The Law (The Dresden Files #17.4)(6)

“So, call up something ugly out of the Nevernever or Demonreach, or do that face-full-of-plasma spell and tell him to buzz off.”

“Might work,” I said dubiously. “What else?”

“Fight him in court!” Bob said. “Like Perry Mason!”

“I’m not a lawyer, Bob,” I sighed. “And it would probably be more expensive to hire one than to pay him off.”

“Yeah, that’s how settlements work,” Bob agreed. “Can the sexy schoolmarm pay a lawyer with sex?”

“She’s not—no!” I said, exasperated.

“Can you?”

“Bob!”

“Harry,” Bob said, his voice hurt, “I’m merely giving you the options available within your irrational limits. I never said they were good options. You don’t have cash, and barter is an option.”

I frowned for a moment. “Something occurs to me.”

“Bound to happen from time to time.”

I tore a corner from a page of my notebook, wadded it up, and flicked it with a finger. It bounced off the skull’s cheekbone. “If Tripp Gregory has all those bills stacked up from being in the hoosegow,” I murmured, “how the hell can he afford a lawyer?”

“Maybe he’s paying in sex.”

“I’ve met the guy. That transaction only goes the other way, believe me.” I tapped my finger on the table and opened the folder Rawlins had given me, paging through it for a detail that my subconscious told me was in there somewhere. “Here it is,” I said finally. “The lawyer who represented him before he got sent to Pontiac. One Talvi Inverno, Esq. What do you know about this guy?”

“Let me run a search!” Bob’s eyelights dwindled down to almost nothing for a moment, then started scanning left to right. “He doesn’t have much of an internet presence,” the Skull reported. “Just public records. Lots of wins. But there’s no business advertisement or anything.”

“That’s damned peculiar,” I said, thinking. “Outfit lawyer?”

“Hard for Google to say,” Bob replied.

I inhaled slowly, thinking. “Okay. Get in touch with Paranoid Gary. Tell him I need whatever he can find on the guy.”

“Check,” Bob said cheerfully. “You thinking you can wax his lawyer and scare him off?”

“I’m not thinking anything yet,” I sighed. “But while that’s going on, I’m going to go see if Tripp Gregory will respond to me leaning on him a little harder. Maybe I can still warn him off.”

“If at first you don’t succeed,” Bob said cheerfully, “you probably needed a better plan to begin with.”

I glowered at the skull and said, “Have Gary get me the information.”

“Will do, O mighty wizard!” Bob replied.

I grunted, grabbed my coat, and thumped up the stepladder out of my lab, to go see if I could get some sense through Tripp’s thick skull.





Chapter Five





I went to Tripp Gregory’s place after dark and got there just as a young woman driving herself arrived, dressed provocatively, went to the door and was let inside. The guy had another woman over? Evidently, he wasn’t the sort to spend money where he needed to, as much as where he wanted to. How the hell was he affording an attorney in the first place?

I squinted. I should stop thinking of Tripp as if he was a regular guy. He was a pimp. If he operated like some of them did, the girl worked for him. He’d be having her over to service him and pay him his share of her income. Hell’s bells. He would just get stronger the more he was allowed to operate. This guy was just as much a vampire as the ones I had fought over the course of my career, only pettier and more disgusting.

And yet… ultimately I was bluffing, here. I wasn’t willing to kill him or mutilate him, not with my magic and not with my hands, either. He was scum, but he wasn’t being violent, and he was still human. Not only did I not dare to violate the First Law of Magic now that I wasn’t a member of the Council anymore, I didn’t want to. If I tried to use my Power to do that when I didn’t believe in it, it wouldn’t work—the spell would simply fail.

And that was a non-fallacious slippery slope. A critical component of working magic was believing that it would and should work. Dry fire your magical abilities one too many times, and maybe enough doubt would creep in to sabotage them altogether, or at least to make it an uphill battle to access your talent at all.

Well. Maybe Tripp was dumb enough to be easily impressed.

I waited, and about forty five minutes later, the young woman left. A few minutes after that, Tripp Gregory emerged jauntily from his home, whistling, car keys in hand. He had to walk about half a block to his car. I murmured a word and threw up enough of a veil around me to make sure he wouldn’t see me approaching, and cat-footed my way after him.

I waited until he lifted his key fob, then pointed my finger at a new BMW, focused my will into the simplest spell a wizard can do, and murmured, “Hexus.”

Random magical energy lashed out, a power that would cause absolute havoc to modern electronics. But I hadn’t counted on my resentment for the jerk adding a little more oomph to the spell. Not only did it scramble the fob, but the wave of power washed over his new car too, and it started up with a roar, the high beams and emergency lights came on, the trunk flew open, the windows all rolled down, and the car alarm started wailing.