Kill All the Judges (18 page)

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

A
rthur 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.

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.

Nick raced off, and Arthur yanked the cord and the saw coughed to life. The sweet, dripping forest, the crisp clean smell of fresh-cut
timber, the arcs of flying flakes, the sputter and roar of a manly weapon: all these made Arthur feel good. The outdoorsman. Happily engaged in the only profession he cared about, farming. Enjoying his retirement years. He should burn his gown, a public ritual, a proclamation to the Cudworths of the world that this lawyer is no longer in service.

The luckless fellow was dealt a joker when Wilbur Kroop nominated himself to do the trial–this made the paper the other day, with a sidebar account of Pomeroy's caustic portrayal of the chief at the Gilbert Gilbert trial. Surely, Pomeroy will move to have His Lordship stand down. Extreme apprehension of bias: a substantial ground of appeal.

“One more reason to stay away from that fiasco, Beauchamp. The Badger despises you even worse than Pomeroy.” Twenty years ago, Arthur told Kroop his jury instructions were “a hopeless mishmash of error and speculation devoid of facts and biased to the point of low comedy.” Arthur was then on a quart-a-day habit, and after three nights in jail couldn't take any more, so he apologized. “Grovelled. The unpitying old bugger.” He must stop talking to himself this way.

He cut a last butt from the lower trunk, then bowed to the remains of a brave fallen warrior who will warm his house next winter. The task of splitting and hauling will wait until he has his Fargo back. “It will be gracing your driveway tomorrow,” Stoney promised. That was ten days ago.

It was almost five-thirty, time for dinner. As he packed his tools away, he saw that Nick had left his day pack hanging on a bough. Retrieving it, he felt a budge in a side pocket and pulled out a clear plastic bag with half an ounce of crushed green leaves. Marijuana. This deeply saddened him–he'd already given the boy one lecture. It explained his detachment, his blank attitude to his father's visit and engagement.

He trudged to the house, hung up the day-pack, and pocketed the cannabis. He didn't want to bother Margaret with this problem
right now, not before dinner, not as she was chopping peppers in the kitchen.

He asked, “How did it go with the old farts on Saltspring?” She'd been at a glad-handing session, the Pioneers Club.

“Arthur, I don't think it suits you, of all people, to use that expression. Old-timers are respected. They deliver votes.”

“Is it fair to campaign when you're not yet nominated? What if someone decides at the last minute to contest?”

“I don't think it's in the cards.”

“Not a healthy sign for your political party, this lack of choice. Undemocratic somehow. Odd there isn't some young crackerjack willing to test himself against the old guard.”

“Old guard!” A scoffing laugh.

“My dear, your Green Party has an establishment. You are part of it.”

“Oh, sure, the Green machine.” She was enjoying politics, knew she excelled at it, her grin gave proof she was even vain about it. Had the infection begun? The creeping corruption? Sadly, her party still barely showed in the polls, a mere sixteen per cent.

Underfoot, the fat tabby, was on his lap, chewing his belt, some kind of rare leather deficiency. He pushed him off. “I hope we're to have a quiet evening together finally.”

“I'm not going out, if that's what you mean. I'll be on the phone a lot.” Somehow, Arthur didn't like the sound of that. “Wash up so we can watch the six o'clock news.” He didn't like the sound of that either.

After showering, he transferred Nick's baggie into his fresh pants. The prospect of disciplining the boy repelled him, but there must be consequences. Confiscate the iPod. Cut off access to the Internet. Force him to read Dickens. Arthur ought not to delay the matter, he'd tackle him this evening. It was hard being a grandparent.

Rejoining Margaret, Arthur lowered himself into his club chair, face to face with the cyclopean monster. He'd resigned himself to
it, a new thirty-inch TV, apparently an essential tool for the aspiring politician. Complete with the mysterious usages and workings of a DVD recorder.

He grumped loudly through the six o'clock commercials. A diabolical intrusion, this machine. Mind-numbing pap for the docile masses. He'd come to Garibaldi for peace and quiet.

“Then be quiet.”

Underfoot was back on his lap, and his brother, Shiftless, was going up his pant leg. They may have sensed he needed love.

“Good evening. There'll be a by-election in Cowichan and the Islands on Tuesday, February 26. That word came down today from…”

That's all Arthur bothered to listen to. He looked up at Margaret, standing beside his chair, looking very intense and white in the television's glow. This is the news she wanted them to share, the starting pistol has fired. Arthur had visions of mindless sign-wavers covered in badges, staged photo ops, babies thrust at candidates. Worst would be the innuendos, the mudslinging, private lives stripped bare. But he shook off the cats, moved behind her, and encircled his arms about her waist. “In case there are lingering doubts, I'm behind you. All the way.”

The phone was ringing. “Don't answer.” She squeezed his hands and pressed him back into his chair. “Look.”

A political analyst. “Well, Jim, all three major parties now have candidates in the field, and the Green Party, with its typically late start, is expected to go with former island trustee Margaret Blake–”

“Who is credited with bringing about a new national park in that riding.”

“Yes, Jim, with her standoff against developers.”

Fifteen seconds of free advertising for Margaret Blake. The other candidates didn't fare so well, a sentence each.

Both cats were on his lap, licking, getting his slacks wet with their saliva. But a graver matter was at hand: Nick had come in
and was searching through his day pack, frowning. “Anyone seen the catnip I got for Underfoot and Shitless?”

“Shiftless, dear,” Margaret said. “I suspect it's in Arthur's right pants pocket.”

Arthur fished it out, tossed it over, wordless in his embarrassment–he had no idea what to say without seeming even more foolish. Margaret laughed quietly as she got up to a ringing phone.

On a hazy, rainless morning a few days later, Arthur found himself at the terminus of his health walk, the general store, getting the usual silent reception in the lounge–the latest tactic of the Cud Brown Defence Coalition.

That organization had started off as a small local body, but somehow it had taken a leap over the Salish Sea to the Mainland. Now there were chapters. Literary groups, artists, workers. Cud's old union, the Steelworkers. Bloggers (whatever they were) had taken up his cause, conspiracy theories were floating around the brave new world of the Internet. There was a sense that this working-class poet had been railroaded by the rich.

At least Cud had stopped pestering–he was on a reading tour of hinterland libraries.

Arthur strode guiltily past the school where he'd missed too many of AA's bi-weekly Tuesdays, past the turnoff to Breadloaf Hill, where lay the ashes of the community hall. Only fifty thousand pledged to date, the rebuilding drive was going slowly. Here was the Shewfelts' roof, still tenanted by Santa and his reindeer two weeks into the New Year. Rudolph had weathered last week's storm poorly, had buckled to his knees, his nose hanging by a wire.