Free Primal Fear by William Diehl

future.”
    “And how do you suggest I do that?”
    “Jane Venable’s moving out. The D.A.’s office is wide open.”
    “C’mon, you think Jack Yancey and I could spend more than ten minutes together without killing each other?”
    “Yancey needs you. He’s lazy. And he’s lost all his gunslingers. Jack’s balls’re hanging out. Hell, he never did have the stones for that job. He’s a politician in a job that calls for an iceman. He has to do something fast before everybody finds out how incompetent he is. What he wants is to make judge—eight, nine years down the line—and live off the sleeve for the rest of his time. To do that, he needs to rebuild his reputation because you’ve been makin’ him look like Little Orphan Annie. Twice in one year on headline cases and burned up his two best prosecutors to boot. Silverman’s still in a coma from the Pinero case and Venable’s on her way to Platinum City. He needs you, son.”
    “I can’t afford to work for an assistant D.A.’s salary. This case alone could cost me seventy-five, one-hundred thousand.”
    “C’mon, son, you made a half million off Pinero and you live like a hermit.”
    “My nest egg.”
    “I have some people who can turn your nest egg into a portfolio worm a million, million and a half over the next few years. That’s where it counts.”
    “All of a sudden everybody wants to do me favors.”
    “That’s because you’re a winner. You take your beating on this Rushman thing, just shows you’re human.”
    “Why is everybody in such a hurry to convict this kid?”
    “Because it’s bad for the community, bad for the state. A thing like this? The sooner it’s behind us, the better. Anyway, you see Yancey’s going to get his robes. Then who knows? You play the other side of the street for a while—hell, you might like prosecuting, don’t know unless you try, right?—three, four years from now who knows where it could end? You want to be doing pro bonos when you’re fifty?”
    He looked out the car window. “Hell, you want to be a man of the people, do it where it counts. Let them pick up the tab.”
    “What the hell’s in it for you?” Vail asked.
    “I don’t like to fight people I can’t beat,” Shaughnessey answered.

EIGHT
    Charlie Shackleford watched from his cubicle in the rear of the big room as Jane Venable burst out of the elevator. She was huddled in a navy pea jacket, a blue knit cap pulled down over her forehead, a bulky turtleneck pulled up around her ears, galoshes flopping at her feet. As she entered the sprawling, noisy office, she swept the knit cap off her head, loosing a forest of red hair, and stuck a Virginia Slims in her mouth which she lit as she wove her way through the jungle of paralegal desks and file cabinets, nodding to the staff as though she were royalty and they were her subjects. Charlie sighed. She was gorgeous. She was brilliant. She was everything in the world Charlie wanted and knew was beyond his reach. She reminded him of one of those models on TV who demonstrate furs in the international fashion shows. Tall, distant, untouchable, classy, arrogant, self-confident. She had it all. Venable had been her own Pygmalion, turning liabilities into assets and capitalizing on what other women might consider physical drawbacks. Her nose, which was too long, became part of an equine mystique that added to her haughty allure. Her neck, which was too slender, was masked in turtlenecks and high lace collars that became the trademark of her classy appeal. She was almost six feet tall, with irreverent splashes of red hair and a stunning figure she usually disguised inside bulky sweaters and loose-fitting jackets.
    Except, of course, in court.
    Charlie looked forward to those days when she would perform before the bench in outrageously expensive tailor-made suits designed to show off every perfect parabola of her body—from her broad swimmer’s shoulders to the tight melons of her rear. She would pull