Kill All the Judges (24 page)

“It's a pleasure to meet you finally. Wentworth has told me all about you.”

“Then I am a man without secrets.”

“No one is without secrets, Mr. Beauchamp.”

She smiled. Her dark, intense eyes threatened to lay bare his secrets, his weaknesses. An emergency van bleated past the square and stopped on Alexandra Street, lights flashing. He swivelled to the window. Someone passed out on the street, that was all. Ah, the city, the frenetic, dismal city.

Wentworth was annoying him with his pacing. He told him to sit down while April recounted her adventures: visiting Pomeroy's room in a cut-rate hotel, flushing an ounce of cocaine down the toilet, her trip to Hollyburn Hall.

“Had you been aware of the extent of his disability, Ms. Wu?”

“He seemed deranged.”

“In what way?”

“He was writing a novel.”

“Ah.”

She gave other examples, bursts of paranoia, festering conspiracies, a high-toned British accent coming out of nowhere. “Bad chi,” she said in summary. “Very bad energy.”

Poor chap. Suspicious, reclusive, self-medicated on drugs and alcohol, yet somehow able to cope. Brian had always been neurotic, and his friends may not have picked up that this was something worse.

“What did he say about the opal ring?”

“‘Ring around a rosie.'”

“Good grief. His interview with Mr. Brown seems incomplete, Ms. Wu. It ends abruptly in a steam room.”

“It is said that sometimes one must stop digging the well before water is reached.”

Lao-tzu, he presumed. Again, that impenetrable smile. “I take it that means he shut the interview down.”

“He didn't like the way the story was unfolding.”

Arthur nodded. On reflection that seemed a wise decision, especially after Florenza's “Help me escape.” This must have occurred during one of Brian's sensible moments–he hadn't wanted Cud to dig a deeper hole for himself. Self-incrimination tends to complicate things for a defence lawyer; the wiser course is to gather the facts before resuming such interviews.

“Wentworth?”

He came alert. “Yes, sir.”

“Cud signed his two books for Florenza–are they among the evidence?”

“No, not that I'm aware.”

Never regret
, he wrote in one of them.
New love blooms as the old lies dying
, in the other. “Let us hope they don't turn up.”

The Confederation Club was in the heart of the business district, a four-storey Ionic temple where Arthur had taken many wet lunches over the years. The rattle of the cocktail mixer brought memories and tremors as he settled into a deep chair in the lounge with his tea and the Saturday paper.

He regretted not being with Margaret tonight at the all-candidates. She had claimed he'd make her nervous. A businesslike kiss on parting. Shared good wishes for their respective campaigns. No apology for her crack about his low sexual appetite.

Shuffling through the newspaper, he paused at an item from Ottawa. In question period yesterday, an opposition MP asked about allegations that the former justice minister kept a secret, well-nourished bank account. The prime minister chided the member: in maligning the dead, he'd fallen to a new low.

This bribery business was showing growth potential. Arthur wondered how much there was to it. The Tory chicken farmer must be wondering too.
Shit sticks.
Margaret will have no trouble besting him tonight. But the New Democrat is crafty, a labour lawyer, she'll be tough in debate.

He heard snatches of conversation from the table behind him.

“He's staying here, is that right?”

“Yes, while he's defending that character who did in the judge, what's his name, Whynet-Moir.”

“Ah, yes, the poet fellow who shared a nest with Beauchamp's wife.”

“Tree huggers. They have different moral standards, I suppose.”

 

SOMEONE ELSE IS GOING TO DIE

W
entworth Chance had not gained much courtroom confidence in his years with Pomeroy Macarthur, and his billings were low–too many hours in the library, grubbing for obscure precedent for the few cases entrusted to him, misdemeanours mostly. Worried about his future with the firm, resigned to being an academic nerd, he became indispensable, working nights and weekends, preparing briefs his bosses would recite in court as their own. When he wasn't working, he was dreaming.

Though almost thirty, he looked (and somehow felt) as if he was still in his troubled teens: skinny, awkward, and shy–especially with women. He'd grown up in a town on the Alaska Highway and hadn't learned the social graces. He wore thin ties and black horn-rimmed glasses that made him look like a refugee from a 1950s vocal group. The C-Notes, maybe, or the Mellotones. He would have been the tenor, with his high voice–though it was poorly oiled and needed frequent throat clearing.

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.”