The Plinko Bounce by Martin Clark EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Martin Clark
- Language: English
- Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Literary Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
JUDGE CHRISTINA LEVENTIS SENT the jury to begin their deliberations at 11:03
a.m., and she was so damn unhappy and agitated when she left the bench that
she was already unzipping her robe before she reached her oce, jerking out
her arm from the sleeve while she was still striding across the courtroom,
impatient, as if she were shedding a black polyester straitjacket.
As soon as the judge disappeared, Porter Bowman looked at his lawyer,
Andy Hughes. “Judge Levin sure is pissed o,” Bowman observed.
“Leventis,” Andy corrected him. “It’s written right there, Porter, on the
nameplate beside her microphone. See it? And as many times as you’ve been
in here, you ought to know her name by now.”
“Well, whoever she is, I don’t think it’s fair she’s actin’ mad at me. If we lose,
I wanna appeal. As much as we can. The Supreme Court if we have to. I ain’t
guilty of nothin’.”
“I’m going to smoke a cigarette,” Andy said. “Stay here. Don’t leave this
table. Don’t move. Think you can manage that?”
Andy walked down the tight interior stairway of the Patrick County
Courthouse, past the security desk and metal detector and through the heavy
double doors. The July air was scorched and listless, the building’s small yard
baked. He turned a corner, heading for the alley across the street. He didn’t
think it was professional to loiter at the front entrance, beside the pencilnecked Smoker’s Outpost ashtray where bailis, witnesses, clerks, and jittery
defendants burned cigarettes and, more often than not, tossed the butts on the
ground or underneath a giant holly bush.
Several of his public defender clients—the Reliables, the lawyers called them
—hung around in the alley, occasionally sleeping there. Moonfaced Dancin’
Ben would cut a little jig, sort of a creaky soft-shoe, if you paid him a dollar.
Pink Panther was as gentle as a baby lamb and could recite the books of the
Bible in order until he became loaded, and then he pissed in public and
panhandled at the grocery store, cursing and threatening shoppers who didn’t
see t to give him cash.
General Gene really had served in the army, though he
never left Fayetteville and never made it past E-3 private. They’d been to every
rehab, every shelter, every program, every church and halfway home, and they
weren’t xable, weren’t ever going to stop drinking and raising Cain, and they
lived on the court dockets, with almost daily charges of drunk in public, curse
and abuse, disorderly conduct, indecent exposure, littering, and assault and
battery.
Today, Dancin’ Ben was wearing a thrift-shop suit and a fat tie. He was
seated in a lopsided metal folding chair, draining a forty-ounce Steel Reserve,
eight percent alcohol, the big bottle only $2.50 and tax, strong fuel for cheap.
“You’re looking sharp, Dancin’ Man,” Andy noted. “Why the shave and nice
suit?”
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