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You shook your head at him. <span class="mu-r">“Landing yourself in prison won’t do anything to help your son. Keep your nose clean, and stick to what you know. I’m no stranger to a good side hustle, but don’t let it get you into trouble.”</span>
He nodded mechanically, his whole body seeming to deflate upon being admonished. While he wasn’t looking, you quickly whipped out your phone, opened up the cloud recording app and brought up a snippet of footage that had captured the vendor’s face.
<span class="mu-r">“What’s your name?”</span> you asked.
<span class="mu-g">“Nasir Hamedi.”</span> he replied without so much as looking at you. Even without being an empath, you could tell that guilt and shame were practically radiating off of this man. But, it never hurts to be thorough.
<span class="mu-r">“Got it. Give me one sec.”</span> you said, getting up and walking away from him so that he couldn’t eavesdrop on your conversation. <span class="mu-r">“Hey, Julia. Still there?”</span>
<span class="mu-b">“Barely. You’ve got me falling asleep over here!”</span> she complained. <span class="mu-b">“I mean, honestly. How long does it take for someone to go and buy a hotdog? I could’ve ordered one from Grubhub in the time it took you to-”</span>
<span class="mu-r">“You can bite my head off later. Right now, I need a favor.”</span> you interrupted. <span class="mu-r">“Could you do me a favor and run a search on this guy? His name is ‘Nasir Hamedi’, and he’s currently disputing a custody battle in court right now. I’m sending his photo over now.”</span>
<span class="mu-b">“Ah…alright, gimme a few. I’ll do a quick background check.”</span>
<span class="mu-r">“Thanks.”</span>
—----
Several minutes later, Julia got back to you. <span class="mu-b">“Good news. His story checks out. This guy’s been getting shafted by the court system for months now. And judging by the wife’s credit history, she hasn’t been spending a whole lot of that money on her son. In fact, the more I read, the more I feel like this doesn’t exactly fall under the category of ‘good news’.”</span> she said. <span class="mu-b">“Anyway, it looks like he’s telling the truth. What do you plan to do about it?”</span>
With a sigh, you pulled a business card out of one of your belt pouches, along with a fat wad of cash.
<span class="mu-r">“The right thing, I guess. I’ll call you back right after this.”</span>
After putting her back on hold, you walked back over to the ledge, knelt down and handed him $7,000. His eyes went wide with confusion when he turned to look at you.
<span class="mu-r">“Here’s the number for a good lawyer that should be able to help you out, along with some money to afford his services. Just tell him what you told me, and you’ll be fine.”</span>
He reached a shaky hand out to accept the gift, but pulled away at the last moment, trying to figure out whether this was a trick or not. Surely, this was much farther than the average hero was willing to go, and he had no reason to believe that you had his best interests in mind.
His eyes met yours, and he gave you a searching look. <span class="mu-g">“Why…why would you do this?”</span>
(Cont.)
