Edward decided he’d wait a day to put in a call to Veronica Salazar. He wanted to do some asking around about her first. He went back to his real job, the one paying the bills, and ended up making a small sale to a company looking for a new email server and cyber security system. He got a call from his biggest client, their CEO wanting to make another appointment with him. He went about his business as if it were an ordinary day, all the while in the back of his mind thinking, Shit shit shit.
This reflected Edward’s still being out of touch with the courthouse world. After being in prison for two years, out in the world for one and a half, then trying only one case in the ensuing year, he didn’t know all the players any more. He shouldn’t have gone to Judge Valencia, not on that particular day. On the other hand, it had been a crapshoot. The next judge might be worse. These are the kinds of thoughts that make lawyers wake up at four a.m. In Edward’s case, though, it was something else that did that: his phone ringing at that time of the morning.
‘This is a call from the Harris County Detention Center,’ said an automated voice.
What the hell? Edward looked at the clock as Linda moaned beside him. They didn’t let inmates make calls at this time of the morning. ‘Hello?’ he said automatically.
‘Mr Hall? This is Dr Jones. I’m in the infirmary at the jail. I’m sorry to call you at this time of the morning, but your client is here in the infirmary. He’s been asking for you and he’s very insistent.’
‘Donald’s in the infirmary?’ Edward was confused. The inmates should all be locked down in their cells. ‘Is he sick?’
‘The incident happened hours ago,’ the doctor said.
‘Then why are you just now calling me?’
‘Your client just now regained consciousness.’
Edward was at the jail forty-five minutes later. It’s not possible to get anywhere in Houston in less than forty-five minutes, even at a lightly-trafficked time of the morning. He didn’t have a bar card to show the guard, but they were expecting him, and another guard led him to the jail infirmary.
Bruises don’t show up well on African-American skin, but the black eye was spectacular enough to draw attention, accompanied by a gash on the temple showing the eye had probably been hit by an implement. Donald’s whole face looked swollen.
‘What happened? Did guards attack you?’
Donald shook his head. ‘Inmates. Four of them. We were in the dayroom and one of them kind of motioned me over to this corner. I should’ve known better, but I went over there. Turns out it’s the one spot that’s out of sight of the guard station and the camera.’
He used to know that kind of thing, Edward thought. But Donald hadn’t been in this jail long enough to learn the layout. ‘And?’
‘I just asked what’s going on and that’s when he punched me.’ Donald stopped to swallow. He was stretched out on a metal cot that he almost hid from view. The other beds around them were mostly filled with sleeping inmates. They kept their voices down. ‘He tried to hit me in the throat to cut off my wind but I lowered my chin and blocked that. Then I heard the others coming up behind me.’
‘Three others.’
Donald nodded. Clearing his throat sounded like scraping mortar off brick. ‘One of ’em is going to be limping for the rest of his life, and another one is probably still nursing his swollen nuts, but the other two jumped me and beat me down pretty good. Got me down on the ground.’
That’s all he had to say about that. Edward had witnessed such ‘fights’ in prison. Never as a target, thanks in part to Donald. But when more than one guy got the victim down on the ground, then they could go to work on him, kicking from various angles while the helpless victim tried and failed to cover all his vitals at once. Donald was lucky to be here rather than the morgue.
‘I managed to get to my feet—’
‘Really?’
‘Well, my knees. And I knocked one back far enough that he was in the guards’ line of sight. Still took ’em a hell of a long time to get there.’
Paid off, then, Edward thought. A coordinated attack with the overseers paid to look the other way. Donald was damned lucky to be here.
‘Who were they? What’d they have against you?’
Donald shook his head. ‘Never noticed ’em before. And you know me, Edward, I ain’t done nothin’ to nobody. Hell, I ain’t been here long enough to piss anybody off. I’ve just been keepin’ my head down and shufflin’ along.’
Edward did know that about his friend. As much space as Donald took up, he tried his best to keep a low profile. Didn’t join a gang, didn’t reject them in a way to piss anybody off, just did his time and tried to make each day pass as quickly as possible.
‘Somebody hates you because of your last caper?’ The kidnapping that had made Donald famous in a bad way.
Donald shook his head then groaned. ‘They were hired, Edward, you know that. Somebody wants me dead in here.’
‘Somebody from your prison days?’
Donald shrugged. His eyelids were lowering. But his eyes snapped open for him to say, ‘You’ve got to get me out of here. They say they’ll put me in ad seg, but if the guards’re in on it too …’ Ad seg, administrative segregation, protective custody inside the jail. But Donald was right, he could be protected from inmates but not the keepers.
Edward shook his head. ‘Maybe I could get your bond lowered based on this, but that would take a day or two.’
Donald grinned the most hideous grin ever, with one tooth hanging. ‘Then you need to get yourself put in here with me so you can cover me.’
