Final Appeal

“Maybe to law school?”

She smiles. “Maybe.”

“That sounds great. I think it’s great.”

She puts down her sandwich. “Nah, it was a pipe dream. The only reason I didn’t quit was Armen. He’d have been on my case forever, like he was till I quit smoking. That man was too much. He paid my tuition for me, clear through to graduation.”

“But why does he pay it at all, if I can ask?”

“I couldn’t afford to, so we had an agreement. He lent me the money and I paid him back in installments. When they told me it was all paid off, I started thinkin’. Maybe it was a suicide. Maybe he was fixing it so I couldn’t quit after he was gone.”

It can’t be. “Maybe he just wanted you not to worry about it.”

She shakes her head. “I feel like quitting anyway.”

“Don’t. He wouldn’t want you to.”

“I know that.” She bites into her sandwich.

“El, can I ask you a question?”

She nods, her mouth full.

“How much money are we talking about for your tuition?”

“Couple thousand a semester.”

“Where would Armen get that kind of money?”

“He makes a fine livin’, hundred thirty thousand a year, and he saved like a fiend. He never spent a dime, that man.”

It doesn’t make sense. Why would Armen save if he had over half a million dollars? “He was a saver?”

“Always. But he was cheap, they all are.”

“Who’s they? Judges?”

“Armenians. You should see, when they’d have a dinner, I’d be countin’ dimes on my desk. Who had the iced tea, who had the wine. I’m serious.”

“That’s racist, El.”

“I know. But it’s true.” She laughs.

“Did his family have money?”

“No. Susan’s did, but he didn’t.”

“So how much did he have saved, do you think?”

“Maybe fifty–sixty thousand. He told me not to worry about it, he’d take care of Malcolm’s college. I worried plenty, but I don’t make enough to save shit. Why?”

I look down at a half-eaten pickle. “Just curious.”

We split up after lunch because Eletha has to run an errand; she promises me she’ll take the back entrance into the building, because there’s no demonstration there. As I reach the courthouse, I consider doing the same myself. The mob has grown. People spill out past the curb and into the street, filling the gaps between the TV vans and squad cars. The police ring the crowd, trying vainly to keep it out of Market Street.

I cross against the traffic light, which turns out to be advisory anyway. A gaper block stalls traffic up and down the street. As I get closer to the courthouse, I see that something seems to be happening. The chanting stops suddenly; the crowd noise surges. Reporters and TV cameras rush to the door. I pick up my pace. It looks like breaking news, maybe the panel decision. My pulse quickens as I reach the edge of the crowd. I look for the hot orange cones that mark the walkway into the courthouse, but they’ve been scattered.

“What’s going on?” I say, but am shoved into a woman in front of me. I turn around to see who’s pushing. A cameraman stands there, and a lawyer with a trial bag.

“Sorry,” says the lawyer, sweating profusely behind horn-rimmed glasses. “It’s this person behind me.”

“No!” someone screams at the head of the crowd, and then there’s more shouting and pushing. The mob’s moving out of control. I feel a sharp elbow in my back. It knocks me off balance.

“There’s a decision!” someone shouts up front; then there’s more yelling, even screaming. I feel panic rising in my throat as the crowd swells toward the door, carrying me with it, almost off my feet.

Suddenly there’s a painful whack at the back of my head. I feel faint, dizzy. Everything gets fuzzy. My arms flutter, groping for anything to stay upright.

Gunshots ring out like distant firecrackers, and there’s screaming and shouting, also far away. Strong hands catch me from behind. Someone says in my ear, “This is a warning. Let the judge rest in peace.”

The words and the pain melt together.

And then slip beyond me.

17

I wake up on a green plastic couch in a room I’ve never seen before. My head hurts, but I can see everyone clearly. Standing over me are Eletha and the law clerks. Behind them are a few marshals I don’t know, and the big mustachioed one, Al McLean, who was on duty the night Armen was killed. I’d been meaning to talk to him. His shrimpy sidekick, Jeff, sits silently in a chair nearby.

“Auntie Em, Auntie Em,” Artie says, but nobody laughs.

“Hey, baby,” Eletha says soothingly. She sits on the couch beside me.

“What happened?”

“You got caught in a riot, child. I shoulda walked back with you.”

“Fifteen people were wounded,” says Ben, from over Eletha’s shoulder. “They ran out of ambulances, that’s why you’re here.”

“Where?”

“Our lounge,” McLean says, which explains the odor of stale cigarettes.

“I still say she should go to a hospital,” Eletha says loudly, in McLean’s direction. It takes me only a second to picture the fuss she must have made before I woke up.

“Somebody had a gun,” Sarah says. “Two people were shot. Demonstrators.”

The gunshots I heard. “Are they okay? Are they dead?”

“I don’t know. Nobody knows.”

Then I think of the warning just before I blacked out; it sends a chill through me. Was the person who warned me also the shooter? “Did they catch who did it?”

“No. No suspects, either. They don’t know if it was a demonstrator or just some nut.”

“And Hightower, the panel affirmed?”

“Names on a caption, Grace,” Eletha says.

My head begins to pound dully. “Which means Hightower dies.”

“Not so fast,” Sarah says. “Robbins dissented. It’ll be appealed to the Supremes.”

“Finis est,” Ben says with satisfaction. “All they have to do is find a vein.”

“Ben, stop it,” Sarah snaps.

Eletha helps me to a sitting position. “You need to see a doctor, honey.”

Behind her, Sarah says to Ben, “Don’t be so fucking cocky. I didn’t think it was such a good opinion. Galanter blew the ineffectiveness issue. Nothing Hightower’s lawyer said to that jury could have made up for the failure—”

“Please, you two!” Eletha says, half turning toward them both. “This not the time or the place. Grace is hurt, and all you can do is argue!”

I squeeze her arm to calm her. “I’m fine, El. I just got a bump, that’s all.” My fingertips root through my hair to find the Easter egg on the right side. Let the judge rest in peace. I must be on the right track because somebody’s worried about it. But who? I didn’t recognize the voice. It sounded like a man, but it could just as easily have been a woman speaking low.

“You might have a concussion,” Eletha says.

“I feel fine.” I struggle to sit up.

“I told you she don’t need no hospital,” McLean says. Jeff watches from the chair.

“You shouldn’t be sitting up,” Eletha says.

“Fine. I’ll stand.” And I do, to stop her from worrying. The room spins a minute, and Artie steadies me with a strong arm.

“Grace!” Eletha shouts.

“Eletha, please. You’re giving me a headache.” I cover my ears and Artie laughs.

“She’s okay, El,” he says. “I got her.”

“Somebody warned me out there,” I say, slightly woozy.

“What do you mean?” Artie says.

I stop myself; I shouldn’t say anything, not yet. “I thought I heard somebody warn me to be careful. I guess about the crowd.”

“Did you see him?”

“No.” I shake my head, and the fuzziness isn’t hard to fake. “I guess it was nothing.”

Eletha reaches out for my other arm. “You should go to the hospital. You look white.”

“I am white.”

“Excellent!” Artie says, laughing, and I convince Eletha that I’ll survive if she lets me leave the marshals’ lounge. I don’t feel especially comfortable around McLean or Jeff anyway.

The courthouse lobby is almost vacant, like it was before the Hightower case started. No reporters or gawkers are in sight, just a handful of lawyers and witnesses, watched over by a platoon of marshals. “Where are all the reporters?” I ask, as we walk through the lobby.

“They cleared the building,” Ben says.

“She picked up on that, dude,” Artie says. “The mayor filed for a restraining order to block the press from in front of the courthouse. The DOJ applied for one inside.”

“They won’t get it,” Sarah says.

“Yes, they will,” Ben says. “It’s within the police power. They’ll get it because of the shootings.”

We reach the elevators and the marshals make us walk through the metal detectors, even though Eletha threatens their life. Or maybe because she threatens their life. “You okay?” asks Ray, when I emerge on the other side.

“Sure. Thanks.”

“Good.” He looks relieved. Relieved enough to wave to Eletha.

We ride up in the elevator in silence. The law clerks seem uneasy, and I feel stone scared. People have been shot; it may or may not have to do with the warning. But the warning was real; it came from a killer, maybe Armen’s killer.

“You’d better go home, if you’re not going to a hospital,” Eletha says as we step off the elevator.

“Maybe I will,” I say. Ben is the first to find his keys, and he unlocks the exterior door.

Eletha pulls me by the arm, and we troop down the hall together. “First we’ll get some ice on that bump, like the nurse said,” she says. We push open the door to chambers, and standing in the middle of the room is Senator Susan Waterman.

I blink my eyes once, then again. She’s still there.

Bernice, the dog who’s been driving my station wagon, stands disloyally at her side.

“What are you doing here?” Sarah shouts, letting out a squeal of delight that reverberates in my brain. She rushes over to Susan and gives her a warm hug. “I thought you were in Bosnia!”

“I delayed the trip. We leave tonight.”

Ben tightens his tie. “Senator Waterman,” he says, extending a stiff hand, “please accept my condolences.”

Susan breaks her clinch with Sarah. “Thank you, and I’m pleased to finally meet you,” she says to Ben, pumping his hand so vigorously that her silver bangles jingle. Ben seems to forget that he’s a Republican for a minute as he takes in the aura of power that envelops the woman. It’s undeniable, despite the offhand way she wields it. “My husband told me so much about you, Jim.”

Ben withdraws his hand. “I’m Ben. Ben Safer, Senator.”

Her clear blue eyes focus on Artie. Tiny parentheses at the corners of her lips deepen into a smile. “Then you must be Jim,” she says, vaguely off balance.

“Artie Weiss, Senator. I’m sorry about Armen.” He can barely say it; he must still be hurting.

“Good God, I’m zero for two,” she says with a light laugh. “Wait, I know. You’re the basketball player.”

“Right. I think Jim was one of last year’s clerks,” Artie says uncomfortably.

“Of course.” She shakes his hand and then looks at Eletha. “You look wonderful, Eletha. How are you?” She extends a hand.

Eletha shakes it, obviously underwhelmed. She complained all morning about the funeral arrangements, or lack therof.

“Fine,” she says. “How was the funeral?”

A flicker of pain crosses Susan’s face; the first sign of grief I’ve seen. “Beautiful. I’m sorry you couldn’t be there, El,” she says, then her gaze focuses on me, direct and strong. “You must be Grace. My husband spoke about you all the time.”

I bet he did. Did you kill him for it? “I’m sorry—”

“Thank you.” She extends a hand and squeezes mine hard; I squeeze back just as hard. We have both proved our manhood. “And thank you for adopting Bernice. I was so surprised to see her here, I called the refuge and they told me. I couldn’t possibly keep her, with my schedule.”

I’m sure. “She’s fine with me.”

“Grace got caught in that mess down there,” Eletha says. “Hit on the head. I keep telling her she should go home.”

“By all means you should. I’ll lend you Michael, he’ll put you in a cab.” She gestures to the tall aide with the expensive glasses, standing by Eletha’s desk. I remember him from the memorial service.

“I feel fine, I really do.”

“Nonsense.” She marches me over to Eletha’s chair and plops me down in front of the monitor. “El, would you get us some ice for this bump?”

“I was about to.”

Bernice trots over to me and burrows under my hand, trying to make up for her inconstancy. Her brown eyes roll up at me like marbles. “Good dog,” I say, softening, and pat her head.

Eletha returns with some ice wrapped in a paper towel and hands it to Susan, who brandishes it like Nurse Ratchett. “Where’s the bump?” Susan says.

“In the back.”

“Remember when Malcolm fell off his bike, Eletha?” Susan asks. She probes my head with a large hand and presses the ice into my noggin—not exactly a mother’s touch. “He needed stitches, didn’t he?”

“Twelve of ’em.”

“Twelve stitches, can you imagine? Poor kid. He was four, right?”

“Five,” Eletha says.

“I think that’s enough ice,” I say.

“Be still,” she says. I want to hit her.

“Did you hear what happened out front?” Sarah asks. “Two shootings? You weren’t down there, were you?”

“Of course not,” Susan says, over my head. “I was up here, waiting for you.”

“I didn’t know you were coming in.”

“I should have called, but I was en route and the shuttle was a mess. I came to pick up a few boxes. Are those all the boxes, Eletha, in the office?”

“For the most part. I still haven’t packed all the case files yet.”

“I was looking for some of the older things, his personal things, but I couldn’t find them.”

“What things?” Eletha asks. “The personal stuff is still in the credenza.”

I think of the checkbook; I found it in the credenza. Is that what Susan is looking for?

“I looked, but all I found were school papers,” Susan says.

“I think I’m done with the ice, Susan.” I take her hand and move it away. “What are you looking for exactly? Maybe I saw it.” I watch her face.

She looks down, mildly surprised. “Oh, maybe you have. Memorabilia, mostly. Pictures from our honeymoon, things like that. Special, personal things. I guess you haven’t seen anything like that.”

Is this a code? “No, I haven’t seen anything special. Or personal.”

She leans over me with the wrapped cube. “More ice?” We have ways of making you talk.

“No, thanks.” I take the ice and toss it into the wastecan, then rise unsteadily, feeling her aide hovering at my shoulder. Is he the one who hit me? I wonder what his voice sounds like.

“Are you sure you’re well enough to stand, Grace?” she asks.

Boy, she’s good. I can’t tell if what’s beneath her smooth exterior is evil or just a smooth interior. “Sure. Thanks.”

“Well, I’d better get ready. I’m holding a press conference before we go.”

“Press conference?” Sarah says.

“Since I’m in town, considering what happened. Then we go. In two hours, isn’t that right, Michael?”

The aide checks his Rolex and nods, apparently mute, at least in my presence. I need to hear his voice. I say, “You look so familar, Michael. Did you go to Penn?”

He shakes his head but doesn’t say a thing. A man of few words.

“Where did you go to college?”

“Brown,” he says quickly. Too quickly for me to hear his voice.

“Where are you from? Maybe that’s where I know you.”

“Maine.”

“Oh? Where in Maine? My ex used to like Blue Hill in the summers.”

“Bath.”

It’s still not enough. “Oh. Well, what’s your last name? You looks so much like someone—”

“Robb.”

Eletha shoots me a quizzical look and I give up; I’m out of questions and Michael’s out of syllables. “I guess it was somebody else.”

“Guess so,” Susan says, with a faint smile.

18

Bernice rests her chin on the top of the plastic gate like Kilroy over the fence. My mother shifts the ice pack on my head. “How’s that?” she says.

“Ma, will you stop? I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine,” she says, practically hissing. Her breath is a mixture of denture cream and stale cigarettes. She hasn’t mentioned our skirmish last night; we’re both pretending it didn’t happen. “You shouldn’t have been there.”

“I had to eat, Ma. If I didn’t eat you’d be yelling, ‘Why didn’t you eat?’” Of course, I didn’t tell her about the warning. It’s been worrying me since it happened, but I still can’t remember any more than I already have. From the local news, it looked like the shooting had to do with Hightower, so the person who warned me wasn’t the shooter. I hope.

“Here’s the lady,” Maddie says. Her eyes are fixed on the portable TV on the pine hutch. The national news comes on, and the first story begins with a miniature head shot of Susan, floating to the right of a graying Tom Brokaw. “She looks like she’s in the movies, Mom. She’s pretty.”

“I heard she’s ugly in person,” my mother says.

“She’s not.” Especially for a killer. But by now she’s in the air, heading out of my jurisdiction with monosyllabic Michael.

“Look, Mom,” Maddie says. “She’s gonna talk again.” She points to the television, and I focus on the screen as the news runs part of Susan’s speech.

“What happened in Philadelphia today, only a block from Independence Hall, makes a mockery of the Constitution. The framers envisioned that the First Amendment would create open, free, and robust debate. They did not anticipate that words would be replaced by gunfire and thoughts drowned in human blood.”

“I don’t like that part,” Maddie says solemnly.

“Me neither,” I say, absorbed by Susan’s tiny image. Her star is on the rise, her career jump-started by her husband’s death. The papers keep talking about her strength under fire; presidential timber, says the New York Times.

“I am happy to announce that the condition of the two shooting victims is now stable. However, we should use this near-tragedy to consider how we, as citizens of a free and democratic country, can exchange ideas through peaceful means, without resort to violence.”

“What she’s saying, Mom?”

“Nothing.”

My mother laughs. “So what else is new? She’s a politician.”

The ice pack shifts on my head, and I seize the moment to grab it away. “I’m fine now, thanks. Please go sit down.”

“I’m trying to help you.”

“I know. I said thank you.” I drop the melting ice pack next to the spaghetti bowl.

“Shhh!” Maddie says, staring at Susan.

“Was that a Chanel suit she had on?” my mother says, as she takes her place at the dinner table.

The broadcast cuts to scenes outside the courthouse: film of Mrs. Gilpin crying in the arms of a friend and her husband looking on with relief and happiness. He says to a woman reporter, “Now we can see justice done. Now we can close the book.”

In the background is Mrs. Stevens, but Gilpin doesn’t seem to make the connection that she’s about to endure the same pain he had. The camera cuts to her, standing next to the black councilman. “How do you feel, Mrs. Stevens?” comes a shotgunned question, a reporter’s drive-by.

“How do you think she feels, you jerk?” I say to the TV.

“I don’t understand, Mom,” Maddie says, but I hold up a finger.

On the TV, Mrs. Stevens swallows visibly. “I think my boy done wrong, but I don’t think he deserves to die. He’s still young, and the young—”

“Justice was not done here!” the councilman interrupts. “Thomas did not have a fair trial! We will appeal to the Supreme Court without delay, because time is running out. Meanwhile, two African Americans were shot here today, showing support for their young brother….”

The camera focuses on Mrs. Stevens’s numb expression, then a commercial for Rice-A-Roni comes on.

“So Senator Waterman makes the national news,” my mother says, arching an eyebrow plucked into a gray pencil line.

“She calls these things press conferences, but she never takes any questions.” I get up stiffly and turn off the TV.

“Aw, can we leave it on?” Maddie asks.

“No, honey, not during dinner.”

“But we just watched during dinner.”

“That was special.” I sit down.

“I don’t see what the big deal is,” my mother says, half to herself.

Of course she doesn’t. When I was a kid, we ate dinner on spindly trays in front of a console television. At least Walter Cronkite didn’t hit us. “We’ve already discussed this, Mom.”

Maddie resettles sullenly on top of the Donnelley Directory. “Grandma lets me watch TV during snack.”

“I think it was a Chanel suit,” my mother says quickly, chopping her spaghetti into bite-size pieces. She refuses to twirl it: too Italian. “Did you see?”

“See what?”

“The buttons. That’s how you know it’s Chanel.”

“I didn’t see.”

“How’s your head?”

“Full of important thoughts.”

She frowns. “I still say you should report what happened. You were attacked.”

“It’s not worth it.”

Maddie shifts on the phone book. “Are they gonna catch the guy that did it, Mom?”

“I don’t think so, babe.”

“Why not?”

“They don’t know who did it.”

“Serves them right.” My mother snorts. “They’re the ones with all the guns—”

“Wait a minute. That’s enough,” I say, and she quiets; we have a specific understanding. I wouldn’t let her baby-sit for Maddie unless she agreed to suspend her two favorite activities: racism and smoking.

“What, Mom?” Maddie asks, confused. “What happened to the guy?”

“They think he ran away, honey.”

“Where did he run to?”

“Somewhere in the city. Not near here.”

Maddie nods knowingly and digs into her salad. “It’s dangerous out there.”

“What?” I laugh. “Where did you get that?”

“Don’t you know?” she says, with a mouthful of iceberg lettuce.

“Finish chewing and then talk, okay?”

She chews the lettuce like a little hamster.

“Don’t let her do that,” my mother says, but I wave her off.

“How’s that tooth, monster girl? Ready for the Tooth Fairy?”

Maddie swallows her food. “Almost ready. There’s only one of those thread things. Wanna see?”

“No. Please.”

