Tentative Title - Port of Miracles
"Taut suspense, wry
humor, first-rate storytelling"
-- Chris Rogers, author of Bitch Factor
Chapter One
Thursday, 4:45 pm
Leo Zachmann glanced at the blinking red eye on his phone, then turned his gaze to the sheets of rain pounding the glass walls of his Bayou City high-rise office. He felt as surly as the weather. Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t was about the sum of it. With a sigh, Leo picked up the phone and answered in hardy Texan, “Zachmann, here. What can I do you for?”
“Thanks for taking my call," said Bill Glasscock with an impatient edge in his mid-range baritone voice.
“Why shoot, Bill. If my secretary had told me it was you, I’d have made her put you right through,” Leo lied. Martha Dee had announced Glasscock’s call five minutes ago and Leo had let him wait just to see how desperate the West Coast lawyer really was.
“Guess you know why I’m calling?” Glasscock continued.
“Not a clue,” Leo lied again. Leo had never met Bill Glasscock in the flesh, but he’d seen plenty of him on the all-hype-all-the-time TV news, ever since country-music singer and sometimes actor Jake Jennings had been arrested for the murder of his socialite wife and then hired Glasscock to defend him. The courthouse gossipmongers kept busy wondering if a California lawyer could handle a Texas judge and jury. So far Leo's money was on Glasscock's lawyering getting his client the death penalty.
“Look, Leo,” Glasscock continued. “I need you on my team.”
That you do, thought Leo. The current star prosecutor in the DA’s office, beautiful and bountiful Claudia Lockhill, had planted her high heels in Glasscock's backside at the evidentiary hearing. Jennings was now in county jail awaiting trial. “Well, Bill, I’m not sure what I can do to help. Besides, you’ll do just fine against Miss Lockhill, just as long as you don’t turn your back on her. Watch her... watch her... uh, well, watch her eyes is about the best advice I can give you.”
“I can understand if you don’t want to get involved this late in the game,” Glasscock continued, “but do me one favor before you say no?”
“What’s that?”
“Talk with Jake. That’s all I’m asking.”
The leather chair complained as Leo leaned back, getting into thinking position. He had a dozen reasons why he shouldn’t take on a new case. First, he had a major corporate fraud trial on the horizon. The Texas politicians who had kept the Justice Department at bay for a couple of years were now into saving themselves from being thrown out of office instead of saving former campaign contributors. Then there was the little matter of his ticker that his wife and secretary and daughter kept pestering him to get checked out. Last, but in no way the least, was the wife problem, whatever that was. “I just don’t see how I could do it,” Leo said firmly.
“Please, Leo. I really need someone who knows his way around a Texas courthouse on this one. Talk with Jake, think about it, call me back. Will you do that much before you give me a final answer?”
Leo sighed. Why not that much? Checking it out wouldn’t hurt. Besides, a love-and-murder case was always a sight more interesting than a paper-chase corporate fraud case. The trial date on that one hadn’t been set yet. When it was, he could probably turn most of the preliminary action over to an associate. Time wise, he could probably do it. And then there was that David versus Goliath thing -- lone defense attorney up against the unlimited resources of the state with life or death on the table -- that always made a murder case just a tad more fun. Besides, maybe Jennings was innocent. The cops still hadn’t found the murder weapon.
“Talk is, Jennings' trial gets underway in March," Leo responded. "That’s not enough time for me to get up to speed and hand off the other stuff on my plate.”
“Surely Abrams will give us an extension if you come on board,” said Glasscock.
“Not a chance,” answered Leo. “Not with Judge Abrams. Once he sets a date, you’d better get ready for trial. That’s one problem I can see already.”
“What else?” Bill queried.
“Well…. if I were to decide to do it, who’d be in charge?”
“What do you mean?”
Ah, ha, thought Leo. It was one thing to recruit a hired gun to guard the pass, another thing entirely to let him charge the posse chasing them. “It’s this way,” Leo said. “I generally work solo, except for my very able staff, and they usually do things my way without a lot of argument. I just don’t think I’d be interested in a tag-team match, if that’s what you had in mind.”
