Kill All the Judges

by William Deverell

  There came a ripping sound from the back. Frustrated by the knots, Pound had cut one sack open. Several flashlight beams converged on the great dollops of sticky, melting cannabis spilling from it. Pound found a discarded newspaper, deposited some of the gunk onto it, and showed it to Judge Wilkie under a flashlight beam. Wilkie squinted at it, making a disgusted face.

  McCoy looked like a fierce, hairy elf in the glow from a stubby candle. He tugged at Arthur, whispered, “What’s this blather about community service? I’ve a mind to do time instead.”

  “Ridiculous. You don’t want a criminal record.”

  “I don’t owe this community nothing. They let me down, b’y. They turned me in.”

  Wilkie turned to the prosecutor: “What do you think of Mr. Beauchamp’s idea of community service?”

  “I won’t oppose.” A glowing, candlelit smile for Arthur. Such an excellent prosecutor.

  “So we just have to decide on some task…Who’s the local government on this island?”

  Once again Kurt Zoller rose. “I have the privilege of being our elected trustee.”

  “Okay, I want you to get together with other leading members of this community and recommend an appropriate project for Mr. McCoy to pay his debt to society.”

  “I’ll speak to my advisers, Your Worship.”

  The matter was adjourned. McCoy nattered as he and Arthur walked toward the door. “That hypocritical shit. ‘I have the privilege of being trustee.’ He’s the rat, b’y, count on it.”

  He suspected Zoller of squealing. The two of them were among a dozen property owners clustered around Potters Pond, all sharing the same power line. In the morning, when McCoy switched on his banks of grow lights, their kitchen lights would dim and their toasters lose their glow. Of the neighbours, only Zoller, an auxiliary coast guard, fit the usual profile of a snitch. Few other residents were particularly bothered: after all, marijuana was the number-two industry on Garibaldi after tourism but ahead of sheep and chickens and arts and crafts.

  Arthur hoped to hustle home for lunch but wanted to dodge Cud Brown–who was no longer in the hall, maybe lurking outside. He would let McCoy leave first and then peek outside.

  Nick was still looking as if he’d rather be somewhere else, online. He was at his laptop constantly, playing games or downloading stolen songs or looking at porno or whatever they do. Arthur didn’t know what fourteen-year-olds did. If they were like Nick, their reading consisted solely of computer printouts and arcane texts with phrases such as “eighteen-bit recapture protocol.” To give him credit, he seemed adept at computer arts, was rebuilding Margaret’s broken-down machine, enhancing it.

  “Bob Stonewell,” Mary called out. “Unsightly Premises Bylaw.”

  Word was passed outside, and in a moment Stoney was peering in, holding the door open for McCoy, ushering in a cold wind that blew out some candles.

  “Shut that damn door!” someone yelled.

  Arthur could see his stalker out there, so he stayed inside. McCoy slammed the door behind him as he left.

  Ill-adjusted to the dimness, Stoney stumbled into the cannabis sacks. “Yow, this stuff is really working.” Constable Pound tried to pull him away, but Stoney resisted. “Hey, man, this hemp is heating up.”

  “What’s the problem over there?” Judge Wilkie was standing.

  “Mr. Stonewell is trying to interfere with the exhibits, sir.”

  Stoney spoke with urgency: “Your Honour, I have some experience in these matters, and this here skunk is dangerous, it’s cooking…”

  Pound gave his arm a tug. Stoney went off balance and their momentum carried them against a post, knocking a kerosene lamp off its hook. It fell on the sacks. There were loud gasps as the superskunk quietly ignited, giving off an otherworldly blue glow.

  Stoney bolted up the aisle and past the judge to the front door. “That shit is going to explode!”

  Arthur had known compost to smoulder but had never heard of it exploding. Despite this egregious case of shouting fire in a crowded theatre, only a handful of locals joined the court staff and visiting press in panicky flight out the two doors. Otherwise, evacuation was calm and orderly, children and seniors first.

  He stayed put for a few moments, transfixed. A bubbling sound was coming from the oily sludge the cannabis had become. The flames had spread to other bags and were hotter now, yellow with orange tips, dancing in the gusts from the open doors. By the time the hall’s extinguishers were finally located and brought into play, flames were licking up the cedar-shingled wall.