Her face grows serious. “There are bad people, Mom, didn’t you know that?”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What are you watching in the afternoons, Dragnet reruns?”

“Care Bears!” Maddie says, and grins at my mother. My mother winks back, and I decide to let them have their secrets.

“All right, so tell me how school was.”

“Okay.” She shrugs, shoulders knobby as bedposts in her white blouse.

“Did you have art?”

“Yeah.”

“Yes. Did you make anything?”

“Yes.”

“What did you make?”

“A picture.”

“What is this, a deposition? What was it a picture of?”

She perks up slightly. “Trees. You stick little sponges in the paint and then on the paper. It makes fake leaves for the trees. It’s scenery. It’s for our play.”

“You’re going to be in a play?”

Maddie nods and sips her milk, leaving a tomato-sauce stain on the rim of the glass and a milk mustache on her upper lip. Then she grabs her napkin in a professional way and wipes her mouth.

“What’s the play about?”

“Spring.”

“That sounds nice. Is it a musical?”

She rolls her eyes. “No, Mom. That’s in the olden days. We don’t do anything as dumb as that.”

“What a relief. Jeez.”

Maddie squints at me to see if I’m kidding. I squint back, and we squint at each other like moles for a minute.

“Maddie told me some good news today, Grace,” my mother says. She turns to Maddie. “Tell your mother how you made a new friend.”

“You made a friend?” It’s too much to hope for.

Maddie beams. “At recess.”

“Terrific!” I feel my heart leap up. “I propose a toast. To Maddie and her new friend.” I hoist my glass in the air, and so does my mother. The heavy tumblers clink loudly.

“She won’t tell me any more about it,” my mother says. “She says she’s only allowed to tell you.”

“Oh, a secret! So you played with this friend at recess? What did you play?”

“Digging.”

“Like with Madeline?” I think of the day I watched her near the edge of the playground.

“Yep. He likes Madeline.”

“Oh, he’s a boy, huh? Is he cute?”

She wrinkles her nose. “Kind of. He’s big.”

“How big? Like a second grader?”

“No, bigger than that. Almost as big as Daddy.”

My mother laughs. “That means fifth grade.”

“What’s his name?”

“It’s a secret. He’s my secret friend.”

I wonder if he’s imaginary. “But he’s real, right? Not like Madeline. A real boy.”

She looks confused. “He’s a man, Mommy, not a boy. He helped me and Madeline dig a hole. He’s strong.”

“What? A man?”

My mother puts down her fork in surprise. “Not a stranger!”

“Maddie knows not to talk to strangers.” I turn to Maddie. “Right, honey? He’s not a stranger, is he?”

Her face flushes red. “He knows you and that’s not a stranger.”

“Who is he?”

“He said it’s a secret. I told you. He knows you and your work. He knows your judge and the lady on the TV. That’s not a stranger.”

“What did he look like, Maddie?” my mother says, her voice thin with anxiety. “Tell Grandma.”

Maddie looks from my mother to me, becoming uncertain. “I didn’t do anything bad, Mom. He said he was my friend, and you said make a friend.”

“Of course you didn’t do anything bad,” I say as calmly as I can. “Which recess did he play with you, Mads? Recess in the morning or recess after lunch?”

“He knows things. He said it’s good to be careful, like you say. He said, Tell Mommy too.”

I feel my gut tense up. “Tell me to be careful?”

“Maddie, what are you talking about?” my mother says. “How could you—”

“Ma!” I snap at her. “Let me talk to her.”

My sudden anger makes Maddie’s lower lip buckle. “Mom, I didn’t do anything wrong.” Her eyes well up with tears.

“It’s all right, baby,” I say. I scoop her out of her seat and she burrows into my neck. I think of the man and my skin crawls. Is this for real, and does it have anything to do with this afternoon? “Can you remember what he looks like, Maddie?”

“No,” she sobs.

“That’s okay. It’s all right, now.” I hug Maddie close and catch sight of my mother over the top of my daughter’s tousled red head. Her face has gone gray and drawn with fear; her gnarled fingers shake as she reaches for her water glass. “You okay, Ma?” I ask her.

She looks up, startled. “Fine,” she says.

Later, after we’ve cleaned up and Maddie’s safely in bed, my mother makes coffee in silence while I call the principal at Maddie’s school and tell him what happened during a recess that’s allegedly supervised. He reminds me that the back field is huge, that there are only two playground aides for 350 children, and that Maddie was playing at the far end. I suggest politely that he hire more aides, then show my fine upbringing by not threatening grievous bodily harm, although I let him know a lawsuit is always an interesting alternative. Then I call Maddie’s teacher, who mentions that Maddie has a vivid imagination. Not that vivid, I say to her, before I hang up.

I call the police in my tiny borough to report the incident; they seem happy to leave their game of checkers to come over and do real police work, like on TV. One even has braces on his teeth. My mother lubricates them with hot coffee and I give them free legal advice, so they promise to cruise around the house tonight and the playground tomorrow and the next day. I decide not to tell them about Armen’s murder or what happened to me at the courthouse; it’s out of their distinctly suburban league.

But I’m getting the message the killer is sending, loud and clear. Someone is using everything they can—including my six-year-old—to warn me off, but it won’t work. It only makes me want to fight back harder. Where do they get off threatening my child? They haven’t met up with the fury of a single mother. Especially one who’s run out of alimony.

19

The phone rings after the police leave. “Grace.” It’s a man’s voice, almost in a whisper. “It’s Winn.”

“Who?”

“Winn. Shake and Bake. Get down here fast.”

“What? It’s eleven o’clock at night.”

“Please. I can’t talk long.”

“Listen, you, somebody tried to grab my daughter today. And somebody hit me from behind.”

“Are you all right?” He sounds stricken, but not as stricken as I am and only half as stricken as my mother.

“She’s fine, we both are.”

“Was she hurt?”

“No, but only because she was at school. I can’t have this, Winn.”

“I’ll protect her. I’ll get somebody on her.”

“Who, kindergarten cop?”

“I’ll make him a teacher. A janitor.”

“That’s not the point.”

“I can’t talk now, just come down here. It’s Artie. He needs help.”

“Artie? Where?”

“Northern Liberties.”

Not one of Philadelphia’s showcase neighborhoods. “What are you doing there?”

“We’re at Keeton’s. On the corner, at Third. There’s a sign.”

“Is Artie okay? In danger?”

“Nothing like that, but come now.” He hangs up.

I hang up slowly, looking at the phone. I hate to leave Maddie tonight, after what happened to her, nor am I excited about driving around, after what happened to me. On the other hand, it might help to talk to Winn, and Artie’s in trouble. There’s a caffeinated couple of cops driving circles around my house and a bulldog of a grandmother seething in the living room; my daughter has never been safer. I decide to go, mumbling an excuse to my mother, like in high school.

I drive into town with an eye on the rearview mirror, and no one appears to be following me. I reach the warehouse district in a half hour. The streets are wider here than they are in the rest of Philly and almost deserted. Trash mars the sidewalk, and the homeless beg from the traffic on the expressway ramp. One man, apparently crazy, is draped in a blanket despite the warm, breezy night. I look away until I remember that it’s an apparently crazy man I’m looking for. I look back, but it’s not Winn.

I drive around the block, past a graffiti mural on an electrical wholesale store, until I find a ratty tavern. An old-time window of thick glass block is stuck into a dingy brick facade. Over the black-painted door a pink neon sign glows KE TON’S. Artie is lying in front, passed out under a dim streetlight. Winn is propped up against the lamppost, fuzzy-faced and dressed in a raincoat, looking oddly like a degenerate Paddington Bear. I pull up to the curb and get out of the wagon.

Winn smiles vacantly when he spots me. “Harvard’s sick, Miss Rossi.”

I kneel over Artie. There’s stubble on his formerly handsome face, and his clothes are a mess. But then they always are. “Artie? You okay?”

Artie opens one eye, then covers his startled face with his hands. “It’s alive! Make it go away, Grace. It’s heinous!”

Winn smiles. “Harvard drank too much.”

“I figured.”

“I figured you figured.” Winn claps his hands. “I figured you figured I figured you figured.”

“He’s crazy as a fuckin’ loon, Grace,” Artie says, his eyes still closed. “Sarah was right.”

“Bye-bye, Sarah,” Winn says.

Artie looks up at me, his mouth curving down in Pagliacci’s exaggerated frown. “Sarah went bye-bye, Grace.”

“I’m sorry, Artie.”

“She was in love with Armen, she admitted it.” His eyes fill up with drunken tears. “She never loved me.”

Poor kid. “I’m sorry.”

“I knew it all along, Grace. She thinks I’m stupid, but I’m not.” He licks his dry lips. “I knew from the way she looked at him.”

I grab the folds of Artie’s denim jacket; it occurs to me that I have picked up a drunk before. This drunk budges only an inch.

“Armen was my friend, Grace. He was my friend.”

“I know, Artie.”

“I was right! I am a genius! I made law review!” he rails into the night, then his head lolls to one side. A piece of wax paper rolls over him like urban tumbleweed.

I struggle to move him but can’t. “Would you help me, Shake and Bake?”

“No.” Winn wags his head back and forth, ersatz autistic before my eyes. “I’m busy.”

“That’s funny, Shakie.” My lower back begins to ache; I’m too old for this and in no mood. I straighten up and glare at Winn. “Now get up and help Mommy.”

Artie’s eyes fly open suddenly, like a corpse reanimated. “Look, Grace! Look what I got!” He starts to unbutton his fly.

Oh, Christ. “I know what you got, Artie. Keep it in your pants.”

“No, no, Gracie! Something totally awesome! Look!”

I look down. Artie’s work shirt is yanked up to his neck. Directly north of his stomach, between two rather erect nipples, sits a basketball, regulation size. Its surface is brown and pebbled, and in the center, in familiar script, it says Wilson. “What is that?” I say, aghast.

“I got a tat! Isn’t it so excellent?”

“A tat?”

“Artie has a tat-toooo,” Winn says, singsong.

“No pain no gain,” Artie mumbles. “Today I am a man.”

“I got one, too,” Winn says, getting up. He brushes off his soiled pants, which does nothing to improve them. “Two tats. One for Harvard, one for me.”

“Terrific.”

“Barukh attah Adonai,” Artie says, “Eloheinu meleckh ha-olam. Let’s light the candles!” He waves his hand in the air, then it flops back against the cracked sidewalk.

“Want to see my tattoo?” Winn asks, standing a little too close for comfort. He smells like cheap beer and body odor.

“Keep your shirt on, Shakie,” I say.

“Grace’s being mean to me, Artie,” Winn says, pouting.

“Don’t be mean to him,” Artie says, eyes closed, from the pavement.

I look at Winn, unamused.

“Two points,” says Winn. “For me.”

Artie caterwauls in the shower while Winn sits forward on the beat-up couch in Artie’s apartment, quizzing me about what happened to Maddie and me. He looks uneasy when I finish the story and takes off his rain bonnet to run his fingers through his greasy hair. “This is too dangerous for you, for your daughter. I never should have gotten you involved in it.”

“So why did you?” I sit back on a folding chair in front of a secondhand coffee table.

“I had no choice. I had nothing on the leads I was running and I know something’s there.”

“What do you think’s going on? You said Galanter’s not the only judge involved.” I sip a Coke to hide my anxiety.

“Everybody dance now!” Artie sings in the shower, to C + C Music Factory.

Winn glances at the bathroom door, then leans close enough to give me another whiff of his rich stench. “Allegedly involved. I’m not sure yet, but I think Galanter’s in on it and maybe Townsend.”

I feel stunned. And no Armen. “A conspiracy?”

“It happened before, in this circuit, in the nineteen forties. Judges Buffington and Davis, together they sold a group of cases. One of ’em was working with a Second Circuit judge, too, who took half a mil. You could buy a lot of justice for that much money back then.”

I think of the $650,000. “But that was then.”

“Last year, Judge Aguilar in California told a Teamster who was embezzling union funds about one of our wiretaps on him. And Judge Collins, my personal favorite, took a hundred thou to give a drug dealer a lesser sentence. Both federal judges. Collins even collected his salary during the six years he spent in jail.”

“This a hobby of yours, judicial misconduct?”

“It’s what I do. All I do, in fact.”

“Like a specialty?”

He nods. “It’s fun, it’s brainwork, and it’s mostly bloodless.”

“The Quaker part.”

“In a way. I like taking these guys down. They’ve had every advantage, every privilege, and still they go bad. They’re hypocrites. They’ve got no excuse except greed.”

It doesn’t sound like Armen.

“Now it’s Galanter’s turn. It’s a scandal, Grace. It’ll blow the courthouse wide open.”

My heart sinks. For the court and for Armen, when they find out about the bank account.

“You still upset about today? You look kind of sick.”

I chug some Coke. “Just the gal for undercover work.”

“You’re not working undercover anymore. I want you out of it. Clear.”

“Why?”

“You need to ask, after today?”

“You’re assuming I want to get out. Tell me what you think is going on.”

“You remember the case that was argued Monday, the one I blew up? Canavan?”

“The racketeering case, with the florists.”

“Yes. The Mob was behind it. The lawyer just couldn’t figure out how.”

I force out the words. “The Mob?”

“I believe they got to the judges and paid somebody off to make it come out their way, either Galanter or Townsend or both. Artie told me the judges vote right after the cases are argued, and I needed more time to gather evidence. So I had to make sure the argument didn’t happen. Ticktickticktick.”

I put down my Coke and look at him with wonder. “They did postpone that argument.”

“Of course they did, and I got more time to watch everybody play the game. I told you I’m smarter than I look.”

I feel my pulse quicken. If Winn is right, the $650,000 couldn’t have been a bribe for Canavan. Armen would have voted to reverse, sending the defendants to jail: clearly not the desired outcome from the Mob’s point of view. “I don’t understand something. Does this have anything to do with Armen’s death?”

“I think so. He may have been killed to prevent him from voting in Canavan.”

“My God. Who killed him?”

“Somebody they paid to do it. Some scumbag.”

“Or Galanter.”

“What?” He rears back slightly. “That’s not how these cases work.”

“Maybe this one did. There was no break in, and Bernice wouldn’t have let just anybody in.” I tell him how Bernice attacked Galanter, getting excited as I speak; it renews my determination to work for him.

“Where’s the Canavan case now?” We both hear Artie turn off the water in the shower; Winn looks worriedly at the bathroom door. “Has it been scheduled for argument again?”

“I don’t know, it was Sarah’s case. It’ll probably be listed with the next sitting, a month from now. What is it you want me to do, when I work for Galanter?”

“Do you have the job already?”

“No, but I’ll get it.”

“Don’t. I told you, I want you out.”

“I’m going ahead, so you might as well tell me what I’m looking for. I want to find out if Galanter killed Armen.”

He rubs his gritty forehead. “I knew this was going to happen. I must’ve been crazy to—”

“All I need is for you to protect Maddie at school. I’ll be with her the whole weekend. Plus I have the local police.”

“You what?”

“I want you to park a car right across from the school field. Here’s her picture.” I fish one out of my wallet and hand it to him. “It’s not a new one, she’s actually cuter than that.”

“Freckles. I like freckles.” He smiles at the picture and slips it into his pocket. “I’ll have her watched, but I still want you to bow out. Quit now, I’ll handle Galanter. You’re too exposed. I don’t like it, Grace.”

“Tell me what I’m looking for. Where do I start, the Canavan record?”

He looks directly at me. “Are you really going to do this?”

I think of Armen. He loved me; he was murdered. And he didn’t take any goddamn bribe. “Yep.”

“Christ.” He rubs his beard. “All right. If you insist on this, then all you should do is keep your eyes and ears open around his office. Try to answer the phones. That’s it.”

“Why? What am I looking for?”

The toilet flushes in the bathroom and Winn snatches a Times crossword puzzle from the debris on the coffee table and scribbles in the blank squares. “Call me if Galanter gets phone calls from any of these characters. Or if he has lunch with them, meets with them at all. That’s all I want you to do, got it? I’ll take it from there.” He tears out the puzzle and hands it to me. “I also wrote down the number of the pay phone at the shelter. I’m there most of the time now. If you call, say you’re my cousin. Ask for Rain Man.”

I look at the crossword puzzle. After a phone number, reading down is THESAURUS, and reading across is SPOOL. Underneath that is a list of names, all as Italian as mine. I feel a twinge of shame, then fear. A mobster, that close to my child?

The bathroom door opens and Artie steps out wearing a red Budweiser bath towel around his waist. “Everybody dance now!” he sings, and thrusts his pelvis expertly at us.

“Artie!” Winn shouts idiotically, lapsing instantly into character. “You’re all better!”

“I am better!” Artie strikes a muscleman pose, his wet biceps glistening with leftover water. In the middle of his chest is a slick basketball.

“You look good!” Winn says, applauding. He leaps to his feet with joy and bunny-hops over to Artie. “Everybody, everybody, everybody dance!” They form a conga line and dance around me on the sofa.

I sit back and laugh, marveling at how deceptive appearances can be. The man playing the fool is really a shrewd federal agent; the Ivy Leaguer is dumb enough to engrave a basketball onto his chest. And what about me? I’m somewhere in the middle, definitely involved. It’s a surprise when I realize why.

I want justice.

Everybody dance now.

20

Needlepoint is usually surefire therapy. I take refuge in it at the most stressful times and have come through a divorce and even Maddie’s hernia operation with a few very nice pillows. I’m hoping needlepoint will get me through high crimes and misdeameanors, but this may be too much to ask of a hobby.

I tug a pristine silver needle through a tiny white square. The yarn comes through with ease, filling in an infinitesimal block of emerald green in a rolling English landscape. I favor the smaller scrims; they demand more concentration. I stitch another itsy-bitsy square and look behind me for the local squad car, parked across the street. The skinny cop in braces sits in the front seat, engrossed in the newspaper; he looks even younger than last night, if such a thing is possible.

I check on Maddie. She swings on a swing, pumping her legs back and forth. I can see her smile broaden with pride as the swing goes higher. She’s still learning to coordinate the pumping action; it’s not as easy as it looks. I wave to her, but she doesn’t see.

I return to England after a careful glance around the neighborhood playground. No felons anywhere, just a few children playing in the sandbox and a mother here and there. It’s not busy today; it’s Saturday and everybody’s out running errands, which is what I would be doing if I weren’t somewhere in Northamptonshire.

I look up at Maddie, still on the swings on the far side of the fenced kiddie area of the playground. She was deliriously happy the day she hit six and graduated to the big kids area, but I don’t like it much. The swings are too damn high for my comfort level, and my park bench is too far away. If you think I was protective before, you should see me now.

“You’re dead!” screams a little boy, and I jump. The child runs by, chasing another boy with a toy Uzi. “You have to lay down, I killed you!”

This is why I’m glad I don’t have boys.

England waits while my blood pressure returns to normal. I watch the boys chase each other in the dappled sunshine around a white hobbyhorse on a steel coil, then double back around the sandbox and out toward the swings. Of course they run right in front of the swings, directly in harm’s way. Don’t these monsters have mothers? They survive the gauntlet of swings and run past the bench out by the tennis courts. A man in a black sweater sits on the bench; his head barely follows the boys as they run by him.

Odd.

I didn’t see him when we came. There’s a newspaper on his lap, but he’s not reading it. I take another stitch and yank the yarn through quickly. I look up at the man on the opposite bench.

He’s still there, but too far away for me to make out his features. His hair is dark, and he seems broad-shouldered underneath the bulky V-neck sweater. Something about him looks familiar. Then I remember. He looks a lot like the man I saw at the police station and the memorial service, but I can’t be positive.

Still.

I turn around to the police car. It’s there, but it’s empty. No adolescent cop, no newspaper. I swallow hard. The cop was here a minute ago. I look down the street. He’s standing in front of the borough library, talking to an old woman carrying a stack of books. He’s too far away to see or hear me.

Jesus. Stay calm.

