No Way Out. David Kessler

Чтение книги онлайн.

       Friday, 5 June 2009 – 8.50

      ‘I’ve got butterflies in my stomach, Gene,’ said Andi as the car snaked its way through the streets of Los Angeles.

      ‘It’s too late to go back now.’

      They both laughed. This was becoming a bit of an in-joke between them. They had both been nervous about leaving the Big Apple and crossing the continent to a new life on the West Coast. But Andi’s career had demanded it.

      Andi Phoenix, sitting silently and brooding nervously, was in her late thirties. She had kept her looks through healthy eating, regular workouts and a bit of cosmetic surgery. Her breasts had been enhanced from 34B to 36D with silicone implants and she had taken a Botox injection to remove the first lines of age. But the rest was from hard work and healthy living. The blonde hair came from a bottle; the original had been a decent but boring mousy brown. Changing the color had been a form of therapy after the rough ride of her youth, but the enhancements as a whole carried with them the payload of attention from men that she could well do without. She was a few inches shorter than the black woman who sat next to her and in some ways felt in her shadow.

      Gene touched Andi’s forearm gently. ‘Just remember this, honey: they don’t know you either. But they were ready to take a chance on you.’

      In the driver’s seat, in more ways than one, was Eugenia Vance, the six foot, muscular black woman who had playfully wrestled with her in bed that morning, and won – as always.

      They had met over twenty years ago, when Andi was still in her teens. Gene had helped Andi through her teenage crisis years, and they’d been together ever since. In all the time they had known each other, they never used the word ‘lesbian’ to describe their relationship. It wasn’t denial. It was just that their every instinct railed against categorization. Neither Gene nor Andi loved ‘women’, they simply loved each other.

      ‘I’m just wondering if this whole thing is a big mistake.’

      Gene snorted her mockery at Andi’s self-pity. ‘You’ve picked a hell of a time to start wondering, girl!’

      Here in California, Andi’s specialty was much in demand. She had majored in psychology before going on to get her Juris Doctor degree from the Northeastern University School of Law where she thrived amidst its progressive atmosphere that encouraged social responsibility. But after graduation she had found the law to be an irritating environment in which to work. Most of her criminal work involved plea bargaining rather than trial work and usually that meant helping criminals plead guilty to lesser charges – hardly the service of justice and way off from the ideals that had driven her into the legal profession in the first place.

      Matters had come to a head after she contracted pneumonia, forcing her to take a prolonged leave of absence from the law firm that had initially hired her. But when she went back to work, she found herself welcomed with less than open arms. She was protected by labor laws from outright dismissal, but found herself increasingly sidelined. She joined another firm but then spent the next eight months playing catch-up.

      It was in this period that her interest in the subject changed. Although there were innocent people out there who needed to be helped, criminal law meant – for the most part – helping the guilty. And that was not something she particularly enjoyed doing. So she did the old poacher turned gamekeeper routine and got herself a job with the D.A.’s office, in the domestic violence unit, where she thrived for a while. Starting at the bottom of the ladder meant that she didn’t get to do much courtroom work. Most of it involved working directly with victims, reading reports and collating evidence. But she was happy to do this. It gave her a sense of purpose.

      Paradoxically, it was only when promotion gave her more courtroom work that disillusion set in for a second time. Because she found herself doing exactly the same thing as she was doing before, but from the opposite side of the table: plea bargaining with criminals. She found their lawyers to be vile, for the most part, and she realized how contemptible she must have seemed to the D.A. in her earlier days as a defense attorney.

      At the same time, she had developed another interest: crime victim litigation. There was a growing industry involving the pursuit of civil remedies for crime victims and she very much wanted to be part of it. The only trouble was that she soon hit the glass ceiling and realized that this specialized field was more developed on the West Coast than on the East. She wasn’t altogether comfortable about moving out West. But that was where the work opportunity took her.

      ‘And what if I don’t make the grade?’ asked Andi, still seeking reassurance.

      ‘Hey, listen,’ said Gene firmly, ‘I don’t want to hear any of that. There’s nothing to stop you except fear – and if you let that get to you, I’ll be right behind you, ready to take a paddle to that cute little butt of yours.’

      ‘My butt’s not so little,’ said Andi, but this time with humor rather than self-pity.

      In truth, Andi’s butt was fine, as any red-blooded male would have been only too happy to testify.

      There was a hard edge to Gene. But it was precisely Gene’s confidence in decision making that Andi loved most. On all the important matters, СКАЧАТЬ