Mistaken Identity

33

Joe Citrone wrapped his plaid bathrobe around his lean frame and opened his front door just before breakfast, satisfied to find his newspaper delivered on time for a change. God knows what kept that kid half the time. When Joe was young he got up in the middle of the night to deliver the paper. The Philadelphia Inquirer was the morning paper then and the Evening Bulletin was what his father read when they sat down to dinner. Now Joe’s father had passed and only the Inquirer was left. Half the time it didn’t get delivered until after Joe’s eggs.

He picked the paper off the stoop and straightened up, stiff again. DOUBLE TROUBLE: TWIN DEFENDS TWIN IN COP MURDER, read the headline. Joe shut the door and skimmed the newspaper story until he got to the only paragraph that interested him.

Early reports that Rosato’s license to practice law had lapsed were unfounded, sources said today. The attorney was only technically in default on her yearly ethics requirements. According to one well-placed source at the Pennsylvania Bar Association, the lapse “should cast no reflection on Ms. Rosato’s ethical standing or prevent her from undertaking any civil or criminal defense.”

Strike one. It happens. They’d try again next time up at bat. Joe had options, plenty of them, but he didn’t want to resort to them if they weren’t necessary. The game had to be played an inning at a time.

Joe flipped to the sports page and scuffed into the kitchen as he read. The new rookie for the Phils was looking good, like he might pull the team out of the basement. The kid’s name was on top of the stat sheets in eleven categories, including home runs and RBIs. Joe sat down at the head of the table, the sports page in front of him. In a minute, Yolanda would serve his scrambled eggs, runny the way he liked them, and he could already smell the coffee brewing for his first cup. He could study the stats in peace.

Joe believed in the stats, in numbers. They were scientific, exact. As a young man, he had wanted to be a businessman, maybe an actuary, when he grew up. The old man was against it. Didn’t want his kid growing up better than him, the old Italian way. So Joe became a cop instead of a businessman. Then he found out they didn’t have to be two different things.

He nodded when he heard the clink of a porcelain plate hitting the table on the other side of the newspaper. The egg smell wafted up, and Joe reached for his fork behind the paper. Next he heard the gurgle of coffee splashing into his cup. The paper said the rookie played like a vet, reminding everybody of Yastrzemski. Shit. Yaz. Suddenly the telephone rang, a jangling sound that disrupted the silent kitchen. Joe heard his wife hurry to the wall phone.

“Yes,” Yolanda said. “Hold on. He’s right here.”

Joe kept reading. He knew who was on the telephone. He was in no hurry to get it. He waved a fork in the air.

“Can he call you back?” Yolanda asked into the receiver.

The phone call would be from Lenihan. He’d be all worked up about Rosato still being on the Della Porta case. Lenihan was too emotional. He would never play like a vet.

“He’s in the middle of breakfast, Surf,” Yolanda said. “It’ll be only ten or fifteen minutes.”

Joe shook his head.

“Maybe half an hour,” Yolanda added, translating.

Joe frowned at the grainy photo of the rookie making an airborne catch. Kid had legs like a colt and he was tall. Statistically, taller men made better athletes. You name it, any sport. Also, tall men were more successful. It was true. Joe was tall.

“Okay, sorry, thanks. Yes… yes… I’ll make sure he calls.” Yolanda hung up the phone. “That was Surf,” she said needlessly, and went back to the sink.

Joe nodded. Surf had nothing to worry about, because in the end, the stats held true. Joe always came out on top. He was a vet. He held the sports page to the side and scooped a forkful of buttery eggs into his mouth, where they melted.

Across town in an apartment, Surf Lenihan slammed the phone into its cradle on the nightstand. “Fucker!” he said, so loudly that his girlfriend stirred in her sleep and dragged a pillow over her head. She’d slept like the dead last night, but Surf hadn’t caught a wink. He’d watched Howard Stern on the E! channel both times, because the Scores strippers were on, and then he caught a war movie before the early local news. It had the story about Rosato getting her license reinstated on the Connolly case. They had tape of her going in and out of her office. Fuck!

Surf climbed out of bed and pulled on the navy-blue pants of his summer uniform. He knew he shouldn’t have left it to Citrone. The old man had gone about it all wrong. Got her license taken away. Leaked the twin story to the press. Like publicity would scare off a lawyer.

Surf slipped his shirt on and buttoned it up hastily. He couldn’t let Citrone and the others fuck this up. He couldn’t wait around for them to get it straight. He grabbed his gun holster off the doorknob, looped it around his shoulder, and buckled it on as he headed for the apartment door.

34

Lou Jacobs had done his share of scuba diving, so he figured he knew something about being dropped in the middle of a completely different world. He’d swum with stingrays off the Keys, hung with barracuda during a wreck-dive, and once eyeballed a green-and-black octopus fluttering on the sea floor. But he had never entered a world as foreign as this one; it was all women. There wasn’t another man in the joint, not even a messenger.

Lou gave his name to a receptionist with her hair in a tight braid, wondering if women could be as good lawyers as men. Sol Lubar, from the Thirty-seventh, had a woman lawyer for his divorce and she was a bitch on wheels. Lou should have had a lawyer that good when it came his turn. He’d lost the house, half his pension, and the friggin’ cat. And it was Laurie who cheated on him. Lou shook his head, still pissed off sixteen years later.

“Is there a problem, Mr. Jacobs?” the receptionist asked, unsmiling.

Lou thought she needed to loosen up. A joke, maybe. “Hey,” he said, “you know why divorce is so expensive?”

“Why?”

“Because it’s worth it.”

The receptionist didn’t smile, but Lou didn’t give up easy.

“Okay, you don’t like that one? Here’s another. What’s the difference between a lawyer and a prostitute?”

The receptionist blinked at him.

“A prostitute stops screwing you when you’re dead.”

The receptionist blanched. “That’s disgusting.”

It was his best joke. Lou thought it was funny as hell, but he decided to clam up and let the fish have the whole goddamn ocean. Later, when the receptionist told him Rosato was ready for him, he followed his nose to Rosato’s office, leaned in the doorway, and tried again. “Rosato. Stop me if you heard this one. What’s the difference between a lawyer and a prostitute?”

“A tax bracket?” Bennie said, looking up.

“No, but that’s good.”

“How about ‘nothing?’ ”

“Better.” Lou laughed gruffly. “That was a test. I guess I’m reporting for duty.”

“Wonderful!” Bennie eyed him, in his crisp navy-blue blazer, dark pants, and a white business shirt. The only dissonant note was a brown tie of shiny artificial fibers. “What is it with cops and ties?”

“What is it with women and hair?”

“What?”

Lou made a circle with his finger. “You changed your hair. Why do women do that?”

“To confuse cops.”

Lou’s eyes went flinty. “I’m here to take the job, Rosato, so don’t start with me. Bad enough you got a buncha hens up here.”

“They didn’t bite, did they?”

“No, but they didn’t laugh either. It’s a great joke, admit it.”

“I admit it.” Bennie smiled. “Now, let’s get started. Why don’t you sit down?”

“I like to stand up.” Lou folded his arms.

“Suit yourself. I’ll begin at the beginning.” Bennie gulped some coffee and briefed Lou on the case, holding back her suspicion that Della Porta may have been crooked. She wanted to follow up on that lead herself and didn’t know Lou well enough to trust him. In her experience, a cop’s sense of loyalty was even worse than an Italian’s. “You were a uniformed cop, right, Lou?”

“For forty years, until last year.”

“That’s quite a career. You just retired?”

“Yep, and hating every minute of it. That’s why I got the security job.”

“What was your district?”

“The Fourth.”

“That’s South Philly. So you’ve canvassed neighbors before.”

Lou smiled. “In my sleep.”

“Good.” Bennie sipped her coffee, which never seemed hot enough. “That’s your first assignment. I want you to meet Della Porta’s neighbors. Find out what they saw Connolly do that night. Get the details, too, like what Connolly was wearing. I want to know what they’ll say on the stand.”

“I know the drill.”

“Also, find out if any of them saw Connolly throw something in the Dumpster in the alley. That’s the D.A.’s story and not all of it jibes. For one thing, no gun turned up. If she was getting rid of evidence, why not dump the gun?”

“Nobody said bad guys were smart. They make stupid mistakes all the time.”

“Well, see what you can find out. I’ll give you a copy of the file. Read it before you go.”

“When you want this neighborhood survey done?”

“Right now. You got a bus to catch?”

Lou shrugged. “No.”

“Good.” Bennie stood up. “I have to get going, but I want to introduce you to the lawyer you’ll be working with. She’s only done one survey, but she’s one of my best young lawyers.” Bennie pressed the intercom button on her telephone. “DiNunzio?” she said into the receiver. “You busy?”

35

“Jesus!” Connolly said. She rose in astonishment on the other side of the Formica counter when Rosato banged into the interview room. “Look at you!”

“Tell me about it.”

“You look exactly like me! You haircut is the same, and that eye makeup!”

“I did it myself.”

“No shit.” Connolly burst into laughter.

“I’ll get better.” Bennie did a model’s spin-turn and came up smiling. With her new makeover, she felt giddily like an actress playing a role. That the role may actually have been the truth added a thrill Bennie couldn’t quite ignore. She shut the door behind her, locking the impostor in with the original and not being absolutely sure which was which.

“How’d you do that, overnight?”

“I got a new haircut and a bad attitude.” Bennie swung her briefcase onto the counter. She didn’t need Connolly’s verification to tell her the transformation had been successful. The prison guards had stared when they patted her down, undoubtedly primed by the newspaper coverage. “It’s all part of the master plan.”

“Which is?”

“We play twins, at trial,” she began, and briefed Connolly on the rationale. Connolly sat down, leaning forward over the counter as Bennie spoke, the story sounding better and better.

“It’s amazing,” Connolly said when Bennie had finished.

“It’s risky, though. You have to follow my rules or it’ll blow up in our faces. I control all communication about the trial and about us. At no time do you speak to the press. About anything. You don’t even say ‘no comment.’ I don’t want your voice heard. Got it?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t talk to anybody here about this conversation. Understood? This is confidential trial strategy. If word gets out it’s intentional, it’ll kill us.”

“You mean, me,” Connolly said, her expression suddenly grave enough to reassure Bennie.

“Good. Now. We have to talk about Della Porta. I went back to the apartment last night and got it in order the way you two had it.”

“You what? My place? Jeez, you’re full of surprises.”

“So was the apartment. Tell me why everything in it is so expensive.”

“What do you mean?”

“The art, the kitchen stuff. Anthony made about fifty grand a year as a detective, right?”

“Right.”

“Did he have any source of income other than that? Family, stocks? Or from boxing?”

“No way. Anthony’s family is long gone, and Star was a money drain. Anthony spent all his own money on his training, plus the uniforms, the equipment, advertising, the whole thing. That’s why he needed the backers.”

“What about other sources of income?” Bennie unzipped her briefcase and tugged out a legal pad. “Did you give him any money?”

“Nothing. I didn’t have it.”

“Where’d he get all that money then?”

Connolly looked puzzled. “I always figured he made it. I never saw the bills. He handled everything. It was his place and his money, and the stuff was all there from before I came.”

“Not on that salary.” Bennie edged forward on her seat. “Are you sure Della Porta couldn’t have been involved in any kind of corruption?”

“Anthony? No way. I told you before, he was straight as an arrow.”

“Isn’t it possible that this dispute in the past, between Anthony and the other two cops, Reston and McShea, involved corruption of some kind?”

“Like what?”

“Maybe Reston and McShea were taking money and they wanted Anthony involved and he turned them down. Or maybe Anthony was in with them in the past, before he met you, taking money, and then he stopped?”

“No way. At least, I don’t know. All I know is the cops jumped all over themselves pointing the finger at me.”

“Did you ever hear or see any kind of unusual discussions between Della Porta and other cops, like at the board meetings you told me about?”

“No. I think they talked girls and boxing.”

Bennie thought a minute. The boxing angle troubled her, but she wanted to follow up on the police lead first. She knew the terrain better and something told her it smelled. “Anthony was a homicide detective. Did any of his cases have anything to do with the murder of drug dealers or drug busts?”

“Sure, they had to, but he never talked about work. He didn’t like to bring it home.”

“Did he ever have any sources or snitches who were involved with drugs?”

“Not that I heard him say. I didn’t know anything about his business.”

“When he was a uniformed officer, did he bust a lot of drug dealers?”

“I didn’t know him then.”

Bennie eased back in her chair, momentarily stumped. It was hot in the airless room, and she felt Connolly’s confused gaze on her, as well as the vigilant stare of the guard behind the smoked security glass. It didn’t fit, but she was slipping into solving the murder instead of preparing the defense. Going to Della Porta’s apartment last night had screwed up her focus.

“When do I get outta here?” Connolly asked suddenly. “Trial starts Monday. I haven’t seen the outside in a year, except for that hearing.”

“They’ll move you right before the trial, probably Sunday night or Monday morning. During the trial you’ll stay in a holding cell in the Criminal Justice Center.”

“Shit, I can’t wait. Free!” Connolly waved her arms gleefully in the cramped room, and for the first time Bennie caught a glimpse of the child in the woman. She almost felt Connolly’s happiness, a thrill flittering through her like a shadow. Could Connolly truly be her twin? Bennie thought of Grady and their conversation in the bathroom.

“You know, my boyfriend thinks we should take a DNA test,” Bennie blurted out. “To see if we’re twins for real.”

“What?” Connolly’s face fell, her smile evaporated, and her arms dropped like a bird shot from the sky. “You still don’t believe me? You want to test my DNA?”

Bennie felt a twinge. She’d hurt Connolly at the one moment her guard was down. “I wasn’t suggesting it, necessarily. I have some information about a lab that does DNA testing. We send blood samples off and in seven days or so, we know the truth. Apparently they do this sort of testing all the time.”

