Kill All the Judges (8 page)

He had to buy presents for the kids, find a way to smuggle them in. The shops were busy, depressing. Dumbly smiling elves in tinselled windows, syrup from speakers, tunes for illiterate ears, Christmas lights everywhere, sputtering, blinking, inducing a new phobia, fear of epileptic seizure.

He tarried a while outside the Bay, listening to a pretty violin-playing busker play a stripped-down version of the
Four Seasons
. He gave her twenty dollars for trying out for Rosy. Then down to the pimped-up waterfront, right on Cordova, then a ramble up Water Street, and you're at Maple Tree Square, and that's when you realize you're being followed again. It was the same thin guy
in the overcoat, or his brother. Dark complexion, Brian hadn't noticed that last time. Who does he represent?

He hurried into an ugly so-called heritage building, avoided the elevator, took two flights of stairs, checking behind him at every landing. Yes, he'd shaken off the thin man. He entered through the portals of Pomeroy, Macarthur, Brovak, and Sage, whose freckled receptionist greeted him with a frozen cheery smile. “Good
afternoon
, Mr. Pomeroy.” Loud, so everyone could be warned.

Cuddles wasn't here yet, just a couple of white-collar criminals in the waiting room. Brian had time to powder his nose. But stepping out of a doorway in a confrontational way–arms outstretched to hinder progress–was Maximilian Macarthur III, his dear friend, his woe-sharing buddy and partner of two decades.

“We need to talk.”

“I agree, Max. I've got a client coming by, let's set a time.” Brian couldn't get by, Max blocked all the holes. He was a little guy, bald and wiry, a runner, over-healthy. He pulled Brian into his office, closed the door.

“The divorce is over, Bry. It's time to get normal.”

Brian stared grumpily out the window. Max had a pigeonless view, a choice view, over Burrard Inlet, a tableau of sea and mountains.

“Christ, you were coming around. Why did you relapse? For the last three months you've been like some ghoul who wanders in occasionally to spread gloom. Was it because your secretary quit? Roseanne got married. That happens. She's pregnant. That happens too.”

Brian listened sullenly. Max doesn't understand. No one understands. They can't reach me, they can't get to where I am.

“We've got you another one. She's in your office now, restoring order from chaos. April Fan Wu, two weeks out of Hong Kong, she worked in a major law office there. Knows the lost art of shorthand.”

“Appreciate it. I think my client's here.” Brian edged to the door.

Max had to reach to put an arm around his shoulders. “We'll look after that disturbance charge, Bry, don't worry about it. But I want to know what's going on with you. Everyone's concerned…”

“Did they ask you to check me out?”

“Who?”

“Everyone. You used the word
everyone
. Who is that, I want to know. Who is everyone?”

“Your partners, Bry–Augie and the Animal and me. Wentworth too. The conspiracy doesn't go any higher. Where the hell have you been staying; why won't you tell us?” The tone was of a social worker admonishing an adolescent runaway.

“I'm in a cabin in the woods, Max. I'm centring. I'm a Buddhist now, I'm studying the ways of the ascended masters. Listen, Max, I love you for caring, but if I act a little crazy, I'm just putting you on. It's my sense of humour, Max, noir is in fashion. How's Ruth? How's little Jackie?”

“Jacqueline is not little any more, she's thirty-five, she's doing her Ph.D.”

“I knew that.” Brian made it out the door, waving goodbye, walking backward. “Later, right? We'll talk later.”

“Let's hoist a beer at Happy Hour, okay?”

“Happy Hour,
claro
, excellent plan.” Brian escaped down the hall, relieved he'd passed the test. Max hadn't guessed the full extent of the damage.

He locked his office door, withdrew his A's, fished out his bindle of blow, then turned to the sound of a soft “Hello?” He'd forgotten about his new secretary, hadn't noticed this Modigliani masterpiece by the filing cabinet.

Brian tucked the bindle away, annoyed at himself, annoyed at her for smiling in such a knowing way. Why was this woman a legal secretary? Why wasn't she on a runway in Milan? Five-foot-eight, mostly leg, flat chest, catlike eyes, and that infuriating
smile, as if she reads him, knows his addictions, his sicknesses. Poised, assured, masking her repugnance.

“I am pleased to meet you, I am April Fan Wu.” The voice was musical, the accent British over a hint of Cantonese. “You
are
Mr. Pomeroy?”

