Blanket Immunity

by Adam Van Susteren

  Brad looked at Jo’s face, then scanned her breasts, her slender midsection, and raised his eyebrows ever so slightly when looking at her calves. “Suit yourself.”

  Jo felt skeeved but steadied herself. “I’ll send you a disengagement letter and copy of the immunity agreement on Monday. Have a good weekend. And good luck.”

  Chapter 11

  Jo woke up happy and refreshed at just after nine on Saturday morning. Sunlight made her blinds look like they were glowing. “Saturdays are the best,” Jo said to herself as she snuggled under her covers.

  “Ugh.” Jo pushed her covers off of her upper body and thought, Small bladders are the worst. Upon her return from the commode, Jo unplugged her two phones from their chargers and brought them in bed with her.

  Thirteen missed texts on her work phone and three missed calls. All from Brad Gecina starting after midnight and ending at three am. Drunk creep, Jo thought and wondered how she could have been remotely attracted to him when she first saw him.

  Jo read through the text messages laden with typos. She listened to the long drunken messages. She pieced together that Brad was being blackmailed and needed her help again. Jo shook her head and thought, What he needs are boundaries. The voice message told her to check her email. She did on her other phone and saw three emails from Brad, each with a video attachment.

  “Wait. What are you celebrating?” the person recording asked, holding his phone in his lap while pointing it up at Brad. Brad responded, with his speech slurred. “Freedom, man. Got a get-out-of-jail-free card today. Dumb bitches couldn’t figure shit out.”

  Jo watched the second clip. Same vantage point, it became more clear the location was a bar. Brad is leaning in to talk to the recording guy and, barely audible over the music, Jo heard Brad say, “You ever wake up with a hard on that just called out for specific pussy? Man, that’s what happened. Shhhh.” After some cross talk she hears Brad say, “Hey, man it’s not rape if she liked it.”

  Jo sat upright. “What the fuck?” She wondered if Brad was drunk and on tape admitting to raping Cassie just after getting the immunity deal.

  Jo opened the third email and played the video. The video screen was completely dark. There was no music in the background. She hears laughing and drunken shushing. “They gave me their room key. I gave them the rope. Fair trade.”

  She heard more cross talk and a voice say, “I thought you said you’ve done this before. I thought you were cool.”

  Jo heard Brad’s voice, “Man, I never raped a sleeping girl before. Cassie was awake.”

  Jo dropped the phone and whipped the palm of her hand against her forehead. It made a loud smacking sound. Brad was going to rape another woman with another guy last night. And he admitted to raping Cassie.

  “Oh my fucking God. Oh my fucking God. What the fuck did I do?” Jo hoped against hope that she was still asleep and this was a vivid morning dream right before she was going to wake up. She closed her eyes hard. Fuck, she wasn’t sleeping. “That poor Cassie.”

  Jo thought about the woman and how the system wouldn’t get her justice. Her rapist would never go to jail and Jo was responsible. Her advocacy had kept a guilty man from ever even being charged with a crime. Jo shivered when she thought that would be great marketing for her new firm. She felt guilty at even letting herself think that.

  Jo got out of bed and paced. She knew she was going to email Brad and tell him that she was not his attorney and would not represent him, but the exact language eluded her. Ten seconds later her pacing stopped and she sat on her bed, staring at her phone. Her fingers tapped keys on autopilot. “Mr. Gecina, my representation of you has concluded. I am not your attorney. If I am to understand that you lied to me, then I am not interested in representing you in any further endeavor.”

  Jo wrote ‘best wishes’ and erased it. She wasn’t sincere, respectful, and couldn’t think of the valediction that summed up how she felt. Oh, there was ‘fuck off’ but she didn’t want to type that in a work-related email that could bite her on the ass later. Instead, she simply clicked send.

  She texted Dzuy. “Worst morning ever. When can I see you?”

  Jo stared at her ceiling and wanted to scream. She needed to tell someone but couldn’t, the damn attorney-client privilege wouldn’t let her tell anyone what happened.

  A knock on her door interrupted her staring contest with the ceiling. She closed her eyes and calmly asked, “Yes?”

