Читать книгу Mercy - David Kessler - Страница 13

‘Life without parole,’ Alex had said. The man in the car couldn’t believe it.

There was no doubt. The offer was on the table.

The man’s mind was reeling. When the governor had invited Alex to come early for the meeting, he had wondered about what was going down. He had known that it was likely to be something unusual. But he hadn’t expected that.

He kept running over the conversation in his mind.

Nathaniel Anderson was not a G-man. Neither was he a cop, nor a journalist, nor a hired assassin. He had recently graduated from law school and was working as a legal intern while preparing for his bar exams. He had done a lot of Public Defender work in his final year of law school, helping indigent clients plea bargain down their sentences in the proverbial meat-grinder that was the criminal law system.

It had taken time to win their respect. They saw him as a stuck-up white boy, like most lawyers. But he had worked like a dog and won them over through his sheer tenacity and hard work. And because he worked for the Public Defender he had also built up a powerful list of contacts in the criminal community. It was a list that had come in very useful.

So the governor was offering Burrow clemency in return for revealing where the body was located. He wondered how the public would react to that—not that the governor or Alex would reveal it until it was a done deal.

Nathaniel looked round at the traffic on Golden Gate Avenue. Parked a few cars down the road was a limousine. He looked up. The sun was higher now: the day was wearing on. Just under fourteen hours till Burrow was due for the lethal injection—unless Alex could save him.

He looked back at the limousine and wondered if it was the vehicle that had brought Mrs Olsen here. Her proximity left him feeling uneasy. But that was all right. He knew that they would both be gone in a minute.

Keeping his eyes on the rearview mirror, he waited while the next couple of minutes went by. Finally there was activity from the entrance to the building and several people emerged at the same time: Mrs Olsen, the limo driver and Alex Sedaka. Alex watched while the limo driver led Mrs Olsen back to the car, opened the door to let her in, closed it behind her and went to the driver’s seat. He continued watching while the limo drove off past him, heading east toward Larkin Street.

As Alex turned away, Nathaniel strained to see the look on his face in the rearview mirror.

As Alex approached, Nathaniel pulled out the earpiece and put it away in the glove compartment. He reached forward for the ignition key as Alex opened the front passenger door and got in.

‘I assume you got all that, Nat?’ said Alex, pointing to Nat’s cell phone.

‘Every word. So what’s it to be? The office?’

‘No, I think we’ll pay a little visit to San Quentin first.’