Kill All the Judges

by William Deverell

  Otherwise, he’d had two drug-free weeks–except for the excellent Ron Habana, only three bucks a quart. He felt tanned and fit but unwell in other, confusing ways.

  Confusing because things didn’t go good without Coke, things got worse. When not high, he got the full blast of a breakdown that seemed never to want to heal. Dismayingly, Harry the Need was no longer working Main and Keefer. He’d taken a fall, been detained, nicked, tumbled.

  Dr. Epstein, who wants to put him away, finds his self-diagnosis–nervous breakdown–a fuzzy term, thinks he’s paranoid or psychotic or something similarly off the wall. She’s not supportive, doesn’t believe his voices are real. Whynet-Moir’s voice, for example: Your feeble cause, Mr. Pomeroy, is hardly aided by these crude outbursts.

  He can’t keep hiding much longer. He has to go public tomorrow. That’s when the trial starts. Vancouver law courts, 10:00 a.m. A five-day endurance test with Wilbur Kroop, a weekend between. It’s good that the Need got busted. Brian had to have his wits about him tomorrow, he must be straight.

  He’d been holed up in 305 since his return from Cuba except for a couple of trips to his firm, everyone sidestepping him while he hid in his office resenting the pigeons, resenting April Wu because he had no work for her and now had to share her with Wentworth Chance. Bad chi.

  His only other outings had been to Chinatown, to the Jolly Buddha, which serves an all-you-can-eat for twelve bucks, his only meal of the day. But today he waited too long; the smorgasbord ends at four. Also he was out of tequila, and the nearest liquor store was closed. He’d have to pay double to the mercenary bartender downstairs for a quart of Cortez. He didn’t like the bar, too many former clients, some had gone down, served time. It’s always the lawyer who’s blamed by these complainers.

  Brian hasn’t been able to make contact with his wife (he can’t bring himself to say ex-wife). Caroline had switched phone numbers, e-mail addresses. Two letters had been returned unopened. Little Amelia had tried to get through this blockade, calling his cell. But he had let it bleat away, discovering later that his thirteen-year-old had called to say, “Hi, Daddy, I love you. Thank you for the scary house.” He’d wept an ocean. He’s been doing a lot of that.

  News less bleak: Max Macarthur got that disturbance charge dropped, the drunken carolling. Brian asked him how he did it. “I spoke to Caroline.” That prompted another breakdown, though it was proof she cared.

  He stared balefully at the Brown file, which he’d been avoiding because it caused panic symptoms, Kroop attacks. He’s also been avoiding Cud, who calls incessantly, who haunts from the wall, two arrows sticking from his back, the same bent nose and pissed-off look. It’s just your word against Astrid Leich’s, Cud, so chill out. Brian will play it by ear, that’s how he does best.

  But first he had to get through the night. He took the fire escape, slipped in the back way to blasts of hot air and bad music, a bewigged, red-faced, top-heavy matron belting out “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” backed up by a slide guitar and a drum machine. It seemed real, like his voices, not one of Epstein’s alleged delusions.

  He mounted a barstool, showed the bartender a fifty-dollar bill, tried to hunch himself small, his jacket collar over his ears. But very quickly someone was beside him, a clean-cut yuppie, vaguely familiar but out of place in this joint. Gold earring, thousand-dollar watch. He took the stool next to Brian, and said, “Twenty years.”

  The only client Brian could remember who got twenty years was Tiny Stephenson, the double manslaughter, but he weighed three hundred pounds and half his teeth were missing.

  “You don’t remember me, do you, Mr. Pomeroy?”

  “Sorry, but I’m expecting an urgent call and must hasten to my lodgings.”

  The bartender passed him a heavy paper bag and was about to pocket the fifty when the intruder waved him off, flipping a C-note from his money clip. “Mr. Pomeroy pays for nothing when I am here. Give him another bottle.”

  “Yes, Mr. Neff.”

  “Twenty years ago, almost to the day. Walking out of that courthouse, taking my first breath of free air in five months.”

  Search memory cells. Find Neff. Eureka, the Bolivian flake conspiracy, a big win in his early career.

  “‘Gaping holes,’ you kept saying. ‘Gaping holes.’ You owned that judge, man.” Neff looked around and his voice lowered. “Hey, if there’s anything special you’d like, I just brought in some new lines.”

