“Sure, Brady.” He shrugged. “Okay.”
Julie brought in a tray with a carafe of coffee, three mugs, sugar, and milk. She placed it on the low table beside me and said, “Anything else?”
“That’s great,” I said. “When Paul gets here, just bring him in.”
Julie turned and left the room. Glen followed her with his eyes.
I filled the three mugs with coffee, sipped from mine, and lit a cigarette. “Just so you don’t embarrass me in front of Paul with more irrelevancies,” I said to Roger, “there are some other things you probably should know. Paul did not go to Harvard or Yale or Princeton. Not BC or BU, even. His old man was an immigrant Polish cobbler in Medford who was disabled by a stroke when Paul was fifteen and didn’t die for another five years. His mother was a checkout clerk at K Mart and cleaned office buildings at night to put food on the table for Paul and his four siblings. Paul commuted to UMass Boston, then got his law degree from Suffolk, part-time. It took him about ten years to get through college and law school. He earned his way by waiting tables and tending bar at Italian restaurants in the North End, and probably met a lot of future clients in the process. The Middlesex County DA hired him for about fifteen grand a year to handle a caseload that would overwhelm an entire State Street firm. Within two years Paul Cizek was prosecuting homicides and getting convictions at an astounding rate. All the fancy downtown firms courted him, but he went to Tarlin and Overton in Cambridge because they wanted to keep him in front of juries, where he belonged. He’s been with them almost five years. Paul’s about forty now. He’s got a nice house in Lynnfield and a Boston Whaler and a wife who went to Wellesley, who’s a lawyer herself.” I paused. “Let’s see. Anything else I should tell you before he gets here?”
“He sounds like our man,” said Roger.
“I hope you won’t be startled by his appearance,” I said.
He shook his head and shrugged.
I smiled. “But you probably will be.”
I figured Roger had Paul Cizek pegged as a fat, big-nosed, toothpick-chewing caricature of a sleazy defense lawyer, a swarthy, foreign-looking man in a shiny suit with red suspenders and a flowery necktie and pointy shoes. In fact, Paul had fair skin, blond hair, ice-blue eyes, and the chiseled features of Butch Cassidy—or maybe it was the Sundance Kid. The Newman character.
When Julie escorted Paul into my office, Roger, to his credit, didn’t blink. Paul was wearing chino pants and a cableknit sweater under an expensive tweed jacket. He shook hands graciously all around, declined Julie’s offer of coffee, then said, “I’ll need to talk to Glen for a few minutes.”
I touched Roger’s arm. “He means alone,” I said.
Roger looked up. “Huh? Oh, sure.”
Roger and I went out to my reception area, and about ten minutes later Paul and Glen came out.
“Okay,” said Paul to me.
“You’ll take the case?”
He shrugged. “I like challenges.”
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Acknowledgements
I AM GRATEFUL TO my candid and perceptive critics Rick Boyer, Vicki Stiefel, and Otto Penzler, who helped me beat this story into submission.
I owe thanks as well to many unwitting consultants, who in a variety of social, public, and private settings over the years, have engaged me in enthusiastic debate and discussion on the subject of gun control. I have concluded that the issue is far more complicated than it seems.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1995 by William G. Tapply
Cover design by Kathleen Lynch
978-1-4804-2731-0
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Seventh Enemy Page 23