It was 10:00 o’clock by the time I left the bar and I had a pretty good buzz going. Enough to make me a sentimental drunk. A stupid sentimental drunk. Anyway, somehow I found myself at her door at 10:30 at night. One minute I was heading towards my house and the next, there I was in her driveway. I didn’t want to scare here, so rather than knock on the door, I decided to call her first. Landra answered on the second ring and I could tell by the tone of her voice that she was glad to hear from me.
“Hi. I tried to call you earlier,” she said.
“You miss me, don’t you?” I must have slurred because she laughed at me.
“Only a teensy bit, so don’t let it go to your head. Where have you been?”
“50-50. I’m sitting in your driveway.”
“You are not!” she exclaimed.
“Am too. Can I come in?”
I saw the blinds separate and heard her laugh. “What are you doing sitting in my driveway?”
“I didn’t know if you were still awake,” I told her.
The front door opened and she was standing in the doorway in her pink robe. “That’s not why,” she said, and I could see the smile on her face.
“Yeah it is,” I said, getting out of my car and heading up the path to her house.
“Nuh uh. You were sitting in my driveway because you missed me,” she taunted.
“I didn’t. I was just bored.”
We were standing within four feet of each other. “I have to go now,” I said. “I have a really hot chick waiting for me.”
Landra laughed out loud and came over and wrapped her arms around my neck and hugged me.
“Hi, Sam.”
“Hi, Landra.”
And just like that, once again my resolve disappeared in an instant, and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t get the smile off my face.
“Come in,” she said, taking my hand and leading me into her house. She closed the door and locked it behind us. She led me over to the couch and sat down right next to me and we visited for a while, but I was having a hard time concentrating. She was telling me about something that had happened at the shelter and I was only half listening and she busted me when she asked me a question and I gave her a vague, “Uh huh.”
“You’re not even listening to me, are you?”
“Did you push Drake Reeds out the window?” I blurted it out before I even realized it. She went dead silent, I guess while it sunk in. I think she was trying to decide if I was serious.
“What do you mean, did I push him?” she asked. “You mean on purpose?”
“Yes. Did you shove him out that window on purpose?”
She sat straight up and looked me in the eye. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
I couldn’t read her at all because she went silent again, so I had no idea if she was offended or pissed off, or something else.
“Did you know that you’re the beneficiary of his life insurance policy?” I asked.
“You’re so full of shit!” she said. She took a pillow from the couch and hit me in the chest with it.
“I’m dead serious, Landra. Are you saying you didn’t know?”
“I’m the beneficiary of Drake Reeds’ life insurance policy?” she repeated in disbelief.
“Yes.”
She looked at me for a second, then the look of shock on her face turned to one of panic, and she burst into tears. “No way!” she said, getting up from the couch. She started pacing the room frantically, pulling at her hair and rubbing her temples, and I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me or to herself.
“They’re going to think I killed him for the money,” she said. “It’s happening all over again.” She paced back and forth a couple of times, then turned to me finally and dropped to her knees at my feet and clutched my hands in hers. “They’re going to aren’t they? They’re going to say I did it on purpose.” She was looking at me, pleading with her eyes for me to tell her differently, but I couldn’t do it. I just looked down at her and didn’t say anything. The silence hung in the air and then her expression changed again to a look of total defeat.
“You think I did it, don’t you?”
She looked me in the eye, waiting for my response. I sat there looking at her, tears streaming down that beautiful face, and I had to be honest with myself.
“No,” I told her. “I don’t think you did it.”
She laid her head in my lap and cried. I ran my fingers through her hair, brushing it back from her face.
“What am I going to do, Sam?” she said pitifully.
“We’ll take it one step at a time.”
I ended up spending the night, basically for moral support, but it was nice just to be close to her. She never asked me how I learned that she was the beneficiary of Drake’s insurance policy and I never volunteered the information, but I laid there wide awake in spite of all the beer I’d consumed, thinking about my predicament. It was the same old thing. Every time I was with Landra, I knew without a doubt that I could trust her. Hell, when I was with her, I would trust her with my life. Regardless of how convinced Niki was that Landra was bad news, I’d just have to convince him that it wasn’t so. Maybe I’d invite him and Stacy over for dinner and he could see for himself that Landra wasn’t capable of plotting and executing a cold blooded murder, much less two.
I woke up at 6:00 a.m. and got dressed while Landra was still asleep and I considered slipping out without waking her, but I’d done that before and learned the hard way that girls hate that shit. I sat down on the side of the bed and ran the back of my fingers over her cheek. She had such a nice complexion, like a child’s; it was so completely pure. She opened her eyes and smiled and I thought that it would be a nice thing to wake up to every morning.
“Are you leaving?” she asked, stretching and looking over at the clock.
“Yeah. I’ve got to be in court this morning.”
She sat up and hugged me. “I’m glad you came by last night.”
“Me too. When are you going to finish my walls?”
She covered a big yawn. “Maybe this weekend. I’m going out with some girlfriends tonight and tomorrow night I’m going to my parents’ house. What are you doing Saturday?”
“Playing with you.”
