Breman was certainly aware that Louis pulled a lot of strings behind the scenes when it came to political appointments. He was also known to have important contacts in the nation's capital. A spot on the bench was a nice dream, one she felt she deserved, but on the ride over she also couldn't get over the feeling that Louis had whistled and she'd obeyed like a well-trained dog.
"Maybe I should go in with you, Kri…I mean, ma'am," Teddy said, glancing meaningfully at the big man standing on the sidewalk in front of the steps leading into the building. The skinny one had also come off the wall and moved onto the sidewalk.
Breman wished more than anything that she could say yes to Teddy's request, but Louis had told her to come alone. He promised that she had nothing to worry about, even though he mentioned that Jayshon Sykes and perhaps another of the Coney Island Four would be present. Mustn't show fear. "No. I'll be all right, Teddy. I won't be long."
As she walked over to the steps, the fat man turned and proceeded up the steps ahead of her. After she passed, the skinny man parked himself at the bottom of the steps and stared insolently at Teddy, who stood looking after Breman like a retriever waiting for its master to come home.
At the top of the steps, Breman paused long enough to read the simple plaque on the outside of the building: Louis amp; Associates, Attorneys at Law. The inside of the office was nondescript, by all signs a no-frills, hardworking, underfunded legal firm.
Beyond the outer reception area was another spartan office with a desk on which rested the nameplate for Hugh Louis, Esq. The chair behind the desk was functional but nothing special, as were the two chairs in front. What art there was in the room consisted of cheap African knockoffs of Zulu masks and Swahili spears and a fake lion's skin made of horsehide.
Breman figured that this office was probably where Louis met most of his clients. She was sure of it when she was led into the inner sanctum-a richly appointed den done in teak and leather. The walls were adorned with expensive-looking art pieces, including what she believed might have been an original Jackson Pollock. A black-and-white photograph of Louis with his arm around an uncomfortable-looking Joe Namath hung behind the desk, signed Best Wishes, Joe.
As she entered, Louis came out from around a bar where he'd been mixing "a root beer and rum…care to join me?"
Breman shook her head. "No, thank you. It's been a long day and it would probably just make me sleepy." She laughed, wondering if it sounded as false as it felt.
Louis mopped his forehead with the omnipresent handkerchief, which he then stuffed back into a pocket and held out his hand. "Good of you to make it, Krissy," he said. "Sorry to make you-I mean, ask you-to make the drive from Brooklyn, but I thought it would be good for us to meet away from prying eyes. There ain't many in this neighborhood, at least none who would say anything to anybody who might care." He released her hand and pointed behind and to her side. "I believe you know my clients here, Mr. Jayshon Sykes and Mr. Desmond Davis."
Breman fought to keep the smile on her face as she turned in the direction Louis was pointing. She had not seen the two men slouching on the black leather couch in front of the wall of books. She nodded. "Of course. Good to see you again."
Neither of the young men acknowledged her greeting. They both appeared to have found something infinitely more interesting on the wall and on the floor respectively. Louis pretended not to notice the slight and waved her toward the chair in front of his desk while he went around behind it and sat down. Establishing who's boss, Breman thought miserably as she noticed that her seat was several inches lower than Louis's, who appeared to tower over her.
As a matter of fact, Louis was immensely pleased with himself. He'd filed a $250 million lawsuit against the City of New York and its police department, which he estimated might settle at one hundred million. He was contractually entitled to one-third of the settlement and by the time he added in expenses, including an apartment for his mistress, Tawnee, and the baubles she required to keep her happy, he'd get about half. And that didn't include the book and film rights.
Over steaks and martinis at the Tribeca Grill, he'd cut a deal to do a book with the New York Times reporter Harriman, in exchange for half the royalties and favorable stories in the Times. So far, the reporter, who had never met a scene he couldn't create out of thin air or a quote he couldn't manufacture, had kept up his end of the bargain.
Louis and Harriman had a meeting set up the next week with three different publishing houses whose executive editors were already pissing all over themselves for the rights to The Coney Island Four: An American Tale of Racism and Injustice. As soon as they had a deal, Louis planned to fly to Hollywood and talk to a couple of producers he'd contacted about the film rights.
Life was good, but he thought it could get better yet. He'd called Breman and told her to meet him at the office for two reasons. The first was-as Breman had surmised-to make sure she understood who was in charge. He figured that if she was willing to drive to Harlem on a cold night in December to be given marching orders, she was his whore for the duration.
The second reason was that for all his meticulous planning, dangers remained dangers. The major difficulty was that for some inexplicable reason, Igor Kaminsky was still alive.
The idiot brute Lynd was supposed to have taken care of the problem but now he was worm meat. Then the brain-dead ghetto niggers sitting on his couch couldn't count to two-the number of arms the man they'd shoved in front of the train had-and so the one-armed Kaminsky lived to rat on them another day.
Otherwise, there was only one other loose end that he had to worry about-and he didn't think it was much of a concern. At the original trial, a teenage female named Hannah Little had testified that Kwasama Jones admitted to her over the telephone that Sykes and Davis had raped Liz Tyler. Hannah's brother, Kevin, had been one of the five originally charged for the attack on Liz Tyler, but he'd agreed to a plea deal and testified against the other four.
Sykes had used his gang affiliations to find Kevin in California and have him killed in a staged drive-by shooting. He'd planned to have Hannah killed, too, but she'd disappeared from Bedford-Stuyvesant shortly after her brother's death and hadn't been heard from since. She could present a problem if the investigators working for the city found her, but given the long silence, Louis believed that she was too intimidated to come forward at this late date.
Which brought him back to Breman. He knew she'd talked herself into believing that she was "doing the right thing" in the cause of justice; he'd pounded that notion at her enough. But what if the letter from Kaminsky made her think again about Villalobos's confession?
Louis knew his clients were guilty of the crime and that Villalobos was lying-he'd insisted on knowing and Sykes had filled him in with a smirk. But Louis didn't care; some middle-class white bitch getting raped wasn't worth the millions he stood to make by representing the Coney Island Four. But he was worried that Breman might grow a conscience because of the Kaminsky letter. Or, if the little shit came forward, that she would find it politically expedient to turn on him. Louis needed to make sure she was his.
Louis cleared his throat, took a sip of his drink, and asked, "Have you heard from that lying piece of shit Kaminsky fella who wrote you a while back?"
The question elicited a pang of guilt from Breman. She'd read the letter when it first arrived and sat on it for a couple of days. If what Kaminsky said was true, and it came out, she was going to have a lot of explaining to do. All sorts of questions might be raised about why she had capitulated so quickly and not followed procedures in dealing with Villalobos. So she took the letter to her mentor, District Judge Marci Klinger, who also happened to be presiding over the Coney Island Four lawsuit.