BookQW's word is WORD. In Unholy Alliance attorney Grady Donahue Fletcher speaks to a reporter, hoping to get publicity for his innocent client, Tori Morningstar.
Six months earlier
Grady had phoned a reporter at the Los
Angeles Globe. "Drew Barker. Grady Fletcher here.”
“Ah, the lawyer.
Calling about a tip?”
“I am. Here's something
you can investigate. Tori Morningstar, did she murder Irene Brennan?"
"I wrote that
story many years back," the journalist had said. “I assume you have new
discoveries.”
"Fraud, illegal
testimony. Give me the word. Do you want the story
first?" A second passed. "Otherwise, I'll call the Orange County Guardian."
"Okay, okay. We
want it."
Three days later Grady
had a hand in writing the first article in Drew Barker’s column. "The
public labeled Tori Morningstar as an undesirable. Not black and poor, but
disfavored, accused, incarcerated, and wrongly condemned. Her cellphone has
been recovered. Her call to 911 identified her voice and substantiated screams
of the victim in the background. Could she have beaten someone while speaking
to dispatch at the same time?"
The reporter had written
the second article. "People who get their ideas about criminal lawyers
from TV probably would be disappointed in Grady Fletcher. He lacks flash but
stands up straight, his posture neither ramrod nor slouched. He doesn't smoke, doesn't wear thousand dollar
suits. His voice is soft and low, one of
his assets. He speaks truth with a voice inviting confidences."
As nice as that was,
Grady’s stomach cramped over pressure and strain from Drew Barker’s final
article with the headline, Tori
Morningstar, Released Today. Picked
up by the online service, Newser, KTLA and CBS Los Angeles, they planned to
broadcast his arrival to escort his client from Gladstone.
Tori’s decade-long
prison sentence ended today but with a sobering fear over tomorrow.
When was a July morning
this hot? Grady balanced her release papers on his lap as he rolled up one
sleeve then the other while gripping the damp steering wheel. Sweat blossomed
on his throbbing forehead, wrapped like a python[S-E1] ’s
grip. He adjusted the dial for the AC and embraced the challenge of helping
another client get back on track. Embrace and conquer. Or at least sound like
it.
Grady didn’t
necessarily believe in heaven, but suppose such a place existed and he was
eligible for entry when his time came? He expected it’d look like a courtroom
where he won appeals for deserving people.
The mobster’s daughter,
Tori Rourke, took Morningstar as her surname. She’d run from the Irish mob but
couldn’t hide. With no patience for those who leave its ranks, the mob had framed
her. She’d spent a decade at Gladstone.
His most recent client,
Tyrone Marquis, black and poor, worked at a poultry plant where he’d plucked,
hacked, and processed thousands of chickens. Marquis had written a bad check
and committed a petty theft. The court had handed him a twenty-year prison
sentence. When Grady believed in the falsely accused or excessively sentenced,
he fought hard from a deep pit. He won this man’s appeal.
Poor and black did not
describe Tori, born into an Irish crime family, but in essence, she was
marginalized and excluded too. Society detests any mobster association.
His cousin, Finbar
Donahue, managed the trust accounts for the Rourke offspring. In spite of
Finn’s hostile relationship with the mob, he’d followed Tori’s murder trial.
Finn had guilted Grady
into appealing her case. “She’s a fringe relative. Okay. Not by blood, but come
on.” Finn’s words landed like punches, sapped his resistance.
The closer he got to
the maximum-security complex, the more his heart pounded with blood pressure
exploding like a grenade. Thump, thump. How safe will she be when freed? He
scrambled for his game face.
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