The Green Lantern IIX

“Well if I'm supposed to go tell Fred that you might be our bondsman after all, then I should probably get there. It would be embarrassing if I was late with the message,” Bryan was fumbling and I knew that he was uncomfortable so I let him go. Bryan had already given me far more information than I had expected, now it was up to me to think through it and I would do that better with Bryan gone anyway.

I cleaned off the breakfast plates while I thought, it was good to keep my hands busy. After I was done with them I moved on to cleaning the rest of the apartment. It was mindless work which was just as good because if my mind raced any faster than it already was then it would probably explode. One conclusion that I came to quickly was that Bryan had no reason to lie to me and the facts fit anyway, Uncle Art was not worth mourning. Given that they were right and Uncle Art was trash then I had to decide where fact that he was family mattered more than my neutrality as a businessman. That was where my mind was hung up. I liked to think that I was a man of honor, and part of that code was that family could not be betrayed. However I also had to ask where I drew the line, would defending a man like Uncle Art seemed to have been tarnish that honor more than me betraying him?

It was two tortured days later that I met Officer O'Reilly about a block from the Green Lantern, it was his beat and I knew that anything that went through him would end up on O'Conner's desk. I had already checked in the Green Lantern to makes sure that O'Conner wasn't in there, he hung out there as much as most gangsters. I had the envelope full of money all ready for O'Reilly when he came around the corner, and I knew that O'Conner would have told him to expect me. Normal bails wouldn't be done like this but Goetz was a special case, it had taken a lot of underhanded deals to pull this off. I hoped that Bryan understood that I expected to be paid according to the difficulty of the job.

“Here's the money for the bail, all of the paperwork has already been done with O'Conner,” I told O'Reilly when he stopped to talk. I gave him the envelope.

“A pleasure doing business with you. I heard there was a spot of trouble over this at The Green Lantern between you, Barker, and Karpis. The next time you try to get yourself killed, don't do it on my beat, alright?” O'Reilly was only half joking, I could tell by his tone.

“Yeah, it wasn't my easiest bail and I was unprofessional. Don't worry, it won't happen again. This was a specially situation and I let my emotions take control. For a little while it looked as if things were going to get ugly but Fred Barker and I sorted things out. We had a nice long talk yesterday, Uncle Art wasn't worth a bent nickel anyway. Certainly not worth me getting killed over I found out.”

“You don't want to get on the bad side of the Barkers, I heard they killed the lawyer who didn't manage to get Lloyd Barker off.”

“They won't kill me, don't worry. I thought things out, I told you. Everything,” I'm not sure why I added the last part. Maybe I was trying to convince myself that everything was alright, because I still wasn't sure I was doing the right thing. Officer O'Reilly was already walking on, our conversation over, and I went in the other direction. With any luck I would never have to face anything connected to the issue again.