Chapter 26
“Can you explain something to me?” I asked, moving the files from my desk to the coffee table in Harrison’s office.
The other paralegals left at five. A few of the more ambitious prosecutors and paralegals stayed on until seven but now it was eight, and I was fairly certain that Harrison and I were the only ones left in the building other than the janitors.
The janitors preferred being able to clean the bullpens uninterrupted, so for the past few days this week, Harrison and I had started working together in his office, first grabbing dinner, and then going over the files from a little after 7:00 until we gave in for the night, usually sometime between eleven and midnight. Even then, it was only when the driver sent him a message saying his on-call shift was ending soon.
After our little “talk,” I had worried things would be tense and awkward. They were for the first few hours. Then we both fell into a rhythm with the work, and the personal no longer mattered. At least, not while we were in the office.
When I was back in that fancy apartment enjoying the over-the-top luxuries like electricity and hot running water, that was when the personal mattered. Each night this week I’d worked myself to the point of exhaustion, then unwound with a glass of wine from a bottle I found in the kitchen.
It was older than I was, red, and I couldn’t read the label, so I knew it was good. I would sip my single glass while soaking in a tub full of water as hot as I could stand it and let my mind wander to Harrison.
I would think about how it felt when he touched me, when he kissed me. How had no one ever before made me feel so wanted, needed, and safe enough to surrender my control?
“Is there something in one of the files you don’t understand?” he asked, cocking his head as he looked at me over his computer. I shot him back a bored expression, praying he didn’t see the guilt from my thoughts painted all over my face.
“I think I have proven time and time again that I understand the legal work despite not having been to law school yet.”
“Okay.” He lifted his hands in surrender. “Why is it you insist upon ordering from the cheap takeaway place down the street when I could just as easily have food delivered from literally any other restaurant in the city? Because that’s what I don’t understand. I could have authentic, healthy, amazing egg rolls delivered fresh and hot and not in paper bags that are literally dripping with grease.”
I rolled my eyes at Harrison. “Okay, I am only going to try to explain this one more time. The food from Ye’s Apothecary and Blue Willow is best experienced in the amazing atmosphere that they create. The experience and the quality of the food greatly diminish the second it leaves the building. However, the takeaway chow mein and egg rolls and heavily battered sweet and sour pork from Wong’s are all just as good in the office as they are if you were eating them from the cardboard containers directly in front of the restaurant.”
“I don’t think you’re making the point you think you’re making,” Harrison said, folding his arms. “But back to your question, what is it you don’t understand?”
“These files, you’ve clearly been gathering information on this family for years. Why are you only putting it together now, and more importantly, why haven’t you actually made an official move? I mean, you have so much evidence of laws being broken and police officers who may or may not be dirty. It’s just, it stacks up, and I don’t understand what you’re waiting for?”
Harrison moved from his desk to the couch, sitting directly opposite me while rubbing the back of his neck.
I could have sat on the chairs facing the couch, but after sitting all day in the swivel chair with my back straight, I preferred to sit on the floor in front of the table with my legs folded under me. At least until after we ate, and then I would usually end up sitting on a couch next to Harrison as we went over the things that I had found that day and the things that he was adding throughout his meetings and his findings.
“It’s complicated,” he said.
“You know, I’ve heard I’m actually kind of smart, maybe I’ll understand.” I was mostly teasing, but the look he gave me said that wasn’t how he took it.
“I’ll explain it, but I need your word that what is said in this room never leaves this room.”
“Nothing you have said in this room has ever left this room, at least as far as I’m concerned.” I was honestly a little hurt he thought I would betray his trust like that. We may not be sleeping together anymore, but there was still a level of professionalism that I couldn’t believe he thought I would cross.
“I have been looking at this outfit for a very long time, and initially, I stopped because I came across the evidence of what happened to the last prosecutor.”
“They killed their last prosecutor,” I said, staring at him with my mouth open.
“No, he dropped the case because they killed his family. They kidnapped his daughter and his wife and threatened their lives, saying they would only be returned safely if all charges were dropped.”
“And he tried to call their bluff, and didn’t drop the charges?” I clarified.
“No, he did,” Harrison said as he sat back. “All charges were dropped immediately, and from what I can tell, he went so far as to destroy evidence. But it didn’t matter, they killed the man’s wife and sold his daughter. They still haven’t found her. And did a few other unspeakable things. It didn’t matter that the prosecutor had dropped everything, they still followed through just to prove a point.”
