Lance got what he could from him, then switched him to Rosy and swivelled to watch her react. She turned and gave him a tired smile, as if to say, Thanks, but I didn’t really want to talk to him.
He may have erred in hiring Rosy. She’d been as worthy as the dozen others he’d interviewed, with the bonus of being breathtakingly scenic, but he’d taken her on before learning her husband was a copper, and now there were complications. Hank may have heard exaggerated rumours about Lance’s reputation with the fair, yet decidedly unfair, sex. The last thing Lance needed was a jealous cop tailing him around town.
He swivelled back to Cud. “It seems that the chair of the North Shore Arts Council saw you take care of her neighbour. Maybe you ought to go back to Mr. Pomeroy and apologize.”
Brian clicked Widgeon open, hoping to find a help file for lost writers. Search for “mental.”
Do not mentally exhaust yourself. Before chance (and whatever small talents I possess) favoured me with literary success, I, too, had a day job, as inspector for Her Majesty’s Customs, and I would often arrive at work exhausted after scribbling till three in the morning. Many a smuggled item must have slipped through on my watch! So please, when you see nothing but rot on your page, take a deep breath, pack your pages away, and make a soothing cup of Earl Grey while you climb into your pyjamas.
Brian didn’t have Earl Grey, and his pyjamas were in the Good-Luck Wash’n’Dry.
The tough-dame-assistant was rot on his page–if he couldn’t rewrite Rosy Chekoff he’d have to scrap the hackneyed big-hair hoochie. There was no model to draw her from, he’d looked everywhere, all the bars up and down Main Street. Brian felt stymied in his effort to create credible female characters. He’d never given the concept of femaleness much thought. Generally, he was having trouble making people up, making things up.
Widgeon, Chapter Two. The beginning author will be forgiven if he or she commits minor theft, stealing premise, plot, even characters from real life. But do not become wedded to reality; do not copy life. There is no point in writing fiction if you have no imagination.
Fair enough, but it’s so last year, as his older teen daughter might put it. Widgeon isn’t hip to the trend. This is creative non- fiction, history pretending to be fiction. Write what you know, they say. But it was getting harder to cling to the remains of reality, especially when potted on cactus juice, harder to maintain a window to the world of sanity. It was a task just keeping the pigeons out, the shitting pigeons that haunted his imaginings…
After going through the pockets of his bomber jacket–two broken cigarettes in a crumpled pack–he went out the side window to the fire escape, clanging down it, avoiding the ground-floor saloon, avoiding the dopers in the lane, pretending he was sober, pretending he was normal, and in this way making it to the street and across it.
Harry the Need nodded, recognizing him, the mouthpiece gone bonkers at the Ritz. All the street people knew, his breakdown was all they talked about. They were waiting for him to do it finally. To self-destruct.
Walking carefully so as not to stagger, he made his way past the Golden Horizon Travel Agency, across the street, past the recessed staircase to the local bookies, upstairs from, appropriately, a second-hand bookstore that was open late, always busy. “Books! Books! Books!” Beside it, a honky-tonk bar, the Palace. “Girls! Girls! Girls!” A muscular black man out front, the doorman. He knew. The doorman knew.
At the corner was the New Consciousness Head and Smoke Shop. Brian bought two packs of A’s there and was waiting for a walk sign when, right in front of him, a dish got out of a taxi, almost a Rosy, and went into the strip bar. He forgot what his plan was. The sign said, Walk, but he didn’t. Then it said, Wait. A passenger door of the taxi was open, beckoning. Brian wasn’t sure if he should go into the strip bar, take the cab, or wait. He got into the cab. He gave his previous address, on Mountain Highway in North Vancouver.
THE THREE-ELEVEN FERRY
“Would you care for more toast?” Arthur asked.
“Yeah, I guess, thanks.” Young Nick made no motion to rise, though the toaster was five feet away. Perhaps he thought it operated by remote. The boy had slept till nine.
Arthur got up, slid two more slices in. It was Wednesday, December 19, a week after the hall burned down and three days before Nicholas Senior was to come by to fetch his son. Arthur and his grandson were strangers, that was part of their problem–the boy’s parents had lived in Europe and Australia, there’d been no chance to bond.
