Kill All the Judges Read Online Free PDF

any fucking judge off a deck!”

 

    THE VALENTINE AGENCY
    D espairing of finding justice through normal channels, convinced that all lawyers were reactionary, mendacious, and corrupt, Cudworth Brown sought out a reliable private investigator. An arts reporter he’d seduced during his literary forays into Vancouver made inquiries, then recommended the enigmatic, urbane Lance Valentine, formerly of Scotland Yard. There were rumours of misbehaviour, she warned, rumours that the Yard had quietly let him go to avoid a scandal.
    Cudworth called the Valentine agency, whose sultry-voiced secretary promised she could fit him in. And so it happened that late on a dreary, drizzling December day, Cud made his way to the tenderloin area, near Main and Keefer, which he thought an odd choice of location for this polished private eye…
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    The Widgeon icon was bouncing at the bottom of the screen. It did that once in a while; it meant Widgeon was trying to warn Brian. Trash this page, he was silently screaming. You are writing from the point of view of the wrong character.
    A mouse-click took him to Widgeon’s Chapter Eight. We do not really care to know what lesser characters think–they have mouths to speak. See with your hero’s eyes. Hear with her ears. Do not distance your hero from the reader, bring him close enough so the reader may sense his sweat, his prickles of fear, feel her hot breath as she closes in on the villainous cur who swindled dear Auntie Maude…
    â€œWho is this Horace Widgeon you’re constantly on about?” Dr. Alison Epstein had asked a couple of days ago as he fidgeted on her couch.
    She’d never heard of him? Brian was shocked. Thirty mysteries and three how-to’s and five times nominated for the Dagger Award. “He writes escape fiction.”
    â€œI don’t feel the need to escape,” she said.
    When piqued, this normally gracious woman occasionally gave in to an unprofessional snappishness. This happened when Brian was rambling and evasive. Which he usually was throughout his allotted three-quarters of an hour. She would peel and dig, trying to get down to the rotten core, but he wasn’t going to let her find it. None of her business.
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    â€œI didn’t fucking chuck any fucking judge off a deck!”
    That is what this repulsive fellow claimed, of course. That, in Lance Valentine’s experience, was what they all say: they’re not guilty. Clients who protested the loudest, complaining they’d been falsely accused, were invariably guilty.
    This one, this obscure backwoods poet, didn’t strike Lance as being an exception to the rule. A rugged, cocky, broken-nosed look of a brawler. Unshaven. Tattoos were doubtless part of the package, but were hidden under his long-sleeved, tasselled deerskin jacket. He subscribed to some kind of conspiracy theory that he was being railroaded. The usual story.
    â€œYou want me to find the chucker?”
    â€œNobody else is trying.”
    Lance fiddled with a rose in a vase. He must always have a fresh rose on his desk in the morning. That’s what he told the ravishing Rosy Chekoff when she applied to be his secretary. From the outer office, he could hear the tapping of her keyboard. If he twisted his head he could see her profile, a view that invariably caused him to breath rapidly. Rosy was also married to a detective, this one a civil servant, West Vancouver Serious Crimes.
    â€œLet me ask you, Cudworth–is that what they call you? Or Cud?”
    â€œSometimes Cuddles. Sardonically.”
    â€œYou got a lawyer, Cuddles?”
    â€œYeah, I got a lawyer. Mind if I smoke?”
    â€œHave one of mine.”
    Cud bent over Lance’s desk to get a light, then straightened with a wince. Chronic bad back, Lance reckoned. He’d been a high-rigger, an ironworker. Retired to Garibaldi Island, his childhood home, on a small disability pension. Ran the recycling depot