Jury of One

50

“Nice to meet you.” Shelly offered her hand to the man who stood with the warehouse door propped open. She didn’t offer her name and he didn’t offer his. He led her into the spacious facility, with rows of tall metal cabinets and a twenty-foot ceiling. He moved briskly and she followed him without saying a word.

“Here you go.” He opened a drawer and pulled it out. His hand moved directly to the tab she was looking for. He had obviously already looked for it and found it. He held his finger on the file until Shelly replaced it with her hand.

The man whistled as Shelly ran through the file once, then twice. She almost jumped out of her skin as her cell phone rang.

She looked at the man, who seemed alarmed at any prospect of delay. She held up her finger and answered the phone.

“Shelly, it’s Joel. Hey, where are you?”

“You know where I am.”

“Oh. Oh, right. You find everything you need?”

“What do you want, Joel?”

“We got something on Ronnie.”

“Hang on,” she said. She put down the cell phone, removed a business card and scribbled on the back of it, using her thigh as a backstop. She handed it to the man.

“Joel didn’t say anything about this,” said the man.

She pointed to the phone. “You want to talk to him?”

He sighed and shook the card in his hand. “Is this it?”

“I promise.” She picked the phone back up. “What is it, Joel?” She began to follow the man as Joel spoke.

“My guy followed Ronnie. Today was the first day. Pretty good first day.”

The man stopped and started, then turned down one of the high rows of documents.

“Ronnie headed out to the west side today.”

The man tried several drawers, pulling them out and comparing them to the card Shelly had written on.

“He went to the projects. You know the A-Jar projects?”

She did. The Eduardo Andujar projects were on the city’s west side, a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood. Shelly had represented some kids from A-Jar.

The man opened a drawer and held his finger at a space midway through the drawer, wearing a bored expression.

Shelly balanced the cell phone between her shoulder and cheek and went through them. There was more than one. She rifled through them, forcing herself to move more slowly.

“We saw him go into this consignment store,” said Joel. “He came out of the alley a few minutes later. Know who he was walking with?”

She found it. She opened the file slowly.

“Eddie Todavia,” Joel said over the phone.

She read the original birth certificate slowly.

Birth mother: Michelle Ingrid Trotter

Date of birth: January 10, 1970

Age: 17

“Ronnie knew Eddie Todavia from school, too,” Joel continued. “Alex and Ronnie and Todavia all went to school together. We forgot about that. You know what this means?”

Adopted child: Baby Boy Trotter

Date of birth: February 19, 1987

She flipped the page. “I think I do,” she said.

“It was Ronnie, Shelly. Ronnie was working with Todavia. He was working with the Cannibals.”

Adoptive parents: Franklin Masters. Date of birth: March 5, 1947. Elaine Masters. Date of birth: March 29, 1950.

“Ronnie was working with the Cannibals, Shelly. Alex must have told Ronnie he was helping Miroballi take down the Cannibals. And Ronnie killed Miroballi. Alex is afraid to give him up.”

Adopted child’s given name: Ronald Franklin Masters

“Are you there, Shelly? You getting this? This is unbeliev-”

She moved the phone from her ear and turned in the direction of the man, without looking at him. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m done.” She left the man standing there and then brought the phone back up to her ear.

“-thought he was pulling your leg, Shelly, I really did. I thought your guy was guilty six ways to Sunday. But we’ve got this kid Ronnie now. I have him on tape. We can put him with Todavia and if we keep watching, he’ll probably fuck up some more. Jesus, this is really something.”

“Sit tight for now,” she found herself instructing Joel as she pushed open the door to the document storage warehouse for the Department of Public Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics.

“Shelly, what’s up? This is what we’ve been looking for. We finally got him. Ronnie’s your boy, I swear he is.”

She laughed bitterly and punched out the phone. “He certainly is,” she mumbled into the evening air. She got into her car and drove without thinking. It was several miles before she realized that she had been traveling in the wrong direction.