The Last Straw

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Book excerpt

Chapter One

Perry Brumfield unzipped his pants as he entered the bedroom and strode confidently toward the queen size bed.

He was in his early thirties with neatly trimmed hair that didn’t quite cover the top of his ears.  He was dressed in a black three-piece pinstripe suit with a yellow polka dot tie, and he wore black wingtip shoes that were so highly buffed you could almost see your face in them.

“Hey, I need the money up front,” Jean said, standing in the doorway behind him, her right hand on her hip and her left hand outstretched, palm up.  She wore a short green, figure-hugging skirt with matching high heels and a white silk blouse.  Her flowing red hair descended well below her shoulders.

He hesitated and turned toward her.  He had had a few drinks and for the first time that evening, it started to show, or maybe she hadn’t been paying close enough attention until now.  She usually took clients she didn’t know to hotel rooms, and she had initially balked at letting him come to her apartment, which was reserved for men she could trust (insofar as that was ever completely possible).  But her girlfriend had vouched for this man and she had relented.

“What if I don’t feel like it?” he asked, smiling broadly.

Maybe he’s just playing around, Jean thought.  He seemed harmless enough and, based on what her friend had told her, coupled with the way he dressed, money was clearly not something he had to worry about.  “I’m sorry, sweetie,” she said, smiling back at him, “but those are the house rules.”

His smile evaporated and turned into an angry snarl.  “I said I don’t feel like it.”

“Shit,” Jean said under her breath.

“What?”

“Nothing … Listen, what do you say we hit the bar again, have another drink and talk this over?  How does that sound, huh?”

“Don’t you have anything here?”

“No.  I’m all out.”

The smile reappeared.  “All right,” he said, zipping his pants up and moving toward her.  “I guess I could use another one.”

Jean exhaled slowly.  This was an occupational hazard she could not completely escape no matter how careful she was and, truth be told, no matter where she was.  Still, she had dodged a bullet.  She would get this creep to the bar down the street and dump him.  Then she would give her girlfriend a piece of her mind for getting her into this mess.

She started toward the front door, picking up her purse from the coffee table on the way.  Still smiling, Brumfield joined her and put his arm around her shoulder as they approached the door.  When she opened it, though, he kicked it shut and shoved her against it, back first.  His left hand clutched her throat.  Not enough to impede her breathing but more than enough to pin her to the door.

His face twisted into an ugly scowl.  “You don’t listen too good, do you?  Now I don’t feel like payin’ at all.”  

This wasn’t the same man she’d met at the bar earlier that evening.  That man was the one her friend had described, a successful salesman in a three-piece suit who would never say “you don’t listen too good.”  And it wasn’t just the liquor.  He literally was not the man he’d pretended to be, and although her customers often weren’t, she could almost always tell.  But not this time.

Suddenly, his scowl melted into a smile once again.  Plainly, he was enjoying himself.  At first Jean sneered at him, a natural reaction.  Then her instincts kicked in and she smiled back.  His own smile broadened.  Her eyes found his and locked on them.  Intrigued, he loosened his grip on her neck ever so slightly.

Still smiling and careful not to telegraph anything to him, Jean twisted her body sideways and drove one of her high heels into the top of his foot.  He winced, groaned loudly, and fell to the floor, grasping his wounded foot with both hands.  Still facing sideways, she swung her purse at his head like she was delivering a backhand in a tennis match.  He dodged it just in time and the purse flew across the room, spilling its contents as it hit the wall.  She turned toward the door and a half step brought her close enough to reach for the door knob.  As her hand grasped it, Brumfield grabbed her ankle and pulled her to the floor.

“Bitch!” he growled as he pinned her arms to the floor beside her and pulled himself on top of her abdomen, propping himself up on his knees with his legs straddling her.  “I oughta kill you for that,” he bellowed and punched her full in the face. 

She screamed.

“Shut up or I will kill you.”

She turned away from him and brought a hand to her throbbing cheek.  He reached behind him and slid his hand under her skirt.  She twisted and squirmed under his weight and he punched her again on the other side of her face.  Groping for her panties, he found the top elastic band and pulled hard.  It snapped like a thin rubber band.  Then he ripped her blouse apart, scattering buttons that pinged and skipped across the hardwood floor, as he forced her bra down, exposing the nipples of her breasts.  Leering at them, he hesitated.

In that instant Jean contemplated going limp and yielding.  For a fee – a good one; her services weren’t cheap – she would have willingly had sex with him a few minutes earlier.  That was true despite his deception.  Was it worth the beating she was taking – might yet take or worse – to force him to live up to his end of the bargain?  But was sex all he wanted?  He was going to rape her, but would it end there?

