Stakeout (2013) Read Online Free PDF Page A

service?”
    “They’re on speed dial. I’ll call them in a minute. Right now we need to have a little talk.”
    “Uh, oh.”
    “Hey, it isn’t every pro bono lawyer posts bail. You could at least listen.”
    “I’m listening.”
    “Okay, look, we got a problem. You framed yourself for murder. Usually a poor move, but with your track record, not impossible. Complicating things is the testimony of the motel manager.”
    “I don’t need a recap, Richard. What’s the bottom line?”
    “Twenty-five grand and you’re impatient?”
    “Are you going to work the phrase ‘twenty-five grand’ into every conversation?”
    “Not when I get it back . I get it back when you go to jail or we clear your name. Going to jail could be a long process, what with trials, appeals, and what have you. So clearing your name is the way we want to go. I am somewhat hamstrung at this juncture. There’s not much I can do until the trial, which, as I say, could be a while. Even then, the outcome is in doubt.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “The motel manager’s an obstinate jerk. I can make him look like an obstinate jerk, but I can’t make him retract his story, and if the jury buys it you’re toast.”
    I stared at him. “That’s why you got me out?”
    “That’s right. You have to solve the crime.”

8
    A LICE WAS PREDICTABLY SUPPORTIVE . “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
    I felt like shit. Alice has the ability to support me wholeheartedly while totally undermining my position, leaving me like a cartoon character who’s walked off a cliff and suddenly realizes he’s standing in midair.
    “What do you mean, I didn’t do anything wrong? I found a dead body and got arrested.”
    “Well, you shouldn’t have done that.”
    “Then I did something wrong.”
    “No, you didn’t.”
    “Are you saying I should get arrested for murder?”
    “Now you’re just being silly.”
    That’s why I can’t argue with Alice. Every time I win a point she tells me I’m being silly. Which is unfair. You can be silly and still win a point. I wondered if I should tell her that. I was sure she’d have a comeback.
    “Don’t worry about it,” Alice said. “Richard will handle things.”
    “Richard won’t handle things. Richard got me out of jail because he realized he can’t handle things.”
    “No he didn’t.”
    “He told me so.”
    “Yes, but he’s a lawyer. They’ll tell people anything.”
    “He’s my lawyer. And he’s very concerned.”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “He is. That’s why he got me out of jail.”
    “Don’t be silly. He’s handling a murder case. He got you out of jail to do his legwork.”
    “That’s ridiculous. He could just hire someone.”
    “He’d have to pay him.”
    “He has to pay me.”
    “Twenty bucks an hour. He’s not going to find anyone else that cheap.”
    “Oh, give me a break. It cost him twenty-five thousand dollars to get me out.”
    “Yes, but he’ll get it back, won’t he?”
    “Eventually.”
    “Yeah, but he will, and then all he’ll be out is the twenty bucks an hour he paid you. As opposed to someone else who’s gonna cost him a thousand bucks a day.”
    “A thousand?”
    “Say five hundred. Your eight-hour day’s 160. Still a huge saving.”
    “Richard’s not that cheap.”
    “Oh, really?”
    “Well, maybe he is that cheap, but that’s not why he did it.”
    Alice put her hand on my shoulder. Smiled. “Stanley, if it makes you feel better to think that Richard, with twenty years’ experience and what I understand is a rather impressive track record in court, feels that you, an unemployed actor/writer permanently moonlighting as an ambulance chaser, are more qualified to mount a first-degree murder defense, then go ahead and think that.”
    “I think it’s only first-degree if you kill a cop.”
    “Is that true?”
    “I don’t know. I’d have to look it up.”
    “Never mind. It’ll be on the Internet.”
    And Alice was off to the computer, leaving me