25. Anderson
25
ANDERSON
G one. All of it. Hope. Peace. My fantasy of a future with June. It’s all just empty air. My body went weak with the news, and I feel deflated somehow. Hollow.
They have me dead to rights. I’m ruined. My life, my career, my wife?—
A cupped hand under my chin forces me to look up. It’s her. My former bride-to-be. I won’t drag her down with me. I can’t. She snaps her fingers in front of my face. “Baby, baby, I need you here with me, okay?”
Gently, I shake myself free of her hand. “Oh, I’m here. I’m fucked, but I’m here.”
“You can’t go all catatonic on me. We need to think?—"
“I’m not catatonic. It’s just… this is a lot.”
She squats in front of me. “I am going to make you breakfast?—"
I laugh. “You think I can eat right now?”
“You think I care if you think you can eat right now? I am going to make you breakfast, and you’re going to shove it down your throat whether you like it or not, and that will give us the strength to figure out what the fuck we do now. But you’re not going to think with a clear head until you’ve eaten and gotten some coffee in you, so march to the dinette table and sit your pretty little ass down, and I will bring you food. Go.” She points angrily at the table.
Well, shit. “Alright, alright,” I climb up off the floor and go to the table as she stomps to the kitchen.
Moss’ eyes go wide. “You are right. She is perfect for you.”
June is still in a snit, but it’s impossible not to catch the curl of her lips as she smirks a little. Moss joins me at the table while she works in the kitchen. I am in awe of her. How she can function right now is so far beyond me that I’m speechless.
For her sake, I try to form sentences. “What, uh, what did your spy tell you?”
“That Wachowski spoke to someone on the phone, and what I have already said is what she heard. She was uncertain about the context, and that keeps her safe for now. My informant is good. Solid. She has never steered me wrong before.”
“Banks and Wachowski all but said they had video,” I mutter, stomach twisting in on itself. “But until now, I could tell myself it wasn’t true.”
Moss takes a breath. “Could be that he is feeding her information.”
I frown up at him. “You mean he knew she was listening?”
He shrugs his huge shoulders. “Could be. But I would not bet my life on it if I were you. Wachowski has … a reputation. He plays games. Tries to make people act outside their best interest to trip them up. He could have been lying to make her report this?—
“And see if I go on the lam?”
“Da.”
I blow out a breath, trying to clear my head. But it’s still muddy. “Fuck.”
“Da.”
June projects from the kitchen, “It seems to me there are two paths in front of us. One where we flee the country and spend the rest of our days running from the law, and one where we face whatever this is. What do you want to do?”
“Well, I don’t want to go to prison?—"
“Duh.”
“And I want to spend the rest of my days with you. Come what may.”
She smiles up at me before pouring batter onto a skillet. “Good.”
“The problem is, I don’t know what that requires. If we flee, obviously, it’s to someplace without extradition, and that means passports, which are back in Boston, and fleeing is its own set of big problems. I’ll never see my family again. My friends … my home country. Not any of it. We’ll have to create a whole new life, new identities, new everything. I’m a lawyer in the US. I don’t have marketable skills outside of that, so I have no idea what I’d do to support us.”
Moss lifts a shoulder. “New identity? I can help. New job? That, too.”
“Thanks, but I feel like I shouldn’t even be going down this rabbit hole when I haven’t heard from Pym yet. He has informants in the BPD, too, and I would think if Wachowski is pulling some stunt, he’d be feeding them information, too, right? So, Pym should be calling. But he hasn’t. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Not to mention,” June begins, “I don’t want to raise children on the lam in some foreign country where I don’t know anyone, don’t speak the language, etcetera. I wanted to raise our kids here. I want them to have a normal life. What kind of life would they have if we’re looking over our shoulders all the time?”
Moss shrugs. “It is not so bad to raise children this way. My girls are thriving.”
We both stare at him for a solid minute before I ask, “You’re on the lam?”
“Is a matter of opinion. And jurisdiction. But I am wanted man in many places, and I raise my girls happy and healthy anyway. Children do not need to know the troubles of their parents. They need shelter, food, and love. Anything else is bonus.”
She sighs as she delivers a stack of pancakes, butter, and real maple syrup. “Point is, I want our kids to have normal, and Moss, forgive me, but I am not cool enough about murder charges to be able to give my kids normal under those circumstances.”
If the pancakes didn’t look picture-perfect and steamy, I wouldn’t have touched them. But they are, so after an unhealthy amount of butter and syrup, I dive into them. After the first bite, I once again find myself marveling at the woman I want to marry. “You can make these … like, anytime?”
“Well, yeah.”
“I’m gonna get so fat.”
She snorts a laugh and makes two more plates, bringing one to Moss and one for herself. To my surprise, he does not object. In fact, he engulfs his stack with the same gusto I do. It’s a surprise, considering every time I offered him a meal at our place, he refused it. Maybe he’s a little afraid of June. I kinda hope so. I like the thought of her scaring the big bad thug.
After a few moments of silent eating, June asks, “Have you considered calling the Blade to see if he knows anything yet?”
“Calling seems like a bad idea. My phone could be tapped.”
But Moss shakes his head. “Is unlikely. Getting a warrant for that is a big headache. Most will not do it.”
“What about a tap in an apartment?” June asks.
“Less paperwork, but also usually too much for them to try. You are both lawyers. How you not know this?”
I shake my head. “I’m a corporate lawyer, she’s a tax attorney. We went through some criminal law classes, but de jure is what we learned. The letter of the law. Not how it actually functions day to day. De facto is what matters here. It’s one thing for us to know the steps for a cop to obtain a warrant, but the odds of whether or not they’ll do it is another thing entirely.”
She goes on, “So, since it’s a pain in the ass, then they probably haven’t planted a bug in our place?”
He thinks for a moment, then shakes his head. “Getting information from a person is much easier than the work that goes into planting a bug because judges do not like giving their approval to such things. Convincing judges is trouble for police. Physical evidence is far easier to come by. Confessions are even easier. Anderson, you did not confess to anything?”
I shook my head. “And I’m not about to.”
“Then what they need is physical evidence. If they have video of the brawl or of us handling the haddock, then … you are proper fucked. But if they have video of the attack followed by the brawl … ”
“Mitigating circumstances,” June mutters. “We need to know if that video exists and, if so, how much it saw. If they recorded that piece of shit attacking me, then we can argue fighting back was justified.”
Moss nods along, but I’m not sure. “The only way to find out what’s on the video is the hard way. We go back, we face the music, and let the chips fall where they may. I’m not sure I’m ready to do that.” Going back sounds like the exact opposite of what we should be doing.
June takes my hand in hers. “Like we do everything else. Together.”
Moss smiles at us. “I will do what I can to help. Whatever you choose.”
“Thank you. How are your pancakes?”
“Best I ever have. Thank you.” He finishes his stack before either of us.
She smiles. “These aren’t special, guys. One day, I’ll make some sourdough pancakes, and you’ll see how good they can really be.”
One day, she says. As if we aren’t going to prison forever. I’d like to think she’s right, but all of this makes me feel like the noose is tightening, and I can’t escape it. Did I cheat death when I was shot only to end up in prison? I don’t want to believe that’s my fate. I’d like to believe fate let me live for a reason. I just wish I knew what the hell it was.
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