  “I thought I heard you moving around,” Jo recognized her mom’s voice.

  “I’m up. What’s up?”

  The door opened and Mom stood in the doorway. “Good morning, Joanna. Want some breakfast?”

  Jo exhaled. “No thanks.” Jo plopped on the bed with her feet hanging off.

  “Something wrong?”

  “Uh, yeah. You could say that.”

  Mom approached Jo’s bed and sat on the corner. “What’s happened? Is it that Dzuy gent?”

  Jo shook her head. “It’s work. So I can’t discuss much of it. Let’s just say I helped someone and I really regret it.”

  Mom looked confused. “We shouldn’t regret helping people.”

  “If we helped a guilty person avoid justice we do.”

  “Oh. From what I understand, that’s part of your job. But you can always pivot. You can do anything,” Mom said, reaching her hand out and squeezing Jo’s foot.

  “Thanks, Mom. Yesterday I felt on top of the world with the outcome. Today I feel the world on top of me.”

  “I’ve learned a lot of things in this life, Joanna. One thing I know is we’re standing on top of the Earth. You’re feeling pressure you’re putting on yourself. I can’t imagine everything in the situation is your fault. Whoever your client was is the person who did the wrong. Not you. Right?”

  Jo eked out half a smile. “That’s true.”

  “Come down for breakfast. Maybe go for a jog and clear your mind.”

  Jo sat up in bed and opened her arms. Mom leaned in and they hugged. “Thanks.”

  “Any time. Call that Dzuy guy. He seems to make you happy. Maybe he can help take some pressure off.”

  “Okay, Mom. I will.”

  “Good. I’ll be downstairs, or I can stay if you want.”

  “I’ll come down in a bit. Thanks.”

  Mom left and Jo laid in bed, thinking. She was thinking about the rules of professional conduct and what she was legally authorized to do. Fuck the rules, she thought. She was going to buy a thumb drive, put the videos on it, and mail it anonymously to Cassie so she could sue the shit out of the bastard for raping her.

  Jo changed into leggings and a long sleeve tee shirt, then lifted up her mattress to make a withdrawal from her cash fund. She pulled on a baseball cap and put on sunglasses. She would be hard to recognize and would take steps to make sure the files were anonymous. With that, she stopped at the bathroom before saying good morning and goodbye to her parents. She was out the door, headed to a big box electronics store. Forty minutes later she was at her office.

  Jo stretched the fabric of her shirt to cover her hands and fed an envelope into her printer. She printed it with Cassie’s address. After nearly a minute of frustration she managed to use a letter opener to peel off two stamps from a roll to affix to the envelope.

  Continuing as James Bond, well, maybe Bond as a toddler, Jo used the fabric of her sleeve to pull out the thumb drive from the box and transfer the files. Without a fingerprint and no trace of DNA, she hoped, she had the envelope ready to go.

  Jo thwacked her face and wondered if the computer file had some sort of meta data that could be traced to her. She pulled out her phone and called Dzuy.

  “Hey, Joanna, I’m about to check in for a flight. Can I call you in five minutes?”

  “Okay. I’ve got a question for you.”

  “Call you right back.”

  Jo grabbed a manila folder, using her sleeve to put the envelope into it so she could freely handle the package without leaving behind finge
rprints or DNA. While waiting for Dzuy to call her back she was going to hunt for a blue mail box on the side of a road where there weren’t likely to be any cameras. She wanted a neighborhood drop box and was trying to remember where she’d seen one last.

  Jo exhaled deeply, she couldn’t think of one. I’ll just drive around and when I see one I’ll stop and deposit.

  Jo locked her office and plopped the folder on the passenger seat. Just as she started backing out of her parking spot the phone rang. “Hold on, Dzuy,” she said to herself as she maneuvered her car far enough back to shift to drive. She picked up the phone and saw it was Brad Gecina. She froze, dropping the phone without answering. An instant later she rapidly looked around the parking lot, wondering if he was there. She didn’t see him, so she slammed on the gas and launched out of the parking lot on to the street.

