Kill All the Judges

by William Deverell

“Already done.”

  “I am keen to secure a certain item of jewellery, to wit, an opal ring likely hidden by an insane lawyer in a second-floor suite of Hollyburn Hall in West Vancouver.”

  “Don’t know the joint.”

  “Haute bourgeoisie hospice for junkies. Overstaffed, but they don’t lock the doors.”

  “I can do it in my sleep.”

  “You might check for any non-prescription drugs while you’re at it. In recompense, I can offer a one-third reduction in my next fee.”

  “You’re not gonna see the Owl professionally again. I ain’t into free trade no more, I’ve given up the game. This time I mean it.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  After dropping Arthur off for dinner at his club, Wentworth found his way to Fishermen’s Wharf, on the docks of False Creek. The rain had lessened, so he wandered around the slips for a while, early for his appointment with Minette.

  Several years ago, when he’d beat her first case, she’d offered him a treat–which of course he declined, though it prompted many torrid imaginings. They’d carried on as friends in a non–sexually threatening way. She still used him, the odd bylaw complaint, a threatened nuisance action by neighbours. After Naught’s death, the police tried to shut her down, but Wentworth got her business licence back. She actually did know how to massage, had a bodywork certificate, but her sideline was more lucrative, with maybe three dozen regulars, well-to-do professionals, business persons.

  Here was her boathouse, two storeys on a sturdy, timbered raft, sandwiched between a sloop and a yawl. This was the gangplank on which Naught had bumped into Johal.

  Minette swept out to greet him in style, a cocktail dress, dark eye shadow and hot red lips, prepped for work–they liked to watch her undress, she’d told him. She pecked him on the cheek. “Still a virgin, honey?”

  He didn’t want to admit that for all practical purposes he was, though technically not if you count a few strained episodes with his landlord’s tough-talking daughter, who used to barge into his room. That was two years ago, before she joined Officers Training. Then there was his teenage sweetheart, she’d finally let him do it, after about his fiftieth try, in the back seat of her dad’s Impala. That led, a few days later, to a bizarre quarrel; she claimed she’d been saving her virginity for someone special. No wonder sex scares the pants off him. It’s become a neurotic thing.

  Minette led him to the second floor, a stylish boudoir with Matisse and Modigliani nudes, a massage table for those who wanted to pretend that’s what they came for, vials of scented oil, sex toys, an array of quality condoms, a bed turned up.

  “Poor baby, you look beat, what’s up?”

  “I’m under siege. You been following this murder trial, the poet guy?”

  “Yeah, I read on the Net he’s being railroaded.”

  “Well, guess who’s acting for him?”

  “Arthur Beauchamp.”

  News of Wentworth’s critical role had yet to make it into cyberspace. “I’m his indispensable assistant.”

  She seemed impressed, and this encouraged him to talk about the case. He found himself getting wound up, pouring out the details, the ins and outs, evidence, witnesses, suspects, his backbreaking load.

  She interrupted. “Take your shirt off.”

  Wentworth froze. “Why?”

  “Lay down on the table over there. I’m going to give you a massage.”

  He did as directed, felt uncomfortable as he climbed on the massage table, exposed, scrawny. He was afraid he’d get a hard-on, but he didn’t, and her hands felt good, very good, he could feel the tension melt. She went at him in silence for twenty minutes, and when he sat up he felt better. Maybe all he needed now was sleep.

  As he pulled on his shirt, he got to the point: he was exploring a theory someone wanted to kill both Whynet-Moir and Darrel Naught. When he asked for a rundown of what happened at about midnight of August 18, she turned silent, went to a tall window, drew open the curtain. Wentworth went behind her, stared over her shoulder at lights glinting on the undulating inlet, a forest of masts, the glow of downtown towers. There, distant but in clear view, was the spot where Naught went over, at the end of the floating dock, just below a metal ramp to the shore.

  “I usually open the curtains when I’m alone. I like to look out.”

  “It’s pretty, I don’t blame you.”

  “I said at the inquest that Darrel didn’t show up for his midnight appointment. That was true. I also said I didn’t see him that night. That wasn’t true. This is between you and me, Wentworth, huh?”

  “We’re bound to silence. Me and Mr. Beauchamp.”

