Jacques Guillaume: Missing lawyer

 Jacques Guillaume: Missing lawyer

Maître Laurent Besson had not appeared at the Palais for four days. His clerk came to the office near République because the police had said a grown man with no note and no blood was allowed to be elsewhere. Guillaume made coffee. He did not ask how she took it.

“What did he take?” he said.

“His good coat. Not the briefcase. His passport is still in the drawer. The diary for next week is full.”

Guillaume walked the chambers himself. Besson’s desk was tidy in the way of a man who meant to return. One file was missing: a small commercial matter for a restaurant group in the 11th, a lease dispute that had suddenly become a question of who owned the company that owned the lease. The clerk said Besson had been short with everyone since a meeting on the Tuesday.

Guillaume did not flash a card. He bought a coffee at the place across from the restaurant and listened. The manager remembered the lawyer. He had come in after closing, argued with a man in a leather jacket, and left looking ill. The man in the jacket had a scooter and a habit of parking it on the pavement outside a gaming club two streets over.

Besson was in a room above that club. Not tied. Not beaten much. He had been told to sit there until he signed a paper withdrawing the client’s claim. He had not signed it. He had also not been allowed to leave. Guillaume did not go up alone. He called a commissaire he still spoke to, gave him the address, the file name, and the scooter plate, and waited on the corner with the clerk’s number ready.

They brought Besson down twenty minutes later. Coat on, hands shaking, diary still in his head. Guillaume walked him as far as the Métro. He told the clerk where to collect him and sent the invoice the next morning. The lease fight would go back to court. Guillaume had only been hired to find the man who was supposed to argue it.

Jacques Guillaume: Missing Lawyer

 Jacques Guillaume: Missing Lawyer

The office on the third floor of the old notary building still smelled of wet wool and carbon paper. Maître Hélène Vasseur had not opened her shutters in three days. Her clerk said she had left on Tuesday with a thin file under her arm and a promise to be back before the evening post. She had not come back.

Jacques Guillaume stood in the doorway and did not touch the desk. The blotter was clean. The appointment book stopped at 16:40: “C. Morel — quay.” No address. The clerk had already told the police that Morel was a dock broker who wanted a contract witnessed. The police had already told the clerk that brokers miss appointments and lawyers sometimes take trains.

Guillaume walked the quay at the hour named in the book. The cranes were idle. A boy selling roasted chestnuts remembered a woman in a grey coat who had argued, quietly, with a man in a leather cap, then walked toward the footbridge instead of back to the tram. Guillaume followed the footbridge to the river steps. On the third step down, caught in a crack, was a brass paper clip bent into a hook. Vasseur bent her clips that way when she marked a page she did not trust.

He found Morel in a café that did not put its name on the window. Morel said the meeting had been cancelled. Guillaume set the bent clip on the saucer and asked who had cancelled it. Morel looked at the clip a long time. Then he said the contract was not a contract. It was a list of names copied from a warehouse ledger, and Vasseur had refused to notarize it. She had taken the copy with her.

They found her that night in a room above a chandlery, alive, with the ledger copy sewn into the lining of the grey coat. She had not been taken for money. She had been held until she would say the list was ordinary. She would not say it. Guillaume did not ask her why. He walked her to the prefecture with the coat over his arm, and he let the clerk open the shutters in the morning.

James Brogan: Missing Lawyer

 

Missing Lawyer

James Brogan sat in his cramped office above the Korean deli on 14th, nursing a lukewarm coffee that tasted like regret and burnt chicory. The rain hammered the window like it had a personal grudge. He was halfway through a pastrami sandwich when the door opened and a woman walked in smelling of expensive perfume and expensive worry.

“Mr. Brogan? I’m Elena Voss. My husband is missing.”

Brogan wiped mustard off his thumb. “Lawyer, right? The one who eats corporate defendants for breakfast?”

