Black River by Ford G. M

Author:Ford, G. M. [Ford, G. M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: thriller, Mystery, Seattle, Hard-Boiled, Suspense, Crime
ISBN: 9780061851971
Google: 2AgPcv-mn-AC
Amazon: B0CG167VRS
Goodreads: 10202843
Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
Published: 2002-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

22

Friday, October 20 5:54 p.m.

She was right where he expected to find her. Leaning back in a booth at Vito's, a half-empty martini glass on the table in front of her. On the jukebox, Otis Redding was working his way through "I've Been Loving You Too Long."

Corso stood in the doorway until his eyes adjusted to the deep-space dark. Half a dozen regulars held down the bar stools. Renee Rogers had the booths to herself.

He got all the way to the table before she looked up and made eye contact.

"Well, well," she said. "I guess I'm going to have to work on being less predictable." She gestured with her hand for Corso to take a seat.

"Good thing Elkins didn't want to cross-examine," he said.

"Mercifully." She raised her glass in a toast, took a sip of the clear liquid.

"Klein's on a roll in there."

Her eyes were suddenly serious. "It's too damn easy," she said.

"How's that?"

She thought it over. "It's hard to describe," she said finally. "You do this for as long as I have and you get a feel for the pace of a trial. The ebb and flow. A trial falls into a rhythm, like a song."

"And?"

She waved a hand and looked at the ceiling. "Something's not right. Raymond can feel it too. It's hard to describe. The timing is off. It's like we're rolling downhill with no brakes." She looked over at Corso and made a face. "It's a lawyer thing."

"You shared this with Klein?"

She snorted. "Both Ray and I tried, but Warren doesn't want to hear about it. He's convinced his case is so airtight that Elkins's finally giving up the ghost and facing the inevitable."

"Last time I saw the evidence connecting Balagula to the construction companies, it seemed pretty thin to me."

"It still is. It's the weak link in the case. Balagula did a great job of insulating himself from their businesses. No matter how you look at it, the construction trail always leads back to Harmon and Swanson."

"The two guys they found floating in San PabloBay."

"And the only two people on earth who could tie Balagula directly to the contractors." She took another small sip from her drink. "You were at the second trial. Elkins objected to every chart, every graph, and every witness I put up there. He had citations for every instance and objection."

"I remember."

"Today, he's Mr. Rogers. He gets up just oftenenough to look like he's doing something. Last time out, it took us two weeks to get through what we got through today in two hours. He's going through the motions. I don't get it."

"Maybe Klein's right. Maybe he has got Balagula by the balls."

She gave a grudging nod. "Maybe," she said. "If we can prove that Balagula and Ivanov arranged for the fake inspections and the fabricated core tests, then by extension we prove they must have had some interest in the companies involved; otherwise there'd be no reason for them to be going to all that trouble and taking all that risk.

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