The Last Straw E-Book

Ed Duncan

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

When a teenage girl witnesses a carjacking gone bad, she is marked for death by a crime boss.

A lawyer and an enforcer forge an uneasy alliance to protect the girl from a hit man with an agenda of his own. Soon after, Paul Elliott - lawyer and close friend of the witness's family - begins counseling them and becomes entangled in the murder plot.

As the long-simmering feud between Rico - the white enforcer - and the hitman John D'Angelo reaches boiling point, bodies start to pile up in rapid succession... and old scores will be settled.

Leseprobe

THE LAST STRAW

PIGEON-BLOOD RED

BOOK TWO

ED DUNCAN

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Epilogue

Next in the Series

About the Author

Copyright (C) 2017 Ed Duncan

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2019 by Next Chapter

Published 2019 by Next Chapter

Cover art by Voyage Media / Jacob Arden McClure

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

For my parents, Attwood and Freddie Duncan

CHAPTERONE

Perry Brumfield unzipped his pants as he entered the bedroom and strode confidently toward the queen size bed.

He was in his early thirties with neatly trimmed hair that didn't quite cover the top of his ears. He was dressed in a black three-piece pinstripe suit with a yellow polka-dot tie, and he wore black wingtip shoes that were so highly buffed you could almost see your face in them.

“Hey, I need the money up front,” Jean said, standing in the doorway behind him, her right hand on her hip and her left hand outstretched, palm up. She wore a short, green, figure-hugging skirt with matching high heels and a white silk blouse. Her flowing red hair descended well below her shoulders.

He hesitated and turned toward her. He had had a few drinks and for the first time that evening, it started to show, or maybe she hadn't been paying close enough attention until now. She usually took clients she didn't know to hotel rooms, and she had initially balked at letting him come to her apartment, which was reserved for men she could trust (insofar as that was ever completely possible). But her girlfriend had vouched for this man and she had relented.

“What if I don't feel like it?” he asked, smiling broadly.

Maybe he's just playing around, Jean thought. He seemed harmless enough and, based on what her friend had told her, coupled with the way he dressed, money was clearly not something he had to worry about. “I'm sorry, sweetie,” she said, smiling back at him, “but those are the house rules.”

His smile evaporated and turned into an angry snarl. “I said I don't feel like it.”

“Shit,” Jean said under her breath.

“What?”

“Nothing… Listen, what do you say we hit the bar again, have another drink and talk this over? How does that sound, huh?”

“Don't you have anything here?”

“No. I'm all out.”

The smile reappeared. “All right,” he said, zipping his pants up and moving toward her. “I guess I could use another one.”

Jean exhaled slowly. This was an occupational hazard she could not completely escape no matter how careful she was and, truth be told, no matter where she was. Still, she had dodged a bullet. She would get this creep to the bar down the street and dump him. Then she would give her girlfriend a piece of her mind for getting her into this mess.

She started toward the front door, picking up her purse from the coffee table on the way. Still smiling, Brumfield joined her and put his arm around her shoulder as they approached the door. When she opened it, though, he kicked it shut and shoved her against it, back first. His left hand clutched her throat. Not enough to impede her breathing but more than enough to pin her to the door.

His face twisted into an ugly scowl. “You don't listen too good, do you? Now I don't feel like payin' at all.”

This wasn't the same man she'd met at the bar earlier that evening. That man was the one her friend had described, a successful salesman in a three-piece suit who would never say, “You don't listen too good.” And it wasn't just the liquor. He literally was not the man he'd pretended to be, and although her customers often weren't, she could almost always tell. But not this time.

Suddenly, his scowl melted into a smile once again. Plainly, he was enjoying himself. At first Jean glared at him, a natural reaction. Then her instincts kicked in and she smiled back. His own smile broadened. Her eyes found his and locked on them. Intrigued, he loosened his grip on her neck ever so slightly.