He supposed the young man was still feeling the aftershock of his parents’ split-up–one becomes thoughtless when angry. To add to that, he and Nick had got off on the worst possible footing–as Arthur was helping him unpack, he’d come upon a baggie of marijuana. Coals to Newcastle, but he couldn’t pretend to ignore it. He’d delivered a lecture that made him sound, even to his own ears, like an old fart: sorry, son, there’s a no-dope policy at Blunder Bay. Hey, he tried grass a few times himself, but at a mature age. Psychedelics can stunt emotional development. Be smart, alter your mind with learning. Nick stared at the floor, resentful.
Arthur was not equipped to handle adolescent trauma, cared not to remember the pain of his own growing up, his cold, indifferent, intellectual parents. He was getting only limited help from Margaret who, currently, was on Vancouver Island. Politics, schmoozing with Green Party members, lining up support for a nomination. Amazingly, Blunder Bay Farm was running smoothly despite its mistress’s many disappearances. Thanks partly to the four resident woofers, hard-working kids from overseas. Willing Workers on Organic Farms. They travel the world on the cheap: a half-day of labour for room and board.
“Your father phoned, Nick. I didn’t want to wake you. He said he’s not able to make it over this weekend. Things have piled up, he said, a pre-Christmas rush in the markets.” Nicholas managed two high-risk mutual funds. He was always on edge.
“Yeah, okay.” An alarming catch in Nick’s voice. Then he said, “I don’t think I want any more toast, thanks.” He got up and left the kitchen with troubling haste.
Disquieted now, Arthur jumped when the toaster popped. He’d relayed Nicholas’s message with consummate ineptness. The boy’s emotional barriers were breached, and Arthur was alarmed. Leave him alone a while if he’s in turmoil? Seek advice?
He phoned Deborah’s school in Melbourne. A machine responded, instructing him the school’s hours were eight-thirty to three-thirty. He slapped his forehead. It was two in the morning in Melbourne.
Through the window he watched Nick go up the steps to the woofer veranda, sit on the swinging chair, plug a phone line into his laptop. He regularly dialed the Internet from there, to avoid tying up the house line. Arthur finished a third cup of coffee, poured a fourth, then walked over there, jittery.
“Your dad wants to clear the decks so he can take you skiing at Christmas.”
“Cool. Thanks.”
“Told me to give you his love, and he’ll call later.”
“Thanks.”
“Okay, let’s give that computer a rest. Why don’t you give Lavinia a hand in the corral?”
Arthur had struck the right note. Nick closed his laptop. He’d taken a fancy to Lavinia, who teased him. Lavinia was twenty-three, a woofer from Estonia, a pretty blonde with an earthy directness. She and three agonizingly polite Japanese bunked in the former farmhouse of the former neighbour, Margaret Blake, just behind the apple orchard.
They found Lavinia carrying pails of feed for the cow and goats. She set them down, examined Nick critically. “You cute guy. How old you?”
“Almost fifteen.”
That was varnish, he was born in July.
She squeezed his biceps. “We make you bigger muscles. Come. After, we will fixing fence.”
Nick grabbed the heavy pails. Clearly, he preferred her company to that of old gramps. Arthur was grateful to leave him in her charge while he dealt with the headache of Cudworth Brown, who was clogging Arthur’s answering machine.
Brian Pomeroy was not returning calls, and no one, even his partners, seemed to know where he was.
Arthur had been too rash in flipping Cud off to Pomeroy. He wasn’t Arthur’s first choice, involved as he was in the aftermath of a devastating divorce, but several of the best had been unavailable, and he didn’t dare deliver up Cud to an incompetent. Pomeroy had free time, and the case intrigued him. Arthur rationalized: there was nothing like a juicy murder to help a lawyer escape his marital troubles. He’d learned that during his own soul-destroying first marriage.
Brian had seemed fine the last time Arthur phoned, a few weeks ago. “I’m on top of it, maestro. Looks like a duck shoot.”
Arthur went into the house to shower, shave, and put on a suit, pausing to try Brian’s cell number again. This time he answered. “You have reached the Speech Defect Centre. Please garble your message after the tone.”
“Why are you being impossible to reach, Brian?”
“I got into the worst shitstorm of my life last night. They just gave my Nokia back.” A tired voice, hoarse, as if from shouting.
“Dare I ask where you are?”
