He was fascinated by the courtroom, its theatre, its combat, its heroes. When told on Friday he was to junior the don of the West Coast bar, he’d had to lie down to slow his heart rate. He’d attended Mr. Beauchamp’s every major trial for the last decade, skipping classes, shifting appointments. In the privacy of his threadbare two-room flat he’d imitated him, as best he could–the thunder of his voice, his jabs and gibes, his wit. He’d been dismayed when Mr. Beauchamp retired several years ago, delighted when he came back, however sporadically, to the arena.
Throwing himself into the Brown case, he was exasperated to find papers and records from the file scattered all over Pomeroy’s office. Some of his scribblings didn’t make sense, though that was to be expected, given his illness. Wentworth felt guilty; he should have alerted the partners to his last conversation with Brian. (“Do you know where I get my orders from?” “Where?” said Wentworth with a nervous laugh. “Hector Widgeon himself.”)
His weekend visit to Garibaldi was a disaster. Mr. Beauchamp didn’t recognize him, though they’d met four times: at a guest lecture at UBC, in an East End Bar dinner, in the hallway outside provincial court 10, and while serving documents at the great one’s firm, Tragger, Inglis, Bullingham.
He’d been more comfortable with Margaret Blake–who’d fed him, despite his protestations–though he’d made the hugely embarrassing slip of calling her Mrs. Beauchamp. “He’s just being crotchety,” she said as he helped with the dishes. “He’ll soon get over it.”
But the icon seemed to be holding him at a distance. He was grumpy, saw this intriguing case (multiple suspects, political entanglements, hot sex in the boudoirs of the rich) as some kind of millstone. He flinched at the mere mention of the client’s name.
Mr. Beauchamp had chided him in Pomeroy’s office. (“Wentworth, I find myself wilting under your barrage of nervous energy. And stop calling me Mr. Beauchamp. I have a first name.”) Further unsettling him was April Wu, whose alluring presence always left him sweaty and tongue-tied. If she weren’t gay, he’d be in love.
When he sought advice about how to handle Cud Brown on Sunday, Mr. Beauchamp said, “Test him. See if his story holds up.”
He’d come second in the footrace but fourth in the swim, and now, on this final day of the triathlon, he must win the bicycling to earn the gold. His lungs were raw, he didn’t know if he had enough left in the tank, and the Nigerian and the Czech were still five metres ahead. The ultimate test was approaching, Heart Attack Hill. He dug deep…
Wentworth braked, swerved to avoid a car door swinging open in front of him. Had the exiting driver not yelled, “Sorry,” he would have given her the finger–she had almost killed a lawyer involved in one of the biggest trials of the decade.
He powered up the hill to Eighth Avenue, pulled up in front of a tall, ramshackle wood-frame building, the Western Front, a theatre and artists’ residence, an East End counterculture shrine where Cudworth Brown was writer-in-residence for the next two weeks.
He found him in a two-room flat, swigging beer, bare-chested except for his peace medallion. His girlfriend was here too, Felicity Jones, sitting at a typewriter, puzzling over a dictionary.
Cud had a steely grip. “I forgot your name.”
“Wentworth Chance. We met once at the office.”
Cud didn’t seem to recall that. “What’s with the bicycle helmet?”
“It’s a health thing.” He didn’t want to admit he couldn’t afford a car on what they paid him.
“You’re a lawyer?”
“Winner of the McKenzie Prize in Evidence.”
“I hope Arthur ain’t going to foist you on me like he did with Pomeroy.”
“Be nice, Cuddlybear. He looks hungry, you could warm the lasagne.”
“Thanks, I just ate. Mr. Beauchamp wants me to go over your story again.”
“Okay, but I want to watch the game after.”
“Game?”
“The Super Bowl, man. It’s super Sunday.”
“What rhymes with yonder?” Felicity asked.
“Launder,” Wentworth said. “Fonder.”
“Perfect.”
“Tell me about the judge I got. This Kroop character. I hear he’s an assmunch.”
Wentworth had worked up a personality profile on Kroop for the Gilbert Gilbert trial. With his profound dislike of dissenters and radicals, the chief justice wouldn’t like Cudworth’s arrogance and hairy chest and peace medallion and views about proletarian revolution.