  “Holy shit.” Nick, beside him, finally excited about something. “This place is totally doomed, Grandpa, we got to split.” He grabbed Arthur’s arm, breaking him out of his rapture. Volunteers were running about, filling buckets, forming a brigade, as Arthur grabbed his briefcase and followed Nick out to the slushy lawn. Others hurried to move their vehicles out of harm’s way.

  A familiar voice. “I need to talk to you about this Pomeroy character.”

  “Cud, the community hall is burning down.”

  “I weep. I did my first reading here.” He emerged from behind Arthur, a wet, hatless head poking from a Mexican poncho. “Meantime, another tragedy unfolds. Struggling poet Cudworth Brown is looking at doing life in the crossbar hotel for a murder he didn’t commit. The evidence against him is flimsy, claims celebrity barrister Arthur Beauchamp, but he’s too busy to take on his old chum’s case, so he refers him to a lunatic.”

  A siren could be heard faintly; the volunteer fire department was on its way. But the pumper would be too late to save the hall–flames were leaping to the roof.

  This would be a day to remember and mourn. A heritage building, a loss of history. Arthur felt depressed, weary. He wanted to go home, go back to bed, wake up again, start this day over. He wanted…a drink.

  That was prompted by Cud pulling out a flask, having a nip. Brandy, by its scent. “The trial starts in two months. Pomeroy ain’t nowhere near prepared, he wants to sell me out.”

  Arthur finally bit: “Why do you say that?”

  “Last time I saw him he looked like a suicide bombing. Bedraggled, a week’s growth, red, wacky eyes. Asked me if I’d be willing to cop to manslaughter. I almost punched him out.” A pause to catch his breath, then he shouted frantically over the sound of the approaching siren: “Manslaughter? I didn’t fucking chuck any fucking judge off a deck!”

  THE VALENTINE AGENCY

  Despairing of finding justice through normal channels, convinced that all lawyers were reactionary, mendacious, and corrupt, Cudworth Brown sought out a reliable private investigator. An arts reporter he’d seduced during his literary forays into Vancouver made inquiries, then recommended the enigmatic, urbane Lance Valentine, formerly of Scotland Yard. There were rumours of misbehaviour, she warned, rumours that the Yard had quietly let him go to avoid a scandal.

  Cudworth called the Valentine agency, whose sultry-voiced secretary promised she could fit him in. And so it happened that late on a dreary, drizzling December day, Cud made his way to the tenderloin area, near Main and Keefer, which he thought an odd choice of location for this polished private eye…

  The Widgeon icon was bouncing at the bottom of the screen. It did that once in a while; it meant Widgeon was trying to warn Brian. Trash this page, he was silently screaming. You are writing from the point of view of the wrong character.

  A mouse-click took him to Widgeon’s Chapter Eight. We do not really care to know what lesser characters think–they have mouths to speak. See with your hero’s eyes. Hear with her ears. Do not distance your hero from the reader, bring him close enough so the reader may sense his sweat, his prickles of fear, feel her hot breath as she closes in on the villainous cur who swindled dear Auntie Maude…

  “Who is this Horace Widgeon you’re constantly on about?” Dr. Alison Epstein had asked a couple of days ago as he fidgeted on her couch.

  She’d never heard of him? Brian was shocked. Thirty mysteries and three how-to
’s and five times nominated for the Dagger Award. “He writes escape fiction.”

  “I don’t feel the need to escape,” she said.

  When piqued, this normally gracious woman occasionally gave in to an unprofessional snappishness. This happened when Brian was rambling and evasive. Which he usually was throughout his allotted three-quarters of an hour. She would peel and dig, trying to get down to the rotten core, but he wasn’t going to let her find it. None of her business.

  “I didn’t fucking chuck any fucking judge off a deck!”

  That is what this repulsive fellow claimed, of course. That, in Lance Valentine’s experience, was what they all say: they’re not guilty. Clients who protested the loudest, complaining they’d been falsely accused, were invariably guilty.

