Kill All the Judges (35 page)

“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 spotted 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

A
fter 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.