“Under RCMP escort. I’m just out of the tank. I’m waiting for court.”
Finally, here was the proof Arthur hadn’t wanted to hear, proof that Brian wasn’t holding it together. “What’s the charge?”
“Causing a disturbance. Caroline wouldn’t answer the door. I woke up the neighbours. Don’t tell my partners, I’ll deal with it. As to other matters of moment, yes, I did explore the matter of manslaughter with the loudmouth you foisted on me. If he hadn’t made a theatrical show of indignation by stalking from my office, he might have learned that Astrid Leich, former stage performer, honourary patron of several worthy charities, and current chair of the North Shore Arts Council, having been awakened by a noise, slipped out to her balcony in time to see the accused pitch Justice Whynet-Moir onto the rocks of doom.”
“You are not making this up?”
“If you chance upon Cuddles, tell him he might want to come back and grovel. Tell him I’m off the case if he acts up again. The only reason I’m taking this on is to show the world what a complete prick Whynet-Moir was. Got to go, my name is being called.”
Arthur headed for the shower. This was another ticklish matter, Pomeroy’s antipathy to Judge Whynet-Moir. Overeager to offload the file, Arthur hadn’t borne in mind that Whynet-Moir had presided over the Pomeroy divorce. Pomeroy had run around afterwards calling curses down on the judge’s head, alleging he’d been making eyes at Caroline all through the trial, that she was flirting back.
But despite last night’s bizarre lapse, despite a doubtless majestic hangover, the fellow seemed sufficiently on his game. Arthur truly wanted to believe that.
Astrid Leich…he’d seen her a few times on stage. A touch overexpressive, some ham in her. There had been nothing in the press about her role as witness. She saw the deed in the dark, from across an inlet? Identification issues can be very tricky in court–this case was not the duck shoot Pomeroy boasted it would be. But if there was ever an expert on the identification defence it was Pomeroy, who famously defended a hothead charged with assassinating the visiting president of one of those gang-ridden Asian republics of the former U.S.S.R.
Arthur found it hard to see Cud Brown doing this. A ruffian, yes, and a scoundrel, true, but a murderer, doubtful. What motive could he have had? He’d been sitting pretty, enjoying his small fame, enjoying the literary life, library readings, CBC interviews, the circuit of writers’ festivals.
Arthur had no firm idea why he so disliked the local literary luminary. It wasn’t because he smoked cigars, or drank too much, or seduced countless women with his weary beatnik shtick. Maybe it was his undeserved success. His new collection, Karmageddon, was, impossibly, shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award. The fellow was a sham, a poetaster, his verses self-indulgent and profane.
But was there a darker, hidden reason for his antipathy? I hope it’s not because I spent two weeks up a tree with your lady. That comment rankled, and was the more hurtful for its taint of truth. Two years ago, in an anti-logging campaign, Cuddles and Margaret were chosen by lot to share a high platform on a fir tree. Cud lasted only thirteen days, but they were miserable days for Arthur. He embarrassed himself by being suspicious, flagellated himself with sordid, excessive, unworthy imaginings. He suspected he was neurotic that way, conditioned by his first wife, unfaithful Annabelle.
He had to smother his ire when Margaret joined the chorus urging him to take Cud’s case. “Arthur, darling, I spent two weeks enduring his foul tongue and smelly cigars and smellier feet, and even I think you should defend him. Everyone on the island expects you to. Otherwise, it’ll look like you’re punishing him for some reason.”
A reason she was too polite to define, or didn’t understand. He didn’t understand it himself, his pathetic jealousy. Call it a phobia, he was phobic about Cudworth Brown.
The leftovers from last week’s court docket–Hamish McCoy, inter alia, were being heard today in the legion hall. Because the sky was clear, the sun warm, and the hall reached as easily by sea as by land, Arthur had persuaded Nick to enjoy a trip on the Blunderer, his canopy-topped outboard.
He put Nick behind the wheel for a while, and they kept to a leisurely ten knots while dolphins followed. “This is brilliant,” said Nick. He’d recovered from the disappointment of his father’s cancelled visit, and, even better, was starting to tune in to country living. If all went well, maybe they could lollygag back, do a little fishing.
