Kill All the Judges (20 page)

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 stuck.

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…