The siblings exit the car, double check that it’s locked, and cautiously walk the stairs to the third-floor apartment, only to find the door already open.
With big, innocent eyes, Ella looks up at Bill, and he nods.
He steps inside, his shoulders so tense he almost loses the sense of having a neck. The tiny one-bedroom apartment is mostly tidy, clean, and organized. The furniture is all secondhand, but the recovering addict had done everything he could to make the place seem livable.
The only sign that this is the apartment of a drug addict are the two syringes that sit on the living room table. With his sister behind him, Bill scans the room, looking for his brother.
He hears the muffled tears first.
Hiding behind the couch, in the darkest part of the apartment, the tall Jonathon Harvey cowers like a child scared during a thunderstorm.
“Jonathon.” Bill’s voice is firm.
Jonathon doesn’t answer, his hands covering the back of his head, sobbing in the fetal position.
“Jonathon.” Bill’s voice is softer this time, more caring.
“I’m sorry,” Jonathon mumbles through his tears. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s alright,” Ella, the one with a gentle touch, reassures him. “It’s alright.”
She comes to his aid, her hand gently rubbing his back.
“I’m so sorry.” Jonathon rocks back and forth, feeling the pain of failure. “I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t want this.”
Bill has to look away. Here is a man, a part of his family, that used to be strong and powerful, and he’s now reduced to a blubbering mess. Addiction can do that to even the strongest of people.
Ella looks up at Bill, but he can’t force himself to watch. His eyes blink quickly as he looks towards the kitchen.
“I didn’t mean it, Ella. I’m so sorry. I’m such a bad brother. I’m such a failure. I’m a horrible person.”
“No,” Ella replies, still rubbing Jonathon’s back. “No, you’re not. The drugs got you, and that’s ok. I understand that it wasn’t you that hit me. It’s ok. You’re not a failure.”
“It was me,” Jonathon states, finally raising his head. “I failed. I failed the drugs. They were too strong for me to resist. I failed.”
“Get up.” Bill’s voice is strong, turning back to face his brother.
“Bill. This isn’t—” Ella tries to interject.
“Get up!”
“Bill, this isn’t the way to help him. He—”
“Get up, Jonathon.” Bill’s jaw clenches.
“Bill—”
“No, it’s ok, Ella. I have to face the consequences of what I’ve done.” Jonathon places a hand on Ella’s shoulder as he begins to rise. “It’s my fault. All of this. I have to face the consequences of my actions.”
With his eyes focused downwards, feeling like a complete failure, Jonathon stands, shoulders slumped forward, and walks in front of his brother, ready to take a beating. It’s what he feels he deserves – he has failed them. After all the years away, they still put their faith in him, and he failed them.
Head leaning forward, chin almost to his chest, Jonathon stands in front of his cold brother, ready for a strike.
He hit their sister – he deserves the same in return.
Bill stands tall, chin up, chest out, fist clenched, ready to dish out the punishment.
But standing there, seeing his brother at his most vulnerable, desperately sorry for what he has done, the anger dissolves.
His fist unclenches, and he reaches his arms around his brother, drawing him into his chest. It’s not a position that Bill is comfortable with – the Harvey men were always taught that emotions were to be avoided at all costs. Emotions were for the weak, not to be expressed at any occasion. Put your head down and work hard – that’s what their father had taught them.
But it didn’t work for him.
Awkwardly, Bill holds his brother in a hug for a few moments, then pats him on the back.
“Right.” Bill draws out of the hug. “Right. Well. Yes. We’re here for you.” It’s the most uncomfortable statement he has ever made. He turns away from his siblings so they can’t see his face, and he tries to hide the fact that he needs to wipe a tear away from his eye with the back of his hand.
Smiling, Ella moves to the kitchen. “I’ll make the coffees.”
Not another word is spoken while Ella busies herself in the kitchen, the two Harvey men looking down at the ground, each equally uncomfortable.
Carrying two cups of steaming hot coffee, Ella walks back into the living room, handing a cup to each of the men, and nodding for them to sit down on the small couch. Jonathon sits on the couch cradling the coffee, but Bill remains standing, leaning against the wall.
Taking a seat next to her middle brother, Ella rubs his arm with a caring touch. “We’re here for you, Jonathon. We’re family, and we love you. We wouldn’t be here otherwise. We know that this is going to be challenging, but just know that we’ll do what we can to help.”
“I don’t deserve your help,” he whispers as he looks into his coffee.
“Stop talking like that.” Again, Bill is firm. “We’re here. Accept it.”
“Thank you.” Jonathon’s voice is soft.
“It’s not all bad news, though.” Ella shrugs. “Jonathon got a job last week.”
“Really?” Not many people want to employ ex-cons that have spent their lives addicted to drugs.
“It’s not much pay, but it’s a start.” Jonathon’s shoulders pull back with pride. “I’m helping out in a removals company, but I couldn’t be prouder to be doing it. It’s casual work at the moment, so when they need an extra hand, they call on me to help. I met the guy downstairs at my apartment building, and he asked if I was keen to help out. He said I looked like I could lift heavy things, and he needed an extra pair of hands.”