“Okay… that explains why you would back off, but?—”
“Actually, no, when I found that out, I was even more determined. I figured I would have to be the one to bring them down since my family is wealthy enough to always have security. They were protected. I thought we were untouchable until I found out that the Irish mob worked with another family. A family I thought was legitimate.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, not following.
“The family of a friend of mine from school. A man I thought to be honorable and as aboveboard as the one percent of the one percent got. I found ties between the mob and his father. If his father was working with them, then I wasn’t just dealing with a bunch of thugs, and I wasn’t as convinced I could keep my family safe.”
“Oh.” Anyone else and I would be positive he dropped it just because his friend was involved, but the way his fingers tightened into a fist at his side and his shoulders tensed made me think that he was angry. A favor wouldn’t make him angry.
“I asked him about it, and he confirmed all of the rumors. My friend told me that he had already made plans to distance his legacy and his business from the mob but while his father was in power, he wasn’t able to do that. He needed to get control of more of the business, and then sever all ties. He wanted to be separated from these men before someone finally brought charges that stuck, and his empire was taken down with theirs.”
“Did you believe him? That he wanted to separate from them?” I asked.
“Yes. With the men I went to school with, it was always best to trust but verify. When I looked into what he was saying, I found out that he was right. If I were to take down this mob, there would be no way to stop the damage from spreading. At that time the two were too closely linked, and if I took on one, I had better be ready to take on them both. So I decided what I was going to do was give him time, not a lot, but enough so if he wanted to, he could sever those ties. I was giving him time to prove himself because I didn’t believe that he should be brought down by the actions of his father. Not to mention his family’s legitimate business has a bigger GDP than most countries and putting more people out of work and on the streets is not my intent.”
I nodded, kind of understanding where he was coming from, at least in theory. “So your friend, he has severed those ties, and now you’re free to go after them without hurting him?”
“Kind of. It’s actually gotten a little bit more complicated. He has made the move to separate the ties, which is great, but more importantly, he married my sister. And now I’m worried that this group might try to retaliate for the loss of business by grabbing my sister. So now it’s not a matter of just keeping New York safe, it’s a matter of keeping my family safe.”
Harrison sat back and pressed his palms into his eyes. The stress of these long nights were clearly starting to weigh on him.
“Okay,” I said, nodding.
“What do you mean okay?”
“Just that, I mean, okay, let’s get the scumbags off the streets before they go after the people important to you or, really, anybody else. Even the people who aren’t lucky enough to have the district attorney as a brother still deserve that protection. So let’s build this case and lock up the bad guys.”
He looked up at me, then smiled and nodded and placed the order for greasy Chinese food, and we got back to work.
We worked for a few more hours, uncovering different trails, adding to the files of names and dates that were growing. First looking for dirty cops, and the politicians they had influenced, possible crimes they may or may not have been linked to including everything from racketeering and blackmail to mugging, drug possession with the intent to distribute, and whispers of human trafficking. There was so much this family was tied to I was afraid to ask why his friend’s family worked with them. I was pretty sure at this point I honestly did not want to know.
“Do you know when you’re going to press charges?” I asked, mostly for the excuse to look up from the paper and blink. This work really did take four times as long when it wasn’t done digitally.
“As soon as I have a clear view of who is involved and enough evidence to make sure that I can get a fair trial. I want to make sure that I know each judge they’ve paid off, every prosecutor that they have blackmailed. I need to know it all so I can assemble the best team and force any compromised judges to recuse themselves. This case needs to be beyond airtight because it will go to trial.”
“And you need to make sure that the evidence provides proof beyond a shadow of a doubt so they don’t walk, and you can’t prosecute them later,” I said.
“Exactly,” he replied, looking at me for a moment.
The phone on the desk rang, and Harrison moved to answer it. When he hung up, he looked at me and told me that security had our dinner.
“Did you want to run down to get it, or do you want me to?” he asked.
“I’ll go get it. I need a break,” I said, standing up and trying to brush the wrinkles from my pants. “If I keep staring at these papers for another couple minutes, I’m going to go blind, so I’ll go ahead and grab the food.”