Still smiling and careful not to telegraph any warning to him, Jean twisted her body sideways and drove one of her high heels into the top of his foot. He winced, groaned loudly, and fell to the floor, grasping his wounded foot with both hands. Still facing sideways, she swung her purse at his head like she was delivering a backhand in a tennis match. He dodged it just in time and the purse flew across the room, spilling its contents as it hit the wall. She turned toward the door and a half step brought her close enough to reach for the doorknob. As her hand grasped it, Brumfield grabbed her ankle and pulled her to the floor.

“Bitch!” he growled as he pinned her arms to the floor beside her and pulled himself on top of her abdomen, propping himself up on his knees with his legs straddling her. “I oughta kill you for that,” he bellowed and punched her full in the face.

She screamed.

“Shut up or I will kill you.”

She turned away from him and brought a hand to her throbbing cheek. He reached behind him and slid his hand under her skirt. She twisted and squirmed under his weight and he punched her again on the other side of her face. Groping for her panties, he found the top elastic band and pulled hard. It snapped like a thin rubber band. Then he ripped her blouse apart, scattering buttons that pinged and skipped across the hardwood floor, as he forced her bra down, exposing the nipples of her breasts. Leering at them, he hesitated.

In that instant Jean contemplated going limp and yielding. For a fee – a good one; her services weren't cheap – she would have willingly had sex with him a few minutes earlier. That was true despite his deception. Was it worth the beating she was taking – might yet take or worse – to force him to live up to his end of the bargain? But was sex all he wanted? He was going to rape her, but would it end there?

“No!” she wailed and with her free hand plunged her nails into the side of his face, leaving deep, bloody tracks where they pierced the skin.

“Goddammit!” he yelled, reaching for his face with one hand and then punching her once more with the other. She blanched and cried out.

Abandoning his plan to rape her, Brumfield now flew into a rage and, grasping her neck with both hands, began to strangle her. She stomped her feet on the floor and grabbed at his wrists, frantically trying to loosen his grip. She gasped for air, started to choke, and felt herself slowly descending into unconsciousness.

Her descent was arrested by knocking on her door and a voice from the hall. “Jean, are you all right?”

It was her elderly neighbor Gabriel Koblentz, who was about to enter his apartment across the hall when he heard the commotion inside hers. Suspecting the worst and getting no answer, he pressed his ear against the door and knocked again. “Jean, Jean, are you okay?”

Brumfield cocked his head toward the door and covered Jean's mouth with his hand. She managed to loosen his grip enough to reach one of his fingers with her teeth. She bit hard until she tasted blood. He yanked his hand away and shook it vigorously, but the only sound he made was a muffled groan.

In a voice just loud enough to reach the other side of the door, Jean whimpered, “Help… He's killing - ”

Brumfield turned back to her, lifted her head in both hands and slammed it against the hardwood floor. By now she was so spent she could hardly manage a sound. Brumfield scrambled to his feet and, favoring his injured instep, limped the few steps that separated him from the door. When he opened it, he saw only the door to Koblentz's apartment slamming shut. He looked back at Jean lying motionless on the floor and, not bothering to close the door, hobbled to the end of the hall, down three flights of stairs, and out of the building.

From inside his apartment, with his ear pressed against the door, Koblentz listened intently until he heard Brumfield's footsteps fade in the distance. Then he opened his door enough to stick his head out and inspect the hall in both directions. Seeing no one, he hurried to Jean's apartment. She heard him come in the open door and close and lock it behind him. She pulled her skirt down, closed her torn blouse as best she could and turned her battered face to him.

Brumfield's first punch had landed flush against her left cheek and eye, and the second and third had landed squarely against her right cheek. The result was that her left eye was already swollen and nearly closed, and the color of her rapidly swelling cheeks was somewhere between dark crimson and light purple.

“Did you call the police?” Jean whispered.

“No, not yet.”

“Then don't.”

“But - ”

“Please don't.”

