Rough Men by Aric Davis Read Free Book Online

bad guys; sometimes it means some poor assholeis up to his knees in bullshit. I had a case a few years ago where a guy I wound up working with had been held for six months on a hundred-thousand-dollar bond for possession of heroin. Now, this poor guy had maintained since day one that the ‘heroin’ that he had was just a bag of vitamins that had melted together while he ran in the rain. ‘Bullshit,’ said the cops. ‘We tested it. Heroin.’
    “Except, guess what? They hadn’t, and my client was telling the truth. You will never believe the hurdles I had to jump just to get that judge to finally test the fucking dope. That put some egg on some people’s faces, let me tell you. Here’s the thing, though. By then, the guy had lost his wife over it, had terrible custody issues, the whole nine yards. I begged that poor asshole to sue the hell out of them, but he wouldn’t. Settled out of court for like fifty thousand dollars. Pennies for what he could have had. Pennies for what he deserved.”
    Lou’s story had only made the three of them feel worse, and he must have seen it on their faces. “But seriously, guys? Things like that are few and far between.” He clapped his hands. “Let’s get to it, then.
    “What we need to do now is figure out what exactly you want to say to the press, plus the community at large, and then get it to them. We either establish that you’re victims in this—and you are, you’ve lost your son, for God’s sake—or you risk coming off as complicit in what happened. I don’t think it does anyone any good to keep on waiting, you or them. What do you want to say?”
    “I’m not sure,” said Alison. “I guess I would want people to know that, as his mother, this affects me very deeply. And even though I’m as horrified as everyone else by what Alex did, and certainly ashamed, I’m still mourning my son.”
    “Absolutely. There are a few factors in play here, though, guys. What you say, how it’s perceived by the media, and then how that spin is taken by the public. Now, we need to word thisin a way that elicits sympathy without coming anywhere close to outright asking for it.
    “And then there’s the fact that you, Will, are in the public eye a little bit. That’s another potential complication. It’s extremely important that we handle it right.”
    Will gave his head a shake as if to jar it into service. “What the hell are you talking about?”
    Leo opened palms on the table. “The novels you’ve written, Will. No one would ever connect them to anything insidious under normal circumstances, but people get killed in both of them—in the second one, quite a number of them, if I recall correctly.”
    “You are fucking kidding me. Those are
stories
.”
    “I’m not saying that it would be fair for you to be judged over a work of fiction, but it’s reality. People, and lots of them, are going to be judging your actions as parents, and you need to accept that. No matter how well we spin this, and no matter how well the media behaves, there are still going to be people out there that regard you as, at best, bad parents.”
    The kitchen went quiet. Outside, an engine rumbled—one of the TV trucks, maybe, shifting its position—then went silent.
    A black emptiness yawned open in Will. Like opening a tap, he let the rage fill it. “Well, at worst, what will they think?” he snapped. “We weren’t the best parents—me especially—but we did the best we could with Alex.”
No, you didn’t.
And just like that, the rage drained out of him again.
    “That,” said Lou, “is the exact opposite of the attitude you need to have. Think contrite. I’m going to put something together, and then we’ll all sit here and go over it, and maybe I’ll let you make some suggestions, as long as they’re polite and you don’t make me feel too bad about needing to edit my work. Which reminds me, have you talked to your publisher yet, Will?”
    “Shit.”

Hi Jack,

I feel it’s