Chapter 13 Lucy #2
There are monthly payments for the same amount. Four thousand dollars. I’ve watched biker and mafia shows on television and I wonder if they are protection payments. Or perhaps a monthly retainer for services rendered.
But I feel like I’m grasping at straws. Even when I compare this to my father’s client roster, I don’t find any correlations.
Before I stop for the day, I make a list of all the steps it will take to try and get some post-conviction relief for Grudge.
I grab the sentencing packet and tug out the contents, laying them flat on my desk.
I need to move on this for Grudge before my father regains the ability to speak properly, before he can interfere behind the scenes.
It bothers me that most of the files from my father’s secret drawer are old, because I’m certain—given my mom’s concerns and my own run-ins with the Midtown Rebels—that their relationship with my father has been on-going all this time.
A part of me wonders if it’s because technology has changed and my father has digital back-ups elsewhere.
I make a note to check his office and wish I could get my hands on his laptop, but he has it with him in the hospital.
Some of the messages are vague, but then, I notice one of them, asking for payment for the Loeb job, is signed WG.
I look up at the spreadsheet. WG.
It can’t be a coincidence, and my heart skips a beat.
Now, I just have to figure out who WG is. And the only person who can tell me is my father.
This is the part of the law I enjoy…piecing details together, finding missing pieces or identifying parts of the narrative that no longer fit. A kernel of an idea springs to mind, whereby I start my own law firm. I could poach Nancy and Jasmine from my father.
And Grudge should be my first case.
As I look through the paperwork again, I can see I have grounds. It’s easy to separate the evidence out into constitutional violations, prosecutorial misconduct, fraud on the court, and falsified evidence.
I never call a case a slam dunk to my clients. It breeds a false sense of security, and nothing about the law is certain. But this is very close. I have multiple data points in each category, plus, my own testimony.
I’m not sure how many appeals, if any, Grudge went through. But if all appeals and post-conviction deadlines have passed, I’ll even file a writ of coram nobis petition if I have to demonstrate that with the new information we have, the trial outcome would have been different.
Wait…I won’t be able to do any of it. It will be a conflict of interest to have my witness testimony, as well as being the lawyer on the case. But I can prepare it. Seal it up so tightly that whoever Grudge hires at my expense will be able to walk through the process with him.
By the time I’m finished working, I reach my hands over my head and feel my muscles ache as I pull on them.
A glance out the window tells me the wind has died down and the snow isn’t more than a centimeter deep.
A careful run, followed by a hot shower, then some homemade soup for dinner sounds like a brilliant idea.
It takes no time to find all my nicely organized running gear. At some point, I’ll have to get the rest of my things out of the storage locker in New York. But that feels like it should follow a decision on where I’m actually going to live.
The only thing of mine I left behind in the apartment was my engagement ring. Unlike the one Grudge had given me, it held no sentimental meaning.
The air is crisp when I step outside. Not so cold I’m going to freeze before I’ve got a sweat going. The snow crunches beneath my feet as I run, but I step off the sidewalk onto the asphalt of the road, where the snow isn’t sticking because of the vehicles riding over it.
I breathe in for three strides, blow it out for two.
Steady and repetitive.
With every footstep, I get one step closer to turning my brain off. Main Street peters out. The sidewalk disappears. There is nothing in front of me but wide-open space and fresh air.
I used to run a lot when I was younger. Mainly to escape my home. I think of my complicated relationship with my father. When I was younger, I felt the stature that came from being his golden offspring. The apple of his eye.
I was the poster child of being the chosen one.
I was probably a little precocious with it.
My father loved me when I was innocent and malleable enough to be the person he wanted me to be.
As soon as I became a teenager, forming my own opinions on social matters like school shootings, police violence, and warmongering, my father distanced himself while increasing his intolerance for my every misstep.
When I questioned the land rights of our estate, my father accused me of disloyalty to the family and said it was something that happened years ago and is therefore not our fault.
As an adult, we have no common ground that the disparity between us is insurmountable.
The pathway narrows, and I find myself heading up the side roads that lead to the Iron Outlaws Clubhouse, even as I try to convince myself it’s just because I want to do a rolling hill run out in the wild instead of some preprogrammed run on the treadmill in the apartment building that looked out onto the busy traffic just south of Central Park.
My music keeps me company, and I run to the beat of the playlist I curated for days like this. It’s uplifting, loud, fun.
Despite the circumstances with my father. Despite the way I feel about being in Grudge’s orbit, in spite of Henry cheating on me, I finally feel like I can breathe.
Until the roar of motorcycle engines breaks through the music.
And the bikes riding double wide force me to jump out of the way and I cry out as my ankle buckles beneath me.