  Brian invited him to 305.

  Zero degrees and slush falling from the sky. There were portents in the weather, messy twists had been written into this morning’s script, the slush will turn to shit. An ugly growth outside the courthouse like a clump of monster mushrooms. He couldn’t focus, something wrong with his eyes. As the taxi pulled up at the Nelson Street entrance he made them out: smokers under umbrellas.

  He wiped his nose. His arm shook when he tried to read his watch. Twenty to ten. What day? Thursday. When had he got up? Had he even gone to bed? He couldn’t remember waking.

  He paid off the cab, grabbed his briefcase, hitched his raincoat over his head, got out and surveyed the scene. Among the smokers, against the wall, a two-headed poncho. One of the heads looked like Cud Brown but different. The other head smaller, some kind of fungal growth. No, a woman.

  He felt confidence welling again, thanks to the line he snorted in the cab. This trial will be a snap. He is Brian Pomeroy, number three in the criminal lawyer survey of 1997, icon to the freedom fighters of Bhashyistan. Play this one loose, old boy, rely on instinct, throw away your notes. What notes? Did he have notes?

  Reporters comprised a separate group of mushrooms, they were talking about him. He’s going to blow it, they’re saying. Others had talked about him today, the desk clerk at the Ritz and two cyborgs with religious tracts. A scene occurred, Brian had accused them of whispering lies about him, shoved the clerk. Keep your temper, old fellow. Keep your mouth shut.

  Warning. Alert. Charles Loobie approaching, Loobie of the Province, pot-bellied habitué of the El Beau Room. No comment. Remember to say no comment.

  “Hey, Bry, how you doing?”

  “No comment.”

  Loobie laughed. “You may be onto this, I’d be surprised if you weren’t, but I dug up an interesting case Whynet-Moir reserved on.”

  Brian put on his dark glasses, the light was hurting his eyes. He wasn’t sure whose side the reporter was on. He seemed friendly but might be trying to set him up. A scandal monger, this guy.

  “He was just about to go on reserve week when he got terminated by person unknown. I say unknown because Astrid Leich, as you know, is blind as a bat.”

  Brian couldn’t get a flame to his cigarette, couldn’t hold his hands steady.

  “Whynet-Moir was supposed to write three judgments, which are now in limbo. A medical malpractice. An extradition hearing. The interesting one is a land deal…I’m probably telling you something you already know.”

  “No comment.”

  Loobie chuckled again. “A slippery developer, name of Clearihue, was going to make megabucks if he beat a misrepresentation suit. I saw some of it; Whynet-Moir was obviously in favour of the old geezer who sold the land, a rancher named Vogel. Now the case has to be retried.”

  This was flying past Brian. He’d lost attention after the tossed-off blind as a bat. Astrid Leich, linchpin of the Crown’s case, was blind as a bat. Why didn’t he know that?

  “And Darrel Naught–how come everybody’s forgot about a judge who drowned outside a floating whorehouse after nailing a bunch of hoods for twenty years to life?”

  Cud was walking toward them. Loobie lowered his voice. “Naught was being investigated for consorting with hookers, one in particular. After he drowned, the matter was quietly dropped. Some people say suicide. I say maybe. Maybe something else.”

  Brian chain-lit another smoke, but the nicotine didn’t help. Judge Naught. Floating whorehouse. Consorting. These word-scraps skidded about loosely. Blind as a bat. That s
tuck.

  Cud was suddenly in Brian’s space. “Any chance I could talk to you?” He’d had a haircut, lost weight, looked younger. He led Brian to the lee wall of the courthouse. “This is my girlfriend Felicity, from Garibaldi.”

  The fungal growth, a chubby little head poking from the poncho. “I’m going to see him through this with my dying breath, Mr. Pomeroy.”

  Brian wiped his nose. “I’ve got a cold. Don’t get close.”

  “You able to function, counsellor?”

  “I was up all night working.”

  “Working on what?”

  “Be nice,” Felicity said. “Mr. Beauchamp says you’re awfully good, Mr. Pomeroy. You’re the only hope we have.” She pulled a ring from her finger, pressed it in his trembling hand. “Here is truth. Here is innocence. I give you the power of this ring.”

