Mob Lawyer

by Dave Daren

  “Still there?” I asked.

  “Still there,” the driver agreed.

  “There’s the gym,” I said unnecessarily.

  The place was brightly lit, even at this late hour, and as I’d predicted, there were plenty of people heading in and out of the doors. Heck, I’d spent plenty of time there myself during the wee hours of the morning, usually when I couldn’t sleep, or found myself working impossibly long hours at the office.

  “I can drop you right in front,” the driver said as we waited for the light to change. “You sure you don’t want me to call the police?”

  “I’ll do it when I’m inside,” I assured him.

  The light changed and the driver eased forward to the next corner, where he pulled up in front of the gym. I thanked him profusely as I hopped out of the car, and then I sprinted towards the door to the gym. At this time of night, you had to have an electronic pass to get in the door, but mine was in my apartment alongside a sweaty pile of workout clothes. I managed to catch the door before it swung shut behind a woman with an afro, and stepped inside the brightly lit lobby. I could just make out the sound of bass-heavy music in one of the back rooms and the heavy clang of weights on the various machines.

  “Can I help you?” the bouncer-slash-clerk behind the desk asked suspiciously.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I left my pass at home this morning. Didn’t plan to be at work so late.”

  “Your name?” the man asked with his hands poised over the keyboard.

  “Hunter Morgan,” I replied as I glanced at the windows.

  The blue Honda had double-parked across the street, and I could just pick out the profile of the driver as he studied the gym. I could see a beaked nose and thick hair, but not much else.

  “You’re set, Mr. Morgan,” the bouncer announced as the computer beeped.

  I looked back at the desk and saw that the man actually had a smile on his face.

  “Looks like someone double-parked again,” I commented.

  The muscled desk man scowled at the offending blue Honda.

  “I should have a word with the driver,” the desk man replied. “Warn him about getting tickets.”

  “I’ll just head on back to the lockers,” I noted as the clerk moved from behind the desk and started towards the door.

  I scurried towards the locker room and then kept going. There was a back door to the gym, tucked behind the locker rooms and the sauna that never worked, that led to an outdoor workout area. The outdoor area was popular with the yoga classes, but officially closed after eight p.m. Still, it wasn’t unusual to find a few people out there on nice nights, usually doing stretches or just meditating. More importantly for me, it also featured a locked gate that could only be opened from the inside. The gate opened onto the next block, and I could circle back to my apartment building while I kept an eye out for the Honda. I hoped the bouncer had convinced the driver to move on, but I had a sneaking suspicion that if the guy had followed me all the way from Queens, he probably wouldn’t give up just because some guy from the gym told him to move on.

  There were only two women in the outdoor zone when I passed through, both doing crunches together in between sips of water and red wine. They barely looked at me as I jogged towards the gate, and I ducked through before they could comment.

  Though the gym was busy, the street was quiet. I spotted one older man walking his dog along the opposite side, but that was it. There was no sign of the Honda either, but I didn’t really imagine that the driver would have moved to the next block. It seemed unlikely that he knew enough about the gym to know about the gate, so my guess was that he was still near the gym doors. Unfortunately, that also left him close to my own building.

  “Come on, you mutt,” the man with the dog muttered. “Finish your business already.”

  The dog was unimpressed with the request and continued to sniff around a tree. The man huffed but took no further action.

  “What are you gonna do?” the old man asked when he spotted me. “Wife says to take him out for one more trip, so I take him out. Now I gotta wait on the dog, too.”

  “At least the dog doesn’t talk,” I replied because I’d heard this exact conversation hundreds of times during my tenure in Brooklyn.

  “Ain’t that the truth,” the old man replied with a sage nod, exactly as I knew he would.

  I hid my grin, jogged to the end of the street, and then continued around the corner. The businesses on this end of the block were all closed, and I moved as quietly and as quickly as I could to the next corner under the orange light of the streetlights. I stopped near the corner of an art supply store and looked down the street. The blue Honda had pulled into a spot in front of a fire hydrant, and the driver stood on the sidewalk next to it. His gaze was locked on the other corner, where the lights of the all-night gym still beckoned.

  I could, I decided, probably make it to my building before he realized I had gone around the block. But even if he just caught a glimpse of me, he would know for sure where I lived, if he didn’t already. What was clear was that this wasn’t just another simple mugging, and that someone had taken an interest in either me or one of my cases. Since corporate mergers rarely involved stalkers who looked like extras from a mob movie, it was a safe bet that this was related to Lamon’s case. Or should I call him Anthony Febbo instead?

  It was time to get some more answers, and the person to answer them was only half a block away.

  Chapter 5

  I crossed to the other side of the street and started down the sidewalk towards the driver and the blue car. I kept my head down and walked quickly, like somebody trying to get home at the end of a long day. I glanced towards the driver, but he was still focused on the people leaving the gym.

  He didn’t turn towards me until I was almost on top of him, and even then, it didn’t register that I was the person he was supposed to be watching for until I stopped next to him and looked up. He actually jumped, and stumbled as one foot missed the curb and landed on the street instead.

  “Why are you following me?” I demanded.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” the man said defensively.