I look back at the man on the bench, watching him as he scans the playground, apparently harmlessly. His sweater is much too heavy for such a balmy day, and it’s bulgy enough to accommodate a gun in a shoulder holster. He could be with the Mob; he looks the part. Is he the same man as at the police station?

That man had a black car with Virginia plates.

I take a quick stitch and casually look over the cars along the street. There’s my wagon, then another wagon and a minivan. His car isn’t there; so far, so good. I glance at the library lot next to the playground. The chrome grill of a dark car peeks at me from around the library, glinting in the sunlight. I bite my lip. It looks like the black car, but it also looks like a zillion other American cars. It’s parked with the front end facing me, and there are no license plates in the front. Maybe it’s from Virginia, maybe not.

I can’t stand this. I feel more nervous by the second.

I take another stitch and peek over at the cop. He’s nodding as the old woman unloads her pile of plastic-covered books into his arms. Terrific. My yarn snags; a notch of kelly green explodes through a yellow thatched roof. I hate needlepoint.

I stare at the man. He’s still sitting there, but now he’s checking out the swings. Maddie’s not the only child on them, but he appears to be watching her. I look back at him, then at her. She’s between us, but he’s closer to her than I am.

Relax, I tell myself. You handled back labor, you can handle this. I weave the needle into the scrim border for safekeeping.

Maddie sails back and forth, her cotton skirt billowing each time she swings forward. The man in the sweater watches her, unsmiling.

What the hell? Is he the man from the school playground? Is he the man from the police station? Why is he watching my daughter?

Suddenly, the man takes the newspaper off his lap and stands up.

I set my needlepoint aside and stand up.

He looks up at the swings and so do I. With a start, I see that Maddie’s swing isn’t going nearly as high as it was; she’s beginning to slow down. She slows to a low arc, dragging an untied Keds on the ground, kicking up loose, dry dirt. She’s getting ready to jump off.

My heart starts to pound.

The man takes a step toward the swings.

The cop rearranges the books. The old woman takes his arm.

I feel breathless. I open my mouth to scream but nothing comes out.

The man walks right toward Maddie. Unmistakably.

My scream breaks free. “Maddie! Maddie!” I shout. I’m off in a second, running toward the swings. “Help, police!”

Maddie looks confused, then terrified. The man glances back at me, then sprints in the opposite direction.

I pick up my pace, running as hard as I can. “Help! Police!” I scream, full bore.

My panic sets off the other mothers. One of them gathers her children together, hugging them to her legs. The other, a young mother, takes off like a shot after the stranger, who’s fleeing across the grassy common. She’s a short-haired woman in bicycle pants, and she passes me in no time. “I got that bastard,” she says, hardly puffing as she whizzes by, cowlick flying.

I keep running until I get to Maddie, who’s frozen with fear in front of the swings. I scoop her up and hug her tight. Over her shoulder I watch the young mother almost on the heels of the man. I pray to God he doesn’t have a gun as she grabs him by the sweater and they both fall hard to the ground.

The cop comes running from the entrance to the playground, but the young woman doesn’t need his help. She clambers onto the man’s back and wrenches his arm behind him. A group of teenagers playing basketball at the far side of the playground stop their game and come running over. It’s a done deal by the time the cop and the teenagers reach the middle of the huge field, which is when I guess the young woman must be an undercover cop, sent by Winn just in case.

“What’s happening, Mommy?” Maddie says in a small voice. “What’s going on?” She wraps her arms tighter around my neck.

“That man who was running, was he the one you saw on the playground at school?”

“Yes.”

I watch as the basketball players ring the prone man. “It’s okay now, baby. It’s all over.”

“What are they gonna do?”

“They’re gonna put him in jail.”

“Why?”

Because he’s a killer, I think to myself, and hug her even closer. I pick her up and walk over to the crowd around the man. The cop has handcuffed him and flipped him over on his back. The woman has her running shoe at his Adam’s apple. She gives me a brusque wave as I approach.

“We got him,” the cop says.

Please. “You had an assist, I think, from the FBI.”

The cop and the woman exchange looks over the unconscious man. “Are you with the feds?” the cop says.

“Me? Are you kidding?” The young woman laughs. “I’m a librarian.”

“What?” I say. “But the way you tackled—”

“Arrgh,” the man moans, regaining consciousness. He’s older up close but still a scumbag, like Winn said.

“He’s waking’ up!” one of the ballplayers says.

The librarian presses her ribbed toe into the man’s throat. “Stay right there, asshole.”

“Grace?” the man says, disoriented, looking up from the grass.

“How do you know my name?”

“I gave it to you, for chrissake.”

“What?”

He spits grass out of his mouth. “I’m your fuckin’ father.”

Bernice glares through the gate of her Fisher-Price prison, eyeing with canine distrust the stranger who is my father.

“Lucky for me that dog wasn’t with you today,” he says. Underneath his sweater is a ropy gold chain; no shoulder holster, as far as I can tell. “That’s a big mother dog.”

“Watch your language.”

“Sorry.”

“You want coffee or not?”

“Yeah.” He holds up his mug.

“How do you take it?” I pause over him with the pot of coffee. Maybe he needs a hot shower.

“Black is fine.” He looks up at me with blue eyes that eerily mirror my own, which stops me short. I can see the years on him; the deep crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes and a softening around the jowls. He must be over sixty, but he looks fifty. His hair is jet black, like Robert Goulet’s; I wonder if he dyes it. I pour him some coffee, then myself, avoiding his eyes.

“You’re mad, aren’t ya?” he says.

“You know me so well, Dad.”

He winces when he sips his coffee. “Christ, this is hot!”

I stop short of saying, Good, you burn yourself? “So what are you doing here? In the neighborhood, thought you’d drop by?”

He frowns at my sarcasm but evidently decides not to send me to my room. “Look, I wanted to see my granddaughter.”

“Why?”

“I just wanted to see her, okay?”

“Why now? She’s been around for six years. It’s not like she’s been booked up.”

“I just retired.” He clears his throat, but his voice still sounds like gravel. “I moved back to Philly.”

“So you were in the neighborhood.”

“I figured it was time to settle up, you know?”

“No, I don’t.”

“When you’re my age, you’ll know.” He slurps his coffee, wincing again.

“We have a telephone. You could have called.”

“I know, I looked you up in the phone book. That’s how I knew where she went to school.” He glances into the living room, where Maddie’s teaching herself to make a cat’s cradle with a pink string he brought her. “She’s a little lady. Just like you were,” he says wistfully, but I have no patience for his wistfulness.

“You scared her, you know. And me.”

“I’m sorry.”

I pull out a chair at the side of the table, two seats away from where he sits. Even from here I can smell his aftershave, something drugstore like Aqua Velva. He doesn’t say anything for a minute, staring down into his mug. I’ll be damned if I’ll fill this silence. I sip my coffee.

“Okay, so it wasn’t the best way to go about it,” he says finally.

“On the contrary. It was the worst possible way to go about it.”

“Now I got your Irish up.” He laughs softly, but I’m not laughing.

“You want a drink? Little sweetener for that coffee?”

He looks at me, stung. “I haven’t had a drink in a long, long time.”

“Right.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Good for you. Where do you live?”

“Philly, now. South Philly.”

The Italian neighborhood. “What do you do?”

“I used to teach.”

“You were a teacher?” I can’t hide my surprise. I would have figured him for a bartender, maybe a trucker. But a teacher? “What did you teach?”

“English.”

“What?” He can barely speak it. I almost spit out my coffee.

“You’re surprised at your old man, eh?”

“Please. Let’s not leap ahead with the ‘old man’ stuff. Where did you teach?”

“In high school. In Virginia.”

It was his car, the black one. It’s parked out in front of my house like an official Mafia squad car. “Have you been following me?”

He shifts heavily in his seat. “Not exactly. Just watching, a little.”

“Why?”

“Tryin’ to decide, you know. When to make my move. In the beginning, I just wanted to see what you looked like.” He appraises me for a minute. “You grew up nice, pretty. Very pretty.”

Let’s change the subject. “So they let Italians in Virginia. You like it there?”

“No. No calamar’, no nothin’. I had nothin’ keepin’ me there, so I came back. That’s my life story.”

“Never remarried?”

“No.”

“No other kids?”

“Not that I know of.” He laughs, then spots my glare. “No.”

I shake my head, and another silence falls between us. We have nothing to say to each other; we have everything to say to each other.

“You’re a lawyer?” he says.

“Yes.”

“Here’s a good one. You’re in a room with Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan, a lawyer, and a revolver loaded with two bullets. What do you do?”

“What are you talking about?”

He waves his hand. “It’s a joke.”

“Okay, what?”

“Shoot the lawyer twice.” He laughs, but I don’t. “Okay, strike one. Here’s another. What’s black and brown and looks good on a lawyer?”

“Listen—”

“A Doberman.” He laughs again, his eyes crinkling at the corners. An attractive man for his age, with a kind face. Except that he’s a wife beater. Did I mention that appearances are deceiving?

“You beat my mother, didn’t you?”

“Did she tell you that?”

“In a way.”

He exhales heavily. “Madonn’.”

“Well?”

“I never laid a hand on your mother. Never.” He points a thick index finger at me.

“Bullshit. I remember.”

“You remember wrong, lawyer.”

“The hell I do. Don’t you dare come here and tell me what I remember,” I say, my voice rising. “I know what I remember.”

“Mom?” Maddie calls uncertainly from the living room. The child has been traumatized enough; now her mother is going off the deep end.

“You want to go play outside, honey?”

“No.”

“You want to watch a tape?”

“Even though I watched cartoons this morning?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah!” She leaps off the couch.

“You know how to put it in?”

“I do it all the time, Mom. Jeez.” She rummages under the TV for her tapes.

My father watches Maddie slip a tape in the VCR. “Smart little girl.”

I feel a knot in my chest. “She sure is. So was I.”

He pushes his mug away and folds his hands. “You want to know why I left?”

“For starters.”

He looks down at his wrinkled hands, the only giveaway as to his age. “I met your mother at the Nixon, at Fifty-second and Market.”

“We’re beginning at the beginning, I see.”

He gives me a dirty look. “As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, the Nixon was one of the biggest ballrooms around. Cost a couple bucks to get in. Had a mirror ball, spotlights, ten-piece band. Soup to nuts. You had to wear a tie and jacket.”

“Very classy.”

He nods, missing the irony. “Very classy. Why your mother was there that night, I still don’t know. She was from Saint Tommy More. She was a great dancer, the best.”

“My mother, dancing?” I blurt out. It’s inconceivable, she barely smiles.

“God, yeh.” He nods. “I was there with the goombahs, the boys from the corner. Louie, Popeye, Cooch. She was there with the Irish girls. They were all in a corner, talkin’ to each other. The Italians never asked the Irish to dance, the Irish never asked the Italians to dance. They weren’t from the neighborhood. Lady of Angels.” He smiles, lost there for a minute. “I remember her eyes, she had gorgeous eyes. Bedroom eyes.”

“So?”

“So I asked her to dance, but she wouldn’t dance with me. I kept after her for the slow dance. Finally she did. I remember the floor was slippery from the powder.”

“Powder?”

“Yeh. Talcum powder, on the floor. Made it even more slippery, for slide dancing. Slow dancing, you know. Big band. Ah, your mother was good. So was I. You had to be good; otherwise you’d slip on your goddamn ass.” He laughs thickly. “They had a contest, too, for the best jitterbug. We won some money, coupla bucks, I forget how much.”

I hear the first strains of Cinderella coming from the living room and Maddie jumps back up on the couch, already lost in the fantasy world of Disney. Someday my prince will come. I should burn those tapes.

“Then we went outside for a drink. You couldn’t drink at these things, but we found a way to drink. We always found a way to drink. Then we got married and you came along.” His smile fades. “I decided to stop then, went to AA, the whole bit. But she didn’t.”

I don’t understand. “You mean Mom drank?”

“I tried to get her to stop, but she couldn’t.” He leans back heavily in his chair.

“But Mom doesn’t drink. Not even beer.”

“Maybe not now, but then she did. I tried everything. Hiding the bottles, throwing them away, pouring that shit down the toilet. I dumped her whiskey and she came at me—”

“Came at you?”

He reddens slightly. “That was the last straw. I couldn’t take it anymore. I knew if I stayed, I’d go down with her. So I left. Took off. The only thing I did wrong, the thing I regret, is I left you.”

My chest grows tight. I can’t say anything.

“I can’t even tell you I tried to get custody, because I didn’t. They wouldn’t have given it to me, not in those days, but that’s no excuse. I heard she stopped drinkin’ after I left, but I still didn’t go back. We were bad for each other, we would’ve gone down together. And you too.”

I swallow hard, disoriented. This isn’t my family history. My history is altogether different: a father who drank, a no-good, and a mother who suffered. A victim, a saint. I don’t know whether to believe him. I can’t look at him. “You should go,” I say.

“I’m not so dumb that I expected everything to be all right with us. I came because I wanted to make it up to you. I have a little money. Maybe I can help out.”

“You can’t. You should go.”

“Maybe you need to think about it. I know I sprung this on you. You can call me any time.” He puts a card down on the table. EMEDIO “MIMMY” ROSSI, CERTIFIED ESL INSTRUCTOR. “I’m startin’ a little business. I teach English as a second language. To Koreans, Vietnamese, like that.”

“Am I supposed to clap?”

“You’re tough, you know that?” He gets up to go, but I still can’t look at him. I have a thousand questions for him, but only one keeps burning in my head.

“Did you hit me?” I ask, when he’s past me.

“What do you mean, hit you?”

“When you drank, did you hit me?”

“No. Never.” His voice sounds louder; he must have turned around to face me. “Why?”

“I’m remembering things.”

He’s silent for a moment. “You’ll have to ask your mother about that,” he says. I hear him call good-bye to Maddie and leave by the screen door.

It closes with a sharp bang.

“Roarf!” Bernice says.

21

I spend a long time at the dining room table, feeling awful as Maddie sits enchanted by her tape. What is he saying? That my mother drank too? That she was the one who hit me?

It never even occurred to me.

I’m not sure what to do; I can’t process it all fast enough. I can’t even deal with the fact that I have a father now. What does a grown woman want with a father? And is there room for a mother, especially one who would wallop a child? Then a more urgent concern pops into my head.

Maddie. Has my mother beaten her, ever? My God. I close my eyes. From time to time Maddie gets bruises, but she told me they were from falls. And first grade has been so difficult for her; her first year in my mother’s care. It all fits, and it sickens me. Would my mother really hit Maddie? It would be beyond belief, except that she apparently hit me, too.

When I was Maddie’s age.

What’s been going on in my own house? Maddie knows, but I have to pick the right time to ask her. It preoccupies me as I cook and serve dinner. Afterward, I clean up the dishes and let Bernice slobber over every plate, a silent payback.

Later, at bathtime, Maddie relaxes in a full tub of Mr. Bubble. She makes a blue rubber shark swim among plastic goldfish, hidden beneath the sudsy meringue. I sit down on the lid of the toilet, watching her. Now might be the right time.

“How’s that water, button?” I say.

“Want to see a tornado?”

“A tornado? Sure.”

She grabs her nose and turns over once in the tub. The water swirls around her and she comes up smiling, wet hair stuck in tendrils to her cheeks and chin. “Did you see?”

“Amazing.”

She looks askance. “You weren’t watching.”

“I was watching, it was cool. Like a whirlpool, right?”

She sinks into the bubbles up to her chin.

“So Mads,” I begin, as casually as possible, “what do you and Grandma do in the afternoons?” The shark plunges into a swell and Maddie doesn’t answer. Maybe she’s avoiding it; maybe it’s a child’s typical inattentiveness to adults. Or hers to me. “Mads?”

“What?”

“Do you have fun with Grandma while I’m at work?” Dumb. A leading question.

She nods and the shark leaps across her tummy.

“What do you guys do?”

“Watch TV.”

I’m relieved at this answer for the first time ever. “Cartoons?”

She nods at the shark, who nods back at her.

“Tapes, too?”

“Yeah. Yes.”

“Don’t you ever just play?”

She nods again. The shark nods, too.

“What do you play?”

“Can I have Madeline in the tub?”

“Of course not, she’ll get wet,” I say reflexively, then think again. Maybe Maddie can say something through Madeline that she can’t say to me directly. “I’ll let you this time, but not in the water, okay?”

“Yeah!” The shark dances for joy as I fetch the doll from Maddie’s room and bring it back. I sit cross-legged on the rag rug beside the tub.

“Hey, Maddie,” I make the doll say.

“Hey, Madeline,” Maddie says cheerily. She abandons the rubber shark.

“What games do you play with your grandma?” the doll says. “Gimme the dirt.”

Maddie giggles. “What’s ‘the dirt’ mean?”

“The gossip. The news. The real truth. I want to know everything.” The doll’s yellow felt hat bobs up and down.

Maddie sits up in the bathtub, focusing on the doll as if she were real. “We play lid,” she says.

“What’s lid?”

“It’s a game, with a ball and a lid.”

“That sounds boring.”

Two slick knees pop through the bubbles; she wraps her arms around them. “She chases me around when she loses.”

“My grandma does that, too. She’s a bad sport. I hate her.”

“Does she pinch you? My grandma pinches me.”

I feel my heart skip a beat. “Pinches you?”

She nods. “She chases me around and pinches my butt.”

“Hard?”

She shakes her head. “Just for fun. When she loses. Anyway, she doesn’t catch me ever because I’m too fast. I’m faster than the boys. Do you like boys?”

“No, I hate them more than grandmas. Does your grandma ever get mad at you and yell?”

She looks blank.

“Tell me!” the doll screeches. “Tell me, you little brat! Tell me everything!”

She giggles and unsticks a wet strand of hair from her cheek. “It’s a secret,” she whispers, growing serious.

“A secret?”

“A real secret. Something Mommy doesn’t even know.” Her blue eyes glitter.

“A secret from Mommy?”

“Grandma said she would never find out.”

I feel sick inside. “I know. Mommy’s so stupid. Tell me.”

“I can’t. Grandma said Mommy would be mad if she found out and yell at me.”

“I bet she wouldn’t.” The doll flops up and down in frustration, cloth mitts falling at her side.

“Uh-huh,” she says emphatically. “My mom yells a lot. She says it’s because she has to do everything and I don’t help.”

Guilt washes over me like a tsunami. “My mom yells all the time, too. She’s a jerk. A big, fat, stupid jerk.”

Maddie covers her face, laughing. “My mom yells all the time. She yells when I don’t put my clothes in the hamper and she has to pick them up. She bends over twenty times a day. If she had a nickel for every time she bends over she’d be rich.”

“She sounds like a big fat jerk, too.”

“But know what I do?”

“What?”

“I go in the closet and take off my clothes.”

“What? Why do you do that?”

“That’s where the hamper basket is. I stand in the basket and my clothes fall right in.” She smiles and so do I; I picture her standing in the closet in a Rubbermaid bin.

“You’re pretty smart, you know that?”

“I am. Really.” She rubs her nose with the palm of her hand.

“Do you love me?” the doll asks.

Maddie reaches over and arranges a strand of the doll’s too-red yarn hair. “Yeah.”

“Then tell me your secret!” the doll explodes, jumping around frantically. “RIGHT NOW!”

“All right, all right! Calm down!” she says, a tenuous cross between laughter and true concern. “The secret is that Grandma smokes.”

“What?”

“On the porch. During Tom and Jerry. My mom thinks she doesn’t smoke when she baby-sits me but she really does.”

“That’s the secret?” I try not to sound disappointed, although I didn’t know my mother did this. She’d told me, with an absolute straight face, that she holds off for three hours. A good liar, from years of practice.

“Isn’t it a good secret?”

“Yep. You got any other secrets for me?”

Maddie looks up, thinking. “Nope.”

“I’ll tell you one.”

“Okay.” She straightens out her knees in the tub.