She nodded, elegant even with dark circles under her eyes. “Richard Voss. Senior partner at Voss, Hale & McQueen. He left for the office Tuesday morning, kissed me on the cheek, and… nothing. No calls, no credit card activity, no body. The police think he ran off with a secretary. I know he didn’t.”

Brogan raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Because he hates secretaries. Calls them ‘administrative vampires.’ And he was terrified of something last week. Wouldn’t tell me what.”

Brogan took the case. He always did when the paycheck had commas.

---

First stop: Voss, Hale & McQueen on the 32nd floor of a glass tower downtown. The receptionist looked like she’d been Botoxed into mild surprise. Brogan flashed his license and asked for Richard’s junior associate, a twitchy kid named Kyle who kept adjusting his tie like it was trying to strangle him.

“Mr. Voss was working on the Meridian merger,” Kyle whispered, glancing toward the corner offices. “Big defense contractor. Some numbers didn’t add up. He said he was going to ‘fix it before the devil noticed.’ Then he just… vanished.”

“Any chance the devil noticed first?” Brogan asked.

Kyle swallowed. “I hope not.”

Brogan spent the next two days doing what he did best: bothering people who didn’t want to be bothered. He talked to Richard’s golf buddies (clean), his mistress (didn’t exist), and the parking garage attendant who swore he saw Voss drive out at 11:47 p.m. Tuesday looking “like a man who owed money to the wrong people.”

On Thursday night, Brogan got a text from an unknown number: Old shipyard, Pier 19. Midnight. Come alone or he dies.

Classic. Brogan loaded his .38 anyway.

---

The shipyard smelled of rust, salt, and bad decisions. A single security light buzzed overhead. Three men waited near a rusting container. One of them had Richard Voss on his knees, hands zip-tied, looking like he hadn’t slept or shaved in days.

The leader, a thick-necked guy with a neck tattoo of a snake eating its own tail, smiled. “You’re the PI. Cute. Voss here found some creative accounting in the Meridian books. We told him to forget it. He decided to be a hero.”

Brogan kept his hands visible. “Creative accounting? That’s a polite way to say ‘embezzling from a defense contractor.’”

Snake Tattoo shrugged. “Client wanted the deal done. Voss was going to blow the whistle. We can’t have that.”

Voss looked up, eyes desperate. “Elena… tell her I’m sorry. I should’ve just kept my mouth shut.”

Brogan sighed. “Here’s the thing, gentlemen. I don’t care about your crooked merger. I care about my client getting her husband back. So how about we do this the easy way? You let Voss walk, I forget I was ever here, and everybody lives.”

Snake Tattoo laughed. “Or what?”

Brogan smiled the small, tired smile he saved for moments like this. “Or I send the USB drive full of Richard’s evidence—plus photos of you three idiots—to the U.S. Attorney, the IRS, and that reporter at the Herald who hates defense contractors more than I hate decaf. Your choice.”

There was a long silence broken only by the lapping water and distant traffic.

Snake Tattoo stared hard. Then he cut Voss’s zip ties. “You’re lucky we’re on a deadline. Take your lawyer. But if any of that evidence sees daylight—”

“You’ll know where to find me,” Brogan finished. “I’m in the book.”

---

Two hours later, Richard Voss was reunited with his wife in their expensive kitchen. Elena cried. Richard promised he was done being a hero. Brogan drank their very good scotch and accepted a very nice check.

As he left, Elena asked, “How did you know they’d blink?”

Brogan shrugged. “Guys like that only respect two things: money and consequences. I didn’t have enough money.”

He stepped out into the damp night, lit a cigarette, and walked toward the glow of the city. Somewhere out there, another client was probably waiting with another missing person.

Brogan smiled faintly.

Just another Tuesday.

James Brogan: Missing Lawyer

James Brogan: Missing Lawyer

James Brogan sat in his cramped office above the laundromat, the smell of fabric softener and regret drifting up through the floorboards. The neon sign outside buzzed like a dying insect. He was nursing a lukewarm coffee and a fresh bruise from last night's collection job when the door opened.