  This one, this obscure backwoods poet, didn’t strike Lance as being an exception to the rule. A rugged, cocky, broken-nosed look of a brawler. Unshaven. Tattoos were doubtless part of the package, but were hidden under his long-sleeved, tasselled deerskin jacket. He subscribed to some kind of conspiracy theory that he was being railroaded. The usual story.

  “You want me to find the chucker?”

  “Nobody else is trying.”

  Lance fiddled with a rose in a vase. He must always have a fresh rose on his desk in the morning. That’s what he told the ravishing Rosy Chekoff when she applied to be his secretary. From the outer office, he could hear the tapping of her keyboard. If he twisted his head he could see her profile, a view that invariably caused him to breath rapidly. Rosy was also married to a detective, this one a civil servant, West Vancouver Serious Crimes.

  “Let me ask you, Cudworth–is that what they call you? Or Cud?”

  “Sometimes Cuddles. Sardonically.”

  “You got a lawyer, Cuddles?”

  “Yeah, I got a lawyer. Mind if I smoke?”

  “Have one of mine.”

  Cud bent over Lance’s desk to get a light, then straightened with a wince. Chronic bad back, Lance reckoned. He’d been a high-rigger, an ironworker. Retired to Garibaldi Island, his childhood home, on a small disability pension. Ran the recycling depot there. Two books of poetry, one CD, muted acclaim.

  Cud straightened, holding that back, and squinted out the dusty window at the little barrio of decrepitude that was the Downtown East Side. “Kinda pissy low-rent location, but I guess it’s part of the private dick shtick. You keep a bottle of Johnny behind the books?”

  Lance ignored the question. He wasn’t going to let this smart aleck stereotype him. “Did you tell your lawyer you were coming to see me?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s an idiot. I don’t trust him.”

  “Brian Pomeroy?”

  “That’s the one.”

  Delete, delete. What had been reborn with promise has evolved into self-flagellating mockery. A detour typical of the drooling nutter he had become, prompted by the mess he’d made of Cudworth’s appointment on Friday.

  Follow Brian, as he flashes back to his session with Cud, to restored Gastown, its cobblestone streets and tchotchke shops and failed chic, to Maple Tree Square, where the raw, rowdy Downtown East Side begins, where timorous tourists turn back.

  The ground and second floors of his firm’s building were occupied by Club d’Jazz, an exponential improvement over the last tenants and their nausea-inducing singalongs. Brian’s third-floor digs offered views of pigeons strutting on the outer sill, whitewashing it with their excrement. He kept his windows closed, he feared those birds, was obsessed with images of them flying in and shitting all over. His partners had relegated him to this office because he wasn’t showing up regularly. Macarthur, Brovak, and Sage: fickle friends who’d stopped expressing sympathy over his divorce, in fact had stopped talking to him. But they talked about him. He spied them once in a while gawking, whispering.

  He wasn’t taking many cases these days. A motor manslaughter plea coming up. A couple of misdemeanours, a fraud. And this one, referred to him by the immortal Arthur Beauchamp, who hinted there was glory to be won by so enterprising a counsel as Brian Pomeroy.

  Cudworth had done only one smart thing on the night he got busted. As Detective Sergeant Chekoff was pouring coffee into him, trying to sober him up for the third degree, he asked to make a call to Arthur, who advised him to shut up.

  Brian had summoned Cud to the office because he’d lost his notes from his earlier interview. Nothing in the file but the bail papers. With surprising ease, during a lucid interval, Brian had got a judge to agree to a property bond.

  Part of his problem in getting his ass in gear was that the Attorney General had appointed as special prosecutor a well-known feminist shit disturber named Abigail Hitchins, with whom, many years ago, Brian had a bizarre, disastrous affair. He didn’t have the gumph to phone her–he couldn’t seem to get drunk enough. As a result, he hadn’t got around to getting her particulars of evidence. He should do that one of these days, especially since there’ll be no preliminary inquiry–the A.-G. wanted a speedy end to this sensitive matter, so he’d indicted directly to trial.

  No sooner had Cud Brown sat down when these words popped out of Brian’s mouth: “Would you be willing to take a plea to manslaughter?”