“Good,” she said smiling. “I think the weather’s supposed to suck. If it does, I’ll work on your walls.”
“I’ll see you later,” I said, and I kissed her lightly on the lips, intentionally keeping all emotion out of it since I couldn’t be late for my court appearance. “Call me if you need anything.”
Chapter 7
We waited until after dark and went in after the custodial crew. Niki had a copy of the floor plan of the building, so we went straight to the south wing of the first floor to what used to be Maddie’s office. It was bigger than I had pictured and Niki started checking out the walls as soon as we walked in.
“Here it is,” he said. He had pulled up a chair and was standing on it, scoping out what by all appearances was an air conditioning duct. It was actually a special vent attached to the ceiling that contained a hidden camera, and it was pointed at Maddie’s desk.
“I wonder how many of these offices have been under surveillance,” I said.
“I don’t know, but we can find out. Come on, let’s go check out her supervisor’s office.”
We left Maddie’s office and went down the hall to the right until we came to Larry’s office. It was a corner office but its furnishings were cheap and ugly.
“He had the surveillance equipment over here,” Niki said, walking to the far corner of the room. He pulled out a drawer and came up with a fist full of wires, a dinosaur video camera, and some cable plugs, then he stuffed them back in the drawer.
“Check this out,” Niki said. He handed me an 8x10 glossy photo of a leather clad guy with a whip in his hand standing over naked women on all fours. There was a hand-written caption scribbled underneath the photo that read, “Domination.” I didn’t know if Larry had written the
caption or not, but either way, I was beginning to think we were dealing with a mental case. I handed the photo back to Niki and he returned it to the drawer.
“Now where would he hide the tapes?” he asked, looking around the room.
There were two walls of bookshelves and he started scoping out the books, first from across the room, then with an up-close inspection. He started pulling books out four or five at a time, or however many he could grip with one hand. I went to the other wall and started doing the same thing. We’d both covered two entire shelves and I was beginning to think it was a really stupid idea, when I gripped a handful of books and a whole facade of fake books came off, covering a two-foot section on the shelf. And there they were. Two dozen videotapes, most of which were labeled with advertising or marketing titles, but some with only initials, and others with no label at all.
“M.G.” Niki said, pulling a video off the shelf. “Maddie Griffin?”
He took the videotape out of its case and went over to the TV, but there was only a DVD player. “Let’s see if we can find a place to watch this,” he suggested.
I would have just as soon taken it with us and gotten the hell out of there, but he’d hear of no such thing so I didn’t even suggest it. We left Larry’s office and walked back down the hall, passing Maddie’s office and a ladies restroom and found a TV with an old dual player in an executive’s office. I was looking around the office while Niki messed with the VCR. He had the TV on and was pushing all the buttons trying to get the VCR to work and I had my back to him when I heard him exclaim, “What the fuck!”
I turned around and there he was with the remote in his hands, and a horrified expression on his face as he watched my neighbor on the screen.
“What the fuck is she doing?” he asked, clearly unnerved by what he was seeing. The angle of the camera made her appear slanted on the screen and he had his head tilted to the side to bring the picture straight up and down.
“Damn! That’s got to hurt,” I said.
Maddie’s shirt was opened in the front and she had these funnel-like things with tubes coming off them that she was holding up to each breast. It was some kind of electric apparatus and the machine would groan and suck her nipple down into the funnel, and it was pulling the damn things way out of proportion. It looked painful as hell.
“Ouch,” I said, as I watched her nipple get sucked an inch or more into the funnel.
We were both standing there in front of the TV with our heads tilted watching Maddie’s nipples go in and out of the funnels and we both winced with every suck.
“What the fuck is she doing?” Niki repeated.
“It must be some kind of milking machine,” I finally realized. “She told me she was breastfeeding her kid. Yeah, look . . . there’s milk in those little bottles,” I said, pointing to the screen.
“What kind of sick bastard would come up with a milking machine like that for a woman?” Niki asked. “It looks like some kind of Chinese torture machine. It’s inhumane!”
“Well no one’s making her do it,” I pointed out.
We were both still watching in fascination. It wasn’t a sexual turn on, but more of a freak show like when you see something so bizarre that human nature dictates that you gawk.
“Have you seen enough?” Niki asked after a couple of minutes.
“Yeah. Turn it off.”
Niki pointed the remote at the VCR and hit stop, then he ejected the videotape and handed it to me.
“You going to take it with you?” he asked.
“Yeah. I don’t think Maddie would appreciate me leaving it here.”
We walked out of the office and started back down the hall, but Niki stopped and called me back.
“What do you make of this?” he said. He was standing outside the ladies restroom, but it wasn’t the same one we had passed earlier.
“What about it?”
“Well, it’s an add-on,” he said, like I was stupid not to notice.
“Okay. They added on a ladies restroom. What about it?” If it was obvious, I sure wasn’t getting it.
“Why would they add on another ladies restroom when there’s one right around the corner?”
Call me dense, but I didn’t think it was any big deal, and I told him so. He opened up the door and we both poked our heads in. There was only one toilet and a sink with a mirror over it. Niki walked up to the mirror and poked his nose right up against it, and I finally realized what he was getting at.