Connolly nodded. “Well, let’s do it, then.”

“What?” Bennie asked, surprised at the turnaround.

“Let’s do it, huh? I’ll give my sample today. Will you arrange to get it sent to them, or whatever?”

“I don’t get it. What changed your mind?”

“Here’s your chance to know the truth,” Connolly said quickly, though her tone held no rancor. “You don’t have to believe me or take it on faith. You’ll have proof, if that’s what you need. Set it up. They take blood samples for court in the infirmary. In fact, let’s take care of it right now, while you’re here.”

“Now?” Bennie said, caught off-guard, but Connolly was on her feet.

“Guard!” she called out, turning around. “Yo! Guard!”

Bennie roared away from the prison in the Expedition, distracted. Connolly had given a blood sample at the prison and they’d arranged to send it to the lab to preserve the chain of custody and eliminate contamination. If Connolly would so quickly put it to the test, maybe there was truth to the twin story. There was only one way to find out. Bennie would have to give her own sample. The hospital was on the way back to the office.

She braked at a red light. Cars slowed in the line of noontime traffic and wiggly waves of heat snaked from their hoods. Bennie wasn’t sure what to do. She could go back to the office or stop by the hospital. The results would take a week. She felt her heart beating harder and tried to ignore it. Her face felt flushed and she ratcheted up the air-conditioning. She wanted to know the truth, didn’t she?

Bennie stared at the traffic light, burning bloodred into her brain. She felt as if she were looking into her own heart. When the light turned green, she yanked the steering wheel to the right and headed for the hospital.

36

The boxing gym was light, with bright sun pouring through its large storefront, though it served only to illuminate every speck of dust and dirt. Judy, in a gray sweatsuit, held out her hands while Mr. Gaines wrapped Ace bandages around her palms and wrists, then stuffed a pair of red boxing gloves on her. They looked like cartoon mittens, except for the duct tape repairing splits at the top. Red headgear covered her forehead and cheeks in cushioned leather, exposing only her eyes. She felt as awkward as the Pillsbury Doughboy when Mr. Gaines began teaching her the fundamentals of a boxing stance.

“Left foot forward, a little out more,” he said.

“Sorry.” Judy corrected her feet. “I can’t twirl spaghetti either.”

Mr. Gaines smiled. “Put your right foot back a little. Gotta get your stance right. Gotta get the fundamentals. Gotta bad stance, you like a house gonna fall down. Got it? Like a house gonna fall down when the wolf comes. You know that story?”

“Sure.” Judy placed her feet where she thought they should be and double-checked in the mirror. The glass reflected a full gym, with maybe ten men training. Most were shadowboxing, but there was a half-hearted sparring match and men using the equipment. The thumping, thudding, and pounding sounds made a constant drumbeat as glove met bag, body, and headgear. A man on the heavy bag shouted “Hah,” “Hah,” each time he connected with a jab, syncopating the rhythms. Judy kept an eye on the boxers as she adjusted her stance. “Better, Mr. Gaines?”

“Good. Right. Now, when you gotta move, you keep your feet in that stance. Got it? Gotta have the foundation or the house gonna fall down.”

“Okay.” Judy obeyed, but it was hard to move in the awkward position and she ended up with her right foot in front. “Damn.”

“S’all right. S’all right, you’ll get it. You gotta work on this. Gotta get this right. Com’ere, lemme show you what I mean.” Mr. Gaines grabbed Judy by her sweatshirt and led her over to a table outside the ring. Paint peeled off the table, which was actually a front door onto which someone had hammered splayed legs, and on the table sat a folded Daily News, a bottle of Mr. Clean, and a plastic jug of water with a dirty glass. Mr. Gaines grabbed the jug and glass from the table, then held both over a steel wastecan full of trash. “Pay attention, now. You payin’ attention?”

“Sure.”

“You gotta be in the right place in the ring. See this?” Mr. Gaines poured water from the jug beside the glass and it splashed into the wastebasket. “See what I mean? Ain’t in the right place. Won’t work. Not he’ppin’. Not doin’ nothin’ for you. Now watch.” Mr. Gaines moved the glass under the stream of water and it filled the glass. “See now? It’s in the right place. All ready. Doin’ the right thing. You gotta be in the right place. Got it?”

“Got it.” Judy smiled. She had already noticed that Mr. Gaines had a way to explain even the simplest principle. She wished he had a way to catch a killer.

“Now let’s get back to work,” he said, and led her back to the mirror. “Get your stance, now. Remember what I told you.”

Judy stood in position, foot-conscious as a girl at her first dance, and checked the mirror. From this angle she spotted something she hadn’t seen before. An attractive young woman sitting against the far wall, knitting. The woman’s hair hung in moussed waves around a delicate oval face, with dark and penciled brows. She wore tight jeans and a waist-length leather jacket with black spike-heeled boots.

“What you lookin’ at?” Mr. Gaines asked, and Judy snapped to attention.

“That woman, knitting. Who is she?”

“One of the wives.”

“Whose wife?”

“Boy on the bag. Danny Morales.”

“She’s here a lot?”

“All the time. Now, keep your mind on your job here. You come to gossip or box?”

“Box.”

“Then box, woman.”

Judy didn’t have much time. Her boxing lesson was over and she had to get back to the office. She was stretching plausibility with her story of a two-hour doctor’s appointment, even with a gynecologist. They overbooked with less guilt than an airline, but there was a limit. Judy crouched next to her gym bag and packed it slowly, watching the young woman with the knitting. Her husband pounded the speed-bag next to her. Mr. Gaines had said Connolly hung with the wives. Maybe Mrs. Morales knew something.

Ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum, went the speedbag, smacking the plywood backboard and swinging back for more punishment. Morales punched the bag with the outside of his gloves, his tattooed arms high and his elbows spread sideways like wings. His wife glanced up from her knitting to watch him, though the boxer concentrated on the drubbing he gave the speedbag, lost in a trance sustained by the rhythms of his own violence.

Judy zipped her gym bag closed, straightened up, and walked casually in their direction. Ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum; the sound grew louder. She walked past Morales and stopped next to his wife, who didn’t look up from her knitting. “I always wanted to learn to knit,” Judy said loudly.

The young woman looked up in surprise, her lacquered fingers frozen at her row of tight stitches. Morales stopped hitting the speedbag, which flopped back and forth on the squeaking chain, and glared at Judy. “What did you say to her?” he demanded.

“Uh, nothing really,” Judy answered, taken aback. Behind Morales she saw Mr. Gaines, who had stopped coaching another fighter and was watching vigilantly. “I was just trying to learn about knitting.”

“Oh, yeah?” Morales blinked perspiration from his eyes, revealing a prominent brow that crumpled with the force of his anger. “Buy a book.”

“Danny, Danny,” Mr. Gaines called out, shuffling bandy-legged to Morales. He waved an arm in the air as if he were hailing a cab. “Ain’t no call for that now. Tha’s Judy, Judy Forty. She one of my students.”

Morales grinned crookedly. “A chick, takin’ lessons here?”

“She a boxer to me, tha’s all,” Mr. Gaines said. “You should rightly be sayin’ welcome to her. He’p bring her along.”

Judy felt a guilty pang. Mr. Gaines was standing up for her, and she had lied to him. “That’s all right, Coach.”

“No, Danny here can introduce himself, he want to be polite. You might like meetin’ a famous boxer. Danny has twenty-five fights, twenty-four by knockout, only one by decision. He’s comin’ up to his first twelve-rounder in a coupla months.”

Morales relaxed, apparently soothed by his credentials, and nodded at Judy. “Danny Morales. You a friend of Mr. G’s, I’m happy to meet you. Anythin’ you wanna know about this sport, you ask. History, pointers, whatnot. I don’t mind.”

“Thank you, Danny. I didn’t catch your wife’s name,” Judy said, and the young woman smiled, apparently pleased at the unaccustomed attention.

“Ronnie, Ronnie Morales,” she said. “Anytime you want to know about knitting, you just ask.”

Judy took a step closer. “What are you making?”

“A scarf, for Danny.” She put a slim finger to her lips. “But don’t tell him. It’s supposed to be a surprise.”

Morales almost smiled. “Like I didn’t know. She knit me two scarves and a sweater already.”

“You’re a lucky man,” Judy said, and the conversation stalled. She couldn’t talk to Ronnie with her husband there. They had to go where no man could. “Uh, Ronnie, do you know where a ladies’ room is? I know they have a locker room, but we can’t wash up there, can we?”

“It’s around the back. You have to use the janitor’s closet.”

“I didn’t see it. Is it hard to find?”

“Kind of. You want me to show it to you?” Ronnie asked, setting her knitting aside.

“Sure,” Judy said, as casually as possible. “Lead on.”

37

Bennie hustled into her office with a freshly poured mug of coffee and pushed aside her phone messages, correspondence, and other case notes. Connolly had become the only priority. It was Thursday, for God’s sake. Bennie slipped out of her jacket and caught sight of the Band-Aid in the crook of her elbow, then fingered the bumpy red blot in the middle. Her blood; Connolly’s blood. In a week she would know if they were the same. The possibility seemed more likely since the test, though Bennie knew her thinking wasn’t completely rational.

She sat down in her padded desk chair, and the sun streamed through the window behind her, reminding her like a tap on the shoulder that the day was almost over. She went through her papers to find the police chronology. It was the weakest part of the prosecution’s case, and she intended to weaken it to the breaking point.

“Incident Report,” read the slip of white paper. These were the papers that Carrier had applied to the court for and which had been released, albeit in severely redacted form. The documents looked as insignificant as newsstand receipts, but were among the most critical documents in a criminal case. Usually they constituted a chronological recounting of the police activity at the crime scene, but in this case they didn’t explain how the hell Reston and McShea got to the scene so fast. There was only one set of documents left to consult, the transcripts of the telephone calls that came into 911.

Bennie pulled the transcripts for that night. The first call had come in at 8:07, with a positive ID. Not so good for the defense, but the caller, a neighbor named Lambertsen, didn’t say when she heard the gunshot. Interesting, because Bennie wanted to pinpoint that. She read down further, to the police response. The first response was a minute later, exactly. Bennie made a note and kept reading. There were more calls reporting the gunshot and Connolly running down the street, which Bennie read with increasing dismay. The Commonwealth would parade these witnesses to the stand. The cumulative effect would devastate the defense.

Bennie shook off her fear. She had to find the soft spots in the prosecution, and they were there, she just sensed it. Sunlight moved onto her papers in an oblique shadow that reminded her of her last visit with her mother and she realized she hadn’t spoken with her mother’s doctor in days. She should call. It would only take a minute. Bennie reached for the phone, punched in the number, and identified herself when they picked up.

“The doctor’s been trying to reach you all morning, Miss Rosato,” said the receptionist.

Bennie was puzzled. The doctor had wanted to reach her? She hadn’t seen his phone message. She tucked the phone in the crook of her neck and thumbed hurriedly through her pink messages. Dr. Provetto, at 9:13 A.M. Dr. Provetto, at 11:45 A.M. My God. Why was he calling? Bennie’s heart leapt to her throat the moment she heard the doctor’s voice.

38

Judy had discovered that a janitor’s closet was really an open toilet near a string mop. The walls were streaked with grime and a gritty Rubbermaid bucket sat under a streaked washbasin. The toilet paper holder was empty and two half rolls of toilet paper were lined up on the tank next to an old copy of Sports Illustrated. Judy washed her hands in the basin. “So,” she asked, “is knitting hard? It looks hard.”

“No, it’s easy.” Ronnie Morales lingered at the door and checked her hair in a cracked mirror over the sink. She wore light eye makeup but no foundation and her skin was poreless over cheekbones that shaped her face like a Valentine’s Day heart. “I taught myself from a book. That’s what Danny meant. I could teach you in five minutes. I even have some needles for you, thick ones to start with. I’ll bring them for you.”

“Thanks,” Judy said, surprised at the offer. It struck her that Ronnie Morales was a woman who needed a friend.

“No problem.” Ronnie folded her arms against the shiny black of her form-fitting leather jacket. “I knit lots of things. Sweaters for Danny and my mom and sister, some baby clothes for my new nephew, and a vest for my grandfather.”

“So you enjoy it.”

“No, I hate it,” Ronnie said with a giggle. “I’ll teach you if you want, but it’s totally boring. Doing your nails is more fun than knitting.”

“Why do you do it, then?” Judy’s hands dripped while she looked around for paper towels.

“For something to do. There’s no TV here. I read the new magazines as soon as they come out, then I got nothing to do when Danny’s trainin’.”

“Do you watch him train every day?” Judy gave up her search and wiped her hands on her sweatpants.

“I have to.” Ronnie squinted in the mirror. “Danny says I’m his good luck charm.”

“He needs luck with a speedbag?”

Ronnie smiled, then stopped like it was against the rules. “He’s a real good fighter. His manager thinks he’ll be famous. Be one of the great ones.”

“Don’t you get bored, though? I mean, even if I loved someone, I might get bored watching him all day.”

“Sure I get bored. That’s why I knit.” Her mouth pursed slightly, wrinkling an upper lip like a Cupid’s bow. “Danny is the jealous type.”

“Then why does he bring you to the gym? There’s nothing but men here.”

“He likes to know where I am. Not that I ever cheated on him or nothin’. Not ever. I never would. I mean, never.” Ronnie watched herself in the mirror as she tossed her head. “You’re takin’ lessons with Mr. Gaines?”

“Uh, yeah,” Judy said, catching up with the abrupt change of subject.

“Not many women in the gym, that’s why we don’t have no ladies’ room. Only women here usually are the other wives. Even they don’t come in much anymore.”

“Too bad. I’m new in town. It would be nice to meet them. Make friends.”