“My mom gets so mad sometimes that she hits me. Like this.” I squeeze the doll and bounce her head off the ledge of the tub. “Like this and this. Owww!”

“Really?” Maddie’s eyes grow wide and she looks at the doll for confirmation. I make the doll nod.

“Really. It hurts.”

“That’s mean.”

“I know. She does it when she’s mad or when she drinks.”

“Drinks?”

“Like a beer. Like wine or whiskey. Does your mommy do that?”

“No.” Maddie shakes her head, mystified. “She just yells.”

“Does your grandma?”

“No.”

“Never?”

“No.”

“Do you ever see her drink anything?”

“Water.”

“No whiskey? It’s yellow.”

“No. She just smokes. It comes out her nose like a dragon.”

“Yuck.”

She nods gravely. “Yuck.”

I feel my pulse return to normal. So the unimaginable didn’t happen, and my daughter is safe in her grandmother’s care. It’s just the past I have to deal with. My past.

I’ll get to it right after I’m finished with the present.

22

It’s Sunday, and Bernice, Ricki, and I sit on the bottom row of the hard steel bleachers, watching Ricki’s favorite son play soccer. Ricki’s eyes remain glued to Jared while I tell her how Shake and Bake turned out to be Winn and about my father. She looks at me only when I tell her about the hit on the head in front of the courthouse, but I think that was because Jared took a water break.

“Way to go, Jared!” she shouts, cupping her hands to her mouth. “Did you see that? He almost scored!”

“He’s the messiah. I’m convinced.”

“Hey, watch it.”

I look around the lush suburban field almost reflexively; my paranoia hasn’t diminished, even though the Italian stalking my daughter turned out to be her grandfather. Apparently, there’s nothing to be worried about here. Bryn Mawr, where Ricki lives, is one of the wealthiest communities on the Main Line. No killers here, only color-coordinated parents watching their kids kick the shit out of each other. I’m safe as long as I stay off the field.

“Are you gonna see your father again?” Ricki asks.

“Not if I can help it.”

“You should, you know. I think it’s very healthy.”

“Give me a break, Rick. It’s a horror show.”

The wind blows a strand of hair into her lipstick and she picks it out. “I like that he came forward and found you. He’s dealing with it, or trying to. Credit where credit is due.”

“Please. The guy looks like Elvis. On the stamp they didn’t pick.”

“You should talk to your mother about what happened when you were little.”

“Another winner. Masquerading as Rose Kennedy. What a joke.”

She watches Jared kick the ball to his teammate. “Nice pass, honey!” She covers her mouth. “Damn. He told me not to say that anymore. Anyway, talk to her.”

“I have bigger problems.” I think of Armen. His killer is still out there, and this is my only Sunday without Maddie, who’s at Sam’s.

“You mean the judge?”

“I told you it wasn’t suicide, Rick. Even the FBI thinks so.”

“Don’t be unbearable, please.”

“You mean because I was right and you were wrong?”

“Yes, already.”

“Do you say uncle?”

She claps loudly. “Way to go, Jared! Way to go!”

“Sometimes a train really is a train, Ricki. Trains and bagels, bagels and trains.”

“Go, Jared, you can do it!” She claps. “All that matters is you getting out of that mess. You’re right to let the FBI take over, it’s their job. You should never have been involved in the first place.”

So I lied. It was a white lie, a little white lie. Why worry her?

“I don’t know what made you think you could investigate a murder all by yourself. With the Mafia yet.”

Silly me. “Uncle,” I say.

“Maybe I’m finally getting through to you. All that free therapy, paying off.” She smiles at me, then gets distracted by the action on the soccer field. “Hey, ref, what about it? Wake up, you jerk!” The woman next to her glances over. “I heard on the radio about that death penalty case.”

“Yeah, the Supremes still have it. They haven’t decided yet.”

“Go, Jared, charge him!”

I think of Hightower, sitting alone. I read they moved him from death row to a special cell near the death chamber. The death warrant runs out tomorrow morning at 9:03. I wonder what Mrs. Stevens is doing today. How many mothers know the exact time and place of their child’s death? Besides the Gilpins?

“The radio said they were locking down the prison tonight,” Ricki says. “What’s that mean?”

“It means all the prisoners have to stay in their cells.”

“Isn’t that what prison is?”

“They do it before executions, so the population doesn’t riot.”

Ricki leaps to her feet. “He scored! Way to go, honey! Way to go!” Applauding wildly, she looks down at me. “Clap, you! He scored!”

So I clap for Jared, who truly is a fine young man, all wiry legs in his baggy soccer trunks. He throws his arms into the air and beams at his mother and me, his mouth a tangle of expensive orthodonture. But somehow when I look at his face, flushed with adrenaline and promise, I think about Hightower, who had no suburban soccer field, no fancy jersey or hundred-dollar cleats. One will go to Harvard; the other will be put to death.

No justice, no peace.

Empty rhetoric, until I think of Armen and his killer.

That very night I’m on the warpath, rattling toward West Philadelphia in the dark. I’m heading for Armen’s secret apartment. Someone killed him; maybe the answer is there. And I’m the only one who knows about it, so it’s relatively safe. I decide to go, especially since Maddie is with Sam. I make the most of baby-sitter time; if you have children, you’ll understand. I’ve known couples to drive around the block just to enjoy that last fifteen minutes.

I’ve disguised myself as the high-priced lawyer I used to be, just in case anybody’s watching me: a monogrammed briefcase, overpriced raincoat, and pretentious felt hat. I check out the rearview mirror on the way to West Philly, but everything looks clear.

I open the car window into the cool night air. It still smells like hoagies at the corner of 40th and Spruce, like it did twenty years ago. I swing the car into a space and step out into a curbful of trash. Some things never change.

I lock the car and walk down Pine Street, which used to be lined with Victorian houses full of expensive apartments with hardwood floors and high ceilings. The richer students lived here when I was in school; it looks like they still do, judging from the cars parked along the street, bumper to exported bumper.

I reach the address on the checkbook and stand outside the brownstone in the dark. It’s a three-story Victorian, with high arched windows and a mansard roof. A light is on on the bottom floor, showing through closed shutters in what would be the living room. I straighten my hat, climb the porch steps, and ring the bell to the front door.

A porch light comes on. An older woman appears at the window, behind bars. Her gray hair is plaited into a long braid and she wears thick aviator glasses. “What is it?” she shouts at me, through the bars.

“I’m a lawyer,” I say, brandishing my briefcase.

She does an about-face. The light goes off.

Good move. I take another tack. “Please, I’m a friend of Greg Armen’s.”

The light goes on again and she reappears, friendlier in a colorful Guatemalan shirt. “What do you want?”

“I need to come in. I’m meeting him here. My name is Grace Rossi.”

She squints and I smile in a toothy way. She unlocks the several locks on the door and opens it, welcoming me into the foul odor of Indian curry. “Smells good,” I say.

“Do you work with Greg?”

“Yes. I was supposed to meet him, but he’s late. Do you know a way I could get into his apartment? To wait for him?”

I hear a cat meow from inside her apartment. “He didn’t come today. He always comes on Sundays.”

“I know, he got tied up. He asked me to stop by tonight. We just starting seeing each other.”

“You want to surprise him?”

“Right.”

“Interesting. Hold on,” she says, winking at me in a stagey way. “He gave me a key in case he forgets it.” She scuffs into her apartment in Birkenstocks and returns with a key on a ring. “He does forget it sometimes. He’s kind of strange, in that cap and sunglasses all the time. I like her, though.”

“Her?”

“Whoops! You didn’t hear it from me! Give him hell!” she says, slapping the key in my palm; then she turns on her heel and scuffs inside. I hear the cat meow again as she closes the door.

I trudge up the stairs with a sense of dread. I like her, though. Who is she? The shabby carpeted stair winds around to the left, and at the top are two doors, 2A and 2B. The checkbook said 2B, so I slip the key into its lock. It opens easily, eager to reveal its secret, even if I’m not so eager to know it.

The room is dark, except for a streetlight streaming through the bay windows at the other end of the room. It looks like an efficiency, with a single bed against the wall. A chain hangs down from an overhead light, and I yank it on.

What I see shocks me.

All over the apartment, everywhere I look, are toys. Against the wall are white IKEA shelves full of stuffed animals. A plush tiger. Pinocchio. A Steiff lion. Mickey Mouse. They’re crammed onto the shelves in all directions, sticking out by their cartoon feet and white-gloved hands. The lower shelves are stacked with an array of games. Candyland. Don’t Break the Ice. Clue. Monopoly.

Stunned, I close the door behind me.

A child’s room. Does Armen have a child? The woman downstairs said he comes on Sundays, like lots of divorced fathers. Like Sam. Is Armen divorced? Was he married before?

What is this all about?

I walk stiffly to the middle of the room and pick up a stuffed Dalmatian puppy from the couch. It looks back at me, round-eyed, blank.

Who is this child? Who is this woman?

I rummage through the stuffed animals on the shelves, then the games. Toy cats and teddy bears fly off the shelves in my wake. I feel myself getting angry, losing control. Who is this woman? Who is this child?

I tear the plastic lid off a white toy box full of blocks and root to the bottom. Nothing, except for plastic beads and a pirate’s scabbard.

I move to a bookshelf next to the toy box, also white. It’s full of children’s books, more than most libraries, and many in hardback. I snatch them out, one by one, enraged. Why didn’t he tell me, that night on the couch? I hear the sound of my own panting and watch with satisfaction as Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are fall to the soft carpet, littering it.

I take the next book from the shelf. Eloise. There’s a pang deep within my chest; I know this book, but I have yet to buy it for Maddie.

How do I know Eloise?

I open it, going through it page by oversized page, trying to remember. I come to a page that at first looks ripped but unfolds at the top. I trace the trail of Eloise from a distant memory, my nail running along the dotted red line that goes up and down on the elevator. I remember a thick fingernail tracing these same travels. See, here she goes. The finger is yellow-stained at the edge with nicotine, and the hand is warm as my own hand rides around on top of his. My father’s hand. See, Princess?

And then he left.

I love you.

Liars, liars all. I let the book fall to the floor.

Suddenly, I hear a noise at the windows behind me. I turn around, but nothing’s there. I hear the noise again, like a rustling outside. I reach overhead and turn off the light. The room goes black just as a figure climbs onto the porch roof outside the bay window.

I back up against the wall.

The figure creeps toward the window, silhouetted in the streetlight. I feel my hackles rise. Someone is about to break in. Who knows about this apartment? Armen’s killer?

The figure removes the portable screen from the window and places it on the roof without a sound. A professional. The streetlight glistens on his black leather jacket, stretched tight over a powerful back. I watch, dry-mouthed, as he jiggles the center window and it comes open in his hands.

I reach for the apartment key in my raincoat pocket, ready to drive it into his eyes. I feel the scream rising in my throat but suppress it.

The figure opens the window halfway and climbs into the room, landing silently at the foot of the single bed.

I back toward the apartment door in the dark, every nerve strained with tension. I can’t see who the intruder is and I don’t care. I must have been out of my mind to come here. I take a step back. Suddenly, I slip on a book and let out an involuntary yelp.

In a split second, the dark figure is barreling across the room toward me. He slams into my chest with the impact of a freight train, knocking the wind out of me. I cry out in pain and fall back on the hardwood floor. My head cracks hard where it was bumped before.

I try to scream but a hand clamps down across my mouth so cruelly it bring tears to my eyes. The hand forces my head back down against the floor. His body climbs up on mine, pinning me to the floor. I try frantically to knee him but he’s too strong. A flashlight blazes into my eyes, blinding me.

“Grace!” says the voice behind the light. “What the fuck?” The hand releases my mouth.

“Who?”

“It’s me. Winn.” He shines the flashlight on his bearded face. “What are you doing here?”

My head begins to ache. “Why did you attack me?” I ask him, wincing. “You hurt my head.”

“What did you break in for?” He backs off of me.

“What did you break in for?” I pull my tweed skirt down, trying to recover my dignity. “Jesus H. Christ, I’ve never been so banged up in all my life. Ever since I met you.”

He stands up and helps me to my feet. “Why didn’t you say who you were?”

“I didn’t know it was you. Why didn’t you say who you were?”

“I didn’t know it was you.”

“Where’s your raincoat?”

He looks down at the leather coat. “Underneath.” He pulls out an edge to show me, but it’s too dark to see. “I found this in a dumpster a block down, can you believe it? It must’ve cost a couple hundred dollars.”

“You’ve been undercover too long. Where’s your rain hat?”

“I don’t wear it on B and E’s. You should sit down. Come on.” He eases me onto the couch and tilts my head back on a crinkly bandanna he pulls from his pocket. “Rest a minute. I’ll find some ice.”

I grab his lapel before he gets up. “No. No ice. I hate ice.”

“You need ice.”

“No. What I need is to yell at you, then I need to sue you. Then I need to yell at you and sue you again.”

He laughs and sits heavily on the couch next to me. The streetlight illuminates the oil slick coating his nose; I could never go undercover, my pores couldn’t take it. “I’m sorry I jumped you like that,” he says, “but you surprised me.”

“I surprised you? I’m lawfully on the premises.”

“How was I supposed to know that? I’ve been watching this place for over a month. The light is never on at night. I came in to catch a killer.”

“Didn’t you see me go to the door?”

“I didn’t recognize you. You don’t wear hats, and I never saw you with a briefcase. I thought you were here to see the old woman downstairs. You’re off the reservation, Grace. Way off. Who’s staying with your daughter?”

“She’s at her father’s. Sunday is father’s day, apparently.”

He reaches around the back of my neck. “Lift up. I want to fix this thing.” I oblige and he folds the bandanna in two.

“I hate men.”

“I know, we’re bums. Look at me.”

“Exactly.”

He laughs. “Which do you hate more, men or ice?”

I feel myself smile, the adrenaline ebbing away. “Men. Armen in particular. So he was a father? Who’s the mother?”

“Don’t you know?”

“Of course not.”

“Then how do you know about the apartment? I thought he told you.”

Hurt and humiliated, the combination platter. “So whose child is it? Tell me.”

He pauses. “Were you in love with him?”

I’m glad he can’t see my face. “No. I was in lust with him. I didn’t know him at all, obviously. If my daughter ever does what I did, I’ll kill her.”

“You were lonely.”

“How do you know?”

“Artie told me.”

I wince. “Terrific. On to more important topics. Is it his child?”

“Yes.”

“And the mother?”

“You want to know? Straight up?” I feel his eyes on me.

“I can take it, doc.”

“The mother is Eletha.”

I gasp as if the wind were knocked out of me again. I can’t say anything for a minute.

“Grace?” He touches my arm, but I move it away.

“The mother is Eletha? The child—”

“Is Malcolm.”

Oh, God. “How do you know that?”

“She dropped him off here.”

My mind reels. I think of Malcolm’s picture on Eletha’s desk. His lightish skin. Why didn’t I think of it? Armen paid for her tuition, even. “They were married?”

“No. I checked. Never married.”

Malcolm, born out of wedlock? “Does Susan know?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never seen her here. Armen met Malcolm every Sunday.”

“Since when?”

“I don’t know that either. They played inside, sometimes he took him to Clark Park. Places he wouldn’t be recognized. He was a good father.”

My stomach turns over. “Oh, please. He was a liar.”

“That’s unfair.”

“How do you know? What was he, Clarence Thomas? God, was I blind.”

“Don’t judge him until you have all the facts. I knew Armen, too. He was a good man. He went out of his way for me. He got them to let me into the Y, even got me a locker. He didn’t care that I was homeless.”

“You’re not. And he was a piece of shit.”

“You don’t believe that or you wouldn’t have protected him.”

“I protected him? How?”

“You didn’t tell me about the money. The $650,000. That’s how you knew about the apartment, isn’t it?”

I sink back into the couch. My head hurts even more. “How do you know about the money?”

“The IRS found out about the account. It was a fraction of that last year, when he declared it. Gained a lot of weight in twelve months.”

“It couldn’t be a bribe for Canavan, you know. Armen wanted the case to come out the other way.”

“I know that and you know that, but the money convinced my boss it was Armen who took the bribe. They figure it’s the reason he killed himself, he couldn’t live with it. He killed himself in April—tax time, they figure. They’re gonna pull the plug on this investigation any day now. The bad guy is already dead.”

“But you saw Armen at the argument. It was him against Galanter.”

“They think that was just for show. He hadn’t voted yet, he was killed before he could. If I don’t turn up something very soon, the investigation is over. Armen’s gonna be smeared in every newspaper in the country.”

“But his killer would go free.”

“I know, and the world will think Armen was dirty. Including his son.”

I feel stunned. It was awful before, and now it’s worse. Now it’s Armen and Eletha, my lover and my friend. Were they still seeing each other, sleeping together? What did she mean to him? What did I mean to him? “I don’t know if I’m still in.”

“I want you out, I told you. You’re in danger.”

“It’s not that.” I tell him about what happened with Maddie, even about my father. He’s a good listener and stays quiet for a minute after I finish; the last man who listened to me that intently was Armen.

“So you’re hurt,” he says.

True. “I always thought he was so honest, so honorable. But here, this place. A child, Malcolm.”

“He would’ve told you sooner or later.”

“I don’t know.”

“Let me take it from here, you’re in way too deep. All I wanted you to do was answer Galanter’s phone. Now you’re breaking into apartments.”

“I didn’t break in, I talked my way in.”

He smiles. “You lied your way in. Not illegal, just immoral.”

It reminds me of Armen, and our talk that night, over Hightower. Law and morality. You can’t separate them, why would you want to? Then I think of his broad back slumped over his desk. Armen was murdered, and murder is wrong. Illegal and immoral. Nothing I’ve learned tonight changes that, and I’m still the only one who has a chance of getting to Galanter. I rise, unsteadily. “Maybe I’m not out, Rain Man.”

Winn takes my elbow. “Aw, come on, Grace. I worry about you.”

“Good. Somebody should.”

“I mean it.”

His voice has a softness I’d rather ignore, at least for the time being. “You want to walk me out or you gonna play Batman again?”

I get no answer, not that I expected one. We end up leaving by the conventional method. He waits for me on the sidewalk while I stop downstairs to return the key. The old woman opens the door carrying the cat, a chubby orange tabby. “I heard you moving the furniture!” she says slyly.

“Moving the furniture?”

She plucks the key from my hand. “You’re a nineties woman, I’ll tell you that!” The woman shuts the door, and the cat meows in belated agreement.

23

Monday morning I push open the glass door into the courthouse lobby. It’s mercifully clear of reporters and crowds, but it looks like martial law has been declared. There are double the number of marshals, and even the lawyers and court employees have to go through the detectors. I join one of the lines, predictably the slowest moving.

“What gives?” I say to a skinny marshal, when I reach the middle of the line. Jeff stands at his side.

“New rules, on account of that circus last week.”

“A little late, isn’t it?”

“Tell the AO that.”

In front of me in line is an older woman, thin and tall, with marvelously erect posture. Her gray hair is swept into an elegant French twist and the air around her smells like lilac bushes in June.

“Line up, now!” roars McLean, at the head of the line. His booming voice sets the woman in front of me trembling. “All bags on the conveyor belt! All bags on the belt! Sir, sir!” he shouts at a heavyset man in a red Phillies windbreaker.

“Shit,” the man says. He surrenders the wrinkled paper bag to the conveyor belt of the X-ray machine.

“Say what, sir?”

Ray looks over from behind the machine. “Don’t be roughin’ up the Phils fans, McLean. We need ’em all, after last season.”

The marshals laugh, including the fan. But not McLean. “I’m not roughin’ nobody up. I’m doin’ my job.” The fan lumbers through the metal detector, and McLean motions distractedly to the woman in front of me. “You don’t know who’s carryin’ a piece,” he says. “You can’t tell by lookin’.”

The older woman quivers like Katharine Hepburn.