“Have you started yet?”
“First job was last week. But the problem is…” Jonathon draws a long breath. “They drug test employees.”
“If you can avoid the job for a three days, the drugs will have cleared out of your system.” Bill’s response is clinical.
“Three days. Ok. I can do that. If they call, I’ll tell them I’m sick.”
A hush falls over the room.
“Where did you even get the drugs from?” Always in problem-solving mode, Bill works through a solution.
“Some guy.”
“Who?”
“I’ve never seen him before. I was sitting here, just watching some television, and I got this knock at the door. This really well-dressed guy was at the door, and he said he had a present for me – told me it was because I had recently moved into the building, and he just gave me a box, then left. After I closed the door, I opened it and found two needles full of heroin inside. Clean stuff, too. Not the dirty street stuff. Really clean. After I opened the box, I ran back to the door, but the guy was gone.”
“You didn’t think it was strange?”
“I thought it was very strange.” Jonathon continues to stare at his coffee. “But what I was to do? I didn’t know who he was, and I didn’t want to walk out onto the streets with two syringes full of heroin. I didn’t want to get arrested again. For all I knew, this was a setup, and the cops were just outside waiting for me to come out.”
“So what did you do?”
“I hid them just outside the window, near the fire escape. That way if it was a setup, I could have told the cops that they weren’t mine and someone else left them on the fire escape. They weren’t in my apartment. I didn’t want anything to do with them.”
“Why didn’t you throw them out?”
Ashamed of his past, Jonathon shrugs. “I don’t know. I just couldn’t bring myself to do that. This stuff was so clean, and it would have been worth a lot of money. I thought I was strong enough to resist it. I thought—”
“So you took the hit.”
“I’m sorry, Bill,” Jo
nathon’s forehead drops into his right hand, the tears welling in his eyes again. “I didn’t want to do it. I really didn’t want it. I tried my hardest to get through the night, and I thought that if I just got through the night, then I could throw them away in the morning. I tried to make it… I really tried. But I couldn’t… The drugs were screaming at me. I couldn’t resist it.”
Addiction is the strongest calling any mind could have. It drenches everything with its need for a hit, a need to get high again.
It was something their father never understood. He never understood the need for his son to get high again. He had spent his life working hard and avoiding his emotions; his only drug was drinking three beers on a Sunday, mostly watching his loved football team.
Emotions will make you weak, he repeated to his boys over and over again as they grew up. He was driven by discipline, and he expected everyone around them to be the same.
“Have you seen the guy before?”
“Never.”
“You don’t think he lives in the building?”
“I don’t think so. I’ve seen most of the people around here, and he looked too well-dressed to live in Skid Row. He had a nice watch, nice skin, and a nice suit on. He certainly wasn’t what you’d expect to live around here.”
“Did you get a name?”
“Said his name was Kevin.”
“Kevin?” Bill’s mouth drops open.
“That’s what he said. He was a short Chinese guy with a long face, glasses, well-dressed, black hair, late-forties, I guess. That’s all I know. That’s the truth.”
“Bill?” Ella looks up at her brother leaning against the wall. “Do you know someone like that?”
Bill nods, furious that his struggling brother has been pulled into his mess. He places his coffee mug on the table, fists clenched, and begins to move towards the door.
“Bill?” Ella asks again.
“I have to go.”
“To do what?”
“Something I should have done a long time ago.”
Chapter 14
Bill’s hand slams against the door, echoing the sound through the house.
Yin Sun answers the knock, aged well beyond her years. She has warm and kind eyes, but her hair is frazzled, and her eyes have shed too many tears. She wasn’t always this way. Her life wasn’t always lived in a daze. Once, she was a woman full of endless love, a caring soul with time for anyone, but life was never the same after losing her only granddaughter.
Her granddaughter’s sudden disappearance tore her heart out. The kidnapping and possible murder of Amy Wu tore the soul from this loving grandmother.
Even with the benefit of five years passing, that pain has not lessened. The tears that she sheds each night are still as painful as the ones she first cried half a decade ago.
She didn’t want this life, she never dreamt that she would live in a competitive L.A. suburb, but her son became addicted to the money and success that came with being notorious. After Kevin’s first wife, Amy’s mother, died in a car accident, Yin was flown to Los Angeles to help Kevin raise his young daughter.
Only one year later, Kevin married Eva, and Yin thought that she would have someone to help with the home duties. But Eva wanted nothing to do with Amy, the only remaining memory of Kevin’s first wife, and left all the parenting duties to Yin.
Yin watched on as, over time, Eva became more and more involved Kevin’s affairs; his drug-dealing, his brothels, his money laundering. She watched on in sadness as Eva became more and more distant, only ever arguing with the young Amy.
It was never the life that Yin wanted.
All she ever wanted to be was a good family matriarch. That was her calling. Her life.
And she was doing that. She was living her dream. Despite the crime that occurred around them, she spent her days protecting her granddaughter from the dangers of the world, teaching her how to become a confident woman, showing her how to deal with all that life could throw at them. They cooked together, laughed together, and grew together.
