BLIND TRIAL, Brian Deer [top 10 motivational books .txt] 📗

Ben swung a fist and missed.

Now Hoffman let him go and hurled the phone. It clattered onto asphalt in the dark.

“You can’t do that.” Ben lunged toward him.

But a fist caught him square in the face.

Pain. Such pain. His eyes filled with liquid. He reeled against the Camaro and held his nose. “You asshole. That’s assault. You might have broke my fucking nose.”

“Lucky I don’t send you home in pet food.”

“You try.” Ben lunged again. He’d get Hoffman’s phone. Or he’d ask Doc Mayr for hers.

He wasn’t a big fighter: always talked out of trouble. But somewhere in the pain sprang a mindless fury, like the way he’d once scrapped in the schoolyard. A kid said something about his family being crooks, and Ben pummeled the kid’s head on a concrete step. A crowd gathered. There was crying and blood.

He threw a right. Missed. Then a left. Missed again. Then a right, another right… All missed.

His fury was for nothing. He didn’t gain a yard before more powerful hands took control. Hoffman saw a fist coming, fast and low like a ball, and—slap—caught it hard in a mitt. Ben threw the other and—slap—caught again, in stronger, thicker, fingers than his own.

He felt his wrists levered, his forearms pivot. He sank and felt stones in his knees.

Then he felt a storm of kicks: again and again. His shoulders, then his head, hit the ground.

THE KID looked pathetic, lying there in the dark. Probably pissed himself, like the old girl. Was Henry’s boy a rat, making calls on his phone? With all that behind him? After everything? Hoffman felt the ache of betrayal as sharply as the sting of his sore, skinned fists.

So where was the struggle? If Ben was determined, what the hell was he doing on the ground? He was, what, six-one? With a linebacker’s build. And the offensive capability of a rabbit. He might have landed a punch or pulled free his sweaty fingers. Guts a mess of collards. What a dope.

“Who were you phoning?”

“Fuck off, creep.”

“So that’s the way you talk to me now?”

Hoffman called to Doctorjee, who’d climbed from the Sentra. “Give us five. Me and this kid need to talk.”

The EVP coughed and moved off toward the street.

The old girl remained sunk in her pillows.

“Now, you look here, kid. You’re making me mad.”

“I’m not a fucking kid.”

“Right, okay. Guess you’re not.” Hoffman surveyed the lot. “Now you look, Ben Louviere, you gotta wise up. We don’t need this shit. Not now.”

The kid half-crawled to a sitting position and pressed his fingers to his face.

Hoffman offered a hand. “Look, this thing’s gonna seem damn harsh to you. Damn harsh. I can see that. Come on, get up.”

Ben shuffled backward. “Yeah, well that so-called doctor there’s a murderer. And that’s crossing the line. Wherever you’re coming from, that’s evil.”

The dog barked down by the airstrip.

“Can’t argue with that. I agree with you there.”

“Yeah? And you’re in on it. You’re in on it too. And if I hadn’t been with Sumiko last night, you were gonna kill her too.”

“Me? kill Dr. Honda? You’re crazy. Grow up. I’ve never killed anyone, personally.”

“So what about the drapes then? What was all that? And what about the subway in DC?”

“Look, all we wanted to know was if Murayama was going back to that apartment of hers. Was he stopping the night there? If you were there fucking the goddam woman’s brains out, you know I got the crazy idea the Jap would be heading on back to his hotel. That’s all. We needed to know. Nobody was gonna kill anyone. What a joke.”

Ben tapped his teeth and said nothing.

“Damn. That woman’s gotten to you, hasn’t she?”

No reply.

“That’s what it is. Goddamn. We send you out here to get to her, keep her sweet, and she’s gone and gotten to you. Damn that woman.”

“Bullshit.”

“Look, this whole thing ain’t how it seems here. You’re getting it all wrong. Now, you walk over here with me. Let’s take a walk here now, away from that motherfucker, and I’ll explain.”

“Fuck off.”

“Then, if you want, you can call the cops. Use my phone.” He started toward the carwash, turned, and waited.

A truck’s lights broke from the darkness.

Ben didn’t move. Seconds passed… And more… This was a make-or-break moment: decision time.

Then yes. Slowly… slowly… the kid rose from the ground… brushed his shirt and pants… and followed.

Hoffman stopped at the wall, now slashed with urine, turned his back and raised a foot against the bricks. “That guy?” He pointed toward the street. “Let me tell you about that motherfucker. I wasn’t in on what him and Wilson did. And when I found out about it yesterday—yesterday let me tell you—I felt pretty much how you’re gonna be feeling now.”

No reply.

“But now you ask yourself what the fuck we do about this? Not how we think or feel about it, but what we do.”

“That asshole belongs in jail.”

“Damn right. Damn right. What I thought, soon as I knew. But what’s important now? Huh? Ask yourself. Is the thing here about nailing that sick bastard, or is it about getting that vaccine out on time to the folks who need it, and everything the company’s been working for? Coz right now, we can’t do both.”

“What he did’s over the line. It’s immoral.”

“Right again. But do we compound that immorality by making innocent folks suffer? Do we? Do we punish the millions who need the timely protection of our product? Folks whose futures might be depending on what we do tonight?”

“Yeah, well, there’s FDA and experts and government agencies for all that. That’s not for anyone here to decide.”

Hoffman’s shoe sole rasped on brick. “Maybe so. Maybe so. But you think now. We’re lawyers, right, you and me? Members of a licensed profession. These people might be psycho, murdering motherfuckers. All of them. But they’re still our clients. All we do’s we represent them, professionally and privileged, no matter what crazy stuff they do. We hope for better