“They still haven’t caught the guy who did those shootings,” McLean continues, watching her place a wristwatch with a black cord band into the bin. “You can pack anywhere, even your boot.” He shouts over her head to the marshal at the monitor, “Billy, you remember that joker, the one with the boot?”

Billy peers over the top of the monitor. “The cowboy.”

“Yeah. Some cowboy,” McLean says. “Put your purse on the belt, ma’am.”

The woman watches with apprehension as her purse disappears into the maw of the machine. As the light turns green, McLean propels her through the metal detector and looks at me. “How’s your head, Ms. Rossi?”

“Fine, thanks,” I say warily.

“Put your purse on the belt. Go when the light turns green.”

“You be nice to her, McLean,” Ray says. “She’s my girl. Grace, you takin’ care of that matter we discussed?”

Damn. I forgot to talk to Eletha about him. How can I broach it now, when I can barely look her in the eye? “I’m workin’ on it, Ray.” I walk through the metal detector, but it explodes in a ringing alarm.

“Come back on through,” McLean says. I walk back through the metal detector and the clamor subsides.

“What’s the deal?”

“Turned up the sensitivity. Have to do our jobs right.” He winks, but it’s not friendly. “Take off your watch and try it again.”

I snap off my Seiko, and it clatters into the bin on the counter. I start through the metal detector, but no sooner do I hit the black rubber carpet than the detector erupts in another cacophonous warning. The people in line break ranks to see what’s going on.

“I think she’s okay,” Ray says, “even if she is a lawyer.” The other marshals laugh.

“No, can’t take any chances. Ms. Rossi’s been a busy lady, checkin’ up, makin’ sure we’re doin’ our jobs.”

I glance at Ray, but he looks as surprised as I do. “I was checking security.”

“I know what you were doing. You wanted to know who was on duty the night Judge Gregorian bought it. Well, you’re lookin’ at him, and I didn’t see nothin’ unusual. Earrings in the box.”

I drop my hoops into the bin. “Do you check the hallways?”

“Sure, I patrol.”

“Did you check our hallway, on eighteen?”

“Sure did. Nothin’ there.”

“At what time?”

“About eleven o’clock, then again around four or so.”

My mouth goes dry. By four o’clock Armen and I were on the couch. “Did you come into chambers either time?”

A smile plays around his lips. “Don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember?”

“Is there an echo in here?”

I grit my teeth. I’ve deposed bigger bastards than this. “Do you usually go into chambers?”

“I check the doorknobs. If the door’s unlocked, I go in. I forget if that one was open that night. Now you better get through the detector. We got a line here.”

I walk through the detector, trying to remember if the door was unlocked that night. I have no idea. The alarm sounds again.

“Come on back, Ms. Rossi.”

I walk back through and the noise stops. My handbag sails past me in the opposite direction. McLean looks over his shoulder at Jeff. I can’t see his face but I can see Jeff’s, and he’s smiling.

“Now your belt, please, Ms. Rossi.”

“Cut her a break, man,” Ray says.

“You ain’t my boss and I ain’t your man,” McLean snaps, then looks at me. “Only one thing left. Stand up and put your hands out straight from your sides.”

“Get real. You know I’m not a security risk.”

“You want to get to work today?” he says. From behind the counter he produces a hand-held metal detector, which looks like a cartoon magnifying glass. He switches it on in front of my chest.

Biiinng! It screams to life, even louder than the other metal detector. All eyes are on me, or more accurately, on my breasts. Shame and fury restrict my breathing.

Biiinnng! Biiinnng!

McLean holds the magnifying glass in front of my left breast, then moves it slowly in front of my right. It’s all I can do not to hit him.

Biiinnng! Biinng!

“I thought so,” he shouts, and turns off the noisy alarm. “Underwire bra.” One of the marshals laughs out loud, then quiets.

I look McLean in the eye. “If this is some kind of game, pal, you won’t win.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, unfazed.

I grab my earrings and bag and stalk ahead to the elevator, where the older woman is holding the door for me. “Here, dear,” she says, in a comforting way.

I slip inside and punch the button for eighteen. “Thank you.”

“What an unhappy man,” she says, looking up at the lighted numbers. The elevator doors open on the second floor and she extends a bony hand. “It was very nice meeting you. My name’s Miss Pershing, by the way. Amanda Pershing.”

“Grace Rossi.”

Her hooded eyes light up. “Are you Italian?”

I think of my father. “No.”

She looks disappointed as the elevator doors close behind her. Her perfume lingers, and I travel heavenward in an elevator filled with lavender and rage. Did McLean see Armen and me together? Where was he when I was hit on the head?

I head for chambers but hear noise down the hall, coming from Galanter’s chambers; it sounds like a party.

I pass the judges’ elevator and linger for a moment in the hall. The sound is coming from the office of Galanter’s law clerks. Maybe they’re celebrating Galanter’s ascension; maybe I can learn something about Canavan. I walk down the hall and stand in the open doorway.

There are no judges, but the clerks’ office is packed with twenty-five-year-olds, crowding among the federal case reporters, laughing and talking. One of Galanter’s clerks has two party hats crossed on his head in a coarse caricature of a woman’s breasts.

“It’s time!” somebody shouts, and then everybody starts blowing horns and noisemakers, like New Year’s Eve.

“Ready for the countdown?” shouts a pretty blonde in a dark suit. She checks her watch, as do several of the others.

“Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven!”

The kids all shout, growing giddier with each second. I have no idea what is going on.

“Come on in, the water’s fine!” says one of the partyers, who’s older than the others. He takes me by the hand and pulls me inside. “Count with us!”

“What for?” I yell, over the din.

“Six! Five!” shouts the crowd in unison. “Four! Three! Two!”

“What are we celebrating?”

“Justice!” He raises a plastic glass. “The Court denied the stay in Hightower. This is the big day! 9:03!”

“One! Zero!”

“Good-bye, Tommy!” shouts the blonde, next to a familiar head of wiry hair.

Ben. He sees me in the doorway, and his shocked expression freezes for a moment. Then he turns his back on me.

24

“You had a phone call, Grace,” Eletha calls out from Armen’s office, as soon as I get into chambers. “From that reporter.”

“Reporter?” I pause in the doorway to Armen’s office, taken aback by the sight. Everything has been packed up. There’s not a trace of Armen still visible; none of the books he loved or the objects he collected. Even the cudgel he kept on the wall has been wrapped. I feel a sharp twinge inside.

“That stringer, the one who was givin’ Susan such a hard time after the memorial service.” She pushes a stiff strand of hair out of her eyes, looking beautiful without even trying. No wonder Armen loved her. “The curly guy, who needed the shave. Faber.”

Are you gonna let somebody get away with murder? “I know the one. Did he leave his number?”

“You’re not gonna call him back, are you?”

“Why not?”

“He’s an ass. He called here, buggin’ Ben, even Sarah. Artie hung up on him.” She strips some wide packing tape from a roll and presses it onto a box. “I can’t be bothered. I got another asshole to deal with. Did you see?” She steps aside, presenting the chair behind her like Vanna White. A long Indian headdress is draped over the chair. Its feathers are a brilliant cardinal red, with orange in the center, and the pointy tips of each plume are black. It’s easily eight feet long and makes a gaudy caterpillar onto the carpet.

“What’s that doing here?”

“It’s Galanter’s, he’s the chief now, get it? Think he’ll wear it behind the goddamn desk?” She shakes her head. “Meanwhile, check out what’s going on down the hall. You won’t believe that either.”

“I saw.”

“They should be ashamed of themselves. I called the clerk’s office upstairs. They’ll stop ’em.”

“Was Galanter in?”

“He’s been gone all morning.”

“Where?”

“Damned if I know. He left some typing for me, like I’m his goddamn secretary.”

I turn to go. “I gotta check the mail.”

“How was your weekend?” she calls after me.

I think of my newfound father, then the secret apartment full of toys. “Same old same old.”

“You’re talkative this morning.” She’s puzzled by my coldness, and I decide to level with her in a way she didn’t with me. Or maybe I want to pick a fight.

“Actually, I had an interesting weekend, El. Went up to West Philly.”

“You? In my neighborhood? What’s up there?”

“Armen’s apartment.”

Her mouth forms a glossy chestnut-stained O. “Say what?”

I close the door behind me. “I thought I knew you, El, but it turns out I don’t.”

She eases down onto one of the boxes. “Now don’t say that.”

“What am I supposed to say?”

“How’d you find out about the apartment?”

I hadn’t thought about that. “I came across some papers in here the other night. A lease.”

“I thought I packed all that stuff.”

“You didn’t tell me about Malcolm.”

“You expected me to?”

“Of course, we’re friends. I thought he was yours and your ex’s.”

She points an electric nail at me. “I never told you that. You assumed it.”

“You let me assume it.”

“You’d’ve blamed me.”

“Blamed you? It’s him I blame.”

She frowns. “Armen? Why?”

“Hitting on women who work for him. First you, then me.”

“Armen wasn’t like that.”

I look away at the bookshelves, empty and hollow. “Come on, El. I wasn’t born yesterday and neither were you. It’s the same old shit, just in a black robe.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Wasn’t or isn’t?”

“Wasn’t,” she says firmly. “It’s ancient history.”

“Good. So he wasn’t cheating on me, just his wife.”

“We ended before he met Susan, Grace.”

It sets my teeth on edge. “Then why didn’t he marry you?”

“Because I said no.”

“What?” It’s a surprise.

“The bottom line is”—she pauses, then laughs and throws up her hands—“we fell in love, then we got pregnant. He wanted to make it legal, but I couldn’t see marryin’ him, takin’ him away from everybody he loved. His mother. His community.”

“What community?”

“The Armenians. The dinners, the church, the whole thing. It was the center of his life.” She looks down. “You think his mama liked it when she met me, my belly big as a watermelon? I’m half the reason she killed herself.”

“Is that true?”

“I don’t know. Armen always blamed himself. So when he asked, I said no.” She sighs. “Don’t think I haven’t regretted it, plenty of times. I even felt a little jealous of you.”

“Me?”

She waves it away. “Water under the bridge. It was the right thing. I didn’t fit in his life.”

“Did Susan?”

She wrinkles her stubby nose. “Not really, but he fit into hers. Now you were different, you woulda been the one. You fit into his life and he fit into yours.”

I feel a lump in my throat. I know that, inside.

“With him and me, we were betwixt and between, both of us. My family wasn’t in love with the situation either. It never would’ve worked.”

“So you took Malcolm yourself and raised him?”

“Not on my own. Armen was in on every decision, we talked about Mal all the time. He was a great father, Grace. The best.”

“How’d you swing it financially?”

“Armen paid Malcolm’s expenses. Now I don’t know what’ll happen.” She flicks some imaginary dirt out from under a nail. “It’s part of the reason I’m thinking about quitting school. To get another job at night.”

I think of the checkbook. “Did Armen leave a will or anything?”

She laughs. “For what? He had no extra money, it went to us. You saw the apartment, he bought that boy everything. I told you he saved. Well, it was Malcolm he was saving for, for his college.”

“How much had he saved?”

“About fifty–sixty grand, like I told you. Not bad, huh?” She smiles proudly, and the irony hits me full force. I can’t shake the image of the $650,000, socked away in a money fund. Did Armen hold out on her and Malcolm?

“Let’s say he did have money, Eletha. Do you think he had a will? Did Susan say anything?”

“Not that I heard.”

“Does she know about you and him?”

Eletha’s eyes widen comically. “You crazy, girl?”

I smile, feeling my hostility subsiding. Maybe I wouldn’t have told me either. “Why not?”

“Uh-uh.” She shakes her head. “I didn’t want to tell her, and he promised me he wouldn’t. She has no idea.”

“But how did he get away every Sunday?”

“How do most men get away? Work. Clubs. It became his Sunday off. We were careful during the campaign, laid low, and she found plenty to do, believe me. She was into him early on, but when she caught Potomac fever she left him behind.”

“Is that when he asked for a divorce?”

She looks at me like I’m crazy again. “Armen? Never. He loved her in his bones. She’s the one who called it quits.”

I don’t understand. “Susan was the one who ended the marriage, not Armen? But he told me she’d asked him to stay with her.”

“Through the campaign, because she needed a hubby to smile pretty for the pictures. Otherwise, that woman didn’t need him at all.”

I sit down in one of the chairs at the conference table. “I don’t know what to think, El. I don’t understand Armen. I don’t understand anything.”

“You’re takin’ this bad, girlfriend,” Eletha says. “What don’t you understand, baby? Mommy make it better.”

“I don’t know if Armen was a bad guy or a good guy.”

“A good guy. Next question.”

“I don’t know who killed him.”

“He killed himself. Next.”

I look at her in bewilderment. “How can you say that? You had a son with him.”

“That’s right.”

“You said he was a good father.”

“He was. The best.”

“How could he be? What kind of father leaves his own child?” I think of my own father, though I hadn’t started out thinking about him. Suddenly I need to know the answer to the question, burning like hot lead at the core of my chest. “Tell me that, Eletha. How can a father turn his back on his own flesh and blood?”

“Because he has no choice. Maybe the pain is too great to stay.” She shakes her head. “Look, you left your husband, didn’t you? Why?”

“He cheated on me,” I say, the words dry as dust in my mouth. “It’s not the same.”

“Yes, it is. You loved him, didn’t you? But you left.”

“I had to.”

“Right. You had no choice. Just because you left doesn’t mean you didn’t love.”

I feel a catch in my throat. I can’t say anything. I think of Sam, Armen, then my father. I need Ricki, fast.

Eletha folds her arms. “And I always thought you were so smart. Fancy degrees and all.”

“You just assumed wrong,” I say to her, and she laughs.

The marshals’ smelly gym is empty; it’s midafternoon. Against the wall is a huge mirror and racks of chrome free weights. A treadmill stands at the end behind some steppers. On the far wall hangs a poster of Christie Brinkley and beside it one of the electric chair. At the bottom it says: JUSTICE—FRIED OR EXTRA CRISPY? I kid you not.

“How can they have that there?” I ask Artie, who’s flat on his back, pumping a barbell up and down over his chest.

“Have what?”

“That poster.” I point, and his eyes follow my finger.

“Christie? She’s a babe. An old babe, like you.”

“The other one, whiz.”

He hoists the barbell up and down, exhaling like a whale through a blowhole. “I never noticed it. They let me work out here, Grace, I don’t give a shit about the artwork. Which rep am I on?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re a lousy spotter.” He presses the barbell into the air.

I can’t take my eyes from the poster. The newspaper said that Hightower’s last meal was steak and an ice cream sundae. He ate the dessert first. After dinner he played Battleship with his guard, and the guard won. “Artie, if you were playing Battleship with a man who was condemned to death, wouldn’t you let him win?”

“What?” The barbell rises and falls.

“Wouldn’t you let him win? I mean, the man’s going to die.”

“I don’t know, would you?” He grunts with effort, his bangs damp from sweat.

“Of course. I let Maddie win all the time. What’s the difference? It’s a game.”

“Games matter, Grace.”

“Excuse me, I forgot who I was talking to.” I look back at the poster. The witnesses at Hightower’s execution said he shook his head back and forth as the lethal chemicals flowed into his veins. His feet trembled and his fingers twitched for about three minutes, and then it was over. Final, unknowable, and beyond this world. “Artie, what do you think about the death penalty?”

“What is this, menopause? Hot flashes and questions?”

“Come on. Tell me what you think.”

“I don’t think about the death penalty.”

“But if you had to say, how do you come out?”

He presses the barbell all the way up to a hook on a rack behind him, where it falls with a resounding clang. “It’s no biggie.” His arms flop over the sides of the bench.

“I thought you were against it.”

“That was when I was fucking Sarah. Now that she’s fucked me, it’s just fine.”

“You don’t mean that.”

He pushes his wet hair away from his forehead. “Yes, I do.”

“But think about the act. The actual act of killing someone.”

“I could do it, if he deserved it.”

“My, we’re in a macho mood.”

“You started it. This isn’t why I asked you to meet me in my branch office.”

I laugh. He has been spending a lot of time here, I gather because he’s out of work and avoiding Sarah. “All right. What did you want to talk about?”

“I wanted to tell you I was sorry about the other night. I drank too much. I wasn’t making any sense.”

“It’s okay. I understand why it happened.” Drowning your sorrows. I’ve done it exactly once.

“Thanks, Mom.” He rubs his chest, and sweat soaks through his thin T-shirt. I remember the basketball underneath.

“You still got that tattoo?”

“Until I find a blowtorch.” He sits up, straddling the bench, then sighs heavily. “Lifting sucks. I miss hoops.”

“You’re not playing anymore?”

“Nah. The team broke up.” He wipes his forehead with the edge of his T-shirt. “You know, before Sarah dumped me she told me something. She said you thought Armen was murdered.”

“I do.”

“Really?”

“Really. Why, what do you think? You gonna laugh at me?”

“No. I even thought of it myself, for a minute. After the way Galanter’s been acting.”

It surprises me. “You suspect Galanter?”

“I didn’t know about suspecting him, but if anybody did it, he did.”

“Why?”

“Besides the fact that he’s a dick?”

“Yes.”

“Because he wanted to be chief judge. He would never have been chief if Armen hadn’t died.” Artie straightens up, rallying. “And remember how Bernice went after him?”

“Do you think becoming chief judge is enough of a motive?”

He snorts. “What are you, funny? It’s the same as Battleship. It’s winning.”

“People don’t kill to win.”

“Sure they do. Plenty of people—mostly men, I admit—would kill to win. It’s ambition. Raw, naked, blind, cold. Ambition.”

I think of Galanter taking a bribe in Canavan and killing Armen to guarantee the result. That makes sense to me, in a perverse way. “I don’t agree. I think people kill for money—or love.”

“Love? Not Galanter, what does he know from love? He’s not even married, he lives for the frigging job. He has an Indian headdress, Grace. The man is not fucking kidding.”

“True.”

“As chief judge, he’ll get on all the Judicial Conference committees. Get to go to D.C., hobnob with the Supremes. It even positions him for the next appointment to the Court. Look at Breyer, he was chief.”

The Supreme Court. I hadn’t thought of that. Combined with Canavan, that’s one hell of a motive.

“It’s a place in history, Grace.”

I remember that Galanter has a collection of first editions in his office. “He would love that.”

“He sure would. It’s the top of the profession. They ain’t final because they’re right, they’re right because they’re final.”

“But Galanter’s a Republican appointee.”

“The Dems won’t be in forever, babe.” He looks down, then shakes his head. “Justice Galanter. That’s so beat. Can’t you just hurl?”

I consider this, and he’s right. I could just hurl.

25

I slip my master key into the doorknob. It turns with a satisfying click, admitting me to the darkened chambers. No one’s there, as I expected; it’s too late even for geeks. I told my mother I had to work late, killing two birds with one stone: avoiding her and poking around. I enter the reception area and close the door quietly behind me.

The computer monitors are on, standing out like vivid squares of hot color in the dark, wasteful but helpful. ORDER IN THE COURT! WELCOME TO THE THIRD CIRCUIT COURT WORD PROCESSING SYSTEM! guides me through the reception area, where the blinds are down.

The chambers are laid out like ours, with the judge’s office to the left. I walk into Galanter’s office; even at the threshold it stinks of cigar smoke. The far wall is entirely of glass, like Armen’s, overlooking the Delaware. The lights from the Camden side make bright wiggly lines on the black water.

In the light from the wall of windows I can make out Galanter’s glistening desk, also of glass. I walk to it with more nervousness than I want to acknowledge and whip out the flashlight I keep in the car; it says WALT DISNEY WORLD. Official burglary tool, patent pending.

I flick on the flashlight with an amateurish thrill and flash it around the room. Next to Galanter’s desk are the same shelves we have, where Armen used to keep the current cases. Galanter does it the same way. I look over the shelves. The circle of light falls on each stack of red, blue, and gray briefs, the colors regulated by the Third Circuit’s local rules. Attached to the briefs with a rubber band is the appendix in each case and the record. That’s what I’m looking for.