“You ain’t missin’ nothin’. They’re like a group, you know. They think they’re all that. There’s Juan’s wife, Maria, and Mickey, he’s a heavyweight, and his wife, Ceilia. Ceilia is a bitch, I tell you. The only nice one was Valencia, Miguel’s girlfriend, but she’s gone.” Ronnie’s smooth forehead wrinkled. “She went to prison.”

“Jeez, prison? What for?”

“They said she was selling coke.”

“Selling cocaine?” Judy hid her surprise. It was amazing how much you could learn from another woman in a ladies’ room, even a crummy ladies’ room.

“I don’t think Valencia did that, though. She was friendly with the wives. She was friendly with everybody, you know. I always wondered, you know, what’s up with them. They mighta been doin’ business, you know, from them I could believe it. But Valencia would never do nothin’ like that. She was a wonderful mother.”

“You don’t think she sold coke?”

“I can’t say for sure, you know. I only went out with them once, ’cause of Danny. He didn’t like it.” Ronnie’s voice trailed off. “Not Valencia, though. Valencia was a good person, you know. Now this white girl, she acted like she owned Valencia. She was with the man who managed Star. You know, Star.”

“Star?” Judy said, playing dumb, which wasn’t easy for a Law Review editor.

“Star Harald. He’s turning pro next. He’s almost as good as Danny. It was his manager, his girlfriend. I forget her name. This girl, she wasn’t even a wife and she acted like she owned everybody, the whole gym.” Ronnie’s voice grew dishy. “A redhead, dressed like a whore, too. She’s in jail now because she killed him.”

“She killed her boyfriend? How do you know?”

Ronnie moved a curl from her eyes. “Shit. Everybody knows that.”

39

Bennie’s world lurched to a stop after she hung up the telephone. Her fingers gripped the walnut edge of her desk and she stiffened in her chair. She knew she was breathing but it was soundless, as if she were afraid to draw breath. Or felt she wasn’t entitled to, now.

Sunlight from her office window fell on her back but she couldn’t feel its warmth. Motes of dust floated through a sunbeam, but she couldn’t focus on them. The shadow cast across the Connolly file was her own, but it looked like a cardboard cutout of a human being. Like a silhouette used for target practice, with a hole blown through its heart.

Bennie fought to keep her breathing even, her head clear, her eyes dry. Square buttons lit up on her phone, silently blinking on and off, and beyond her closed door she could hear the secretaries joking with each other. Everything was the same, yet nothing would be the same from now on.

The news confounded her. It seemed astounding that the only inevitable fact should be profoundly inconceivable when it happened. Bewildering that an event Bennie had thought about, even planned for, should take her completely by surprise, especially given her mother’s illness. Her depression had been a lethal tug-of-war in which every day of life was a victory, and her mother had finally won.

Her mother had won freedom from a life of torment, of whispers in the night, of fears. Hers was an empty life, a hollow one. That was inconceivable, too. Life was supposed to be full of productive work and of simple pleasures; the laughter of children, the crunch of a fresh apple, the warmth of a soft blanket. Sharp pencils and good, thick books. Life wasn’t supposed to be dark with nightmares; brief interludes of clarity in a world of confusion, made blacker because its origins were so unjustified, and unjustifiable.

Bennie felt her throat constrict. It was unfair; unjust. It occurred to her, for the first time, that that’s what her own life had been about. A fight for justice where there wasn’t any. The urge to set things right when they had gone terribly wrong. Not in courtrooms, though that’s what Bennie had always thought until this very minute. Her life was about justice where it mattered. In life. In her mother’s life.

She sat still for one more minute, then got up, grabbed her handbag, and walked silently out of her office and through her law firm. She said not a word to anyone, just avoided their curious eyes, even Marshall’s, who had taken the doctor’s messages and probably guessed what had happened.

Bennie got into the elevator and traveled to the basement garage, then found her car keys in the bottom of her purse and chirped the Ford unlocked. She climbed into the truck, twisted on the ignition, and reversed out of the parking space. A red word lit up on the dashboard, BRAKE, and she yanked up the emergency brake. She acted on autopilot and the only thought in her head was a mild surprise at the number of acts it took to get out of the parking lot and to the hospital:

Insert monthly pass card in slot.

Drive out of garage.

Turn left onto Locust.

Cruise to the corner.

Stop at the red light.

So many tasks to perform, each one discrete and identifiable. Bennie set her mind to performing each task, in the logical order, and so survived the minutes after she learned her mother had passed from the face of this earth.

“She wasn’t alone,” Hattie sobbed, her coarse, dark cheeks streaked with tears.

Bennie hugged the nurse, holding her firmly, as if she could send strength through her very skin. Hattie had taken care of Bennie’s mother for a decade, had been at her side through all of the hospitalizations, the electro-shock, and the chemicals. And now this. Bennie, dry-eyed, was grateful to Hattie once again. Her mother hadn’t died alone.

“She suffered so much,” Hattie said, but Bennie couldn’t bear to hear that. She squeezed Hattie closer and buried her face in Hattie’s marcelled waves, bleached canary yellow. Her hair was stiff and perfumed from processing, but Bennie took comfort in it just the same.

“My poor baby,” Hattie murmured, and Bennie didn’t know Hattie had thought of her mother that way. Sobs wracked Hattie’s soft, heavy body, and she sagged in Bennie’s arms. Bennie walked her over to a chair, gentled her into it, and sat beside her. There was a closed door on the other side of the room. Her mother’s body was inside.

“I don’t know why they tellin’ me she was fine,” Hattie said, her tears turning to anger, then back again. Bennie squeezed her until her crying became hiccups and then sputtered to a wheezy stop. The room fell quiet, and Bennie found the silence somehow harder to take. The lump in her throat seemed to calcify. She imagined a plate of bone growing over her chest, shielding her heart from the outside world and sealing her emotions within.

“Are you the family?” interrupted a man’s voice, and Bennie turned and looked up. An oily-faced gentleman in a dark suit, with a small mustache and earnest eyes, looked puzzled at the hysterical black woman embraced by the businesslike blonde. “My name is James Covella, from Covella’s Funeral Home. Are you the family?”

“Yes,” Bennie answered, her voice thick.

“I’m sorry for your terrible loss. We’ve come for Mrs. Rosato,” he said. Discreetly behind him waited a collapsible metal gurney. The sight of it caught Bennie by the throat.

“Not yet,” she said firmly. “Not just yet.” She halted the man with a large, trembling hand, disentangled herself from Hattie, and rose to her feet to say good-bye. Only after she had slipped inside her mother’s room did she permit herself the luxury of breaking down.

40

Alice didn’t know what came over her but she felt rammy all of a sudden. She couldn’t take it anymore. She had to get out. She had to be free. There was only one skinny window on the unit, and she looked out as she stood, her feet shifting back and forth in the lunch line. “Move up,” she said to the inmate in front of her, who obeyed.

Alice felt crazy. It must be the fucking house. It was getting to her today. She couldn’t figure out why. She inched forward in the line, trying to keep a lid on it. What the fuck was going on? She should have been feeling good; she was that morning when she met with Rosato, but sometime around lunch she got funky. Got a hinky feeling, like something bad was going down.

Alice laughed at herself. Fuck. Of course she was antsy. Something bad was going down. That thing with Shetrell. Somebody trying to whack her. Alice looked around for the eightieth time that morning. Shetrell and Leonia had already gotten their food, they were ahead of her where she could see them. They wouldn’t try anything at lunch anyway, in the open. Alice should have felt safe. But she didn’t.

She reached the front of the line and grabbed her floppy ham sandwich, strawberry yogurt, and canned fruit shit, and walked to the table where she always sat, farthest from the others. The tables were bolted to the floor on the common area of the unit, which was ringed by two tiers of cells, fifteen above and fifteen below; most of the bottom tier was double-celled for low-seniority inmates. Inmates spent every minute of every day with the same group of women, for decades.

Alice yanked out a steel chair with a back that said PHILADELPHIA CIVIC CENTER, for some reason. The floor was a washed-out blue-and-white linoleum and the walls were whiter than white, from slave labor. Alice had counted the tiles in the unit’s common area several hundred times. She’d come up with eighty-seven tiles each time.

She knew her cage by heart. She could close her eyes and point to where the TV was mounted, high so it couldn’t be destroyed. She could see in her sleep the handmade drawings the inmates taped up on the unit walls; DISCIPLINE, TRUST, RESPECT, read the Magic Marker captions. Stick figures held hands under hearts and flowers. Christ. Alice wanted to rip them off the wall.

Instead she sipped her coffee, feeling the stiff Band-Aid in the crook of her arm where her blood had been taken. So she’d had her bluff called. It was the only way to keep Rosato cool. The results wouldn’t be back until the trial was over. Alice would be long gone. She took a bite of sandwich and hunched over her tray, the way she always did, facing the window. She kept her back to the other tables and so didn’t see what was happening between Shetrell and Leonia.

Shetrell sat at the lunch table before her tray, her gaze on Leonia, who sat down in the only empty seat, on the other side of Taniece. Shit. Leonia was supposed to sit right next to Shetrell. What a fuckup. Taniece had taken Leonia’s seat. Bitch shouldn’ta sat in the way like that. Shoulda known better. “Who tol’ you you could sit here?” Shetrell snapped at Taniece.

Taniece looked over. “What I do?”

“Leonia always sit here. You not suppose to be sittin’ here.”

“I don’t have to ax your permission where I sit!”

“Hey!” shouted the guard, and Shetrell shut up. It was Dexter Raveway, Dexter the Pecker. He was a good-lookin’ brother but he knew it, standin’ behind the guard desk at the front of the room, scratchin’ his johnson half the time. She figured he had somethin’ goin’ with Taniece and that was why Taniece picked lunchtime to fuck with her. “Shetrell, that’s enough,” Dexter shouted. “Don’t be bossin’ everybody around, now.”

Shetrell slunk low in her chair. She couldn’t get another write-up, she’d end up in the hole.

“Hmph,” Taniece said, like a church lady, and Shetrell glared at Leonia, who nodded.

Shetrell had to think of something. Her eyes rested on her tray, then she spotted somethin’ move on the floor under the table, between everybody’s sneakers. A cockroach, a big fat brown mother, struttin’. She watched the roach hustle along the linoleum and stop at the table leg. Tryin’ to decide what to do. Whether to come up or not.

Come on, baby, Shetrell was thinking. Come to Mama. She snagged a piece of bread from her tray and let her hand drop to her side, easy so it didn’t look like nothin’ was goin’ on. Maybe the roach would get the smell. Come on, sugar. Mama gonna take care of you. Shetrell watched the roach try to make up its little roach mind. He stopped like a married man, right at the edge. Couldn’t go no further. Come on, baby.

The roach didn’t even have to think twice. It skittered up the table leg, and Shetrell dipped her shoulder, snatched it off, and closed it in her hand. She waited until Taniece turned away, then dropped the roach in the bitch’s strawberry yogurt.

“Shit! Shit!” Taniece shouted when she spotted a dark bulge moving on her plate. “There’s somethin’ in my food! A mouse! A rat! Shit!” She jumped up and shrieked like she was in a horror movie, and Shetrell woulda laughed her ass off if she hadn’t been so worried about gettin’ the shank to Leonia.

“A rat! A rat in the food! There’s a rat in my food!” Taniece yelled. Her chair fell over, then she stumbled backward and fell on top of it, while Breanna, next to her, leapt away from her tray, knocking into another girl. Shetrell watched everybody jump outta their seats. The white trash shook like they saw a steady job.

“Relax, relax, I’m on it,” Dexter the Pecker said, runnin’ over like Wesley Snipes to save the day.

Taniece was doin’ the freak. “It’s a rat, I saw it, it’s a rat! It’s in my motherfuckin’ yogurt!” she said, grabbing Dexter’s arm. “I was eatin’ that shit!”

Pussy, Shetrell thought. Get over yourself.

“Calm down, everybody, calm down,” Dexter said, but nobody was listening. “It’s just a roach, it’s not a rat.” He didn’t call any other guards, which was just fine with Shetrell. She edged back from the crowd, pretending to be afraid, and saw Leonia backing up, too, meeting her from the other direction. Now was her chance.

Shetrell bumped her way backward, slipped her hand into the elastic of her pants, and slid the shank out. Leonia stood next to Shetrell, grabbed the knife, and acted like she was falling down. Shetrell couldn’t see it, but she figured Leonia slipped the shank in her sneaker, under her pants leg. The girl was damn good. She used to snatch wallets at The Gallery.

“Did you get it?” Shetrell yelled, like she was callin’ to Dexter about the roach. Out the corner of her eye, she saw Leonia laughin’ and knew she got it, all right.

“It’s just a roach. It’s all taken care of,” Dexter said, holding Taniece’s tray high over the heads of the women, who were just starting to calm down.

“You better get me another lunch, I ain’t eatin’ that shit!” Taniece shouted. “I’m gonna sue this motherfuckin’ place!”

Alice turned in her seat to see what the commotion was all about, barely interested. A mouse in Taniece’s food. What a lovely hotel. She’d be gone in days. But it didn’t leave her much time to take care of Valencia. Alice took a final slug of coffee and crumpled her Styrofoam cup. She gathered her tray, the food unfinished, and walked through the tables to where Valencia was chattering with the other chiquitas. Valencia looked up, and Alice leaned down and whispered in her ear, “I heard something from my lawyer. Meet me after head count tonight. The guard will come to you. Don’t tell anybody or it won’t happen.”

“Than’ you so much,” Valencia said softly.

“You can thank me tonight,” Alice told her.

41

For Bennie the next few hours were a haze of acute pain mixed with the oddly mundane business of burying the dead. Tasks had to be performed, and she performed each one. She selected her mother’s casket, burial plot, and even last dress, of beige chiffon with tan pumps, with a minimum of tears. She found a valuable ally in the funeral director, with his moussed pompadour and professional smoothness, who scheduled her mother’s wake, funeral, and burial in a way that had a pat beginning, middle, and end. In death as in life.