“Then at least let me call an ambulance,” Koblentz said, stunned at the sight of her injuries.

“No,” she pleaded. “I'll be okay.”

He knelt beside her and, as gently as a mother holding her newborn child for the first time, he cradled her head in his arms. She looked so pitiful and helpless that he couldn't bring himself to argue with her. “What do you want me to do?” he asked, his voice cracking.

“Call a friend of mine and if you don't mind, wait until he gets here.”

“Don't you worry. I'm not going anywhere.” He stood. “I'm getting something for your face while we wait.” He rested her head on the floor. Then he fetched a throw pillow from the sofa, placed it under her head, and went to the bathroom. A moment later he returned with two cool wet towels which he placed on either side of her face. “That better?”

“Yes, thanks.”

He took his cell out of his pocket. “Now give me the number for this friend of yours.” She told him and he punched the numbers in. “And what's the name?”

In a voice that was barely audible she said, “Rico…” and passed out.

CHAPTERTWO

Paul Elliott stretched and tumbled out of bed, shaved and showered, had a quick bowl of cereal, and was off to work inside forty-five minutes. Thirty minutes later he was behind his desk in his office, digging through an avalanche of mail in his in-box when his phone rang. It was the judge's bailiff. The muscles in Paul's stomach tightened. The jury had reached a verdict. He looked at his watch: 9:20 a.m. This was some kind of record. The jury had just gotten the case at 3:30 p.m. the day before, an hour before retiring for the day. As his large law firm's first black partner, he was still a little self-conscious about the need to maintain his excellent won/lost record. Deep inside he knew that this feeling was entirely self-imposed, but that did little to banish it from his psyche.

Paul was at the courthouse in fifteen minutes. Waiting for the elevator, he spied Benjamin Yanders, a neighbor from his apartment building, and followed him into the elevator behind a throng of other people. Yanders was looking down at his shoes and inside the packed elevator Paul couldn't make eye contact with him. Before he knew it, the elevator had reached his floor and Paul was getting out. He glanced over his shoulder and when he saw his neighbor exiting with a few other people, he stopped and waited for him.

Yanders was tall and thin and an old lower back injury caused him to stoop forward a little when he stood for a while or walked long distances. He had a full head of dark, closely cropped hair that was peppered with gray and he had crowded, bushy eyebrows. His dark brown face was more lined and haggard than Paul remembered from the last time he saw him only a few days earlier.

“You practicing law now, Ben?” Paul joked as Yanders approached.

He was looking right past Paul and hadn't recognized him, so the sound of his name startled him a little. “Oh, Paul… Sorry, I didn't see you.”

“No problem,” Paul said. “What's up?”

“Sandy got a subpoena. I'm down here to see the Assistant State's Attorney,” Yanders said, more than a little dejected.

For the first time Paul noticed Yanders' daughter Sandra. He hadn't seen her when she got on the elevator or when she got off. Now she was standing a few feet behind her father. Studious and shy, she was a cute sixteen-year-old. As an only child, she looked upon Paul as an older brother and he treated her like a younger sister. He wondered what the State's Attorney's interest was in her and why Yanders hadn't mentioned the subpoena before now. “Hi, Sandy. How are you?” he said.

“Hi, Paul. I'm okay, I guess,” she said, glancing at him when she answered and then looking away.

Paul checked his watch. “The State's Attorney's office is around the corner. I'm going that way. I'll walk with you.”

Yanders didn't respond, but the three of them started down the hallway together, then Sandy fell behind them. After a few paces Paul said, “So, Ben, you want to tell me what's going on?”

Yanders stopped. He had the look of a man who had just come from the funeral of his best friend. “Sandy witnessed a shooting. The guy died,” he said morosely. “They want her to testify against the killer.”

Paul didn't try to mask his shock. “My goodness. That's horrible.” He looked back at Sandy. She was out of earshot and still looking away. “How is she?”

“I think she's holding up better than I am.”

