Blood Relations Read Online Free PDF

perception. I admire the man. If I can help him, I’ll do it.” Mora stopped walking. “You want to know why I don’t send this case through routine pre-file downstairs and let them mark it no action.”
     
    “
     
    “It crossed my mind,” Sam said.
    Mora stuck his hands in his pockets and wandered over to the windows. The vertical blinds were tilted open.
    Eddie had the same view Sam did, only two stories higher: trees, white stucco houses and apartments, the expressway arching over them, then the downtown sky scrapers a couple of miles away, silvery against a blue sky. The windows needed cleaning up here, too.
    “Yesterday I was in a meeting, and I got an urgent message to call the city manager of Miami Beach. Fine. So I excused myself and called Hal Delucca at his office.
    Delucca told me that one of his-his-most important businessmen was being falsely accused of rape and that a film studio was threatening to pull out of a deal to shoot a movie on South Beach. Delucca said the girl was making an obvious attempt at a shakedown. He said she was coming on to Marquis Lamont when she danced with him.
    Then she offered to sleep with Klaus Ruffini in exchange for a modeling job, and there are witnesses to say so.
    Delucca wanted me to tell the police to back off. Well, of course I couldn’t do that, and I told him I was insulted at the suggestion.” Mora straightened one of the vertical blinds at his window.
    He turned around. “This puts me in a touchy position, Sam. Do I file this case to prove Delucca has no influence over me? Or do I let it go and have it appear that he does?
    That telephone call wasn’t only between me and Hal Delucca. Other people in his office must have known what he was doing. He may have made promises to the men involved in this incident.”
    Even as Sam had grown increasingly impatient, listening to the details of a tawdry case that would never be filed, much less go to trial, he had become fascinated by the spectacle of Edward J. Mora practically hyperventilat ing because a bozo like Hal Delucca had asked him for a favor.
    “What is it you want, Eddie?”
    “I want to be able to tell the press-tell anyone who asks-that we looked into it. That we care about this young woman and so forth, but that given the lack of concrete evidence, we decline to prosecute. I can’t handle this myself, you understand that. Whenever I become involved with a case, it makes a statement, and I can’t make a statement on this. I didn’t immediately consider you be PPW cause, well, I’ve always felt a distance between us. You wanted this job. The governor gave it to me.”
    Sam made a little shrug. I didn’t hold it against you.”
    “I know.” Eddie Mora paced back to the window. “You could have caused me some serious grief, but you didn’t.
    That’s why you’re here now. Why I trust you. You’re not flamboyant, but you get the job done. And your integrity is unquestioned. People recognize that. If Hagen says a case is trash, it is.” From across the room Eddie said, “I want you to handle this case. Do whatever you think is right.”
    “I don’t want it,” Sam said. “Let it go through the sys term, Eddie. Pre-file can notify the girl to come in, but ten to one, she won’t show up. It’ll wash out.”
    “No. I want a senior prosecutor on this. I want you, Sam.”
    Absently, S.am massaged the joint in his thumb. There was some pain there occasionally. Minor arthritis, his wife would say, dismissing it.
    “Eddie-you know, this doesn’t seem like that big a deal.”
    Mora looked at him a few moments, then said, “All right, I’m going to tell you what the deal is, but what I say doesn’t leave this office.”
    “Sure.”
    “I’m on the short list to run on the Republican ticket this fall.”
    It took Sam a while to absorb that. “As vice president.”
    “Correct.”
    “Jesus.”
    “That’s what I said.” Mora smiled. “Who me? The first Hispanic on the ticket. And the youngest