Private L.A. (Private 6)
“Sustained,” Judge Greer said, glanced at Tommy while my insides churned. Even from my angle, I could see that my brother was enraged that his little drama had been interrupted; and I half expected him to start shouting that I was to blame, that I had gotten him drunk, committed the murder myself, put Tommy in the victim’s car, fled the scene, or some diabolical nonsense like that.
“Mr. Morgan,” the judge went on. “The matter is bail, not your countertheory regarding the manner of Mr. Harris’s death.”
“I am not a flight risk, Judge,” Tommy insisted. “I have a business here, a wife, a son. And these charges are not true. I plan to fight. I plan to win.”
Greer hesitated, but only for a moment. “Mr. Morgan, you are to surrender your passport to my bailiff. And your bail is set at five million dollars.”
She rapped her gavel.
Five million? That number sank in, along with the general weakness I suddenly felt as the adrenaline that had seized my body began to ooze away. Tommy did not have five million. He was a recovering gambling addict. He didn’t even have the five hundred grand he’d have to come up with to get a bondsman to cover his bail.
But my brother looked unruffled at the figure, said, “I can live with that.”
Judge Greer rapped her gavel, looked at her clerk. “Next.”
A sheriff’s deputy came for Tommy, while a new inmate appeared from the door to the holding cells. Tommy looked at me,
said, “Help me, brother.”
I watched him disappear as if he’d gone overboard in the darkness, leaving me the only one capable of throwing him a lifeline.
“Morgan,” Billy Blaze said in a harsh whisper, and pointed toward the door.
I startled, got up, and followed the DA into the outer hall, where in that same harsh whisper, Blaze demanded, “Who’s he gonna implicate?”
“I have no idea. Tommy and I aren’t close.”
He squinted. “And yet you come to your brother’s arraignment?”
“Blood’s thick,” I replied coolly. “Haven’t you heard?”
Billy Blaze studied me. “I think the chief and the mayor have grossly overestimated you, Morgan.”
“Think whatever you want, Billy,” I said.
The district attorney clucked his disapproval and said, “I’m watching you, Jack. Your brother’s a killer. It wouldn’t surprise me if you turn out to be one too.”
As Billy Blaze walked off toward the elevators, I wasn’t thinking about what he’d just said to me. I was wondering instead if the strange tattered bond that still existed between my brother and me was strong enough to warrant my posting his bail on a murder charge that he might try to implicate me in as part of his defense.
In all honesty, the thought of Tommy sitting in a jail, stewing, forced to ponder a life behind bars, or worse, a death by lethal injection, definitely had its appeal. But in the next moment I thought of my late mother, who’d told us often that as toddlers we’d spoken our own language, and that the blood of twins was thicker than any other bond, and that by our shared DNA we were committed to each other for life.
Enslaved to each other is more like it, I thought, unsuccessfully fighting the idea that I could just walk away. Keep your enemies closer, wasn’t that the old saying? In any case, it was the argument I relied on as I took the elevator to the clerk’s office, where I planned to find out what I needed to do to post the bail and get my brother back where he belonged for the time being: at home with my sister-in-law and nephew, not sitting in a cell, resentful and plotting ways to destroy me. Or at least that was how my illogic was evolving when the elevator doors opened. I went to the clerk’s office, where a plump, cheerful woman at the front desk said, “How can I help you, handsome?”
I smiled, saw her name tag, said, “You made my day, Judy.”
Judy tittered, “Just doing my job, sir.”
I pulled out a checkbook. “I’m here to make bail for Thomas Morgan, Jr.”
Her face fell into confusion. “Well, someone’s just done that.”
Shocked, I said, “Who?”
“Me,” said an all-too-familiar voice.
I looked to my left and saw an overeducated, impeccably dressed, and utterly ruthless gangster named Carmine Noccia leaning against the counter, holding a BlackBerry.
Chapter 36