by Nick James
“Well, now hold on here, just a minute. I think he mentioned he was going to be in a meeting. We’ve always had an understanding and the last thing I want to do is…”
“Dalton, I’m sorry you’re going through this, but bullshitting me isn’t going to get you anywhere. Believe me, I’ve been where you are, and I wish you the best, but my answer remains the same, no. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really need to get back to work.”
“Get back to work? Listen you little prick, I happen to know you’re disbarred. You can’t even practice law. Do they even know that here? No, I bet they don’t. Look at this damn office. You’re practicing without a license, aren’t you? Just how in the hell do you even think you’re going to pull off this Montcreff deal without someone like me on your team?”
“I think I’ve heard about all I care to hear. Please leave.” Bobby suddenly sounded rather soft spoken. He felt any semblance of emotion leaving his body as he quickly grew cold and calculating.
“Please leave? Me? Leave? Do you have any idea who you’re talking to? I’m going to kick your little disbarred ass and there’s nothing you’re going to be able to do about it,” Dalton said, then stood up so quickly that the clients chair he was sitting in fell backwards.
As fast as he moved, it was still no match for Bobby simply raising the pistol above the top of his desk. “Go ahead, try it. I’ll blow your balls all over the floor and watch you bleed.”
Dalton got a very surprised look on his face. “Now let’s just hold on, don’t do anything stupid here.”
“You’ve already cornered that market. Now you better get your ass out of my office, or believe me, the Bar’s ethics committee and your pending lawsuit will be the least of your problems.”
“Calm down, just take it…”
“Get the fuck out of my sight,” Bobby shouted and thrust the pistol in Dalton’s direction.
He quickly backed up holding his hands out in a sort of ‘Calm down’ manner.
“Just keep on moving, Dalton. Go right out that door and head for the elevator before I change my mind.”
“Just calm…”
“Get the hell out of here,” Bobby shouted. Dalton suddenly turned, tore the door open, and hurried out of the office.
A moment later he heard Dalton shouting, his voice gradually fading as he made his way toward the elevator. “He’s disbarred, he’s cheating each and every one of you. Do you hear me? That bastard Custer is disbarred. He’s disbarred. God damn it. Disbarred.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Bobby waited a couple of minutes, took some deep breaths in an attempt to calm down, and tucked the pistol back in his belt before he walked out of the office. There were still a number of paralegals standing up in their cubicles and making comments to one another as they stared off in the direction of Dalton’s exit.
“Oh-oh,” a woman said as she turned and spied Bobby stepping out of his office. She immediately ducked back down in her desk chair, various heads casually turned, then quickly disappeared from sight as he walked past and headed for the file room.
When he entered the file room and closed the door behind him, Dorsey asked, “What’s all the commotion out there?” He had an armload full of files that he proceeded to place on his four-wheel cart. He walked over to a file drawer, pushed it in and locked it.
“Just another satisfied client,” Bobby said, wondering if that was the last he’d hear from Bishop Dalton.
The final hours of the day couldn’t pass fast enough, and although he had a file out in front of him, he kept finding himself at the bottom of a page without the slightest recollection of what he’d supposedly just read. Dorsey said his goodbye a little after five. The moment he was out the door, Bobby phoned Miguel, explained the situation with Dalton, and told Miguel to come down to his office.
He met Miguel in the lobby of the building and brought him up to the office. “I don’t think he’ll be back, but just in case, my only option is to shoot him. If you see him, you have my permission to hurt him just enough so he has to spend some considerable time in the hospital, but don’t kill him.”
Miguel nodded like this was just an everyday sort of request. “Can you tell me what he looks like?”
“I can do better than that, I have a picture of him,” Bobby said. He pulled open a desk drawer and handed him Roark’s report.
Miguel glanced at the image then looked up at Bobby and smiled. “What is it you say? All talk and no action?”
“Yeah, I’d say that’s fairly accurate. Still he’s bigger than me and can move pretty fast, at least initially, so be careful. I’m going to leave you here. I’ll be in the file room working for the next two hours. It’s the room…”
“The room down the short hall. Yes?”
“Yeah, right. You need anything just knock, I’ll have the door locked so it will take me a moment to open it. Like I said, I don’t think this idiot will come back.”
“If he does, it will be a mistake, a big mistake.”
“Good,” Bobby said then returned to the file room. He was aware of some heads peeking out of cubicles and some whispered comments as he passed by, but he didn’t bother to acknowledge them and just kept moving.
Bobby and Miguel, were back in the new apartment just before nine. Maria stepped out of the kitchen as they entered, each carrying a large box of Montcreff files. She said something to Miguel in Spanish, he answered, and then she said, “Would you like to shower and change before you have dinner? I have something special prepared for you.”
“Something special? To tell you the truth, I’m starving and I’m sure Miguel is, too. We’ll put these boxes in the back room. Let me just get cleaned up and we can eat. Ten minutes sound all right?”
“Ten minutes will be perfect. Now go, go the two of you,” she said sort of shooing them away with her hands. “I’ll pour a glass of wine for you in the kitchen.”
They placed the boxes on the stacks in the small back room. “Is Isa, here?” Bobby whispered to Miguel.
