Harlan Coben - Don’t Let Go

He stares at my hand as if I’m holding a turd in it. I smile at him. I give him the crazy “I don’t give any Fs” eyes. He scuttles back a bit.

“I’m here to save your career, Simon.”

“Who are you?”

“Nap Dumas.”

My intent with this whole play is not to hurt him so much as bewilder and disorient. This is a man who is used to being in control, to neat lines and rules, to making his problems go away with phone calls to well-placed sources. He is not accustomed to off-the-beaten-path conflict or lack of control, and if I play it right, I can take advantage of that.

“I’m... I’m calling the police.”

“No need,” I say, spreading my arms. “I’m a cop. What can I do for you?”

“You’re a police officer?”

“I am.”

His face turns a tad redder. “I’ll have your badge.”

“For illegal parking?”

“For assault.”

“The car door? That was an accident, sorry. But, sure, let’s call more cops to the scene. You can see about having my badge for opening a car door. And I” — I point to myself with my thumb — “can see about having you disbarred.”

Simon Fraser is still on the ground. I hover over him, not really giving him room to rise without my help. It’s not an uncommon power play. I reach out my hand again. If he tries anything — a possibility at this stage — I’m ready. He takes my hand and I pull him up.

Simon Fraser brushes himself off. “I’m leaving,” he announces.

He walks over, picks up his phone, brushes that off too like it’s a small dog. I can see the cracked screen from here. Now that there is some distance, he glares at me.

“You’ll pay for any damage.”

I smile back at him. “Nah.”

He glances at his car, but mine still blocks the driver’s door. I can tell he’s now calculating the pros and cons of crawling across the passenger seat and driving away.

“You tell me what I need to know,” I say, “we keep this all between us.”

“And if I don’t tell you?”

I shrug. “I destroy your career.”

He snickers. “You think you can?”

“Not sure, to be honest. But I won’t rest until I do. I have nothing to lose, Simon. I don’t care if you” — I make quote marks with my fingers — “‘have my badge.’ I’m single. I have no social standing. In sum, to repeat: I have nothing to lose.”

I take a step closer.

“But you, on the other hand, well, you have a family, a reputation, what the papers like to call” — again with the finger quotes — “‘standing in the community.’”

“You can’t threaten me.”

“I just did. Oh, and if somehow I can’t destroy your reputation, one day I’ll come by and kick your ass. Plain and simple. Old-school.”

He looks at me in horror.

“My brother is dead, Simon. You may be standing in the way of me finding out who killed him.” I take another step toward him. “Do I look like the kind of guy who will just let that slide?”

He clears his throat. “If this has something to do with the work Officer Rex Canton did for our law firm...”

“As a matter of fact, it does.”

“... then I can’t help you. As I’ve already explained, the work falls under attorney-client privilege.”

“Not when that work you hired him to do is a crime, Simon.”

Silence.

“Ever heard of entrapment?”

Another throat clear, less sure this time. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“You hired Officer Rex Canton to get dirt on ex-husbands so as to benefit your clients.”

Simon snaps into lawyer mode. “One, I wouldn’t characterize Officer Canton’s work in that way. Two, having someone do background checks on the opposition is neither illegal nor unethical.”

“He wasn’t doing background checks, Simon.”

“You have no proof—”

“Sure I do. Pete Corwick, Randy O’Toole, and Nick Weiss. Do those names ring a bell?”

Silence.

“Cat got your tongue, Counselor?”

More silence.

“By startling coincidence, Officer Rex Canton happened to arrest all three of these men for drunk driving. By startling coincidence, your firm represented all three of those men’s wives in custody battles at the time of those arrests.”

I grin.

He tries: “That isn’t proof of a crime.”

“Hmm. Think the media will see it that way too?”

“If you breathe a word of these unfounded accusations to the press—”

“You’ll have my badge, I get it. Look, I’m going to ask you two questions. If you answer them honestly, that’s it. Your short nightmare known as ‘me’ is over. If you don’t answer them, however, I go to the papers and the American Bar Association and I tweet out what I know on Facebook or whatever the kids call it nowadays. Fair enough?”

Simon Fraser wouldn’t say it, but I could see from the slump in his shoulders that I had him.

“So here is the first question: What do you know about the woman who worked with Rex on the DUI stings?”

“Nothing.”

The answer came fast.

“You know he used a woman to seduce the guys into excess drinking, right?”

“Men flirting with women in bars.” Simon Fraser shrugs, trying to recover a bit of his normal bluster now. “The law doesn’t care why they drink, just how much.”

“So who is she?”

“No idea,” he says, and his words have the ring of truth. “Do you really think anyone in my firm, especially me, would want to know details like that?”

No. It was a long shot but worth taking. “Second question.”

“ Final question,” he counters.

“Who hired your firm to set up the DUI the night Rex Canton was murdered?”

Simon Fraser hesitates. He is thinking it over. I let him. The red is gone from his face now, replaced with something more in the ash family.

“Are you implying that Officer Canton’s, uh, work for our firm led to his murder?”

“More than implying.”

“You have evidence of that?”

“An assassin flew in for just that purpose. He rented a car and headed to that bar. He pretended to get drunk with Rex’s female associate. He waited until Officer Canton pulled him over. Then he shot and killed him.”

He seems taken aback by this.

“It was a setup, Simon. Pure and simple.”

It shouldn’t have come to this — me hanging out in a parking lot making threats. I think Simon Fraser knows that now. He is more dazed now than when the car door knocked him on his ass.

“I’ll get you the name.”

“Good.”

“I can check the billing after lunch,” he says, checking his watch. “I’m late to see a client.”

“Simon?”

He looks at me.

“Skip the lunch. Get the name now.”

I’m blocking on Maura.

I’m doing it for several reasons. The most obvious, of course, is so that I can concentrate on the case at hand. Emotion will not help. I am obviously more driven on this case because of my personal connections here — you, Maura — but I can’t let it cloud my brain or allow wants to twist my thinking.

In short: I can’t help but hope.

There is a chance, slight as it might be, that there is a reasonable answer to all this and that when Maura and I see each other again... when I think of that moment, my mind goes to places it shouldn’t. It goes to a future and long walks holding hands and longer nights under the sheets and then it goes to children and repainting the back deck and coaching Westbridge Little League and, yes, of course, I know how silly this all sounds and I would never voice this to anyone and perhaps again you are witnessing what I miss without you in my life.

It’s crazy enough I talk to my dead brother, right?

We sit in Simon Fraser’s office. The tall woman hands Simon a file. He opens it, and something comes across his face.