Read Online Don't Lose Her by Jonathon King - Free Book Online Page A

Just like on the street: I’d be different than some detective or prosecutor calling in a favor with the promise of a break or a reduced sentence. Johnny did his business under the rubric made famous by an old-time Philadelphia counselor and politico who was caught on tape braying: “Money talks and bullshit walks.”
    I’d be talking his talk.
    Not that I was making moral judgments. I’d already made two other stops, one to see a bail bondsman whose reputation was spread among the users and losers in the drug trade as the man to go to when you were in jail on a possession-with-intent-to-distribute charge, and the other to see a retired DEA investigator who owed me and still kept his finger on the workings of the cocaine importation trade on the Miami River in Miami-Dade County.
    Neither of them seemed to mind taking Billy’s money as a “consultant’s fee” for any information, rumors or otherwise, they might come up with about who might be involved with Diane’s abduction.
    For a man I considered a low-life lawyer, Johnny’s offices were decidedly conservative. He was on the sixth floor of a building on Las Olas Boulevard in downtown Fort Lauderdale. There was a community college across the street. The main offices of the biggest newspaper in Broward County were catty-corner. Just across the Intracoastal Bridge on Sixth Street was the county courthouse and jail complex where Johnny did his work. The reception area for Suite 609 was done in beige and lavender, with a thick carpet and artwork on the walls that was a couple of grades above Motel 6, but prints nonetheless. There were eight chairs in the room, all of them empty.
    Milsap did most of his work defending drug charges against his various clients and being kept on retainer for bail service and for questioning the proper procedures of collection of evidence and the strength of warrants. His wealthier clients did not come to his office; they had their people do it.
    But his more street-level clients were sometimes unpredictable and always carried the possibility of danger if their cases didn’t turn out the way they’d hoped. The receptionist at Milsap’s office was behind a sliding, pebbled-glass window, so you felt like you were visiting the urologist or the local psychotherapist. I could tell by the thickness that it wasn’t bulletproof glass, and knowing Johnny, I wondered why not. I ignored the stupid-looking bell on the shelf and rattled the window with a knuckle instead.
    The glass slid open halfway, and a receptionist with streaked blonde hair and the doe-eyed look and complexion of a seventeen-year-old met my gaze with emerald green eyes that hadn’t a clue behind them.
    â€œMay I help you?”
    I wondered if she knew she’d be the first one to take a bullet if one of Johnny’s pissed-off clients came in with a grudge against her boss.
    â€œPlease tell Mr. Milsap that Max Freeman is here to see him,” I said with as little inflection as possible.
    â€œIs Mr. Milsap expecting you?” the tiny rehearsed voice said.
    I gave her a deadpan look that I imagined was worn by every detective or numbers enforcer or racetrack operator who ever actually came in to see Johnny.
    â€œNot until you tell him I’m here,” I said.
    The girl did not alter her Alice-in-Wonderland look as she said, “One moment please,” and then slid the window shut.
    I did not sit and instead took two steps closer to the door leading to the attorney’s inner office. It wasn’t a long wait. In less than a minute, the handle clicked, the door opened inward, and Johnny Milsap greeted me with the practiced smile of a back-lot carnival barker or adjustable-rate mortgage broker—take your pick.
    â€œWell, Max Freeman, friend and confidant of the illustrious Billy Manchester himself. To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”
    He offered his hand. I stepped past it and walked