Bennie kept her emotions at bay only because she was so skilled at it. She held tight to Hattie throughout, as much for her own support as for the nurse’s, and stopped only to leave a message.

“Hey,” Bennie said as the associate answered the call. “I guess you heard.”

“Yes, I’m so sorry,” Judy said. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Thanks, yes. Draft a letter to Guthrie and tell him what happened. The wake is Friday night, funeral is Saturday, and we’ll need a week postponement of the Connolly trial. If we ask for a week, he’ll probably give us three days. I’ll stop in and sign the letter tonight, then you get it hand-delivered tomorrow.”

“No, I meant, is there anything I can do for you? Not about the case.”

“Do for the case, you’ll be doing for me. Any updates?”

“Yes. Mary talked to her classmate about Guthrie and Burden. She thinks Burden got Guthrie his judgeship, in return for his billings.”

“A costly judgeship. Tell her to follow up and find out where Burden is. They said he was out of the country at the emergency hearing. I want to know if he still is, and where. Like that. That all you got?”

Judy hesitated. “I did find out something you should know.”

“Give me the headline.”

“I think Connolly was selling drugs and using a group of boxers’ wives to do it.”

Bennie leaned against the cheap paneled wall of the lounge. “Is this true? How do you know?”

“I talked to one of the wives today, at the gym.”

“Selling drugs? Connolly?” Bennie let herself slide into one of the brown folding chairs that ringed the room. It was hard to think. “What were you doing at the gym? That wasn’t what I asked you do.”

“I know, I was following a hunch.”

Bennie rubbed her forehead. Was Connolly involved in drug dealing? Was Della Porta? Had Connolly lied to her again? “Do you have proof of this, Carrier, or is it just talk? Did this wife name names?”

“It’s not gossip. There’s a Maria, a Ceilia, I didn’t get last names but I will. Oh, and there’s a Valencia something, who may have sold for Connolly. She’s in prison now for possession. For what it’s worth, the consensus is our client is as guilty as they come.”

“Bennie?” Hattie called out suddenly from the adjoining room. Her voice sounded shaky.

“I have to go, Carrier. Find out where this Valencia is.” Bennie took a breath. “Start at county prison, with Connolly.”

Judy hung up the telephone, her young face falling into grave lines. “Bennie doesn’t sound so good,” she said, and looked across the conference room at Mary, who had just come in from canvassing Connolly’s neighbors with the investigator, Lou.

“Marshall told me,” Mary said, with sympathy. She set her boxy briefcase on the table and wiped sticky bangs from her forehead. “It must be tough, losing your parents.”

“Yeah.” Judy dropped into a swivel chair. “My parents are so healthy. They climb, ride bikes, travel. I always think they’ll live forever.”

“I think my parents will live forever, too, and all they do for exercise is pray.” Mary wanted to change the subject. “We going for an extension?”

“Yes, a week.”

“We need a year to get Connolly off.” Mary rolled out a swivel chair and sat down. “Lou is still out there looking, but we didn’t find any witnesses that would help the defense. Plenty of neighbors saw Connolly run down the street, however. I think she did it, Jude. I think she killed him.”

“Of course she did. She deals drugs, too. A well-rounded felon.” Judy told Mary about her secret boxing lessons and what she’d learned from Ronnie Morales, to Mary’s growing astonishment.

“I can’t believe this,” Mary said when she was finished.

“What? The drugs? The murder?”

“No, the boxing lessons.” Mary felt hurt. “You told me you went to the gynecologist.”

“I lied. I’m sorry, I had to.”

“Why?”

“Because if I told you, you’d come with me, and your mother would kill us both.”

“Silly.” Mary smiled. “My mother would only kill you.”

42

Because it was after the prison’s business hours, Bennie had to wait in the interview room for Connolly. She couldn’t remember feeling so drained. She had rowed in regattas, powered single sculls with sheer muscle and grit, and still never felt this enervated. Fatigue after a race always produced a vague, if drowsy, euphoria and a feeling of accomplishment, but this tiredness was of a darker sort. A bone-deep weariness that came partly from grief and partly from having to contain grief. She straightened up in the plastic chair, folded and unfolded her hands on the smooth Formica counter, then finally clasped them together in her lap.

Bennie startled at a loud ca-chunka and she looked up to see Connolly being led into the secured hallway to the interview room. The inmate’s stride was strong as she walked down the corridor, and Bennie realized that the usual noise level had prevented her from ever hearing those footfalls. Connolly walked like Bennie, fast and slightly duck-toed. It had always bothered her mother, who used to say, “Walk with your legs together, like a lady.”

“What did you say?” Connolly asked, her expression puzzled as she walked through the door into the inmate’s half of the room.

“What?”

“You said something about the way I walk.”

“No, I didn’t. I said…” Bennie’s voice failed her, then she took a deep breath. “You’d better sit down. I have bad news.”

“About my case? Is something wrong?” Connolly took a seat and leaned forward over the counter. “I knew it. I knew something was going on. I could feel it.”

“No, your case is fine. It’s worse than that. My mother has, well, passed on. In the hospital. She wasn’t in any pain, and she wasn’t alone.”

“Fuck, that’s a relief,” Connolly blurted out, then froze when she saw Bennie’s stunned expression. “I mean, it’s a relief she didn’t suffer,” Connolly added quickly, but Bennie fell against the back of her chair as if pushed.

“That’s not what it sounded like. It sounded like you were relieved that she-”

“Died? Of course I’m not relieved that she died. Why would I be? Shit, that’s not what I meant.”

“No? Do you even care?”

“Oh, Christ.” Connolly raked a hand through her coppery hair. “Oh, all right, I was relieved it wasn’t about my case, okay? They wake me up and tell me my lawyer’s here after hours. What else would it be about? You said we don’t talk about personal things, like our mother, so the last thing I expect is that you’d come up to talk about her. I didn’t even know she was that sick. I thought she was mental or something. You can’t die from that, can you?”

“Evidently.”

“Well, that’s too bad. I’m sorry. For both of us.” Connolly nodded, though Bennie couldn’t help but notice that her tone was matter-of-fact. Maybe everybody was right about Connolly. Maybe she was heartless, a killer. A drug dealer, like Carrier suspected.

“You know,” Bennie said, “I did have something come up in your case today. One of my associates thinks you were involved in selling drugs, with the wives of the boxers.”

“Give me a break.” Connolly laughed ruefully, and Bennie’s gut twisted.

“That’s not a denial. Your line is, ‘That’s not true.’ ‘That’s absurd.’ ‘I’m surprised you would even suggest such a thing.’ ”

“It’s not true.” Connolly’s stony glare met Bennie’s dubious one. “I swear, I didn’t have anything to do with dope. I knew the boxers’ wives, but I certainly didn’t sell drugs with them.”

“One of the wives was named Valencia. I don’t know her last name. I understand she’s here, in this prison. Do you know her?”

Connolly’s eyes flickered. “No. I don’t know any Valencia and I didn’t have anything to do with any drugs. Neither did Anthony, no matter what your little associate says.”

Bennie sagged in the chair, spent. Confused. Angry, hurting, and screwing up a major case. Every day she was finding out another way Connolly had lied to her. First, Bullock. Now this drug thing. Bennie faced up to something she had been thinking on the drive to the prison tonight. “I told you not to lie to me and you did, and I can’t trust you anymore. I can’t go forward, especially now… with my mother. I’ll get you another lawyer, the best in criminal practice.”

“You’re pulling out on me?”

“Not completely. I’ll be there watching you from the front row, but I can’t be trial counsel, not now. My mother died. She deserves to be mourned.”

“And what do I deserve?” Connolly spat back, and Bennie leaned forward, angry.

“This isn’t about you. This is about a woman who you claim bore you. How come your own mother’s death doesn’t even faze you?”

“Please forgive me for not crying.” Connolly’s mouth twisted bitterly. “My mother never gave a flying fuck about me. She abandoned me as soon as she saw me. You’re the one she cared about. You’re the one she kept. So you’ll understand if my only concern is my own ass. I’m selfish as sin. I get it from my mother.”

Bennie flinched, shaken to the core. She couldn’t bear to hear anybody talk that way about her mother, especially now. Suddenly she felt no more like Connolly’s twin than she had the day they met. She rose stiffly and went to the door. She wanted Connolly out of her sight.

“You’re not getting out of this case now, Rosato,” Connolly shouted. “I read the papers, I see the news. We’re the lead story. The media is eating it up and the jury will, too. Nobody can pull off the twin defense but my twin.”

Bennie felt sick inside, trapped. “Guard!” she called through the door, though she knew the guard would be watching her.

“Fuck you!” Connolly shouted as the guard appeared, and the curse reverberated inside Bennie’s skull all the way back to the office.

Bennie switched on the lights in her firm’s reception area and walked past the empty secretaries’ desks. The printers and fax machines had been turned off, as had the associates’ office lights, and Bennie could see from the brushed nap of the carpet that the cleaning ladies had come and gone. It was good to know that her law firm took care of itself, because right now she couldn’t take care of another thing.

She entered her office and sat down at her desk. Her business correspondence was covered by a pile of sympathy cards in shades of pink, lavender, and gray. The sight made her throat feel thick, and she set them aside without opening any. She didn’t want to feel sympathy right now. She didn’t want to feel anything.

Under the cards lay the letter to Judge Guthrie that Carrier had drafted, requesting a continuance. Bennie crumpled it up and pitched it into the waste can, shaking her head. Never had her decision-making been so screwy on a case. She shouldn’t have undertaken the representation in the first place. She had been wrong, terribly wrong, and she had to straighten it out.

Bennie punched a key on her computer and started drafting a motion, requesting that she be permitted to withdraw from the representation and also argued an alternative, as most lawyers did, for a postponement of a week because of a death in her family. She’d leave it with directions for Carrier to file ASAP and explain to the associates later why the boss had flip-flopped. After she finished the motion, she drafted and faxed letters to the two best criminal defense lawyers in Philly, offering them the Connolly representation. Both would jump at the chance to take on the high-profile matter.

But Bennie felt nothing like relief as she handed Connolly’s fate to another.

Almost as soon as Bennie opened the front door to her house, Grady swept her into his arms. He had clearly waited up for her, still dressed in his work clothes, a rumpled white oxford shirt and wrinkled suit pants. “Jeez, babe, I’m so sorry,” he said softly. “I’ve been trying to reach you everywhere. Are you okay?”

“I guess,” she said, though the words sounded hoarse, even to her. She remained in his embrace only reluctantly, not so much because she didn’t want to be held by him, but because she didn’t want to be held at all. “I think things are pretty much under control now.”

“I should have been there. I’m so sorry.” Grady squeezed her tighter and she could hear him groan. “I was in a meeting over this stupid merger. I didn’t get to make any calls and I didn’t get your message until late.”

“It’s okay, there wasn’t anything you could do anyway. I picked out what I had to, and Hattie was with her, at the end.” Bennie squirmed in Grady’s arms but he held fast.

“It’s good Hattie was there.”

“Yes,” Bennie said, having suddenly run out of conversation. She didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want to be touched. She wanted only to go upstairs, lie down, and feel miserable. Maybe treat herself to another good, long cry. “Can I go now?” she blurted out, and Grady laughed abruptly and released her.

“Sure, honey, I’m sorry.”

“I’m just tired. I need to lie down.” She felt a nudge against her leg and looked down at the golden retriever leaning into her, his tail down. Bear’s body warmed her thigh, and she scratched the flyaway hair behind his ear. “Dogs are good,” she said, her voice thick.

“Let’s go upstairs. I’ll tuck you in.”

“I can tuck myself in.”

“Whether you know it or not, you need me now. I’m taking you upstairs and putting you to bed. Understand?”

Bennie smiled, though somehow even that hurt. “Okay,” she said, and permitted herself to be led upstairs to bed and tucked in like a very small girl.

43

Early next morning, Judy stood in the sunny conference room and read the faxed order again and again, as if that would change the result: “IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the Defense Counsel’s Motion for Withdrawal and, In the Alternative, for a Postponement is hereby DENIED.” “I don’t get this,” Judy said. “How could he deny it?”

“Guthrie denied our motion, in its entirety? No withdrawal? Not even a continuance?” Mary, standing next to her, flipped over the top page of the order. “There’s not even an opinion. There’s no explanation at all.”

“He doesn’t have to explain anything, he’s a judge.”

“This is a sin. Bennie can’t possibly work this case. Her mother just died, for God’s sake. He can’t give her a week off, even three days?”

Judy shook her head. “I guess he’s figuring that she got the standard three days, if you count from Thursday. That would be Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Jury selection is set for this Monday, with opening arguments right afterwards.”

“Can we file an appeal?”

Judy looked over. “No, whiz. It’s an interlocutory order, not appealable until the case is over.”

“I knew that. It was a trick question.”

Judy smiled, thinking. “I suppose we could file some kind of emergency order or maybe a petition for misconduct, but that wouldn’t help. The Superior Court wouldn’t intervene on an emergency basis for something within a judge’s discretion. Even if we filed a misconduct petition, the only remedy is a reprimand.”

“I knew that, too.”

“What did you know?”

“What you said.”

Judy smiled, then it faded quickly. “I hate to bother Bennie with this. Do I have to call her at home?”

“Of course. We have no choice. She can work at home if we feed her the information we have.” Mary gestured at the papers on the conference table. “I found out Burden’s still out of the country, I can write her a memo. I can dictate my notes on the neighborhood survey and send her a copy by messenger. Then I could draft a cross-examination of the Commonwealth witnesses.”

“That should help.”

“I’m a fountain of helpfulness. What are you going to do?”

