Kill All the Judges

by William Deverell

  Back to the more comforting world of fiction. Flo lacks grounds for divorce. That’s a risky route anyway–Whynet-Moir could walk off with half her fortune. So she decides to fast-track her way to widowhood. Though the carefree ex-flower child might seem an unlikely manslayer, in fact she will diagnose as one of those charming, guilt-free sociopaths that infest society.

  That’s the story line, that’s the right plot for his creative nonfiction work. Which, unaccountably, he’d given to his shrink. What had he been thinking? She’s been phoning again. Her diagnosis has been amended, drug-induced psychosis. She’s looking for a care facility. Men in white are after him, men from the Clean Living Rehab Centre.

  Chief Justice Wilbur Kroop is after him too. Little does he know that Brian welcomes his entry into this pot-boiling roman à clef. Finally he has a worthy villain. That was what this story lacked. Lex Luthor in a black robe with a crimson sash.

  He butted out a cigarette into the soup dish he was using as an ashtray. He lit another, poised his shaking hands over the keyboard. Okay, so we have Cud being played by this psychopathic schemer, and she…What? Where does the author throw in his big twist? Pre-denouement? At the very end? It was exhausting thinking this through, especially when he was so antsy.

  The Widgeon icon was jumping up and down, silently pleading, in its mind-reading way, to join the discussion. As your tale unwinds, you must guide your reader down delightful one-way roads and detours. I must admit in all modesty that I have a facility with the twist and have turned around my poor Inspector Grodgins so often, he must get dizzy! Ah, but Brian has devised a twist that will put his mentor to shame, a twist that might turn poor Grodgins’s head backward.

  How eager Abigail was to nail Florenza LeGrand. Of far more interest than some country Joe in red braces. Together, they might pin the whole thing on Florenza.

  Cud hadn’t told the cops–or anyone–that he’d shtupped the hostess. He was being honourable. He actually used that word. A part of his brain still believes she’s keen on him, on supporting the arts. Why hadn’t Brian insisted he hand over the opal ring? He’d better bring it to court. Does one confront Florenza with it? Or wear kid gloves? Should Brian even show his hand? Why hadn’t Florenza reported the ring missing? So many questions…

  So far, no one had linked Judge Whynet-Moir, who went off a deck, with Judge Naught, who went off a wharf. These deaths were more than superficially tied together, no question. Not the others, though: the old fellow who fell from the ferry, the family court judge who disappeared from her family cottage.

  The memo Arthur Beauchamp dictated to April Wu, what was that about? Whynet-Moir bribing the justice minister–it smelled of red herring. Apparently a lawyer named Schultz may know more of the story. Brian didn’t have the energy to deal with that right now, it was too confusing, too hard to prove, too unlikely.

  He felt itchy all over, it was as if his skin were carpeted with tiny bugs. His quivering fingers hung uselessly above the keyboard, he was at an impasse. Somewhere after your first hundred pages, a dead end must be reached, seemingly insurmountable. But your hero must plod on–until, often by chance or mishap, inspiration comes like a flash, a whispered answer.

  He got up, he paced, fidgeted, turned one of the prints to the wall. It was getting to him, the ravenous white eyes in the blackness, waiting for the cowboys to sleep. He rummaged about for his clunky old digital camera, went to the window, took a couple of pictures of the people he thought could be working for the other side. The Lucky Penny Pizza guy taking off on his bike. Guy in a ball cap crossing the street from the bookies, their runner. Harry the Need negotiating a sale under the awning of Quick Loans. Not Harry. Harry wouldn’t turn him in.

  I was still drunkenly groping around this sweaty, foggy cave, trying to figure where her voice was coming from. She wanted to talk–lots of married women do that before getting it on, to explain they don’t do this all the time. She was hammered too, not as bad as me, going on about how she’d lived a lie for the two years they’ve been married.

  “It’s like somebody owns part of you.” My poetry, Liquor Balls, Karmageddon, helped her “remember freedom,” it “aroused buried passions.” I believed her, how couldn’t I? Cudworth Brown, ex-ironworker with a bad back, had changed a life; his words had inspired a passion for freedom. A passion for me, the “beautiful, lustful savage” she saw in my writing.