“No fucking way!” I exclaimed in disbelief.
Niki laughed. “I think your settlement figure just went up.”
We went back into the executive’s office where we had watched the video and Niki led the way to the area that would back up to the ladies restroom. There was a private bath within the office and there was a built-in cabinet attached to the wall. Niki looked at me and smiled before he opened it to reveal a window the size of the mirror in the ladies room with a head-on view of the toilet.
“What a pervert,” Niki said laughing again.
I was in shock, just standing there staring at the damn toilet, shaking my head.
“What kind of sicko gets his jollies by watching a woman take a piss?” he asked when I hadn’t said anything. He took out a little camera and started snapping away.
I went back out into the office and picked up a business card off the executive’s desk and examined it. “He’s the damn CEO!” I exclaimed. My heart was racing at the thought of deposing the guy. I was so engrossed in the thought that I didn’t hear the door open.
“What the hell are you doing in here?” a man asked angrily.
I didn’t want to turn around because I didn’t want the guy to see my face. I reached into my shirt pocket and put on my shades and I pulled my cap further down over my face. Thank goodness Niki had already come out of the bathroom and closed the door before the guy came in.
“We’re with the janitorial service,” Niki said.
“If you’re with the janitorial service, then you know you have no business being in this office,” the man said.
“We’re with quality control, and no one told us not to enter this office,” Niki replied.
“I’m calling the police,” the man said. He grabbed my arm and tried to turn me around, while he reached for the phone with his other hand.
This was so typical of the kind of situation Niki would get me into, and I was furious at myself for letting him do it to me again. If I got caught breaking and entering, I’d lose my law license. And for what? All so that Niki Lautrec could get his thrills.
I was getting ready to turn around and gut punch the guy when Niki stepped forward and took the phone away from the guy and told him, “That won’t be necessary.”
In literally a split-second, the guy was unconscious, sprawled out on the floor. If I’d seen it in a movie, I’d have thought it was the biggest bunch of bullshit I’d ever seen, because all he did was pinch the guy’s neck and he dropped like a rock. Witnessing it myself, I still couldn’t believe it.
“I guess we better go,” Niki said, as if nothing had happened.
I was shaking and my legs felt weak as we walked back down the hall and out the front door. I had been walking a couple of feet in front of Niki the whole way to the car, which we had parked off the premises, and I hadn’t said a word, but I was fuming at almost getting busted in that office building. We got to the car and I couldn’t hold it in any longer and I turned around and threw a punch at him with everything I had behind it. He didn’t see it coming and it landed squarely against his left jaw and I saw his head jolt back with the punch.
“Ouch!” he said, rubbing his jaw as I threw a second punch. He caught my hand in a grip of steel and slugged me in the gut with the other, but he held on to me to keep me from hitting the ground. Not only did it hurt like hell, but it knocked the wind out of me and I was pathetically gasping for air as he held me up. Once I caught my breath I came in for a second round, swinging a left-right against his chest l
ike he was a big punching bag.
“God damnit, Collins!” he exclaimed, and he kneed me in the stomach and then clobbered me on the head when I bent down. I managed to get to my knees, then put forth a last ditch effort and tackled him around the waist and brought him down to the ground. He landed with a thud and groaned, and I got in a couple more good punches before he flipped me over and stood me up with my arm twisted up behind my back.
“Are you finished?” he asked. He said it in a really calm voice like he was asking if I’d finished dinner or something, and it pissed me off all over again. Unfortunately, I was too tired to fight any more. My head was pounding and my knuckles were raw and my stomach hurt like hell.
“I’m finished.”
He let go of me and I shook out my arm and he rubbed his jaw and moved it from side to side.
“Is your jaw okay?”
“My jaw’s fine, but you slugged me right where I got shot,” he said, unbuttoning his shirt to examine his chest.
“Shot?” I didn’t even know the guy had been shot. “Are you okay? Let me see.” It was pitch dark outside, so it wasn’t like I’d be able to see anything, but he wasn’t going to let me near him anyway.
“Get away. I’m fine,” he said, shrugging it off.
I knew he’d tell me if he was really hurt, but I also knew he was trying to psyche me out. It wasn’t the first time we’d fought. In fact, I liked to pick fights with him because it reminded me of when I was little, picking on kids who were bigger and meaner, just so I’d keep up my reputation in the hood. He’d usually let me get in a couple of punches before putting me down, but he’d never let me really hurt him. And not that I wanted to hurt him. That was the beauty of fighting Niki Lautrec. If you didn’t know better, you’d feel like you’d gotten in a good fight, and sometimes you’d even think that you’d won. It wasn’t until you got to know the guy that you realized for him it was all a game. The thought that I could have actually inflicted damage caught me off guard and I felt guilty as hell for picking a fight with him for no reason. No reason other than his almost getting me disbarred and ruining my entire life, that is. Then again, he could be bullshitting about the bullet wound, which would also be just like him to pull that on me to make me feel guilty.
Advice of Counsel (The Samuel Collins Series Book 1) Page 11