“Mr. Beauchamp will dance rings around him.” No point mentioning the history of enmity. One old clipping recounted a trial at which the chief jailed Mr. Beauchamp three days for claiming his head was set in concrete. “He’s just there to direct traffic. The jury decides.”
When Wentworth declined a beer, Cud opened another for himself. They settled in a nook by a window. “Okay, Woodward, where do we start?”
“Wentworth. First of all, that medallion has to go; you can’t wear it in court. Witnesses are going to be identifying you, there’s no point in helping them. No suspenders either.”
“Good thinking, man.”
“Tell me how you got invited to Judge Whynet-Moir’s house.”
“I’d been nominated for the GG in poetry, as I guess everyone knows, and writers of a certain rank get asked to prostitute themselves for the Literary Trust–and believe me, I felt like a fucking whore in a Tijuana bordello.”
“There were three other similar events going on that evening, right?” Wentworth had done his homework.
“Yeah, in fact I was originally supposed to go to a soiree in Point Grey, which was closer, but a few days before, they switched me to this one. I was kind of resentful, but it’s all for the cause.”
“Why did they switch you?”
“One of them inscrutable events of fate, man. Wish they hadn’t.”
Felicity asked, “Is there a word like nymphean?”
“Never heard if it,” Cud said. “Anyway, I was all day getting there, ferry, bus, thumb, and taxi, and I was in a mood to tie on a good one and not worry about getting my ass back home. When Whynet-Moir greeted me I let the conversation drift to where I didn’t have a bed for the night.”
“How did he seem to you?”
“In what way?”
“Generally. His demeanour.”
Cud looked hard at him. “You could see behind the jovial mask that this dude was tormented. I felt his vibrations right away. I got a nose for people.”
“Okay, then what?”
“So he gave me this home and garden tour, and I’m thinking, there are people living in the street, and him and his wife have got eight baths and an elevator to the wine cellar.”
“Did you express these views, or get in any kind of political argument?”
“He’s not the kind of guy you can strike up an argument with. Too soft and squishy, if you get my meaning. There was this other heavy pockets, Shiny Shoes, who I took a dislike to for making cracks at my medallion. He had some kind of business with the judge, I saw them in a corner bending over some papers.”
“You didn’t mention this to Mr. Pomeroy.”
“I remembered it later, thought it might be important. Shiny Shoes didn’t look happy after that little discussion. He kind of rushed off with his wife. But maybe that’s because I pissed on his Lamborghini.”
Wentworth made a note. Cud’s constant smoking was getting to him, bringing on hiccups.
“Anyway, a martooni or two later, I’m out on the deck and the judge is directing traffic and here comes the mink with her, ‘Want to fire me up?’ She had both my books, she’s an appreciator of the arts.”
“Those are the ones you signed?” Hic.
“Yeah…” A hesitant look at Felicity. “Maybe we should continue this over a beer.”
“We are.”
“Down at the Pig.”
As Cud led him toward the Pigskin, a sports bar a few blocks away, he said, “I never told Felicity about how I
got seduced by that dame. It’s embarrassing.”
“I ain’t been beat in twenty-eight straight,” said Two-Ton Tony, “and I ain’t gonna let some rank amateur stop my run.” He racked the balls as Wentworth tossed back his whisky. “What’s your wager, four-eyes?” Wentworth pointed to his gorgeous girlfriend. “Her. For the night.” He chalked his cue, broke the triangle, and the seven ball rolled into the right corner pocket. The rest would be easy…
The back end of a cue almost struck Wentworth’s glass of ginger ale. “Hey, fat man,” Cudworth growled, “you’re bothering my friend; watch what you’re doing with that thing.”
Wentworth edged back in his chair, ready to bolt, while the hulk sized up Cud’s try-me look, his biceps, his broken nose. Then the guy pretended nonchalance, as if this challenge to his manhood was beneath him, and retreated to the other side of the table.
Cud was into his fourth pint and becoming more garrulous, not to mention dangerous. Wentworth had seen his sheet, a minor record: two assaults, both in barrooms. Those, of course, were inadmissible evidence unless Cud took the stand, in which case the Crown could force them out of him. He was smiling and expansive now, celebrating, relieved that Mr. Beauchamp was on the case. “Like a grizzled gunfighter riding into town to take on the Cattleman’s Association and the corrupt sheriff.”
