Chapter Thirty
PHILIP PARKED THE town car beside a black Escalade that was already empty. The courthouse was located in the well-maintained part of downtown, stacked full of city offices and street vendors. They all sat empty now, partly due to the late hour—and maybe partly because they sensed it was better to be inside, the way that birds stopped singing in a forest when a predator came near.
Clean entry, clean exit.
I wasn’t sure what that would mean. Hopefully killing or hurting people wouldn’t qualify as clean.
Three men wearing all black and holding firearms joined Philip and I at the base of white concrete steps. I had expected them to go ahead, maybe crouching low and peering around every corner. That was how you saw cops enter a place on TV, with the head detective bringing up the rear—only coming in when things were established as safe to do his job.
This was the exact opposite, and I supposed that was appropriate because these men were the exact opposite. Not cops at all. Criminals.
Philip strode in front, walking with a casual confidence, a faint swagger I could imagine him using when the building was open. I followed closely behind him, with very little confidence and zero swagger. The armed men, including the one we’d spoken to outside the warehouse whose name was Marcus, followed in loose formation, weapons holstered. Their bodies appeared relaxed but were clearly ready for trouble. Their gazes clinically scanned every inch of the wide front steps.
When he reached the top, Philip didn’t pause—he opened the glass doors etched with the scales of justice and went inside. An old man in a security uniform sat at the desk. He swallowed hard at the sight of us but didn’t appear surprised. Philip headed straight for him, and I kept pace even as the other men fell back.
“Good evening, Joel,” Philip said.
The older man was faintly perspiring. I was worried he might collapse. “Mr. Murphy,” he said, wheezy.
“The cameras?”
“They’re off. The metal detectors too. No one will bother you, I made sure of it. I did just like you asked.”
Philip’s voice was almost gentle as he said, “I knew you would.”
“Thank you,” the guard said in a tremulous voice. Tears glistened in his eyes. “Thank you, Mr. Murphy.”
Had they threatened this man? God, he looked like a frail old grandfather. I managed to restrain myself until we had walked away. “What did you do to him?”
“Worried about him?” Philip asked, almost taunting me with it.
“Yes. Why shouldn’t I be? He looked terrified.”
Philip strode over the marble floor and through the metal detector—which didn’t go off—as if he owned the place. And I supposed he did own the place. When you could command the people inside it, when you could come and go as you pleased with a group of trained soldiers, you were the true owner.
“He was terrified,” Philip said, “especially when his oldest son crossed the Cavallero family. If they couldn’t find him, they’d have killed the entire family just to make a point. He has a daughter.”
I blinked, trying to take in this side of him—this Philip who did good deeds for people in the city, the same way he did for me. A kind of underworld protector who saved not quite innocent fish from the evil sharks in the water. “You saved her?”
Philip reached up to caress the back of my neck. Then his hand squeezed and he pulled me close. His mouth was an inch from my ear. “I saved her,” he whispered, “by handing her brother over the Cavallero’s so they didn’t have to look for him. They were appreciative. I earned a favor from them that day—and one from the old man outside too.”
A chill ran through me. So he had sent a man to his death. But he’d saved innocent lives in the process, hadn’t he? It all felt dirty to me, especially the fact that he had used that favor to break into a city courthouse to do God knew what. To find out who was pulling the strings, but I didn’t know exactly what that would entail.
Honorable Judge Lawrence Alonso, read a placard outside an office. Inside there were three separate desks—for secretaries and paralegals, maybe. All empty. They had been vacated as part of Philip’s preplanning to come here, maybe the same way that he’d swayed the security guard to let us in unseen.
Philip opened a heavy wooden inner door, half blocking me with his large body. I couldn’t see around him, could only hear an older man’s voice protesting, “Hey, you can’t come in here. Who do you think you—”
There must have been some kind of signal. Or was this all choreographed ahead of time?
Either way, something changed in an instant. The men who had been trailing behind us, quiet and watchful, suddenly sprang into action. They charged past Philip and entered the room, heading straight for the desk. The office was spacious, clearly luxurious with wood paneling and an elaborate rug on the floor, but the armed men overwhelmed the large space.
Marcus dragged the man out from behind the desk by the lapels of his suit, hopelessly crushing and tearing the fabric in his iron grip.
The judge gasped and growled with frightened indignation. “How dare you? Do you know who I am?”
Philip took a small step forward, and that was their cue—the men tossed the judge onto the floor like a sack of garbage. He tumbled and cried out in pain as his knee twisted. He landed awkwardly on his ass in the middle of a rug that probably cost as much as a car.