  She leaned on the windowsill. “Joe Johal took an extra ten minutes, but he left a good tip. I closed the door after him, but I didn’t see him bump into Darrel. I had no idea they knew each other.”

  “When did Judge Naught make his appointment?”

  “That night, around nine, he called from some bar or restaurant. He’d do that when he got lonely. Guy needed a wife. Anyway, I was at this window, and he hadn’t shown up, and I assumed he’d cancelled. And then I saw…I don’t want to get nailed for perjury, okay?”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “Darrel–I only saw the back of his head–was walking away, weaving a little, probably drunk; he was never sober when he came to see me. He stopped and clung to a pier, then continued on to where the floating dock meets the ramp. He was leaning over like he might throw up, but I don’t know if he was sick or what. And then I saw a guy come down the ramp, average height or a little taller, in a suit, I think. And then I saw a flash, like on a camera, only I didn’t see a camera. And Darrel straightened up, kind of flailed out at the guy, like he was blinded, and this dude pushes him back, not hard, but more than a nudge, enough to set him off balance, and he went into the water.”

  She shivered. Wentworth sensed her relief, she was getting rid of this, unburdening. She eased into a chair he held for her, but stayed fixed on the view. “He didn’t come up. Not once. And the guy, I don’t know what he was thinking, he looked around I guess to see if anyone was watching. And he went back up to shore.”

  “Did he have a car?”

  “Not that I saw. He walked up to Creekside Drive. I was standing there frozen.”

  “Could it have been Johal?”

  “Not likely, unless he’d lost fifty pounds.”

  “He was in suit?”

  “Now I’m not sure. But he was wearing a tie. And suspenders, I think.”

  That had Wentworth blinking. Suspenders? They weren’t much in fashion outside the legal profession. Arthur Beauchamp, Q.C., fancied them for court. Brovak always wore them, Pomeroy often. Silent Shawn too. He remembered Cudworth’s mocking self-portrait: The hick in the red braces. That’s what he’d worn at Whynet-Moir’s.

  “Overcoat?”

  “No.”

  “What colour shirt?”

  “I couldn’t tell.”

  “Beard, moustache, glasses, hairstyle, hair colour?”

  “I couldn’t tell the colour, not black, the light there plays tricks. Definitely not bald. No beard, I don’t know about a ’stache or specs–it’s more than a hundred metres away.”

  Wentworth watched a couple descend the ramp. He could make out a short man and a tall woman, but not their features. Jackets of no discernible colour.

  “Sorry, baby, I have a client in ten minutes.” She bussed him at the door. “You don’t look like you’re getting enough, Wentworth.”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “She hot? Need any lessons?”

  “I’ll figure it out.”

  In the car, Wentworth censored a brief erotic moment, then brought out his notepad. Poor Judge Naught. A senseless homicide? Some psycho in a suit who happened to be wandering by? Or a stalker who’d finally found his chance? That flash of light didn’t make sense, unless it was a camera.

  Then a thought popped into his head: maybe the perp was a photojournalist who s
potted Naught hanging around Minette’s houseboat, hoped to catch him consorting with a hooker. Or he’d followed him from the law courts, followed him all evening.

  Loobie. Loobie the leech. Scandal-digging Charles Loobie…

  FOWL PLAY

  After guiltily overeating–a rib roast with extra trimmings–Arthur settled into an appropriately overstuffed chair in the club lounge, earning nods of non-recognition from the pair of old fixtures next to him. He wondered whether he’d be like them in his dotage, fustian and discursive. Old School Tie drank old-fashioneds. The Goatee was more with the times, a thin computer open across his knees.

  “Imperial Oil class B bonds up twenty-one points.”

  “And people whine there’s a fuel shortage.”

  “Plenty more down there. Just have to get at it.”

  “Not enough freeways is the problem. My driver took half an hour to get here.”

  Arthur pawed through his briefcase, found his cellphone, drew Margaret away from a session with her campaign team.

  “How are you faring, Arthur? I hope you’re not loading up on calories; I worry.”

  He hedged: “Only overdid it once. Suffered a fuel shortage. You’re well?”