  What had possessed him to be so bold and obvious? Maybe a mental short-circuit, a disconnect, a fast rewind to his motor manslaughter file, an insurance agent who drove over a squeegee kid.

  At any rate, Cud lost it. Went storming around, scaring the pigeons and the secretaries. Worse, he tattled to Arthur Beauchamp, who left a voice mail asking about this manslaughter nonsense. Brian’s cellphone was off now, he didn’t want to talk to Arthur, to anyone. He was disturbed, distressed, disordered, dysfunctional, the Latin prefix for apart, to pieces. At least the earlier panic had dissipated. He was learning how to get along with his breakdown, learning how to deal with people and not give himself away. It was an art.

  He poured another tequila, got up to empty his ashtray. He’d have to make a run for more smokes. The bar downstairs never had his brand, and the waiters and the low-lifes who hung out there were always wanting legal advice. He was known here at the Ritz, he’d beat a gaming rap for the owner. Yeah, Cuddles, that’s why Lance Valentine is in this pissy location; his creator gets cheap rent. Room 305, with its own sink, shitter, and shower. Furniture from about 1959. Prints on the walls by some unheralded Wild West artist. Brian identified with one of them: an unhorsed cowboy in a cattle stampede.

  He played with his phone, stared out at the busy street, a squad car moving slowly, checking faces. A dealer fading into the shadows under the awning of Quick Loans, No References Required. Harry the Need, purveyor of quality off-the-shelf smack, flake, and meth. A whore shouted an endearment to the cops, and they joked with her, then moved on. Time for another Xanax. He took it with tequila.

  It was just after ten. Abigail, like most witches, never slept. She answered on the first ring.

  “It’s Brian.”

  “For Christ’s sake, I have friends over.” A background babble.

  “What kind of case have you got against Cud Brown?”

  “Bry, are you drunk?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  Abigail must have withdrawn to a quieter room because the noise lessened. “Take my advice, check yourself into a clinic for the fucked up.”

  “I forget, when’s the trial?”

  “Mid-February.”

  Things were starting to spin. He couldn’t remember why he called her. The Crown evidence, the particulars, that’s what he needed. He was having trouble pronouncing the word.

  “Get back to me when you’re normal. I couriered them a month ago.”

  “To my office?”

  “Yeah, go there much? Get a pencil. I can now release the name of the eyewitness.”

  “Eyewitness?”

  “Homicide, please, Detective Sergeant Chekoff…Yes, I’ll hold, tell him it’s Lance Valentine.” He covered the receiver and swivelled
back toward Cud, who was gazing at the silhouette of Rosy Chekoff. Pert nose, plumlike mouth, taut bosom, big hair.

  “I know Pomeroy,” Lance said. “He’s one of the best.”

  “He ain’t on top of it! He asked me to cop to manslaughter!”

  “That’s one of his tricks. He wanted to see your reaction, assess how strongly you believed in yourself.”

  “Bullshit.” Cud plopped back into his chair. Lance wasn’t sure if he wanted to help out this hayseed poet with his slightly rancid smell and sour attitude. He didn’t seem to have unlimited funds–this would be a costly endeavour. Yet he was intrigued.

  The first thing Hank Chekoff said when he finally came on the line was, “Is Rosy all right?” Possessive and distrustful was this porcine suburban copper. He often showed up at the end of the day to drive Rosy home. He wasn’t happy about her working here.

  “She’s doing incredibly well, old boy, working her little, ah, head off. It’s about his late Lordship Rafael Whynet-Moir.”

  “Why do you think I know anything about the file?”

  “Because with your experience and skill you’d most likely have been assigned to it.” Rosy had actually mentioned he had the file. “Give me your honest assessment, Hank, how tight is it?”

  “What’s your interest? Who do you represent?”

  “Can’t divulge, strict instructions. But…let’s say a major underwriter is curious to know if it’s homicide or suicide, in which latter case they don’t have to make payment.”

  A hesitation. “You’re talking big money?”

  “Big.”

  “Tell your clients to pony up. A prominent lady of unblemished character saw the judge get shoved off by this Cud Brown creep.”

  “Good view?”

  “Excellent. Deck to deck. The judge’s neighbour. Hey, let me speak to Rosy after.”