She was tall, mid-forties, sharp suit, sharper eyes. The kind of woman who billed by the hour and never lost in court.

"Mr. Brogan, my name is Elaine Hargrove. My husband, Richard, is missing."

Brogan leaned back, the chair creaking like an old witness. "Lawyer, right? The Richard Hargrove? Hotshot defense attorney?"

She nodded. "He was supposed to meet me for dinner at The Oak Room two nights ago. Never showed. His phone goes straight to voicemail. His paralegal says he left the office at 6:15 PM carrying only his briefcase. No one’s heard from him since."

Brogan scribbled a note. "Enemies? He’s a defense lawyer. That list must be longer than my rap sheet."

Elaine smiled thinly. "Plenty. But the timing is strange. He was finalizing a major case—representing Victor 'The Hook' Moretti against federal racketeering charges. The trial starts in three days. Richard told me he had a 'game-changing' angle. Then he vanished."

Brogan raised an eyebrow. "Moretti? The mob guy with the smile and the body count?"

"The same."

He took the case. Half upfront, half when (if) the lawyer turned up breathing.

---

First stop: Hargrove’s office. The paralegal, a nervous kid named Tim, kept glancing at the door like he expected federal agents or hitmen.

"He was excited, Mr. Brogan. Said he’d found something that would blow the case wide open. Wouldn’t tell me what. Just grabbed an old evidence box from storage and left."

"What was in the box?" Brogan asked.

Tim shrugged. "Old files. From a case fifteen years ago. Something about a warehouse fire."

Brogan found the storage log. One box missing: Case #98-472, City of Bayport v. Moretti Construction.

He spent the night in a dive bar near the courthouse, buying rounds for old court clerks and retired cops. By midnight he had a lead: a retired detective who’d worked the original warehouse case. The man was half-drunk and fully bitter.

"Hargrove came sniffing around yesterday morning," the old cop slurred. "Asked about the fire. Asked if I remembered seeing Moretti’s brother at the scene. I told him the truth—yeah, I saw him. But the DA buried it back then. Politics."

Brogan found the brother’s last known address at 3 AM. The place was empty except for a fresh bloodstain on the carpet and a note pinned to the wall with a switchblade:

Tell Hargrove to drop the case or the next blood is his.

Too late for that.

---

Dawn found Brogan at the Hargroves’ summer cabin upstate, the one Elaine said Richard sometimes used when he needed to “think.” The front door was unlocked. Inside, the place was trashed. Bookshelves overturned, drawers emptied.

In the basement, Brogan found Richard Hargrove tied to a chair, bruised but alive, with a gag in his mouth and a black eye that was turning impressive shades of purple.

Brogan pulled the gag out.

"Took you long enough," the lawyer croaked.

"You’re welcome. Who did this?"

"Moretti’s people. They knew I found the original arson evidence. The brother started the fire on Victor’s orders. The feds never got the full file. I was going to use it for reasonable doubt in reverse—force them to deal."

Brogan cut the ropes. "Cute plan. Almost got you killed."

Hargrove managed a weak laugh. "Worth it. I recorded everything they said while they were working me over. It’s on a thumb drive in my sock."

Brogan shook his head. "You lawyers are all crazy."

---

Two days later, Richard Hargrove walked into court looking like he’d been hit by a truck and won anyway. He played the recording. Victor Moretti’s face went pale. The judge declared a mistrial. Federal agents swarmed the courtroom.

Elaine Hargrove met Brogan outside later, handing him the second half of his fee in an envelope.

"You saved his life," she said.

Brogan lit a cigarette. "I just found him. He saved himself. Stupid bastard."

She smiled. "That’s Richard."

As she walked away, Brogan watched the city swallow her up. Another case closed. Another set of bruises. Same old story.

He headed back to the office above the laundromat, already wondering who would walk through his door next.