I lifted an eyebrow. “What?”
He sighed and nodded at the folder. “Page one of the needlessly killed trees. Talvi Inverno has got to be some kind of alias. The name is just the Finnish and Portuguese words for ‘winter.’”
I lifted my eyebrows and opened the folder.
Bob the Skull might be able to receive cable and the internet now, but the spirit still didn’t seem to understand how things were done there, despite the shared quality of disembodiment. Paranoid Gary, however, was a native of the virtual realms, and he’d come up with a hell of a lot more than Bob had.
I scanned over the pages. “Defends killers, drug dealers and pimps,” I said. “Starting about a year after Marcone became Baron Marcone.” I tilted back my head, still reading. “And he’s good. This can’t be right. Ninety-nine percent of his trials are wins?”
“Some high end legal guys are like that,” Will put in quietly from the doorway. “If they aren’t sure they can win, they prefer to settle.”
“Predators are like that,” I contradicted him. “They take sure bets. They’re reluctant to engage in anything less than a completely unfair fight. But you never know how a trial is going to go. With a record like that, and if he’s an outfit lawyer in Chicago, he probably gets a thumb put on the scales for him a lot of the time.”
“Whatever,” Gary said. “It suggests this guy will absolutely go to court and tear your client apart.”
“Yes, it does,” I said, frowning. I eyed one of the entries. “How many million? From a cancer charity?”
Will whistled, half impressed, half concerned.
“He’s ruthless,” Gary said. “And he employs a cyber security firm to track anyone trying to look him up.”
I looked to Will for context.
Will lifted an eyebrow at Gary. “Did you use a VPN?”
Gary glanced at Will as if he’d asked a very stupid question. “No. I used actual countermeasures. VPN’s are like privacy locks. They just make you slightly harder to hack than the guy next to you, so the lightweights mostly leave you alone if you use them, in order to hit someone without even that much security.”
Will looked willfully patient. “My point is, Gary, are you in any danger?”
Gary shrugged, a jerky movement of shoulders constantly held too tightly. “No more than usual. I think.”
Will grimaced and looked at me. “What do you think?”
“Lawyer Winter-Winter is likely from Faerie,” I said.
“You’re the Winter Knight,” he said. “Can’t you order him off the case?”
I shook my head. “Doesn’t work like that. I don’t really have any institutional authority in Winter. Just responsibility.”
“Seems unfair,” Will said.
“Seems like Winter,” I replied. “The upside is that Winter is the kind of place where whoever punches hardest generally gets his way, and I can punch pretty hard. There aren’t a lot of beings there who I’m afraid to rumble with.”
Paranoid Gary looked disgusted. “God. That’s so twentieth century.”
I shrugged.
“So,” Will said. “You can go warn this guy off?”
“Worth a shot,” I said, eyeing the packet of printouts Gary had assembled. “And he has an office. Which is open four whole hours per week.”
“Keep reading,” Gary said. “There’s a security camera across the street. He’s there most days. He just doesn’t see people.”