True Blue

CHAPTER 4

ROY KINGMAN pump-faked once and then darted a bounce pass between his defender’s legs and into the paint, where a giant with rockets in his legs named Joachim stuffed it home, the top of his head almost above the rim.

“That’s twenty-one and I’m done,” said Roy, the sweat trickling down his face.

The ten young men collected their things and shuffled off to the showers. It was six-thirty in the morning and Roy had already gotten in three games of five-on-five full-court at his sports club in northwest D.C. It had been eight years since he’d suited up for the University of Virginia Cavaliers as their starting point guard. At “only” six-two without rockets in his legs, Roy had still led his team to an ACC championship his senior year through hard work, smart court sense, good fundamentals, and a bit of luck. That luck had run out in the quarters of the NCAA when they’d slammed headfirst into perennial power Kansas.

The Jayhawks’ point guard had been a blur of cat quickness and numbing agility, and, at only six feet tall, could easily dunk. He’d poured in twelve threes, mostly with Roy ’s hand in his face, dished off ten assists, and harassed the Cavs’ normally solid point man into more turnovers than baskets. It was not exactly how Roy wanted to remember his four-year collegiate career. Yet now, of course, that was the only way he could recall it.

He showered, dressed in a white polo shirt, gray slacks, and a blue sports jacket, his standard work wear, threw his bag in the trunk of his silver Audi, and headed to work. It was still only a little past seven, but his job demanded a long, full day.

At seven-thirty he pulled into the parking garage of his office building in Georgetown located on the waterfront, snagged his briefcase off the front seat, chirped his Audi locks shut, and rode the elevator car to the lobby. He said hello to Ned the thirty-something heavyset guard, who was cramming a sausage biscuit into his mouth while leisurely turning the pages of the latest Muscle Mag. Roy knew that if Ned had to get up from his chair and simply shuffle fast after a bad guy, he not only would never catch him but someone also would have to perform mouth-to-mouth on old Ned.

As long as it’s not me.

He stepped on the office elevator and punched the button for the sixth floor after swiping his key card through the slot. Less than a minute later he reached his office suite. Since Shilling & Murdoch didn’t open until eight-thirty, he also had to use his key card to release the lock on the law firm’s glass doors.

Shilling & Murdoch had forty-eight lawyers in D.C., twenty in London, and two in the Dubai office. Roy had been to all three places. He’d flown to the Middle East in the private plane of some sheik who had business dealings with one of Shilling’s clients. It had been an Airbus A380, the world’s largest commercial airliner, capable of carrying about six hundred ordinary people or twenty extraordinarily fortunate ones in ultimate luxury. Roy ’s suite had a bed, a couch, a desk, a computer, two hundred TV channels, unlimited movies on demand, and a minibar. It also came with a personal attendant, in his case a young Jordanian woman so physically perfect that Roy spent much of the flight time pressing his call button just so he could look at her.

He walked down the hall to his office. The law firm’s space was nice, but far from ostentatious, and downright slum-dogging it compared to the ride on the A380. All Roy needed was a desk, a chair, a computer, and a phone. The only upgrade in his office was a basketball hoop on the back of the door that he would shoot a little rubber ball into while yakking on the phone or thinking.

In return for ten- or eleven-hour days and the occasional week-end work he was paid $220,000 per annum as a base with an expected bonus/profit share on top of that of another $60,000, plus gold-plated health care and a month of paid vacation with which to frolic to his heart’s content. Raises averaged about ten percent a year, so next cycle he would ratchet to over three hundred grand. Not bad for an ex-jock only five years out of law school and with only twenty-four months at this firm.

He was a deal guy now, so he never set foot in a courtroom. Best of all, he didn’t have to write down a single billable hour because all clients of the firm were on comprehensive retainers unless something extraordinary happened, which never had since Roy had worked here. He’d spent three years as a solo practitioner in private practice. He’d wanted to get on with the public defender’s office in D.C., but that was one of the premier indigent representation outfits in the country and the competition for a slot was intense. So Roy had become a Criminal Justice Act, or CJA, attorney. That sounded important, but it only meant he was on a court-approved list of certified lawyers who were willing basically to take the crumbs the public defender’s office didn’t want.

Roy had had his one-room legal shop a few blocks over from D.C. Superior Court in office space that he’d shared with six other attorneys. In fact, they’d also shared one secretary, a part-time paralegal, one copier/fax, and thousands of gallons of bad coffee. Since most of Roy ’s clients had been guilty he’d spent much of his time negotiating plea deals with U.S. attorneys, or DAs, as they were called, since in the nation’s capital they prosecuted all crimes. The only time the DAs wanted to go to trial was to get their in-court hours up or to arbitrarily kick some ass, because the evidence was usually so clear that a guilty verdict was almost inevitable.

He’d dreamed of playing in the NBA until he’d finally accepted that there were a zillion guys better than he would ever be, and almost none of them would make the leap to professional hoops. That was the principal reason Roy had gone to law school; his ball skills weren’t good enough for the pros and he couldn’t consistently knock down the threes. He wondered occasionally how many other tall lawyers were walking around with the very same history.

After getting some work lined up for his secretary when she came in, he needed some coffee. It was right at eight o’clock as he walked down the hall to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. The kitchen staff kept the coffee in there so it would stay fresher longer.

Roy didn’t get the coffee.

Instead he caught the woman’s body as it tumbled out of the fridge.