“No!” she wailed and with her free hand plunged her nails into the side of his face, leaving deep, bloody tracks where they pierced the skin.

“Goddammit!” he yelled, reaching for his face with one hand and then punching her once more with the other.  She blanched and cried out.

Abandoning his plan to rape her, Brumfield now flew into a rage and, grasping her neck with both hands, began to strangle her.  She stomped her feet on the floor and grabbed his wrists, frantically trying to loosen his grip.  She gasped for air, started to choke, and felt herself slowly descending into unconsciousness.

Her descent was arrested by knocking on her door and a voice from the hall.  “Jean, are you all right?”

It was her elderly neighbor Gabriel Koblentz, who was about to enter his apartment across the hall when he heard the commotion inside hers.  Suspecting the worst and getting no answer, he pressed his ear against the door and knocked again.  “Jean, Jean, are you okay?”

Brumfield cocked his head toward the door and covered Jean’s mouth with his hand.  She managed to loosen his grip enough to reach one of his fingers with her teeth.   She bit hard until she tasted blood.  He yanked his hand away and shook it vigorously, but the only sound he made was a muffled groan. 

In a voice just loud enough to reach the other side of the door, Jean whimpered, “Help … He’s killing—”

Brumfield turned back to her, lifted her head in both hands and slammed it against the hardwood floor.  By now she was so spent she could hardly manage a sound.  Brumfield scrambled to his feet and, favoring his injured instep, limped the few steps that separated him from the door.  When he opened it, he saw only the door to Koblentz’s apartment slamming shut.  He looked back at Jean lying motionless on the floor and, not bothering to close the door, hobbled to the end of the hall, down three flights of stairs, and out of the building.

From inside his apartment, with his ear pressed against the door, Koblentz listened intently until he heard Brumfield’s footsteps fade in the distance.  Then he opened his door enough to stick his head out and inspect the hall in both directions.  Seeing no one, he hurried to Jean’s apartment.  She heard him come in the open door and close and lock it behind him.  She pulled her skirt down, closed her torn blouse as best she could and turned her battered face to him.

Brumfield’s first punch had landed flush against her left cheek and eye, and the second and third had landed squarely against her right cheek.  The result was that her left eye was already swollen and nearly closed, and the color of her rapidly swelling cheeks was somewhere between dark crimson and light purple.

“Did you call the police?” Jean whispered.

“No, not yet.”

“Then don’t.”

“But—”

“Please don’t.”

“Then at least let me call an ambulance,” Koblentz said, stunned at the sight of her.

“No,” she pleaded.  “I’ll be okay.”

He knelt beside her and, as gently as a mother holding her newborn child for the first time, he cradled her head in his arms.  She looked so pitiful and helpless that he couldn’t bring himself to argue with her.  “What do you want me to do?” he asked, his voice cracking.

“Call a friend of mine and if you don’t mind, wait until he gets here.”

“Don’t you worry.  I’m not going anywhere.”  He stood.  “I’m getting something for your face while we wait.”  He rested her head on the floor.  Then he fetched a throw pillow from the sofa, placed it under her head, and went to the bathroom.  A moment later he returned with two wet towels which he placed on either side of her face.   “That better?”

“Yes, thanks.”

He took his cell out of his pocket.  “Now give me the number for this friend of yours.”  She told him and he punched the numbers in.  “And what’s the name?”

In a voice that was barely audible she said, “Rico” and passed out. 

Chapter Two              

Paul Elliott stretched and tumbled out of bed, shaved and showered, had a quick bowl of cereal, and was off to work inside forty-five minutes.  Thirty minutes later he was behind his desk in his office digging through an avalanche of mail in his in-box when his phone rang.  It was the judge’s bailiff.  The muscles in Paul’s stomach tightened.  The jury had reached a verdict.  He looked at his watch: 9:20 a.m.  This was some kind of record.  The jury had just gotten the case at 3:30 p.m. the day before, an hour before retiring for the day.  As his large law firm’s first black partner, he was still a little self-conscious about the need to maintain his excellent won/lost record.  Deep inside he knew that this feeling was entirely self-imposed, but that did little to banish it from his psyche.

Paul was at the courthouse in fifteen minutes.  Waiting for the elevator, he spied Benjamin Yanders, a neighbor from his apartment building, and followed him into the elevator behind a throng of other people.  Yanders was looking down at his shoes and inside the packed elevator Paul couldn’t make eye contact with him.  Before he knew it, the elevator had reached his floor and Paul was getting out.  He glanced over his shoulder and when he saw his neighbor exiting with a few other people, he stopped and waited for him.

