J Ward: Crave

As the steel door opened down at the end of the hall, Billy sat up a little straighter in his chair.

The woman who came in was a sight to see, all right, but not for the reason most of the freaks here were. She was about ten feet tall and had blond hair that was always up in a twist on her head. Wearing a perfectly fitted suit and a long, formal coat, he knew without asking that her purse and her briefcase were worth more than he had in his 401(k).

To say nothing about that huge gold rope around her neck.

As a couple of guards passed her, they also stretched up their spines and dropped their voices… and immediately looked over their shoulders to get a look-see at the back of her.

And when she came up to the Plexiglas partition in front of him, he was glad he’d already slid the thing back, because he got to smell her perfume.

God… it was always the same. The scent of rich and expensive.

“Hi, Billy, how’s Tom doing at the police academy?”

Like a lot of Beacon Hill types, Grier Childe’s intonation made a simple question seem better than something Shakespeare had written. But unlike those tight-asses, she wasn’t a snot and her smile was genuine. She always asked about his son and his wife and she really looked at him, meeting his eyes like he was so much more than just a desk jockey.

“He’s doin’ great.” Billy grinned and crossed his arms over his puffed-up chest. “Graduating in June. Working out of Southie. He’s a marksman like his pops-kid could take out a tin can from a mile away.”

Unfortunately, that reminded him of Coke Girl, but he pushed the image right out of the way. Much better to enjoy the view of Ms. Childe, Esq.

“It doesn’t surprise me that Tommy’s an ace.” She signed into the log and braced a hip on the counter. “As you said, he takes after you.”

Even after two years of this, he still couldn’t believe she stopped to talk to him. Yeah, sure, the DA types and the regular public defenders chatted him up, but she came from one of those old-school, white-shoe firms-and usually that meant just the facts on where their clients were.

“So how’s your Sara doing?” she asked.

As they talked, he typed her name into the system to pull up who she’d been assigned to. About every six months or so, she came up on rotation as a public defender. It was, of course, pro bono for her. Her hourly rates were undoubtedly so expensive, he was damn sure the clients she got here couldn’t afford more than two words from her, much less a whole hour… or, Christ, even a case’s worth of time.

When he saw the name that was next to hers, he frowned.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

Well, no, it wasn’t. “Yeah. You’re good.”

Because he was going to make it his business for her to be.

He reached to the side for a stack of files. “Here’s the paperwork on your client. If you go to number one, we’ll bring him out to you.”

“Thanks, Billy. You’re the best.”

After he buzzed her through the main door into the jail’s receiving and processing unit, she walked off to the room he’d given her-which just happened to be right next to his office. Making a note in the computer, he picked up the phone and dialed down to holding.

When Shawn C. answered, he said, “Bring up number five-four-eight-nine-seventy, last name Rothe. For our Ms. Childe.”

Little silence. “He’s a big one.”

“Yeah, and listen-could you have a talk with him? Maybe remind him how being polite to his counsel’ll make things easier on him.”

There was another pause. “And I’ll just wait outside the door when he’s in with her. Tony’ll cover me down here.”

“Good. Yeah, that’s good. Thanks.”

As Billy hung up, he wheeled himself around to face the security monitoring screens. In the lower left one, he watched as Ms. Childe sat down at a table, cracked open the file, and looked at the reports in it.

He was going to keep his eye on her until she was safely out of there.

The thing was, down at the jail, there were two kinds of people: insiders and outsiders. Outsiders got treated polite and all, but insiders… particularly nice, young insiders with beautiful smiles and a lot of class… they got taken care of.

And that meant Shawn C., the guard, would be parked out in the hall, looking through the chicken-wire window the entire time that that homicidal maniac who’d been arrested for cage fighting was in with their girl.

If that motherfucker so much as breathed wrong around her, well… suffice it to say that in Billy’s shop, no one was above a little corrective action: All the guards and staff knew about the dark corner in the basement where there were no security cameras and no one could hear an asshole scream when payback turned into a bitch.

Billy leaned back in his chair and shook his head. Nice girl in there, real nice. Course, given what had happened to her brother… Hard lives had a way of making for nice, didn’t they.

Grier Childe sat in front of a stainless-steel table on a cold stainless-steel chair that was across from another stainless-steel chair. All of the furniture was bolted to the floor and the only other fixtures were the security camera up in the corner and an overhead lightbulb that had a cage around it. The walls were concrete block that had been painted so many times it was nearly wallpaper smooth, and the air smelled like rotgut floor cleaner, the cologne of the last attorney who’d been in the room, and old cigarettes.

The place couldn’t have been more different from where she usually worked. The Boston offices of Palmer, Lords, Childe, Stinston & Dodd looked like a museum of nineteenth-century furniture and artwork. PLCS &D had no armed guards, no metal detectors, and nothing was screwed into place so it couldn’t be stolen or thrown at somebody.

There the uniforms came from Brooks Brothers and Burberry.

She’d been doing pro bono public defending for about two years, and it had taken her at least twelve months to get in good with the front desk and the staff and the guards. But now it was like old-home week whenever she came here, and she honestly loved the people.

Lot of good folks doing hard jobs in the system.

Opening up the file of her newest client, she reviewed the charges, intake form, and history: Isaac Rothe, age twenty-six, apartment down on Tremont Street. Unemployed. No priors. Arrested along with eight others as part of a bust the night before on an underground gambling and fighting ring. No warrant needed because the fighters were trespassing on private property. According to the police report, her client was in the ring at the time the police infiltrated. Apparently the guy he’d fought was getting treated at Mass General-

It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday morning… Do you know where your life is?

Keeping her head down, Grier squeezed her eyes shut. “Not now, Daniel.”

I’m just saying. As her dead brother’s voice drifted in and out of her head from behind, the disembodied sound made her feel utterly crazy. You’re thirty-two years old, and instead of cozying up to some hot boy toy, you’re sitting here in the police station with sucky coffee-

“I don’t have any coffee.”

At that moment, the door swung wide and Billy rolled in. “Thought you might like some wake-up.”

Bingo, her brother said.

Shut. Up, she thought back at him.

“Billy, that’s really kind of you.” She took what the supervisor offered, the warmth of the paper cup bleeding into her palm.

“Well, you know, it’s dishwater. We all hate it.” Billy smiled. “But it’s a tradition.”

“It sure is.” She frowned as he lingered. “Something wrong?”

Billy patted the vacant chair next to him. “Would you mind sitting here for me?”