“No, I'm the pigeon control officer. Mr. Pomeroy asked me to get rid of them; they're driving him mad.” Preening on the sill outside, beady-eyed, occasionally taking a shit.

“It is bad chi to kill a pigeon.”

“Who told you that?”

“My grandmother.” Still studying him.

Brian looked about–his office didn't seem in its usual disarray.

“You have not opened your mail for two months.” Matter-of-fact, patient, as with a child. “Almost two hundred e-mails, faxes, and telephone messages, some urgent, some not, demand answer. Dr. Epstein, your psychiatrist, is anxious that you call.”

“Did she describe me as a menace to all of society or just to myself?”

“I do think you ought to see her. You are obviously unwell.”

“Where did you get your medical training, Ms. Wu?”

“Sarcasm is a tool of the unimaginative.”

“Your grandmother?”

She nodded. Her unforgiving smile.

“I'm under a court order not to see my children. I am an emotional mess, I'm having some kind of massive stress disorder. On top of that, I'm being followed. Dr. Epstein is part of it. Illegal drugs bring temporary relief. My preferred form of humour
is
sarcasm. I'm not sure, but I think I'm also suicidal. You will hate working with me.”

“I expect it will be interesting.”

Front desk was paging, Cudworth Brown was on the premises. Brian asked April Fan Wu to arm herself with several sharpened pencils. He wanted Cuddles's every uttered word, he had to find a solution to Astrid Leich, the surprise eyewitness.

Before greeting his client, he slipped into the washroom, locked the door, laid out a pair, inhaled, rubbed his nostrils, and quickly felt much better. Maybe he'll come to the office more often, get to know April Wu better. She's quick, she gave him tit for tat. Obviously likes him. Finds him charmingly eccentric. Handsome enough with his chiselled, strife-worn features, despite his cigarette-yellowed moustache. She's intrigued, here was someone different, the famed defender of an international assassin. The Abu Khazzam case, front-page news all through Asia. Ah, my love, did your heart skip a beat when you learned you'd be working for the great Bry Pomeroy?

He did a couple more rows, then peed, washed his hands, and went out to fetch Cudworth. A muttering of greetings, no apologies, no eye contact. He sat him on a sofa, well away from the Oriental goddess, who was cross-legged on a wooden chair, pencil poised.

“Okay, Cud, face this way, not at her. From the top.”

 

Of the three writers Judge Whynet-Moir invited, the most exotic was Cudworth Brown, a poet of bawdy and muscular verse, and he was the first to arrive–eager to sup at the capitalist trough, to rub elbows with philanthropists and possible patrons.

As Cudworth's taxi pulled into the portico, Whynet-Moir came out to greet him. A thin, greying, straight-backed man, a soft city hand that went limp in Cudworth's gnarly grip. Waving off his ill-meant protests, Whynet-Moir paid the fifty dollars on the meter.

“Bless you, Judge. That fare would've wiped me out.”

“My pleasure. Where are you staying?”

“I'll find a place, I'll get by.”

Whynet-Moir saw that Cudworth had brought a backpack presumably stuffed with overnight gear, and he grappled with the implications for a moment. “Nonsense, you'll stay the night here. Plenty of empty beds. Self-contained suite above the garage if you prefer, the maid's room.” Above-the-garage was what
Whynet-Moir would prefer: this vulgarian had a suspect reputation.

He ushered Cudworth in, showed him where to hang his poncho. The brute had had a recent shave and haircut, at least, and the grace to use a deodorizer. Floppy boots, baggy black pants held up by red braces, the top buttons of a denim shirt opened to reveal a peace medallion nestled among chest curls. Poor Flo, she will be aghast. He wished she would quickly finish her makeup and rescue him. He would definitely check the seating assignments, to make sure he was at the other end of the table from this hulk-shouldered rural.

To kill time before the other guests arrived (the political essayist, Professor Chandra, would be His Lordship's preferred seatmate), he toured Cudworth through the main wing of the house. A catering chef and his assistant were in the kitchen, an atrium of stainless steel; servers were setting a long table in a dining salon whose sliding glass doors gave access to the wraparound cedar deck and views of rock faces towering over a narrow, frothy inlet.

A living room dominated by a two-sided fireplace. A glassed overlook to the heated pool, steaming and bubbling. Jade conveniences in each washroom. Elevator to the wine cellar. Just off the dining parlour, a well-stocked bar.