The judge glared up at Philip, clearly struggling to maintain his bravado. “You have no right.”
“I have every right,” Philip said, almost mild in tone. His relaxed manner was in sharp contrast to the judge’s bristling anger and fear. “When a judge signs an illegal warrant, I have a right to know why.”
“Illegal?” A trembling sneer. “How dare you question me? How would you know—”
“It’s my business to know the law,” Philip said. “Just like it’s yours. And I know as well as you do that the warrant is bunk, that the arrest would never stand. There isn’t enough evidence. There isn’t any evidence. No judge would have granted it based on its merits, so you must have had another reason. What was it?”
“Now see here. If you’re so sure it wouldn’t hold up, why not arrange a meeting with the DA?”
“Is that what you wanted?” Philip asked calmly. “For me to settle this calmly and peaceably and no one would ever have to know about the bribes you took.”
“Bribes?” he gasped. “I would never—”
“The fact remains that someone wanted to see me in handcuffs. They wanted me incapacitated, unable to protect what is mine.” He sent me a meaningful look, and the judge seemed to notice me there for the first time.
The judge’s eyes widened as if suddenly more afraid by the presence of a young woman than by dangerous men. “You brought someone here? She’ll tell. How are you going to keep this quiet now?”
Really, even the supposed good guys talked about me as if I didn’t have a voice. Except his worry didn’t make sense. Why would he be worried about me telling someone? Wouldn’t he want me to tell what had happened here? Surely he would report all of this to the police when we left.
Unless he had some reason to want this secret. Unless what Philip said about the warrant was true.
“She won’t tell,” Philip said softly. “Not if you give me what I need.”
The judge seemed to crumple. “It wasn’t a bribe. God.”
Philip crouched and placed his hand on the judge’s shoulder, almost commiserating man to man, as if it wasn’t his order that had sent the judge tumbling to the floor in the first place. “This is how it ends.”
“Blackmail.” The judge took a shuddering breath. “My grandson. He starts college in the fall. I couldn’t let his life be ruined. He’s so young.”
“Who?”
“Barnes. That fucker. He told me…” He shut his eyes, looking pained. “He gave me instructions.”
Barnes—I remembered the cop from the dorm hallway, the one so determined to arrest Philip. His dark wrinkled face and white hair would have looked grandfatherly without the almost violent determination in his eyes.
Philip didn’t look impressed. “He has been after me for years. What changed?”
The judge met his gaze directly. “I don’t know. I swear it. I only know that someone bankrolled him. Someone gave him the…leverage he needed to secure my cooperation. There were…pictures.”
I sensed Philip’s disappointment, though he didn’t show it. “You’ll call it off,” he said softly.
“Yes, yes,” the judge babbled, and then winced when Philip squeezed his shoulder tightly.
“Wait,” I said, pulling Philip’s arm. “He told you what you wanted to know. He’s revoking the warrant. You got what you needed. Don’t hurt him.”
Philip wasn’t moved by my pulling or my pleas, but he said to the judge, “Tell her what the pictures were of. Tell her what your grandson does for fun.”
The judge turned white. He glanced at me, and in his eyes I saw a flicker of malevolence. “He has sex with girls. Like any boy his age.”
The hand on his shoulder must have squeezed harder, because his mouth tightened in pain and his whole body jerked.
“Okay,” he gasped. “She was drunk. Maybe he’d slipped her a pill. She was tied up. God, I don’t know why he does it, okay? He had the best of everything. Money. Education. I don’t know why he hurts them.”
I stared at him in horror. I’d been nervous about Philip coming here, threatening him, because the man was a judge. He was supposed to be one of the good guys. Even if he’d taken some kind of a bribe to sign the warrant, we all knew Philip was a criminal—with or without evidence. I could have still respected him.
But this? This was disgusting, horrible. This was subhuman. His grandson hurt women, raped them, but his judge of a grandfather protected him? He did illegal things just to keep his monster grandson out of jail—and going to college? He would be one of the fresh-faced freshman around campus next year. No one would know how dark he was inside.
And I realized then what Philip had been trying to tell me in his own way. This was the real reason he’d brought me here. There was no good and bad, not in this city. No clean hands. There was only money and violence—and Philip remained on top by using both to his advantage.
There would never be room in his life for love, for kindness. Those things were only weaknesses. They would only ruin him, the same way money and violence had ruined me. Steel bars, he had said. That was all he was made of. It was a cold embrace but a strong one. And he would never let me leave.