The Pardon by James Grippando Page B

perverted secrets - then he'd better change his ways.
    He stepped to the window and looked outside. It was getting dark and starting to drizzle. A storm was brewing if he was going to meet Goss, there was no reason to wait until four-thirty in the morning. In fact, it seemed safer not to wait. He started toward the door, then stopped. He went up to the attic, opened his footlocker, and found the .38. Downstairs, he spent several minutes cleaning the gun, then loaded it with bullets.
    Just in case.

    Chapter 14
    Rain started to fall as Jack pulled his Mustang out of the driveway. The downpour was a continuation of a violent Florida thunderstorm that had flooded city streets that afternoon. The nasty weather didn't bring him down, though. He was determined to get to Goss's as quickly as possible, before he could change his mind. He raced his old eight-cylinder down the expressway at a speed only a fleeing fugitive would have considered safe, exited into a section of town that no one considered safe, and screeched to a halt outside Goss's apartment.
    The old two-story building stretched nearly a third of the city block. It was bordered on one side by a gas station and on the other by a burned-out shell of an apartment building that some pyromaniac landlord had probably figured could generate more income in fire insurance proceeds than in rent. Rusty iron security bars covered most of the ground-floor windows, plywood sealed off others, and noisy air conditioners stuck out of a few. Weeds popping up through cracks in the sidewalk were the closest thing to landscaping.
    The rain beat loudly on the convertible's canvas top and seeped in where the twenty-year-old rubber window seals had rotted away. Jack jumped out and dashed through water that ran in wide rivulets down the street. He was at the apartment entrance in only fifteen seconds, but that was long enough for the rain to soak his clothes and paste them to his body. Dripping wet, he stepped inside the dimly lit foyer and checked the rows of metal mailboxes recessed into the wall. He had the right place. GOSS, APT 217, read one of them.
    He ran up a flight of stairs to a long hallway lined with apartments on either side. It was even darker here than in the foyer, the tenants having stolen most of the bulbs to light their apartments. Spray-painted graffiti covered the walls and doors, forming one continuous mural. Most of the ceiling tiles had been punched out by kids proving how high they could jump. Rainwater leaked in from above and streaked down the water-stained walls, forming little puddles on the musty indoor-outdoor carpet. All was quiet, except for heavy raindrops pounding on the flimsy flat roof.
    He started down the hall, checking the numbers on the doors that still had them. His pace quickened as he approached 217, the fifth door on the left. He was convinced that the only way to stop Goss was to threaten him - and to do so in a way that only his own lawyer could. If Goss was to report him to the Florida bar for threatening to reveal a client's secrets, it could end his career. But it didn't matter at this point. The stark contrast between his one tragic failure in the Fernandez case and his string of successes in sending men like Goss back onto the streets to prey on an unwary public had weighed on him too long. He'd reached the lowest point of his life.
    Jack knocked on the hollow wood door to Goss's apartment, then waited. No one answered, but he refused to believe that Goss wasn't there. He knocked harder, almost banging. Still no answer. Goss, he said loudly. I know it's you. Answer the door!
    Hey! an angry man shouted from an open apartment doorway down the hall. It's ten o'clock, man. I got a two-year-old here. Cut the racket.
    Jack took a deep breath. He'd been so focused in his pursuit of Goss that he'd acted as if no one else lived in the building. That was a stupid approach, he realized. So he stepped back from the door and slowly headed down the hall, as