Yanders was tall and thin and an old lower back injury caused him to stoop forward a little when he stood for a while or walked long distances.  He had a full head of dark, closely cropped hair that was peppered with gray and he had crowded, bushy eyebrows.  His dark brown face was more lined and haggard than Paul remembered from the last time he saw him only a few days earlier.

“You practicing law now, Ben?” Paul joked as Yanders approached.

He was looking right past Paul and hadn’t recognized him, so the sound of his name startled him a little.  “Oh, Paul … Sorry, I didn’t see you.”

“No problem,” Paul said.  “What’s up?”

“Sandy got a subpoena.  I’m down here to see the assistant State’s Attorney,” Yanders said, more than a little dejected.

For the first time Paul noticed Yanders’s daughter Sandra.  He hadn’t seen her when she got on the elevator or when she got off.  Now she was standing a few feet behind her father.  Studious and shy, she was a cute sixteen-year-old.  As an only child, she looked upon Paul as an older brother and he treated her like a younger sister.  He wondered what the State’s Attorney’s interest was in her and why Yanders hadn’t mentioned the subpoena before now.  “Hi, Sandy.  How are you?” he said.

“Hi, Paul.  I’m okay, I guess,” she said, glancing at him when she answered and then looking away.

Paul checked his watch.  “The State’s Attorney’s office is around the corner.  I’m going that way.  I’ll walk with you.”

Yanders didn’t respond, but the three of them started down the hallway together.  After a few paces Paul said, “So, Ben, you want to tell me what’s going on?”

Yanders stopped.  He had the look of a man who had just come from the funeral of his best friend.  “Sandy witnessed a shooting.  The guy died,” he said morosely.  “They want her to testify against the killer.”

Paul didn’t try to mask his shock.  “My goodness.  That’s horrible.”  He looked over at Sandy.  She was out of earshot and still looking away.  “How is she?”

“I think she’s holding up better than I am.”

“How’s Danielle taking it?”  She was Sandy’s mother and Robinson’s soon to be ex-wife.

“She’s out of the country.  I don’t have her itinerary and her cell is turned off.”

“Okay.  That’s not the most important thing right now.  So, talk to me.”

Yanders took a deep breath and let it out slowly.  “I know you’re wondering why I didn’t call you, but I didn’t want to impose and—”

“Ben, you know me better than that.”

“Yeah, I know.  With everything that’s been going on with Danielle and me, I guess I’ve been a little overwhelmed – haven’t been thinking straight.  I’m glad I bumped into you.”  He was nervous.  He paused and took in another lungful of air and let it out. 

Paul wanted to hear what had happened, but he had to get to the courtroom soon.  “So, fill me in, Ben.  What happened?”

“There was a carjacking.  This young kid shot the driver.  Maybe the guy resisted or maybe the kid panicked.  Maybe it was cold blood.  I don’t know.  Sandy was coming around the corner and the kid must not have seen her, but she got a good look at him – unfortunately.  He pushed the guy out of the car and drove off like a bat out of hell.  She used her cell to call 911.  She was with some of her friends, but since she was way ahead of everyone else, she was the only one who saw it.”

“I think I read something about that in the paper,” Paul said. “Hell of a shame, all the way around.”

By now they were in front of the courtroom.  Paul peeked inside.  The opposing counsel was there with his client.  Paul was representing a doctor who had a heavy surgery schedule and Paul had told him he didn’t have to be present for the verdict.  Indeed, he hadn’t been there since the opening statements, something Paul had prepared the jury to expect during jury selection.  It cut both ways.  No matter how well Paul explained the reason for the doctor’s absence, some jurors might be offended or view his absence as a sign of indifference or worse, callousness.  But he hoped they would interpret his absence as confidence and devotion to his other patients, which was the impression Paul tried to leave with them.

Paul turned to Sandy.  “Are you holding up okay?”

She returned his gaze and didn’t look away this time.  “I’m all right.  A little scared, though.”

“I would be, too,” Paul said. “But just a little, like you.  Listen, everything’s going to be fine, okay?”

She nodded timidly.  Paul smiled at her and extended his fist.  She extended hers and they did a fist bump.  He then turned his attention to Ben, whose face continued to wear the same worried look.  “Ben, what’s the State’s Attorney’s name?”

“Mitchell Tolliver.  Do you know him?”