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

phone calls, WhatsApps, texts, emails. No pictures of your cock up her ass. Nothing. And then don’t say anything interesting.”

That sounded pretty definite.

“And you don’t tell nobody neither.”

“No sir.”

“Do not. Not the old girl. No one. Don’t even park outside the apartment. Park way down the street, or round a corner someplace. You get down and dirty, and we’re all mighty happy for you. You come up short… You draw a blank there…”

“I won’t.”

Hoffman restored his fingers between his eyes. “What I’m saying’s if you do, and the scene goes bad on you, what you do is… What you do is… Okay… You go to the window of that pretty third floor apartment of hers… And here’s what you do… You open a drape… Should be dark by then. Three windows in the living room, right? Facing Missouri?”

The general counsel must have been to Potrero Hill.

“Not been inside.”

“Trust me. You open one of those. One’s enough. Open a curtain.”

“What? You want me to open a curtain?”

“You listening in the back there? You open one of those green drapes she’s got. Shut them first if they’re still open when you get there. You do not call me. You don’t call anyone or send anything. In fact, keep your phone off from now.”

“Okay.”

“And if she don’t wrap her legs round you, like you expect—and I don’t expect—you open one of those drapes, and you get the hell out of there. Okay? Two minutes. Five minutes, max.”

“What, just walk out on her?”

“Say you got a text. Say the old girl’s having a nervous breakdown. Your cat’s got leukemia.”

“Isn’t my phone off?”

“I think… Yeah, right… Okay… It’s okay till then. You can turn it on till then. But after that, turn it off. Don’t forget. And no more than five minutes, max, to be out of there. You drive to your hotel, and you eat dinner in the restaurant. Nothing more, nothing less. Then go to the bar till it closes, and then hang around a while in the lobby.”

“What? So, what, I open a curtain and go to the Hyatt?”

“Eat dinner, go to the bar, and hang around somewhere public.”

“And what if I…?”

“What if you fuck her?” Hoffman laughed. “Better make us a damn good video.”

Twenty-seven

LUKE RONSON leaned forward on his associate-grade desk at the law offices of DePaul & Furbeck. It was catch-up time on the James Mellerman defense: a defense that would be no pushover. He gazed at the cop’s grounds for stopping his client, last reviewed Sunday in bed.

Weaving and drifting.

Signaling inconsistent with driving actions.

Accelerating and decelerating with no clear intent.

Driving 15 mph below speed limit.

After the stop on the Eisenhower, Trooper Beoletto noted Mr. Mellerman had bloodshot eyes, slurred speech, and dropped his driver’s license. He made three errors on the walk-and-turn, breathalyzed at .18 blood-alcohol, and was alleged to have remarked with regard to his adult passenger, “You’d be DUI with this asshole.”

Luke checked his watch: 22:12 Central. He’d worked late to forget Mario’s news. But from the moment his friend left the apartment this morning, frustration had grown by the hour.

Twelve hours back was the firm’s Thursday meeting, which considered a refurbishment scheme. Eleven of sixteen partners and twenty of twenty-five associates spent fifteen minutes considering who was entitled to vote on the proposals, another ten debating whether helter-skelter or lemon splash was appropriate for bathroom walls, and three minutes (when they were technically adjourned) approving a $40,000 spiral staircase from the front desk up to the library.

This afternoon was worse: a bunch of rich kids in dispute with some scumbag landlord. The guy was pressing for eviction after they complained to the building inspector over seven city code violations. “Twenty minutes court time,” Luke reassured them. “Retaliatory Eviction Act, 765 Illinois 720, section 1. Chicago residential landlord and tenant ordinance 5-12-150.” But they insisted they were entitled to a jury trial and proposed he represent them pro bono.

He scrolled the Mellerman file on his desktop screen and clicked a link labeled “Discovery.” In search of any patterns of unseemly behavior (and to generally piss the Illinois State Police), he’d forced disclosure of Beoletto’s arrest reports for fifteen days either side of the stop.

Luke tapped PgDn… PgDn… PgUp…

Then his cellphone vibrated on the desk.

HE HEARD the beat of rock, the click of hazard flashers, and the rumble of a bus on the street. He shut the Mellerman file and sagged back in his chair as the man spilled the latest news.

“I want to ask you something, can I? That okay? Something seriously weird’s going down here.”

Rock. Hazard flashers. Another bus passed. Luke was the listener, as usual. His gaze drifted to a painting above his associate-grade sideboard, in bright, thick-as-toothpaste acrylics. It was a portrait of himself at the US Supreme Court, with a hand outstretched to make a point. Of course, he never did that, but once dated an artist—until the curse of his roommate struck.

“Okay, so they send me out to San Fran, right? About some fuckup with that trial Mario’s on. Right? Basically, there’s this foxy doc complaining about her boss being a racist homophobe, and shit about volunteer retention. Okay?”

“Uh-huh.”

“A few protocol violations. Right? And now the company’s doing what they call ‘source data verification’ to check it’s all on the up and up.”

Luke hadn’t eaten, and the fridge at home was empty. He’d stop at Five Guys and pick up a burger.

“But anyhow,” Ben went on. “There’s some seriously heavy shit going down, and it’s knocking me dead trying to figure it out. It’s like being stuck in a dark room with some big fucking elephant.”

“That’s the doc?”

“Fuck off. I’m over that one. No, what it is, is she’s got a tie-in with some Japanese operation, Sanomo, and Hoffman figures she’s into something pretty sneaky with them. So, he’s got one of his people leaving a package in their guy’s hotel room.”

The trouble with burgers is you wonder about the fat. They’re filling enough, sure. But are they