No Time To Run (Legal Thriller Featuring Michael Collins, Book 1) (11 page)

Michael looked at the clock on his nightstand. It was a quarter past noon.

He remembered his promise to have coffee with Lowell. Michael flipped back the comforter and sheets. When he was about to get out of bed, he heard the toilet flush. The noise shot a pulse through his body as the bathroom door swung open.

In the doorway, Michael saw Kermit Guillardo standing in front of him, delivered fresh from the Sunset Resort to New York. He had a lit joint in one hand, a toothbrush in the other and a towel wrapped around his skinny waist.

“
Hola, amigo
.” Kermit smiled, and then took a hit and let it go. “You gotta keep that door shut, man, anybody could just walk in here and start stealing shit.”

###

After Michael got dressed for work, he and Kermit took the elevator downstairs and found an empty table in the lobby café. The manager eyed the odd couple, trying to figure out whether Kermit was actually an invited guest or just a panhandler harassing one of its fine customers.

“
You two okay?” the manager asked.

Kermit looked up from the menu.

“
After a venti dark sans the moo juice, I’ll be a lot better,” he shouted, even though the manager was less than a foot away. Inappropriate choice of volume was one of Kermit’s bad habits.

The manager turned to Michael.

“
And you, sir, are you sure you are okay?”

“
Fine.” As the one in the suit and tie, Michael’s word was taken as final. The two were left alone while a tall, thin blonde started to work on Kermit’s venti dark sans moo juice, which was otherwise known as a small dark roast coffee without cream.

“
So here’s some cash and a cell phone.” Michael took a small stack of $20 bills out of his pocket and slid them toward Kermit, followed by one of Hoa Bahn’s phones. “I need you to get some new clothes.”

“
Clothes?”

“
Suit, collared shirt, tie –”

“
Brother.” Kermit held up his hands. “If you know where my dearly beloved amigo is, please release him from inside of you. What’s a silk noose and geek pants have to do with busting Andie out of jail?”

“
I need you to be my assistant – ”

“
Assistant?” Kermit leaned back in his chair and rolled his eyes. “I thought you said we would be like partners, man, you and me. I’m the Robin to your Batman. I’m the golden lasso to your – ”

“
We are partners.” Michael put his hand on Kermit’s shoulder. “But as my partner, I need you to act like my assistant.”

“
I don’t know, man.”

“
We need to be able to go places together without drawing so much attention.”

“
Yeah, yeah, but there has to be another way.” Kermit bit his lower lip. “One that allows me to continue being me, you know.” He took a breath and then looked back up at the ceiling for an extended period of time, eventually he focused back on Michael. “After the jungles of ‘Nam. ...” Kermit raised an eyebrow and held it high. “I swore off the machine and that includes the machine’s dress code, if you catch what I’m saying.”

“
But you told me that you’d do anything to help Andie, and now you are saying that you’ll only do certain things. I don’t know how Andie’ll feel about that.”

“
Andie wants me to do this?”

Michael nodded his head, although Andie had no idea Kermit was coming to New York. She would be scared if she knew.

“
I need a partner who can be there with me at the firm, be an extra set of eyes and ears,” Michael said. “Do the legwork that I can’t do or don’t have time to do.”

The waitress arrived with Kermit’s coffee. Kermit smiled, thanked her, and called her sweetheart.

“
She’s nice.” Kermit watched as the waitress walked away. “Lots of pretty women in the city.”

“
Kermit.” Michael snapped his fingers in an attempt to get back his attention. “I need you to do this for us, Andie and me.”

Kermit eyed Michael’s suit and tie.

“
All right.” He shook his head. “But I won’t like it. You can’t cage this bird.” Kermit extended his arms and flapped twice. “You hear me, bro-ha?”

“
I do,” Michael said, “and after you get some clothes. I need you to do some internet research.”

“
Like Google?”

“
Yeah.” Michael nodded. “Like Google.”

“
I loves me some googley-doogley.” Kermit laughed and took another sip of his coffee. “Then what?”

“
Then come by the firm. I’m going to be there late tonight. Depending on how it’s going, I might be able to take a break and we can go visit Andie.”

“
Cool.” Kermit set his coffee down on the table. “Now what do you want me to ask Mr. Google?”

Michael leaned over, opened his briefcase, removed a notepad, flipped to a clean sheet of paper, and started writing.

“
I need you to find out what there is on Green Earth Investment Capital and these other people. Might not be anything, but it’s worth a shot.”

The waitress then returned with the check. She set it down on the table, and Kermit eyed it. “After you pay, can I keep this?” He tapped the slip of paper.

Michael shrugged.

“
I guess.” He didn’t really want to know what Kermit planned to do with the receipt, so he didn’t ask.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

She stared at the ceiling, alone with her thoughts. Questions popped into Andie’s head, followed by doubt, followed by more questions, followed by more doubt. The cycle of questions and doubt dissolved into memories, running backward in her mind from near to past.  First flickers of her life at the Sunset back to her decision to relocate to Mexico, and then back to her time in California, and finally settling in her childhood home of Australia and the month among the red sandstone monoliths, known as Uluru. 

Even at a young age, death and pain were not new to Andie. She understood far too well what it was like to be branded with a curling iron and beaten to unconsciousness. She knew what it was like to wake up every morning hungry or alone. People floated in and out, but death and pain were constants.

