Free A Matter of Mercy by Lynne Hugo

than saw the force the hand had applied. That was the thing with Tomas. You never actually saw the force he applied to anything. “Hey, man,” Tomas said very quietly, speaking eye to eye to Mario. “Mr. Lorenz is our friend. Keep that straight, or we can split up and defend ourselves separately. Right? ”
    Mario’s eyes were coal fires, but he mumbled, “Right.” He looked out the window where the sky was the pure periwinkle of the Cape in September. It helped. The bay would have helped more.
    The attorney’s shoulders and eyebrows—which could use a trim—dropped back into place.
    “Look,” he said, resuming. “There is some good news. Remember that Pissario is also suing the sea farmers—”
    “That’s aquaculturists,” Tomas corrected quietly. His hands rested on thighs that looked exposed without waders over them. His voice was strong, even though it was always low and calm.
    Lorenz blinked and went on again. “Right, excuse me, aquaculturists, he’s suing the other acquaculturists who drive over his beach to get to their grants. Now if I have this right, there are four whose grants are between the access road and Pissario’s who don’t drive over his beach so they’re not included in the suit.” He ran a hand from his forehead back, as if there were hair falling down but there wasn’t.
    Tomas nodded. “That would be Barb, Clint, Tweed, and Karl.”
    Rid directed the question to Mario and Tomas. “Have they heard anything from the people above them? Any complaints, I mean.”
    Tomas answered. “Barb just says she’s always gotten along with them. You know, she sees them out walking, she gives ’em a couple dozen oysters and chats awhile. Nothing different since Pissario filed, but maybe they don’t know about it yet. I doubt it though. People love Barb, and rightly so.”
    “It’s a subdivision up on the bluffs, of course,” Lorenz said. “Sometimes neighborhoods like that will band together if a leader like Pissario emerges. Don’t be surprised. But that won’t affect you.”
    “Yeah.” It was Mario, bitter. “Our asses have already been sued. What else they gonna do? Shoot us at dawn?”
    Tomas shot Mario a look. It was enough to shut him up, but he twisted the baseball cap in his hand until Rid wanted to grab it away. He was nervous enough with Mario’s fidgeting, restraining himself from speaking to avoid Tomas’s reprimand as well as the embarrassment of sounding like Mario. The truth was that his head was about to detonate; he couldn’t trust himself not to explode in his own death threats.
    “Look, could we stick to the point here? I have other appointments.” Lorenz straightened his calendar after leaning over, ostensibly to consult it. “The point is that while there are four aquaculturists not included in the suit for whatever reason, there are six or seven others also sued because they drive across Pissario’s beach to get to their grant areas, although their actual grants are in front of other upland owners’ properties. The point is that perhaps you could draw some or all of them in to fight this together—pool your resources, as it were.”
    “Six or seven others?” Rid couldn’t contain himself, although he had enough control, unlike Mario, to stay seated, refrain from shouting and not cuss. His mother would have been proud. “How’d he figure that? There are twelve or thirteen grants down past Pissario’s toward Blackfish Creek.”
    “I have no idea how he decided whom to sue. That’s a mystery. Maybe they had too many letters and numbers on their license plates for him to copy down or something. I really have no idea. It seems pretty random.”
    “I know Bogsie and Smitty are in it, I saw ’em yesterday,” Rid inserted. “As far as I know, they haven’t done anything like get a lawyer yet.”
    “We can get that information easily enough. You three are his primary targets though, I’m afraid, since you’re engaged in illegally farming his