Boone's in a lot longer.
After all, he hit a cop.
A detective, no less.
In a courthouse hallway.
And Boone didn't just punch Harrington once. He went off on himbig heavy hands and muscles hard from years of surfing slamming punch after punch into Harrington's face, ribs, and stomach until Johnny Banzai managed to get some kind of judo hold on him and choke him out.
Now Boone lies on a metal bench in the cell and nobody fucks with him. He shares the cell with mostly blacks, Mexicans, and some white-trash drunks, bikers, and tweekers and nobody fucks with him.
He hit a cop.
A detective, no less.
In a courthouse hallway.
Boone could run for president of the cell and win by acclamation. They love him in there. Guys are offering him their bologna sandwiches.
He's not hungry.
Too fucking miserable to eat.
It's over, he thinks. I took Harrington's bait like the chump fish I am, and now I'm looking at a felonious assault rap on a law enforcement officer. That means certain jail time, and my PI card is gonzo.
Half The Dawn Patrol's pissed at me and the other half must think I'm a total barney, and they're totally correct in that. I let this Roddick babe play me like a fish, make me chase her like she didn't want to be caught, and then, bang, she turns around and rams a hole in the boat.
And we're all going down with it.
Roddick set us up. She was never going to testify against Danny. She sold the insurance company a story so it would deny Silver's claim. Then he could sue for the big bucks when she changed her story. The whole chase thing was to make us want her more. And it worked.
Judge Hammond will deny Alan's motion for a mistrial and grant Todd's motion for a directed verdict. When court reconvenes in the morning, he'll instruct the jury that the insurance company has already been found guilty and that all they need to decide is how much to award in punitive damages.
Which will be in the millions.
And Alan will be referred to the State Bar Association for ethics charges, not to mention the district attorney's office for suborning perjury. So will Pete.
Her career is fucked. She'll be lucky if she keeps her Bar card, never mind make partner. If she does manage to stay in the law biz, she'll be doing fender benders and slip-and-falls until her hair is gray.
A skinny white tweeker approaches Boone and shoves a couple of pieces of stale bread at him. “You want my sammich?”
“No, thanks.”
The tweeker hesitates, his shrunken meth-reduced mouth trembling with anxiety. “You want a blow job?”
“Get away from me.”
The tweeker sidles off.
But this is what life's going to be, Boone thinks. Stale “sammiches,” tweekers for friends, and offers of jailhouse love.
He rolls over and faces the wall, his back to the cell.
No one's going to fuck with him.
104
Petra sits on a plastic chair bolted to the wall of the receiving station at the downtown jail.
She's glad to be there, though, glad to be anywhere that isn't in the proximity of Alan Burke, who'd gone off on her like a pit bull on crank.
“Good job,” he'd said, storming down the street outside the courthouse.
“I didn't know,” she said, working hard to keep up with him.
He stopped and whirled on her. “It's your job to know! It's your job to get witnesses ready to testify! For our side, Petra! Not the other side! It's my fault for not having mentioned that earlier, I guess!”
“You're right, of course.”
“I'm right?” he yelled, holding his arms out like Christ crucified, spinning in a 360 and yelling to everybody on Broadway, “Hey, I'm right! Did you hear that? The associate attorney who's never tried a case in her fucking life tells me I'm right! Does it get any better? Does life get any happier than this?”
People walked by them, chuckling.
“I'm sorry,” Petra said.
“Sorry's not good enough.”
“My resignation will be on your desk by the end of the business day,” Petra said.
“No, no, no, no,” Alan said. “Too easy. You're not walking away from this. No. You're going to stay for the whole long, miserable march to death, humiliation, and destruction. Right by my side.”
“All right. Certainly. Yes.”
“Are you sleeping with him?” Alan asked.
“With whom?”
“With Todd the Rod!” Alan yelled. “Boone! Who did you think I meant?”
Petra turned beet red and stared at him, mouth agape. Then she said, “I don't think that's an appropriate question for an employer to ask an employee.”
“Sue me,” Alan said, and walked away. Then he turned around, came back, and said, “Look, we fell for a trick older than dirt. It's not your fault, I should have spotted it. They set us up. Burned a cheap building down, produced a phony arson witness, then had her flip on us in court to get a punitive damages award. They win; we lose. It happens. Now go bail Boone out. We don't shoot our wounded.”
So now Petra sits on the plastic chair waiting for the desk sergeant to process paperwork. He seems to be working at glacial speed.
105
It's a Beauty and the Beast scene.
Tammy Roddick walking down Broadway in the company of Todd the Rod. Draws smirks from passersby whose sole thought is that the ugly fat man has maxed out an AmEx black card for a matinee at the Westgate Hotel.
They go to the Westgate, all right, but not up to a room.
Todd the Rod walks her into the parking structure, right to a gold Humvee, where Red Eddie sits in the backseat eating a fish taco smothered in salsa. He stops chewing long enough to say, “Get in, pretty lady.”
Tammy balks.
Todd the Rod is already sleazing his way toward the elevator.
“No worries, sistuh,” Eddie says. “No one going to touch a hair on your head. On the life of my child.”
She gets into the backseat with him.
“Where is she?” she asks.
He holds up a white paper bag. “Taco?”
“Where is she?”
“She's safe.”