  I can’t bring it all back…Yeah, after I bumped into where she was sitting in a corner, I said something inane about soulmates. She said, “Fuck soulmates.” Her hands slid up my thighs, her body following, slick and hot.

  We ended up on the floor, writhing like pythons on those slippery tiles, pumping like our lives depended on it. What? Sorry, there’s a lady present. I’ll spare you the pornography, but we were both about a half-inch from coming, when, whoosh, we got this jolt of cold air.

  You couldn’t make him out at the door, you couldn’t see through the pea soup. “It’s after one o’clock, Flo,” he said. “Are coming up?”

  “Almost there, Rafael.” In this choking voice. I’m growing small. The hissing vents drown out our heavy breathing.

  “Why are you doing this to me, Flo?”

  “Let’s talk about it in the morning, okay?”

  Another cold gust as he closes the door.

  “Help me, Cudworth,” she whispers. “Help me escape.”

  A motive for murder had just inflated like an airbag, Cud’s lust for her body, his hankering to be her toy boy. Brian didn’t like the way this scenario was going. Not at all, not if the next line was, Help me get rid of him by throwing him off the deck.

  He shut his eMac down, stared at his cellphone for a while. He dialed the UBC English Department, turned over the phone to Lance. “Hello, I’m ringing from The Times of London about Professor Pomeroy’s marvellous new book. I wonder if it would be possible to do a quickie interview.”

  “I’m sorry, she’s away for the holidays, but if you’ll leave your number–”

  “Fank you.” He hung up, went again to the window. The Need was still there. Widgeon was calling from somewhere, he could hear his voice, demanding, imperious. “Go away!” he shouted. He lurched out to the fire escape, down the rattling steps to the street, where the Need caught his eye and shook his head.

  Brian walked past him into Quick Loans, into a waiting room with three wooden chairs, a travel poster, and a metal-grill window. A man in working clothes was standing at it, signing over his pay cheque. Some bills appeared on a tray beneath the grill. The borrower gathered them up and hurried out.

  Brian studied the poster. The Cuban Instituto de Turismo. Palm trees draping a crescent of white sand, islands dotting the blue transparent sea. Maybe that was the solution. Get clean. Get healthy. Get ready for the trial next month.

  But he’d need money for that too.

  “Can I help you with something?” Kharmazi, behind the grill, his heavy accent. Square head, cold, ethnic-cleanser eyes.

  Brian tried not to show he was in agony, stilled his shaking body. He begged. He needed two thousand dollars to go to Cuba. His wife had taken all his assets, but he was expecting a partnership draw soon. “I am a lawyer.”

  “I know who you are. The defender of Abu Khazzam. For you, three points over prime.”

  “That’s fair.”

  “Per month. Sign here.”

  Stuffing his wallet with hundred-dollar bills, Brian returned to the street, pointing himself toward the Golden Horizon Travel Agency. He was deliberately not seeing Harry the Need, but couldn’t help hear his invitation. “You looking, Mr. Pomeroy?”

  A flash, a whispered answer. A couple of grams. That would get him on the plane. Then he’d stop.

  Two hours later, in the waning daylight, he was studying a cypress tree, the one famously kissed by the Aston Martin, its trunk now swathed in a wide black bandage. Farther down twisting Lighthouse Lane he could see the château of Florenza LeGrand, high on the craggy cliffs of Burrard I
nlet.

  Brian had taxied to this wealthy waterfront barrio with a sudden surge of energy. He was on top of things again, Lance Valentine, suave and daring. He owed it to his client, to his art, to check out the scene of the crime before escaping to a palmy beach. That plan had also come like a whispered answer, as he snucked up his first toot in seven days.

  With Lance-like urbanity and wit, he will charm the truth from the grieving widow. He will be blunt, candid, will announce himself not as Lance Valentine but as Cud Brown’s lawyer–a gamble but a brilliant ploy. He will say, “They’re trying to keep us apart, but it’s vital that we speak.” She will say, “I was hoping you would come.”

  He advanced with confident steps toward the low stone wall that guarded the house. Then he saw a closed steel gate, a dark-skinned man guarding it…the doorman from the Palace. He had a ferocious-looking dog on a leash, a Doberman, Brian thought, or some close cousin. He stepped behind the skirts of a cedar to reconnoitre. So the tight end had been watching him, it wasn’t a delusion. His orders were to stop Pomeroy. They didn’t want Florenza talking to him, she knew too much.

