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left the parent in the care of the child.
    Actually, the kid was boosting stuff for his older brother. Since young offenders merely got a slap on the wrist, the hard-core punks stayed out of jail by using them as mules.
    I envied the kid next door.
    At least he had a dad.
    Another day, the cops responded to a “shots fired” on the floor below. While searching for the shooter, they found two youngsters living alone in one apartment. A hunt revealed their mother shacked up with a biker across town. Garbage was piled four feet high in every room. A maze of corridors was how the kids moved around. To get rid of the smell, the project had to take the apartment out. Literally take it out—walls, ceiling, floor, guts, and all.
    We hoped that would put an end to the cockroaches, but it didn’t.
    Lord Strathcona Elementary was my school. The lord drove the last spike of the CPR in 1885, according to Mr. Pritchard in socials class. One day the kid sitting beside me was bored by such history, so he set fire to the hair of the kid in front of him. Mr. Pritchard broke his leg in a skiing accident. On crutches, he worked at the blackboard with his back to us. The kid on my other side pushed a pin through an eraser, then threw it full force to jab Mr. Pritchard behind the ear. I recall his crutches flying out like the wings of a bird. Next time we saw him, both legs were in casts and he was confined to a wheelchair.
    Ergo, he took our class to court.
    To drive home what happened to kids who refused to toe the line.
    Three things struck me as we sat in Kinky’s court. One, a court wasn’t a solemn, somber, serious place. It was the best free show in town. Two, the lawyers were all chubby, while Mudge was a skinny and ill-fed runt like me. The fat cats of the legal profession had never missed a meal. And three, the lawyers were a network of pantywaists: powdered and pampered West Side boys, weaned off silver spoons. I knew I could take the whole lot down in an East End brawl.
    A West Side brawl?
    That’s an oxymoron.
    Then and there, I knew I could better them at the legal game.
    The problem was how to get from the Ritter Project to the bar.
    Britannia Secondary was my high school. Gangs were endemic to the East End. The H Squad (or Heavy Squad)—police armed with baseball bats—had crushed the Clark Park Gang by my time, and the consequent void was filled by gangs of ethnic refugees. Hispanics from Central America hefted cojones as big as grapefruit. Vietnamese boat kids were pirates at heart. The Chinese were trying to get into triads. And the Russian mafia was worse than Don Corleone’s. Other whites were “sidewalk bikers” hoping to make the gang, for the Angels by then had absorbed Satan’s Choice, the Coffin Cheaters, and Hell’s Rebels. This being Canada, guns were rare. But then, a gun is the coward’s weapon of choice. Too much distance between cause and effect. Those into wet work preferred a knife, thrilling to shivers that shuddered along the blade. Junk peddled on the street had sunk to a measly 1.5 percent, so Ts&Rs was the popular high. T stood for Talwin, a synthetic opiate analgesic painkiller, and R stood for Ritalin, a stimulant. A Ts&Rs was mixed by crushing two and two, and was mainlined like heroin. Ritalin gave it a nasty edge, which pumped the punks for vicious work with their flashing blades.
    That was the minefield of my school.
    Study, study, study—that was me.
    Work, work, work to pay my way.
    Stay alive; grab the chance; keep your nose clean.
    And hey, I made it.
    Read my card.
    Jeffrey Kline, Esq.
    Barrister-at-law.
    Every chance I got to break away from school would find me sitting in a court gallery, absorbing more law than I did at UBC. The provincial courthouse was nearby on Main, and it was home to another “hanging judge.” No capitals, he was lowercase, to distinguish him from Hanging Judge Kinky of high-court fame.
    This hanging judge got his name from sentencing a shoplifter who was a