The Client Read Free

A half-empty fifth of Jack Daniel’s was in his hand. He took a sip, screwed the cap on it, and placed it on the seat. He inhaled slowly and closed his eyes to savor the gas. Would he simply drift away? Would it hurt or burn or make him sick before it finished him off? The note was on the dash above the steering wheel, next to a bottle of pills.
    He cried and talked to himself as he waited for the gas to hurry, dammit!, before he’d give up and use the gun. He was a coward, but a very determined one, and he much preferred this sniffing and floating away to sticking a gun in his mouth.
    He sipped the whiskey, and hissed as it burned on its descent. Yes, it was finally working. Soon, it would all be over, and he smiled at himself in the mirror because it was working and he was dying and he was not a coward after all. It took guts to do this.
    He cried and muttered as he removed the cap ofthe whiskey bottle for one last swallow. He gulped, and it ran from his lips and trickled into his beard.
    He would not be missed. And although this thought should have been painful, the lawyer was calmed by the knowledge that no one would grieve. His mother was the only person in the world who loved him, and she’d been dead four years so this would not hurt her. There was a child from the first disastrous marriage, a daughter he’d not seen in eleven years, but he’d been told she had joined a cult and was as crazy as her mother.
    It would be a small funeral. A few lawyer buddies and perhaps a judge or two would be there all dressed up in dark suits and whispering importantly as the piped-in organ music drifted around the near-empty chapel. No tears. The lawyers would sit and glance at their watches while the minister, a stranger, sped through the standard comments used for dear departed ones who never went to church.
    It would be a ten-minute job with no frills. The note on the dash required the body to be cremated.
    “Wow,” he said softly as he took another sip. He turned the bottle up, and while gulping glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the weeds move behind the car.
    RICKY SAW THE DOOR OPEN BEFORE MARK HEARD IT. IT flew open, as if kicked, and suddenly the large, heavy man with the red face was running through the weeds, holding on to the car and growling. Ricky stood, in shock and fear, and wet his pants.
    Mark had just touched the bumper when he heard the door. He froze for a second, gave a quick thoughtto crawling under the car, and the hesitation nailed him. His foot slipped as he tried to stand and run, and the man grabbed him. “You! You little bastard!” he screamed as he grabbed Mark’s hair and flung him onto the trunk of the car. “You little bastard!” Mark kicked and squirmed, and a fat hand slapped him in the face. He kicked once more, not as violently, and he got slapped again.
    Mark stared at the wild, glowing face just inches away. The eyes were red and wet. Fluids dripped from the nose and chin. “You little bastard,” he growled through clenched, dirty teeth.
    When he had him pinned and still and subdued, the lawyer stuck the hose back into the exhaust pipe, then yanked Mark off the trunk by his collar and dragged him through the weeds to the driver’s door, which was open. He threw the kid through the door and shoved him across the black leather seat.
    Mark was grabbing at the door handle and searching for the door lock switch when the man fell behind the steering wheel. He slammed the door behind him, pointed at the door handle, and screamed, “Don’t touch that!” Then he backhanded Mark in the left eye with a vicious slap.
    Mark shrieked in pain, grabbed his eyes and bent over, stunned, crying now. His nose hurt like hell and his mouth hurt worse. He was dizzy. He tasted blood. He could hear the man crying and growling. He could smell the whiskey and see the knees of his dirty blue jeans with his right eye. The left was beginning to swell. Things were blurred.
    The fat lawyer gulped his whiskey