“Correct your work, as always,” Judy said, and reached for the phone to call Bennie.

At home, Bennie sat on the edge of the bed in her white terrycloth bathrobe, holding the phone after the associate briefed her fully and hung up. Bennie couldn’t think of a single judge who would have denied that request, at least for the postponement, and it was out of character for the well-bred Harrison Guthrie. Stunned, she held the telephone receiver in midair, and Grady plucked it from her hand and placed it on the cradle.

“Why did he deny it?” Grady asked. He was dressed in jeans and a gray T-shirt, and he’d gotten up early, brewed fresh coffee, and made French toast that Bennie hadn’t touched.

“We don’t know. There was no opinion, just the order.”

“He denied the postponement, too? What could he be thinking?”

“God knows.” Bennie shook her head. Her temples throbbed and her eyes felt dry and sticky. She sagged with exhaustion after a sleepless night. Bear trotted over, setting his large head on her thigh, and she scratched it idly. “Maybe my motion wasn’t good enough. Maybe I should have found a case, some precedent.”

“No.” Grady folded his arms. “That wouldn’t make the difference. He’s on solid grounds legally, but as a matter of custom, you think at least he’d give you a postponement. It’s common decency.”

“Maybe it was the press coverage. Maybe he wants it over with.”

“That can’t be it. This decision will cause more criticism, won’t it? When it gets out that your mother has passed and he wouldn’t even grant a week’s extension? Hell, everybody’s got a mother. Guthrie’s got to run for reelection some day.”

“He’s getting on, maybe he’s not worried about reelection,” Bennie said, but even as she spoke she knew it didn’t make sense. All judges worried about reelection, if not their reputation. “It’s like he’s hell-bent on screwing me.”

“That’s possible. You’re not the most popular lawyer in town, except with me.”

“Wait a minute,” Bennie said, her brain waking up suddenly. Maybe it was personal, but maybe it wasn’t directed at her. What had Connolly said, that first day they met? I think the judge is in on it, too. “Maybe Judge Guthrie is in on it.”

“In on what?”

“A conspiracy against Connolly.”

“A what?”

“Think about it, Grady. Who gets hurt most by this decision? Connolly.” Bennie’s thoughts cleared like fog. It all fell into place. “I’m sitting here, all wrapped up in myself, but it’s Connolly’s life on the line. With this ruling, she gets stuck with a lawyer who doesn’t have the time or the energy to prepare for trial. What does that do to her chance of winning?”

“But a conspiracy, involving Guthrie?”

“It’s not impossible. Somebody’s taking aim, and I’m not the target, she is. Think back. First, somebody leaks to the press that Connolly’s my twin. Second, somebody at the bar association starts screwing with my license. Third, I don’t get the extension the first time I apply, even though it was reasonable. Now I don’t get an extension even after my mother passes. It stinks, Grady, and it goes all the way up to Judge Guthrie.”

“Bennie.” Grady grabbed a chair, yanked it across the plywood subfloor toward the bed, and sat down. “Listen to yourself. You’re saying that a Common Pleas Court judge is plotting against a criminal defendant. How likely is that?”

“It’s possible,” Bennie said, alert for the first time in what seemed like years. “Guthrie got his judgeship because of Henry Burden. Burden was the D.A. and knows everybody in law enforcement. Connolly says the cops framed her for this, and the police response to the scene-the timing-is suspicious. Even if Connolly was selling drugs-”

“Connolly was selling drugs?” Grady interrupted, and Bennie realized she hadn’t told him that.

“Grady, assume the cops killed Della Porta and framed Connolly for it, why can’t a judge be involved, too? You never heard of judicial corruption? On the Common Pleas Court bench? Please. Years ago the roofers were paying cash for cases, Grady. Cash.”

“Connolly is a liar. She’s lying about being framed and she’s lying about being your twin. Now you’re telling me she’s a drug dealer? She’s manipulating-”

“We don’t know she lied about any of that, Grady. She agreed to the DNA test, did I tell you that? We both gave blood yesterday. Or the day before that.” Bennie rubbed her eyes. Her mother’s death had chased every other thought from her head.

“No, you didn’t tell me, but don’t infer so much from the fact she agreed.”

“Why not? You’d infer an awful lot if she refused. So would I.”

Grady cocked his head. “She could have agreed to string you along. Or maybe she believes she’s your twin. Who knows?”

Bennie sighed, exasperated and confused. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but something was definitely fishy about Judge Guthrie’s order. She sprang up from the bed, jolting the golden retriever from her lap. “I have to get dressed.”

“What? Why?” Grady asked, startled. “You going to work?”

“Not exactly,” she answered, and hurried to shower.

44

“My goodness! Ms. Rosato, you, eh, don’t have an appointment, do you?” The judge’s aged receptionist looked startled behind her bifocals and double-checked the appointment book lying open on her desk. Her slim hand bore an Irish wedding band, and Bennie could smell her lemony hand lotion from across the desk.

“This is an impromptu visit. Judge Guthrie wasn’t in his courtroom, so I assume he’s in chambers.”

“Why, yes, but one can’t simply visit Judge Guthrie.”

“Oh, he’ll be thrilled to see me.” Bennie winked, and the secretary rose to her feet, waving a hand.

“Please, no. You can’t go in there. The judge is working.”

“So am I,” Bennie said. She strode to the office door, knocked briefly, and opened it. The judge’s chambers were decorated in Shaker style, and antique cherry furniture circled an elegant silk Oriental in front of a large mahogany desk. Certificates blanketed the paneled walls, and ginger lamps lent an understated glow to casebooks and legal treatises that filled cherry bookcases. Judge Guthrie stood across the carpet reading a chubby United States reporter; its stiff, ivory pages open in a fan. He peered over his tortoiseshell reading glasses at the intrusion.

“Ms. Rosato,” he said, turning from the bank of cream-colored volumes. The judge made a frail, stooped figure without his judicial robes. “Please accept my condolences in the death of your mother.”

“I got them this morning. ‘It is hereby ordered,’ I think it said.”

“Ah, quite. I thought you might be disappointed.”

“That, too. Puzzled is more apt, Your Honor.”

“Ms. Rosato, please call me Judge. Lawyers who barge into my office always call me Judge.”

Bennie couldn’t find her smile. “I need to know why you didn’t grant my motion, Judge. I should have been able to withdraw, especially in these circumstances. I can’t represent the defendant anymore. I’m too close to her, too emotionally involved, and with my mother-”

“I can understand your predicament,” Judge Guthrie said, his voice calm even as the door behind Bennie opened and his secretary peeked in worriedly, with a male law clerk cowering behind her.

“Judge,” the secretary interrupted, in a tremulous voice, “I telephoned the sheriffs, and they’re on their way.” She glanced at Bennie, who thought she read a twinge of regret behind her bifocals, but the judge only laughed.

“Call off the dogs, Millie. Get back to work, Ronald. I can handle Ms. Rosato on my own. She’s not the first lawyer unhappy with one of my rulings and she’s not quite so terrifying as she thinks.”

“Yes, Judge.” The secretary nodded, withdrawing and closing the door after her.

Judge Guthrie cleared his throat. “I anticipated your displeasure with my order. It wasn’t an easy decision, given my sympathy for your recent loss, and we do have history, you and I, don’t we?”

“Yes, we do.”

“I’m fond of you, Ms. Rosato. I tell you that directly. However, I had to deny your motion to withdraw. Recall that I granted your earlier motion to step in as defendant’s counsel. Less than a week later, you move to step out. I can’t sanction that sort of conduct. It would create havoc, not only with my calendar but with the rights of criminal defendants.”

“But, Judge, you read the papers. Surely you’ve seen that there are extenuating circumstances in this case. I admit it, I was wrong. I shouldn’t have gotten involved in the first place.”

“You mean the ‘twin murder case.’ I would prefer to avoid tabloid journalism, though it’s impossible these days.” Judge Guthrie shook his head, his wispy white hair bright in the light of chambers. “No, it was imprudent of you to become involved in the Connolly matter. But you did, and that’s where we find ourselves. I don’t recall your asserting in your brief that the defendant wishes you to withdraw, do I?”

“No. She wants me to remain her counsel.”

“I assumed as much.” Judge Guthrie nodded. “I couldn’t very well grant that withdrawal motion then, now could I?”

Bennie swallowed. Ever since this case began, she’d been arguing the wrong side. Still. “But why no extension, Judge? It’s routine in the case of death in the immediate family. The trial hasn’t started yet. You know I’m right on the extension.”

Judge Guthrie stiffened. “I’m not in the habit of scheduling my cases around counsel’s availability. That’s the cart before the horse, my dear. I told you in open court we couldn’t have further delays in this matter, and we cannot. I have a breach-of-contracts matter scheduled for the following week with out-of-town counsel and that should take a full month. Now. You have my order.” Judge Guthrie snapped the casebook closed, and the soft thunk punctuated his sentence.

“I don’t believe that’s the real reason, Judge.”

“The real reason? My then, what’s the real reason, Ms. Rosato?”

Bennie hesitated. She was accustomed to busting cops, but judges were another matter entirely. “I believe there’s a police conspiracy against Alice Connolly and I think you’re a part of it. I think you’re protecting the police, in return for the old favor of getting you this judgeship. I think that’s why you gave Connolly’s defense to Henry Burden in the first place, so he’d sit on it. And how convenient that Burden is out of the country so nobody can question him.”

“My, that’s quite a theory.” Judge Guthrie smiled faintly and replaced the book. Only when it was completely ensconced did he turn and face Bennie. “Corrupt judges, corrupt police, corrupt lawyers. Who is behind all this, and why?”

Bennie found his reaction odd and noted he hadn’t denied her charge, even reflexively. “I don’t know yet, but it’s not who, it’s what, and the answer has to be money. It always is. I think a lot of people stand to make a lot of money if Connolly gets railroaded. They want Connolly to have a lawyer so preoccupied she can’t think straight or work hard. Which only makes me want to work harder, by the way.”

“I see. Well. If you suspect these terrible things, why don’t you go ahead and file a charge?” Judge Guthrie eased his glasses off his nose and cleaned them by blowing softly in one lens then the other, two shallow puffs of breath. “Why storm in here like gangbusters, to no result?”

Bennie paused. Strange. Was he making a suggestion? “I came to give you the benefit of the doubt.”

“Ah.” The judge held up a bony hand, from which his tortoiseshell glasses dangled. “You mean you have no proof. You have only your suspicion, unsubstantiated, and that’s what motivates you. You disagree with my order, so you charge into my office. You come without opposing counsel. You make scurrilous allegations. Lawyers lose their licenses for such conduct, you know.”

“They tried that already. It didn’t work.”

“You are in quite a state, aren’t you?” Judge Guthrie rolled out his leather desk chair and eased into it. His desk was dotted with gift gavels in malachite and crystal, anchored by a large porcelain lamp. Its light glinted on a lacquered set of brass scales, an award from the bar association. “I remember how I felt when my mother passed away. It fell to me to make the arrangements for my mother’s funeral. Yet I worked throughout, at the firm, for I had clients depending on me. It wasn’t a responsibility I took lightly, nor was the responsibility I bore my family. I never take my responsibilities lightly, whether they be to my clients or to my family.”

Bennie struggled to read between the lines. Was someone threatening him or his family? “I am looking out for my client, Judge. I believe she’s being set up for a crime she didn’t commit. I’m not about to let that happen. Neither should you.”

“My, my.” Judge Guthrie replaced his glasses as he gazed out his office window. The Criminal Justice Center was located on a side street in a city struggling to keep business from escaping to the suburbs. There was no view except for the shadowy windows of the vacant office building across the way. The judge seemed momentarily lost to Bennie, and she sensed that if he was involved in a conspiracy, he was being coerced.

“Who are you protecting, Judge? What do they have on you?”

“My, my, my,” Judge Guthrie said, tenting his fingers as he focused outside the window. “Grief is a funny thing. It plays tricks with the brain. It’s an emotional time for you, but you will have to set your emotions to the side. You’re at sixes and sevens, in a tizzy, owing to your terrible loss, but it is time for you to get along now. You have lots of work to do, Ms. Rosato, and very little time to do it in.”

Bennie sighed, torn. “Your Honor, if I’m going to try this case, I’m going to take your friends down. Don’t make me take you down with them.”

“I do hope you feel better, Ms. Rosato. I did send your mother some lovely flowers, you know. Lest you think me a wicked man.” Judge Guthrie swiveled to face Bennie and opened his hands slowly. “I am not a wicked man,” he repeated.

“We are what we do,” she said, and left the judge hiding behind his awards.

“Bennie, any comment on the ruling?” “Bennie, what do you think about Judge Guthrie’s decision?” “Will you appeal the judge’s decision, Ms. Rosato?”

Bennie barreled through the reporters at the courthouse and later outside her office building. They followed her from one place to the next, plaguing her with questions, jostling her, sticking videocams and tape machines in her face. She realized how much her world, at least her inner world, had slowed down since her mother died. She felt oddly like an invalid forced outside, into light and movement, and it disoriented her. She fended the press off with a jittery hand and prayed the cameras wouldn’t broadcast her anxiety.

“No comment,” she murmured as she pushed through the revolving door into her lobby and crossed to the elevator bank. The doors opened, and Bennie took the elevator to her floor. The reception area was as quiet as an oasis, except that everyone was staring at her. Bennie avoided all eyes but Marshall’s, sitting at the reception desk. “Any messages?” Bennie asked simply.

“Yes, sure,” Marshall said. She slipped a strand of hair behind a pierced ear, gathered the mail, and handed it over. “I’m so sorry-”

“Thanks,” Bennie said, accepting the work, if not the expression of sympathy. She had to block it out if she was going to be effective and she’d meant what she told Judge Guthrie. If somebody wanted her paralyzed, then her only response was to move faster. She tucked the papers under her arm and hurried to the conference room.

