Читать книгу The Prodigal's Return - Anna DeStefano - Страница 9

“NO,” NEAL BARKED over the cell phone, about twenty minutes before the butt crack of dawn. “I don’t want anyone talking with Edgar Martinez but me. I’ll be there in half an hour to go over your notes. But I’m taking the meeting.”

He’d be there in half an hour? Since when did Stephen Creighton get into the office first?

Since Neal had started falling further and further behind, his everyday caseload turning into one unheard-of delay after another. Since he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t focus, from thinking about the nonconversation he’d had two weeks ago with a certain Dr. Wilber Harden. Then Nathan had hung up on him the one time Neal had gotten through to the man over the phone, saying nothing but a few choice curses.

And what did Neal have to show for the aggravation? Finishing his Friday morning run with the added bonus of the wet-behind-his-ears lawyer he’d hired a year ago chewing on his ass.

“I don’t know what’s going on, man,” Stephen said, taking another bite. “This case is a no-brainer. If you don’t have time for it, let me take over. Edgar Martinez—”

“Martinez is my problem until he goes to trial. And if I thought it was a no-brainer, I would have advised him to settle.”

“The D.A.’s offer is a gift.” Not intimidated by Neal’s ex-con rep, Stephen plowed forward where other colleagues treaded more delicately. The kid had the pedigree of a philanthropist, but the guts of a street fighter. Neal’s kind of guts. “The public defender wanted Edgar to take the plea a week ago.”

“It’s a crap offer, and we’re not taking it.” Neal’s legal-aid center, funded first by his mother’s exceptionally well-invested money, then by grants and donations from several silent partners from Atlanta’s legal community, had become the bane of Georgia’s prosecutors. He took the cases of people who couldn’t afford pricey defense attorneys, and he never plea-bargained until he’d squeezed the last ounce of concession from the district attorney’s office.

The best lawyer he’d ever known had taught him that tactic.

“Push too hard on this one,” Stephen argued, “and our client’s going to end up with no deal at all. This is a county D.A., and he’s not taking kindly to being put on hold. Neither is the public defender.”

“And Edgar shouldn’t take kindly to them railroading his son. The public defender wants to plead this one out, to save herself a trip to Statesboro for the court date.”

“You don’t know that. You won’t even take her calls. I have, and—”

“Well, don’t! You’re making us look anxious to settle, and that cuts me off at the balls. Be ready to bring me up to speed, then stay the hell away from the meeting if you can’t stick with the game plan.”

Neal ended the call and flipped the cell phone onto the heap of tangled sheets atop his bed, more angry at himself and his increasingly bad mood than anyone else.

Stephen was right. He’d let the Martinez case slide. Meanwhile there was an eighteen-year-old kid sitting in a south Georgia jail, counting on Neal to get him out. Only Neal had spent more time away from the office than he’d been there ever since Buford’s call, as he tried to first ignore, and then come to grips with, the reality that his father was sick. Damn sick, even if Doc Harden wouldn’t say any more than it was about time Neal up and paid attention to the man.

Oh, he was paying attention all right. He was standing there soaked to the skin from the near-freezing rain outside, his teeth chattering for a hot shower, when where he should have been hours ago was in the office doing the job he did better than anyone else in town.

He kicked off his shoes and peeled out of his sweats. Turning the shower on full blast, he cursed every hour he’d let slip though his fingers since Buford’s call. He should have followed up with Martinez days ago. Should have worked out Juan’s release, and be pushing for a pre trial settlement the D.A. would hate but be inclined to live with. Whatever it took not to be dragged into court to face the very talented, but anal retentive, Stephen Creighton, who was an ace at slow-playing the proceedings, drawing them out indefinitely, if that’s what it took to get their client the best deal.

Neal caught his expression in the mirror gone hazy with shower steam. On the job, he put himself out there one hundred percent. No holding back. He manufactured Hail Mary deals that changed the lives of those people who got snared in the churning cogs of an overburdened legal system. He cut through the bull, found the truth, then hammered away until the courts bent to his will.

Only this time, instead of forcing a solution, he’d become part of the problem. One more person Edgar Martinez and his son couldn’t trust to put their interests first.

Because the battle he should be fighting wasn’t here. And it refused to be dealt with over the phone, no matter much he needed to take care of things long distance. The life he’d made in Atlanta wasn’t working anymore. He’d lost his focus and there was no getting it back. Not until he’d dealt with the sick old man, and all the memories that came with him, that Neal no longer had the option of avoiding.