The Attorney by Steve Martini Read Free Book Online Page B

expletives, mostly to himself. He's having difficulty getting to his feet. What I have witnessed is as close to a hit and-no-run as I am ever likely to get.
    He crawls on hands and knees. There are a lot of slurred words here, feeble attempts at foul language, but nothing that could be called threatening, except perhaps to the demented, alcohol-sodden mind of another drunk.
    He stops crawling long enough to raise one hand, a finger in the air for emphasis, his motions failing to synchronize with his words.
    Jack Daniel's sense of timing.
    Her right hand is now lost in the main pocket of a large purse that hangs from a strap on her shoulder. It stays there, making me wonder what's inside.
    He's talking trash. "Bitch" is every other word. Those that I can understand.
    "Come on. Get up. You can do it," she says.
    Her body language almost wills him onto his feet. She beckons him with the curved fingers of her other hand, the one not buried in her purse.
    He struggles to get up.
    "Sure. That's it. Get up. Come on over here and kick my ass.
    You're the man. You can do it." He is up, stooped, wobbling and unsure, a stumbling lexicon of slurred epithets. Moment of truth, her elbow begins to flex.
    It happens in the flash of an eye, a marked instant of sobriety.
    The trash talk ceases, a reckoning which reveals that even to a booze-burned brain there can be a near-death experience. The pins go out from under him. He is again sitting on his ass on the ground, thirty feet from her, looking up in wonderment as if asking the silent question--"How'd I get down here?" She shakes her head more in disappointment than contempt, then fishes in her purse and comes up with keys. She strides to the back door of the building, not even taking notice of him now, and works the locks like a jailer, first the steel bars and then the wooden door behind them. An instant later, senorita of your darkest dreams disappears into the shadows of her shop.
    If there was any doubt as to my quarry, it is resolved by the plates on her car: blue letters on a white background--the word zoland--not so much a place as a state of mind, an empire of attitude as dark as her attire.
    I figure there's no sense waiting. Hit her while she's on a psychic high. I put my coffee on the floor in the passenger-side well and step out, slamming the door of the Jeep. I walk as I wonder. Did she have a piece in her purse? Would she have used it? I'll never know. Maybe if she'd gotten the chance to shoot the drunk, she might have been sufficiently giddy with euphoria to give up the whereabouts of Amanda Hale. Maybe. It certainly would have made me a witness with leverage--make my day.
    I head down the side street, around the corner, toward the front of the building, taking my time, so as to give her a chance to open up. When I get there the door is still locked, lights off in the front of the shop though I can see her moving in the shadows behind the counter inside.
    She appears to be reading mail, slitting open envelopes. I tap on the glass and she looks up.
    "I'm closed." She dismisses me. Her gaze returns to the mail.
    "Sign says you're open." I shout through the door, where the hours are posted: "8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m." It is now nearly nine o'clock. I point to my watch and to the sign on the door.
    "I told you I'm closed." I knock again.
    She looks at me, this time with real irritation, studying me, then takes her purse from the counter, slings it over her shoulder, one hand buried inside.
    With a look of exasperation she comes around the counter, turns the lock on the inside, and opens the door just a crack, the security chain still on.
    "What part of closed don't you understand?" she says. Her hand is still buried deep in the dark recesses of her purse. At the moment, I suspect I am living more dangerously than I want to know.
    I slip a business card through the crack. "I could tell you I represent the man you just ran down on the street, but that would be a lie." I give her my