Trouble (11 page)

Sighing, he drummed his fingers on the desk.

He could do a lot of things. Saying
no
to Dara was apparently not one of them.

“Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”

“Oh, my God!” Her face lit up like New Year's Eve in Times Square. “Thank you!”

“Don't thank me yet,” he said gruffly. “I want twenty-
five
for the retainer.” He glanced at his watch. “I suppose she wants me to drop everything else to be at the arraignment this afternoon to bail his ass out of jail.”

She headed for the door. “Probably.”

“Meet Jamal here at two-thirty. He's coming to watch and learn. Oh, and wear—” he waved a hand to indicate Dara's plain black dress, which would be fine if she wasn't rocking a body guaranteed to make the inmates riot— “something else.”

Dara gasped and threw her hand over her heart. “
Really?
I can come with you?”

Mike had the uncomfortable thought that the look of excitement on Dara's face, more than any retainer Johnson might pay, was his reward for taking the case.

He grinned. “You can take notes for me. You don't want to miss any of the fun, do you?”

“Of course not!”

“Good. Because if I have to work my ass off on this case, so do you.”

When Dara met Jamal back at the office at two thirty, he looked her up and down as if she'd shown up in a bikini.

“You're not wearing that, are you? Mike said he told you to change.”

“Yeah, well, it's a perfectly respectable dress,” she said. “I'll be fine. And all my other work clothes are at the dry cleaners anyway.”

With Jamal muttering darkly, they quickly walked the eight blocks to the justice center and met Mike by the elevators. He took one look at Dara and scowled.

“Didn't I tell you to change?”

“Look,” she said, thoroughly sick of the whole topic. “I can handle myself. Let's go.” She turned her back on Mike shooting Jamal a stupefied look and pressed the UP button on the elevator.

Mike shook his head in amazement, stole one last incredulous glance at Jamal as if to make sure he hadn't imagined the whole incident, then followed Dara onto the elevator. He shook his head and muttered something—whatever it was didn't sound very flattering—under his breath.

When they got to their floor, Mike went to the information desk to fill out a sign-in form. Meanwhile, a guard unlocked a door for Dara and Jamal and took them into a visiting area with long, cafeteria-style tables with attached benches. Several inmates in striped jumpsuits sat talking in quiet, urgent tones with their attorneys, most of whom were male. Inside the adjoining glass-enclosed holding pen, other inmates loitered, waiting to come into the visiting area to talk with their attorneys.

Whoa
, thought Dara, who hadn't expected the inmates to have this kind of freedom of movement. They just walked around like that? Without shackles or anything? How was that safe?

The ones with their attorneys spared her a quick glance, then resumed their conversations, ignoring her, but the others in the holding pen, having nothing better to do, gawked. The second she stepped into their view, the stunned looks spread like wildfire. After several seconds of surprised but appreciative silence, they started to murmur, point, and laugh until her ears burned.

“Come on.” Jamal, his face flushed, took her arm and led her to a cheap sofa, where she sat with as much dignity as she could.

Then it got worse.

An inmate came right up to the glass and sauntered past, looking her up and down like she was one of the elephants in an enclosure at the zoo. Very quickly, a loose procession of gapers formed and paraded by, visual jackals waiting for their turn at the carcass.

At that point, an inmate in the visiting room with them got up from his bench and came over after his attorney left but before the guard could come collect him. Tall, burly, with short, twisted braids, he wore a black eye patch over his left eye, the one thing that could make him look more menacing than he already did.

“Whassup, sweet thang?”

“Hey,” she said coolly.

“I betchoo ain't had none-a this in a while.” He grabbed his crotch. “Otherwise, you wouldn't be so uptight. Why don't you come in the other room with me and let me work that pretty little …”

“Yeah, okay,” she said, standing. “I'm finding the guard now.”

But he'd already trailed off, his eyes fixed on a point just behind her.

Mike was back, tight-lipped with rage. He studied her face intently for a long moment, then edged her behind him and turned a withering eye toward the inmate.

“Whassup, Mike?” the man wheedled.

“Terrell,” Mike replied, his voice clipped and quiet, like a pistol's safety being switched off.

“She witchoo?” Terrell asked warily.

“She's with me,” Mike said, his voice louder now so everyone in the room could hear. “Got it?” He flashed a grim smile that made the “or else” unnecessary.

“No problem, man.” Terrell raised his hands and backed away from Dara as if she'd turned radioactive. “You should-a said something sooner.”

Just then, a guard came, took Terrell's arm and led him back into the holding area.

Mike turned back to Dara, eyes narrowed and nostrils flaring. If thunder had a face, this would be it. She winced and dropped her gaze to the floor.

“Let's go,” he barked.

Mike wheeled around and led them to a small table in the corner. Dara still felt the prisoners staring at her, but this time, to her tremendous relief, they watched her with a newfound respect.

