Risk Assessment

by Parker St John

  “Take care of that vehicle, Elliot Smith.”

  He gave Elliot’s hand one suggestive squeeze before heading back to his bike. The weight of the man’s gaze followed him as he merged back into the flow of traffic.

  He probably should have let the guy off the hook, especially if he intended to eventually collect on the promise of that pouty mouth of his. Elliot had a sort of hapless charm, like Hugh Grant in some old rom-com, and it made Lucas ashamed that he was toying with him.

  Lucas’s mother used to say he had the devil in him. It might have been one of those affectionate things said by an exasperated mother, if it had come from anyone else. But Mary Kelly had never smiled when she said it, as far as Lucas recalled. She’d been in the ground a few years now, but he could still see her in his mind. Everything about her had been worn and washed out, from her pale wisps of hair to her papery skin. She used to stare at him through her cigarette smoke and say how he looked just like his father. She’d never smiled when she’d said that, either.

  She must have had big dreams once. Lucas had seen photographs of her when she’d been young, with sparkling eyes and a glowing complexion. She’d never meant to end up the wife of a poor mechanic, but that was what fooling around in high school had earned her. Then he’d gone and failed her as a husband by up and dying on them.

  She might have been right about Lucas and the devil, though. It was no angel sitting on his shoulder that made him enjoy winding up some straight-laced suburban mook and then leaving him hanging. Fuck it, he took his fun where he could these days.

  Maybe that was the reason for Arnold’s suspicious squint when Lucas walked into the West End Diner.

  “What trouble are you causing now, Kelly?” For a balding, middle-aged black man with a chest the size of an ocean liner, Arnold was able to inject a ridiculous amount of camp into that question.

  “You got no proof of nothin’,” Lucas sassed back, sliding into their usual ripped vinyl booth. He broke open a sugar packet and dumped it into the coffee that had been waiting for him.

  “I’ve told you before that you got no game. I don’t know how you survived Snake River. You’ve got the most readable face this side of the hemisphere.” Arnold stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Last time you were smiling like this was… what did you call him? The Iron Closet?”

  Lucas attempted to hide his grin inside his coffee cup, but he suspected he’d failed when Arnold chuckled. “Ruining straight men is better than boosting cars, but it sucks balls as a hobby, son.”

  “Then I guess I’ll stick to fixing cars,” he laughed.

  “How’s that going?” Arnold carefully spread ketchup over his hamburger bun before placing pickles in a perfect circle around its perimeter. He had a peculiar, fussy way of eating that was a source of endless amusement to Lucas.

  “A.J. signed the papers a few days ago.” Lucas took a huge swallow of coffee and burned the back of his throat. “The place is mine now.”

  “Freaking out yet?”

  He waffled between telling him to fuck off or admitting he was scared shitless. But this was Arnold. He knew shit about Lucas that nobody else would ever know, and he judged him for none of it. Ironically, he was the best friend Lucas had ever had, even if he was being paid to do it. So Lucas went with a third option and held his thumb and forefinger apart in a ‘little bit’ gesture.

  “Yup.” Arnold nodded knowingly. “Big changes, boy. Responsibility has a way of terrifying a man.”

  Lucas didn’t think Arnold had ever been scared a day in his life. The former cop had been forced to resign from active duty almost a decade ago when a bullet shattered his femur, but Arnold didn’t even seem bitter about it. He swore he’d gone through all the stages of grief at one time or another, but there was no sign of it. He was one of the most laid-back men Lucas had ever known. Lucas had a hard time imagining him working a gang enforcement detail off Burnside.

  Arnold took a bite of his burger, then a forkful of potato salad, then a sip of coffee, before repeating the ritual in the same order. “The overgrown kid who walked into my office three years ago wouldn’t even recognize you. You’re making a place for yourself. A home. Now all you need is a little hubby waiting at home and you’ll be fully domesticated.”

