Family Values by Ford G. M

Author:Ford, G. M.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: eBook ISBN: 9781477808979
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2017-08-29T04:00:00+00:00

“One hundred forty-six thousand dollars and eighty-three cents,” she said, pointing at the computer screen. “Out of pocket in the past year and a half. He took her up to Providence in Everett. Gene therapy. That’s why it took a while to find.”

“Ibrahim didn’t have pockets that deep,” I pointed out.

“No . . . he didn’t.”

“And the only one of the five cases they were pressing against you where somebody does have that sort of loose change is the Harrington case, but they don’t have anybody they’re trying to spring from jail. Quite the contrary. They’ve already got their daughter’s murderer convicted and doing life without, over in Walla Walla.”

“Then what?”

“Clueless.”

“You know,” Rebecca said in a low voice. “I feel a little better about the whole thing now. I sorta don’t blame Ibrahim for what he did. We let people like him give their lives to public service, and then we nickel-and-dime them over the most precious things in their lives. It’s just not right.”

“He tried to tell me,” I said after a quiet moment.

“Who?”

“Ibrahim. The last thing he said to me was to the effect that family was everything. I think he was . . . you know . . . trying to apologize. Trying to tell me that he’d only done what he needed to do.”

“So who came up with the cash then? That’s a lot of loose change,” Gabe said. “Somebody had to set this thing in motion. And why?”

I just shook my head.

Rebecca pushed herself to her feet. “I’m on TV in the morning. I better see if I can put together something to wear.”

Gabe was chewing. I leaned back against the sink.

“You made handling the brother look pretty easy last night.”

“It was easy.”

I waited for Gabe to swallow. “How’d you know that cop?” I asked.

“He tried to nail an assault rap to me once.”

“Was he successful?”

“We’re standing here talking, aren’t we?”

I wasn’t sure whether the “we” referred strictly to Gabe or to both of us, so I segued. “Gabriella Funicello, huh?”

“You make any Annette Funicello jokes, and I swear to God, I’ll shoot you.”

I kept my mouth shut. I could hear Rebecca thrashing about in the bedroom.

“You take a lot of crap about your name as a kid?” I asked.

“For a while,” Gabe said. “Took a lot of crap about a lot of things. High school’s tough that way. I wanted to play on the football team, but they wouldn’t let me. You’d have thought I wanted to burn babies on the town square.”

“Where was this?”

“Topeka, Kansas.”

“What brought you out here?”

“Topeka was a tough place to be genetically ambiguous.”

“I’ll bet.”

“My family wasn’t much. Just livin’ hand to mouth. Havin’ a kid like me was hard on them. They weren’t exactly deep thinkers. There was nothin’ holding me there.”

“Is it better here?”

“Around here you could marry the family pet and nobody’d give a shit, except maybe the ASPCA. In Topeka you’d look out the window and there’d be a mob outside with shovels and rakes and torches .

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.