He looked at his watch. It was 8:00 p.m. He just arrived home. It was a long, tiring day in court for Christopher Kane.
He was able to get an acquittal on a technicality for his client, Darrell Shotgun Mason, the man behind the scenes of just about every major crime in the state of Georgia. Shotgun Mason was the Don of the Dixie Mafia and one of the most feared men in the state. If you crossed him, or if he thought you crossed him, the next time anyone would see you would be in the morgue, with a shotgun blast to your face, making a visual identification virtually impossible.
Christopher Kane was a criminal lawyer, one of the best, if not the best, in Georgia. Most of his clients were notorious for the way they brutally enforced Omerta, the mob’s word for the code of silence, which they lived by. If he wasn’t busy in his highrise office, which encompassed the entire top floor in one of the tallest buildings in downtown Atlanta, one of his clients would be calling him on his private line in his home office at all times of the night. That’s because most of their business were conducted under the protection of darkness. If they required his assistance, then the darkness of night didn’t provide the protection they needed from local law enforcement.
They paid him well and they expected him to be there for them when they called. His job kept him busy around the clock, seven days a week. It was a price he paid for the benefits he received. He was very wealthy, one of the wealthiest men in the state.
He was glad to be at home. He was glad his wife, Helene, had already gone upstairs to bed. He was tired. He made himself a sandwich from the leftover meatloaf, Rhonda, their maid, had cooked earlier in the day. He hadn’t been home to share a meal with his wife, Helene, in years. She didn’t care and neither did he.
He took his plate and grabbed the Wall Street Journal off the counter and walked to his study. Their marriage had turned into just an arrangement. A comfortable arrangement for both of them. Neither one asked anything from the other outside of him giving her enough money to appease her every need, or, to put it more precisely, her every want. He just wanted her to leave him alone. He didn’t have time for her anymore. He told his colleagues that as soon as he gave her a ring, her body changed and her face got lumpy. He didn’t enjoy looking at her and she just wasn’t very smart. Her interests were completely foreign to him and; he supposed, his were to her.
They lived in a beautiful mansion, less than a block from the Governor’s Mansion in Buckhead, the wealthiest neighborhood in Atlanta. The mansion came with a manicured lawn, two tennis courts and a pool the size of the local public pool. Christopher never set foot on the tennis courts nor did he ever use the pool. He employed twoyard boys to care for his lawn and shrubs. A four car garage housed Christopher’s Ferrari Dino 246 GT, named to honor Enzo Ferrari’s deceased son Alfredino. Christopher had had this car built to his specifications.
He met Enzo Ferrari right after World War II and they became close friends. Christopher was a top notch pilot in the Army Air Corp, known as an ace, and Enzo was fascinated with flying and respected those who did. The Ferrari logo was a personal emblem of Francesco Baracca, a highly decorated Italian World War I pilot, who had it painted on the fuselage of his aircraft. The Baracca’s allowed Enzo Ferrari to use the Cavallino Rampante, the Prancing Horse, symbol. He adopted it as the logo for his racing car, placing it on a yellow shield in honor of his hometown of Modena and he topped it with