  He got his courage up again. He had a right to be here, a right on behalf of his client to examine the crime scene. He trespassed over a lawn and hurried across the street while the doorman was folding open a newspaper. Brian stuck his head over the stone wall, had a closer look at him–he’d put on glasses, looked different, older, shorter, thinner. Maybe Brian should get glasses.

  The dog was sleeping, it didn’t look so dangerous that way. Brian’s fear of dogs–not just guard dogs, all dogs, from Mastiffs to shin-biters–was a component, his shrink explained, of his extensive paranoid mosaic. The guard and the beast were likely there to keep away reporters away. Still, they were obstacles best avoided.

  On the other side of the wall were ornamental bushes, a neatly trimmed lawn, a garden shed. Staggered terraces cut into the natural rock, rising to a patio, then descending to a wide cedar deck with a four-foot railing. The deck seemed to cling precariously to the beams of a flat-roofed, heavily timbered house of many levels. View of a slender inlet, waves splintering against rocky promontories.

  He found a spot where he could clamber over the wall unseen, then, glancing back–the guard was still at his newspaper, the dog not stirring–made swiftly for the terraces, for the deck, where he paused to catch his breath and ponder his next move. Look around, old boy, before seeking an audience with the lady of the house. But it seemed deserted–no lights within though it was early dusk. Here was an area of wide windows and French doors, all curtained, probably a grand salon or dining room. He tested a doorknob. Locked. He pressed on, ducking below the railing in case the guard glanced up.

  He made a sharp turn toward the backyard, where he could see the three-car garage, the maid’s suite overhead. (Where was she that night? Why was Cudworth offered her room?) This had to be where Whynet-Moir went over, the jagged rocks below, waves slapping them, sighing and hissing back to the sea. The deck furniture was heavy metal, chairs and occasional tables, rust-less, stainless steel or zinc. One of these chairs had been found tipped over at this spot.

  Down a sturdy staircase, the pool–still steaming, the tiles wet, towels strewn about. He felt transported back in time, October 14, the early hours, when a similar scene had greeted police. They seized the towels, didn’t they? Yes, they got DNA hits off Cud.

  Someone must be in the house: flickering light through a ten-inch gap between the curtains of a bay window. Crouching close he heard muffled music, a film score from a wide-screen TV snug to the window.

  It was too high to see over, so he brought one of the chairs to the window. Slowly, he raised himself up, peeked over the monitor. Caught within the screen’s stark, spastic glow were two persons on a couch. A handsome male, swarthy or maybe just well tanned, handlebar moustache. Tucked beside him, a leggy brunette, Florenza LeGrand, in a bathrobe hanging open, her bosom exposed, two ripe peaches.

  Some part of Brian knew he ought to duck out of view, but he was mesmerized by Florenza’s bobbing breasts as she bent over a table to savour a ritual known only too well to the observer. She did two toots and raised her head, wiggling the residue into her nose with a finger. Brian withdrew too late from the window; he’d seen the shock as their eyes met.

  Her yelp of fright was followed by an obscene torrent. “Get that fuckhead off the fucking deck! You fucker!”

  Brian clambered from the chair but froze again, found himself gaping across the little inlet at the neighbour’s house, at Astrid Leich, made up to go out, bangles and beads, again seeing something of interest going on across the inlet.

  But now, Florenza and her boyfriend burst outside, she still raging, he with an open jackknife. “Cut his balls off, Carlos, it’s the only way to deal with these media shits. Slit his fucking throat!”

  “Claro, I weel carve heem up as a warning to these paparazzi.” But Carlos looked nervous, his machismo failing him, and he stalled his advance until the guard scrambled around the bend with his barking dog. Brian put his hands up, terrified until he saw the dog was leashed.

  “What kind of fucking security are you, Rashid? Get his camera, goddamnit!”

  Brian was still riveted on the dog. But when it lay down on command, he lowered his hands. Rashid’s pat-down brought forth only a cellphone and a wallet. “He does not have a camera, Miss.”

  Carlos slipped back into the house, presumably to stash the blow, but Florenza tightened her robe, advanced, grabbed the cellphone. “Back off, Rashid, I’ll deal with this.”

