Scales of Justice

Chapter One: A Simple Chore

"The pleasure principle makes us want things that feel good, while the reality principle tells us to channel the energy elsewhere. But the desire for pleasure doesn't disappear, even when it's sublimated to work. The desires that can't be fulfilled are packed, or REPRESSED, into a particular place in the mind, which Freud labels the UNCONSCIOUS." - Introducing Freud

The room seemed to be as hot as hell as the two men stared down at the paper. It was from the law offices of Tennerson and Grieg, a major criminal defence firm in Colorado - stamped with their golden symbol of scales over a pyramid - and it informed the two men that Mr. Querel Angelos, the first of them, was in for a hell of a time. The prosecution had rallied with a number of the suspects to turn on Querel. His brother Carlos was no happier to hear of the news. The air seemed to somehow shimmer between them as Querel's hands slowly curled around the edges of the paper; shimmering with heat, with sweat, with tension, with hatred. It informed the two men of the state of affairs with regards to Querel's upcoming trial for conspiracy to commit armed robbery.

"These stupid fuck lawyers, man. They botched this case. They screwed it all up. Don't they freaking know I'm innocent, huh?"

His brother barked back - "Jesus, Querel, I fucking know already. I've been with you every step of the fucking way. This should have been easy." Stepping back from the dining table, Carlos ran his hands through his long ropes of dark brown hair, gazing out into the street from the picture window. Kids were playing out there, in the hot mid-day sun. This area of the city had really crumbled over the last twenty years. "Should have been easy. And now, they're just covering their asses."

"They always have been," fired back Querel. "Now they're throwing it in my face that I didn't take the deal. It's like justice doesn't mean anything to 'em, Carl. Like it doesn't matter that I never went near that place! That God - damn - bank!"

"Least they got you bail," said Carlos, attempting to sooth his brother. Querel was...well, querulous, and when his temper got up, the target ceased to matter. To get his wrath out of his system, anyone would do - including Carlos himself. Querel had an extra six inches of height on his younger brother, and his hair was buzzed almost entirely away. There was just a thin crop of it left, dark like his eyes, giving his whole face the look of a bully. His nickname from the racist fucks at his school had been 'loco' - they'd thought it funny to throw his culture at him with the one Spanish word they knew - and hell, he'd been crazy enough to earn it.

"Bail? Fuck bail if I end up back in prison. Just that one night - just that one night, Carlos, was too fucking much. Can you imagine how much shit I'll get for this? How much time?"

"No, no...no, I don't know."

The two men looked at each other again. Carlos was the first to blink, moving right up to the window, pressing his heated forehead against the glass to cool it. "Haven't things really fallen apart around here?" he asked. The kids were playing with rocks again, turning up the street-corner boom box, seeing how high they could bounce a rock off the ground, or bouncing them off of walls to get a ricochet. "How did it happen? You with that stupid gang, me with the - with my new habits."

"Your drug shit, you mean? And as for the gang, I broke it off with them. Or are you forgetting that, like the rest of these stupid law fuckers?" Querel got up close and personal with Carlos, Carlos pressing back against the glass as though he wanted it to swallow him up, Querel's face boiling hot and red even with his dark olive skin. "Whose side are you on, bro? I didn't counsel SHIT."

The new claim from the prosecution was that Querel, with his old leadership of the group that had robbed the Whitesquare First Bank out in Denver, must have advised the act. Apparently, evidence was being gathered. Testimony from the other gang boys, who had squealed on Querel. In a way, not surprising. When Querel had left the group, he had expected anger, raised voices, thrown stones. But there had really been nothing. Just a hush, a disquieting hush that Querel was plenty smart enough to recognize as bad news. He trusted noise and fury and accusations. This dead calm was too much. It got on his nerves, stopped him from sleeping, gave him ugly nightmares.

Carlos had taken things in stride as much as possible. He stood by the decision to leave the gang. It had mostly been his advice, and the look of scorn in their father's eyes upon his passing. 'Criminal scum', those eyes had screamed, 'my own son, a piece of shit thief. A cut-throat. A dog.' Querel had been deeply struck by it.

Carlos pacified his brother again, grabbing his shoulders in a sudden motion, speaking directly to him the way that Querel understood best. "I ain't betraying you, Querel. My loyalty to you is perfect. We're fucking brothers. Loyalty is what we have. Wild horses couldn't tear it from me."