Mark Johnson, alleged murderer and former NFL player, was escorted to their table a minute later by one of the guards. He was huge, taller even than Mike, and outweighed him by at least forty pounds. He was bald, with a mustache, goatee and pierced ears on both sides. Multiple tattoos ran up and down his arms, and his hands were at least twice the size of hers, with fingers like Polish sausages. He was attractive, in a thuggish sort of way, and his body was certainly something, although he was far too bulky for Dara's tastes. His neck was like a log of firewood.

She remembered the Alicia she'd known in high school—sheltered, sweet, a little spoiled—and tried to reconcile her with her husband, this menacing giant from the streets with the checkered past that included suspensions for fighting in college, a conviction for weapons possession and two accusations, quickly followed by settlements, of sexual assault against women.

Yeah, Dara had Googled both his history and news stories about the murder.

Why would Alicia have married this bad boy? To help him walk the straight and narrow? Sure. Good luck with that.

The murder victim, Dante Morgan, was a childhood friend of Johnson's and his business partner in the club. Was she sitting across the table from the man who'd killed him? Dara wondered, a chill pressing against her spine.

“Thanks for taking my case, man,” Johnson said to Mike after the introductions were made and they'd seated themselves around the table.

“Don't thank me. Thank Dara,” said Mike.

“Thanks, sweetheart,” Johnson told her, smirking.

“Don't mention it.” She took out her notebook and turned to Mike, waiting for him to begin the interview.

Mike watched Johnson leer at Dara and seethed, painfully aware that plenty of women went for the professional athlete types with their big bucks and fast cars. Maybe Dara was one of them.

Not that it was any of Mike's business. He was here to do a job, he reminded himself, so he'd better start doing it.

“Tell us what happened,” Mike told Johnson, his voice a little sharper than he'd intended.

Johnson shrugged and furrowed his brow in the worst show of puzzlement Mike had ever seen. The cherry on top of this D-list performance? Johnson's eyes widened with an innocent baby look that didn't really work with all the tattoos, several of which were of naked women.

“I don't know. Someone shot my partner at the club the other night. Now they blame me for it, but I didn't do it.”

“Where did it happen?”

“In the storage closet.”

“Where were you at the time?”

“In my office.”

“Can anyone vouch for you?”

“My hostess, Desiree Campbell.”

“Anyone else?”

“No.”

“What were you doing?”

“Talking about seating at the tables.”

“Why do the police think you did it?”

Johnson hesitated for several beats. “Because I found him. And because we, uh, had a few words earlier in the evening.”

And there it was. Johnson's motive for killing his partner. Mike took care to keep his face blank and his voice casual. “About?”

Johnson stared at him. “I don't like the way he kept the books.”

Yeah, okay, Mike thought, stifling a curse and crossing his arms. He could see where this was going: Johnson was the innocent victim here, a man who had—
alas!
—had the misfortune of coincidentally arguing with his partner the very night he'd been killed by someone else.

So Johnson did it.

At least now Mike knew what he was dealing with.

“I suppose there are dozens of witnesses to the argument,” he asked, uncrossing his arms and picking up his pen again.

Johnson slowly nodded his huge head.

Thinking hard, Mike tapped the pen on the table. Maybe there were some extenuating circumstances he could work with, some way he could piece together a defense. Dara—
Johnson!
—was counting on him.

“You know,” he said idly, doodling on his pad, “juries tend to understand crimes of passion. Say, for example, you and Morgan had an argument and it escalated. Maybe a punch was thrown, things got out of hand. It wouldn't be the end of the world.”

He looked up and waited.

Johnson growled. “I said I didn't do it.”

Riiiiiiiiight
.

And I'm President Obama
.

“Do you have a gun at the club?” Mike continued.

“Yeah, but it was in the safe.”

“Security videos?”

“Not for that part of the club. Police took 'em.”

Mike checked his watch and got up. This conversation was going nowhere fast, and they were running out of time before the hearing. “Here's what'll happen. The prosecutor will read the charges against you, and the judge will ask how you plead. I'll say not guilty. Then I'll ask for bail. The prosecutor will oppose bail because you're wealthy and could flee to anywhere in the world. I'll say you won't flee because of your family. The judge will grant bail, but it'll be high. I'm guessing between a quarter and half a million, and you'll have to come up with twenty percent and surrender your passport. You'll be home by dinner. Any questions?”

Johnson seemed impressed. “Yeah. Can you fast-track my trial or something? I need to get my name cleared and I need to get my club back open.”

“I'll see what I can do.”

“Can they nail me for this, man?”

Mike rubbed his hand across the back of his neck and assessed the evidence. His own personal opinion about Johnson's guilt notwithstanding, they were actually in decent shape.

“No witnesses to the shooting. You have an alibi. No weapon that we know of. Sounds like their case is mostly circumstantial, but we need to see what the forensics reports say. If your alibi holds up, I'd say you've got a fighting chance.”

Jamal and Dara also stood. Dara packed up her notebook.

“Your wife brought a suit for you to wear,” Mike added. “And there's one last thing. My big rule: any client who lies to me gets fired. We clear?”

Unblinking, Johnson held his gaze. “Absolutely.”