  Lucas snorted.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t crave those things — family things. It was so strong in him sometimes that it felt like he’d been searching for it all his life. But if his life thus far had taught him anything, it was that people rarely got what they wanted. His father hadn’t. His mother sure as hell hadn’t. Even his sister, who’d had dreams of becoming a librarian before she got pregnant and dropped out of high school, had gotten nothing but shit in her hand any time she reached for something good.

  Lucas probably wouldn’t know what to do if he did find someone to come home to at the end of the day. The concept was foreign to him. He would fuck it up somehow. He always did.

  Arnold caught his unease and changed the subject. First, he talked about the World Series, then he bitched about his daughter’s upcoming wedding. The former appeared of much greater concern to him than the latter. Eventually, when they’d each finished off a piece of local marionberry pie, Arnold sighed and pushed his plate away. “You’re a free man soon, Kelly. Last check-in is next month.”

  Lucas swallowed the lump in his throat. He managed a nod.

  “That’s when a lot of my guys slip up, you know. Once they’ve made it. It’s like they can’t stand the idea they might actually succeed, so they do something to make sure they don’t.”

  “I own a business now, Arnold,” he said uneasily. “I’m not doing anything that will get me sent back to prison.”

  “Hell, I know that, boy.” Arnold looked disgusted. “You’ve never been a risk for recidivism. You sabotage yourself in other ways.”

  Lucas felt his mouth doing something weird, like he’d been planning a smile but it self-aborted halfway through. So he just asked, “Same time next month?”

  Arnold sighed and nodded. Lucas dropped cash on the table for his share, pretending not to see the sympathetic expression scrawled all over Arnold’s broad face. As he headed for home, his gut felt tight and cramped, and he didn’t think he could blame the coffee and pie. Acid rolled through his stomach, and it only got worse the more he thought about Arnold’s words.

  He was only a few weeks away from getting his life back. Things were going better for him than they had since he was a child. Maybe that was the reason he felt so agitated. He kept expecting the other shoe to drop. Hell, if he was being honest with himself, he expected a whole piano to drop, just like in those old cartoons. If he let his guard down, he’d be walking down the sidewalk one day and then wham. Game over for good this time.

  Once he got home, the first thing he did was shuck off his work clothes and yank on an old pair of sweats. Then he headed to his workout room, ready to punish his agitation into submission.

  The fact that he even had a workout room was a great source of pride. He had purposely requested a bottom floor apartment so he could jump rope and hit the heavy bag without disturbing his neighbors. The stomping feet that rattled his ceiling at crazy hours was a small price to pay for his safe haven. It was a simple little place, with formica countertops and scratched pine floors, but it had a giant living room and an extra bedroom for his weights. Lucas got a crazy little thrill every time he unlocked his front door, even after more than two years.

  The guys at the garage teased him whenever it was his turn to host game night, because he had a little bowl of potpourri on the back of the toilet tank, and because he made them use coasters on the coffee table he’d refinished by hand. Lucas didn’t care. It was the first place he’d ever had that belonged to him alone. It didn’t have the smell of grease and cigarettes, so thick in the air that it coated his tongue like some funky old blanket. It didn’t have a roommate in a bunk two feet below him who insisted on jacking off and doing push-ups all hours of the night. This apart
ment belonged to him. It was his everyday reminder that he was making it work, just like a real person.

  He had a home. He had friends, even if they were all his coworkers. He hit the heavy-bag with a hard straight and reminded himself that he owned the garage now. They weren’t his coworkers anymore. They were his employees. Still, life was good. Life was better than he’d ever expected it to be when he’d been just a dumb punk with a chip on his shoulder.

  Arnold had no call to be giving him shit for not having the perfect Stepford family unit waiting at home. The man was never satisfied. He was the ultimate busybody, nosier than an old lady. He saw it as his duty to poke and prod until everyone around him was living their best lives, according to what he thought was best for them. But Lucas had one more month of parole. He wasn’t about to get fucked in the head wishing he was the type of person someone else wanted to come home to at the end of the day.