  I’d been right about the beaked nose, and up close I could also see the thin lips and the five o’clock shadow. He wore a suit that was probably supposed to look like an Armani, but it was too shiny and wrinkled. He also smelled like cheap whiskey and garlic, an unappealing combination that made me wrinkle my nose involuntarily.

  “You followed me here from Queens,” I snapped. “I want to know why and I want to know who sent you.”

  The man’s surprise had worn off and I saw his hand start to reach under his jacket. He might have been reaching for something innocuous, but given the hard stare he suddenly gave me, that seemed unlikely. I won’t claim to be a ninja master, but I’d taken enough self-defense classes over the years to know what to do.

  The man’s hand was still tucked under the jacket when I grabbed his wrist and snapped it back. The man let out a startled yelp as something heavy and metallic hit the sidewalk, and then he started to swing with his free hand.

  I knew that was coming, though, and I blocked his punch with my free arm even as I brought my knee up and caught him in the kidneys. The man coughed and tried to throw a quick jab while he yanked hard on his imprisoned wrist. I held tight, but the force pulled me closer to my attacker. I swerved to avoid the jab, but he managed to land a glancing blow to my jaw.

  “Son of a bitch,” the man muttered as he tried to pull away from me.

  “Why are you following me?” I reiterated.

  “You’re crazy,” the man wheezed.

  I kicked out again, this time with a hard shoe to the kneecap. The man fell against his car and I felt his body go slack for a moment. He probably hoped I would let go then, or at least loosen my grip, but I didn’t. With a growl, the man spun back towards me and threw himself into me. I staggered under the surprising weight, and the two of us crashed into the sidewalk
together, with me on the ground and the man on top of me.

  As I struggled to knock the man off, I saw his right hand start to feel along the sidewalk and I knew he was searching for whatever he had dropped a few moments ago. I threw a haymaker at my opponent’s head as he threw another jab, but my reaction time was faster and I made contact first.

  The man grunted as his eyes went blank for a moment, and I pushed him to the sidewalk. I scrambled to my feet and looked around the sidewalk to find what he had dropped. It was easy enough to spot, a pistol that managed to look menacing even just lying on the concrete. I heard the man grunt again and I glanced back towards him. He was struggling to his feet, and the angry look he cast me in my direction was all I needed to see to know he wasn’t done.

  “Hey, you!” a new voice called out. “You better get the hell outta here! I called the police!”

  The Honda driver looked across the street to the new speaker. I knew from the voice that it was Sulla, an immigrant from Uganda who worked days as a butcher, and spent his nights as a doorman for my apartment building in exchange for a rent-free apartment in the basement. He looked like a Zulu warrior, but in truth, he was one of the gentlest people I had ever met.

  “You heard him,” I said as I stepped out of the attacker’s punching range and kicked the gun further down the sidewalk.

  The Honda driver growled at me, but Sulla was barreling across the street. The driver yanked the door of the little car open and folded his tall frame into the driver’s seat, then pulled out just as Sulla reached us. Sulla slapped at the car hood as the wheels squealed, and then the Honda shot past the doorman and raced towards the end of the block. The tires squealed again as the driver made the turn, but I wasn’t watching him any more. I spotted the pistol again and quickly shoved it into my waistband.

  “You okay, Mr. Morgan?” the ever polite Ugandan asked.

  “I’m fine,” I assured him as I rubbed at my jaw. “He managed to land one blow, but that was it.”

  Sulla stood guard as I collected my briefcase, and then we started back across the street together.

  “I called the police,” he repeated. “They should be here soon.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “I’ll just go drop off my briefcase and maybe get some ice, then come back downstairs.”

  “Did you know that guy?” Sulla asked as he stepped into the lobby of the building.

  “Never seen him before,” I replied.

  Sulla shook his head sadly as he peered into the street again, and I took that as an opportunity to escape. I started towards the stairs, then decided I had earned a ride in the elevator. One arrived just as I pressed the button, which I took as a sign that the elevator had been the wise choice.

  My jaw was starting to ache, and I spent the ride to the fifth floor rubbing at the sore spot while I listened to eighties pop music played so softly it was hard to hear it over the elevator gears. By the time I reached my floor, I’d decided the song was some sort of strange instrumental version of The Smiths’ ‘How Soon is Now?’ but it could also have been an instrumental version of a Kanye West tune.

  I walked past my neighbor’s doors and stopped in front of my own apartment. I fumbled for the keys in my pocket, then stumbled inside when I finally managed to get the door open. It wasn’t a huge place, but then most apartments in the city are not, unless you can afford a multimillion dollar pad with a view of Central Park. I dropped my briefcase on my dining table-slash-work table and then pulled off my jacket.

  I stared at the gun for a moment, then slowly pulled it from my belt and examined it in the pale light from the windows. It was a Heckler & Koch USP, not a cheap gun by any means, and not something that was likely to be used in your average mugging. The H & K pistol is extremely accurate and this one was designed to hold Smith and Wesson forty caliber casings. That was a lot of power in a small gun, and again, not something you would use in a mugging.

