Kill All the Judges by William Deverell Page A

Pomeroy, see for yourself. Come back and tell me if he don’t belong in the cackle factory.”
    Progress to the docks was slow, Cud was walking backward, arms extended to prevent Arthur from darting past. Nick was watching from the Blunderer while playing with the ship-to-shore electronics.
    â€œMaybe I have not been plain, Cud. I am not a conveyer of information about your trial, nor am I entitled ethically to advise you. Brian Pomeroy is a skilled counsel who, incidentally, a few years ago won a celebrated case involving wrongful identification.”
    Cud’s voice lowered. “There’s something about him that scares me. Something about his eyes…”

 

    CAROLLING CAROLINE
    T hose wacky eyes, glinting like flints from the cheap meth they buff the coke with. Yes, stardust was what Brian was now abusing, blow was what he’d been tucking up his nose during the half-dozen shopping days before Christmas. It’s got more oomph than Xanax, it brings security, a blast of self-esteem. He wasn’t interested in going back to his couch doctor for more Xanax, he didn’t even want to see Dr. Epstein, with her hints about “caring facilities.” Institutions. Creepily smiling keepers, muscular warders.
    Harry the Need makes home deliveries, just like the folks at Lucky Penny Pizza. Hell of a guy when you get to know him. He used to trade stocks, ran with a fast crowd, got hooked on meth, graduated to horse, sells to support his habit. He’s against legalization; it would collapse the market.
    Cud must have been seriously distressed on realizing he’d been bad-mouthing the winner of a famous case of failed identification. Maybe the lumpen poet now remembered seeing Brian’s televised scrum, his sardonic bon mots after eyewitnesses failed to ID the assassin of the visiting Bhashyistan president. As a bonus, Brian was credited with causing Bhashyistan to break diplomatic relations with Canada.
    Brian was grateful that Arthur took the trouble to wise Cuddles up. Brian wants this case. He wants to run an insanity defence. One in which the lawyer is insane.
    No other counsel had the jam to take on the intemperate poet. Beauchamp had obviously fished widely in the lawyer pool before settling on a bottom feeder. Two of Brian’s partners had been approached, they admitted it, Macarthur and Brovak. Brian taunted them–they were cowards, afraid to ruffle the bench by pleading the cause of a loudmouth who may have murdered a judge, maybe two or three. They claimed money was a factor: Cud had none. Brian wasn’t proud, he would accept legal aid rates.
    Morning coffee in hand, still in his underwear, he looked out the dusty window to see if any of his followers were out there. Last night it was a thin guy in a London Fog, watching him through the window of the Glad Times Noodle House.
    Nine o’clock, and his room was already stuffy, sweaty, smoky. The Ritz’s heat got trapped on this top floor, but you couldn’t open a window without hearing Bing Crosby. Sleigh bells ring, are you listening? It was that abysmal time of year when the gluey, the garish, the mawkish rule. What happened to the beauty of it, the spiritual, the birth of hope? You rarely heard the great old carols any more.
    That’s actually what Brian had been doing Tuesday night, lustily carolling Caroline, “Good King Wenceslas,” “Adeste Fideles.” Standing below her window, reminding her through song of the coming celebration of the great Christian miracle–what could be wrong with that, he asked the judge, a young woman, unimpressed. She sought the view of Caroline in the gallery. “Just tell him to stay away from me. Especially when drunk.”
    Brian felt more rested today; he’d got four hours’ sleep last night, the most in weeks, and four hours more than the night before, on a musty mattress in a barred room of the Redcoat Inn in North Vancouver. The