Big Mango (9786167611037) Read Online Free PDF Page A

about people than Eddie ever
really wanted to hear.
    “Why are you always so hard on yourself,
Dare? Myself now, I think you’re an okay guy. If my ass were in a
crack, you’re exactly the fellow I’d want wiping it for me.”
    “That’s disgusting, Wuntz.”
    “Don’t mention it.”
    A silence fell and they sat for a while
contemplating the courthouse crowd together. It had taken Eddie a
while to understand where he had landed after he was kicked out of
his big, uptown office: the one with the indirect lighting, the
glistening hardwood floors, and the expensive oriental rugs. He
eventually worked out that he had crossed over an invisible line,
one he had never before known existed. As quietly as a spy, he had
slipped through the border that divided the orthodox world in which
he had previously lived his life from an angry, corrosive realm
whose citizens reveled in being at war with everybody else.
    Lawyers were like priests in that world,
Eddie soon discovered, the secular priests of the Other Side. In
the privacy of their lawyers’ offices, people told stories of
deeds, failures, and betrayals that were too horrible to mention
even in a real confessional. People came into Eddie’s office and
told him what they thought about when they couldn’t sleep at night.
They told him sad stories, shameful stories, brutal stories, even
funny stories. But they were always stories of misery, greed, fear,
and stupidity. They were stories that would break your heart, if
you let them.
    Some lawyers Eddie knew had crossed the line
deliberately, so romantically enraged at the random idiocy they
encountered every day that they were determined to change things.
But they never did. Before long, even the craziest of them stopped
worrying about how the universe was screwing their clients and
started worrying instead about how it was screwing them. The Hall
of Justice was a mean and unforgiving world. It cut no slack for
good intentions.
    “You hear about Judge Bono?’ Kelly suddenly
asked.
    Eddie shook his head.
    “We busted the bastard last night. He was
parked down in the Presidio in his big Mercedes swabbing out some
16-year-old’s throat with his shriveled little weenie.”
    “Nobody cares about that garbage anymore,
Wuntz. It’ll probably just end up getting Bono appointed to the
Supreme Court.”
    “You think?”
    Wuntz savored his tales and liked to string
them out. This time he really had the look in his eye. Eddie saw
it, so he was half prepared when Wuntz eased in his punch line.
    “I know we’re politically real righteous
around here and all that good shit…” Wuntz looked away and Eddie
couldn’t make out the expression on his face any longer. “But even
in San Francisco, don’t you think it might’ve been better for
Bono’s career if he’d been tonsil humping a girl?”
    Wuntz turned back to Eddie, roaring at his
own story until he was almost choking. A few heads tilted toward
him, distracted briefly from their own private miseries by the
sight of an overweight man in a wrinkled, polyester sports coat
laughing himself into a fit. The Hall of Justice was not normally a
place where people found very much to laugh about.
    Eddie was even smiling a little himself when
his telephone rang.
    “Dad?”
    “Hey, Michael. This is a surprise.”
    Michael, as he usually did when he and Eddie
talked, got right to the point.
    “Mom said I had to apologize to you before
she’d give me my allowance.”
    “Apologize for what?”
    “She said I was rude when you called last
week.”
    Eddie considered that. “Do you think you were
rude?”
    “No. I was watching the Lakers game. I just
didn’t want to talk to you.”
    “Then don’t apologize.”
    “Okay, I won’t.” The boy paused for a moment
and Eddie could almost hear him thinking, weighing exactly where
that left him. Then he made up his mind. “So here’s Mom. Would you
tell her to give me my allowance anyway?”
    Eddie listened to the telephone