“Bennie, I’m sorry,” Judy said, her young face soft with sorrow, and Mary looked positively teary.

“I’m really-”

“Sorry,” Bennie supplied, then added, “I know. Thanks. But we’re all up shit’s creek if we don’t get back to work.” She tossed her papers on the conference room table, where they landed with a slap. “Tell me where we are in this case. I got your notes. Mary, you start with the details.”

Mary filled Bennie in on the dismal results of their neighborhood canvassing. When she finished she added, “And Lou’s still out there, so maybe he’ll find out something.”

“Maybe,” Bennie said, and turned to Judy. “Tell me about this drug thing. I got your message about Valencia. Connolly says she doesn’t know her and denies selling drugs.”

“I’m not surprised,” Judy said, and reiterated the details of what Ronnie Morales had told her. “I can go back to the gym to learn more, if you want. I’d like to try to meet some of the other wives, see what I can find out.”

“No, we’re in high gear now. You have to get the paperwork done. Jury instructions, motions in limine, questions for voir dire. It all has to be done right away, and whatever has to be filed has to get filed.” Bennie grabbed her papers. “I’m going to get my copy of the file and work at home for an hour or two before the viewing.”

“Tonight is the viewing?” Mary asked. “We’d like to go.”

“Thanks, but neither of you can come. We’ve got a defense to stage.”

Judy frowned. “But we’d like to. We can work afterwards.”

“No.” Bennie headed for the door. “If you’re there, you’re fired. Don’t file anything without my seeing it first. Fax it to me at home or send it by messenger. Call if you have any questions or need anything.”

“Sure,” Judy said, mystified, and Mary nodded as Bennie slipped out the door and hustled to her office to pack her briefcase.

45

Fleur-de-lis of ersatz gilt flocked the wallpaper and the room was long and narrow, almost a coffin itself. Sound from another wake traveled through the thin walls and the cheap nap of the rug betrayed that it was indoor-outdoor carpeting. Covella’s Funeral Home wasn’t the first tier of Italian funeral homes, where the mob wakes were held, but Bennie thought it suited. It was unpretentious and small, like her mother, and if it had bowling trophies displayed on a shelf in the back of the room, so be it. It didn’t matter to Bennie where she mourned her mother. She’d be mourning her the rest of her life.

Bennie sagged in an overstuffed chair in the front row between Hattie and Grady. Her head throbbed dully and her eyes were sore and dry. She was all cried out and hollow inside. The press thronged outside, but they’d been kept at bay by a ring of streetwise morticians. At least it remained quiet inside the funeral home.

Grady squeezed her hand, and Hattie sat on Bennie’s other side. Her yellow hair was the only bright spot on her; the dark skin around her eyes was swollen, and she wore a black pantsuit with short sleeves and a pointed collar that she kept tugging into place. The three of them-Grady, Bennie, and Hattie-constituted the sum total of her mother’s mourners, but Bennie shrugged off any shame about it. She’d been to political wakes, business wakes, and school-reunion wakes, all jam-packed with people who cared little for the body lying amid the flowers. This loss was greater, somehow undiluted, because it was just the three of them huddled together, their heads bent.

Bennie’s thoughts turned to Connolly and she felt pleased that Connolly wasn’t there. Even if Connolly was a blood relative, her presence would have been an insult to her mother’s memory, considering how little the death had affected her. Bennie shifted in the armchair and wondered if she should have tried to notify her father. Winslow wasn’t her mother’s husband, but he might have wanted to be here, if the saved note was any indication. Still, he could read the obituaries as well as anyone. Maybe he’d come, suddenly appear out of nowhere. How many times had Bennie wished that as a child? And how many times did it happen?

She didn’t bother to look for him and realized that she felt about him the way Connolly felt about her mother. He had missed her life, and whether or not it was his decision at the outset, he hadn’t tried to correct it. Hadn’t once tried to contact Bennie, so why should she bend over backward to contact him? How would she feel at his passing? Would she care as little as Connolly did at her mother’s?

Bennie’s feelings were jumbled, her thoughts disoriented. She sank into the chair, with Grady’s arm at her back. She felt so distant from him, from everyone, in willed isolation. She hadn’t invited anyone from the office to the wake or even her oldest friend, Sam Freminet. She didn’t want anyone to see her like this, or know her this way.

“Father Teobaldo is here,” said the funeral director, who materialized from nowhere. Behind him stood a slight Catholic priest, with a damp forehead, a long bony nose, and a face too gaunt for a young man.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Rosato,” he said, extending a slim hand and shaking hers. He eased into the seat beside Hattie, who introduced herself and shook his hand. “Pleased to meet you, too,” he said, and sounded to Bennie like he actually meant it.

“S’nice you took the time to come,” Hattie said, a hoarse lilt to her voice. She grew up in Georgia and like Grady, had an accent that surfaced when she was tired or upset. This evening she was both. “I know you didn’t know Missus Rosato. She wasn’t a well woman. She couldn’t get out to church.”

“That’s all right. I’m not here to judge her. God won’t judge her. He’ll welcome her.”

“I know he will, Father,” Hattie said, her voice sonorous. “Jesus loves all of us.”

Bennie looked away. She never had much use for religion and wasn’t about to start with the thought of her mother’s death being welcome to anyone, even God. Her gaze fell on the front of the room and she realized that she hadn’t once looked at the bier where her mother lay. It had been hard enough to see her, back at the hospital. Bennie made herself look at the front of the room and try to absorb it. An act of will, almost against her will.

It was easier to look first around the casket, rather than at the casket itself. White wrought iron sconces flanked her mother’s coffin, their light insignificant. Tacky flower arrangements ringed the front: pink-sprayed chrysanthemums and paint-covered daisies wrenched into the shape of hearts, banners, and, improbably, a horseshoe. Bennie had ordered dozens of long-stemmed white roses, but elegance and simplicity were apparently unheard of at a South Philly funeral. White satin sashes spanned the flower hearts, one reading Beloved Mother in handscript of Elmer’s glue and glitter, and the other saying Mom in crimson. Bennie decided to let it go. The flowers mattered as little as the bowling trophies. Her mother was gone.

She made herself look at the coffin and the vision wrenched her heart. A rose-colored light had been mounted inside the satin upholstery of the casket, bathing her mother’s face in a pink glow. Brownish foundation had been sponged onto her mother’s skin and her lips sealed in a matching pink lipstick. That bothered Bennie more than anything, the unnatural closing to her mother’s lips, and she wondered uneasily how it had been accomplished. She swallowed hard and bit back her tears. Her gaze traveled down her mother’s side. In one rigid hand had been placed a pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses. Bennie had no idea how the mortician had gotten the glasses; she’d forgotten that her mother had even worn glasses. Her mother had been so ill the past few months, she hadn’t been able to read.

“Excuse me,” said the funeral director, returning and leaning down to Bennie. His moussed hair was by now familiar, though he smelled tonight of lemon-lime Barbasol. “Should we begin, or wait for the other mourners?” he asked.

“Begin, please,” Bennie answered, testy. She had explained it to the man twice. Just the three of us, she had said, but still he’d set up the room with ten rows of folding chairs, as if the lack of mourners was somehow shameful. Coming from a tradition that actually paid mourners, it probably was.

“But there was another mourner. What happened to him?”

“What mourner?”

“A gentleman,” he said, raising a hand, and Bennie turned around. There was nothing there but the trophies, their fake gold angels elevating bowling balls like Communion wafers.

“Who was he?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t ask. He was here early, before you came. Before the reporters.”

“What did he look like?”

“An older gentlemen, with a tweed coat, I think.”

Bennie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It was Connolly’s description of Winslow. “What did he want? Did he say anything?”

“I gathered he wished to pay his respects. I suggested to him that the service wasn’t for several hours, but he said he knew that. He left flowers.”

“What flowers?” she asked, a lump in her throat, and the funeral director pointed toward the sprayed white carnations.

“I set them behind that last arrangement. They’re… different.”

“I want to see them,” Bennie said, rising. She went to the last arrangement and pushed it aside, then knelt down. In back of the stiff crysanthemum concoction sat a clear glass vase and from it sprung a fresh bouquet of leggy pink cosmos, white daisies, blush roses, and black-eyed Susans. At the fringe were pink snapdragons and foxglove with velvety purple pockets. She recognized the flowers. They were from Winslow’s garden. She bent down and cupped the blossoms in her hands.

“Bennie?” Grady said, appearing behind her, but she was breathing in the fresh perfume of the flowers. Her father had been here. He had brought her mother flowers. He had cared. He was real.

“Bennie?” Grady said again, but she was rising to her feet, without thinking. Her heart was pounding. Maybe he was still here. Maybe he hadn’t gone. She got up and hustled down the aisle of folding chairs to the back of the room and hurried out to the entrance hall. She didn’t know why, he was probably long gone, but she looked for him anyway.

It was dark, but reporters mobbed the sidewalk. One spotted her and pointed for his cameraman. Flashes popped in Bennie’s eyes; two, then a dozen. They seared like lasers into her brain and still she couldn’t stop searching, even though it was so hard to see. Maybe he was behind the crowd. Bennie stood there, her hands to the glass in the dark, and didn’t leave until Grady came to take her back inside,

After the wake, Bennie stopped at the office to pick up some papers, then walked home to clear her head while Grady dropped Hattie at her house. She had a defense to prepare and almost wanted to get to work. Let it occupy her thoughts and chase her emotions away.

Once home, she changed into jeans and a workshirt, padded into her home office, and got to work with her ritual props at her side: fresh coffee and a crinkly bag of M amp;M’s. Though her comfort foods were in place, she had little luck with her first task, drafting her opening argument. Her head hurt. She ached at the core. Still, she sat at the computer and willed herself to peck out the first sentence. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you see before you…

Each keystroke sounded in the empty room. The night was quiet, its stillness broken by intermittent police sirens. Bennie sipped coffee, curiously tasteless. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, before you…

No.

Good morning. Before you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, sits…

Suddenly Bennie heard the front door open and close downstairs, then the heavy clunk of shopping bags hitting the floor. It would be Grady, home from picking up some groceries. Bear leapt to alertness and skittered downstairs, toenails sliding on the bare floors, but Bennie didn’t feel quite as welcoming. She’d wanted the house to herself.

“Honey?” Grady called upstairs. “Ya home?”

“In my office,” she called back, but he had already reached the top of the stairs with the dog. He wore the clothes from the wake, but his print tie was loosened into a crooked V and his oxford shirt wrinkled.

“Hot as hell out there.” Grady walked to Bennie’s desk, leaned over, and gave her a dry kiss on the cheek. His eyes looked bleary behind his rimmed glasses and his gaze found the monitor. “Your opening?”

“Yep.”

“Can I help?”

“Not really.”

“I got fresh cream and a lifetime supply of M amp;M’s. Nothin’s too good for my girl.”

Bennie forced a smile, but her thoughts kept straying. Her mother. The purple foxglove. Then, Good morning. Before you, ladies and gentlemen…

“You want to talk? Cry some more?” Grady smiled with sympathy. “I got a shoulder. Two in fact. We can lie down together, take a break.”

“Thanks, but no. No time.”

“You want to talk about the case, then? Try your opening argument out on me?”

“No, I’m not there yet. Got to write it first.”

Grady pursed his lips. “Want fresh coffee?”

“Got some.” Bennie turned to the monitor. Good morning. Before you, ladies and… “Grady, I’m sorry, I have to concentrate.”

“Okay,” he said, giving her another peck on the cheek. “I’m outta here.”

Bennie stared at the screen as he left the room, the dog sashaying behind with his characteristic slip-slide. She couldn’t focus. Her coffee cooled as she found herself listening for Grady’s comings and goings around the house. She smelled the popping of frying chicken and anticipated the kitchen growing humid with boiling potatoes. Later he’d mash them with bacon. Grady was a terrific cook, particularly of Southern fare, and he was making one of Bennie’s favorite meals.

She heard the clink of dishes as he set the plywood table. She could almost taste the cold beer he’d undoubtedly uncap. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten anything. The aroma of sizzling bacon wafted up from the kitchen and into the hallway. It was driving her nuts.

Bennie closed the computer file. She had to get out of here. She had to go where she could be away from everyone. She had to concentrate on the case, on Connolly.

She knew just the place.

46

Surf Lenihan sat low inside the black bucket seat of the black TransAm. He wore a white polo shirt and jeans and tugged on a carton of strawberry milk. He’d parked down the street a safe distance from the house. Watching, in the dark.

Surf slugged another gulp of strawberry milk and felt good for the first time since the shit hit the fan. Maybe it was because he was finally doing something about the situation himself, instead of waiting for Citrone to get off his ass.

Surf was young and moving up in the department. He’d already started to network, just like in business, and was just beginning to know the right people. He wasn’t going to let Rosato fuck him up. He wasn’t going to let anybody fuck him up. He had too much ahead of him.

Surf kept an eye on the house. Red-brick, a dumpy three-story. You’d think she’d buy a nicer house with all the money she made off the department. Surf had followed Rosato home from work, tracking her at a distance in the car, which was his girl’s. The TransAm was more obvious than he would have liked, but at least it was black. It did the job.

As soon as Rosato had left her office building, Surf figured she was going home. He knew where that was. He’d looked up her address in the phone book and had almost beaten her here, slipping into a parking space and slinking low in his seat as she turned the corner, moving fast on foot. She was strong and not bad-lookin’ if you liked big girls. Surf didn’t. Her stems were okay, but her tits weren’t big enough. Plus, she was a lawyer. Who would want to fuck a lawyer? Later Surf got his answer-another lawyer. A tall, skinny dude with a flowered tie had gone inside the house after her. Pussy had a shopping bag, for fuck’s sake.