“How's Danielle taking it?” She was Sandy's mother and Ben's soon to be ex-wife.

“She's out of the country. I don't have her itinerary and her cell is turned off.”

“Okay. That's not the most important thing right now. So, talk to me.”

Yanders took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I know you're wondering why I didn't call you, but I didn't want to impose and - ”

“Ben, you know me better than that.”

“Yeah, I know. With everything that's been going on with Danielle and me, I guess I've been a little overwhelmed – haven't been thinking straight. I'm glad I bumped into you.” He was nervous. He paused and took in another lungful of air and let it out.

Paul wanted to hear what had happened, but he had to get to the courtroom soon. “So, fill me in, Ben. What happened?”

“There was a carjacking. This young kid shot the driver. Maybe the guy resisted or maybe the kid panicked. Maybe it was cold blood. I don't know. Sandy was coming around the corner and the kid must not have seen her, but she got a good look at him – unfortunately. He pushed the guy out of the car and drove off like a bat out of hell. She used her cell to call 911. She was with some of her friends, but since she was way ahead of everyone else, she was the only one who saw the whole thing.”

“I think I read something about that in the paper,” Paul said. “Hell of a shame, all the way around.”

By now they were in front of the courtroom. Paul peeked inside. The opposing counsel was there with his client. Paul was representing a doctor who had a heavy surgery schedule and Paul had told him he didn't have to be present for the verdict. Indeed, he hadn't been there since the opening statements, something Paul had prepared the jury to expect during jury selection. It cut both ways. No matter how well Paul explained the reason for the doctor's absence, some jurors might be offended or view his absence as a sign of indifference or worse, callousness. But he hoped they would interpret his absence as confidence and devotion to his other patients, which was the impression Paul tried to leave with them.

Paul turned to Sandy. “Are you holding up okay?”

She returned his gaze and didn't look away this time. “I'm all right. A little scared, though.”

“I would be, too,” Paul said. “But just a little, like you. Listen, everything's going to be fine, okay?”

She nodded timidly. Paul smiled at her and extended his fist. She extended hers and they did a fist bump. He then turned his attention to Ben, whose face continued to wear the same worried look. “Ben, what's the State's Attorney's name?”

“Mitchell Tolliver. Do you know him?”

“I do,” Paul said. “I'll call him and see what I can find out. Then I'll stop by this afternoon – if that's okay.”

“Okay? That would be great,” Yanders beamed, smiling for the first time since his daughter told him about witnessing the hijacking. They shook hands and Paul went into the courtroom.

Rico decided to let Jean sleep a little longer. He was anxious to get started, but he didn't want to leave before she woke up. She had been a mess when he got there the night before. Both sides of her face were swollen and raw and her left eye was partially closed. Her ears were ringing, her head was pounding and spinning at the same time, and she couldn't stand for more than a few seconds without feeling faint. She had some leftover Vicodin in her medicine cabinet from a recent dental appointment, and he gave her two tablets for the pain. He also continued the warm compresses Gabriel Koblentz had started until she fell asleep two hours after he got there.

He had made it to Jean's apartment twenty minutes after Koblentz called. She hadn't been able to talk very much, but she had given him the gist of what had happened and he knew where to start.

Looking at her now from a chair across the room, Rico found it more difficult than usual to keep his emotions in check. And it was harder now than it had been when he first got there the night before and saw her lying on the living room floor, her head cradled in the old man's arms and her face almost completely covered by the bathroom towels. Keeping vigil from his chair, he had hardly slept, which gave him plenty of time to think and to grow angrier with each passing moment. You would never know it by looking at him, though. What emotions he had he hid well. He always did.

Jean stirred and he went to the bed and sat beside her. “How do you feel?”

“Like shit.” It was painful to talk and her voice was just above a whisper.

“Doesn't surprise me.”

“Me either, but my jaws still hurt like hell. Ditto my head and my eye.”

