The Brethren by John Grisham Read Free Book Online Page B

That’s all we really care about.”
    Lake was nodding his agreement. Protect the economy, keep the peace, and American voters would elect anyone. “I have a good man to run the campaign,” Lake said, anxious to offer something.
    “Who?”
    “Mike Schiara, my chief of staff. He’s my closest adviser, a man I trust implicitly.”
    “Any experience on the national level?” Teddy asked, knowing full well there was none.
    “No, but he’s quite capable.”
    “That’s fine. It’s your campaign.”
    Lake smiled and nodded at the same time. That was good to hear. He was beginning to wonder.
    “What about Vice President?” Teddy asked.
    “I have a couple of names. Senator Nance of Michigan is an old friend. There’s also Governor Guyce from Texas.”
    Teddy received the names with careful deliberation. Not bad selections, really, though Guyce would never work. He was a rich boy who’d skated through collegeand golfed through his thirties, then spent a fortune of his father’s money to purchase the governor’s mansion for four years. Besides, they wouldn’t have to worry about Texas.
    “I like Nance,” Teddy said.
    Then Nance it would be, Lake almost said.
    They talked about money for an hour, the first wave from the PAC’s and how to accept instant millions without creating too much suspicion. Then the second wave from the defense contractors. Then the third wave of cash and other untraceables.
    There’d be a fourth wave Lake would never know about. Depending on the polls, Teddy Maynard and his organization would be prepared to literally haul boxes filled with cash into union halls and black churches and white VFWs in places like Chicago and Detroit and Memphis and throughout the Deep South. Working with locals they were already identifying, they would be prepared to buy every vote they could find.
    The more Teddy pondered his plan, the more convinced he became that the election would be won by Mr. Aaron Lake.
    Trevor’s little law office was in Neptune Beach, several blocks from Atlantic Beach, though no one could tell where one beach stopped and the other started. Jacksonville was several miles to the west and creeping toward the sea every minute. The office was a converted summer rental, and from his sagging back porch Trevor could see the beach and the ocean and hear the seagulls. Hard to believe he’d been renting the place for twelve years now. Early in the lease he’d enjoyedhiding on the porch, away from the phone and the clients, staring endlessly at the gentle waters of the Atlantic two blocks away.
    He was from Scranton, and like all snowbirds, he’d finally grown weary of gazing at the sea, roaming the beaches barefoot, and throwing bread crumbs to the birds. Now he preferred to waste time locked in his office.
    Trevor was terrified of courtrooms and judges. While this was unusual and even somewhat honorable, it made for a different style of lawyering. It relegated Trevor to paperwork—real estate closings, wills, leases, zoning—all the mundane, nondazzling, small-time areas of the profession no one told him about in law school. Occasionally he handled a drug case, never one involving a trial, and it was one of his unfortunate clients at Trumble who’d connected him with the Honorable Joe Roy Spicer. In short order he’d become the official attorney for all three—Spicer, Beech, and Yarber. The Brethren, as even Trevor referred to them.
    He was a courier, nothing more or less. He smuggled them letters disguised as official legal documents and thus protected by the lawyer-client privilege. And he sneaked their letters out. He gave them no advice, and they sought none. He ran their bank account offshore and handled phone calls from the families of their clients inside Trumble. He fronted their dirty little deals, and in doing so avoided courtrooms and judges and other lawyers, and this suited Trevor just fine.
    He was also a member of their conspiracy, easilyindictable should they ever be