The Fixer
I was bored and trying to pretend to be okay with nothing to do. After all, for me being “bored” meant I wasn’t in the middle of a game where the stakes were life-and-death.
This is nice, I thought. You’ve earned a break. Enjoy it.
I tried. Really.
The sun slanted through the wooden slats of my office window. It hit the scotch in my glass and sent little patterns of amber light across my desk.
I wasn’t one for daydreaming. I’d been told it’s relaxing, however, so I gave it a try. I could indulge my whims a little, after all. It had been quiet of late.
So, I allowed myself a moment to appreciate the simple things. The eighteen-year-old scotch in my glass. The fading rays of the late afternoon sun. The light dancing on the wooden desktop.
Yeah. This is the life, I told myself. Isn’t it nice to not feel like you have to be going full-tilt all the time?
I was technically self-employed, but it’d been quite some time since I had to hustle for a job or worry about money in the face of all this downtime. Another reason I should’ve felt all right just doing nothing for a little while.
I had plenty of money. Enough for most men to retire. Though that’s not something I even considered. That would definitely be fucking boring.
You wouldn’t have known I was loaded by the look of my office, or the location of the building it was in. But that was a front. In my line of work, you didn’t flaunt what you had.
Still, all that down time did make me antsy. Ain’t it typical? You work like a dog, day-in and day-out, always grumbling about how you’d love a break. Then a break comes and you can’t enjoy it.
On the other hand, I knew it was a blessing to love what you do. More than that, given what I did, it was a double blessing to live long enough to be bored during the slow times.
See? Another reason to enjoy the quiet. So stop grumbling, be thankful for the respite, and enjoy your goddamn scotch.
Resolving to do just that, I sipped my drink. True, I'd rather have been working. Idle hands are the devil’s playground, right? Well, I lived in the devil’s playground. Shit, I’d pretty much helped the fucker design the place. Being idle meant something much darker to me. Much more dangerous.
But the scotch was damn fine. I allowed myself to enjoy the warm fuzziness the alcohol sent to my brain. I rolled the peaty taste around on my tongue and was just starting to smile when the phone rang. Damn.
It was my secondary line. Which meant whoever was calling was someone I knew. Or a close friend of someone I knew.
In any case, it was not a social call—definitely work.
And I was just starting to get the hang of this leisure-time, too.
I answered the call without speaking.
“Uh… he- hello?” a female voice on the other end. Despite her hesitancy, there was an unmistakable strength underlying her voice and the dichotomy intrigued me.
“What can I fix?” It was my usual line. Some of the guys I knew who did my kind of work thought I was being corny. That I was a schmuck for even having a “line.” To me, it was just smart branding.
And I owned more yachts than those other fuckers. So, you tell me who’s the schmuck?
“Oh. It is you,” the woman’s voice held a hint of nervous relief.
See? The branding worked.
I didn’t respond to her statement, though. That was not a gimmick. In the beginning of a relationship with a client, it was all about me feeling them out. I found that silence on my end forced them to reveal their true colors quickly.
To her credit, she seemed to understand. At least, she didn’t try to coax a response from me.
Instead, she set her tone into an even more professional manner and got to it. “My name is Theresa Brannigan. I’m the Assistant District Attorney.”
“I know who you are,” I responded. “You graduated Penn Law. Came here right after graduation and have been rising in the ranks ever since. You’ve got an impressive record.”
Yeah, I’d heard of her. It was pretty typical for some young, idealistic lawyer to come to this city and try to blaze a trail for herself. It was rare, though, for someone to actually succeed.
She’d been tearing it up on the legal front. I had reason to know. Some of my clients had benefited from her work. More than a few had been pissed off.
I liked people who had that kind of wide impact.
“McDonnell gave you my card?” I asked, by way of confirming what I knew. Maybe I was also trying to put her at ease. Like I said, she had an impressive background. And if McDonnell gave her my card, I could trust her.
“Yes. I need help,” she said.
“Of course, you do. Or you wouldn’t be calling.”
“Right.” I could almost hear her flush through the phone. I prayed she was not all show. That she was actually as tough as she played. I waited for her to speak again. When she did, it was disappointing. “Professor McDonnell told me that you were a good resource, if I ever needed it.”
“Don’t lie to me,” I snapped.
There was a pause. This was the moment of truth. Would she continue to try and bullshit me, in which case we had no future together? Or would she come clean, in which case I’d consider it? It was all on her, now.
“He told me you were a resource of last resort,” she admitted, voice low.
That’s better. “And are you in need of a last resort?”
“Yes.” No hesitancy from her, now. Good. That meant she was truly desperate.
Desperate was my specialty. I rattled off the address of a bar and a time to meet me. Then hung up before she could confirm she got it all.
After setting the phone down, I leaned back in my chair and looked at the glimmering light dancing on the desktop again.
Maybe the day wouldn’t wind up being so goddamn boring after all.
3
Theresa
My hands shook as I rode the elevator up. I don’t think I’d ever been so nervous in the whole of my life. Not when I was taking the bar exam. Nor when I faced the worst kind of lowlife on the witness stand.
Maybe I’m making a mistake.
I clutched my large purse closer to me and stared at the buttons on the elevator. I wondered if I could somehow override this rise to the top floor.
The bar the man on the phone named was called “XXV”. So-named because of its location on the 25th floor of an otherwise nondescript office building. I’d never heard of the place before. When I got to the building, I was afraid I’d written down the wrong address. He’d rattled it off so quickly I was still noting it down when the line went dead.
Then, in the elevator, I saw that while every other button on the control board had normal numbers, there was that one in Roman numerals at the top. So, I was in the right place, right?
It should have been a relief. Instead, the dread increased.
Who cares if one sleaze like Antoine Larroca goes free today? You’ll have another chance to put him away. Guys like him screw up eventually.
As I deliberated with myself, the pings announcing each subsequent floor the elevator passed seemed to somehow come faster and faster as I neared the point of no return.
22… 23… 24…
It was possible that Larroca screwed up in a way that would finally let me put him away for good. But in the meantime, how could I sleep at night knowing I had a chance to stop it all, but was too chicken-shit to follow through?