Death Penalty Read Online Free

case.”
    â€œSettle with them.”
    He shook his head. “They still think they’ll win. They offered peanuts. The outfit they took over doesn’t make recreational vehicles anymore, so they aren’t afraid of adverse publicity. They are what you might call smug andextremely confident.”
    He smiled, almost wistfully. “I got the case on a third. So, if the appeals court upholds the verdict, I get a fee of a little more than a million and a half. Twenty percent of that, Charley, ain’t what you’d call chicken feed. Will you take the case?”
    â€œWhy don’t you do it? You’ve been there before.”
    â€œI’m too nervous. I got too much riding on this. If it’s lost, I’m ruined, honest-to-god ruined. Christ, I think I’d burst into tears right there in the appeals court, or faint. I need someone who can be cool about the whole thing. How about it?”
    I could see the fear in his eyes. He had bet everything he had, money, honor, future. The case didn’t sound like a winner. Appellate courts look with hard eyes on such cases. Still, to say no to him would be like running over a puppy.
    â€œOkay, Mickey. I’ll do it.”
    â€œThis calls for a drink, Charley.”
    â€œNot for me. I have to go.” I gave him my card. “Send me the file.”
    I patted his shoulder and started for the door.
    â€œThanks.” The word was practically whispered. But I didn’t know if he was talking to me or to God.
    SOME MEN HURRY home to loving wives, some to not-so-loving wives, and some, with wary care, to other men’s wives. I was fresh out of wives, at least at the moment, so I drove back to my office in Pickeral Point. I didn’t even hurry.
    I seemed to have gone through a platoon of secretaries since I occupied the office over the marine insurance company. I even drafted my daughter, Lisa, as secretary, before she went off to college.
    It’s an easy job, really, working for me. I’m a triallawyer, mostly criminal cases, so paperwork is at a minimum, at least in comparison to some lawyers. I like to think I’m easy to get along with. Of course, some of my clients, I admit, would scare Dracula, but they are generally on their best behavior when visiting my office. Murderers, robbers, and muggers, when not engaged in their employment, as Gilbert and Sullivan observed, can be as courteous and civilized as other people.
    Mildred Fenton, the woman presently occupying the secretary position, had much to recommend her. She’s efficient, organized, and intelligent, although completely lacking a sense of humor. She’s never late and always leaves precisely at five o’clock. She doesn’t approve of small talk. Her telephone manner is polite, albeit cool. She’s been married to her husband for twenty years. Like many married people who have lived together for a long time, they have come to resemble each other. Like her husband, she’s tall, straight up and down, and plain. She wears no makeup and her mousy brown hair is pulled back in a tight knot behind her head. Even a sailor who had been at sea for a very long time wouldn’t consider Mrs. Mildred Fenton an attractive love object.
    Which is a plus, since her presence doesn’t provoke in me distracting carnal thoughts. She doesn’t smoke, or drink, another plus for me, obviously, and she has no children. I suspect she doesn’t approve of some other things as well.
    To her friends she is Milly. To me she is Mrs. Fenton. We both feel comfortable with that formal arrangement.
    I arrived back at my office just a few minutes after five, so Mrs. Fenton had already gone.
    As usual, she left a carefully typed note, almost a diary of what had happened during the day, plus telephone messages received.
    The mail, stacked in a compulsively neat pile, awaited me on my uncluttered desk. I like the desk cluttered butMrs. Fenton does not.
    My office may not