David Hosp - Among Thieves

It took less than an hour, and then he was ready. He sat at the table at the kitchen, checking over his weapons.

“Are you sure?” Broadark asked at last.

“I am,” Liam replied.

“This was never part of the plan.”

“Plans change.”

“They do,” Broadark agreed. “It’s not always a good thing when they do. If this goes badly, there will be questions. No one wants us to put the organization in this kind of light.”

“It won’t go badly.”

Broadark had nothing to say to that. To question any further would have brought the two men into a confrontation from which there was no backing down, and both of them knew it. He stood and walked over to the window, looking out into the cement yard. “When?” he asked.

Liam was strapping the knife to his ankle. He checked his pistol and slipped a fully loaded clip into the handle. He wouldn’t need the automatic. Not for this task. “Soon,” he said.

Finn worked through the morning. He drafted the motion for a new bail hearing in Devon ’s case, taking extra care to make it a work of his finest advocacy. Once he finished with the motion, he moved on to get some work done on other cases. He could feel Lissa looking up at him on occasion, studying his demeanor. Normally they would talk to each other periodically, and he generally showed her his work so that she could look it over. Not that day, however. He was too wrapped up in his own thoughts, and he didn’t feel like sharing them at the moment.

At one point Lissa got up and walked over to him. “You all right, boss?”

“Fine.”

“You sure?”

He looked up at her. “There’s nothing more I can do,” he said. “I can write the briefs, I can make the arguments, but that’s it.”

She nodded. “That’s true.”

“It pisses me off,” he said. “I should be able to do more.”

She flashed him an understanding smile. “That’s bullshit,” she said. “But at least it’s nice bullshit. It’s what makes you who you are.”

“My bullshit makes me who I am?”

“Yeah,” she said. “It does. True of everybody else, too, so don’t feel bad. Your bullshit is better than most.” She leaned in close to him. “But that doesn’t mean it isn’t bullshit all the same,” she said softly.

He took in a deep breath and exhaled; returned her smile weakly. “Is that all you wanted to say to me? You had to walk across the room to tell me that? I’m full of shit?”

“No,” she said. “That’s not all.”

“What else, then?”

“It’s almost one-thirty.”

“So?”

“So, Sally gets out of school at one-thirty. You’re already going to be late.”

He looked at his watch and sighed again. “Damn, I almost forgot.”

“Almost?”

“Fine, I forgot.” He looked at the papers strewn across his desk. “I have no idea when I’m gonna get the rest of this work done.”

She looked at him for a long moment. He could sense a change in her recently. Something he was having trouble putting his finger on. She had always been one of the harder people he’d known. She didn’t let people in easily, and life seemed to roll around her without making a dent. But she seemed softer now, somehow. Perhaps it was just his imagination.

She walked back to her desk and picked up her car keys. “I’ll get her,” she said.

“You don’t have to,” Finn replied. He stood up and pulled his jacket off the back of his chair, feeling in the pockets for his own keys.

“I don’t mind,” Lissa said.

“I appreciate it, but she’s my responsibility.” He was moving toward the door, but she stepped in front of him.

“Finn,” she said, “she’s not your responsibility. You do understand that, right?”

“We can’t just leave her at the school.”

“I don’t mean right now. She’s not your responsibility long-term.”

“I know,” he said.

She looked at him. “Do you?”

“I do. I just want to do what I can to try and keep her father out of jail.”

“A lot of it’s out of your control, though. Even if you get Devon out on bail, you know he’s gonna go back in after the trial. You’re a good lawyer, but you can’t change the fact that you have a guilty client. Not just guilty; dead to rights.”

“I know,” Finn said. “But I’ve got to try. Maybe with a little time on the outside, Devon can figure out someplace for her to be. Someplace better than where she would otherwise end up.”

“There are lots of kids in the system who do just fine,” Lissa said. “Sally’s tough. She may be fine.”

He nodded. “Maybe. But maybe not.” He tried to step past her, but she moved to block him.

“You wanna tell me what this is really about?”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t bullshit me.”

He put his head down and took a deep breath. “There are moments in life you’d like to have back. Times you wish you could go back and change the things you did-change the things you didn’t do.” He looked up. “The system’s overwhelmed. It’ll put kids anyplace they’re out of the way. The last foster home I was in, I was fifteen. No one in their right mind takes in a fifteen-year-old. But this family ran sort of a group home. They got fifty bucks a week from the state for each kid they took in, so they’d take in anybody. They had about eleven of us when I was there. They had a bunkhouse out in the back where we all slept; one side for the boys and one side for the girls.”

“Sounds cozy.”

“Not the word I would have chosen. There wasn’t a lot of love in the place. And the kids…well, let’s just say the kids had their issues. Three of the older boys, in particular. They were into drugs. Into the gang scene.”

“So were you, right?”

“Fair enough,” Finn said. “But these three were different. Vicious. There was this one little girl, probably around thirteen, who was like a lost soul. See, most of us had been in the system our whole lives. We were used to it. We knew what to expect. But this one girl had grown up with a family. I’m not sure what happened to them; the girl didn’t talk about it. Something bad enough for her to end up in this god-awful place.

“Anyway, she kept to herself mostly. She had a diary and she spent a lot of time writing in that. Like her own form of therapy. One day one of the three boys stole it. He brought it into the boys’ bunkroom and started reading from it. It was sad and pathetic and everyone started laughing. Then this girl walked in and realized what was happening. She went berserk. She attacked the kid who had the book, kicking and screaming at him. He and the two others got a hold of her and just started whaling on her. Beat the hell out of her. She kept fighting, though, as long as she could. Finally, when the fight was gone from her, the three of them picked her up and carried her into the girls’ bunkroom. They kicked everyone out; threatened to kill anyone who ran to the main house-not that I think anyone there would have cared. They locked the door. I can still hear the girl crying.”

Lissa pursed her lips. “That’s not your fault,” she said. “You were a kid, and there were three of them. There was nothing you could have done.”

“Maybe not. But I didn’t even bother trying. You know what I did? I pulled out a bag and threw my shit in it and left. Never went back. Figured I was better off on the street. Still, I like to think that if I had it to do over, I’d do it differently.”

“And this is your chance to prove that?”

Finn shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

Lissa shook her head. “It won’t change what happened. It won’t do anything for that little girl in the bunkhouse, and I’m guessing in the end it won’t do anything for your conscience either.”