I sort through a bunch of criminal cases, all sentencing appeals, and a commercial contract case; the Uniform Commercial Code seems less interesting to me than it used to. Underneath the stack, at the very bottom, is Canavan and its record. I tug the Canavan papers off the shelf and settle down on the floor.

I pull off the briefs and appendix to get to the record. I expect to find a stack of blue-backed pleadings bound at the top, but the papers are stuffed in a yellow envelope. SEALED COURT DOCUMENTS, says a forbidding red stamp on the envelope. A court order is taped underneath.

Why would a district court seal this record? In any event, it doesn’t apply to me, at least not tonight.

I plunge into the envelope, pulling out the first part of the record. On top is the complaint, which alleges that Canavan Flowers was driven out of business by a group of local flower retailers. The defendants listed Bob Canavan on their FTD-like telephone network but never sent him any orders to fill. The complaint is a poorly drafted litany of the ways Canavan was starved out, but never explains why. The young lawyer couldn’t flesh out the Mob connection. Neither can I.

A ring of florists? Galanter laughed.

I flip past the complaint and skim the appendix until I come to the names of the wholesalers. I take the crumpled crossword puzzle Winn gave me from my pocket and compare it with the papers, sticking the flashlight in my armpit. None of the names are the same. The list of wholesalers’ names reads like white bread, the list of mobsters’ names like Amoroso’s hoagie rolls. I put the pleadings aside in favor of the depositions. If there’s gold to be found, it’ll be here. Something that isn’t what it seems.

I read the first deposition, then the second and the third, fighting off a sinking feeling. None of the names are the ones on the crossword; none of the allegations amount to anything other than common law fraud by a bunch of rather hard-assed florists. Isn’t that what Townsend said? How is it different from a case of garden variety fraud? Was he speaking from the casebook or the checkbook?

I start the next deposition, given by one of the vendors. An inadvertent reference to a delivery-man sounds familiar. Jim Cavallaro. I look down at the short list on the crossword puzzle:

James Cavallaro.

It must be the same man. I think a minute.

Of course.

The Mob couldn’t care less about the carnations; it’s in the delivery. In the trucks and the truck drivers. In an operation that runs by phone orders, the delivery is where the money is to be made. It doesn’t matter what’s being delivered, even something that smells like roses.

I leaf back to the other depositions, looking for references to the truckers. I scribble down the names, but there’s only a few. My next step is to check Galanter’s phone log to see if any of them made calls to chambers, or if there’s any other connection to Galanter.

Suddenly I hear the jiggling of the doorknob in the reception area to Galanter’s office. I freeze, listening for another sound, but by then it’s almost too late.

The door opens, casting a wedge of light into the reception area. I flick off the flashlight and shove the record back onto the shelf. If this is Winn, I’ll bludgeon him with my Pluto flashlight.

Where can I hide? I look around the room.

Galanter’s private bathroom. Right where Armen’s was, off a tiny hall leading from the office. I scoot into the bathroom and slip behind the door, willing myself into stillness.

Whoever’s coming in has a flashlight of his own.

He strides into Galanter’s office as if he doesn’t have any time to lose. He casts the flashlight this way and that, throwing a jittery spotlight at the bookshelves, then at the couch and back again. All I can see of him is that he’s big-shouldered, an ominous outline above the blaze of the flashlight. Too heavyset to be Winn. I withdraw behind the bathroom door, afraid.

The figure strides to Galanter’s desk. His back is to me as he aims the flashlight on the papers piled neatly on the glass surface. He touches each pile; his hand is hammy as it falls within the flashlight’s beam. He seems to be looking for something, rapidly but with confidence. He’s been in this office before, it seems. He had a key, unless he picked the lock.

His hand moves over the desk like a blind man reading Braille. He finds something and picks it up. I squint in the darkness. He holds a wrinkled piece of yellow paper in the beam of the flashlight. It must be a phone message; we use the same ones. They’re printed on thin paper so they’ll make a carbon copy. They tear constantly.

“Fuckin’ A,” the man says, in a voice I almost recognize. He takes the paper and slips it into a pocket.

Who is this man?

I get my answer when he turns around. In one terrifying instant he passes in front of the bathroom on the way out. I don’t see his face clearly, but the mustache is a giveaway, as is the glint of an official marshal badge.

Al McLean.

My mouth goes dry. I hold my breath as I hear the outer door to chambers open, then close behind him. He jiggles the doorknob to make sure it’s locked.

McLean. Christ. And he was the one on duty the night Armen was killed. I wait in the bathroom a minute, not surprised to be perspiring. I wipe my forehead and tiptoe into the office. I want to know what McLean was looking at, and what he took.

I walk over to the polished desk, stand in the same position he did, and flick on the flashlight. Everything is upside down, all the papers and correspondence that tie a circuit judge to the outside world. In a stack on the middle pile is a group of yellow message slips, written in the careful script of Galanter’s secretary, Miss Waxman. The first two messages are from Judge Foudy and Judge Townsend. PLEASE CALL BACK, the secretary has checked. But the three messages after those are from Sandy Faber.

The reporter. The same one who’s been phoning me and everyone in our chambers. The latest message, recorded at 4:58, says IMPORTANT! in letters so perfect they could be printed.

What did Faber find out? And whose message did McLean take?

It could be Faber’s, since the three preceding it were from him. But it ain’t necessarily so; the odds are worse than a flip of the coin. I decide to check the phone log tomorrow; it will have copies of each message. It’s too risky to stay tonight.

I set the messages down the way I found them. Underneath is a small squarish envelope, its address the tiny Gothic typescript characteristic of only one institution: the Supreme Court of the United States. Hobnob with the Supreme Court, Artie said. Position himself for the next appointment. I open the stiff envelope.

What’s inside is a surprise.

A note from Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, thanking Galanter for his recommendation letter on behalf of Ben Safer. Incredible. Ben doesn’t even clerk for Galanter. I read it again, then slip it back in the envelope. I stack everything up the way it was, three-inch messages on top, small cards under that, letters next, then briefs. Strict size order, calibrated to telegraph CONTROL.

Boy, am I going to hate working for Big Chief Galanter.

26

Galanter’s office gleams in the morning light, all sparkling surfaces with sharp edges. Glass glistens in front of the many photos of him with other judges; his collection of rare books rots behind locked glass doors. Even the furniture is shiny, covered with a polished cotton in navy stripes. It’s more the domain of a corporate CEO than a judge with a public-record income of $130,000. I always thought Galanter had family money; I never knew it was money from the Family.

The problem is, he isn’t hiring.

“I have my own clerks,” he says, looking down at me from behind his desk chair. His cigar sits in a Waterford ashtray on the desk. “They’re all full-time.”

“But you get a part-time assistant as chief judge. It’s in the budget already, for the administrative work.”

“My law clerks can handle it until I hire one. Judge Gregorian waited several months to hire you, as I recall.”

“The Judicial Conference meets soon. You’ll need to be briefed.”

“I can read.” He thrusts my memo at me, a heavy hint to scram. I rise from the stiff-backed chair.

“I’d recommend that they get to the misconduct complaints first, then. There are eight backed up, and Washington likes us to stay on top of them.”

“Washington?”

“They monitor the complaints, even keep a report on their disposition by all the chief judges. You don’t want to make that list, it’s a black mark. In Washington.” I turn to go, hoping he’ll call me back. I get as far as the door, ten feet farther than I predicted.

“You say there are eight, eh?”

“Last time I looked. We set them aside to do Hightower, and they just kept on coming.”

“How long do they take?”

“The research, a while. Then we get the record and review it. That takes time too. At least a week per complaint.”

He puts his hands in his pockets, rocking slightly on his heels. “I don’t have the space for you. I’m gutting your office when I move. It needs redoing.”

Fuck you very much. “I can work in your law clerks’ office.”

“No.”

Good thing I have a strong ego. “I can work in the library on the first floor.”

He examines his nails. “Of course, I would hire my own assistant eventually.”

“I want to get back to practice anyway.”

“I’d have no time to supervise you.”

“I don’t need supervision, just a paycheck.” A sympathetic note, to make him feel like the regent he thinks he is.

“Miss Waxman?” he calls out the door. His oppressed secretary materializes at the other entrance to his office; she’s probably been hovering there, waiting for him to bark. A civil service retirement is the only reason this sweet-faced soul would stay with such a tyrant. “You two have met, haven’t you?” Galanter says.

“Sure. Hello, Miss Waxman.”

Built like a medium swirl of soft ice cream, she nods at me but says nothing.

“Give her the drafts as you finish them, then I’ll take it from there. If I need you, I’ll call.”

“Fine.” I start to go, then do Peter Falk as Columbo. “Where should I put the drafts so I don’t have to bother you? I used to put them in a box on our secretary’s desk.”

He looks at Miss Waxman. “Miss Waxman, make a place on your desk for a bin.”

She nods.

“I could show you what I mean, Miss Waxman,” I say to her.

She glances at Galanter for permission, and he dismisses us with a wave that says: Women, so concerned with the details! Then he picks up the phone. “Close the door,” he says.

I close the heavy door and meet Miss Waxman at her desk in front of the door to the law clerks’ office. Next to her computer keyboard is the phone log I need to see, with the standard four message slips to a page. Galanter couldn’t have gotten too many calls this morning, so the copy of the message McLean took should be on the top page.

“I thought it would help if I knew where to put the papers,” I say, moving closer to the open log book. “I don’t know how you do things here.”

She nods slightly. Her bangs are arranged in tiny spit curls around her face; an aging Betty Boop, down to the spidery eyelashes. “We do them the way the judge wants them,” she says in a soft voice.

I look at the log. The top four messages are: Judge Richter at 9:00, Judge Townsend at 9:15, Chief Judge Wasserman of the Second Circuit at 9:16, and one at 9:20 from Carter at the Union League. Damn; a busy morning. It’s not on the top page; it must be on the page underneath. I touch the spot next to the log. “Do you think it should go here? It just might fit.”

“If you think that’s okay, Miss Rossi.”

“Please, call me Grace.”

“I wouldn’t feel comfortable.”

“Please. We’ll be working together.”

She nods deferentially; the master-slave relationship, she understands it perfectly. This I can’t abide. “Where would you like to put the box, Miss Waxman? It’s your desk, after all.”

“I don’t know.” Her brow knits with worry, cracking her pancake makeup into tectonic plates. Sometimes free will is not freeing. “I just don’t know. Whatever you think, Miss Rossi. Grace.”

I pat the surface near the log again and spot a photograph of a wicker basket full of silver toy poodle puppies, with frizzy gray pompadours. “Maybe here?”

“No!” she blurts out. “But, I mean, if you want to.”

“No, that’s all right. Whatever you want.”

She touches her cheek. “It’s just that…my dogs are there. Their picture. I like to see them when I work.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t want to hide the picture.”

“But still, if you—”

“Please, I understand. I have a dog too.” And now I have an idea. A wonderful, nasty, awful idea. I feel like the Grinch. “It’s a big dog, though.”

“I like big dogs too,” she says. Interest flickers in her pale gray eyes.

“Actually, I adopted Judge Gregorian’s dog, Bernice.”

“You did? I heard she was given to the Girl Scouts.”

“No. She was at the Morris Animal Refuge.”

A horrified gasp escapes her lips. “Why, that’s a dog pound.”

“I know.”

She gazes at me with an awe better directed at Madame Curie. “Well, aren’t you kind!”

I look away guiltily and pick up the dog picture. Its frame is flimsy, from a card shop. The puppies look at me with abject trust, like their mistress. “They’re so cute, Miss Waxman.”

She beams with a mother’s pride. “They do all sorts of tricks. I taught them. They’re smart as whips.”

“They look it.” Coal-black eyes, little button noses.

“This one grew up to be a champion.” She points at the one in the center, but how she can tell them apart I’ll never know; each one looks as yappy as the next. “That’s Rosie, my baby. My champion.”

“A champ? Really?” I take an invisible deep breath and let the picture slip from my fingers. It hits the carpet and the frame self-destructs on impact. I feel like shit on toast, but it had to be done.

“Oh! Oh!” Miss Waxman exclaims, hands fluttering to her rouged cheeks. She bends over instantly to rescue the picture, and I flip the top page of the phone log over.

“I’m so sorry,” I say, reading the four preceding telephone messages, recorded in carbon copies. All four are from Sandy Faber. I counted only three messages from Faber on Galanter’s desk, so that means the one McLean took was from Faber too. “I hope it’s not broken.”

“It came apart,” she wails.

“I feel terrible.” I flip a page back, then another. A bunch of judges. Cavallaro and the other Mob names would be farther back, presumably before the Canavan argument, but I don’t have time to look now. I turn back to the top page. “Here, Let me help.”

“That’s all right, I have it.” Waxman finishes gathering up the frame, and when she straightens up, her eyes are glistening with tears.

I feel awful. “Let me fix it, Miss Waxman. If I can’t, I’ll replace it. I’ll buy you fifty, I swear.” I take the assembly from her with a gentle tug.

“It doesn’t matter. I can get another,” she says, ashamed of her reaction.

“Let me try.” I replace the piece of plastic in the square well, then put the photo over it and close the back. One of the brass clips has gotten bent, so I bend it back with a thumb. I breathe a sigh of relief for my immortal soul. “There you go. I really am sorry.”

She turns it over in her hands. “Why, it’s good as new!”

“It wasn’t hard.”

“I could never have done that.”

“Of course you could have, Miss Waxman.” I touch her shoulder, soft in a nubby chenille sweater. “Maybe we can have lunch sometime.”

A look of horror skitters across her face. “Oh, no, I eat at my desk.”

“Every day?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“The phones. I have to get the phones.” She nods.

“Can’t the law clerks get the phones? We take turns in our chambers, so everyone can have lunch.”

“Judge Galanter doesn’t think law clerks should answer the telephone.”

“Why?”

She looks blank. Ours is not to question why.

He wants to keep the calls confidential, I bet. “I guess he has his reasons.”

She purses her lips, inexpertly lined with red pencil. “He says you don’t need a legal education to answer a telephone.”

I wince at the insult to her, but her expression remains the same. “We’ll see about that, Miss Waxman.”

She smiles uneasily.

I spot Artie making copies at the Xerox machine on my way back to chambers. “Just the hunk I want to see.”

“The Artman. Making copies. Copy-rama,” he says, lapsing into an old routine from Saturday Night Live. “At the Xerox.”

“How are you doing, handsome?”

“Gracie Rossi. Single mother. Former lawyer. Very horny.” He grins and makes another copy.

“I get it. Now cut it out.”

“You’re no fun,” he says in his own voice. He flips a long page over and hits the button. “What are you doin’ in the enemy camp?” He leans over confidentially. “Find any evidence?”

“Not yet. Listen, you busy tonight?”

“Me? It’s atrophied, babe. It’s fallen off. It’s lying in the parking lot across the street. You know that speed bump? That’s it.” He laughs.

“Artie, you’ll be okay. You’ll fall in love again.”

“I’m not talkin’ about love, Grace. I’m over love. I’m talking about jungle fuckin’.”

I pretend not to be shocked, it dates me. Besides, I have something to accomplish. I need to talk to Winn, face-to-grimy-face. “Listen, since you’re free, how about you come to my house for dinner tonight? You can even bring your side-kick.”

“She broke up with me. Had a crush on my friend, what can I say? I had her body, not her heart.” He shakes his head. “Can you believe I loved her for her mind? Me? It’s gorky.”

“You’re growing up. Anyway, I meant Shake and Bake.”

“The Shakester. The Shakemeister. Shake-o-rama,” he says, singsong again. “Real smelly. Schizophrenic.”

“Wash him up first, okay? So he doesn’t terrify Maddie. Or Bernice.”

“The Madster. Little cutie. In the first grade.”

“Artie, stop.”

He comes back to reality and hits the button. “You really want me to bring Shake and Bake?”

“I thought it would be nice. Do my part, sort of.” White lie number 7364.

“Is your kid ready to meet the oogie-boogie man?”

“I married the oogie-boogie man, pal.”

He smiles. “What are you makin’ for dinner?”

“What do you care? I can beat Frosted Flakes.”

“Hey, last night I had Cocoa Krispies, from the Variety Pak. You know those little boxes?”

“Maddie likes those, too. So come to dinner. You can have Lucky Charms for dessert.”

“You want to make me a good-bye dinner?”

“Good-bye? I didn’t say that.” I feel a pang: too many good-byes lately.

“Yes, ma’am. I’m outta here. Headin’ for the junk blondes in NYC. I picked out a crib this weekend.” He doesn’t look so happy about it. “This is the lease.”

“So when do you go?”

“Next week. Cravath’s taking me early.”

“You’re in the army now.”

“Tell me about it.” He looks at his lease with contempt. “You have to be a lawyer to understand this friggin’ thing.”

“You are a lawyer, Artie. Starting next week, people will pay a hundred and fifty bucks an hour for your time.” I think of the basketball on his chest.

“Suckers.” He laughs. “So will you look this over for me?” He holds up the lease, a standard form.

“The landlord always wins. That’s all you have to know.”

“That’s just what Safer said.” He shakes his head. “What a dick. He’s in there, sittin’ by the phone.”

“Why?”

“Waiting for that call from Scalia.”

“They call?”

“Except for Rehnquist. He got turned down once, so he makes his secretary call.”

I think of the letter I saw on Galanter’s desk. “Think he’ll get it?”

“The Eight Ball says yes. Isn’t that so lame?”

“It’s a toy, Artie, remember?”

He looks at me, dead serious all of a sudden. “It’s always right, Grace.”

I almost laugh: $150 an hour. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Later, after work, we drive to my house together. Artie sits in the front seat and Winn sulks in the back, in an apparent psychotic funk because Artie made him take off his rain bonnet. When we reach the expressway, Artie turns to the news station for the basketball scores, but Winn wants the Greaseman, another misogynist with a microphone. He reaches between the seats and presses the black button for the Greaseman’s station.

“On!” he says. “We want the Greaseman.”

Artie punches the KYW button. “No Greaseman. Greaseman sucks.”

“Greaseman. Greaseman!”

“Be good, Shakie,” Artie says.

The news comes on as we sit stalled in the bottleneck going west. The expressway narrows to a single lane at the Art Museum, even though it’s easily the most heavily traveled route west out of Philly. A row of red taillights stretches out in front of me all the way to Harrisburg. “Why would they design a road like this? It makes no sense.”

Artie looks out over the Schuylkill, the wide river that runs alongside the expressway. Its east bank is home to a lineup of freshly painted boathouses; the white lights trimming them glow faintly. Single rowers scull down the river and disappear into the sun, now fading into a dull bronze. Here and there an eight picks up the pace, with a skiff running alongside it and a coach shouting through an old-fashioned tin megaphone. “I’ll miss this shitburg,” Artie says.

“It’s not a shitburg.”

“How do you know? You never lived anywhere else.”

“Why would I want to?”

“KYW…news radio…ten sixty,” Winn sings, in unison with the radio jingle. “All news all the time. All news all the time.”

Artie turns up the volume. “Go Knicks.”

“Go Sixers,” I say, and catch Winn sticking his tongue out at me in the rearview mirror. His face changes as soon as we hear the first news story.

“A Caucasian male,” the announcer says, “found murdered in the early morning hours, has been identified as Sandy Faber, a reporter who worked for several Delaware Valley newspapers. The Mount Laurel, New Jersey, man was beaten to death after he used an automated teller machine in Society Hill. Police have no suspects, though they believe robbery was the motive.”

My God. I find myself gripping the steering wheel to keep my wits. Faber, killed. And McLean in Galanter’s office last night, taking his phone message. I look at Winn in the rearview mirror, but he’s still in character.

“Bye-bye Greaseman,” he says sadly. “All gone.”

27

I tell Winn the story while I pop chicken with rosemary into the oven and check on Maddie, who’s in the backyard shooting hoops with Artie. Artie’s hogging the ball again, so I knock on the window. He coughs it up with reluctance while I start to scrub some new potatoes, then drop them into hot water and finish the story.

