I looked directly at him, dropping the polite mask I had worn all evening.
“I don’t understand?” I asked softly. “I spent forty years hearing men like you say that right before they were prosecuted.”
His expression tightened.
Adrian looked at me again, more carefully this time.
By then I had already taken out my phone.
This wasn’t a bluff.
It was procedure.
First I called a prosecutor I knew who still worked in the domestic violence division in Chicago. Years ago she had been a young clerk in my courtroom. Now she was one of the toughest prosecutors in the city.
She answered on the second ring.
“Attorney Walker,” I said evenly. “This is Margaret Morgan. I’m in River North. I’m with a domestic violence victim. The assault happened less than a minute ago in a restaurant full of witnesses.”
Adrian’s face drained of color.
Mr. Torres stopped pretending to be offended.
Now he looked worried.
“Hold on,” Adrian said quickly. “You can’t just do that without talking to us first.”
I looked at him as if he were nothing more than another file on my desk.
“You just pulled your wife’s hair in public,” I said. “There are witnesses. There are visible injuries. And there’s a pattern. I’ve already spoken.”