Diego flattened himself against the fence, feet struggling to fit into the spaces between the links. The cyclonic was a different make, though, and he couldn’t even get his toes in. Despite this, Diego managed to get about four feet off the ground based on his arm strength alone before he dropped heavily back to the pavement.
Diego looked up at me as I closed in. A snot bubble expanded and retracted in his left nostril as he wheezed. I kept expecting it to burst but it never did.
“Please,” he blubbered. “Please, I don’t want to die.”
“Everybody dies, Diego,” I said with a shrug. “You had the chance to die with some fucking dignity. Instead you’re going to get gutted in an alley.”
Now this was the part where it got dangerous. You ever hear the phrase ‘there’s nothing more dangerous than a cornered animal’? Well, Diego was a cornered animal. In desperation, he grabbed a chunk of concrete off the ground and lunged at me.
I snapped my knee up into his chin and he folded like a house of cards. Diego whimpered as I knelt on his back and grabbed hold of his stupid fucking cop haircut.
“Aw, you look so sad, Diego,” I said, whipping out my switchblade. “Let me draw you a new smile right here under your chin.”
I dragged the blade along his throat, making sure to cut deep enough and long enough to get both the big arteries in his neck. Then I slammed his face onto the pavement a few times until he held still. Slitting somebody’s throat ain’t like it is in the movies. It takes a minute or two for ‘em to bleed out, and in that time some of them will still come after you, try to take you with them because they know they’re on their way out.
I wiped the blade clean on his jacket and stowed my knife. That’s when I heard it: a sudden gasp muted by the passage of a city bus.
My blood ran cold and I whipped my head around to see an older guy standing at the mouth of the alley. I knew he’d seen the whole damn thing.
I leaped to my feet and ran hard toward him. He took off out of sight. I whipped around the corner and saw him getting on the same bus what just trundled by.
The bus lurched off. I gave chase like an idiot for half a block before it pulled onto the main drag and left me in the dust.
“Shit,” I said, my breath coming in a white puff. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Chapter Three
Sophie
The watery pale sunlight beaming in through the courthouse windows offered nothing in terms of warmth. I shifted in my seat, crossing my legs and regretting the fact I’d worn a skirt.
Of course, Judge Maroni wouldn’t have been able to surreptitiously peek up my skirt had I worn pants. And I wanted him nice and distracted, which was why I’d worn sheer hose with no panties underneath.
I don’t mind using what God gave me to win a case. Of course, just flashing my shaved snizz wasn’t going to be enough. Judge Maroni still had people he answered to. The longer you live, the more you find out even powerful people have folks they’re accountable to.
My peepshow act was just one tiny facet of my overall strategy. The tall, skinny toothless guy to my left—the defendant—had offed his own aunt for the insurance money, then bragged about it to his best friend over text. It wasn’t exactly an orgy of evidence; my client had done a good job of cleaning up the crime scene. The cops didn’t have the murder weapon and they couldn’t reliably place him at the scene at the time of the murder.
But they had his phone. It sat right over on the District Attorney’s table in a plastic bag, a big letter A scrawled across it. Given my client’s less-than-stellar history with law enforcement, it was probably going to be enough to send him away for the rest of his life.
My client, a meth head named Dilbert Wayne, had fallen far from his family tree. Unemployed, in and out of prison for the last ten years of his life, a real wastrel. Yet he had a couple of uncles who figured he was innocent of the charges, so they’d pooled their resources to hire the best criminal defense attorney in the greater Chicago area.
That was me. Sophie Vercetti. My motto is ‘just because you did it doesn’t mean you’re guilty.’ I left one of the city’s top firms a few years ago so I could start my own practice and never looked back.
Dilbert shifted uncomfortably in his chair as the prosecutor droned on and on about the grisly details of the crime. I had to admit it was a good strategy. When your evidence is sketchy, you try to appeal to the jury’s emotions, get them riled up and angry, horrified, offended that a piece of work like Dilbert gets to walk around amongst the normal, law-abiding types.
I wasn’t worried. I poured myself a glass of water from the pitcher on the table and drank it down. Casually, as if I weren’t even aware, I uncrossed my legs and spread my thighs wide. Judge Maroni’s bushy eyebrows rose just a hair on his wizened face. I knew I had him hooked.
DA Miller wound up to a crescendo, gesturing toward my client.
“And now, the people would like to present exhibit A, Mr. Wayne’s cell phone.” Miller lifted it up and paraded it around for their perusal. “Mr. Wayne sent numerous texts to Larry Hansen detailing how he had cold-bloodedly bludgeoned his seventy-year-old aunt to death with a garden spade in her own bed.”
“Objection, Your Honor,” I said, standing up. “So far, the prosecution has only provided us with transcripts of these