  My intercom buzzed then and it was my turn to jump in surprise. I set the gun carefully on the table, then walked over to the panel by the door and pressed the button.

  “Mr. Morgan, the police are here,” Sulla informed me.

  “I’m on my way down,” I replied.

  I darted into the kitchen and grabbed a bag of frozen something from the freezer, then spotted the gun still in plain view on the table. The smart thing was to carry the gun back downstairs and turn it over to the police. Maybe they could track down my attacker through his fingerprints, and I would have a name to go with the face. But Gomez’s warnings were in my head as well, and having access to a gun didn’t seem like such a bad idea. After a moment’s hesitation, I dropped the gun in a plastic bag and tied the handles.

  With the gun in one hand and my bag of what turned out to be frozen broccoli that I didn’t even remember buying in the other, I made my way back to the elevator and then to the lobby. Sulla was at the desk along with two police officers. The doorman waved his hands as he described what he had seen, but he started towards me as soon as he saw me walking across the lobby.

  “That’s going to be some bruise,” Sulla sighed.

  “It doesn’t feel too bad right now,” I replied. “But it will probably hurt like hell in the morning.”

  “Are you Mr. Morgan?” the shorter cop asked as Sulla and I arrived at the desk.

  It was an all-male team this time that featured a tall redhead with a face that reminded me of a pug, and a shorter man with close-cropped black hair and lips to rival Mick Jagger’s.

  “I’m Hunter Morgan,” I said as I took in the odd couple.

  “Mr. Jango here…” the shorter one began.

  “Jengo,” Sulla corrected.

  “Right, Jengo,” the shorter cop continued. “He says you were assaulted tonight.”

  Both cops were studying the lovely bruise that I could feel forming along my jawline. Not to mention the streak of blood on my shirt that I hadn’t even noticed before now.

  “I was on my way home from work,” I replied. “I was just across the street when this man standing by a car attacked me.”

  “Did he show a gun or a knife?” the red headed cop asked.

  “Not exactly,” I said after a moment’s pause. “I mean, he started to reach for something in his jacket pocket, and that’s when I kneed him. I heard something fall to the ground.”

  “You fought him?” the shorter cop asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “After he dropped this.”

  I set the plastic bag carefully on the desk. The shorter cop carefully untied the bag and peered inside. He let out a low whistle and then showed the gun to his partner.

  “A Heckler and Koch,” the red-head muttered. “Don’t know any muggers who carry that.”

  “I’m not sure it was a mugging,” I admitted. “I think he followed me.”

  “On foot?” the tall cop asked even though Sulla had already been talking to the cops.

  “In a car,” I corrected as patiently as I could. “A blue Honda, I think, but I couldn’t swear to that. It was really old, I do know that. It was behind me all the way from Queens.”

  “What were you doing in Queens?” the short cop asked suspiciously, as if no one in his right mind would go to Queens.

  “I was with a client,” I explained. “Look, he held this thing in his bare hands. Can you dust it for prints or something?”

  “You an attorney or something?” the red-head asked as he picked up the gun in the bag.

  “I am,” I agreed.

  “So was this guy maybe a disgruntled ex-client or something?” the short cop asked.

  “It wasn’t someone I knew,” I insisted. “I’ve never seen him before.”

  “But he followed you all the way from Queens, with this gun, in an old car,” the red-head summarized.

  “Really old car,” Sulla agreed. “Like something from one of those French movies in the 1960’s.”

  “I don’t suppose either of you noticed the license plate,” the shorter cop asked.

>   Sulla and I both looked at each other for a moment, and then I risked a shake of the head. I saw stars for a moment, but I managed to stay on my feet.

  “I don’t think it had a license plate,” I said as the realization hit me.

  “You’re right,” Sulla added. “I don’t think it did.”

  “You’re looking a little wobbly there, Mr. Morgan,” the tall cop noted. “We could finish this upstairs.”

  “There isn’t much more to tell,” I replied. “Besides a description of the guy.”

  The shorter one consulted the notebook he’d been holding since I’d arrived and then flipped to a clean page.

  “Sure, that would be good,” the shorter cup said as he licked the tip of his pencil. “You should come by the station as soon as you can and look through some photos, as well.”

  “I could probably do that tomorrow,” I offered with a wince.

  “Do you want an EMT to take a look at that?” the tall cop asked with a note of sympathy.

  “Nothing’s broken,” I said. “And all the teeth are okay. I think I just need a handful of aspirin.”

  Both cops nodded in sympathy, and the tall one ran one hand along his own jawline. The puglike man probably had taken a similar blow somewhere along the line, which would explain why he winced whenever I did.

  “Why don’t you give us your description, and then we can let you head back upstairs,” the shorter cop suggested.

  “Right,” I agreed as I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to picture my opponent. “He was about an inch or two taller than me. Long nose, thin lips, dark hair and dark eyes.”

  “Anything else?” the short cop asked when I hesitated.

  “There might have been a scar near his hairline,” I replied. “Not big, but something he could cover with his hair.”

  “Better than most people do,” the short cop replied. “Anything else? Like, what was he wearing?”

  “A cheap knock-off suit,” I said.

  “A suit?” the tall cop said in surprise.