BLIND TRIAL by Brian Deer (best books to read for beginners TXT) 📗

John Hancock Center, renamed 875 North Michigan. It greeted him daily with two antennae fingers and bid him goodnight with red lights.

Since moving to Atlanta, Ben called at least daily. The record so far: four times. He reported himself driving his BMW 5 series and spinning behind a beech-veneer desk. He described “awesome vistas” from the company’s roof terrace and sought advice about a lady in his shower. He chattered about reforming his band, Plus Tax, and of “Jad moving south.” Some chance.

Then there were WhatsApps: what the weather was like; vital pickings from websites around the world.

Did u know Chicago’s water is full of dihydrogen monoxide?

I did

OK haha

Luke padded to the kitchen, spooned coffee into the machine, and marveled at the stove and countertops. After six years co-starring in their corny buddy sitcom, he was still getting his head round the change. The last year was toughest, after Ben traced his roots to one Jean-Baptiste de Louviere. He was born in Quebec in 1731 and deported—“yesss”—from Riviere St. Jean at the “mighty nice” age of twenty-three. After that, Ben’s cooking went all hot ’n’ spicy dog food with more gunk than a slaughterhouse can.

Luke moistened a paper towel and wiped the refrigerator. Then metal struck metal again.

“Turn your cell on. I need to ask ya something. Something I been thinking about. Call me.”

He filled two mugs and returned to the bedroom, where his guest was undoubtedly awake. A crow-black buzz cut protruded from the sheets, and a muscular arm touched the floorboards. Mario gave the impression of still being asleep. But he couldn’t have missed the bell or that voice.

“You conscious?”

No response.

“Time to smell the coffee and sign the lease.”

Luke liked Mario. He was witty; in-shape; hairy; a horticulturist at the Botanic Gardens up at Glencoe. They’d met at Charlies Bar, where Mario hit on Ben, and ended up with Luke on the rebound. They’d talked a lot lately about him renting the empty bedroom: a kind of live-in fuckbuddy arrangement. But the deal wouldn’t close. They’d been circling for weeks. And the man was now threatening to return.

Luke dropped onto the bed and poked the protruding arm. It withdrew like the limb of a turtle.

And that was another thing: Mario was off sex. He didn’t even want to be touched. Luke cracked jokes, asked questions, dry humped, but Mario would push him off or get mad. And, surprise, surprise, Ben was somehow factored-in. You’d think he strangled babies at that biotech. When Mario was last here and Luke took a call, Mario spat “screw him” and went home.

It made no sense. There was never a problem once Mario finally grasped Ben was straight. Sure, he felt excluded from their homelife intimacies: private jokes, shared clothes, naked breakfasts. But three weeks back—which was after Ben left—even his name became the trigger for a squabble.

Luke reached across the floor, dragged over a black briefcase, and fired-up his MacBook Pro.

The Law Offices of DePaul & Furbeck

Client: James Mellerman

Attorney: Luke Ronson

Mr. Mellerman, forty-two, an adult bookstore proprietor, was driving his Jaguar XJ on the Eisenhower Expressway at 20:20 on a weekday evening. He was pulled over by a state trooper, one Vernon Beoletto, and later charged with aggravated DUI. Also in the vehicle were a thirty-six-year-old male and an eleven-year-old female—the aggravation.

Luke switched on his Motorola Android One and considered the grounds recorded for the stop.

Weaving and drifting.

Signaling inconsistent with driving actions.

Accelerating and decelerating with no clear intent.

Driving 15 mph below speed limit.

There was no doubt about it: this case had potential.

Then his cellphone buzzed between his legs.

Ten

BEN PUNCHED out a WhatsApp message: “People might at least answer their phones.” Then he kicked his Cubs bag from where it blocked his front door and stepped out onto a concrete walkway.

In Midtown Atlanta, the Ericson Vale apartment complex was still recovering from Saturday night. Its yellow brick walls, red doors, and green awnings soaked the summer morning in silence. He gripped a steel rail and looked down onto a pool flanked by aluminum recliners. The water shimmered pale, its surface only broken by a pair of tubular stainless steel ladders.

Someone ought to help him relive the subway incident: how our hero saved the foxy lady’s life. That wasn’t a cheese-and-sausage thing: she might have been squashed. World religions were founded on less.

From the walkway rail, he could see his ride, near a fence by a stand of Bradford pear trees. Before moving to Atlanta, he couldn’t afford a car. In Chicago, it would be cheaper to run for Congress. But he’d bought this bad boy from a guy at Emory University: a BMW 5 series E39 sedan, metallic green, stick-shift, and tilting a sunroof, with about a million miles under her wheels.

He needed to talk: about the Sumiko thing to start with. And then there was the matter of Henry Louviere. He’d tried to blank that out since he last spoke with Luke. But it wasn’t going away. Shit was pending. Tomorrow, most probably, it might be adios BerneWerner and hola strumming for coins in Boystown bars.

Some part of him yearned to pack up his stuff and hit I-75 North. In twelve hours, he could be back at Cleveland Avenue as if his biotech nightmare never was. True, he’d be hauling a bigger debt than Argentina. But so what? Everybody owes someone.

He stepped back into the apartment he’d rented since Memorial Day, opposite an open-air mall: Ansley Mall. For fourteen hundred a month, he’d gotten a second-floor one-bedroom with a living room that opened onto the walkway. He’d gotten aircon, dishwasher, and free cable hookup. The color scheme: beige on beige.

The front door slammed behind him as he hauled his Gibson to the bedroom and emptied his Cubs bag on the floor. Out dropped a Wahl Aqua Blade stainless beard trimmer, a heap of Uniqlo socks—some black; some white—and a biography of Mohammed Ali. Then he gazed at the beige for eight or ten minutes, before making another call: to his