“Back up a minute, Grace. What were you doing in Galanter’s office?” Winn says, pacing in front of the counter. His ratty clothes are clean so he looks merely poverty-stricken, more like a grad student. “It could’ve been you that was murdered last night, not Faber.”

“He was after Faber, not me. He knew just what he was looking for. I bet Faber was getting closer to Armen’s killer. I wonder if McLean was working with Galanter somehow.”

“You shouldn’t have been there.”

“Do you think he was working with Galanter or not?”

“You’re not a professional. You have no training.” He paces back and forth in the cramped kitchen; Bernice watches him, swinging her massive head left, then right.

“But if McLean were working with Galanter, why would he have to steal the phone message? Galanter would just give it to him, wouldn’t he? Unless they thought of it later, after hours.”

“Grace—”

“But Galanter could’ve called Faber at the paper, using a general number.” I look out the window, thinking. Maddie is shooting foul shots, none of which reach halfway to the basket; Artie, retrieving the balls, is learning to take turns. “No. Faber wasn’t a staffer. He was a stringer, he works on his own. So he couldn’t be reached at the paper. But why didn’t they call him at home, look him up in the phone book?”

“Grace, you’re not listening.” Winn stops pacing and folds his arms. Bernice rests her head on her front paws.

“Neither are you.”

“Yes, I am. Faber wouldn’t be in the Philly phone book because he lived in Jersey. They said it on the radio.”

“There you go! So maybe Galanter did have something to do with Armen’s death, he wanted to be chief judge so bad. Or maybe McLean was working alone.”

“Grace, you have to slow down.” He rakes a hand through his hair; it looks a lighter brown now that it’s been washed. “I told you not to go prowling around at night. First Armen’s apartment, now Galanter’s office.”

“I work there now. It’s my office, too.”

“No, it isn’t.”

I open the oven door and check on the chicken. Bernice sniffs the air with interest. “I thought I did pretty good. I even figured out the Mob connection.”

“That was my end of the deal, not yours. You could have called me. I would have explained it to you.”

“I couldn’t have read the Canavan record in the daytime. What did you expect me to do?”

“I told you to keep your eyes and ears open at work. That’s all I wanted. I didn’t think you were going to turn into Wyatt Earp.”

“Nancy Drew. My role model, not yours.”

He frowns deeply. “Look, the phone log was okay, the breaking and entering was not. Got it?”

“What are we fighting about? We just caught the bad guy. Let’s call the police.”

He throws his hands up in the air. “Grace, I don’t want you in any deeper. How you gonna explain what you were doing in Galanter’s office? I don’t want you identified.”

“All right, then you report it. Call your boss.”

“My boss, why? We think McLean may have murdered a reporter at a money machine. It doesn’t have anything to do with the DOJ investigation. Murder’s not even a federal crime.”

I sit down on the stool next to Bernice, curled up in her new sixty-dollar dog bed. The aroma of rosemary chicken fills the room, but it doesn’t suffuse me with the homey feeling it usually does. “I have an idea. How about you report it to the Philadelphia police and I’ll be your confidential informant? I tell you what I know, you get an arrest warrant for McLean. Just keep me confidential.”

“You, an informant?”

“Why not?”

“Confidential informants are slime.”

“You don’t know what I’m capable of. I knocked over a picture of poodles today—on purpose.”

He smiles. “Life on the edge.”

“It’ll be enough for probable cause for Faber’s death. It’s a start.”

He rubs his beard thoughtfully. “We could take it a step at a time. I could take it a step at a time.”

“Do we have enough for a wiretap? It’s the same standard, isn’t it?”

“Down, girl. Wiretap of who? McLean, maybe, but not Galanter. All we have on him is a marshal going into his office, which is what he’s supposed to do.”

“But he took a message.”

“That doesn’t prove anything about Galanter, even assuming McLean fesses up. Trap-and-trace procedures are strict, Grace, you know that. It’s not like on TV, with phone taps installed as soon as you suspect somebody. Remember the Fourth Amendment?”

I pull a pad out of the junk drawer. On the top it says DENNIS KULL—YOUR REALTOR IN MONTGOMERY COUNTY. “Let’s start already. Take a letter, Maria.”

“What?”

“Take a statement from me, okay? Let’s get to work before the kids come back in.”

He takes the pad grudgingly and begins to write.

“Wait, I didn’t dictate yet.”

“Oh, you didn’t, huh? Well I’m dictating, not you. Sign this.” He tears off a piece of paper and slides it along the counter to me. At the top it says CONTRACT. Underneath that it says I PROMISE NOT TO GO ON ANY MORE SECRET MISSIONS OR WINN CAN TAKE ME TO THE PARTY OF THE FIRST PART.

I smile.

“Sign,” he says, handing me the pencil. “I’m not interested in losing my most confidential informant.”

“It’s not a valid contract. There’s no consideration.”

“Ha! You’d take money from a homeless man?”

“It doesn’t have to be money, it could be anything of value. Not that you have anything of value either.”

He reaches into his pocket and offers me his battered photo of Tom Cruise. “My most prized possession. Now sign.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

“If I sign your statement, will you sign mine?”

“Yes.”

So I sign. It’s not enforceable anyway.

The kitchen fills up with the homey smell of fresh-baked rosemary chicken.

Winn’s phone call comes at the worst time, when I’m rushing like a madwoman to get Maddie to school. I leave her at the front door holding her Catwoman lunch box, run back to the kitchen, and struggle over the gate penning Bernice in the kitchen.

“They arrested McLean this morning,” he says.

I feel a thrill of excitement. “They got the bad guy! All right!” Even Bernice wags her tail.

“Your identity remains a secret. Even from my boss, the president.”

I’m juiced up, like I just won a jury trial. “So tell me what happened.”

“Mom, we have to go,” Maddie calls from the door. I’ve been pushing her all morning, and now she’s going to push back.

“Tell me fast,” I say to Winn.

“They picked him up at home, no muss no fuss. He denies taking the message. He’s mad as hell.”

“You saw him?”

“Through the two-way mirror. The man has a temper and a history of some pretty rough street fights.”

“I’m not surprised. He doesn’t deny being in the office, does he?”

“Mom,” Maddie says, coming into the dining room, far enough from Bernice to feel safe. “We have to go.”

I hold up my index finger, the universal sign for please-let-Mommy-talk-on-the-phone. Bernice sticks her head over the gate, begging for Maddie’s attention.

“He admits to being in Galanter’s office,” Winn says, “but he claims he was just checking. He was on duty that night. Said he heard a noise.”

“I take offense. I didn’t make any noise.”

“I know, master burglar. He has no good alibi for the time Faber was killed. Says he was off by himself, fishing.”

“In Philadelphia?”

“On the Schuylkill.”

I laugh. “Real believable.”

“Right. The boats fuckin’ dissolve, the fish don’t stand a chance.”

Maddie says, “Mom, I’ll be late. I don’t have a note.”

I check my watch. She’s right. “Wait a minute, Winn. When does he say he was fishing?”

“At dawn, the same time Faber was killed.”

“Also the same time Armen was killed.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“What’s the connection to Armen? Did they find out anything?”

“No.”

My heart sinks. “But then why would McLean kill Faber? I thought it was because he was investigating Armen’s death. Getting closer.”

“Wrong motive, and I’m not sure Galanter had anything to do with it either. We may be back at square one.”

“What?” It comes out like a moan.

“McLean had it in for Faber. Turns out they had a couple of run-ins last week, with all the press coverage of Hightower. Faber stepped over the line trying to get a story and it pissed McLean off. He’s an ex-cop, you know. They all are.”

I remember McLean taking off after Faber at the memorial service.

“Last month, McLean caught Faber bothering the U.S. Attorney and roughed him up. Faber reported him for it and they were considering discipline. McLean was about to lose his job.”

“Jesus.” I think of the reporter, beaten to death, and reality sinks in. Catching McLean doesn’t bring Faber back or erase the violent way he died. And Armen is still a question mark.

“Mom, she’s staring,” Maddie says, watching Bernice anxiously. “Is she gonna bite me?”

I scratch Bernice’s head. “No, honey, she loves you.”

“You love me?” Winn says. “I knew it. Tell me what it was that turned you on. Was it my body odor? The tartar on my gums? My tattoo?”

I laugh. “Basketball tattoos don’t do it for me, pal.”

“It’s not a basketball. You don’t know what it is.”

Maddie narrows her eyes. “Is that your boyfriend, Mom?”

I silence her with a glare. “I gotta go, Winn. I have to take Maddie to school.”

“But we love each other!”

Maddie dances around, singing, “Mommy has a boyfriend, Mommy has a boyfriend.” Bernice watches her, wagging her tail harder.

“Is that Maddie?” Winn asks. “What’d she say?”

“Nothing.”

“She likes me, you know. She told me after dinner.”

I hold the phone close to my chin and wave to Maddie to stop, but she doesn’t. Who raised this child? “I have to go, Winn. We’re late.”

“All right, but stay out of trouble. Call if you have to, cuz.”

“Fine.”

“No more funny stuff, remember our contract. Things are heating up. Anything can happen. If McLean didn’t kill Armen, whoever did is still out there.”

Maddie skips around the dining room table. “Mommy has a boyfriend, Mommy has a boyfriend.” As soon as I hang up, the child says, giggling, “I’m telling Daddy.”

“The hell you are,” I say, and chase her around the table.

28

Wednesday is my alleged day off, but I decide to go in until Maddie gets out of school. I drop her off, still the only mother who walks her child all the way into line, and drive into town.

I rack my brain about McLean and Armen the whole way in; somehow the two must be connected. Al McLean was a cop, Winn said. Where do a cop and a judge meet up?

In court.

Cops are in court all the time as witnesses. Maybe Armen let a defendant go free on appeal, somebody that McLean had testified against in the trial court. It’s just a hunch, but it’s not a bad one. I hit the courthouse with my brain churning.

The marshals look grim at their stations behind the security desk and at the X-ray machine. They have to know about McLean’s arrest. Ray is nowhere in sight, only Jeff. He barely nods as I walk through the detector. I head upstairs alone and unlock the door to my office. I want to do some research on Lexis before going into chambers.

The joke is on me.

I open the door to my office and it isn’t there anymore.

The bookshelves, previously full of duplicate case reports and green pebbled volumes of Pennsylvania statutes, are empty. Dismantled overnight. The rug has been torn up, exposing a cement floor covered with yellowed streaks of sticky gum. All the furniture is gone; only my desk and computer remain, not counting the view.

I’m gutting your office, Galanter said. He even paid overtime. He must really like me.

I step through the tacky goop, my pumps sticking at the soles, until I reach my desk. I sit with my feet stuck straight out until I find a legal pad to rest them on. At least my papers and computer are still there. I log on to Lexis and the modem sings to me. A glittering double helix comes on, the logo of the legal research company. Don’t ask me why.

WELCOME TO LEXIS! says the screen. Machines greet us everywhere in the modern workplace; it’s the people we can’t find. PLEASE TYPE IN YOUR SEVEN DIGIT IDENTIFICATION NUMBER.

I watch the polite sentence disappear. Ben, computer maven, has rigged it so we don’t have to log on each time. The only downside is you have to erase the last user’s research.

YOUR LAST SEARCH REQUEST WAS FREE SPEECH AND ARTNETT. DO YOU WANT TO CONTINUE WORKING ON IT? Y OR N?

Probably Sarah’s. I press N, then punch in GENFED, then 3CIR, to retrieve only cases in the Third Circuit.

The screen says, READY FOR YOUR SEARCH REQUEST.

“Give me a minute, whiz,” I tell it. I’m not as speedy on this program as I should be; Lexis was born about the same time Maddie was, and my refresher training’s no match for a 486 chip. I squeeze my eyes shut and think. Assume Armen decided a case when McLean was a cop, and McLean was a witness of some kind. That means I need cases that will contain both names. I open my eyes and type in AL MCLEAN AND WRITTENBY (GREGORIAN).

In a nanosecond the screen says, YOUR REQUEST HAS FOUND NO CASES.

Shit. So there’s two possibilities: a dry hole or a lousy drill. Guess which is likelier. I double-check the search request. Wrong. Al’s name is probably Albert, or Alan. If he testified in court he would use the more formal name. I type in AL! MCLEAN AND WRITTENBY (GREGORIAN). It should retrieve all incarnations of Al imaginable. I sit back, proud of myself.

Not for long. YOUR REQUEST HAS FOUND NO CASES.

Damn it! I sigh at the computer. It’s in there somewhere, I feel it. Every judge has enemies; they make at least one with each case. In desperation, I type in MCLEAN AND WRITTENBY (GREGORIAN).

The computer says, YOUR REQUEST HAS FOUND ONE CASE.

“Yes!” One case is all I need. Excited, I squint at the template above the keys and hit .fd, which is computer for gimme gimme gimme!

Clermont v. Brewster comes up. An old case, 1983. Armen was on the panel and wrote the opinion. But it’s not a criminal matter. I don’t understand.

I type in .fu, which stands for full case and not what it usually stands fo.

The case comes up in full. I type .np to get to the next page, then the next, deflating slightly with each new screen of white-on-blue text. There’s no police testimony in it at all; it’s a medical malpractice case. A woman, Elaine Brewster, sued a doctor for not diagnosing her skin cancer early enough to save her life. A jury awarded her a whopping $15 million. On appeal, the Third Circuit reversed. Armen, writing for the panel, found the evidence of the doctor’s negligence was insufficient to go to a jury, a sympathy vote but legally indefensible.

I hit .np and the next page pops onto the screen.

Then I see it. Highlighted in bright yellow by the computer.

Mr. McLean.

A man who testified in the trial court about the plaintiff’s pain and suffering, but not in his capacity as a cop. He testified that the plaintiff had been a beautiful woman, spunky enough to keep her own name after marriage. Elaine Clermont. The disease reduced her to an invalid, her skin blackened and eaten away.

The woman was his wife.

McLean lost his wife to cancer and he lost $15 million to Armen. That’s it.

I ease back into my chair, staring at the screen. I should be happy, but I’m not. Too much pain, too much death. I imagine McLean going to Armen’s to kill him. Bernice would have known McLean from the courthouse. So would Armen; he would have let him in without question. But Armen wouldn’t have remembered McLean from a ten-year-old case. He never saw McLean testify in the first place; the appellate court bases its decisions on a record. Armen would have assumed McLean was his protector. He would have assumed wrong.

But why would McLean wait ten years to get Armen? I don’t know the answer, but I intend to find out.

My hand is shaking as I pick up the phone to call Winn. It’s not hard to convince the young girl who answers the phone that I’m Winn’s cousin, I sound pretty depressed. I tell Winn the story and after he gets over the initial surprise, his tone turns cautious. “How do we know it’s the same McLean?” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“You said the computer searches the name exactly, right?”

“Right.”

“So how do we know it’s the same man?”

“How many Mr. McLeans can there be who had a case before Armen?”

“Maybe one, but that’s not the point. The question is, can we charge this McLean just because a guy with the same name had a motive to kill Armen?”

“But it’s him.”

“McLean is a common name.”

“Not really.” It sounds feeble, even to me. I went to high school with one.

“Does it at least say he was a cop?”

I scroll through the case. “No. It identifies him as the husband, that’s all. He’s only mentioned in the opinion for a paragraph.”

“Does it say his age?”

“No. But the wife was thirty at the time. That would be about right.”

“Only if you assume she married a man about her age, but an assumption’s not enough to charge a man with murder. The whole thing could be a coincidence. After all, why would McLean wait ten years to kill him? Can’t we verify it somehow, get the actual record instead of just the opinion?”

Of course. I should have thought of that. “The record will have the trial transcripts, all his testimony. Address, work history, the whole thing.”

“Where’s the record now?”

“The case was from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, so the record would be downstairs in the district court file room. It’s in this building, unless it’s archived.”

“Can you get it? I mean without your standard B and E.”

I smile. “We order district court records all the time. We call on the phone, they deliver them to chambers.”

“When will you have it?”

“In four hours.”

“Four hours? I thought you said the file room was downstairs.”

“This is the federal government. They have to fill out forms and type up receipts. If I went downstairs and got it myself, I’d have the answer in fifteen minutes.”

“Do it the normal way. I want everything by the book.”

“It’s not a Miranda warning, Winn.”

“McLean’s already in custody, what’s the difference? It’s more important that it be done right.”

“I’d do it right. It’s perfectly safe. Let me get the file.”

“Grace,” he says, “I want no suggestion that you tampered with the records. I want the chain of custody to be clear. Order the record, please. Keep the reason to yourself. Don’t go running in and telling everybody you caught Armen’s killer.”

“Come on.”

“You come on. Now order the record and call me when it comes in.”

“Mighty pushy for a Quaker.”

“You love me anyway.”

“Bullshit.”

“And one other thing. There’s a loose end.”

“What?”

“It doesn’t explain Armen’s bank account. Or Canavan.”

“Do I have to do everything for you?” I say to him before I hang up.

Then I look at the phone, thinking. He’s right. It doesn’t explain the money, but that was his investigation. My investigation is just about over.

We celebrate Ben’s big news at a picnic lunch on the grassy mall between the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, just catty-corner to the courthouse. Ben got the call from Justice Scalia this morning and was so delirious he even became likeable, helping all of us box the last of the case files. For a time it was like when Armen was alive and we all worked together, despite the clerks’ bickering. My spirits were high, fueled by my certainty that the record would prove me right about McLean. I felt so good I sprung for hoagies all around.

“They call this a sub in New York,” Artie says, inspecting his sandwich with a frown.

“What do they know? We invented it,” I say, wiggling my toes in the grass. Behind my digits is Independence Hall, the most beautiful building in the world, in its own subtle way. Its muted red bricks have a patina that only two hundred years can bring, and its mullioned panes of glass are bumpy; perfectly imperfect even from here. A long line of schoolchildren piles two by two out of Congress Hall, the right wing of the building, where Congress used to meet.

“Look around you, Artie. This is a real city, a city where people can live. It’s beautiful, and there’s history everywhere.”

“Except for that,” Sarah says flatly, her long granny skirt spread out on the grass. She points over Ben’s shoulder at the new housing for the Liberty Bell, a structure of sleek concrete with corners that stab out onto the cloudless sky. “I hate that building. They call it a pavilion, but it looks like a Stealth bomber.”

“Something the matter with Stealth bombers?” Ben says, smiling.

Eletha picks a paper-thin onion out of her hoagie, her nails working like pincers. “It’s not that bad, Sarah. It’s just new.” She drops the onion onto a pile of its brethren.

“That’s the problem.” Sarah raises her voice to be heard over the tourist buses gunning their engines next to the pavilion. “It should be compatible with the surrounding architecture and it’s not.”

“I agree, they should’ve left the bell where it was. It belongs in Independence Hall.” I remember how angry I was when they moved the Liberty Bell from Independence Hall. Now Independence Hall has to face its bell’s new home; it’s like sitting across the table from your ex’s trophy wife. For eternity.

“You mean they didn’t consult you?” Artie says. “You, Miss Philadelphia?”

“Isn’t it terrible? I don’t know why they think they can run this city on their own.” I tear into my cheese hoagie.

“So Ben,” Eletha says, “the clerkship begins in September?”

He nods and sips his coffee.

“What’ll you do till then?”

“I’m working on an article.”

“What about?” she asks, fishing out another onion.

“The European Convention on Human Rights.”

“Human rights? You?” Sarah says, bursting into tactless laughter.

Ben smiles easily; not even Sarah can bother him today. “I’ve been doing some thinking on the subject.”

“You?” she says, still laughing.

“Real nice, Sar,” I say. “What are you going to do next? And you better say join the Peace Corps.”

“How about joining Susan’s staff? Is that good enough?”

“Not since she got my name wrong,” Ben says, and Eletha laughs.