  Brian looked around for Hobbits. He took his glasses off, squinted, felt the ring’s power. A fire opal, glinting orange and red, a spark of yellow, a blinking caution light, warning of betrayal. He rubbed the ring, made a wish. Forgive me, Caroline.

  “Felicity wanted to wear it for a while, I said okay.”

  Brian pocketed it. “Blind as a bat,” he said and led them into the law courts.

  Rain slicked down the vast transparent ceiling above the great hall. People everywhere, cops, lawyers, curiosity-seekers, prospective jurors, the building was jammed, he felt suffocated. “Free Cud” buttons. A sheriff’s deputy was seizing a sign from a bearded revolutionary. “Anarchist Poets for Justice.” Later, Dr. Epstein will tell him this was yet another delusion.

  As he stared at the posted docket, the lines blurred, went double. He made out Regina v. Brown, court 67. Sixth level, the big assize court, it was somewhere up there, behind the cascading, vine-draped tiers. He hurried Cud and Felicity to the escalator. He’ll settle them in, then change into his gown.

  Abigail Hitchins and the lead cop, Hank Chekoff, were conniving on the gallery overlooking the great hall. Alone by the wall, lanky Shawn Hamilton, Silent Shawn, Florenza’s lawyer. She wasn’t supposed to take the stand today, was she? Who was?

  Astrid Leich…He braked, and Cud almost bumped into him. Cud shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be in view, she might be anywhere. The courtroom, witnesses aren’t allowed in there. He’d stash Cud on a back row. This intense thinking exhausted him. He needed another snifter just to stay awake.

  Abigail and Chekoff broke off their scheming as he led his client and consort past them. He asked, “Where’s Astrid Leich?”

  “Witness room,” said Chekoff with his porcine grin. “Snorting to go.”

  Brian glared at him. “Fank you.”

  Court 67 was packed, stifling. People had to squish over so he could seat his charges. Chief Justice Kroop wasn’t here yet, some other judge passing sentence, a motor manslaughter, a drunk who blew a point one six. What did Cudworth blow? Did Florenza take a Breathalyzer? Was that in the particulars?

  Abigail was waiting for him outside the door. “Where’d you go the other night?”

  What night? He remembered a restaurant. “I was acting on orders.”

  “You were plastered then, and you look like you’re plastered now. Are you ready for this?”

  He wiped his nose and went off to see what Chekoff was up to. Just as he suspected, sidling toward the witness room. It’s the guy with the poncho, Miss Leich, he’s cut his hair since you saw him in the lineup.

  While Chekoff exchanged jibes with the deputy sheriff in charge of the witnesses, Brian peeked in. The room smelled of expensive cologne. Men in fine suits and women in fine dresses, standing, chatting. He’d stumbled upon some kind of cocktail party. No, a secret society of the rich and powerful. There was Leich, fumbling with her glasses, getting another fix on him.

  The deputy had him by the arm, tugging. “Sorry, sir, we don’t want no one disrupting the witnesses.”

  Brian hurried down to the barristers’ changing room, but stalled when he couldn’t remember the combination for the Pomeroy Macarthur locker. Flustered, knowing Kroop has jailed lawyers for being late, he borrowed a gown from a neighbouring locker, fought his way into a too-tight wing collar shirt, tied on a dickey.

  Then he headed for the can and an empty cubicle. While lining up his rows he spilled powder onto the gown, a little snowfall on black fabric. He tooted, wiped his nose, licked what he could off the gown, flushed the toilet. At the sink mirror, he saw he still had his sunglasses on. He removed them, saw a pair of hot, bloodshot eyes. He replaced the glasses. Saw a patch of white powder on his inner pant leg. Attacked it with a paper towel. Heard a sheriff calling, “Mr. Pomeroy, court 67.”

  He kept brushing at his gown as he hurried there. He couldn’t get rid of the white smear, he shouldn’t have licked it. He entered court, saw them all looking at him. He stumbled to a halt. They knew, the packed gallery, the press, the glowering chief justice, they all knew that Brian was guilty. “The Crown is ready to proceed,” said Abigail Hitchins.

  “Don’t just stand there like a signpost.” Coal-black eyes gleaming from folds of face flab. “Get up here and let’s go to work.”

  Brian felt the earth giving way, like a cave-in. He steadied himself against a bench until everything went still, deathly silent, a grey zone. He was in the middle of a crowded room in a black gown, holding a briefcase, that’s all he knew. What did all these people expect from him?

