Barely Legal

82

By the time he got home, Herbie was a nervous wreck. He knew where Melanie was, but he couldn’t rescue her. If he went to Dino, the cops would raid the place and those jerks would kill the girl. So what could he do?

He could go into court and throw the case. That would buy some time, but that would destroy his client’s life. It could put him in danger, too. In jail, some subhuman specimen could attack him in the shower or stab him during lunch.

Unfortunately, it was the lesser of two evils. David’s possible demise, balanced against Melanie’s almost certain one. The gunmen he’d seen through the window weren’t subtle. They had made their intentions known. At the slightest hint of a rescue the girl was dead. That was the way they played. It might not be what the brains of the outfit wanted, but it was what the menials intended to carry out.

Herbie had to rescue her himself. Pose as a mailman, pose as a cable TV repairman, pose as a pizza delivery boy, for Christ’s sakes, he knew that worked, all you needed was a box. He could probably talk his way in, but what did he do then? Overpower three or four armed thugs with his bare hands? The chance of that succeeding seemed awfully slim.

Herbie wished he had a gun. He’d had one for years, got rid of it when he cleaned up his act. The gun had gone the way of everything else. Everything except his IOU. That had survived over the years, despite being paid off, and transferred, and forgotten, and remembered, and transferred again, a worthless piece of paper that might well cost him his life.

Why hadn’t he ditched the IOU and hung on to his gun?