By the time I got to the elevator, went downstairs, got our dinner, and came back up, Harrison was lying on his couch with his eyes closed and thumbs pressed into the corners of his eyes.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, just a headache starting.” He sat up. I nodded and set the food down on the side of the table and then picked up all the folders and moved them to his desk.
“We need those,” he said.
“Not right now, we don’t,” I said. “We need a break or we’re going to burn out and we’re going to miss something. So let’s just have dinner and talk about anything else for a couple of minutes and once we are done, we’ll get back to it.”
He opened his mouth like he was going to argue but then nodded in defeat. He started unpacking the boxes while I took a seat on the couch next to him. We ate in silence for a moment, like neither one of us knew how to talk about anything other than work.
“Why aren’t you in law school?” he asked, making me choke a little bit on my sweet and sour pork.
“That was subtle,” I said. “I love how you just ease into the difficult questions like that.” I laughed and he gave me a rueful smile.
“But really, why aren’t you in law school?”
“Because it took me longer to finish my undergraduate degree than I was anticipating,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I needed a specific number of credits to get my degree.”
“No, I know what that means, I’m asking you why it took you longer and why, since you have your degree, you’re working here instead of going to law school?”
“Because law school costs more money than I currently have and I’m not able to survive on just student loans and the measly financial aid I was getting for my BA, which meant I had to spread out my classes and take on more student loans which increased my debt, and I had to begin making payments.”
“Did you qualify for full aid?”
“Yeah, it covered the classes, but it wasn’t enough to also cover books, food and housing. So I quit.” I shrugged.
“You just quit?”
“Well no, I postponed applying to law school so I can work, pay on my loans, save up some money and still have some to live on. Then I plan to take law school classes one at a time and pay for them as I go,” I said.
“And that’s why you lived in that shithole apartment.” He made the connection himself. “So you could save up in order to apply to law school faster.”
“Exactly.”
“Okay, I guess that makes sense.”
“Well, now it’s my turn to ask a very personal and invasive question out of nowhere.”
“Okay?”
“It’s only fair,” I said with a smile, and he nodded and waved me on.
“What is your favorite color?”
“What?” He laughed, dropping his chopsticks in his chow mein noodles. “That’s your invasive personal question, what’s my favorite color?”
“I figure it must be extremely embarrassing because when I look around here, everything is beige. So you either love the color beige or you are deeply embarrassed by your favorite color. Is it pink? It’s pink, isn’t it? It’s like baby pink, you just love baby pink.”
Harrison started laughing so hard he had to put his cardboard container down. His laugh was robust, and I didn’t think I had ever actually heard it before. I meant we were working on a massive mob case, so I guessed there wasn’t a lot of time for jokes, but I wasn’t expecting such a full-bodied, robust laugh from such a serious man.
“I don’t think I actually have a favorite color anymore.”
“Counselor, I object. Everybody has a favorite color. Just because you haven’t thought about it in years does not mean that you do not have a favorite color.”
“Overruled,” he said.
“I’ll rephrase,” I said. “When you were seven, and someone asked you what your favorite color was, what would you say?”
“Relevance?” he asked.
“Because I want to know.”
“When I was younger, I said the color red. But now that I’m an adult I think it’s actually changed.”
“Oh, so you do have a favorite color?”
“At the moment, green, but not just any green, the deep emerald that’s still so impossibly bright it looks like it cannot possibly be real.”
The way he was staring into my eyes, I knew he was looking at them, looking at me. Just the color of my eyes had such an impact that he’d noticed. It wasn’t my legs, it wasn’t my breasts, it wasn’t even the Cupid’s bow of my lip that he found attractive. It was the color of my eyes.
“You test my control. Do you know that, Eddie?”
I shook my head.
“I am a man of my word, and I said I wouldn’t touch you again, but you test my control.”
The way he was looking at me, the way he made me feel, I couldn’t remember why being with him was a bad idea. How could anything that felt this right be bad?
“What if I didn’t want you to keep that promise? What if those words were said out of anger and self-preservation, and I didn’t mean them?”
“Eddie.” He said my name like a prayer and leaned in like he was going to kiss me again. I wanted him to kiss me. I desperately wanted to feel the press of his lips on mine again.
“Harrison!” A shrill voice came from the bullpen.
We looked through the door and watched his mother and fiancée, both dressed in formal gowns, marching toward his office.