  He swivelled. He bolted from court, scrambled through a swarm of press, fled down the cascading stairways, outside, down the street, the rain lashing his face, his gown flapping. He ran and ran…

  THE NEWS AT SIX

  Mid-February, the unrelenting wet season. After three weeks of rain, Arthur could no longer delay bringing in his wood, so he toiled in the muck with mall and splitters, making several trips to the woodshed in his trusty, mud-spattered Fargo. (Welcome, home, old friend!)

  From time to time he fed a fire with bark and broken branches and took his breaks there, warming himself, smoking his pipe, trying to pretend he wasn’t aware it was day one of Cud’s trial. He was in denial, he supposed, Regina v. Brown denial. He’d cut off all contact with him, with his case, even with Brian Pomeroy–who’d been on holiday anyway, charging his batteries for court.

  The profligate poet, on seeing Pomeroy in fighting trim, will finally stop hounding Arthur, who’ll be shunned no longer at the general store. They were handing out “Free Cud” buttons there yesterday amid brave talk of going en masse to court on the morning ferry. Arthur doubted if any showed up for the six-twenty sailing.

  He was having trouble leaving this warming fire, though he should finish up, get back to check on the roast he’d put in the oven. Margaret planned one of her rare visits this evening, to bone up for the all-candidates meeting tomorrow. With the election twelve days off, she’d been barnstorming by float plane, an environmentally unsound mode of transport. Her Conservative opponent had denounced this as eco-hypocrisy. Chipper O’Malley sees her as an emerging threat; he was down to thirty-five points on the last poll.

  Yes, the tireless Margaret Blake had risen like Venus from the sea, was now tied with a New Democrat at twenty-seven, while the Liberals, their last corrupt government not forgotten, were fighting it out with the independents. Arthur has been learning about politics, attending Margaret’s strategy sessions. The idea is to edge ahead of the New Democratic Party, collapse its left-wing vote, stampede its supporters into lining up behind her as the better hope of upsetting the candidate of the Right. All in the great tradition of Nicolò Machiavelli.

  He threw more sticks on the fire. Only one more load to bring up. Nick, who wasn’t much for physical work but had offered to help, seemed relieved when Arthur let him off the hook. The kid has finally settled in like a familiar piece of furniture but his tenure is up in ten days. He spends his mornings helping Lavinia and afternoons plugged in or studying programming codes. Occasionally he will hand Arthur a printout of local interest, ramblings from the World Wide Web clai
ming Cud Brown was framed to protect people in high places and that Whynet-Moir was eliminated to staunch political scandal.

  The Syd-Air Beaver wheeled overhead, pointed its pontoons to Blunder Bay. Syd was a supporter, this was his donation. O’Malley had made something of that too. Despicable fellow, this chicken fattener–only by stretching a point could he be called a farmer, he imprisons his birds in cages for the fast-food market. He’s been making none-too-subtle innuendos about Margaret’s two weeks in a tree with an alleged killer. With pepper added, vile hints of wanton behaviour. As predicted, Cud Brown has become a political liability.

  The fire was subsiding to a mat of woody coals. Arthur rose, stretched, shook the rain from his hat, and went off to split the last butts.

  When he got to the house Margaret was on the phone, a press interview. She blew him a kiss, thanking him for putting the roast in. “No, I don’t think eight points will be hard to make up, not at all. We have a lot of policies in common with the NDP. More and more of them see us as the most effective place to park their vote.” Arthur had grown up distrusting these idealistic lefties. “A caboodle of soft-headed socialists,” his father used to say. The NDP candidate was sharp, though, a labour lawyer.

  Where had Margaret developed these political skills? She’d come to Garibaldi with the long-defunct Earthseed Commune as sixteen-year-old flower child, but instead of dropping out, she dropped in. Home study courses in agrology. Twice elected island trustee. He could handle that, but not Ottawa. He was afraid of losing her to politics, the knives, the skulduggery. How could she prefer that to making goat cheese at Blunder Bay? How would they manage the farm from four thousand miles away?

  When he finished his shower she was on the phone with her campaign organizer. “We rise above it, that’s what we do.” She hung up. “Bastards! They’ve got a picture of Cud and me on their campaign website. We’re in the tree fort hugging and waving.”