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

you try feeling asses and snatching purses on the United States National Mall. You try it, man. I’m telling you, that town’s got more kinds a cop than Starbucks got hot beverages. They got Metro cops, transit cops, Capitol cops, FBI, DEA, Secret Service. They got Homeland Security, CIA, ATF, federal marshals. They got military cops, buildings cops, parks cops…”

“Shut the fuck up, will you?” Hoffman sniffed the gun. “Couldn’t have snatched something, for God’s sake? Woman like that could whine till Thanksgiving on getting something snatched.”

“Yeah, what she have? Fucking shopping bag.”

“Could have snatched that.”

“Right, with a fucking beach towel? Man, that’d be some trauma. Put her into psychiatrics.”

The general counsel opened the driver’s door and flapped it to expel Skeet’s odor. He was stinking up the car like he’d not bathed in months, or a raccoon crawled to die in his shorts. Christ, Hoffman loathed this. This wasn’t his style. He was a corporate attorney, not some hood.

“And your pretty boy protégé had the bag.”

Hoffman studied the apartment building. From the Camaro’s front fender stretched three levels of schoolyards, each surrounded by chain-link fences. Against the sidewalk, behind the fences, sat four parked cars. None was a white sedan.

He couldn’t see her front door, on the corner with Twentieth, but Henry’s boy’s signal was enough.

Skeet scratched between his legs. “So why didn’t I get the Jap job anyhow? You said I’d get that when you called.”

Hoffman filled his lungs before closing the door. Managing morons wasn’t his strong suit. “Two reasons. First, I’d wrap myself in brown paper and phone the feds to come get my body before I put a half kilo of eighty percent cocaine in your greasy paws. Second, I needed a test for the kid. You remember a test? When you mistook your SAT results for a soccer score.”

“Aww.”

They’d wait fifteen minutes for Ben to get clear. Then Dr. Honda would learn something about her Sanomo Romeo. Plenty to keep her mind off work.

“Okay Skeet, let’s go over it again.” He passed the firearm. “So, she answers the door. You push your way in. You give her a bunch of verbal about ‘where’s the Jap,’ and wave this thing. Right?”

“Now, about that having no shells…”

“We covered that.”

“I gotta say, that’s not an NRA-approved situation. Gun with no shells is worse than no gun.”

“Look, the purpose of this is to avoid a disturbance. Think about it. If you don’t have this, maybe she’d do something. Scream most likely. You want that? A screaming woman?”

“Fuck yeah.”

“But she’s not gonna resist when she sees this in her face. And then you say, ‘Where’s the coke.’ And she’ll say, ‘Dunno,’ or “Don’t ask me.”

“Yeah, but what if she says, ‘Please don’t hurt me, it’s under the bed?”

“She’s a doctor. She’s not gonna have half a key.”

“Yeah, well, whatever she’s got, I’m having it.”

“And when Murayama’s not there, you say, ‘Where’s his coke?”

“I got that. ‘Where’s his coke.’”

“Stressing ‘his.’”

“Yeah, but that’s when maybe I’m thinking I need to slap the bitch around some. Make the thing more convincing.”

“Like to slap her around myself.”

“Right on.”

“No. It’s no. The aim’s to make her think twice about the Jap. Break off that connection. We don’t need to get heavy. You wave this around, check the place over, say, ‘We’ll find that piece of shit that went off with our stuff,’ or something similar. Nothing else. You hear me?”

“Could set light the place.”

“No, you could not set light the place. You do what we agreed. Okay? Reason? Bullet point (a)…”

“With no bullets.”

“Point (a), slapping women around and setting light to buildings is going further than we gotta, and we don’t go further than we gotta. Point (b), burning buildings is destroying people’s homes. Think about the folks who live underneath. And the cops’ll start world war three over arson. Point (c), you’re one sick asshole, who’ll do what he’s told. You got all that? This is business.”

“Be a nice combustible frame behind that siding.”

“Fuck’s sake. First thing she’s gonna think is someone’s trying to shut her up. Destroy her secret documents, probably. You can bet she’s got secret documents up there. In her own mind.”

“Could tie her up.”

“No, you could not tie her up. What the fuck for? Look. Think it through here. Use that frozen pea in your skull to process information for a change. She won’t call the cops if she figures her boyfriend’s a mule. Yes? And if she does—which she won’t—who’d give a shit? They’re not short on crime in this town.”

Hoffman looked at the sky: dark for a city. A ship’s siren hooted across the bay. Sporadic vehicles cut through to Third Street, and a wobbly old guy walked a German Shepherd dog. Otherwise, the location was deserted.

“Now, for the last time, you’re hundred percent sure she didn’t see your face in DC? You’re totally sure about that?”

“Listen boss, the dude saw me. The little old lady saw me. But the bitch did not see me.”

“And she’s not seen you anywhere else?”

“What, two miles outside Athens, Georgia, from six at night to six in the morning? Yeah, sure, she’s been in and out of there like dicks in the monkey house.”

Hoffman wiped the pistol on a monogrammed handkerchief. “Okay, let’s do it then, and I’m out of here. So, no violence. You’re looking for the Jap, and the coke. That’s it. Now you go back to your car, you wait ten more minutes for the kid to get clear and me to get downtown.”

Skeet took the gun and pulled the passenger door lever. “Okay boss. I’m just hoping it works the way you’re thinking. Cos, I’m thinking I gotta slap her around. What else I do? Think about it now. I say, ‘Where’s the Jap, where’s the coke?’ She says, ‘Don’t ask me. The fuck you talking about?’ And I say, ‘Oh, pardon me ma’am, excusez-moi,’ and step back on the street? I don’t think so.”

Thirty

SUMIKO WAS shocked by how quickly he lost it. His