Read Online Solitary Dancer by John Lawrence Reynolds - Free Book Online Page B

be filing a writ to get you in front of a judge and out of here. Word is, they won’t fight it.” He twisted his body and glanced around the room, the exertion causing him to wheeze. “Shouldn’t even be here, short-term. Could’ve kept you downtown, in the courthouse holding cells. Didn’t you raise hell about being sent here? Didn’t you say this was a breach of your rights?”
    â€œNo,” McGuire said.
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œDidn’t give a damn.”
    Hoffman watched his client intently for several seconds before leaning as far forward as his girth would permit and asking, “You sure you’re all right?”
    McGuire looked at the man as though he didn’t understand the question. He was still staring at Hoffman when a knock at the door caused the lawyer to raise his head and motion one of the guards into the room. The guard handed Hoffman a note, studying McGuire’s face as though imprinting it on his consciousness for a future test of his memory, before leaving and closing the door behind him.
    â€œYou’re out of here,” Hoffman said after glancing at the note. “But they’re only going halfway. They’ve got some charges pending on other stuff and demanding you’re not to leave the state without informing Berkeley Street.” He tossed the note in front of McGuire who looked at it curiously. “I’ll get that lifted this afternoon. It’s another crappy move, got Eddie Vance’s prints all over it.” He stood up and gestured to the guard through the window. “I’ve got a couple other clients to see,” the lawyer said. “Take about an hour which’ll give you time to gather your belongings. You want a ride downtown?”
    McGuire said yes and when the guard entered the room again he shuffled away, leaving Hoffman frowning and shaking his head, comparing the subdued man he had just met with the explosive homicide cop he once dreaded tangling with in a courtroom or jail corridor, a man with the same name and face but with something else in his eyes, something this man, this new McGuire, was lacking.
    â€œI hope you don’t mind meeting me here. But I just didn’t like the idea of setting foot in Berkeley Street again.”
    The woman facing Tim Fox in the corner booth of the Gainsborough Pub was perhaps thirty-five years old, maybe younger. She wore a camel-coloured cashmere sweater and brown tweed skirt. Her silken hair framed a startlingly expressive face, one that leaped between extremes of joy and sadness, rarely pausing between the two. Her eyes were large and dark and when her lips parted in a smile, deep dimples formed in her cheeks, soft-edged like craters in meringue. Her name was Michelle Lorenzo. It had once been Micki McGuire.
    â€œDon’t blame you,” Fox smiled. “When I walk out of Berkeley for the last time, I don’t ever plan to go in again.” A waiter brought him coffee. Micki’s sat cold and untouched in front of her. “How long were you and Joe married?” Fox asked.
    There it was, the quick smile, the dimples. “Nearly five years. Plus a year and a half we lived together before that.” Her hands, small and delicate, toyed with a coffee spoon as she spoke, and the smile faded. “He was so intense. It took me a long time to get used to it, how intense he was about things that mattered to him. I’d almost forgotten about it. Then I saw him earlier this year. I’d written to him, care of Berkeley Street. Just to see how he was doing, what he was up to. They sent the letter to Ollie Schantz and his wife who passed it on to Joe, over in the Bahamas.”
    She sat back in the booth, toying with the coffee spoon.
    â€œI’d been involved in . . .” She halted again, looked across the almost deserted restaurant and started over. “I was working for an air conditioning company, they did repairs,