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line before Bill said, “I think we can work it out to your satisfaction.”
Leo thought he heard a faint sigh of relief on the West Coast end of the line. Premature relief. He wasn’t ready to agree to anything just yet. The one thing Leo knew for sure was that every murder case took a piece of his soul, so the first order of business was to bargain for a fair rate of exchange. The price had gone up over the years as he was left with less soul to trade. “Assuming I talk with Jake and decide he’s a man I’d want to defend, exactly how would I get paid?”
“He can afford you. Whatever you and Jake work out is between you and Jake. Just talk with him, think about it, and call me back by Friday. Okay?”
“That much I’ll do.” Leo said. “And, Bill, whatever I decide, thanks for asking.”
“We’ll talk again Friday,” said Glasscock and hung up.
Leo replaced the receiver and unfolded his substantial six-foot-five frame from his chair into standing position. As he stretched to work out the kinks in his back, he glanced at the rain-doused windows. The neon lights on the tops of downtown high-rise buildings shimmered like the movie version of an alien spacecraft hovering over a doomed city.
Doom. What he felt. Maybe it was just the weather that had him in such a funk. Rodeo weather. God’s gift to the “trail riders” -- the bone-chilling, Blue Norther freezing rains that followed early February's false Spring. Happened every year just about the time city-slick Texans dressed up in cowboy costumes and drove wagons and horses and RVs hundreds of miles along interstate highways into the Bayou City. Served ‘em right for treating horses that way.
Leo turned away from the windows and walked through the door of his private office to visit with his secretary. Martha Dee was on the phone telling someone he wasn’t in. He waited until she finished her white lie and scribbled the message.
“Could you call the jail. Let them know I’m coming down in the morning to visit Jake Jennings. We’ll need a few private moments.”
Martha Dee looked up. “You going to tell her?”
“Tell her what?”
“You know what?”
“I haven’t said I’d take it yet.”
Martha Dee gave him her flamboyant expression of disbelief -- mouth pursed, eyes cast to the ceiling, then the schoolmarm shake of her head. “Don’t play dumb with me, Leo Zachmann. You’ve been second guessing Glasscock from day one. We both know you’re going to take it. But you and Miranda...”
Damn it. Even the help could see he and Miranda were having problems. but he wasn’t going to address marriage problems, not with Martha Dee. “Well, don’t you think Jennings deserves a chance?” Leo countered.
Martha Dee shrugged. “Doesn’t sound like a winner if you believe what they have to say on the news, but I doubt that’ll stop you. Hardly anything stops you once you decide to do something.”
“Hmm.” There was no need to protest. Martha Dee knew him too well. All the women in his life -- his wife, his secretary, his daughter, even his young granddaughter -- knew him too well for him to get away with much. Worse, they all had an opinion on just about everything he did as well as an ongoing commentary on what he should be doing instead of what he was doing. Women.
“Where is Miranda anyway? I’m ready to go to the house.”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you. She left the office while you were in conference this afternoon. Said she’d try to call you later.”
“She say where she was going?”
“Singapore. One of Stockton’s deals.”
Damn it. Not only had Miranda abandoned him in spirit, she’d flown the coop. “Well, I’m going to the house,” Leo said and turned back to his office. “I would suggest you do the same before all the streets flood."
“Right behind you,” she said, “after I call the jail.”
Leo grabbed his jacket and headed for the elevator.
“Drive friendly,” Martha Dee called after him.
Right, Leo thought. Exactly how he felt like driving.
If you would like to be notified of the release date for PORT OF MIRACLES, email lbcobb@lbcobb.com. In the meantime, read Cobb's critically acclaimed and award winning novels, SPLENDOR BAY and PROMISES TOWN.
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PROMISES TOWN, L.B. Cobb's first Texas Mystery introduces Leo and Miranda Zachmann in the case of a murdered Federal Prosecutor. Bill Glasscock, who makes a cameo appearance in PORT OF MIRACLES, stars in SPLENDOR BAY.
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