The Famous Mafioso Hired Me to Hear Him, and the Man in the Cell Is Not Who They Convicted novel · Chapter 17 of 24
Chapter 17: The Boat House
Jo's POV
The old man with the mop found me in the prison parking lot, sitting in my car with the engine off.
He did not knock.
He came around the hood in his gray uniform, a trusty's badge pinned to the chest, and stood outside the window in the cold until I saw him.
I rolled it down.
It was the first time I had seen all of him in daylight.
He was past seventy, with white stubble on his jaw and eyes the color of weak tea.
HE WANTS YOU OUT OF HERE, he signed.
HE HAS A PLAN.
I WAS JUST WITH HIM, I signed.
HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT HE WANTS?
I HAVE BEEN HIS HANDS FOR NINETEEN YEARS, the old man signed.
He took a folded paper from his sleeve and passed it through the window.
It was a court order on the letterhead of a Rochester clinic.
It authorized a one-day medical transfer for an audiological fitting, and it carried a judge's signature and a lawyer's.
The lawyer had signed it Leona Tewksbury, and a second signature in another hand sat beneath it.
HER LAST ACT AS HIS COUNSEL, the old man signed.
SHE FILED IT BEFORE THEY STRUCK HER.
NOBODY HAS CAUGHT IT YET.
HE RIDES TO ROCHESTER TOMORROW AT SIX. TWO GUARDS, ONE VAN.
THE VAN WILL NOT REACH THE CLINIC.
My heart did something that hurt.
WHAT WILL IT DO, I signed.
He smiled, a small, crooked smile that took forty years off his face.
IT WILL GET A FLAT TIRE ON THE RIVER ROAD, he signed.
THE CLUB IS VERY GOOD AT FLAT TIRES.
At twenty past six the next morning I sat in a pickup outside a fogged boat house on the Genesee River.
My father's friend with the gray beard sat beside me at the wheel, and a thermos of bad coffee sat between us.
Nobody talked.
A white van with the state seal pulled onto the shoulder fifty yards up the road, one tire sagging against the gravel.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Famous Mafioso Hired Me to Hear Him, and the Man in the Cell Is Not Who They Convicted are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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