So when Andie lost her footing and slipped, catching her arm in a long, narrow fissure while climbing alone on the western face of Ayers Rock, she didn’t panic. Her head instead filled with cold calculations that were beyond her years.

How long would it take for the counselors at the camp for juvenile delinquents to realize she had run off again? What were the chances of another climber choosing to scale the western face, rather than staying on the more popular and safer routes to the top? How cold would it get when the sun went down, and how hot would it get when the sun was at its peak? How long could she last with just two bottles of water and a bag of granola?

Black ants canvassed her arm. Andie tried to shake them off, but there was no give. Caught just above the elbow, her arm was wedged deep into the rock. She had no leverage. Her arm couldn’t move in any direction. The best Andie could manage was to flop her hand up and down, anything else simply made her already raw skin bleed even more.

Andie hung on the side of the stone monolith. Her water had run dry on the second day, and on the third Andie had begun to wonder if anybody at the camp was even looking for her. She hadn’t seen any helicopters or planes, no spotlights or flares.

It was night, and Andie faded in and out of sleep. There was no way of knowing how long she had been out, nor how much longer until the sun would rise again. She was in a process she thought of as a “slow bake.” Her neck and skin were burnt. Every time Andie licked her cracked lips, she tasted nothing but salt from the dried, collected sweat.

It was sometime before dawn when Andie decided that just surviving wasn’t good enough. She was tired of surviving. Surviving was all she had done in her short life, and now she wanted to live.

Andie struggled, but she was eventually able to get a set of keys out of her backpack. Then she began scraping the stone. Little happened, but Andie didn’t stop. When one key was dulled, she started with another. She planned to continue like that until she was down to the last key, and then she would stop trying to cut the rock and start cutting her arm. She wasn’t just going to survive. She was going to live.

It took another day, before a fragment of rock came loose and Andie was freed. She took the dulled keys and threw them down the mountain, retaining the final one, a burnt gold key.

It was the key that would have gotten her off the mountain one way or another.

At the bottom of Ayers Rock, Andie didn’t return to camp. She panhandled for bus fare, and went back to Melbourne where she enrolled herself in school, worked odd jobs to pay her own rent, and eventually got a scholarship to college. She worked. She hustled, and she saved. It allowed her to do something that she had never done before: live.

Andie reached for the burnt gold key that had hung around her neck for over twenty years. The guards made her take it off when she was processed and booked. The key was gone, but its meaning wasn’t. She was stuck on that rock again, and had some choices to make. 

Spread out around her on the bed were hundreds of letters, some opened and some not. The pile contained letters calling her a “whore” and a “bitch who deserved to die” and ultimately “burn in hell.” The “burn in hell” thing was a popular turn of phrase. On the other end of the spectrum, there were letters that proposed marriage, or anti-death-penalty organizations offering counseling and legal help. A few, were even offers to purchase the Sunset Resort & Hostel, alluding to her future and offering just 35% below market value and a quick closing. They were all vultures, thought Andie, circling above her for their own reasons. 

Swinging her legs over the side of her bed and standing, Andie picked up the white envelope from Vatch, and then walked over to the door of her cell. It was a solid metal door with a small, bulletproof glass window near the top. On the right side of the door was an intercom.

Andie pressed the button. The intercom beeped.

“
Yes.”

“
This is Andie Larone.” She looked down at the envelope in her hand, her palms sweating. The envelope contained the subpoena to testify against Michael. It was her only way out. “I need to make a phone call.”

“
Time for personal phone calls is over.”

“
It’s not personal.” Andie cleared her throat. “I need to find a new lawyer.”

“
Don’t we all.”

A beep and the door unlocked.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

It took Michael two hours of starting, stopping, and starting again, before the basics of writing a legal memorandum came back to him.

Alone in the office with only his law books and statutes, words eventually began to flow. In the brief pauses between legal incantations and citations, Michael remembered how much he loved the basic fundamentals of being an attorney, stripped of all its pretension.

Most attorneys hated writing legal briefs. For a poor Irish kid like Michael, the act of drafting legal documents was power – like lifting the hood of a car and knowing how the engine works. Nothing happens in court without something in writing: whether it was a lawsuit, a motion, or a final order of judgment. If a lawyer wrote well, the car could go very fast. If a lawyer didn’t write well, the car might make it to its destination, but the car would sputter and spin and rely a great deal on luck.

Michael printed his memorandum opposing the government’s motion for a stay. The memorandum was twelve pages long, but it was only the first draft. Before it’s done, the document would be cut in half – the clock was always ticking, even for judges, and brevity was rewarded.

“
Yo, ho.”

Michael looked up, and Kermit swung through the door.

“
How you like these duds?” Kermit spun around in a circle.

“
Pretty nice.” Michael appraised the beige khakis, tasseled loafers, and purple silk shirt. “No tie?”

“
No tie,” Kermit said, “but if absolutely necessary, I have a special arrangement with a certain street vendor on Mott.” Kermit sat down in one of the chairs in front of Michael’s desk. “This place is pretty nice, man. The front’s a little nouveau riche, but all in all it ain’t bad.” Kermit looked around the room. “You think I can smoke up in here?”

“
No, I’m pretty sure that’s against firm policy,” Michael said. “Did you do the research?”

“
Internet café.” Kermit continued studying the office as he spoke. “Hung with the other tourists. Met a nice lady from Iowa, you know how that goes.”

“
Not really,” Michael said. “But the research, what’d you find?”

Kermit handed Michael a stack of paper about three inches thick.