  She examined the phone for a camera, then came nose to nose with Brian, looking hard at him with almond-shaped eyes. “If you write about this,” she hissed, “I’ll sue your fucking ass from here to Zanzibar.”

  “I have no intention of writing about the shocking scene I observed, Ms. LeGrand.” Lance Valentine was cool in emergencies. “I’d really rather not mention it to anyone, in fact.”

  “Listen, jerk, I’m not offering you any money.”

  “I find that totally insulting, madam. I ask only that you agree to talk to Cudworth Brown’s lawyer.”

  She stared at him, confused. “When?”

  “Right now would be a jolly good time.” A spectacular coup was in the making. He gave her Brian’s card.

  “Get this fucking asshole out of here,” she called to Rashid.

  The dog barked. Brian’s hairs stood on end. “As a bonus, I’ll agree not to tell the authorities about Carlos.” Who hadn’t reappeared, who hadn’t wanted to tangle, who may be risking deportation.

  “Just a minute, Rashid.” Waving him off, she dialed Brian’s office number. “I’d like to speak to Mr. Pomeroy…Then put me on to his secretary…Ms. Wu, there’s a character here who claims to be your boss. Can you describe him?…Uh-huh. Rings under his eyes?”

  Brian took the phone from her. “April, it’s me.”

  April was cautious. “Say something else.”

  “I came here to scope out the scene of the crime, and there was a brouhaha. Tell her who I am.”

  After she did so, Florenza thanked her and switched off. “Come inside.”

  A tour de force, old boy.

  RUNNING MATE

  Arthur heard cheering outside, saw green balloons floating past his window. Why was Margaret throwing clothes into a bag? “Wake up,” she cried. “we’ve won! We’re going to Ottawa!”

  Arthur heard his own voice, “No!” as he hovered in the netherworld between sleep and waking. Another nightmare, one of a series airing each morning around dawn, more intense as nomination day approached. January 19 was nine days away.

  “Did you say something?” Margaret asked from the stairs.

  “A loud yawn, my dear.” He smelled fresh-brewed coffee. The lazy January sun was hiding, rain was beating on the roof. Too bad, he’d planned to work in the woods today. He might have to sit in his club chair instead and read Plutarch, with the Borodin quartet’s sweet melodies caressing his ears.<
br />
  But by the time he finished his last slice of toast, the thick clouds, finding little profit in wasting their juices on the Gulf Islands, had pushed north to the worthier target of Vancouver. There were even hints of sunshine, so at mid-morning he set out with chainsaw and gas for the west woodlot to buck a tall, wind-fallen fir. He sized up the job, sharpened his saw, and bent to his noisy task, begging forgiveness from Pan and his merry pantheon of wood nymphs.

  Nick joined him at noon, with sandwiches and advice to “make sure Arthur keeps his helmet on and doesn’t lose any fingers or toes.” They shared a Thermos of coffee, not talking much though Arthur wanted to know Nick’s thoughts. There hadn’t been much reaction to his dad’s visit on Sunday–four days past and he still hadn’t said anything about it.

  Nicholas Senior had brought Pamela along, shy Pamela of the twitchy nose and brittle smile. “We are serious about each other,” Nicholas announced. Engaged, in fact. Father and son took walks in the woods while the shy fiancée ate homemade cookies and desperately tried to make conversation.

  After they left, Arthur called Deborah, who wasn’t as upset as he’d expected–Nicholas had forewarned her with a long, anguished e-mail about having “found someone,” apologizing that his romantic circumstances had caused him to be a neglectful dad. Deborah seemed to relish Arthur’s account of the strained day at Blunder Bay, his unflattering portrait of the blushing bride-to-be.

  He put Nick to work piling branches and gave him a safety lesson. Know where your feet are at all times, snip the boughs from the point of stress, position hands and arms thus as you cut fireplace lengths. He illustrated his lecture with tales of his own close calls.

  “The key is the sharpening, a chain should descend through wood as if through butter.”

  Nick patiently watched him file the links to razor sharpness. “Cool. Mind if I go now? It’s milking time.”

  Deborah has let Nick stay through most of February, though he’d miss some school. Out of a quaint sense of delicacy Arthur didn’t tell her of her son’s fascination with an exotic Estonian milkmaid. He considered it harmless and rather charming. He remembered puppy love, he’d had a crush on his grade nine Latin teacher.