Querel nodded slowly, raising a hand to scratch over his eyebrow. He backed off, slouching into a chair by the window, watching the kids playing their shabby games in this neighbourhood that was suddenly a ghetto.

***

Bernard Tumbler's feet were atop the desk when his star employee entered his cubicle.

"Amy, got the afternoon free?" he asked bluntly. He was a fat, ugly little man, two patches of grey-brown hair darting across his temples and over his ears. Bernard Tumbler. 'One of the world's truly stupidest names', Amy had always thought.

"A minute, Mr. Tumbler? Of course I do." As one of Bernard's personal assistants and aspiring paralegals, Amy was all ears. Bernard did not shift from his position, simply gazing at Amy from his reclined position. He looked her up and down appreciatively. He had always taken liberties in this department.

Not very tall, not very busty, but a nicely dimensioned frame, and some real spring in the bust - or so Bernard speculated. It was really all in her face, though. That was what counted. Her blue doe-eyes peeked out from whispers of blonde hair that hovered over and around her forehead, trembling down the sides of her head to a little further than ear height. A slightly tomboyish look, perhaps. But her soft lips and slightly flushed round cheeks were unmistakably feminine - and gorgeous at that. Oh, those lips. Bernard envisioned Amy sinking to her knees, mouth popping into a perfect 'O' shape, in preparation for Bernard's great, thick...

"Sir?"

Bernard regained his attention in a flash, smiling up at Amy. "Ms. Passey," he began, only to be interrupted.

"Mrs. Passey, if I might remind sir." Amy had been married precisely two weeks, but felt it important to remind her boss. She figured him to have quite the imagination - from the looks he gave her - and from his recent divorce.

"Ah yes. Kept the last name. That's what throws me off. In any case, Amy, I have an assignment for you. Think you can handle it solo?"

"Sir, I'm just as capable as the men in the office. What is it that I should be concerned about, going in alone?"

"A client of ours, Querel Angelos, is a little...discouraged about the last batch of paperwork we sent over to him."

Mrs. Passey straightened immediately, a little annoyed. "I wrote up those documents myself. They're an honest reflection of the facts."

Coughing and spluttering a little with the latest flu bug (Tumbler caught every and all flu bugs, usually requiring at least two days off), Bernard shrugged. "Well, Querel isn't angry. But he is discouraged. Sounded depressed, frankly. And if we're going for a deal, we need a strong face."

Amy rolled her catty eyes and leaned forward a little, to make herself more clear. Bernard admired the tops of her creamy breasts, doing so covertly, under the cover of a barrage of coughs, giving her eyes enough attention so as to keep her off guard. Amy spoke slowly - "I told Querel to take a God-damn deal, sir. Just like you told me, to tell him. I passed it on just as you said. The evidence is ironclad. We had a weak prosecutor before. Now he's sick, and Barkley is on the case. She's fierce. Now the evidence is mounting..."

Bernard barked up at her - "don't tell me, Amy! I know! I'm the lawyer, here! I'm the partner. So save it, for when you tell Querel in person. He wants a representative. Someone who worked with the case. And that's..."

"...You and I," finished Amy. "Of course, you could go down yourself, or with me. Except for, I suspect that flu of yours is troubling you, huh? A mite convenient, isn't it, to fall ill so frequently?"

Playing indignant, Bernard straightened his tie as though by doing so, he straightened up his morals, and looked down at Amy with a very lawyer-ly gaze over his thick glasses. "Amy, if you're implying that I'm avoiding work by faking sick, that's a malicious and - and - slanderous allegation. That I take very seriously."

"You're one of a kind, you know that?" replied Amy. She was good-natured about her boss's antics. Sure, he was a bit creepy, and gave her too many long looks - sure, he dodged work - but he was good-natured. That was rare in men.

***

The afternoon was a muggy and a hot one. The neighbourhood seemed almost crowded with kids playing, people walking dogs, old people shuffling groceries about. Somehow, this run-down part of town was heavingly busy at this time of the day. God only knew why, with the sun beaming down so intensely. Amy felt a little rivulet of sweat run down her brow. She was wearing a blue blouse, and felt a faintly damp spot emerge between her breasts. The little dark spot grew a little larger as the heat persisted. Colorado in July was a force to be reckoned with.

Mrs. Passey called her husband as she approached the residential block where the Angelos brothers lived. Jack Lancer picked up quickly, after the second ring, and Amy stifled a grin at his groggy, hung-over voice. "'Ello?"