They’d been here an hour, and Wentworth was worried about his Outback 310, chained outside the Western Front. He would leave after the game started, but he still had a few minutes to venture into unexplored territory.
He was careful in his phrasing. “Cud, I’m going to leave it to Mr. Beauchamp to ask what happened after you left the steam room. But let’s talk about some possible scenarios.”
Cud leaned back, chewed on the matter a while, gave him a cagey look. “Okay, one logical theory has me passing out so I don’t remember a fucking thing else. Another has Flo and me going up to the maid’s room and screwing our tails off and not seeing anything. Or maybe we do see Whynet-Moir, hear him go, ‘Goodbye, cruel world,’ and jump.” He put his finger up for another pint. “Game’s starting.”
“I’ve got some research to do.” Wentworth rose.
Cud pulled him close. “Or how about this–maybe I stepped out to piss and witnessed some dude flip Raffy over the deck. There’s a cold-blooded killer on the loose, I’m drunk and scared shitless, I race down to the garage to commandeer a car and run it into a tree ’cause I figure that’ll bring the cops faster than a phone call.” He grinned and turned his attention to the set.
Wentworth’s desk was piled with files and notes, and he was seeing double. It was almost midnight, the city tucking in, sad jazz riffs from below, a drunk bellowing, “I wanna hear ‘Temptation.’”
He tried to focus on his scribbled list of possible perps. A late addition to the cast: Terrence G. Whitson, a.k.a. Shiny Shoes, owner of the Lamborghini. Had some business deal going with Whynet-Moir. Specialist in offshore investments according to the Web. A file for him.
A file for the alleged scandal-silencing hit man from Ottawa. A file for Clearihue, the land-grabbing developer whose trial was aborted by Whynet-Moir’s death. A file for Florenza. A file for her secret lover, if she has one. A file for suicide. A file for a serial killer specializing in judges. Seven possible perps if you include Cud.
The trial was only ten hours away, mind and body needed rest. He put his head on his desk, tried to summon the strength to rise, pack it in, get on his bike. He jumped when the phone rang next to his ear. An impaired driver, maybe–this was when they usually called, after midnight.
“Wentworth?” Brian Pomeroy’s sad, haunted voice.
“Er, yes, it’s me.”
“Someone else is going to die.”
THE BADGER
Arthur sipped a takeout coffee early on a chilly Monday morning as he waited at the locked door of Pomeroy, Macarthur. He would have preferred to work from his old firm, Tragger, Inglis, with its massive library and its coven of gnomic researchers, but the files were in Pomeroy’s office, and as much as he’d like to escape the gluey ubiquity of Wentworth Chance, he felt obliged not to desert him.
He unfolded the Sun to a third-page item announcing the start of the Brown trial, with “veteran criminal lawyer A.R. Beauchamp, Q.C.,” standing in for the stressed-out Pomeroy, under care at an unnamed facility.
Here was an account of the all-candidates debate. The NDP labour lawyer got top billing, her efforts applauded as vigorous and witty. That accorded fairly with what he’d seen on the late news. Margaret had been tentative, nervous, as if afraid of miscues.
But she’d been ready for Chipper O’Malley’s low blow, a veiled reference to her acts of civil disobedience with a man charged with murder. “If it’s Mr. Cudworth Brown you’re referring to, he and I had drawn lots to be up that tree. We were fighting to save a beautiful wilderness area. What have you done to protect our natural heritage?” That televised quote didn’t make it into the paper.
Finally the receptionist came, looking harried–the staff of this small, hectic firm was overworked. Arthur followed her inside. Passing by Wentworth’s office, he glanced within and saw the young man slumped over his desk, asleep. Before rousing him, he scanned his list of suspects. The notes concluded with an underlined quote, “Someone else is going to die.”
“Wentworth, we must be in court in an hour and a half.”
He woke with a start, stared in horror at his watch. “Oh, my God. I have to shower and dress.”
Arthur gave him the keys to the Chrysler. “I’ll take a taxi. Meet me at court.” Wentworth flung several files into his backpack and fled before Arthur could ask him about that curious quote.