Miguel glanced out the door to see where Maria was before he answered. “No, after a while she becomes what we call a lot of work,” he said then smiled.
“I’m just going to get changed and then we’ll eat. Thank you for coming to the office tonight. I felt a lot better once you were there.”
“Never hesitate,” Miguel said. But Bobby wasn’t sure if he meant calling him or pulling the trigger on Bishop Dalton.
He changed into casual clothes, jeans and a t-shirt. He left his suit and shirt on the bed, not giving a second thought to Maria picking them up. As was his custom, he slipped his wallet and phone in his jeans, then remembered he had turned his phone off earlier in the afternoon. He pulled the phone back out of his pocket and turned it on. A moment later it vibrated signaling a message. He pulled it back out expecting to see another rant from Bishop Dalton. Instead, what he saw were three calls and a text message from Emily.
The text had come across late in the afternoon, ‘Free for dinner and a lot of in and out?’ The phone messages had arrived in half-hour increments after the text.
“Hi, don’t know if you got my text, you free for dinner? Call me.”
“Hi, give me a call. Thanks.”
“Where the hell are you?”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Bobby thought about calling her, but as he weighed the options, he wasn’t coming up with anything in his favor. Yes, she sounded more than willing to have sex, and she would no doubt want to prove she’d had a boring weekend with girlfriends, but he had Maria right here and she had dinner ready. He made a snap decision, turned his phone back off, and went out to the kitchen.
Miguel was sitting at the counter with his hand wrapped around a frosty bottle of Dos Equis. A crystal glass filled with red wine sat on the edge of the counter. As Bobby entered, Maria indicated the glass with her chin. He sat on a stool and pulled the glass toward him.
“You having something?” he asked her.
She nodded
and took a half empty glass from the counter behind her.
Bobby raised his glass to both of them, “Thank you both, I’m blessed.”
The two of them smiled, then Maria said, “We are all starving, so let’s eat.” She dished up large platters of some sort of chicken dish that tasted delicious. Over dinner they talked about everything and nothing. Eventually, the conversation settled on Valentina and Camila, Luis’s daughter and sister.
“Her recovery seems to be taking too long,” Maria said.
“She was shot twice,” Miguel responded. “And that’s not the first time.”
“But shouldn’t she be able to walk better by now?”
He shook his head. “I think she will always have the cane. She is lucky to even be here. Only because of you, Bobby,” he said and then the two of them raised their glasses to Bobby. Maria reached over and squeezed his hand.
Later that night lying in bed in the afterglow, Maria rested her head on Bobby’s shoulder as she ran her fingers across his chest.
“Are you writing something?”
“Yes,” she said. “It is a prayer, to keep you safe. To protect you. Two prayers actually, one to Santa Muerte and another to Jesús Malverde.”
“Never heard of them. Friends of yours?” Bobby half-laughed.
Maria rose on her side and looked at him. “They are real. Santa Muerte is holy death. She protects and Jesús Malverde is like us, he takes from the rich and helps the poor.”
“You mean like Robin Hood?”
She sort of frowned and said, “I do not know this man. Does he work for Señor Morales?”
“Does he… No, not exactly. He’s from a long time ago. He fought a sheriff and a prince, I think.”
“So he is like us, if he fights with the police?”
“Sort of.”
She slid her leg over him, then kissed him and raised herself up on top of him. She leaned forward until her face was no more than an inch or two from his. “I have had a dream,” she whispered. “You’ll be in danger and there is no way out for you. You must go through the fire.”
“Through the fire?”
“Yes,” she nodded.
“And when is this supposed to happen?”
“That I don’t know,” she said then kissed him again, slowly moved forward a little and began to rock back and forth.
“Is this part of your prayer?” Bobby chuckled.
“No, it’s is part of the miracle, see it is already happening.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
The following morning Miguel dropped Bobby off at the office well before nine. Dorsey was already moving through the cubicle area distributing files. He’d unlocked the Montcreff drawers in anticipation of Bobby’s arrival.
Bobby draped his suit coat over the back of the chair at the reading desk, and began to work. He took a break about eleven and wandered back to his office. On the way, he pulled his phone out of his trouser pocket, remembering as he did that he’d shut it off last night. He turned the phone on and cringed in anticipation as it fired up, waiting for a dozen voicemail messages from Emily to flash across the screen. Amazingly, there was only one.
“Hi, call me.”
He closed his office door and placed the call. She answered on the fourth ring.
“Oh, thanks for taking the time to get back to me,” she answered, her tone was cold and he envisioned her wearing a frown, standing with one hip cocked. Her arms would no doubt be crossed tightly over her chest.
A brief thought flashed in his mind and for just a second he imagined asking her how she liked San Francisco? Instead he said, “Sorry about that, had a problem yesterday, and turned my phone off then completely forgot about it. To tell you the truth, I was wondering why you hadn’t called. I finally decided to call you then realized I’d had the thing turned off for the past twenty-four hours. I know, I’m an idiot.”
“As long as you remember that,” she said, then giggled and all was apparently forgiven. “I was just really worried about you, afraid you might be pissed off about something.”