“Is she still in Bosnia, finding facts?” I ask.

Sarah nods, and I hope she forgets that I accused the woman of murder. Nancy Drew, my ass. She had a roadster, not a station wagon.

“So Artie,” Eletha says, “are you all ready for Wall Street? You pack your toys?”

Artie looks down at his hoagie. He seems out of sorts today, quiet. “Guess so. Off to peddle my soul.”

“For how much?” Eletha asks.

“You don’t want to know, girlfriend.”

“Yes I do. Hit me with it.”

“Just shy of one hundred large.”

Eletha almost gags. “You’re kiddin’ me!”

“Not including the endorsements. Justice. Just do it.”

“Justice?” I say. “On Wall Street?”

“Isjdjr! Keidnbu!” shouts a young man with flyaway blond hair, who troops with a park ranger onto the lawn behind Ben. Suddenly, a group of tourists is thronging around the man and the ranger, a bobbing mass of blond heads. “Keird ishdsn!”

“What the fuck is this?” Artie says. “Our neighbors to the north?”

“I would like to propose a toast,” I say, ignoring the interruption. I hoist my Diet Coke in the air. “To all of us, even Ben. And to justice.” I’m thinking of McLean, behind bars.

“Perfect!” Sarah says. “To all of us, even Ben. And to justice!” She hoists her Evian bottle to Eletha’s paper cup.

“To all of us, even Ben,” Eletha says. “And to justice, and happiness.”

Artie raises his bottle of Yoo-Hoo. “There is no justice or happiness. To all of us, even Ben, and to Patrick Ewing.”

“Kirs eushjk!” shouts the young man. He points to the Liberty Bell, visible through the pavilion’s glass wall. Crudely embossed letters at its top say ALL THE LAND AND UNTO ALL THE until the sentence disappears around the cast-iron curve. Tourists encircle the bell, but a park ranger will prevent them from touching the rough-hewn letters. I touched the letters once, when the ranger wasn’t looking; they felt cool and ragged.

“Thank you, all of you,” Ben says. “It’s very nice. You’re all very…kind.”

Artie bursts into laughter. “Don’t choke up or nothin’, dude. It’s not like we meant it.”

“Artie, be nice,” I say. “Good things happened today for a change.” I think of my successful Lexis search. Wait until they find out Armen was murdered. Will it make it worse or better? Which way does it make me feel?

“God knows, we needed it,” Eletha says, taking a slug of her iced tea.

“Welcome to Philadelphia, ladies and gentlemen,” the park ranger booms, then launches into his spiel with official enthusiasm. The tourists frown up at him almost instantly. Either the sun is bright or they don’t understand English with a Philadelphia accent. My guess is they’ve seen the sun before.

“I have some good news of my own,” Eletha continues, shouting to be heard. She sets down her cup in the grass and inhales deeply. “I’m a free woman, as of today. I broke up with Leon.”

“Really?” I say. I was wondering what she meant about happiness.

“I told him this morning, no more shit. Life is too short to take shit from any man.”

“Good for you!” Sarah says, drawing a sharp look from Artie. There’s an awkward silence, and I think of my promise to Ray.

“Don’t hang it up too fast, Eletha,” I say. “Have I got a man for you.”

“So have I,” Ben says, leaning over. “Chief Judge Galanter is single.”

Eletha laughs. “That’ll be the day! Shoot me before I get to that point. Shoot me, child!”

I think of Armen and stop laughing slowly. The others don’t seem to notice.

Sarah says, “No, Eletha, you got it backwards. Shoot him.”

They all roar with laughter, even Ben. I force a smile. What does it feel like to be shot? What is the last thing Armen felt? Did McLean hold the gun to Armen’s temple? Force him into the chair? I look away to where the park ranger is addressing the tourists and tune him in.

“There were no bell foundries in the colonies at that time period,” the ranger says, “so rather than send it back, these resourceful colonists, who had previously made only pots, pans, and candlestick holders—”

“Grace?” Artie says. “You with us?”

I push it out of my mind. We got him now. That’s justice, even if it doesn’t bring Armen back. “Sure.”

“Who’s bachelor number one?” Eletha asks.

“What?”

“Who did you want to fix me up with?”

“Oh. One of the marshals.”

Eletha shudders. “One of the marshals? Forget it!”

“Back in the saddle, Miss Thing,” Artie says. “I love a man in uniform.”

“What’s the matter with a marshal?” Sarah says.

Eletha leans forward. “You know what I heard? One of the marshals was arrested this morning. For the murder of that reporter.”

Sarah pales. “You mean the stringer? The one who was calling us?”

“What?” Ben says, setting his hoagie down in its shell of waxy paper. I concentrate on the grease spots soaking the paper from the inside and try to look as shocked as he does.

“That’s unbelievable,” Artie says, between mouthfuls of corned beef. “Which marshal?”

“Al McLean, the big one.”

“How did you hear this?” I ask her.

“Millie, from the clerk’s office. So no marshals, honey. Not for me. No way.”

“But it’s Ray Arrington. He’s a teddy bear.”

“Ray? A what?” Artie says, chomping away. “Gimme a break! You ever see him on a basketball court? The man is a maniac. He almost knocked Shake and Bake out.”

“Ray?”

“The Shakester had a bruise all down his side.”

“Poor schizophrenic,” Ben says. He stows his empty coffee cup in his hoagie wrapper and rolls them up together. “We should get back to the office. It’s been over an hour.”

Eletha and Sarah look at each other and laugh. “What are they gonna do, fire us?” Eletha says.

“I want to work on my article.”

But Sarah doesn’t hear him. “We’re free. We have no work, no job, no office.” Her face falls suddenly. And no boss, is the thing we’re all thinking, but nobody says it. Artie wraps up the remains of his lunch in silence and Eletha watches him, her eyes unfocused. I feel a lump in my throat and raise my can in a silent toast.

“I agree,” Sarah says softly and touches her drink to mine. Eletha raises hers, too. Only Artie doesn’t say anything. I can’t catch his eye.

Ben clears his throat. “We’d better go back. Grace still has a job, you know.”

“Don’t remind me.” I’ve indentured myself for nothing, unless I want to help Winn’s bribery investigation. “Anyway, today I’m off duty.”

“So why’d you come in?” Sarah asks. She gets up, then helps me up.

“I don’t know. We don’t have much more time together. I thought I’d say good-bye.” It comes out of its own force, and even though it’s not the reason I came in, I realize how true it is. The lump comes back.

“Awww,” Sarah says, and to my surprise gives me a warm hug, which Eletha joins.

“Group hug!” Artie says, rallying. He wraps his long arms around Eletha and presses us all together. I’m somewhere in the middle, trying to swallow the damn lump.

“Come on in, Mr. Human Rights,” Sarah calls out.

“I’ll pass,” Ben says, but I hear the smile in his voice.

“Isjdhyk mejsgr!” shouts the young man. “Kkkrk!”

29

I sit at my desk with the form letter in my hand, reading it to Winn:

We have been unable to locate the record in this matter in our archives or file room. This is not out of the ordinary with older case files and we will continue our efforts to locate it. We regret any inconvenience this may have caused you.

“You know McLean took it, don’t you?” I say.

“Possibly.”

“Possibly?”

“The government never loses anything?”

“A court record? Not often.”

“Ever?”

“Not often.”

Winn is silent.

“Charge him anyway, Winn. The lawsuit existed. His wife existed. He can’t hide the facts, even if he can steal the record.”

“Fuck. This slows us up.”

“How? Ask him about it. Say to him, Did your wife die of skin cancer? Did she sue the doctor? Was the fifteen million dollar award taken away by Judge Gregorian?”

“He’s not answering questions, Grace. He’s got a lawyer already.”

Shit. Of course. Shoot the lawyer twice. It stumps me for a minute.

“You say we don’t need the record, but if the record doesn’t matter, why would McLean steal it?”

“Because he’s stupid. Because he didn’t count on anybody doing legal research on him.”

“How would he steal it? Would he be able to?”

“Sure. The marshals have master keys, that’s how he got in Galanter’s office. The files are kept in number order by year. Even an idiot can find a record.”

“Fuck!”

“Let me be the confidential informant again. I’ll make another statement. Describe everything that happened in Armen’s office, the way McLean acted to me at the metal detector, even my research and the clerk’s letter. It’s enough to charge him, isn’t it?”

“It’s a close question.”

“Winn, he killed Armen because of the court case, then he killed Faber because he was close to finding out. A verdict that big would make the papers. Faber probably did his homework and found out about the wife’s case. Hell, he could find it easily on Nexis. I could do it myself, right now. Faber was calling our chambers all day.”

“Relax, Grace.”

“Charge him. It’s enough. I’m a lawyer, I know. Are you gonna let him get away with murder?”

“It’s close. I don’t want to go in half cocked.”

Man talk. “You got another idea?”

“Yes. Is there any other place records would be?”

The thought strikes like a thunderbolt. “The appendix! The appendix is a duplicate of the record. For a trial with that much money at stake, I bet it’s complete.”

“Where would the appendix be?”

“Every judge on the panel would have gotten one, including Armen. It’s an old case but Eletha would know if we have it.” My brain clicks ahead. I didn’t see the older cases in the boxes we packed this morning, but Eletha could have packed them earlier. “She said Armen saved everything. We just finished packing this morning.”

“Go get ’em, tiger.”

“It’s about a million boxes.”

“Dig we must.”

Easy for him to say. He doesn’t have to deal with Eletha’s reaction when I tell her what I’m going to do.

* * *

“You want to do what?” Eletha shrieks at me, astounded. She stands protectively in front of the boxes that stack almost to the ceiling in Armen’s office.

“Shhh!” I look toward the clerks’ office, even though the door is closed. “You can go home. I’ll do it. I already called my mother to pick up Maddie at school.”

“Are you out of your goddamn mind?” Long fingers clasp at her chest and she breathes deeply, in and out.

“Eletha, don’t do the Lamaze thing, not for me. You can go.”

“You want to rip open all my boxes? We just finished!”

“I’ll put everything back.”

She shakes her head. “No. I won’t let you do it. No way. No file is important enough to ruin all that work.”

I wish I could tell her why, but Winn made me swear. “I’ll redo it.”

“Galanter wants this stuff out of here! I told him we’d be done tomorrow, you know that. That’s why I worked my ass off all morning! All week!”

“I know, but I need it.”

“What for?”

“A misconduct case.”

“What misconduct case is ten years old? Don’t bullshit me, Grace. We’re friends.”

I take her by the shoulders. “Listen, trust me. I can’t tell you anything more.”

“Why not?”

“Eletha, it’s the most important file in the world.”

“No file—”

“This one is.”

“Are you outta your mind?” Her dark eyes watch me with hope.

“No.”

“But I got class tonight, and Leon sure ain’t gonna sit anymore.”

“That’s all right. I have to do it myself.”

“Galanter wants in—tomorrow. It’ll take you all night.”

I remember the last time I was here in this office until dawn. “That’s okay.”

I look around at the boxes and so does she. It’s daunting, like moving an entire house in only one night. Twice. I wonder if I’ll be able to get it done in time. If I can’t, screw Galanter. He may not be a killer, but he’s still a jerk.

“I know what you’re thinkin’,” Eletha says to me, wagging a finger. “It’s gotta be done by morning. GSA is comin’ in to take up the rug.”

“All right, all right.”

“You want me to come back after class? It’s over at ten.”

“Nope. You got Malcolm.”

“I’ll bring him. He can sleep on the couch.”

“No, thanks.”

“Suit yourself.” She shakes her head, mystified. “Start with those boxes against the wall.” She gestures to about forty-five boxes, taped closed and stacked up like children’s blocks. “Those are the case files. Everything over there”—she points against the back wall behind Armen’s desk—“is old stuff, papers, and some older files. There could be some older case files in there, too.”

“Okay.” I eyeball the boxes in the back. Thirty, easy. Christ. I remember when I left Sam: all my stuff and Maddie’s in a storage bin, and it still wasn’t that high. “No problem.”

She points at the conference table and the chair against the window, both of which are heaped with brown paper packages. “That’s all the Armenian stuff. I put bubble paper underneath that brown paper, you know. You won’t be needin’ any of it, so don’t unwrap it.”

“I won’t.” Each package is labeled in black Magic Marker, some cryptically. STATUE. ANOTHER STATUE. PRAYER RUG. FRAMED THING. BIG THING. I laugh at BIG THING, lying horizontally across the chair near the window. “What’s that one?”

She wrinkles her nose. “You know, that big thing?”

“No, I don’t, El. I have no idea.”

“You do too. That wood thingie he had hangin’ up, like a baseball bat.”

Now I remember. The cudgel. “Oh, yeah. That big thing.”

“Right. It weighs a ton. Leave it alone, all of it.”

“I will. I promise. Hey, where’s the Indian headdress?”

“Oh, that?” She grins. “I lost it.”

“You what?”

“I can’t remember where I put it, for the life of me. I guess it just got lost in the shuffle.” She scratches her sleek head, then bursts into laughter.

“Eletha, what did you do?”

“It serves his ass right, doesn’t it?”

I have to agree.

“Okay. I gotta go, but I’m gonna do one thing for you. Make you a pot of coffee.”

“Deal,” I say and get to work.

I open box after box, digging into each with cheap government scissors. I go through the case files; each is a manila folder containing Armen’s notes, a set of briefs, and an appendix. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to be in chronological order, or in any order at all; I don’t stop to read Armen’s notes, even those not written in Armenian. I can’t afford the time; I’m trying to nail his killer.

The afternoon wears into the evening and I go through cup after cup of coffee and box after box of files. Eletha pops her head in to say good-bye when she goes; then Artie, Sarah, and Ben, who’s still carrying a briefcase. I tell them I lost some papers, and they all offer to help, even Ben.

I check my watch. Maddie’s bedtime. I decide to call home, then Winn after that. I punch in the numbers to my house.

Maddie answers the phone, then proceeds to work me over. “But why do you have to stay, Mom?” she asks, her thin voice rising on the other end of the line.

“I told you, honey. Because it’s an important case. I have to work on it.”

“Why can’t somebody else work on it? Why does it have to be you?”

“Because I’m the only one who can.”

“Are you with your boyfriend?”

I laugh. “Of course not. I don’t have a boyfriend, I’m working. Now tell me what you’re gonna read with Grandma before you go to bed.”

“I’m too sick to go to school tomorrow, Mom. Madeline feels sick too, her forehead’s hot. She’s burning.”

I ease into the chair next to the conference table. “You’ll be fine in the morning. You just need to sleep.”

“But my head hurts. My neck is swollen.”

“Honey, listen. We’ll see in the morning, okay?” I tug a box over to the chair and cross my legs on top of it. “I’ll check if you have a fever.”

“You have to use the thing. The glass thing. Grandma says you can’t tell with your hand, not really.”

Thanks, Mom. “Maddie, I’ve never used a thermometer with you and I’ve never been wrong. I can tell with my hand.”

“No, you can’t. It’s not science.”

I look out the window into the night. The orange lights are twinkling again, running in thin strips to the river, the way they were that night. I was sitting right here, but tonight is different from before. It’s raining hard, a spring down-pour, and Armen is gone. The streets below glisten darkly.

“Mom?”

“Tell you what. Remember last week, how you wanted to wear your party dress to school and I said no?”

“The purple one?”

“Yes. Well, I’ll let you wear it tomorrow, just this one time, since it’s a special occasion.”

“What special occasion?”

I think of the case file; it’s in here somewhere. “We’ll make one up. Happy Thursday.”

“You’re silly.”

“I am. I get it from you.”

She giggles. “Mom, I have to go now. The commercial’s over.”

“What, are you watching TV? It’s after nine o’clock!”

“It’s Disney.”

“Disney is still TV. What happened to reading?”

“Just Donald Duck, then we have to turn it off.”

“All right, but after that it goes off. Now go get ready, you don’t want to be too late to bed.”

“Yes, I do,” she says, hanging up.

I press down the hook and am about to try Winn when I see a dark form reflected in the window. Someone must be in the doorway behind me. I hang up and twist around in my seat.

The gun is the first thing I see.

I scramble to pick up the phone.

30

“Hang up, Grace,” Ben says. He closes the door behind him and locks it from the inside. “Hang up.”

The phone clatters uselessly onto the hook. “Ben?”

“Surprise! Did you find the file yet?”

“What? How—”

“Lexis. The computer saves the last search request, remember? I saw it after lunch when I logged back on. Nice search request, by the way. You’re improving.” He moves to the head of the conference table and points the gun at me.

I’m terrified. My mouth turns to cotton. No one is around. Eletha is at class. God knows where Winn is, or security. “How did you get that gun past the metal detector?”

“I took the judges’ elevator.” He smiles down at the gun, handling its heft with satisfaction. He looks strange, unhinged. “I bought this the other day. Isn’t it nice?”

“What are you doing, Ben?”

“It’s not what I’m doing. It’s what you’re doing.” He slips a finger inside his jacket, pulls out a small piece of white paper, and holds it up. “Your suicide note. Sign it.” He places the paper in front of a brown package that reads PHOTO OF A MOUNTAIN. “Oops, I almost forgot.” He puts a rollerball pen on top of the paper.

I don’t touch the letter or the pen. I can’t believe this is happening.

“Please sign, Grace. Make it easy on yourself.”

My own suicide note. A fake suicide. Oh, no. “Did you kill Armen, Ben?”

“Yes.”

I can barely catch my breath. I assumed wrong.

“I didn’t plan to, if that’s any consolation.”

“But why?” It comes out like a whisper.

“Why did I kill him? What’s the difference?

“I want to know, to understand.”

“I wanted that clerkship.”

I stare at the paper. It’s almost inconceivable. “You wanted a clerkship that bad? A job?”

“It’s the Supreme Court of the United States, Grace. I’ve been preparing for it my entire adult life. I’ll teach after that, then on to the appeals court. I intend to end up on the high court myself. I wasn’t about to let Hightower stand in my way.”

“It was Armen who stood in the way.”

He flinches slightly. “Sacrifices had to be made.”

Armen: a sacrifice for a young lawyer’s ambition. “But you could’ve gotten the clerkship anyway.”

“Why take a chance?”

I don’t understand. I feel sick with fear and dread. “You got the clerkship, so why this? Why me?”

“It’s your own fault. You were the one digging around. You dug up McLean, now there’s a glitch. It’s only a matter of time before he points the finger at me.”

“Did McLean kill Faber?”

“The reporter? Yes, at my suggestion. Faber was too close to finding out.”

Two men dead. I feel stunned. “Was McLean the one who hit me on the head?”

“No, that was me. Now open the letter and sign it. I want no question later that you wrote it.”

I feel myself break out into a sweat. The lethal black eye of the gun barrel is almost at my head; I think of the gunpowder star the detective found on Armen. “What does it say?”

“That you hired McLean to kill the reporter. You see, Faber had found out that you had killed the chief.”

I look up at him behind the large gun barrel. “Why would I kill Armen?”

“Sexual harassment is a terrible thing. He raped you that night in the office.”

“He did no such thing!”

A smug smile inches across his lips. “I heard. You were very willing, McLean said.”

“You—”

“Of course, McLean was all too happy to help you cover up the murder. He’s been nursing his hate for a decade. He thinks the chief ruined his life, so it didn’t take much convincing to get him on board. I bought him a few drinks and pointed him in the right direction.” He levels the gun at me. “Sign, please.”

I pick up the paper and unfold it. It’s neatly typed, and the last line makes me sick inside:

I love my daughter very much.

I stare at the paper. I love my daughter very much. Maddie. She’ll think I abandoned her. I know how that feels. I fight back the tears; I’d beg if it would do any good. “She needs me, Ben,” I said hoarsely.

“You were the one who wouldn’t let it lie.”

I look at the note. The typed letters seem to swim before my eyes against a vast backdrop of brown packages. PRAYER RUG. STATUE. ANOTHER STATUE. Then I remember the label on one of the other packages. BIG THING.