Read J.D. Trafford - Michael Collins 02 - No Time to Die for Free Online

also thought about telling the family about the protest and about Tommy’s cancer, but Michael held the information back. That’s what lawyers did.
    A lawyer should never give a client bad news without having something else to offer. Michael had been trained to tell people bad news, and then paid to tell them how it was going to be fixed. If he hadn’t known how to fix it at the time, he waited until he did know. If he couldn’t fix it, then he’d spend his time thinking about how to blame the problem on somebody else. That’s what lawyers did , Michael thought. They held information back. It was usually better that way.
    The bottom line was that making the family wait a few hours or a day to get the full picture wasn’t going to hurt them or hurt Tommy.
    Michael and Kermit pulled in front of Jane’s office on Main Street. He parked the rental SUV. Michael got out, leaving Kermit inside with the engine running. He waved at Jane.
    Jane was in the back of the office at her desk. She saw Michael wave through the front window, put her file away and came out the door.
    As she locked the office, Michael looked at the large front window.
    “ Nice and shiny.” The contents of the paper bag thrown from the pickup truck had been cleaned off. Its remnants were gone. “Kermit and I could’ve done that for you … or maybe just Kermit.”
    “ Very gentlemanly.” Jane laughed.
    Michael opened the door of the SUV.
    “That’s me, a complete gentleman,” he said. “Been washing windows all afternoon?”
    “ Not all afternoon. Got most of the poop off with one spray, and then worked on some green card applications.” She shrugged. “I’m still a lawyer, sort of.”
    “ Me too.” Michael shut the door. “But not really.”
    As he walked around the front of the SUV, Michael ran his hand through his hair. As he did it, Michael looked down the street. Behind them, just around the corner, he saw the front of a blue Taurus. It was parked with two people sitting inside. He was being watched.
     
    ###
    The trailer complex sat about two miles off of Gopher Ridge. It was a bigger cluster than the one where Tommy had lived. This one had about 20 trailers. They were all white and beaten. Rust crept up their metal seams. Every window screen was either torn or missing, and garbage bags filled the spaces between each unit.
    Michael parked the SUV, and the three ventured into the complex. As they walked, Michael noticed a few people in the trailers sneaking peeks through the windows.
    “Any ideas about where to start?” Michael didn’t want to knock on a door again. The last time he had done that he and Kermit had been arrested.
    “ Where there’s smoke; there’s fire, mi amigo .” Kermit pointed to a small stream of smoke tracing up into the air a short distance behind the trailers. “Looks like the party is back there.”
    They walked past the trailers and a handful of dented garbage cans and dumpsters, and into a clearing.
    There were about 20 men sitting around a bonfire. Foil packets filled with food lined the edge of the fire, reflecting the orange flames and absorbing the heat. In the middle of the fire, there was a metal coffee pot. When Michael saw the coffee pot, he couldn’t help himself from smiling.
    He remembered an infamous case he had read in law school. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had held that immigration agents were justified in checking the papers of men sitting around a fire with a metal coffee pot in the middle. The court opined, “The agent’s investigation and detention of the men was reasonable under the Constitution, because only illegal immigrants brew coffee in metal coffee pots in the middle of an outdoor fire.”
    Michael, Kermit, and Jane continued to walk up to the group of men, and then stopped. The men looked up. A few whispered, “ immigracion ,” but none ran.
    Jane stepped forward.
    “I’m from the Community Immigrant Legal Services in town. I think I know some of you. I’m