  “I’m probably exhausted, but I won’t feel it until after Tuesday. We’re having a problem over some unauthorized e-mails accusing O’Malley of cruel and unusual punishment at his chicken factory. It’s been popping up on screens all over. And he’s still making oblique references about how my hubby is acting for you-know-who. How’s that going?”

  “Over the hump, I think. Two main witnesses to come. If they don’t do me severe damage, I may be able to raise enough reasonable doubt to keep Cud off the stand.” He feared what Abigail might do in cross; the Badger, too, might go after Cud, transferring the ire he holds for Arthur. But he expected Kroop would not be in his usual troll-like temper tomorrow, after being lauded, applauded, and lied to at tonight’s bar dinner.

  “Eric Schultz wants to talk to you.”

  The turncoat Tory. Arthur doubted he was a good influence on Margaret; he played by the old rules.

  “Ah, Eric, how goes the campaign?”

  “Tight, very tight. NDP’s done, but we’re still a few points behind O’Malley. Problem is we’ve got three parties courting the environmental vote, and O’Malley’s cornered the rest, the global warming deniers. Outspending us ten to one.”

  “Dalgleish Ebbe popped into court today.”

  “Still sore about being passed over for Whynet-Moir, hopes you’ll be his instrument of vengeance, that’s my take. Might be an idea to talk to him; he and Whynet-Moir were in law school together, he may be able to confirm rumours Raffy had a few same-sex dalliances in his college days.”

  “How would that be relevant?” Arthur wanted to say he’d left his shovel on the farm.

  “Just a thought. Not here to tell you how to run your trial, but we could bridge the gap if you keep hammering away at the payola issue. Polling tells us it’s a growing factor. The latest: a reliable blog with Ottawa sources says an audit of Jack Boynton’s books will show he and Whynet-Moir were up to their eyeballs. Rumours of a numbered account in the Bahamas.”

  Arthur wondered if some crafty campaigner was feeding the blogs with that sort of tattle. This brave new form of communication had potential for villainy. “I’d hesitate at this point, Eric, to make accusations based on rumours. It would be a terrible thing if we’re proven wrong.”

  “Of course. I understand. Tricky business, politics. Mind you, one can’t defame the dead, and you’re in a libel-proof venue anyway. Not saying something you don’t know. Wouldn’t dream of suggesting anything against your client’s best interests. Getting Brown acquitted, that’s the main thing, it’ll go a long way to muzzle O’Malley and his insinuations. Best of luck, Arthur.”

  Arthur couldn’t get rid of a sour taste as he slid the phone into his pocket.

  “Here’s a scurrilous election ad.” The Goatee, at his laptop. “Calls our man a dirty rotten chicken plucker.”

  “They’ll stop at nothing.”

  Arthur went to bed early, but a bout of indigestion made for a night of phantoms. Dreams fuelled by his distaste for politics. A mini-nightmare in which a man dressed as a chicken asked him to accept a judgeship. And this truth-based oddity: he was cross-examining Astrid Leich, with Kroop running his usual interference–but it was a film set, cameras on cranes and dollies, and he was an actor playing a lawyer. On the director’s stool, with a clipboard, was Brian Pomeroy. The dream awoke him.

  His fretful night stayed with him as he read a newspaper piece about those chicken plucker e-mails from some renegade geek. Though they carried no virus, they’d riled computer users. The Green Party had denounced their author but was still getting the blunt of the blame, accused of sleaze, of being anti-business.

  He perked up over coffee with Wentworth in his firm’s lounge, with its lovely view of the North Shore’s snowy peaks–a brighter space than Pomeroy’s office, with its patrolling pigeons and views of junkies, bums, and tourists.

  Arthur was a little confounded to learn Naught had met his end not by mischance but by a relatively polite form of homicide, a push into the drink by a faceless nondescript in, unusually, suspenders. Arthur himself was an aficionado of braces, as he preferred to call them, and typically so was Cudworth Brown. Not that he otherwise fit Ms. Lefleur’s description–Arthur couldn’t conjure an image of the proletarian poet in dress shirt and tie.

  “That wasn’t a gun flash Ms. Lefleur saw?”

  “She didn’t hear any noise. My guess is a camera. Um, I hope you won’t think this is way too bizarre, but I’m going to nominate another candidate for bad guy. Charles Loobie.”