  “Fuck!” Jo yelled as she drove. “He stalked Cassie!” Jo gave a death grip to the steering wheel and sped along until she approached a red light, wondering if she was being stalked now. Jo slowed and eased her grip, she knew she was overreacting. Probably. But if this guy knew that she was helping Cassie, he might go after her. And he was a cop. Despite the James Bond maneuvers she did to send a letter, he would probably know it was her.

  Jo scrunched her face. Please be overreacting. Jo sat at the red light staring at her phone that had just stopped ringing. She picked it up and saw two missed calls. Dzuy called while Brad was calling.

  With her fingers trembling slightly Jo carefully scrolled the missed call list to Dzuy to return the call.

  “Hey, Jo -”

  “Crap. Sorry. Hold on,” Jo set her phone on her lap so she could concentrate on driving. The car behind her was laying on the horn because she hadn’t moved the instant the light turned green.

  “Everything okay?”

  Jo looked in her review mirror and over both her shoulders to see if Brad Gecina was following her. “No. One more second.”

  Jo turned right onto a side street and pulled over in front of the driveway of a small house. She careened her neck to watch the main road she had been on and didn’t see anything she recognized. She exhaled deeply and took in a breath. “Talk about a bad day.”

  “What happened?”

  Jo rolled her eyes. “I can’t talk about it. Damn attorney-client confidentiality.”

  “Oh. I understand that. Government security clearance and all. If you can’t tell me what happened, how do you feel about what happened?”

  Jo turned her head slightly. “Jesus, Dzuy, are you even real? That was like the most amazing question. Hold on.” Jo flicked her turn signal, saw it was clear and started driving, keeping one eye open for blue mail boxes.

  “I’ve been where you are. Sometimes I can’t talk about a contract going bad, but I can talk about how it feels when you have your expectations set and someone shits on it. And not, like, to fertilize the deal.”

  Jo almost chuckled. “Ha. Well I definitely feel like I’ve been shit on. I won’t say betrayed, because I wasn’t. But mislead. Tricked. And the worst part of it is I thought I was doing something very good for so many different people, plus making some money, and it turns out that it was only good for a bad person. I helped ensure justice won’t be done. I feel terrible.”

  “Then that’s how you feel. It’s okay to be upset and hurt for a while. But soon you’ll have to work toward solving the problem.”

  Jo quickly glanced at the folder on the seat next to her. “You’re right. I’m making the first step now. Speaking of that, do you know where any of those old-school blue mailboxes in a neighborhood are? I need to mail something out today.”

  “All the post offices have them.”

  Jo bit her lower lip. “Uh, I was thinking more of a neighborhood one.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “I just don’t really want to be on any cameras and I figured the post office would have a bunch.”

  “Hmm. Okay. But so many homes and places have cameras these days that it’s really hard to not be on tape somewhere. Hey, Jo?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re a lawyer. Am I aiding and abetting a crime of some sort right now?”

  Jo forced out a chuckle. “I can honestly say no.” Jo wanted to add, it’s just a violation of my ethical duties.

  “Okay. I like how we’re starting this relationship giving each other the benefit of the doubt. It sounds like you’re up to something so let’s remember to make sure we don’t get carried away.”

  “Agreed.”

  “You still searching for a mail box?”

  “Nope,” Jo answered as she pulled into the drive up drop-off at the post office. “Decided not to try to be James Bond. I’m just going to drop it at a post office. Hold on.” Jo stretched her shirt over her left hand and grabbed the envelope. She stretched to put it into the elongated blue mouth of the box, when it slipped from her grasp. “Ugh.”

  “What?”

  “Dropped it. Hold on.” Jo’s face reddened as she unbuckled her seat belt and opened her car door. With her shirt sleeve still stretched over her fingers she attempted to pinch the envelope, instead, she just pushed it. She pushed it up against the curb and was finally able to pinch it and drop it in the box with no fingerprints and no DNA. In the unlikely event anyone looked at this post office’s footage she knew she’d be toast, but that wasn’t likely.

  “Done.”

  “Sounds like you’re having a rough day. What’s next for you?”

