Chapter 1: The Broken Angel

Friday:

Twenty-five miles due west of Venice, California, a naked woman sunned herself. Dana Featherstone lounged on the deck of her custom built forty-foot cabin cruiser. The fact was it had been custom built for someone else was immaterial to her. All she cared about was it had been custom built and it belonged to her. She lay on her back, baking her well-oiled body in the hot sun. The radio was set to an oldies station and she hummed along to the music as she slowly rolled over and over almost as if she was on a slow moving spit, making certain every square inch of her nude body would be magnificently tanned. She deserved it. She earned it. Maria Duarte, her secretary, would be green with envy with the tan, Dana, she would bring into the office after this weekend.

When she returned to her office on Monday morning, triumphant from that great and wonderful class action suit all the "smart money" said was not winnable, she wanted to show up tanned, well coifed and dressed to the nines. Edge Holding Company had agreed to settle out of court for a hundred twenty million dollars. Reluctantly the judge went along. Somehow, the old curmudgeon acted as if the money was coming out of his pocket. Twenty-five percent of a hundred twenty million dollars was, "Thirty million dollars." she screamed at the sky. Oh, but life could be so very, very good at times, just so damned good. Normally she never swore. But today, the fourth day of her well earned mini vacation, she decided once was perfectly acceptable as she again for the hundredth time tried to envision thirty million one-dollar bills all tossed into a careless heap like so many leaves piled on the lawn in the fall.

"Thump." she heard something bump into her new-to-her boat. Then she heard a weak sound, like a moan. She thought she heard a faint voice as it called out, "Help. Help me." She could barely hear it. There. She heard it again.

Quickly she got up and hurried over to the railing and looked down. She saw an emaciated shape hanging – barely – onto an orange life preserver. The eyes in the sunburned face were closed and the voice whispered, "Please help me."

Dana quickly jumped over the side, unmindful of her nudity. Quickly she tied the mooring line she had brought with her under his arms, around his chest. As soon as the knot was tied to secure the line she swam to the rear of the boat and pulled herself up the short ladder and hurried back forward to where she had tied him off. She assumed it was a male.

From a casual look, she was hard put to tell for certain. The poor guy, whoever he was, has suffered great physical trauma. With an effort belying what appeared to be a soft, stocky body she lifted him out of the water. She was thankful for all those countless hours of running, aerobics and weight training.

Carefully she pulled him up the side of the boat, over the low railing and onto the deck. She gently arranged him on her beach towel and raised the canopy over him so he would be in the shade. A helpless beauty shone through his sun-ravaged features. "Oh," she murmured, "You're an angel. Oh you poor, poor broken angel." In her breast a voice said, "My angel." She did not try to contradict that voice. There was something about his soft beauty, which reached through all his injuries and touched her heart in a way no male ever had before.

She hurried below deck and opened the large first aid kit and removed the big jar of a mixture of aloe and petroleum jelly she had laughed at when she first saw it. Now she knew why it was there. She hurried back up and gently smeared it all over him. She looked at him as she covered the peeling raw skin. She guiltily found herself staring at his near nakedness. He was young and very definitely male. He screamed as she found the bullet hole in his side while slathering the salve on him. She exclaimed, "That's a bullet wound. I better call the police as soon as I can get back to the marina."

He sat weakly bolt upright. "No. Please don't call the police. They're the ones who shot me and they killed another man. I escaped in his boat. Please promise me, no cops." He fell against her bare breasts and she became very aware of him. It was then she became aware of her own lack of clothing. Blushing hotly, she gently lowered him down onto the beach towel on the deck and rushed down below decks and hastily donned denims and tee shirt. The tee shirt accentuated her large breasts. Well, that couldn't be helped. The young man needed a doctor immediately.

She raised both sea anchors and started the engine. As soon as it was warmed she engaged the throttle and aimed the boat toward her home on Coronado Island, another perk of a successful law practice. She grabbed her cell phone up and called her friend, Doctor Dimitrius Callaghan, general practitioner extraordinaire. Doc Dim owed her big time for cutting him in on her last two cases. He made a bundle off the two class action suits testifying as an expert on toxicology. She nervously fidgeted as she tried in vain to get her call through. She was outside transponder range.

Finally the boat came in range of a transponder and she could get her call through with the cell phone. There was no way she was going to blare her message over the ship to shore radio. "Doctors' Office," a pert young voice answered the call.

"This is Dana Featherstone and..." was all she got out before she was interrupted.

"Oh yes, Ms. Featherstone. I'll put you right through." The young receptionist was in the throes of hero worship.

"Doctor here," the old man's voice said.

"Hey, you dirty old man, that poor girl answering your phone sounds young enough to be your grand daughter. Shame on you." she greeted him.

"For your information, you dirty minded young lawyer, Beverley is my grand daughter. I have her working part time while she's going to college to study law. I told her to take up prostitution or some other more honorable profession, but no, her morals are gone and she wants to be a lawyer like another young lady I know." They laughed together and he asked, "What is it?"

"I need you to come to my place right now. If I'm not there yet when you arrive, go on inside and wait. The key is hidden inside a green imitation rock halfway down the walkway. You'll see it. I have a very interesting mystery to unravel. I want you to be very discreet about this."

"What you are requesting I do, it is legal and honorable, yes?" he asked her cautiously. "Doc Dim," as she called him was one of the most fastidiously honest and honorable men she had ever met. His rectitude communicated itself to juries as he made them think of kindly old country doctors and fiery-eyed researchers at the same time. In reality he was both.