  Arthur didn’t scoff as Wentworth made his case, in fact was piqued at the hypothesis that the sleaze-seeking scribe had been lurking around the False Creek docks. Indeed, there was something almost compelling about throwing into the mix a fellow who insisted on calling him Artie. All those efforts at misdirection, putting them off the scent. His unfounded speculations about Naught: Maybe he had some corrupt dealings with Whynet-Moir…maybe Raffy personally rubbed him out.

  In support of his case, Wentworth cited Loobie’s presence at the press table as Ruby Morgan and his cohorts were sent up the river–seven hours before the judge sank like a stone into the saltchuck. Add to that: Loobie knew Naught was being investigated for frequenting, as Loobie put it, “high-end pros like Minette Lefleur.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in suspenders, though,” Wentworth said.

  “I’m almost sure I have.” Loobie was wearing a belt these days, but Arthur dug into memory and came up with an old snapshot of the pot-bellied reporter snapping his braces in the El Beau Room, a parody of Arthur beginning cross-examination.

  A murder motive seemed entirely lacking, but according to Ms. Lefleur, there’d been a brief shoving match. Homicide without intent may not be murder, even in second degree, but could well attract a manslaughter conviction.

  It seemed a long leap to connect Loobie with Whynet-Moir’s murder, but they speculated awhile about the possibility. A judge about whom floated rumours of corruption, newly married to a woman of wild reputation, a poet with a similarly loose history invited to a staid gathering–these were the spicy ingredients that might entice this maestro of yellow journalism to sneak onto private property. A confrontation, a push, presto.

  Arthur put the matter to rest for now, asked about the late justice minister, whether Wentworth had found any skeletons in Boynton’s closet.

  “It’s pretty bad.”

  “How bad?”

  “Twenty years happily married, adopted three refugee orphans, active in legal programs for the poor…”

  “My God.”

  “There’s worse: various charities, Christian Aid Society, the Darfur Hope Mission, honorary chair of the Children’s Literacy Foundation…”

  “Enough!” Surely the ex-justice minister could not b
e such an unblemished saint. Maybe Wentworth hadn’t got past the protective layers of political boosterism.

  On the desk, freshly couriered, was a recorded disk of Astrid Leich’s 911 call. Wentworth slipped it into his computer.

  “Hello, 911, hello, are you 911? I just saw a horrible thing, terrible, terrible, I think I’ve just witnessed a cold-blooded murder!” Dramatic, yet not histrionic. The call came in at 3:11 a.m., according to the transcript.

  There followed a quick question period: name, address, identity of victim, where, when, how. “Do not hang up, one moment.” A pause for a relay to police dispatch. Then:

  “He was standing on a chair in a dressing gown, and he was…he was…oh, it was horrible…awful!”

  “Please be calm, Ms. Leich. Police are on their way. Are you talking about your neighbour?”

  “Yes, Rafael…he’s a judge. A judge! Another judge has been murdered, oh, my heart, and I’m the only witness!”

  “Have you locked your doors?”

  “Yes, but I’m terribly frightened.”

  “The police will be there within seconds. Now tell me again what you saw.”

  “A man came over and pushed him right over the railing of his deck, just like that. And I heard him scream, and…and then there was a crunch and then just silence, and I don’t know where the man went, he disappeared somewhere.”

  Arthur wasn’t blind to her talent as a stage performer. Yet this frantic account of death cry and crunching bones seemed natural, unrehearsed. No hint of inebriation, no mental confusion, no dissembling. When asked if she might recognize him again, she said, “I believe I would, yes, I believe I would.” A troubling eagerness.

  The dispatcher kept her on the line with a questionnaire, personal statistics–Leich almost balked when asked her age, but who would deny her a touch of vanity? She was seventy-three, hardly ancient, Arthur wasn’t far behind. Marital status? “Long and happily divorced, young lady.” Occupation? “Semi-retired professional actress.” Still available for roles, it would seem.

  Reception said Faloon was in the waiting room. He was whisked in, his round, owlish face lit by a beaming smile. “A slice of pie, took me two minutes. First thing I did was check his pants, hanging on a chair. The item of interest was in a little zipper pocket of his wallet, in this here scrunched-up wad of paper.”