Thirty

Thornton reached for the cord on the shade of her office window. Fager was at his window across the parking lot, the only car parked there now his Mercedes. The police had loaded her Aston and Durango on flatbeds and hauled them away.

He waved as the shade came down. Bastard. Those news stories, her face above a black rectangle but leaving no doubt she was naked. Judy, too. He had something to do with it. That wasn’t a move the cops would pull. It would blow up on them at trial, demonstrate malice, unprofessionalism. No law enforcement agency had offered any comment. But Fager had been in the stories, talking about the search of her office, how shocked he was seeing it happen. “A prominent attorney,” he’d said, the same line in every report, “subjected to the humiliation of police intruding into the space where she practices her profession. I can’t imagine the humiliation.”

She got back to what she’d been doing before she’d felt Fager’s eyes on her. She had bank statements, a print-out of her mutual funds and brokerage accounts, and a handwritten list of her other assets on her desk by a coffee mug holding red wine. This was something she told her clients to do: decide what you can turn to cash, fast. Be ready if your best option is running.

She’d thought she was worth a lot more than what she was seeing. Knock taxes off the mutual funds and brokerage accounts, it was even less. She could get a second mortgage on her house. The office she owned outright. It would sell fast. But there were realtors’ commissions, closing costs, and taxes on the appreciation. And the depreciation recapture, don’t forget that. She’d probably have to put on a new roof and fix the sidewalks before it went on the market. When they got to inspection, the things she knew about the plumbing and foundation would come out.

She’d open the safe deposit box in the morning and start selling the jewelry and coins. The guns in the storage unit, the best she could do was call Frank Pacheco and agree on a price. Sight unseen, but a lot of guns, all kinds, she told him. I’m not vouching they’re all clean. I got them from clients, you know.

He said, “I get the picture,” and gave her a price that factored in the risk he’d be buying weapons that could be traced to crimes. He’d pay in cash, right after he moved the guns to one of his places.

She wanted him to do it tonight. The police would learn about the storage unit from the bills they’d rifled. They could be there before him. She gave him the code for the key pad at the entrance to the facility and the combination for the lock on her unit.

He called back not much later. He got past the gate, but the combination to the lock wouldn’t work. In fact, the lock needed a key.

She didn’t remember switching locks. She hadn’t been to the unit in a long time.

She told him to use bolt cutters. He had to go home and would hurry back.

Those news broadcasts … Benny Silva certainly had seen them. He’d be wondering how his movies made it to the small screen. The Supreme Court immediately suspending Judy, Silva would know that meant the end of his blackmail scheme.

The bungalow shook a little. That happened when the garbage trucks came. She wasn’t sure if this was pick-up night. The last thing on her mind.

Pacheco called again. He was inside the storage unit. He needed to give her more money. He didn’t want her resentful next time he might need her speaking in court for his family. Where’d she get the Barrett fifty caliber? Three Uzis? And that old Colt with pearl grips, Wild West stuff. Cherry. He knew a crazy Texan who collected and had too much money.

Someone was at the back door. She told Pacheco to hold.

She opened the door to two Benny Silvas in brown coveralls, caps on their heads saying Silva Enterprises, black hair sticking out above their ears. No, the one in front wasn’t Benny. That scar running across his face, no mustache where his lip was patched together. You could see teeth in the gap, though he wasn’t smiling.

“Mr. Silva, what— ”

His hand came up. A gun pointed at her chest.

The ugly Benny said, “Now we know what it takes to make a lawyer shut up.”

Fager felt like drinking. One thing he hadn’t done after his wife’s murder was get drunk. He’d held it in, packing it down deep, thinking he was turning grief into strength, coal into diamonds. Maybe if he’d gotten drunk he could have cried. And if he’d cried, maybe he wouldn’t have tried to strangle Marcy Thornton in front of news cameras and he’d still have a law practice.

Tonight’s drunk wouldn’t be about grief. He felt like he’d just kicked ass in court when all he’d done was leak Montclaire’s video. Not one of the reporters had said turn it off before they watched to the end. A couple said, “Run it again.” He reached for the bourbon in the bottom drawer. It made him think of the old days, setting up glasses for staff, sometimes taking everyone out for steaks to celebrate. Marcy, too, when she was a baby lawyer, his only associate attorney back then.

A cigar would be great. He had one left in the box under the picture of Winston Churchill, bulldog face scowling and chomping a stogie. He snipped the end, wet it in his mouth, and fired up, sending smoke circles toward the ceiling. Then he leaned back in his old-style oak lawyer’s chair, feet on the windowsill, facing the parking lot, Marcy’s shiny red Aston no longer out there sneering at him.

The garbage truck cut off his view of her window where her shadow had been. It rolled to the back of her office and parked at the end of the walk where he’d tripped and fallen. He saw her shadow again, rising, then moving toward the rear door. A garbage man was there. Now another, rolling one of those oversized black cans on wheels, laying it on its side.

That wasn’t what garbage men did.

He didn’t see the door open, but he saw them pulling Marcy outside, one stuffing a rag in her mouth. They looked alike, those two. They dragged her toward the garbage can, pushing her feet in first, punching her to stop kicking.

Fager swung his heels off the windowsill and reached for the phone to call 911.

Benny-with-the-scar grabbed her in a head lock. Benny-without-the-scar shoved a sock in her mouth. She tried scratching the one holding her head and he punched her in the nose. They say you see stars. She saw galaxies.

She blinked her eyes clear. Her feet were about to go inside the garbage can. She kicked and the real Benny punched her in the stomach, right under her ribs, knocking the wind out of her.

She felt the black plastic edge of the garbage can scraping her ribs as they pushed her deeper. She threw out her arms, catching an edge in her armpit. They pried the arm loose and the scarred Benny hit her in the back of the head.

The black plastic was up to her chin. One arm inside already, the fingers of her other hand being twisted to make her let go. The garbage can was moving, turning her around, a last glimpse of the parking lot before the lid came down.

There was Walter Fager in his window, standing, a phone to his ear, looking her way.

She tried screaming: Get out here and help me, call the police. But the sock was so far back in her throat she gagged.

For a second, Fager met her eyes.

The hand with the phone dropped to his side.

With the other, he closed the shade.