Still caged in his dark prison cell, gangland boss eddie zamporini faces an uncertain future. That is until an old friend, lawyer Billy Noble, appears. Does Noble hold the key to Zamporini’s freedom? Will Zamporini grasp the only hope he has been offered?


Eddie continued to stare into the space that DI Hackett had once occupied until she was replaced by a more robust and familiar figure. His eyes had widened when the police officer’s words had fallen on his ears and they remained peering into the distance a thousand miles or more were it not for the bricks and mortar before him. Without a blink and without a flicker, Eddie’s eyes had instantaneously transfixed themselves on Billy as he made his appearance.
Silence ensued. A silence which did not comfort Billy. A silence broken by the sound of a struggle involving three bodies in the near distance accompanied by protestations of a man’s innocence, quashed and disbanded as quickly as it had started. Eddie licked his lips, clasped his hands before him and prepared his sermon.
“I don’t know what to say. I guess you could say I am, speechless.”
“For want of a better word, anyway?” Billy nervously retorted. Slow down he thought to himself.
Eddie shook his head. “Always the funny guy. I know guys like you Billy, so many of them. They talk their way into things – talk their way out of things – they come to me expect to be treated like something special, they act some kind of funny but that never fools me, no not me. I see through all that shit. I see what really makes them speak like that to me. I know they are scared – I see it all, can’t hide what goes on in here.” Eddie tapped at his temple with one and a half index fingers as his words trailed off, manipulating Billy’s focus with a chilling certainty.
The eyes that stared back at him now portrayed a deeper menace that made Billy prefer what little comfort there was in the foregoing silence.
“So tell me now Billy, seen as you are so – ah, such the comedian, are you gonna explain to me what this joke is all about? Or do I get to deliver the punchline?”
Billy rubbed at the sides of his eyebrows bringing to his attention the beads of sweat that had formed across his temple, their meniscus bonds now broken by the contact with his hand to allow the contents to trickle down the contours of his face. Billy became increasingly aware of his own anxiety. His anxiety perpetuated his self-awareness and so the cycle intensified. He took the opportunity of briefly losing Eddie’s gaze to drag a handkerchief across his forehead before it magically disappeared, discreetly, back into his trouser pocket. Inhale. Exhale. Miss a beat. Miss another. His innermost monologue resurrected his composure before answering:
“Yeah, they said you would try this.” Billy delivered enigmatically.
“Who says what?” Eddie spat as he scratched the thin line of grey hair that ran round the back of his head.
Billy continued “Well in my experience, big fish don’t have to tell the rest of the pond to be afraid – they just seem to know. And right now, my instinct tells me that you have a lot more reasons to be scared than I do.”
“Big fish, little fish, so what.” Eddie interrupted in a hope to diffuse Billy’s allusion.
“Oh not afraid of me, of course. That’s not my line of work. I’m here to help you.” Billy’s voice had settled now, with the tyres firmly gripping that first tight bend he felt he could now cruise all the way to the finish.
“Help me? You want to stop being funny for a minute, that would help me.”
“No jokes this time Eddie. I just want to make a deal with you. And as you are a man of your word, well at least I’m told you say you are, I understand you will keep to your side of the agreement.”
“’Scuse me, did I miss something, what are you….” Eddie said before Billy could cut him off with the superiority of a conjurer relishing in his audience’s unwitting suspense.
“It is simple. I want out of this and I want out now. But I need you to do something for me. Give me safe passage or your blessing, or whatever it is you do.”
“And what do you give me?”
“My word.”
“Only Noble’s words I trusted was your father’s.” Billy refused to let himself be fazed during the greatest performance of his life, only this time Eddie was his jury and probably his executioner should the gambit not be fruitful.
“Well my word is that my hands are as clean as my conscience as far as the gold is concerned.” Billy paced across the cell floor beating out a very deliberate delay in his delivery. He only continued to speak when he heard his antagonist attempt to interject. “But I can tell you who has got it.”
Eddie stopped sizing up the room for the hundredth time to concentrate on the unexpected hoops that the conversation was now careering through.
“And it is the very same person that set you up, Eddie.”
“Ha, and I was thinking that was you Billy.”
Billy smirked to deflate the repugnant suggestion and mask his mental abhorrence whilst Eddie’s face remained defiant in expressing any emotion.
Billy briskly shook his head and steadily tapped his left hand against his sternum. “I’m the one that will get you out of here.” he said.
Billy relaxed. The worst of it had passed, the final card had been played, the negotiations were over and Eddie appeared to be ready to concede to Billy’s intentions. A long and deliberate pause passed without any answer being forthcoming causing doubt to implant itself in Billy’s mind; a doubt that Eddie suspected something. Billy turned his back momentarily and breathed again when he heard Eddie’s voice boom behind him.
“What’s wrong with Miss McGrade?”
A smile carved its way across Billy’s paled face as soon as Eddie’s words reached him. Eddie’s inflection, now lighter, denoted that Holy Grail of trust that Billy had dearly sought and risked everything for. He slowly turned around to make eye contact with Eddie one last time and said:
“She won’t know the judge.”