  3

  Elliot

  By the next morning, Elliot had mostly put the previous day’s events behind him, except for flashes of sense memory that struck him at the oddest times. He’d almost opened his jugular while shaving when a memory of his savior’s warm, rough skin struck him out of the blue. Every time a stray recollection of Lucas Kelly’s spicy scent or bright blue eyes jackrabbited through his brain, he felt a peculiar tug that shot straight from his stomach to his groin.

  Thankfully, the urges faded the more he went about the familiar routine of his day. By the time he arrived at his office, with coffee in hand and a bagel between his teeth, he was almost his usual self.

  The Cabrini Legal Clinic operated in a corner of the city that could be accused of gentrification only if one was squinting and feeling generous at the same time. It sat directly across from a pawn shop and a bail bondsman, but there was a Starbucks on the corner, so the neighborhood had that going for it, at least. Their office was funded by grants and charitable donations, which were by their very nature unreliable, so they cut cost wherever they could. An economy business space had been the most obvious place to start.

  Each of the four practicing attorneys had their own offices. By Elliot’s estimate, his office was a few square feet smaller than his old closest in the condo he’d shared with Greg, but at least it had a window that overlooked a Hawthorne tree. He’d been forced to flip for it, as most of the other offices faced a brick wall. Everyone shared a conference room where they interviewed clients. One receptionist and three paralegals took up space in the main entry, with their desks sticking out at bizarre angles from each other to create a navigable path. The carpets were industrial, the coffee pot ancient, and the printers always jammed, but it was home in a way his corner office at Harris & Goldwater never was.

  Elliot came alive here. This was his passion, though it had taken him far too long to realize it. At the CLC, he was not only excellent at what he did, but he was daring and eager, ready to take risks he would never have considered under any other circumstances.

  “You’re late,” Miguel Acosta didn’t bother looking up from his eagle-eyed surveillance of the brewing coffee pot. He was dressed casually, in jeans and a faded polo. He’d already been at it for hours, judging by the crazy thatch that always came from raking his hands through his hair while he poured over testimony. He stood with his hands braced on the peeling countertop, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, showing off massive forearms and a faded green tattoo that Elliot had never felt it was his place to ask about.

  Elliot ripped off a giant bite of onion bagel. Between chews, he said, “My car broke down. I had to Uber.”

  “That’s why you should live in the city like me,” Miguel said dismissively. “My place is right by the MAX. No car payments if you don’t want ‘em, no gas, no breaking down in suburban hell.”

  “Is that the same place that got two shots through the window a couple months ago?” Elliot marched into his office and tossed his messenger bag on top of his wrecked desk.

  Miguel followed, grasping a mug with a graphic of the devil with a pitchfork. Beneath the picture were the words: Hell of a Lawyer. “That’s no big thing for a true son of the city, homie,” he said with a grin. “By the way, your ten o’clock is already in the conference room.”

  “What?” Elliot checked his watch. “It’s not even nine!”

  Miguel shrugged his massive shoulders. “What can I say? You got yourself an eager beaver. Maks is in there with him now. Someone needed to keep the little jitterbug calm.”

  Elliot swore, grabbing his tablet and the top file out of his bag before storming into the conference room.

  The eager beaver was named Julio Gonzalez, and he was nineteen years old. He sat at their beat up oak conference table, nervously clutching a paper cup in both hands. His face was pale and hopeful when he turned toward Elliot.

  Sitting beside him with one ankle propped casually on his knee, looking like a silver otter in a three piece suit, was Maksim Kovalenko. Maksim wasn’t exactly an office regular. He was the star corporate defense attorney for a pricey partnership downtown. Whether it was a tax write off or a genuine impulse, Elliot didn’t know, but he donated a sizeable chunk of his time to pro bono work and flitted in and out of the CLC to the beat of his own drum.

  “Good morning, Julio.” Elliot flopped into the chair at the head of the table. “Stealing my client, Kovalenko?”

  Maksim’s polite smile showed off the blinding whiteness of his veneers and the deadness of his eyes. “Just keeping your client comfortable until you arrived, Smith.”