He headed up a research lab that was on the cutting edge of new technology. To many Mexican children and their families in the hills above Tijuana, Mexico, just across the border, he was "El Santo", The Saint. Not even the corrupt federales dared try to shake the doctor down for money or drugs. Two tried and two disappeared, never heard from again. The doctor was unaware of how his disenfranchised patients watched over him.

"Bring your bag, I have a guest with extreme sunburn and other trauma. Come well prepared." She hung up before he could ask any more questions. She opened the throttle as wide open as she dared and not have the ride too bumpy for her new guest's comfort. She pulled the throttles back almost all the way, willing the boat to go even faster. Wrap around stylish sunglasses protected her alert eyes from the glare coming off the slight chop as she peered ahead and to the sides looking for other boats or anything half submerged in the water, which could pose a danger.

Finally she spied the half hidden private canal she shared by her and six other neighbors who also had docking facilities. Carefully, delicately navigating the small waterway at a snail's pace she nudged up to her private dock and jumped out. Hurriedly she tied off fore and aft and hopped back aboard to see to the person she was beginning to think of as her "broken angel."

She placed an arm under his neck and shoulders and raised him to a sitting position. "If I help you, can you stand?" she asked him anxiously. Alien feelings coursed through her, feelings of sympathy and other feelings she was afraid to examine. She firmly turned her mind in other directions, promising herself she would deal with those alien emotions later.

"I'll try," he weakly answered.

She got to her feet, squatted and threw an arm under his shoulders, "Come on now, and lift." She strained and her strong, sinewy legs brought him to a standing position where he barely was able to remain upright without falling. Slowly she urged him toward the railing, actually supporting almost all his weight on her sturdy legs. For once she was thankful for her compact, muscular frame which, although it had made her the laughingstock of all the boys in high school gave her strength and endurance very few men had.

"Who wants to make out with a girl who is built like a guy?" one jock dismissively snorted in her presence. What made matters worse was when she lost her self control and beat him up badly. Nobody would talk to her after that. The girls stayed away from her because the boys said to and the boys because they didn't want to be laughed at by the other guys. She finished her senior year alone, refused to participate in graduation exercises and went away to study law.

She had no outside interests to conflict with her rigid study regimen at law school. She got up, went to class, studied, researched and worked as a waitress part time to make ends meet. She graduated with all honors, the youngest ever and the brightest ever to go directly from school college and on to take the bar exam and then pass her first try, despite the prevailing male attitudes.

There were those who tried to delay her entry into what they considered the rightful domain of men. They quickly learned to let this girl into their hallowed ranks. She brought in a copy of a "test case" on sexual discrimination and passed it out to the examining committee. Her "sample" was right on and needed only the names of the committee members to go with her accurate descriptions of them. She passed.

"Crossing swords with that young broad is like trying to French kiss an alligator." one survivor of the attempt to "put her in her place" told a colleague. "She looks like a short, fat dumb broad, but she's smart and mean as hell."

Mainly because if her appearance none of the prestigious firms would hire her except as a paralegal or "special assistant" and gofer. Dana declined and went to work for the Public Defender's Office. She took no prisoners there, either. No matter how sleazy or guilty her clients were she got them acquitted. Whenever she lost a case, she obsessed for days to figure out how to not let it happen again. Whether or not the other side had the law backing them up mattered not one little bit. Winning was what mattered to her.

In chambers, alone from all prying ears, one judge asked her, "Why don't you ever plea bargain? You're going to burn yourself out preparing all those cases. Right now you have double the caseload of any other attorney in your office. They are trying to run you out. You make your bosses nervous."

"Why should I play let's make a deal when the DA's office is so sloppy? My ambition is to get the DA himself to try a case against me. I'll leave him in the gutter where he belongs."

The remark made the rounds and finally reached the ears of the District Attorney. He was also aware of the fact his reputation as a crime buster had been slipping of late and the party was looking for someone to replace him. Wrongfully he thought Dana was the one they were grooming to be his replacement. He took what should have been a slam-dunk case and personally tried it against her.

The accused, the son of a black schoolteacher, was charged with rape. His alleged victim was a thirteen-year-old white minister's daughter who was beautiful, very intelligent and very composed on the witness stand. Instantly Dana saw her strategy and proceeded like a bloodhound on a scent.

"Just keep staring at her," Dana told her client. Keep staring at her from the second she enters the courtroom until she leaves. When she is on the stand testifying, keep staring. Now this is important. Do not make any gestures and do not move. Keep your face as still as you can. Be a statue that keeps staring at her. I'll do the rest."

"Ain't you goin' to ask if I done it?" her new client asked.

"I don't care if you did it or not. You'd lie to me anyway if you did it. I hate people to lie to me. You remember that." She scowled at him.

"Ain't you even goin to try to make a deal? My cellies tell me they goin' to nail me. Maybe you can make 'em do that plea bargain." He was scared and vulnerable.

"Look, Junior, the bunch of stupid trash you're locked up with don't know anything. If they did, they'd have me for their lawyer. Now if you want to walk out of here a free man, all primed to screw some other white girl, shut up and do what I say. If you want to go to prison and become somebody's girlfriend, keep on trying to run your defense. It's up to you."

"Damn you. I didn't rape nobody. Don't you say I did." He jumped up and stepped back. A burly guard hit him at the base of his skull with a hard fist and the young man fell to the floor unconscious.