Her favorite memories of the time they had together were the times they spent in the kitchen. Even at a young age, Amy had shared her grandmother’s love of cooking. They would spend hours together in the kitchen – baking, tasting, and cooking. Yin Sun’s dream was to pass her secret family recipes onto her daughter and granddaughter and still be cooking together at family functions thirty years into the future.
But in one quick blink of the eye, one moment of terror, her world came crashing down.
All her hopes and dreams of the future disappeared.
“Where’s Kevin?” Bill hovers over the woman.
She doesn’t answer, turning to the kitchen, leaving the door ajar. Taking his liberty, Bill steps inside the large, soulless mansion in the San Gabriel Valley, onto the white marble floor of the spacious, bleak foyer.
With a coffee cup in his hand, Kevin Wu steps out into the foyer. Despite being past lunchtime, he’s still dressed in unpleasant red and yellow striped pajamas. It seems that no amount of money can buy good taste.
“I was wondering when you would come here. I expected you a week ago.”
The rage builds inside Bill until it’s overflowing, every muscle in his body tightening. In a moment of raw intensity, the normally calm Bill Harvey cracks. With one swift motion, he slams the man against the wall, his forearm pressing into the short man’s neck, the coffee cup falling to the floor.
“You think you can play me, Wu? I’m the best player in the whole game.” The bone of Bill’s forearm pushes hard into Kevin’s windpipe.
“And yet, here you are, threatened by me.” An air of infallible confidence leaks off Kevin. He’s grinning as Bill presses his arm deeper into his neck. “Go on. Do it, Bill. Strangle me.”
Bill growls, pressing tighter.
“Do it, Bill. Go on.”
With restraint, Bill releases the pressure on Kevin’s neck, but his left hand still grips the edge of his pajama top.
“I should pound you into the ground, Wu. Bringing my brother into this mess was low, even for you.”
Kevin grins.
He gets a kick from being the most cunning person in a room. During his school days in Hong Kong, despite all the time he spent studying, he was never the smartest, never the strongest, never the most popular.
But what he had was a good sense of what drove people’s behavior, and a distinct lack of morals.
Quickly, he established himself as the man that no one should cross. He would steal other students’ lunches, not to eat, but to punish them for speaking poorly about him. As he grew older, he would slash the tires of anyone who looked at him sideways. If someone crossed him, they had to know he would get his revenge. Not where, or when, but they always knew he was coming at them – often when they least expected it.
At the age of eighteen, he moved to Los Angeles to study at UCLA, and that confidence grew as he began to gather a crew of people who were willing to follow him, people who were willing to be his muscle, and he made his name setting up illegal brothels throughout Downtown and East L.A. He would fly young women in from Hong Kong, renting them out for anyone willing to pay. Through his seedy underworld connections, he began to meet drug dealers, and his little suburban empire began to grow. Before long, he had five brothels, and a nice drug import business on the side.
But with crime comes trouble.
And that’s where his lack of morals really shone through.
“Your brother’s addiction was easy to find out about.” Kevin’s voice is smug. “And I didn’t do anything to your brother. He did it to himself. He made the decision to take the drugs.”
Bill’s forearm presses back into Kevin’s neck. “You gave him the drugs.”
“Oh my, Bill. I really thought it would be harder to get under your skin. I really thought I would have to try so much harder to make you angry. But now I know your trigger. And let me guess, hurting that nice little secretary of yours would make you even more
furious.”
The forearm presses tighter still into his neck, and the smile disappears. Kevin struggles to take each breath, gasping as Bill’s thick forearm presses deeper. He feels his face beginning to go red, and his calm smugness disappears.
He begins to squirm. Exactly what Bill Harvey wants.
Struggling, Kevin brings his hands to Bill’s forearms, trying to force him back. But the lawyer is too strong, too powerful for Kevin’s skinny little arms. His chin tries to force back the forearm, but it’s no use.
He gasps.
Not much air left.
Tears begin to fill his eyes.
Panic begins to set in.
He tries to knee his attacker, but Bill doesn’t even flinch. Adrenaline and fury have engulfed him.
Just when Kevin feels he’s about to pass out, Bill releases his forearm, and Kevin falls to the floor, gasping for life. Crouched over, he wheezes deep breaths, holding his neck, trying to suck oxygen back into his lungs.
“I’m not the man you want to make angry,” Bill growls out into his ear, leaning over his foe.
Kevin coughs loudly, desperately sucking in breaths.
He doesn’t respond, finally moving back to sit against the wall, now with some breath back in his lungs. Leaning against the wall, still sitting on the ground, he begins to chuckle.
“You think this is funny?”
“It’s much too easy.” Kevin grins, happy to have infuriated his former lawyer. “When we get to court, I’m going to push all your buttons and watch you explode in a desperate mess. Now that is going to be fun. I’ll even make sure it’s on video so I can watch you explode over and over again. I might even put it on YouTube.”
Elegant, sophisticated, and conceited, Kevin Wu isn’t a typical type of criminal.
At fifty years old, he looks fit, but that comes with running three miles every evening. That’s his anchor – the way he continues to function even after everything that has happened to him and his family.
A Time for Justice: A Legal Thriller (Bill Harvey Book 4) Page 6