  He clasped Julio by the shoulder and spoke to him for a minute in a voice too low for Elliot to hear. Then he tossed Elliot a wink and strode from the room.

  “What did he say to you?” Elliot demanded, fighting not to grind his teeth together.

  “He said to listen to my lawyer,” Julio said with a nervous laugh. “Nice guy.”

  “Sure,” Elliot muttered. He shook his head and directed his attention back to his client. “You’re early, Julio.”

  “Sorry.” The kid looked embarrassed. “I had to catch two busses and the MAX to get here, and I didn’t want to be late. You got any good news for me?”

  “These things take time, buddy. I already explained how much work we’ve got ahead of us. We have the police report and letters of character in our favor, but appeals courts don’t rescind convictions lightly. This will be an uphill battle. Here are copies of our filing for your records.”

  Elliot opened his manila folder and slid a small stack of paperwork across the table, but he knew a client like Julio wasn’t likely to keep his own records. Even now, the kid was slumped down in his chair like he was trying to avoid being called on in class. The empty little paper cup he held was being actively shredded by fingernails bitten to the quick.

  “Have you found a job?” Elliot asked gently. “Solid employment records along with your parole officer’s statement will go a long way toward proving character.”

  “No one wants to hire a felon, Mr. Smith.”

  “How many places have you tried?”

  There was a resentful silence. The table began to vibrate as Julio jiggled his leg.

  “Did you quit after the first no?”

  “You don’t get it, bro!” Julio exploded from his chair. He threw his mauled cup in the trash with the force of a major league pitcher. “You don’t have to sit there and see the look on their faces as soon as I check the wrong box. Like I’m gonna cap them right there! I’m a Mexican with a GED, man. Ain’t nobody who wanted to hire me before I went to prison.”

  Elliot sighed and shoved his thumbs up into the tension at the inner edges of his eye sockets. This was where his job sometimes got difficult. Truly helping his clients usually meant being nothing close to their friend, and sometimes a friend was what they needed the most. Especially a kid like Julio. He’d grown up in a poverty-stricken neighborhood, caring for an ailing grandmother, failing his way through an overburdened public school system, and he’d gotten mixed up with the wrong people. In
Elliot’s opinion, he hadn’t needed prison. He’d needed a helping hand. But there were precious few of those in the world.

  Julio had already been through the wringer, and he’d come out the other side bitter as hell. At this point, treating him with kid gloves would do him more harm than good. Like most kids his age, he despised sympathy and saw it as pity. So Elliot did him the favor of getting down to brass tacks.

  “Life is full of shitty things we don’t want to do, kid. Where has the easy road gotten you? Back in that BMW with kids you don’t even like?”

  “I don’t—“

  “You’ve got a lot of hard choices ahead of you thanks to that stunt. Life is going to suck for a while. But if you can’t handle the censure of a couple judgmental strangers, you’re in a lot more trouble than I can help you with. Then where are you going to end up? Back in prison, sooner or later.”

  Julio seethed at him. His eyes were full of hate when he spat, “Whatchu know about it, pendejo? You’re from fucking Kentucky. You got white skin and loafers. Bet you ain’t never been turned down for shit.”

  Elliot clamped his jaw shut so hard he felt his teeth grind together. It was like the little prick wanted to go back to prison, screaming the whole way how it wasn’t his fault. It was the cop’s fault, his attorney’s fault, the system’s fault, but never his. Not even when he’d been caught joyriding in a stolen sports car with three members of the Surenos street gang, while his grandmother worried herself sick in their little apartment.

  “Then you’d bet wrong,” he said calmly. “Listen, Julio. I can file papers, and I can argue your case before the appeals court. But if you want to improve your situation, you can’t just sit on your ass and hope something falls out of the sky. So you got rejected on your first picks? Have you tried gas stations? Fast food? Dog walker? Hell, at this point it doesn’t matter. Just get a paycheck to your name.”