Surf peeked up at the second floor window. The light had gone on there a while ago but he couldn’t see in the window, the blinds were closed. He took a last slug of milk and stowed the empty carton in back of the seat. He’d wait for Rosato to come out, then choose his time. He’d do what he had to to stop her.

Wait. A light went on outside the house, to the right of the front door. Maybe it was on a timer. Surf stayed low in the driver’s seat. The front door of the house opened and closed. Rosato came out and walked down the stoop. She had a briefcase in one hand and a dog on a leash in the other. Nice pooch, but didn’t look like much of a watchdog. Good. Surf watched her walk up the street, alone, without the boyfriend. Better. Tonight would be the night. Now would be the time. He twisted on the ignition, pulled out of the space, and cruised up the street after her.

Surf slowed as he watched her get into a car, a big blue Ford, and when she took off, closed the gap enough to see the dog hanging out the back window. He wondered where Rosato was going-maybe back to the office, maybe she forgot something. With the dog? No. They passed the number street closest to the office.

The Ford ended up traveling down South Street. A tough break. South was clogged with traffic, as usual. The sidewalks were full of assholes. Couples out for a walk after dinner, frat boys on the make, chicks from South Philly with big hair. Too many goddamn citizens. Surf couldn’t do anything here. He braked sharply at the light and his gun slid from under the front seat. He edged it back with the heel of his boot.

Where was Rosato going? Surf realized he should have known, when they got there.

He parked at the corner of Trose Street, halfway down the block from Della Porta’s apartment, and watched as Rosato got out of the Ford with the dog and crossed the street to Della Porta’s building. Surf had been there many times, when they were in business with Della Porta. The street was skinny and dark. No streetlights. No one on the street. It was a go.

Surf palmed his gun, stuck it into the back of his jeans, and climbed out of the TransAm. He left the door open slightly so the noise didn’t tip off Rosato. She was at the front door of the building, fucking with keys. Her back was turned. The dog’s tail was wagging like crazy.

Surf quick-stepped across the street and had almost reached the stoop when Rosato unlocked the door. He could’ve pushed her inside and capped her there, but stopped himself. The light in the entrance hall was too bright. Fuck! Surf ducked behind a skinny tree near the curb. Rosato locked the door behind her. He watched her through the window as she went up the stairs.

Surf waited behind the tree until the light went on in Della Porta’s apartment. He lingered another minute, to be sure, then darted to the rowhouse and unscrewed the lightbulb over the front door. It flickered to black and the stoop was bathed in darkness. Surf crept back down the stoop and stationed himself in the shadows by the front door. He could be patient, if he had to. Citrone never appreciated that, he underestimated Surf.

So had Rosato.

47

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, before…

No.

Good morning. Before you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, sits…

Damn. It still wasn’t working. Bennie’s attention kept wandering, even in Connolly’s apartment. She felt exhausted, listless. She yawned and leaned back in Connolly’s chair, in the home office that was a replica of her own. Bear had come along, though that decision had proved predictably regrettable. The dog was scratching at the floor in the living room, bothering the bloodstain. The sound of his toenails broke Bennie’s already shaky concentration.

“Bear, no!” Bennie called out irritably, but the scratching didn’t stop. She tried to ignore it, but couldn’t. She felt bollixed up. Grady would say I told you so. He’d told her she was crazy to go to the apartment. Damn him. Bennie rested her chin in her hand, staring at the bright white screen of the monitor.

Bear was scratching again. Scritch, scritch, scratch.

“Bear, no! No!” Bennie shouted, but the scratching didn’t stop. The dog would destroy the floor. Bennie stood up, rolled back the chair, and stormed into the living room. Bear was tearing at the stain, his ears flopped forward and his back humped with effort. An unpleasant adrenal scent filled the air.

“Bear!” she yelled, but the dog couldn’t be distracted. She went over and yanked him back by the collar. The floorboards were scored with nailmarks, crosshatching over the blood. Still the dog pawed frantically at the floor, scraping and scratching to get back, and finally lunged from Bennie’s grasp. He attacked the stain, clawing the floor in a rhythmic motion, one paw after the other. She had never seen him do that before. What was it about the blood that got the dog so riled up? He had scratched it away and was destroying the floor’s finish. He wasn’t scratching at the blood anymore, he was almost digging like a dog in a yard. The retriever seemed to think something was under there. Maybe something was.

Bennie got up and went to the kitchen, looking for a tool. She pulled open a drawer and rummaged through the knives, serving forks, and wooden spoons. She grabbed a small knife and hurried back to the living room, where her co-counsel had succeeded in destroying the top floorboard.

“Good dog,” Bennie said, in a change of heart. She dropped into terrier position beside him, wedged the knife like a crowbar under the floorboard, and pulled it back. The floorboard bent up, offering more resistance than she expected from an old floor. Then she realized that the floorboard and the others next to it were slightly brighter than the rest of the floor. Newer. These boards had been cut and replaced, very carefully. Something was under there.

Bennie yanked with all her might and the floorboard splintered and snapped off. Bear leapt at the open hole and began pawing feverishly. Bennie worked beside him, driving the knife back into the floor, then prying off the rest of the floorboard until it came free. She dropped the knife and peered into the hole. Bear stood beside her, tail wagging with excitement. Nestled underneath the floorboards sat a package wrapped in brown paper.

Bennie reached into the hole for the package, wrenched it out with difficulty, and plunked it on her lap. It was a heavy square of brown paper crisscrossed with coarse white twine. The size of a suitcase but Bennie knew it didn’t contain suits. She tried to untie the string, then broke it when it wouldn’t give way. The package didn’t smell like anything and she wasn’t tempted to shake it. She ripped away the paper, almost afraid to learn what it contained. Peeking through the paper’s jagged tear was a stack of money.

My God. Bennie pulled out a packet fastened with a blue rubber band. It was a six-inch pack of one hundred dollar bills, about one hundred of them. $10,000. There were packs of fifties, twenties, and more hundreds; ten neat stacks across, three front to back, and the package four packs deep, wrinkled and soiled. Bennie was looking at about $500,000 in cash. Jesus. That kind of money, in cash, came only from one place. It even smelled dirty.

Drug money.

Bennie felt sick inside. She had suspected Della Porta was corrupt, and here was proof. And what Carrier had found out, that Connolly was dealing drugs with the boxers’ wives, had to be true. Connolly had played her, had probably been playing her from the beginning. Bennie’s heart felt like a stone wedged in hard ground. She shoved the money back into its hiding place, yanked the blanket chest over it, and tore out of the apartment.

48

Alice lingered at the door to her cell, standing away from the window in the dark. It was just before the last head count, at 12:00 midnight. The prison was silent and still; the radios and TVs had finally ceased their endless noise. Alice would have no problem with the guard, a little money went a long way with Dexter the Pecker. The problem in the house wasn’t the guards, it was the snitches. Lowlifes would do anything, even finger one of their own.

Alice watched as Dexter sauntered down the hall, right on time. The lights were off in the unit and only a small tensor light shone at the security desk near the unit door, where the other guard thumbed through a hunting catalog, waiting for his break. Regs required him to stay at the desk during the head count, but that didn’t mean he actually paid attention.

Dexter approached Alice’s cell, dipping his head to check each door on the way. There were five head counts a day in the house, including one at 3:00 A.M., but what they called last count was at midnight. It was the best time to execute step one of her plan.

The guard drew closer to Alice’s cell. She shifted in the shadows and double-checked that the screwdriver she’d boosted from the computer shop was still in place. It was. Dexter was only two doors away. Her cellie was in her bed, pretending to sleep. Alice wasn’t worried about the kid. She knew enough to keep her mouth shut.

Dexter was one door away, tilting his head toward the cell. Alice moved directly in front of her door. Dexter reached her door and coughed. At the same moment, he slipped his key inside the knob and extracted it smoothly. She shoved her hand in the door to keep it open, and he passed silently, moving on to check the next cell as if nothing had happened.

Alice stood motionless at her door, watching the other guard in the lamplight below. Through the open door she could hear Dexter’s footsteps as he walked along the concrete balcony, pausing at rhythmic intervals to check a cell door. Her hand began to throb in the heavy door but she didn’t open it wider. She didn’t want that hunter looking up at the wrong time.

Alice watched the other guard turn the pages, then close his catalog and look up expectantly. Dexter reached the last cell door on the tier, then walked down the wire steps to the floor of the unit, his electroplated badge catching the light of the lamp as he reached the security desk.

“Ready, Jake,” Dexter said, his voice faint, and the other guard left the unit. After he had gone, Dexter unlocked the unit door and yawned theatrically, the signal to Alice, then walked toward the outdoor area. As he stood in front of the window, his back to the unit, Alice slipped out the door of her cell, flattened her back against the cinderblock wall, and bolted. She sprinted in a crouch under the windows of the cells, hurried down the stairs in her sneakers, then darted out the unlocked door of the unit.

She was on her own. The hallway was quiet, dead-still, and dim. A line of low-wattage lights down the middle of the corridor lighted her path like a runway. She scooted along the wall, running a finger along the cinderblock, her heart pounding. Not with fear, with excitement. The guards’ break room was down the hall to the right, but nobody would come out now. Dexter had brokered the deal. Alice sprinted around the corner into the corridor that led to the computer room. She arrived at the door and stuck a finger into her sneaker for the key. She fished out the key, shoved it in the lock, and slipped inside, breathing hard.

The computer room was dark and empty, but Alice felt right at home. The monitors were lined up against the wall, their dustcovers sloppy, and the seats in a row in front of them. She’d have met Valencia in this room but for the security camera behind the curved mirror. She couldn’t fix everything. It was probably too dark for the camera to pick her up, but Alice wasn’t taking any chances.

She hurried through the lab to the adjoining storage room and let herself in with the same key. The room was full of dusty cardboard boxes that contained ancient 286 machines, castoffs that ended up here for a rehabilitation that would never happen, like the inmates. Sticking out were some Gateway boxes, with those stupid cow-spots in black and white. They were new computers that some rich bitch donated to make herself feel good, and Alice had been mickeying with the inventory to disappear them. She knew two guards who wanted them for their kids and was about to barter them when the Rosato thing happened.

Alice hunched behind the boxes. The plan was for the guard to let Valencia enter through the other door, off the hall, not the one off the computer room. Valencia would probably be worried, wondering why a meeting about her case had to be held in the dead of night, but she’d come anyway, like a sheep to the slaughter. The weak needed only an excuse. They agreed to their own death.

Suddenly the doorknob twisted open on the other side of the room. Alice edged out of sight, flattening against the boxes at the sound. Valencia would be shuffling through the door in the next second, and Alice knew exactly what she had to accomplish. Put her at ease, then kill her. Alice peeked around the box.

But the silhouette in the doorway wasn’t Valencia’s. The outlined shoulders were massive, the hands huge. The form was Leonia’s. Alice recovered from her surprise a second too late.

Leonia charged like a Brahma bull. Her heavy hand arced through the air and a homemade knife glinted in the light from the hallway. Alice grabbed Leonia’s wrist in midarc and squeezed. The two women wheeled around the room, crashing into cardboard boxes as they fought for the shank. Alice’s arms spasmed with effort. It wasn’t enough. Leonia threw her backward.

Alice fell against the boxes and slid down. Leonia was on her in a split second. The shank hovered above Alice’s chest. Her heart thundered. Adrenaline poured into her bloodstream. She forced herself to think. To act. “No!” she shouted, and kneed Leonia brutally in the pubic bone.

“Ugh,” Leonia grunted in pain and released her grip. Alice rolled to the side, whipped the screwdriver from her waistband, and whirled around.

“You bitch!” Leonia shouted, getting up, and Alice grabbed Leonia by the hair, wrenched her neck backward, and stabbed the sharp screwdriver into Leonia’s throat.

Leonia’s eyes flared wide in shock. Her mouth opened but no sound came out. Blood welled around the screw-driver. Leonia struggled to stand up, still alive.

“Shit,” Alice said. It was harder to kill somebody than most people realized, especially a bull like Leonia. Alice shoved the screwdriver deeper, wedging it into the soft tissue near the jugular. She couldn’t pull it out or she’d be covered with blood. Tough to explain to the prison laundry. Suddenly the door opened and Alice turned.

Valencia stood shocked in the doorway, and Alice knew instantly what to do. “Help me, for fuck’s sake!” she whispered, and Valencia stepped forward, already starting to whimper.

“Díos!” she said, more a cry than a word.

“Take her knife!” Alice ordered, and Valencia bent over and took the shank from a stricken Leonia and handed it to Alice.

“Thank you,” Alice said, taking the knife. “Now hold the screwdriver.”

“Hol’ what?” Valencia asked, horrified.

“The screwdriver! Now!” She grabbed Valencia’s hand and placed it on the screwdriver. Valencia turned her head away, like a kid at the dentist, which was convenient. Alice raised the knife and brought it down into Valencia’s chest, burying it deep.

Valencia emitted a baby’s squeak and collapsed to her knees, falling heavily to the floor. It was a solid hit. Alice stood over them both, panting hard, waiting until they’d bled enough. It had gone well. Two birds with one stone. It would look like a prison fight with the inmates killing each other. Alice even took the extra step of wrapping Leonia’s hand around the shank, just to be sure. Her tracks were covered. All the prints were right. The guards would stay quiet or they’d incriminate themselves.

Alice waited until she was sure they were dead, then left the room and slipped back into her cell with Dexter’s help. She undressed in the dark to the sound of her roommate’s bogus snoring and eased silently into the saggy bed. Later she’d deal with Shetrell, pay her a little visit. It was too risky to do right now, and Alice felt tired. She was fake-sleeping by the time the sirens went off much later, signaling that they’d found the bodies.