Whynet-Moir didn't know how to respond to Cudworth's mantra, “Nice set-up,” “Real nice set-up.” With neither able to bridge the cultural gap, conversation was sparse, but Cudworth couldn't say no a martini, and he lingered so longingly at the countertop humidor that Whynet-Moir gave him a Romeo y Julieta. “I'm afraid we prefer to smoke outdoors,” he said, ushering Cudworth outside. With relief, the judge ran off to attend to new arrivals.

Cudworth twirled his cigar, playing with it, wanting to save it for the right mellow moment, with some of that Hennessy VSOP to go with it. He lit a cigarette, watched Whynet-Moir greet a couple in a high-end Porsche. Here coming up the driveway was a voluptuous car, a topless Lamborghini. Ever since he lost his virginity in a Jaguar, Cudworth had a thing about fine cars.

“Want to fire me up?”

He turned to see what looked like a frame from an early flick, Lauren Bacall in mid-career, maybe, or Greta Garbo, in what they call a little black thing, high black boots, a long set of pearls, an unlit cigarette proffered. There was something vaguely Oriental about her, in her eyes and colour, but he figured half the world had Genghis Khan's genes, sometimes they showed up more obviously.

He didn't skip a beat, had a match under her fag in an instant, his hand cupped to shelter the flame, her hand there too, touching, winered lips puckering, inhaling, smoke creeping from flared nostrils.

“You changed my life,” she said.

 

Brian opened a window to let some of the heat escape. He hadn't been with a woman for months, was horny for Florenza LeGrand, what right had Cud to pucker with the transoceanic shipping line princess? She really say that, Cud? You changed her
life
? Sounds a little wheezy, falsely dramatic.

An image of Florenza and her little black thing and her winered lips came again, but his erection failed to last, submitting limply to an infernal chorus from a shop speaker about the coming of Santa Claus.

He should have had that beer with Max, should have gone with him to the Club d'Jazz at attitude adjustment hour. He shouldn't have sneaked out the back way, by the stairs of cowardice. He should have listened to Max diagnose him.
I'll be blunt, Bry. I don't think you're sick, you're just being an asshole.
He could have refuted that. Easy. But he
wants
them to think he's being an asshole. That's his cover.

At the same time he hadn't wanted a harangue from the scrawny long-distance runner, a drug abuse lecture. Brian took pride in his drug abuse, he was a gourmand of drug abuse, Max wouldn't understand that. Brian had hit on the perfect combination: a tequila on the hour, a line on the half-hour, and non-stop nicotine, a sustained creative high. Presumably most crime writers, from
Dashiell Hammett on, composed while drunk or stoned, so Brian was maintaining a fine tradition. As Widgeon said,
I find a wee nip at the bottom of the day stirs the embers to one last spurt before the weary writer retires to the comfort of easy chair and telly.

 

It had never occurred to Cudworth his verses might change a life; it was a wondrous concept to which he quickly warmed.

“I was living a lie,” she said.

“How?”

“I'll tell you sometime.”

She pulled two thin volumes from her bag.
Liquor Balls
and
Karmageddon
. “Write something scintillating.” Then she had second thoughts, because she put them back. “Later, when you've got to know me better. Would you like to stay the night?”

“Thanks, I've already been asked. I'll be in the maid's room.” Cud pointed to the room above the garage, in case she needed directions. She butted her smoke and went off to greet her guests.

 

You're asking me to buy this, Cud, this seduction scenario? I'll play along with it, but what's
her
version? There's the rub–she's made no statements and, on the advice of counsel, hasn't talked to the Crown. Brian had learned this from a letter from Abigail Hitchins he'd eventually found enclosed in a box with the particulars of evidence.

So Brian didn't know what Ms. LeGrand was going to say at the trial, he hadn't a clue. He'd read about her, seen photos of her, a favourite of the gossip columns, wild, eccentric, unclassifiable. Rumours abounded of dissolute early years, before her marriage two years ago to the handsome, allegedly suave, and utterly eligible bachelor judge.

Brian is going to dig up the dirt on her. If she's lying he'll cut her to pieces. Yes, Cud, your tireless advocate is going to get right on top of the case, you're in safer hands than Allstate. Bry
is a late starter, slow off the blocks, but watch him skim over those hurdles.