“What would I possibly be mad about?” he asked sensing some possible guilt over her weekend tryst with Bennett Hinz.
“That’s what I couldn’t come up with. It’s not like I did anything wrong.”
He let that last statement hang out there for a long moment before he asked, “So, how was the shower?”
“The shower? Oh yeah, the usual, you know, girl games, some gag gifts and a couple of serious ones. We got her a yearlong subscription to Netflix so she’ll have something to watch while she’s up doing midnight feedings. Then we loaded her up with about five hundred dollars’ worth of pampers. They’re both doing well. He’s doing his residency to be an anesthesiologist and she’s in some dot com marketing position. The kid isn’t going to be wanting for much.”
“When is she due?”
“Due? Oh, I think about four or five weeks,” she said, then quickly changed the subject. “So, how was your weekend?”
“Just great if you don’t mind working.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, just some things I had to get finished.”
“And did you?”
“Just about.”
“You wouldn’t happen to be available for dinner, tonight, would you?”
“I would, and I’d love it. What can I bring?”
“I think just yourself and some nasty ideas on how to spend our time.”
“That can certainly be arranged, seven-thirty sound okay?”
“Perfect. See you then, and don’t be late. I’m having a tough time waiting even that long,” she cooed.
Bobby hung up the phone, thought for a moment about what he would tell Maria, and decided it might be better if he had Miguel deliver the message. He opened his office door and noticed Bennett’s door was closed although it sounded like there was a heated discussion going on inside his office. He recognized Allen’s voice, shouting, “I don’t give a damn,” and then some sort of docile tones he took to be Bennett’s response.
He wondered for a moment if Allen had somehow found out about Bennett’s getaway weekend with Emily, then quickly dismissed the idea. It would be next to impossible to find that out unless Allen had been on the same flight with a girlfriend and, even if he did somehow find out, he’d only mention it if there was some direct payoff. No, they were probably arguing about overtime costs or the light bill.
On his way back to the file room, he walked past two paralegals in the hall. They nodded politely as he passed, then he caught their reflection in a window as they turned and stared at him. He had the feeling something was up, he just didn’t know what.
Dorsey was just about to roll his four-wheel cart out of the file room when Bobby opened the door. “Oh, hey, Mr. Custer, perfect timing. Thanks.”
Bobby smiled then pushed the cart back into the room, closed the door behind him and locked it.
“Umm, is something wrong?”
“No, just need some information. You haven’t done anything wrong, Mike, so relax. It’s just that I’m getting some really strange looks from people when I walk past. Bennett Hinz, Allen and probably Sawyer are in Hinz’s office right now engaged in a shouting match. Something’s going on, I feel like folks think I’m somehow involved and for the life of me, I don’t know what it is. Is someone raising hell again because I took over Denton’s office?”
Dorsey snickered and then said. “No, nothing like that. Apparently a bunch of para’s saw you leaving last week in a pretty fancy Mercedes. Some guy who looked like a drug kingpin was holding the door for you and then you took off. Folks were just wondering.”
Bobby thought back to the four guys watching him with open mouths as he climbed in the back of the Mercedes and Miguel drove off. The description of Miguel wasn’t that far off and he was just thankful they hadn’t realized the trunk had been loaded with Montcreff files.
“Then yesterday, that nut job running through the office yelling how you were disbarred a
nd all. I guess he told Marci you were going to get everyone killed. About thirty seconds later that was all over the office. Apparently a few folks were frightened enough that they left early. Someone said there was a guy hanging around your office last night. Looked like he was not the kind of person you’d question.”
That damn idiot Bishop Dalton, Bobby thought. “Yeah, I’ll agree with you there. That idiot yelling was pretty crazy. He’s an attorney, by the way, soon to be tried for misappropriation of funds, I believe. He was here pleading his case. To be honest, I want nothing to do with it or him. I was about to say he went off the deep end, but upon reflection I think he may have already been there.”
That seemed to bring a smile to Dorsey’s face. “Anyway, that’s why you’re Mr. Popular,” he said and shrugged.
“You okay with it, I mean, me?”
“You kidding? Everyone can act high and mighty and worry that Morris Montcreff is a major criminal, but the fact of the matter is he’s the client that helped build this firm. Everyone knows we represent him in all sorts of transactions. Some of which, I’m sure are questionable. But that’s the work that brings everyone their paycheck, so what can we do? Hey, I gotta get these files into the conference room for the meeting. You need anything else?”
“No, thanks for bringing me up to date, Mike. I’m pretty much out of the loop around here.”
Dorsey just shrugged, then looked at the door.
“Oh, yeah, sorry about that,” Bobby said, then unlocked the door and stepped aside.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
On the way to Emily’s, Bobby had Miguel stop at the wine store so he could pick up a couple of bottles. When they were back in the car, Bobby said, “Tell Maria I got called out of town at the last minute to deal with something. Tell her it had nothing to do with Luis. I don’t want her worrying. She’ll drive me nuts.”
Miguel looked in the rearview mirror and smiled. “They have that way, don’t they? They worship and care and then suddenly they’re telling you what you can and can’t do.”