"Hey, hubby. How has your day off been? Not still hung over?"

Jack groaned at his pestering new wife, and laughed painfully. "Amy, it's one in the afternoon. Can't a man get any rest?"

"No rest for the wicked, darling." Amy pushed back a lock of light blonde hair from her eyes. An old fellow on the street corner was begging for change. This place had always seemed like a shit-hole to Amy, and this sort of thing just reinforced Passey's attitude. Walking a little faster, she went on - "just calling to let you know I'm doing an appointment with a PO'd client. I'll be home right after. Probably won't be much longer, 'kay?"

Jack laughed. "I'll cook something real nice for you, baby. Not Mac and Cheese this time."

"I'll believe that when I see it," retorted Amy, and walked up the granite steps to the front door of the Angelos household. She flipped her phone closed. Quickly, she smoothed out her black dress. A part of her really wished it was longer, as she did not want to send Angelos the wrong message: it came to about halfway up her thigh. She was, after all, to be taken as seriously as her boss. A messenger of a lawyer was to be treated as a lawyer, in Amy's mind.

Amy was not very bothered. Querel Angelos had never struck her as a very serious criminal type to her. He was hot-tempered, sure, but he did not strike her as having the balls to carry out anything serious. Having a short fuse was not the same as being willing to carry a gun into a store and hold it up. Frankly, Passey doubted that he had anything to do with the Whitesquare hold-up. The counselling business struck her as nonsense. But Amy was a traditional American, with traditional American biases, and she was willing to turn a blind eye to this spic. Or whatever he was. Amy did not sympathize with the bullshit about being 'color blind'; she was firmly convinced that blacks and Hispanics were a dangerous lot, or at least not a group that needed to be pandered to, and her behaviour of recklessness involving their cases demonstrated this view. Of course she mimicked the politically correct claptrap, when the thought police came knocking - as she considered human resources and their ilk - but in her heart of hearts, she did not care a bit what happened to Querel Angelos.

Querel Angelos opened the door, and immediately cared about what happened to Amy. His cock twitched as he took in her great looks - that lovely angel face, the tits that he could just imagine bouncing in his hands, that flirtatious skirt. He stretched his arm into the interior of the house, letting her pass by, and closing the door behind her without a word of welcoming. Remaining silent, he gazed at her as she passed. As she walked down the entry hall towards the living room, he padded along closely behind her, admiring her ample rear, and the small sweat-spot on the back of her cotton blouse. He liked hair short. Hers was nicely trimmed, allowing lots of neck to be visible.

Amy was saying something about Querel "seeing the light of day - at least I hope - a deal is probably still manageable - I'm still your friend in all of this - Tennerson and Grieg will always be at your service in this - " Mrs. Passey reached the living room, and was surprised to find it neat and tidy. Somehow, she had expected strewn-about beer cans and porn mags. Nicely painted blue and white walls. Paintings of boats from various island vacations. Some family pictures, elegantly framed along the shelf.

She glanced about, and Carlos moved from the bathroom to a bedroom that was closer by. Amy did not notice his movement.

Querel smiled. He imagined that Tennerson and Grieg would indeed be at his service. At least this afternoon, before he got the hell out of Colorado out to the cabin, where they'd never find him. And at least this woman - this gorgeous bit of ass. She would be at his service. And his brother's...

Amy stood in the center of the room, indecisive about whether and where to sit. Querel did not relieve this uncertainty, prowling past the sofa to a glass table where the documents now sat. He spoke deliberately, with great control. "Your boss is a prick. He said we could pull through. He said that innocent men like me would not get nailed. He said that justice is real. And now, when the chips are really down, when the crunch time gets here - he doesn't even show his face? He sends in his bitch?"

Amy whirled about, as he had spoken from just behind her, while her attention had been on some documents she had brought along. The papers flapped in her hands as she spun to try and stare him down. A look of hostility was smeared across his bulldog's face, a leer combined with a mean old look of belligerence. In his dark eyes, she found no chance of his backing down. Her eyes dropped first. Amy spluttered for words for a moment, and Querel's heavy-lidded eyes contemptuously followed the effort. "Mr. - I mean, Querel - you really can't speak to me that way."

