Page 61 of Pro Bono

He crawled to the edge of the door, very softly turned the knob for the dead bolt, then looked at her once more, held up three fingers, two, one, swung the door open, and lunged through it into the conference room with the pistol in a two-handed grip.

The men were gone. Warren moved to the door into the main office. He could see that the men must have poured an accelerant onto the furniture and wall of the waiting area. Bright flames wavered and sparked in that area and were moving across the space where the door was brokenopen and left hanging on one hinge. “Hurry,” he whispered, and tugged Vesper into the open gap and over a foot of low flames into the hallway.

A door down the hallway opened a few inches, a hand holding a pistol emerged, and Warren yelled, “Drop the gun and get out of the building! It’s on fire!”

The pistol roared, and Warren could see a spray of bright sparks. He fired three times into the dark, empty space where the gun was, the door opened farther and a man toppled outward onto the floor. A second man fired at Warren from the corner where another hallway met this one.

Suddenly, the elevator down the hall gave a “ding,” Warren and the second man froze for a second, the elevator door rolled open, and two men dashed out into the hallway with guns drawn. One of them was Copes, who yelled, “Police! Drop your weapons!” Minkeagan shouted, “You’re under arrest! Police! Show me your hands!”

The man lurched out from the corner where he’d been hiding, running toward them. He sprinted down the hallway, a pistol in his right hand. Warren had time to return fire one more time. He could tell that he had hit the man, who veered aside and dropped his pistol, which Warren could now see was a large revolver with a silvery finish. When the man reached his fallen companion, he went to the floor on his belly, so Minkeagan and Copes moved toward him. He picked up the semiautomatic pistol his companion had dropped, raised it to his head, and fired.

Minkeagan reached Charlie and Vesper. Minkeagan said, “What the hell? Why’d he kill himself? Who even are these guys, and why is the building on fire?”

Copes knelt by the other man who had been hit by Warren’s shots. “This one’s dead. Did he kill himself too?”

“Thank you for your concern,” Warren said. “We’ve all got to get out of the building now, you first.”

Minkeagan said, “Tell the cops you found those guns in the dumpster out back, and you were going to turn them in to the police in case they’d been used in a crime.”

“Have they been?” Warren said.

“Not if the cops don’t charge you for this.”

Copes and Minkeagan stepped over the bodies and went to the stairwell.

Warren took out his phone and dialed. He heard, “Nine-one-one, what’s the address of your emergency?”

Warren gripped Vesper Ellis’s hand as he stepped into the stairwell and began to descend. “Fifty-six, nine eighty-nine Wilshire Boulevard. The building is on fire on the sixth floor, we have two men shot, and so we need ambulances, fire, and police. My name is Charles Warren, and I have a law office in the building.”

Five hours later Charlie Warren and Vesper Ellis drove from the police station to Warren’s condominium. The world outside had taken on a faint gray color that felt like a warning that dawn was going to come sometime soon. They mumbled goodnight and went to their respective rooms and went to sleep.

It was late afternoon when they were awake and met at the kitchen table. Warren was already making coffee, eggs, and toast. “Thank you, Charlie,” she said. “I would have been happy to cook, but you beat me to it.” He poured her a cup of coffee and set it in front of her.

He shrugged. “It’s what I make most days. It’s kind of automatic.” He slid the eggs onto plates, the toast onto smaller plates.

She said, “Can I use that pad and pen on the counter?”

“Sure.” He took a step to the side, picked them up, set them in front of her, and went to the refrigerator to get the strawberry jam.

She wrote a paragraph, dated it, and signed it with a flourish, and then pushed it across the table in front of him.

He read it silently. “To whom it may concern: I, Vesper Ellis, have retained the legal services of Charles Warren, attorney at law, from May 6 through June 12. He has successfully recovered all of the money that employees of Great Oceana Monetary Investment and Founding Fathers Vested had removed from my accounts, and obtained damage payments of five million dollars for me. Since he has insisted on taking my case pro bono, he has received no pay. I thank him profoundly and hereby, as of sixP.M.today, discharge him and declare him no longer my attorney.”

He walked out of the kitchen area to the living room, opened a desk drawer, put the letter inside, and closed it. Then he went back to the kitchen table and sat down to finish their food. After they had eaten, they loaded the dishwasher and started the wash cycle.

Warren went into his bedroom closet and selected some fresh clothes, set them on the closet island, and went into his bathroom to take a shower. He started the water, stepped into it, and closed the glass door. He had slept deeply, but endured several dreams that were variations on the gunfight and fire in his office and the long police interrogation afterward. He reviewed them as he soaped himself and let the warm water wash over his head and back and loosen his muscles. His eye caught something moving in the mirror above the sink, and turned. The door had opened and closed, and Vesper Ellis was standing there in a white bathrobe, staring at him.

She took off the bathrobe and hung it on the unused hook beside the glass door and stepped into the shower beside him. She said, “I hope you don’t mind. It was the simplest solution and I’m already glad I did it.”

“If I had any doubts, I would have locked the door.” He put his arms around her and drew her body up against his, and they touched and kissed and stood there sharing the rush of warm water over them. They spent a long time getting accustomed to each other, and then he said, “Any plans for after this?”

“Before we fall asleep again, I’m going to be your girlfriend.”

25

One week later, Charles Warren leaned back on the couch in his living room, and spoke into burner phone number three. He said, “Hi, Mom. This is your favorite son. Where have you been?”

“I was at the beach all morning, had lunch with a friend, and then I was outside gardening. I don’t recognize this number. You’re lucky I answered at all.”

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