Jury of Peers by Troy L Brodsky Read Free Book Online

quickly.
                  "I'll be here all night.  They called me in right away to look at his home computers, financial stuff I guess.  Got some really cool encryption…."
                  Hack cut him off, “I want you to call me every hour with an update no matter what time it is, understand?” 
                  “Yes.”
                  Hack killed the telephone without another word and kicked himself into another gleeful arc.  By the time he reached its zenith, he was angry once again.
                 

Chapter Six
    Insolvent
     
                  The car got dumped between two corrugated steel sheds just over the river.  They changed clothes, stuffed the bloody stuff into a gym bag, and washed their hands in the slush from half of bottle of soda that they'd found in a trash can just outside the Metro.  From there it was a half hour on the green line and a dozen blocks of walking.  They had to go around SMG territory.
                  Saul said nothing.  The sense of relief he’d banked on hadn’t come.  He was no closer now to a real place inside the Widmore Crew than he had been before, and the truth was, this might be the end.  There wasn’t anywhere to run.  He’d seen people try before and it just didn’t work.  Run and someone you loved died.  So he said nothing, letting Bolo go on and on about the sound of the gun crushing the guy’s nose and how the woman screamed and how it took balls to do all of it in a neighborhood like that… that it was what people like that deserved.
                  He went on and on and Saul didn’t care.  Fuck rich people, fuck poor people.  It just didn’t matter; all he wanted was to go home.  But why go there?
    “You didn’t do shit,” Bolo said as they turned up their street.  “Just fucked up my piece is all.”
                  “Sorry.”
                  “Sorry ain’t shit.  You ain’t shit.”
                  They paused at the corner and Saul turned to walk up the alley to his building.
                  “Where you goin’?” Bolo grabbed him by the hair.
                  “Fuck man, fuck!” Saul gasped.
    “Ain’t time for you to go home, it’s time to go talk to Vesper.  Tell ‘em how you oughta just stay on your corner with your little rocks rolled in trash.  Small time bitch.” 
                  “Let go,” Saul twisted around, feeling his coarse hair rip from his scalp.  He pushed at Bolo and was rewarded with a shove that put him on his ass.  “Don’t touch me you little bitch, com’on.”
                  Bolo strode across the street, assuming that Saul would follow. 
                  He did.
                  It always felt grey here, like the wind had blown all of the color out into the suburbs.  Grey like the little girl without any blood inside of her, lifeless, spiritless grey.
    The whole neighborhood felt that way.  It was barren.  Rows of five story black bricked buildings, sterile trees, broken glass, and trash.  Bags of trash, heaps of trash, and migrant trash that just shuffled around from corner to corner like vapid leaves.  People lived here, and they shuffled too.  But there wasn’t any life.
                  During the day it was worse.  In the daytime you could see the grey in the people.  Their hope had taken flight over the river and come to rest in plain sight… but just out of reach.  Saul hated it.  Everyone hated it, but what could you do?  His mom worked all day long and most of the night and all she got was an apartment where she beat rats with pans and tried to get her kids to sleep with cotton in their ears.  Go without the cotton and the roaches would crawl inside–and that hurt like a motherfucker, the constant scratching and pressure until you thought you’d go insane.