Nearing North Point, they could make out the charred stumps of posts on Breadloaf Hill, the remains of the community hall. Margaret had volunteered Arthur for a committee raising money for rebuilding. “It’s not asking much, Arthur, it’s something I’d normally do.” Too busy seeking a nomination for a by-election soon to be called, in Cowichan and the Islands. Her clunky vehicle of ambition, the Green Party–aptly named for its unripe adherents–had never elected anyone to anything. Arthur had given up trying to persuade Margaret that hers was a quixotic quest.
He took over the controls, swung around the North Point beacon into the crooked-finger bay where sat the mildewed legion hall. Cuddles must have seen him coming, because he was on the small-craft dock, motioning for Arthur to toss him a line. Nick asked to stay on board with his laptop, so Arthur put on his jacket and tie, then went up the ramp, with Cud at his elbow, pestering him. “How can this Leich woman claim to see someone who wasn’t there?”
“Cud, spare me the rhetoric. You’ve obviously talked to Brian Pomeroy. You know the worst. Be grateful he’s still acting for you after you flounced out of his office.”
“Okay, I prostrate myself, I’m abject. What cake did Astrid Leich pop out of? Why wasn’t I told about her? Who’s behind this attempt to job me? The system, the courts, the prosecutors, the police? They need a scapegoat, they got to look like they’re doing something, too many judges are being offed. They hire a retired actress to identify prime suspect Cudworth Brown in a lineup.”
“There was a lineup?” Arthur was startled.
“Yeah, I told Pomeroy. He said, don’t worry, it’s a formality, like fingerprinting.”
Arthur made for the back door, paused, took a breath. “Cud, my advice to you is this: compose yourself, repair your rupture with Pomeroy, and help him plan your defence. Astrid Leich will be a key witness.”
He entered, abandoning Cud. He was determined not to feel sorry for him. That was how wily defendants sucked you in, seduced you out of retirement. Here, in Branch 512 of the Canadian Legion, Arthur would sing his final swan song, the sentencing of Hamish McCoy.
Several regulars were there, looking miffed because the bar was roped off. Nelson Forbish again dominated the small press table, which tilted slightly every time he moved, causing the two young women at the other end to jiggle up and down as if on a teeter-totter. Absent was Constable Pound, licking his wounds, widely blamed for bringing combustibles
into the community hall.
Hamish McCoy sat slouched, glaring at Kurt Zoller in his fetishistic life jacket. It would be a task reigning in the leprechaunish Newfie, who’d shown little appreciation after being merely slapped on the wrist for growing half a ton of potent pot. He’d called Zoller a “dorty, stinking Nazi squealer” when they bumped into each other yesterday at the general store.
It was a quarter past two when judge, prosecutor, and court staff finally got themselves organized at tables. “Okay, order in court,” said Wilkie. “We’re a little late starting, and we intend to catch the three-eleven ferry, so I want everyone apprised of that.” A stern look at Arthur and ever-smiling Mary, the prosecutor. “Okay, where were we?”
“Unsightly Premises Bylaw,” said Mary. “Robert Stonewell.”
Stoney wasn’t within the room, and emissaries couldn’t find him outside, a search that consumed several minutes. Judge Wilkie spent the time staring at the glowing Bud Lite wall clock.
“Okay, hold that one down,” he said. “Call the McCoy case.” Arthur and his client came forward. “Mr. Zoller, you were to meet with some locals to come up with a program of community service for Mr. McCoy.”
“Yes, sir. I have a list of recommendations.” He flourished a sheaf of papers. “May I start by reading the minutes of the advisory planning committee?”
“You may not.” His Honour hadn’t reckoned on having to deal with a master of circumlocution.
“The problem is, Your Worship, this matter was debated last night with a lot of interesting views going back and forth–”
“Mr. Zoller, we have a ferry to catch. I just want your recommendation.”
“Certainly, Your Worship, but I promised I would mention the minority report, which calls for defendant to do a hundred hours of beach cleanup–”
Wilkie interrupted again. “Thank you. What did your group finally decide?”
Zoller loosened his yellow life jacket, took a breath, began again. “Okay, well, there’s one main project and a couple of things we’d like to add. Mrs. Hilda Kneaston, who lives across from the defendant on Potters Pond, wants you to order him to wear clothes in the summer while he’s out in his yard, at least shorts or a swimsuit–”
Kill All the Judges Page 4