The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [10]
Never been rewarded so abundantly for helping a murderer walk out of prison.
“The trial is over, Solomon,” Reggie said. “You need a divorce lawyer now.” He thought about hanging up, but he knew Gold would only call back again and again until he had what he wanted.
“Just to talk,” Gold said. “I can’t talk to these people. I can’t talk to anyone.”
Reggie had no idea whom he meant by “these people.” Whoever they were, they probably weren’t bound by confidentiality. Do enough bad things, keep enough secrets, and eventually you can’t hold a decent conversation with anyone but your own lawyer.
“I have one more thing I need to discuss with you,” Gold said.
Reggie let a disbelieving snort escape the cavity behind his nose. One more thing. The horrible truth about Erica Liu’s death would always bind them together. Secrets like that were shackles. Reggie’s sworn obligation to his client meant he would never be rid of Solomon Gold, and Gold’s acquittal meant he would never be done with Reggie.
Locking his office, Reggie waved good night to a group of young associates pecking at a large take-out carton with chopsticks—their night, like his, was only beginning—and took an elevator to the lobby and another to the parking garage. It was more than half empty, but the echoes of the heavy metal doors and his thick soles against the concrete felt different to Reggie. Duller, less reverberating.
He wasn’t alone.
Quickening his stride, Reggie scanned the cars and saw shadows in every one, shadows that disappeared at his glance, only to rematerialize when he turned his head. He heard a cough, a sniff, a swallow, a breath, a single boot step. He smelled onions and garlic, motor oil and urine. When he was within ten yards of his own Audi, he broke into a run, squeezing the car remote five, six, seven times. He started the car and locked the door, then screeched his tires around nine levels of garage as fast as the turns allowed.
He was breathing in gulps. His heart ran laps in his chest. Reggie glanced in his rearview and saw nothing.
Still unbuckled, he worked sweat from his hands into the leather wheel cover. He hated Gold. Hated him for what he had done to Erica Liu and for what he continued to do to Reggie Vallentine. A jury had found his client not guilty, but Reggie’s own guilt could not be dismissed as easily. He knew now how mob lawyers felt. Despite what they tell you in law school, with a certain kind of defendant there seems to be little difference between representing him and becoming him.
“Son of a bitch,” Reggie said out loud, and as he accelerated north onto nearly empty Lake Shore Drive, his anger was like bubbling pop in a shaken can. For months it had been waiting to explode.
Although he’d accepted his client’s guilt midway through trial prep, Reggie had decided to remain as Gold’s defense counsel. A conviction is worthless if it hasn’t been challenged by a vigorous defense, he’d reminded himself. And he couldn’t be known as a lawyer who turned against guilty clients, even repugnant ones. Especially repugnant ones.
As weeks stretched into months and then a year, he recognized insane rages across Gold’s face in short glimpses. Like a shark’s, the composer’s attention almost always came in the form of attacks—unrelenting verbal assaults that seemed to carry the threat of violence. Other people were invisible to Gold unless they offered a service