Rico stood and ambled to the bathroom medicine cabinet. He returned moments later with more Vicodin and a glass of water. “Take these,” he said, handing her two pills and the water.

“Thanks,” she said and promptly swallowed the pills and washed them down with the water. Grateful, she looked at him and smiled a little through the pain.

“Gotta go,” he said abruptly and stood.

“Right this minute?” Her eyes implored him to stay a little longer.

“You know what they say. The early bird catches the worm.”

She didn't bother to ask where he was going. She knew. “Be careful,” was all she said.

CHAPTERTHREE

Paul entered the courtroom and checked in with the bailiff, who notified the judge that both lawyers were present and then summoned the jury. The other lawyer, his client, and Paul stood behind their respective counsel's tables and waited for the jury to file in. Paul watched their eyes to see who would meet his gaze or smile knowingly and who would look away or frown. According to lawyers' lore, the former meant they had voted for your client and the latter meant they hadn't. Paul knew this was more lore than fact, but he always followed the script, nevertheless. He searched their eyes in vain. To a person, their faces were sphinxlike, inscrutable. His pulse raced and his confidence sank. Lawyers' lore also holds that a quick verdict means a defense verdict. This one had certainly been quick, but his natural pessimism, together with his inability to read any of the jurors' faces gave him pause. Now he started to wonder.

The defendant doctor, a respected cardiologist and head of the department at a major hospital, had performed a routine cardiac catheterization on the plaintiff, a fifty-three-year-old mechanical engineer. The procedure is a diagnostic tool performed to measure pressures within the heart and to photograph its blood vessels. The process is started by introducing a catheter, or plastic tube, into the brachial artery near the elbow and threading it through the artery into the heart. A dye is then injected into the heart through the catheter, allowing remarkably vivid pictures of the heart to be taken.

Even when the catheterization is performed flawlessly, one to two percent of the time a clot develops spontaneously in the catheterized arm, usually within twenty-four hours of the procedure. When this happens, a thoracic surgeon can easily evacuate the clot. On rare occasions, however, a clot develops later which, depending on its size, can make the evacuation more difficult. In this case the clot was discovered a full ten days after the catheterization. It was large and the thoracic surgeon had a hard time clearing it out of the blood vessel. In the process he unavoidably caused significant damage to the nerves in the plaintiff's arm, jeopardizing his ability to work in his profession and leaving him with a condition for which he would need pain medication indefinitely.

The claim against Paul's client was that the clot had actually developed within twenty-four hours and that he had failed to discover it. That, though, was pure speculation for which there was absolutely no proof, and until now Paul had felt sure that the jury would agree. Therefore, with the doctor's consent, his insurer had declined to make any offers of settlement. In short order they would know if that strategy had backfired.

After the jurors were seated, the judge called for the verdict.

“Have you reached a verdict?”

“We have, your Honor.”

“Please hand it to the bailiff.”

The foreperson, a rotund housewife, handed the verdict form to the bailiff, who delivered it to the judge who read it to himself and handed it back to the bailiff to deliver to the foreperson to be read out loud. Paul held his breath.

“How do you find?” the judge asked.

“We find for the defendant.”

It was a unanimous defense verdict. Paul was ecstatic and his client, who had vigorously and steadfastly denied any wrongdoing, was vindicated. He and opposing counsel spent several minutes debriefing the jury, after which Paul called the doctor, who thanked him profusely. Next, he called his secretary to give her the good news.

Paul started to head back to the office. Then he remembered that he had promised Ben Yanders that he would talk to the Assistant State's Attorney.

The friend of Jean's who had vouched for Perry Brumfield was named Denise Calloway. She lived in a five-story apartment building within walking distance of Jean's apartment. When Rico buzzed her from downstairs, there was no answer, so he decided to have breakfast and come back later. Although outwardly calm, he was still furious. In his business projecting a calm exterior wasn't enough. To be at the top of his game, he had to rein in his emotions completely. It didn't matter that this was personal. In order to do what he needed to do, he had to regain his detachment, something he seldom lost. Postponing the business at hand hadn't helped so far, but maybe he would be back on his game after breakfast.

