States of Grace by Mandy Miller (top 100 books of all time checklist .TXT) 📕

“Don’t remind me.”

He shrugs and jabs a remote to change the channel to the news. “Slim, your girl’s father, owns a chain of plastic surgery clinics, right? Lots of ads on late-night TV.”

“Yep, new boobs with interest-free financing.” I wrinkle my nose. “Seems like there are two things in this world you shouldn’t go cheap on.”

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“Plastic surgery and lawyers.”

He snorts, poking at the bottles on the back bar with a thing that looks more like a dead squirrel than a feather duster.

“How’d you catch the Slim case?”

I bite my bottom lip.

“Come on, you can tell ol’ Jakey. Consider it the bartender’s version of the priest-penitent privilege. I’ll never tell.”

I hesitate, uncertain if it’s because I’m embarrassed or angry. “Gretchen Slim, the defendant’s mother, is, or maybe was, Manny’s mistress.”

“Ouch!” He leans against the back bar, arms crossed.

I hold up my hand. “Not the best idea.”

“Maybe not, but it’s a big case. And if the money’s right—”

“Hey, turn that up, would you?” I say, pointing at a reporter standing outside the headquarters of the FLPD.

“Excuse me ladies and gentlemen,” the reporter says, pressing an earpiece to into his ear. “We have some breaking news from the Fort Lauderdale Police Department. The prints on the gun recovered during the investigation of the brutal murder of Brandon Sinclair have been identified as those of the teen accused of his brutal murder, Zoe Slim, daughter of plastic surgeon to the stars, Anton Slim.”

I tuck a twenty under the empty glass. “Of course they are.”

“Hey, that’s too much,” Jake says, but I wave him off and slip out into the cloying darkness.

Chapter 5

I drop my yellow legal pad, Florida Bar card, and a blunt pencil pilfered from a convenience store last time I bought a lottery ticket onto the conveyor belt and proceed through the magnetometer, a gargantuan metal detector at the jail entrance.

Beep beep beep.

“Shoot.” I step back.

The guard seated to the side of the contraption, an older man with a paunch from years of sitting, doesn’t take his eyes off a dog-eared copy of Sports Illustrated. “Got anything in your pockets, Miss? Change? A ballpoint pen?”

I pull up my left pant leg and shake Oscar in his direction. “Nope, just this.”

He leaps up, bug-eyed. “Holy Mother of God.” He turns his head this way and that, examining what, to the untrained eye, is nothing more than a metal bar attached to a flesh-colored shoe tree. “Can’t rightly say I’ve ever seen one of them things up close.”

I drop my pant leg and proceed, ignoring the beeping. “Then you’re a lucky man.”

He thrusts his shoulders back and salutes in the practiced way of muscle memory that will never fade.

“What branch?” I ask.

“Army. Spent some time in Nam. Damn near killed me. You?”

“Same. Army. Iraq. Damn near killed me too.”

“I’d say we’re both lucky,” he says, eyes drifting away to somewhere he’d been a long time ago. Back when he was young and everything was possible.

“You’re good to go,” he says, rushing to retrieve my belongings and hand them to me.

“Thanks,” I say, chin high, hand cocked in the first salute I’ve given since leaving Walter Reed.

“No, thank you.”

The guard mumbles into his shoulder-mounted radio and a barred gate slides open. I proceed to the central command post for the women’s wing, the clickety-clack of my steps echoing off the cinder block walls. At the end of the long corridor, another guard stands behind a smudged glass partition, a frail woman with mousey brown hair with a thin body, like a plumb line suspended within her green polyester uniform.

I slide my Bar card and driver’s license into the metal drawer along with a scrap of paper on which I scrawled the cell block location for Zoe Slim I found online. The guard pulls the drawer toward her, but leaves the card and license sitting there. Instead, she scoops up a drippy sandwich from a paper wrapper and starts to eat. I take a seat opposite the window and wait. I wait some more. Waiting’s not a skill taught in law school, but it is one which has to be perfected to survive, as either attorney or inmate.

I try not to dwell much these days on my service, but the guard’s reaction reminds me some still consider military service the height of patriotism. For me, enlisting was the most impulsive thing I’ve ever done, and that’s saying something. On September 12, 2001, I walked into an Army recruitment office and signed up, much to the chagrin of my father, who’d gotten me my first law job—a job in the North Tower of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan.

As luck would have it, I was running late for work on September 11, 2001. The moment I emerged from the subway the first plane hit the North Tower. In an instant, my law firm was no more, my colleagues were dead, and the world had changed forever. No longer could I justify arguing about rich people’s money for a living. I knew in my heart I had to actually do something—not just talk about it—not recite hollow prayers for the fallen and their families, only to go back to business as usual. I felt compelled to act. The terrorists had left me no choice. What I vowed to do was not stand on the sidelines and officiate, but to fight back with my own two hands to avenge the countless victims leaping from the towers against the backdrop of the bluest of bluebird skies I’ve ever seen.

I shake my head to chase away the horrendous memories and motion to the guard in a “Hey, I’m just reminding you I’m here” kind of way. It’s been more than an acceptable period of time, even by jail standards, but a more direct approach such as a “Hey, will you hurry things along,” will only cause her to use what little authority she has to piss me off by making me