One Dead Lawyer Read Online Free PDF

his room and he told me all about a new Scooby-Doo movie he wanted us to buy and watch on Saturday. I told him we had a date, and tucked him in under his covers. He was asleep before I finished the good-night prayer with him. When I came downstairs from his bedroom Regina was standing at the front door.
    â€œHe was running after you. He woke up, heard your voice and wanted to tell you about a new tape he saw in the Wal-Mart sales paper. He stubbed his toe on the door. I tried to help him but he wouldn’t let me touch it. He started screaming for you.”
    â€œThe boy wanted his daddy, you can’t blame him for that,” I said looking hard into her eyes.
    I walked into the living room to get my keys from the sofa and saw Daphne and her son. They were sitting on the sofa. My keys were on the coffee table atop the manila folder.
    â€œDavid, I need to hire you.” Daphne was looking at me, but I wasn’t looking at her. “It’s my son. D, he’s in trouble with some rough boys.”
    She knew damn well that she wasn’t friendly enough with me to be calling me D. She was reaching, so I figured she needed my help pretty bad. I grabbed my keys and sat in the armchair across from the two of them. Regina took the love seat across the room.
    When Daphne’s boy was about seven years old, I liked him a lot. He was a fat little fellow, but he was a rough-and-tumble kid through and through. They lived across the alley behind us, in her parents’ house. I used to watch him play and scrap. The boy was constantly up a tree or under a porch, and he was always dirty, but it was the day’s dirt from his play. Daphne started him out clean.
    He would bring stuff to me to look at what he found; rocks, bones, old-time spinning tops, bolts, whatever struck his fancy. I even built him a treasure box for him to keep all his stuff in.
    I have never known the whole story, but overnight Daphne was no longer a single mom trying to make ends meet while living in her parents’ basement. Young Daphne bought a condo in Hyde Park and a Volvo. From what I heard, she was now living downtown. For a time, after she moved out of her parents’ basement, she would still bring the boy around to the block parties and family barbecues.
    However, the instant wealth changed her, and I guess she changed the boy. He came to a block party with toys and wouldn’t let any of the other kids play with them. They were to only watch him play with them. Kids who have a little learn to share, and he was once a kid who had a little, so the other kids on the block expected him to share. He nor his mother agreed. A fight broke out between the children. Harsh words were exchanged between parents, and Daphne and her son never attended another block party or family event.
    That night at Regina’s, the first thing I noticed about the boy was that he was blunted. He couldn’t have opened his eyes all the way if he was in a squad room full of cops. The marijuana had him feeling right nice. For no reason other than me being in a foul mood, I decided to mess with him.
    â€œHey, Stanley! How you been, young brother?”
    My blurted-out “Hey Stanley” sat him erect as a light pole. He surveyed the room as if he’d just arrived. The kid’s hair was braided in cornrows with jagged angles that resembled the letter V.
    â€œOh, hey there, Mr. Price, I been doin’ awright. School is goin’ great.”
    It was mid-August; no high-school students had returned to classes.
    â€œI didn’t ask you about school, boy. What, did you have to go to summer school?”
    â€œNo sir, not really, I just thought you asked.”
    â€œYou got allergies or something? Why are your eyes so red? And what’s all the white crap around your lips? Damn, I wouldn’t lick them if I was you. That stuff looks toxic.”
    He stopped licking his lips and shot me what I believed he considered a tough look and