He stopped by a small café a few blocks away and had French toast and coffee. He hadn't been there for a while. Several months earlier, someone shot and killed his buddy Jerry in the men's room downstairs. The killer had been looking for Rico. It wasn't Jerry's day.

After he finished eating, he went downstairs and washed his hands. Although he didn't admit it to himself, he needed to see the men's room more than he needed to wash his hands. He hadn't been in the restaurant for several weeks, and he hadn't been in the men's room since Jerry was killed there. He dried his hands and stared at himself in the mirror for a long moment. He hadn't thought going there was a conscious decision, but as he peered deeply into his own eyes, he wasn't so sure. Jerry was the closest thing he’d had to a friend. Yet when he found out about his death, he had felt nothing akin to grief. Indeed, what he felt was almost nothing at all, except that he might be next.

Maybe going back to the place where Jerry had been murdered was a painful reminder of how hollow his life was – but was it really? – he wondered. He and Jerry had worked together and sometimes taken lives together. They both knew their roles were not immutable. They were the hunters today, but they could be the prey tomorrow. True, it was an unorthodox, often dangerous life, but it wasn't hollow. It was the life he had chosen and it was a life that suited him and served him well.

In his line of work sometimes people had to die. He told himself that he never took out anybody who didn't deserve it. He knew that left him a lot of wiggle room, but so be it. That wasn't his problem. He refused to let it be. Not when his life was on the line. If he didn't do a job, somebody else would. So, it might as well be him, that is, unless he had to cross a line set by his own conscience. And if somebody got to him the way they got to Jerry, more power to the son of a bitch, because if he succeeded in punching Rico's ticket, he would have earned his money.

As he stood there absorbed in thought, he heard footsteps approaching the bathroom door. Not moving, he continued to stare into the mirror, his eyes now fixed on the reflection of the door ten paces behind him. The doorknob turned slowly and the door crept open. Still Rico didn't move. Is this how Jerry got it? – he wondered.

The door now swung completely open and a familiar face greeted Rico in the mirror. Aaron Talley was a small-time gambler who was known to take a contract from time to time. Rico knew him but didn't trust him. But then, again, he trusted almost no one completely – and that had included Jerry. The one exception was Jean, and she had only recently ascended to that lofty position in his pantheon.

“Rico, I thought I saw you come in here. What's happening, man?” Talley said, extending his hand to shake Rico's.

“Not much,” Rico said, turning around to let Talley see him remove his hand from the holstered .45 Sig Sauer P226 inside his jacket before shaking Talley's outstretched hand.

“Shit, man,” Talley said, taking Rico's outstretched hand, but staring at the .45 under his still open jacket. “This is me, Aaron. You weren't gonna smoke me, were you?”

“You're still standin',” Rico said in a tone completely devoid of emotion.

“Damn, Rico. Sometimes I don't know about you.”

“You know enough.”

“But you saw it was me, man.”

“Your point?”

Talley knew he wasn't going to get an apology or anything close to it, so he stopped trying. “We got a game starting in a few. You want in?”

“Maybe later. I got somethin' to do now. ‘The Five Aces?’”

“Yeah, where else?

“Isn't it a little early for a game?” Rico asked.

“Maybe. But what the hell else is doin'?”

Rico left Talley in the men's room and went back to Denise Calloway's apartment building. As he rang the downstairs buzzer, a neighbor who was leaving volunteered that Denise had gone to visit her sister who lived on the other side of town and wasn't expected back until later in the day. Rico thanked her and left. He figured he might as well play a little poker before checking in on Jean.

* * *

Paul called the Assistant State's Attorney from the courthouse and he filled Paul in on what he knew. “He say anything?” Paul asked.

