constable Pound, still in his own peculiar space, didn’t budge. When Wilkie repeated himself, the officer snapped awake and began working at the knotted twine around the sacks. It was unclear why he’d hauled all that pot in here for a sentencing, unless out of vanity over the biggest bust of his career.
The hall’s lights flickered three times then died.
“Now what?” Wilkie said.
Someone at the back explained. “When the lights sputter like that, it’s usually a leaner falling on the line.” A tree, he meant.
The windowless hall offered little ambient light. Flashlights came out. Emergency oil lamps were found, candles set on tables, a drill known to most who frequented the community hall in the windy winter.
Arthur carried on stoutly during all this, extolling his client’s talent and virtues, urging that he be discharged after a period of community service. “Do not condemn this senior citizen, this celebrated artist, to live his sunset days with a criminal record.” Reporters scribbled away by candlelight.
Kill All the Judges Page 2