"Oh, no? Who says so, sweet cheeks?" Approaching quickly, Querel ran a finger over her right cheek, and she stood still, livid and still, anger bottled up inside of her. Querel felt his cock twitch as it began to grow in his jeans. She wanted to run to the bathroom and wash the grease trail of his flesh, from her pure ivory skin. Querel had always known it. Known that she was resistant to representing or working with him. He suspected that she was a racist little bitch, but he also had ideas about racist bitches. Something about their hatred - 'methinks the lady doth protest too much' - they were probably afraid but deeply attracted to 'ethnic meat'. He loved to watch her tremble, mostly in anger, slightly in a growing trepidation about the whole situation. Was she afraid? Was she smart enough to be afraid? Oh, no. She hadn't noticed Carlos yet - and Carlos was on board.

"Who says so?" Querel repeated. "You, doll?" The finger became a hand, that cupped her cheek. Her arm snapped up mechanically to push him away, and his own left arm intervened, clutching at her wrist roughly. "What?" he spat at her. "What, tits? You wanna run?"

"What the hell are you trying at?" she said in a moment of blustering strength. "You touch me, I'll file charges. I'll file charges on you, you spic bastard - " Once the words had left her mouth, she regretted them. Querel threw her to the ground, and she hit the floor hard, moaning with the sudden pain of it.

"You won't get the chance, you racist little cunt!" Querel yelled, pouncing onto her. She was lying at the foot of the couch, and he came upon her from above and to the side, securing her effectively between him and the rough living room carpet. His hands were strong - very strong - and he rolled her over casually, flipping her so that her hands were behind her back. There was a shuffling sound from above her, and she saw a rope fall out from its hiding place under the couch cushions. As she was still noisily objecting, Querel pulled her head up and smacked it against the floor a few times, hard enough to be more than a warning, stunning her a little. The rope made easy loops around her wrists, binding her well enough for Querel's purposes. Leaning over her, he could smell her perfume, and found himself getting almost dazed by arousal. His cock felt trapped in his jeans, now, throbbing, too big, iron wrapped in velvet.

Lifting the woman was easy. Mrs. Passey was a light weighted young woman, and Querel Angelos flung her onto the dining room table, which was set with gleaming silverware. She managed to avoid any forks and knives, and simply lay, belly-up, on the table, trying to wriggle as much as possible. Amy's wrists felt secure, no matter how hard she jerked and spasmed on the table. It felt intensely vulnerable to lie on this man's table, breathing heavily in the hot air, after the passing lewd comments he had made. Suddenly, new arms grabbed her ankles, and she raised her head to see Carlos at the foot of the table, a look of grim intent over his face.

"What the hell are you doing?" Amy repeated in hatred and indignation. "How the hell would you get away with this? Carlos - you're smarter than this, at least!"

"We're getting out of the city," explained Carlos, very calmly, very directly. "You're coming with us. We have a place. No one knows about it. Old piece of property from a friend. We can hide out there indefinitely. Law will have a hell of a time finding us."

"You - you knew I would - how did you know I would come?" Passey babbled, her pretty white face crinkling up as though she was going to cry.

Querel took over. "Didn't know 100%. We just figured that that spineless bastard Turner wouldn't show up."

"Tumbler," Amy corrected on auto-pilot.

"Shut the fuck up!" Querel commanded, slapping on the face, and hard. As she recoiled from the force of it, curling a little, Carlos grabbed her wrist and showed it to Querel. "Look, man. Ring finger. Wedding ring. Just look at that! A freaking wedding ring! This piece of ass is married!"

"Yes," murmured Amy, "I'm married to - to a real man, you pieces of shit..."

Querel laughed too. "Good, good. Maybe that means she really knows how to suck cock. I know I wouldn't marry a bitch unless she knew how to use her mouth."

Amy shrieked. "You aren't going to rape me. You are NOT going to - "

Another slap on the face from Querel silenced her, or at least reduced her to quieter sobbing. Querel climbed onto the table, and sat on her stomach, straddling her with his strong thighs. With his hands, he eagerly tore at her blouse, tearing it casually apart, leaving two ragged flaps where the shirt had once fit together. Her tits flopped beneath his dark gaze, encased in a black lacy bra, a really fancy piece of lingerie from Victoria's Secret. Amy started to yelp again, until Carlos - having bound her feet with a further length of rope - came around the table and stopped up her mouth with his own fat mouth. His mouth was a large one, with rough lips that were cracked up from the last harsh winter, and his lips plunged over hers, as though trying to suffocate her screaming. If that was his intent, he was succeeding. Her cries were easily stifled.