“He's still denying that he did it. A patrol car picked him up not more than a block from where they found the car. He spotted the patrol car and ran. Panicked. Probably the same way he did when he stole the car.”

“What's his story?”

“Says he saw the car parked there the night before with the keys inside, and when he saw it the next day in the same place, he decided to take it for a spin. He was smart enough to admit he'd been in the car. His prints were all over the place.”

“Pretty clever,” Paul said.

“But total horseshit. We just have to prove it.”

“And without Sandra you might not be able to?”

“You got it.”

“What about traces of gunpowder on his hands?” Paul asked. “You find any?”

“Too late for that. Current tests aren't effective after about three hours. Or even after you wash your hands real good.”

“And any of the victim's blood you found on his clothing could be explained by the joyride.”

“Yeah, but we checked anyway. And guess what? His mother had already washed them.”

“That would get rid of all of it?” Paul asked.

“Not too long ago some scientists at the University of Valencia in Spain, of all places, proved that you could eliminate all traces of blood on clothing by washing them in detergents containing active oxygen.”

“Don't tell me…?”

“Yep, that's the kind his mother used, so we came up empty.”

“Jesus,” Paul said. “Sounds like he doesn't even need an alibi.”

“For what it's worth he says he was home alone playing video games. But you're right. Without Sandra's testimony, it doesn't matter where he says he was unless somebody else saw him.”

“So why did he do it?”

“My theory is he's a seventeen-year-old kid trying to prove he's a man. He gets pushed into it by some neighborhood toughs and things get way out of hand.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He doesn't even have a sheet. As far as we can tell, he hasn't been in any real trouble, but recently he's been hanging around with the wrong crowd, according to his mother.”

“Gangs?”

“Nothing that shows up,” Tolliver said. “I talked to the Gang Unit. Far as they can tell, nobody's recruited him or even leaned on him.”

“So, give it to me straight. You think Sandra's going to have to testify?”

“He may eventually plead out. As you know, most of them do. But at this point your guess is as good as mine on that. If he doesn't, though, I think we're going to need her.”

Paul disconnected and called Ben. They agreed he would stop by later that afternoon as promised to brief Ben on his phone conversation with Mitchell Tolliver. It was a crisp autumn day and the leaves were starting to change. The sky was clear and there was a bracing breeze. As he approached his car, Paul continued to savor his victory, drinking in large gulps of the cool fall air and exhaling it slowly.

He decided to drop his trial bags off at the office and rearrange the file so that everything would be in order in case there was an appeal. It would take him until lunch time to finish the chore. Afterwards, as was customary, a few of his partners would treat him to a celebratory lunch and a round or two of drinks. Then he would go to his apartment and make one more call before heading to Ben's apartment.

* * *

When Rico arrived at The Five Aces, he took a seat at the bar and called Jean. Gabe Koblentz from across the hall answered the phone.

“Is she all right?” Rico asked when he heard the male voice on the line.

“Yeah, she's fine,” the old man said. “I just stopped over to keep her company for a while.”

“Who is it?” Rico heard Jean ask in the background.

“It's your friend from last night – the one who helped you, I mean.” He handed the phone to Jean, who was still in bed.

“Hi,” she said. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. No one was home, but she'll be back later.”

“Rico…” she began and paused. She put her hand over the receiver and smiled self-consciously at Koblentz. He got the hint, smiled back and left the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

“Rico,” she started again. “I didn't say anything this morning, because after last night I wasn't sure I wanted to and because no matter what I said, I knew it wouldn't matter. But…” she waited a moment, giving him a chance to fill the silence, but he said nothing so she continued. “…I was thinking maybe Denise didn't know this Talley guy as well as she thought she did. He might have fooled her the same way he fooled me.”

“Maybe,” Rico said.

“Then you aren't going to hurt her, are you?”

“No.”

“Promise?”

“What kinda guy do you think I am? You ever know me to put my hands on a woman?”

“No, I guess not.”