In Pomeroy’s office, he found April Wu settling into work–she was still collating the mess of Pomeroy’s scribbles, snippets, and printouts, some of which had been found in his dismal lair in The Ritz, as well as a backup disk. Here was a collection of paperback mysteries, several penned by one Hector Widgeon, a CD-ROM, and a well-thumbed how-to manual by the same obscure writer. Arthur sifted through the manuscript pages.
“Who might this Lance Valentine character be?”
“Mr. Pomeroy’s version of a private detective. An over-glamorized version, if you wish my opinion.”
Any resemblance to others living or dead seemed not coincidental. Among the dead were Justices Naught and Whynet-Moir. Here was Detective Sergeant Chekoff. Cud Brown, and Flo LeGrand. Pomeroy himself. What an odd thing.
“April, please put me in touch with Brian’s psychiatrist.” Arthur should actually visit him, check on his condition–though he had ample proof of his mind’s chaotic state. Recovery of that opal ring was essential, his possessions must be searched.
“Is this of interest, Mr. Beauchamp? It was crunched up in a bottom drawer of his desk.” April handed him a crumpled page from the Georgia Strait, the entertainment weekly, dated October 11 last year. Caroline Pomeroy staring from the page, looking rather pleased with herself. An interviewer quoting this English professor’s wry literary comments. Dr. Pomeroy being modest about Sour Memories, her award-winning collection. A reference to a reading planned for October 12 at the Vancouver Library. Then this: “Next evening she’ll be dining at the lush waterfront manse of socialite Florenza LeGrand and Judge R. Whynet-Moir, one of four Literary Trust fundraisers planned in Vancouver that night.”
How had they got that wrong? But then he recalled Cudworth had been switched at the last moment from a similar event in Point Grey. The Literary Trust had obviously decided he and Caroline should trade places, and for good reason: Whynet-Moir had presided over the Pomeroy divorce.
He had to rush away to his cab. First stop was the Bank of Montreal tower–Tragger, Inglis occupied five upper floors, but Arthur’s destination was Roberto’s hair salon in the mezzanine. For three decades Arthur had entrusted his hair to his fussy old barber–Arthur was one of few who knew the secret of his baldness.
Roberto wasn’t open yet, but on spotting Arthur
behind the glass, he let him in and hurried him to the chair.
“You look like a sea monster risen from the kelp. We can only pray. The beard? Gone. I regret to say the geezer look is out this year. We prefer something très distingué.” Roberto, who in his former life was simple Bob the barber, liked his flowery French phrases, though otherwise knew little of the language. “The distinguished barrister, a power look. I used to do Whynet-Moir, did you know? Lovely hair. Silky. Met Ms. LeGrand. Très magnifique!”
She was to be the final witness, probably Friday. A call to the Crown confirmed she hadn’t taken a Breathalyzer. She remained the wild card, with her self-incriminating silence. Arthur found no indication Pomeroy tried to contact her–doubtless, in any event, she would have slammed the door in his face.
A swivel of the chair brought Roy Bullingham into view, staring at his lathered face from behind the glass. Bully, they called him, Tragger, Inglis’s last surviving original, ninety-one, still at his office nine to five.
“Ah, it is you,” he said, popping in. “Haven’t seen you around much, Arthur. On holiday, were you?”
“Bully, I retired eight years ago.”
“Evidently not so. Nasty case. A high court judge. A home of good repute.”
“I shall not be using my old office.”
“Just as well, I can’t imagine we’d want to be associated with this dismal business. Your Rabelaisian poet and his drunken goings-on.” He left.
“Voilà, a dapper statesman emerges from the ruins. I call this the British ambassador.”
Wentworth Chance was anxiously waiting for him at the curb, already gowned, looking confounded at the new, improved version of his idol. Arthur always felt more confident after his traditional pre-trial haircut. In his three-piece suit, he felt distinguished, ambassadorial. The transformation was setting in, from a doddering yokel to the lion of the courtroom. The process, vaguely magical but hinting of a dissociative disorder, tended to unsettle Arthur. It was if Stoney, say, had another life as a neurosurgeon.
Kill All the Judges Page 17
