The Judge by Peter Colt

Author:Peter Colt [Peter Colt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2023-12-22T00:00:00+00:00

NINE

We shook hands in front of the restaurant, and I watched Terry for a few seconds as he walked back to the courthouse. He wasn’t exactly unsteady on his feet; he was just walking like a man who had a little more than two Martinis. Maybe he had a taste before lunch, something to steady his nerves before his hearing? I didn’t love thinking about it.

I turned and started back to my office. Terry had represented both Lee Raymond AKA Raymond Lee Keith and the late, gravity-challenged Lonnie Cusick. The two men were like a Venn diagram overlapping at my friend Terry McVicker. My recent history had taught me that I had a blind spot when it came to friends. On the other hand, why would Terry hire me to help the judge if he was the brains behind the blackmail scheme?

Johnny O’Day was also their lawyer, according to Terry … which, if he were trying to draw attention away from himself, another person with overlapping involvement with the two men, would make sense. Even if Terry was behind it all, I still had to check out O’Day. After all, sometimes things were just coincidences and friends were just friends. I had to trust somebody sometimes.

It was cold enough out that by the time I got to my office, the tips of my toes hurt and I was pretty sure that the tops of my ears had no feeling. My missing earlobe itched, and my nose was running slightly less than the leaky faucet in my bathroom. Normally, after a lunch like that, I would have been ready for a nap. The walk back to the office in the cold had countered the effects of the heavy lunch and two beers. That was the magic of Boston in January.

Inside, the office was warm and the clanking of the radiators was reassuring. I sat down at my desk and took out the yellow legal pad with the case notes on it and a felt-tip pen. I wrote down everything that had happened to date. I wrote out the names of the two lawyers as well as Lee Raymond and Lonnie Cusick. I doodled, drawing arrows back and forth. It didn’t get me any closer to figuring out how to help the judge.

I picked up a pipe and packed it with a mixture from Dunhill’s. It was called Durbar and had a lot of Turkish Latakia in it. It was strong and rich, giving off a cloud of nice-smelling smoke when I got the pipe drawing. I cracked the office window to let some of the smoke out. Then I picked up the phone and managed to get through to Danny Sullivan.

‘Hey, Andy, how’s the boy?’ he asked out of habit when he came on the line. Danny was successful enough to have a secretary who was a very efficient layer between him and everything.

‘Not bad. I met with your banker friend.’

‘How’d it go?’

‘It was educational.’

‘Yeah, he called me earlier. He said he liked you and that it was an interesting conversation.

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.