Those Canny MacDougalls, Chapter II

After emptying her insides so noisily in the gutter, Claudia Aikens felt both much better and much worse – much better because she’d expelled all the evil humors from her system and much worse because she couldn’t believe she’d played so completely into the hands of this smooth-talking Russian or whatever he was. To say nothing of the fact that she smelled like a biker bar on a Sunday morning and her mouth tasted like the inside of the dumpster behind a seafood restaurant on a hot day. Gennady Kuznetsov pulled a flat tin box from his waistcoat pocket and offered his guest a peppermint. “Now, Miss Aikens. We have had our entertainment and our little charade. Now you will please to tell me your part in this – this incident – at your employer’s office.” Claudia Aikens took two peppermints from the tin. She popped one into her mouth and the other into her purse. She tipped her head back and rested it against the leather seat of the limousine as she gathered her thoughts. Peppermint vapors cleared her head and seemed to refresh her entire being. She remembered her early years working for Clem MacDougall, the fierce pride with which she followed her boss’s early triumphs at the criminal-defense bar. Back before he’d become such an arrogant swine. For some reason, she remembered State v. Politawicz, the appellate case which had cemented Clem MacDougall’s reputation as a lawyer who could get Satan himself sprung on a technicality if the fee was high enough and paid up front in cash. “Miss Aikens? Are you awake? I’m waiting.” “All right, Inspector Captain or Comrade Commissar Kuznetsov or whoever the hell you are.” Claudia Aikens suddenly sat forward and glared at Kuznetsov. “You tell that bullet-headed oaf in the driver’s seat to drive me home right now, and maybe I’ll change my mind about the lawsuit I’m thinking about bringing against you and him and the Police Commissioner and the city, for false arrest, false imprisonment, abduction, kidnapping, arrest without arraignment or bail, entrapment and failure to read me my Miranda rights. And whatever else my lawyer and I can think up. This ain’t the Soviet Union, asshole. By the way, thanks for a lovely evening.” TO BE CONTINUED