No, let’s stick with option A. Edward quickly ran through everyone he knew, with the thought of Donald’s eighty-thousand-dollar bond fee the goal. Someone in Edward’s family would have the money, but he didn’t want to go to them. Didn’t really want them to know he was practicing law again. Besides, how could he guarantee Donald wouldn’t skip? It seemed his best option at this point.
‘There’s only one guy,’ Donald said, reading his thoughts.
Edward’s eyes widened. ‘Are you crazy?’
Donald’s eyes were closing. Man, even his eyelids were bruised. ‘I’ll get him to call you.’
‘You will,’ Edward said. ‘You two are phone buddies?’
But his client was asleep, probably from the pain meds pumping into his arm.
Edward looked around, hoping Donald would be safe here, hoping these inmates really were sleeping. He went to find the doctor who had called him.
It was only late that same morning when Edward got the call on his cell phone, the number Donald knew. ‘Edward Hall?’ said a deep voice.
Edward found himself nodding. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘You can come see me. I’m at home.’
‘I can?’ But he was speaking to dead air. That had been the whole call.
Forty-five minutes later Edward knocked on the door of a mansion in The Woodlands, a large, beautiful community north of Houston, where one moved after striking an oil well or an NFL contract. His caller had expected Edward could learn his home address, and Edward had with a couple of calls, finding his caller had paved the way for him by giving permission to let him have the information. Edward looked up at the house. It was large but understated, made of stone that looked old even though the house couldn’t have been more than five years old. The yard sloped down to the street, where Edward saw a security guard in a golf cart sitting idly, not looking at him.
The heavy wooden door opened and Ryan Jennings himself was standing there, in T-shirt and shorts. This close, the African-American running back was an amazing sight. As tall as Donald at six foot five, but where Donald was bulky Jennings was honed. His T-shirt strained around his biceps. His legs, his source of income, were intricately muscled and huge, but he was light on them. Jennings was handsome, too, his short hair showing off a face with imposing cheekbones and a noble nose. His penetrating brown eyes fixed on Edward, who felt like a member of a lesser species.
‘Thank you for seeing me,’ he said.
The football player waved him in and closed the door behind Edward. He still hadn’t spoken. They stood in an entryway that showed imposing twin staircases at the back, forty feet away. An antique credenza sat beside the door. Jennings just stood there. This was as far into the sanctuary as Edward was getting.
‘Did you really agree to do this?’
Jennings poked a finger at him and Edward flinched back. ‘That’s exactly the sort of question I don’t want to be asked by anybody else. Understand?’
‘Yes, sir. But why would you put up his bond?’
Jennings looked angry, but it was just concentration, studying Edward. ‘He gave me back my boy. You understand? Easiest thing for him would’ve been to kill him and run. Nobody’d seen him, he would’ve never been caught. Instead he brought him home. Gave up eight years of his life to do that. People make mistakes. Donald realized his and he made up for it. You never heard me say a word against him, did you?’
That was true. Before and during Donald’s trial the Jennings family had kept conspicuously silent, having no comments for the press and testifying only minimally to the facts of the case. The prosecution hadn’t called Jennings or his wife in the punishment phase to say how this crime had ruined their lives. They’d kept as much out of sight as possible, for one of the most famous men in town and the object of the best-known crime in years.
A checkbook and pen lay on the credenza. Ryan Jennings leaned over them. ‘Here’s how we’re going to do this,’ he said over his shoulder, beginning to write. ‘I’m making out the check to you. You pay the bond fee. Keep my name out of this.’
‘Listen.’ Edward licked his lips, risking further speech. ‘Could we have a’ – he resisted saying photo op – ‘a public occasion where you’re seen making his bail? It would do a lot to show people Donald’s not … What’s the problem?’
Because Jennings was turned back to him, shaking his head. ‘I’ll do this, man, but if you let anybody know it’s me I’ll back right out. I can’t have this scene. I’m doing this because I don’t think he’s a bad guy, but I can’t look like the moron who paid the bail for my son’s kidnapper.’
‘But you are. Not the moron, the good guy who thinks what you just said. Donald’s not a bad guy, he just made a mistake and then made up for it.’ Suddenly Edward was looking him in the eye, talking to him man to man. Jennings, who could have taken Edward’s head between his thumb and fingers and squeezed until his eyes popped out, did him the courtesy of looking him back in the same way. But his eyes were hard as stones. ‘You talk a good game, counselor. But that’s not happening.’
Edward shrugged, accepting. The football star finished writing the check, tore it carefully out, and handed it to Edward. Jennings’ stare said their meeting was concluded.
‘OK, thank you. This is amazingly—’
But Edward found himself back on the front porch, wafted there gently. As he turned back toward the house the door was closing in his face.
Edward raised his hand in a salute. ‘Big fan!’ he called. The door gave him no response.