Otherwise, he’d had two drug-free weeks-except for the excellent Ron Habana, only three bucks a quart. He felt tanned and fit but unwell in other, confusing ways.
Confusing because things didn’t go good without Coke, things got worse. When not high, he got the full blast of a breakdown that seemed never to want to heal. Dismayingly, Harry the Need was no longer working Main and Keefer. He’d taken a fall, been detained, nicked, tumbled.
Dr. Epstein, who wants to put him away, finds his self-diagnosis-nervous breakdown-a fuzzy term, thinks he’s paranoid or psychotic or something similarly off the wall. She’s not supportive, doesn’t believe his voices are real. Whynet-Moir’s voice, for example: Your feeble cause, Mr. Pomeroy, is hardly aided by these crude outbursts.
He can’t keep hiding much longer. He has to go public tomorrow. That’s when the trial starts. Vancouver law courts, 10:00 a.m. A five-day endurance test with Wilbur Kroop, a weekend between. It’s good that the Need got busted. Brian had to have his wits about him tomorrow, he must be straight.
He’d been holed up in 305 since his return from Cuba except for a couple of trips to his firm, everyone sidestepping him while he hid in his office resenting the pigeons, resenting April Wu because he had no work for her and now had to share her with Wentworth Chance. Bad chi.
His only other outings had been to Chinatown, to the Jolly Buddha, which serves an all-you-can-eat for twelve bucks, his only meal of the day. But today he waited too long; the smorgasbord ends at four. Also he was out of tequila, and the nearest liquor store was closed. He’d have to pay double to the mercenary bartender downstairs for a quart of Cortez. He didn’t like the bar, too many former clients, some had gone down, served time. It’s always the lawyer who’s blamed by these complainers.
Brian hasn’t been able to make contact with his wife (he can’t bring himself to say ex-wife). Caroline had switched phone numbers, e-mail addresses. Two letters had been returned unopened. Little Amelia had tried to get through this blockade, calling his cell. But he had let it bleat away, discovering later that his thirteen-year-old had called to say, “Hi, Daddy, I love you. Thank you for the scary house.” He’d wept an ocean. He’s been doing a lot of that.
News less bleak: Max Macarthur got that disturbance charge dropped, the drunken carolling. Brian asked him how he did it. “I spoke to Caroline.” That prompted another breakdown, though it was proof she cared.
He stared balefully at the Brown file, which he’d been avoiding because it caused panic symptoms, Kroop attacks. He’s also been avoiding Cud, who calls incessantly, who haunts from the wall, two arrows sticking from his back, the same bent nose and pissed-off look. It’s just your word against Astrid Leich’s, Cud, so chill out. Brian will play it by ear, that’s how he does best.
But first he had to get through the night. He took the fire escape, slipped in the back way to blasts of hot air and bad music, a bewigged, red-faced, top-heavy matron belting out “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” backed up by a slide guitar and a drum machine. It seemed real, like his voices, not one of Epstein’s alleged delusions.
He mounted a barstool, showed the bartender a fifty-dollar bill, tried to hunch himself small, his jacket collar over his ears. But very quickly someone was beside him, a clean-cut yuppie, vaguely familiar but out of place in this joint. Gold earring, thousand-dollar watch. He took the stool next to Brian, and said, “Twenty years.”
The only client Brian could remember who got twenty years was Tiny Stephenson, the double manslaughter, but he weighed three hundred pounds and half his teeth were missing.
“You don’t remember me, do you, Mr. Pomeroy?”
“Sorry, but I’m expecting an urgent call and must hasten to my lodgings.”
The bartender passed him a heavy paper bag and was about to pocket the fifty when the intruder waved him off, flipping a C-note from his money clip. “Mr. Pomeroy pays for nothing when I am here. Give him another bottle.”
“Yes, Mr. Neff.”
“Twenty years ago, almost to the day. Walking out of that courthouse, taking my first breath of free air in five months.”
Search memory cells. Find Neff. Eureka, the Bolivian flake conspiracy, a big win in his early career.
“‘Gaping holes,’ you kept saying. ‘Gaping holes.’ You owned that judge, man.” Neff looked around and his voice lowered. “Hey, if there’s anything special you’d like, I just brought in some new lines.”
Brian invited him to 305.
Zero degrees and slush falling from the sky. There were portents in the weather, messy twists had been written into this morning’s script, the slush will turn to shit. An ugly growth outside the courthouse like a clump of monster mushrooms. He couldn’t focus, something wrong with his eyes. As the taxi pulled up at the Nelson Street entrance he made them out: smokers under umbrellas.
He wiped his nose. His arm shook when he tried to read his watch. Twenty to ten. What day? Thursday. When had he got up? Had he even gone to bed? He couldn’t remember waking.
He paid off the cab, grabbed his briefcase, hitched his raincoat over his head, got out and surveyed the scene. Among the smokers, against the wall, a two-headed poncho. One of the heads looked like Cud Brown but different. The other head smaller, some kind of fungal growth. No, a woman.
He felt confidence welling again, thanks to the line he snorted in the cab. This trial will be a snap. He is Brian Pomeroy, number three in the criminal lawyer survey of 1997, icon to the freedom fighters of Bhashyistan. Play this one loose, old boy, rely on instinct, throw away your notes. What notes? Did he have notes?
Reporters comprised a separate group of mushrooms, they were talking about him. He’s going to blow it, they’re saying. Others had talked about him today, the desk clerk at the Ritz and two cyborgs with religious tracts. A scene occurred, Brian had accused them of whispering lies about him, shoved the clerk. Keep your temper, old fellow. Keep your mouth shut.
Warning. Alert. Charles Loobie approaching, Loobie of the Province, pot-bellied habitue of the El Beau Room. No comment. Remember to say no comment.
“Hey, Bry, how you doing?”
“No comment.”
Loobie laughed. “You may be onto this, I’d be surprised if you weren’t, but I dug up an interesting case Whynet-Moir reserved on.”
Brian put on his dark glasses, the light was hurting his eyes. He wasn’t sure whose side the reporter was on. He seemed friendly but might be trying to set him up. A scandal monger, this guy.
“He was just about to go on reserve week when he got terminated by person unknown. I say unknown because Astrid Leich, as you know, is blind as a bat.”
Brian couldn’t get a flame to his cigarette, couldn’t hold his hands steady.
“Whynet-Moir was supposed to write three judgments, which are now in limbo. A medical malpractice. An extradition hearing. The interesting one is a land deal…I’m probably telling you something you already know.”
“No comment.”
Loobie chuckled again. “A slippery developer, name of Clearihue, was going to make megabucks if he beat a misrepresentation suit. I saw some of it; Whynet-Moir was obviously in favour of the old geezer who sold the land, a rancher named Vogel. Now the case has to be retried.”
This was flying past Brian. He’d lost attention after the tossed-off blind as a bat. Astrid Leich, linchpin of the Crown’s case, was blind as a bat. Why didn’t he know that?
“And Darrel Naught-how come everybody’s forgot about a judge who drowned outside a floating whorehouse after nailing a bunch of hoods for twenty years to life?”
Cud was walking toward them. Loobie lowered his voice. “Naught was being investigated for consorting with hookers, one in particular. After he drowned, the matter was quietly dropped. Some people say suicide. I say maybe. Maybe something else.”