  Jo drove away from the post office. “I’m dressed for a run, so might as well go to the beach and run. I don’t think I’m cut out for James Bond stuff.”

  “James Bond?”

  “Sending an anonymous letter and making sure I’m not being followed.”

  “Are you being followed?” Dzuy asked with concern in his voice.

  “No. Just a little paranoid and was trying to do what Bond – hey, how come there’s no female version of James Bond out there?”

  “There isn’t?”

  Jo checked over her shoulders and in all her mirrors to see if Brad was around. “Not that I can think of.”

  “I’ll try to find one on Netflix for us to watch. Or do you want me to plan anything for tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know. It will just be nice to see you.”

  “Okay, we can Netflix and chill.”

  “Veg’ing on a coach sounds great.”

  Dzuy laughed. “I look forward to it.”

  “What, Dzuy?”

  “Nothing, just looking forward to Netflixing and chilling with you soon,” Dzuy said with a goodhearted chuckle.

  Jo drove towards the ocean. “Am I missing something?”

  Dzuy kept laughing, “I don’t know. We’ll get your cameras done tomorrow, have some lunch, then Netflix and chill.”

  Chapter 12

  “How many dates is this?” Dzuy asked with a sly smile.

  “This dinner at Luna Grill is your idea of another big date?” Jo answered with a playful shake of her head.

  “You said you love this place. It’s not fancy, but it’s got great food. I’d say it counts as a date.”

  Jo rolled her eyes at him. “And lunch today was considered another date?”

  “Yeah. And we installed the security cameras at your office. Today was three dates.”

  Jo leaned forward and reached out for Dzuy’s hand. “I know you’re joking around, but seriously. I don’t go that far until I know someone and feel ready. Five dates is a guideline, enough time to know if there is a chance of something serious. The question really is, are you ready for something serious?”

  Dzuy looked into Jo’s eyes. “For you. Absolutely.”

  Jo’s face turned a slight shade of pink. “Then I’m ready.”

  Dzuy smiled and rubbed the inside of her palm with his thumb.

  “But,” Jo covered her eyes with a little bit of embarrassment. “I’d rather wait three or four days.”

  Dzuy looked puzzled. “Okay.
A few more days is fine, but if you’re ready, why wait?”

  “It’s kind of cute that you don’t get it.”

  “Get what?”

  “Mr. Smooth Talker, man who knows everything. How don’t you know this?”

  “That you’re not as comfortable with me?”

  Jo laughed out loud and started reaching for her purse. “How about a visual aid?” She opened her purse towards Dzuy and pulled a tampon into his sight line.

  Dzuy smiled. “Ah. Mother Nature.”

  Jo shrugged. “She calls every month.”

  Dzuy looked concerned.

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “We’re just getting to know each other, so I don’t want this to come across as insensitive. But when we were hanging out you were so with it. Yesterday on the phone you were kind of frazzled. Was that hormones?”

  Jo was trying to decide if she should be offended. She flashed back to how she was on the phone with him, indecisive, frazzled, and how out of character that was for her and who she wants to be. She wasn’t ready to tell Dzuy it was because she was acting against the interests of a former client, instead she said, “There was a lot going on. Maybe the hormones added to it, but not much. I think today was more the norm for me, but my work can be very involved. I can’t just leave it at home. It stays with me.”

  “That’s what first caught my eye. I mean, obviously besides how hot you looked in that skirt suit. But you went out of your way, even when frazzled, to make sure the lady before you was helped, when you could have skipped the line.”

  “And you’ve become more smitten ever since?”

  Dzuy nodded. “Absolutely.”

  Jo leaned in a little closer. “Friday night I’ll have an outfit that makes that skirt seem like a nun’s.”

  “Are we going out to a nightclub?”

  Jo shook her head. “Netflix and chill.”

  Dzuy laughed and shook his head. “I didn’t think you knew what that meant.”

  Jo laughed with him. “I didn’t when we talked on the phone. Two hours later I was all sweaty from a run but met with a client. We were chatting a bit and I used that phrase. He laughed and explained it to me.”