Kill All the Judges Read Online Free PDF Page B

there. Two books of poetry, one CD, muted acclaim.
    Cud straightened, holding that back, and squinted out the dusty window at the little barrio of decrepitude that was the Downtown East Side. “Kinda pissy low-rent location, but I guess it’s part of the private dick shtick. You keep a bottle of Johnny behind the books?”
    Lance ignored the question. He wasn’t going to let this smart aleck stereotype him. “Did you tell your lawyer you were coming to see me?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œBecause he’s an idiot. I don’t trust him.”
    â€œBrian Pomeroy?”
    â€œThat’s the one.”
    Â 
    Delete, delete. What had been reborn with promise has evolved into self-flagellating mockery. A detour typical of the drooling nutter he had become, prompted by the mess he’d made of Cudworth’s appointment on Friday.
    Follow Brian, as he flashes back to his session with Cud, to restored Gastown, its cobblestone streets and tchotchke shops and failed chic, to Maple Tree Square, where the raw, rowdy Downtown East Side begins, where timorous tourists turn back.
    The ground and second floors of his firm’s building were occupied by Club d’Jazz, an exponential improvement over the last tenants and their nausea-inducing singalongs. Brian’s third-floordigs offered views of pigeons strutting on the outer sill, whitewashing it with their excrement. He kept his windows closed, he feared those birds, was obsessed with images of them flying in and shitting all over. His partners had relegated him to this office because he wasn’t showing up regularly. Macarthur, Brovak, and Sage: fickle friends who’d stopped expressing sympathy over his divorce, in fact had stopped talking to him. But they talked about him. He spied them once in a while gawking, whispering.
    He wasn’t taking many cases these days. A motor manslaughter plea coming up. A couple of misdemeanours, a fraud. And this one, referred to him by the immortal Arthur Beauchamp, who hinted there was glory to be won by so enterprising a counsel as Brian Pomeroy.
    Cudworth had done only one smart thing on the night he got busted. As Detective Sergeant Chekoff was pouring coffee into him, trying to sober him up for the third degree, he asked to make a call to Arthur, who advised him to shut up.
    Brian had summoned Cud to the office because he’d lost his notes from his earlier interview. Nothing in the file but the bail papers. With surprising ease, during a lucid interval, Brian had got a judge to agree to a property bond.
    Part of his problem in getting his ass in gear was that the Attorney General had appointed as special prosecutor a well-known feminist shit disturber named Abigail Hitchins, with whom, many years ago, Brian had a bizarre, disastrous affair. He didn’t have the gumph to phone her–he couldn’t seem to get drunk enough. As a result, he hadn’t got around to getting her particulars of evidence. He should do that one of these days, especially since there’ll be no preliminary inquiry–the A.-G. wanted a speedy end to this sensitive matter, so he’d indicted directly to trial.
    No sooner had Cud Brown sat down when these words popped out of Brian’s mouth: “Would you be willing to take a plea to manslaughter?”
    What had possessed him to be so bold and obvious? Maybe a mental short-circuit, a disconnect, a fast rewind to his motor manslaughter file, an insurance agent who drove over a squeegee kid.
    At any rate, Cud lost it. Went storming around, scaring the pigeons and the secretaries. Worse, he tattled to Arthur Beauchamp, who left a voice mail asking about this manslaughter nonsense. Brian’s cellphone was off now, he didn’t want to talk to Arthur, to anyone. He was disturbed, distressed, disordered, dysfunctional, the Latin prefix for apart, to pieces . At least the earlier panic had dissipated. He was learning how to get along