49

Surf was hiding by the entrance to Della Porta’s rowhouse when Rosato ran out like a bat out of hell, the dog bounding beside her to the Ford. Shit! She hadn’t turned out the light upstairs so he didn’t know she was coming. He’d missed his chance to get her in the entrance hall. Fuck! Rosato was running so fast he didn’t run after her. She would’ve made him easy, maybe screamed.

Surf stepped behind the tree as the Ford roared out of the space. Then he darted to the TransAm, climbed in, and twisted on the ignition. He stopped abruptly. Hold on a minute. What was going on? Rosato hadn’t been in a hurry to get to Della Porta’s but she was in a real big hurry to leave. Why?

Surf peered over the rumbling hood of the car at Della Porta’s apartment. Rosato had left the light on. What was she doing up there anyway? Why did she run out?

Surf switched off the ignition and got out of the TransAm.

50

Bennie pulled up, confused by the sight. It was the dead of night, but the prison was alive with activity. Light blasted through its slitted windows into the night and alarms screamed from the watchtowers. Vehicles of all sorts clogged the entrance: black cruisers from the Department of Corrections, white squad cars from the city cops, news vans with tall poles for microwave transmission, and three fire rescue trucks. What had happened? An escape? A fire? Bennie steered into the parking lot with an excited Bear running back and forth on the backseat.

A Philadelphia cop came toward her. “Back it out!” he shouted over the din, waving her off with a black Maglite.

Bennie stuck her head out the window. “My client’s in there. I have to see my client. Lawyers on trial have twenty-four-hour access.”

“Not tonight, lady.”

“What’s going on? Has there been a fire?” Fright gripped her stomach. As furious as she was at Connolly, she didn’t want anything to happen to her.

“I said, back it out, lady!” the cop shouted, but Bennie pulled beside the entrance, yanked up the emergency brake, and leapt from the car. “Hey, wait!” the cop bellowed after her, but she ran toward the hubbub. Her breath came in ragged bursts and she realized she was afraid. She didn’t know why, or how, but she was afraid. There could have been a fire. The rescue trucks. Or a fight, a riot. She raced toward the crowd of officials and reporters, then shoved her way to the entrance.

“Whoa, there,” said a tall prison guard, blocking the front door with another guard in a black shirt. “Nobody’s going in here tonight.”

“But my client, my twin, is in there,” Bennie heard herself say.

“Sorry. We have orders not to let anyone into the facility. Even family.”

“What? Why? At least give me some information. What’s going on? Is it a fire, a riot?”

“A problem,” the guard said, glancing at the other.

“What kind of problem? Come on, tell me. Jesus, it’s all over the news, right?” Bennie gestured at the news vans, and the guard softened reluctantly.

“Knife fight. Two women inmates killed.”

“No!” Bennie cried. “Who? Do you have names?”

“Next of kin ain’t been notified, right, Pete?” He looked at the other guard, who shook his head. “Can’t tell you nothin’ ’til then. It’s procedure.”

“Just tell me, was Alice Connolly killed?”

“Connolly?” The guard shook his head. “That’s not one of the names. You’re okay.”

Still the news struck Bennie like a deadweight. She couldn’t understand the dull pain at the core of her chest. She should have been relieved, but she wasn’t. A knife fight. Something felt very wrong. “Who was killed? Tell me.”

“That’s all we can tell you. You want to see your twin, call in the morning and arrange it with the warden. They’ll be in lockdown all night. Open for business as usual tomorrow morning.”

Bennie turned away without a word. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t see. Television klieg lights were everywhere. Sirens blared. Reporters yakked into microphones. Bennie’s gut torqued with emotion. It was hard to breathe. She found her way to the fringe of the crowd. She gulped cool air and regained her footing.

A double murder, the night before Connolly’s trial. The same night after she and Connolly had talked. Holy God. Bennie squinted up at the brick of the maximum security institution. Red, white, and blue lights flashed on its façade like a carnival. THE OPPORTUNITY TO CHANGE glinted in the kaleidoscope of colors, and she remembered the day she met Connolly.

And then Bennie knew. Deep within, the knowledge grew without notice or warning and spread beyond logic and rationality. Her bones told her, rattling with the news, then Bennie’s very heart confirmed it. Connolly had killed tonight. Bennie knew it, sure as she lived and breathed. Her mind reeled and she found herself caught behind a TV crew. White lights flashed on, and she slipped from the glare as she heard a cameraman say, “Okay, Jim, on in five, four, three, two, one.”

“Jim Carson reporting, this just in,” said an anchorman’s voice. “The dead in tonight’s fatal stabbing have been identified as Valencia Mendoza and Leonia Page. Prison officials are investigating how…”

Valencia Mendoza. Valencia. Bennie didn’t need the report to confirm what she already knew. Connolly had killed Valencia. Bennie had raised Valencia’s name and only hours later Valencia was killed.

Bennie spun on her heels, TV lights blinding her and sirens screaming through her brain. She stomed back through the crowd, keeping her head low to avoid being recognized, and charged to the main entrance, where the same two guards stood in front of the main door, regarding her wearily.

“I have to see Alice Connolly,” Bennie said, finding her voice.

“Told you, lady. They’re in lockdown.”

“She’s my client and she’s on trial on Monday. She has a right to consult with her attorney, a constitutional right.” Bennie wasn’t certain of the legalities but she wasn’t about to be stopped. “You won’t let me in, I want to see the warden now.”

“He’s busy.”

“You’re refusing to let a criminal defendant consult with her attorney? You want to be responsible for that?” Bennie’s fierce gaze flicked from one guard’s black name-plate to the other’s. “Officer Donaldson and Officer Machello. Those names will look good in the caption. You guys ever been sued for infringing the civil liberties of inmates? Depositions, trial, it’s a lot of fun. Costs a fortune, too, but you gentlemen probably have trust funds.”

“We got orders,” the guard said flatly. “It’s not our decision.”

“Then why are you deciding?” Bennie asked, and the guards exchanged looks.

Bennie had never met with Connolly in the secured “no-contact room,” but the warden had ordered it given the crisis. The room was smaller than the standard interview rooms, telescoped down to cell size, and a dense bulletproof window divided prisoner from lawyer, for the lawyer’s protection. Bennie gave the scratched plastic a sharp rap with her knuckles. Tonight it would protect the inmate from her lawyer.

The room smelled rank and its white cinderblock walls were scuffed. A metal grate with chipped white paint ran under the bulletproof panel, to allow voices to go through but not contraband or weapons. Bennie stood on her side of the room, waiting for Connolly to be brought up. She’d waited for over an hour already, but the time hadn’t cooled her off. Instead she grew only more horrified. Connolly was a killer, and on Monday Bennie would be defending her on a murder charge. The thought turned her stomach. She paced the tiny room behind the plastic chair bolted to the floor on her side of the window. She was trapped in this case, against everybody’s better judgment. Someday she hoped for better judgment of her own.

Bennie’s head snapped around as the guard unlocked the door on the inmate’s side of the no-contact room and let Connolly in. Then he closed the soundproof door and stood directly outside it. Inmates weren’t left unguarded for no-contact visits and especially not tonight. Bennie faced Connolly, who plunked down in her chair, her cuffed wrists slipping between her legs. She looked sleepy and less attractive than before, since her makeup had worn off. Or maybe because Bennie knew the truth about her.

“Now what?” Connolly said. The metal grate under the window drained the humanity from her tone, though Bennie was becoming convinced she had none anyway.

“Busy night up here, isn’t it?”

“Shit, yeah. Sirens. Assholes everywhere. Lockdown. They keep waking us up. I can’t get any rest.”

“The only ones who can are Valencia Mendoza and Leonia Page.”

Connolly blinked. “This is true.”

“That’s a good start. Let’s talk about what’s true.” Bennie sat down and glared through the plastic at Connolly. “You killed Valencia.”

“No.”

“You killed Leonia.”

“No.”

“Tell the truth.”

“I have.”

“I’m sick of your lying,” Bennie said through clenched teeth, and Connolly grinned crookedly.

“Nobody’s sicker than me.”

It took Bennie aback momentarily. “I found out Valencia was dealing for you and told you that the last time I saw you.”

“I’m not a dealer.”

“Yes, you are. You and Della Porta were in it together. I found your nest egg tonight. Half a million bucks under your living room floor. You killed Valencia to shut her up.”

Connolly’s head flopped to the side and she covered her eyes with her cuffed hands, but when she moved her hands to the side, she was grinning. “Peekaboo.”

“This isn’t a game. I asked you a question. You killed Valencia, didn’t you? And you killed Della Porta, too.”

“No,” Connolly said. “I didn’t kill Anthony, I told you that.”

“I don’t believe a word you say, not after this. You’re a liar, you’re a cheat. You sell drugs for money and you murder without remorse. You just stabbed two people to death and you’re pissed because we’re keeping you up.”

“I didn’t kill Anthony, I swear.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you back,” Connolly said evenly, then rose and pressed her face to the bulletproof glass. Her eyes loomed cold and furious, though her expression had hardly changed. “Get up. Stand up.”

“Why?”

“You want the truth, stand the fuck up.”

Bennie stood up and leaned close to the glass, almost eye-to-eye with the inmate who looked exactly like her. With their matching haircuts, tense and exhausted expressions, and lack of makeup, they could have been a single woman leaning close to a mirror. None of this was lost on Bennie, who fought to maintain emotional control.

“Fine,” Connolly said, “I lied before. I sold coke and rock for a living. Lyman Bullock, who I fucked silly, laundered the money and socked it where nobody will ever find it, for a very healthy cut. I had a good organization, with good workers, the boxers’ wives. I ran those girls like you run yours. Better.”

Bennie struggled to contain her thoughts, in tumult.

“I capped Valencia and that black bitch. You have to, doing what I do. It’s a cost of doing business.” Connolly’s gaze bored into Bennie. “But the truth is, I did not kill Anthony.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You should. That went down the way I told you. The cops did it, I swear to God. That’s the truth.”

“The cops? Why?”

“Money, of course. We started out in business with them, Anthony did, but I could see we could do better without them. They were deadweight, and we didn’t need them for distribution, we had the girls. So we went solo and started cuttin’ in on their action. We were gettin’ bigger and bigger, and they musta got wind of it. I think they killed Anthony because of it and set me up for the murder. Anthony always said they had friends in high places, but I have no way to prove it. That’s where you come in.”

“You expect me to prove it,” Bennie said, her mouth dry as bone.

“You’re goddamn right I do. You have to prove those shits did it. I didn’t kill Anthony, they did. It goes all the way to the top. The D.A., the judge. They’re all in on it. They have to be.”

Bennie’s head throbbed dully. That much of it rang true, after the way Judge Guthrie had acted in his office. But could it be true? Could Connolly be guilty of everything but Della Porta’s murder?

“Now you’re my lawyer, you can’t get out, and you have to prove me innocent.”

“Innocent is the last word I’d use.”

“Whatever. And while I’m spilling my guts, everything I told you about Winslow was true, except I made up that blood syndrome and the dream shit.” Connolly’s hands pressed against the glass. Her manacled wrists made her fingers look like the jointed legs of a wolf spider. “Fact is, I don’t know if I’m your twin and I don’t care. I don’t need a sister, I don’t need anybody. As soon as you get me off, I’m outta your life. Got it, sis?”

“Don’t ever call me that,” Bennie snapped, and withdrew from the divider.

51

Bennie spent the night driving around the city in the dark, with the dog asleep in the back. She didn’t know where she was headed; she had nowhere to go. She didn’t want to go home and she couldn’t bring herself to return to Connolly’s apartment. She didn’t belong anywhere anymore. She had lost herself.

At dawn she drove home and slipped into bed beside a deeply snoring Grady. The sound used to make Bennie smile, but tonight nothing could do that. She didn’t sleep, just lay there, and finally got up to work in her home office, since it was Saturday. Then she showered, dressed, and avoided her lover’s inquiries until it was time to go and bury her mother.

Bennie’s shoulders sagged in the smooth oak pew as she sat through the Mass at the Catholic church in her mother’s old neighborhood. The church was shabby and small; though neat and well kept, with brown marble arches and walls the color of cantaloupe. Red votive candles flickered in stepped rows to the right of the altar, before a statue of the Virgin Mary, which Hattie prayed to before the Mass began. Bennie didn’t bother, on the assumption that her previous prayers had been ignored. The facts spoke for themselves, as lawyers say.

Her mother’s casket remained in the aisle, draped in a white cloth, dignified except for the steel gurney peeking from under the cover. Bennie avoided looking to the left, and still couldn’t completely comprehend that her mother was gone, entertaining a child’s doubt that her mother was in fact in the coffin. Then she remembered: They’d held a brief service at the funeral home, where Bennie had said a final good-bye and lightly rubbed her mother’s hand. She hadn’t even minded that the hand felt cold, even hard, because it was the last time. Then she held Hattie when the funeral director asked them to leave the room, and Bennie knew that they were going to close the casket then and seal her mother inside. So of course her mother was in there. Of course.

Bennie chased the thoughts from her head as the Mass began, with heavy organ music and a lone tenor who sang “Ave Maria.” She had always regarded “Ave Maria” as the Church’s trump card at funerals, but resisted tears by concentrating on the goings-on at the altar. Two young girls were assisting at the ceremony, which Bennie noted as a political matter, and she chose not to focus on the words of the old priest. At the end of the Mass, the priest stepped from the altar, his white robes swaying, swinging a large ball of incense that trailed dark and pungent smoke. The smoke filled her nose and brought tears brimming to her eyes, as the priest said something about how her mother was surrendering her body and spirit to Jesus Christ. Bennie knew her mother had surrendered her body and spirit to something quite different, a long time ago, with no choice in the matter. And it wasn’t anything half as benevolent as Jesus Christ.

She tried to think back to before her mother’s illness had taken over, gradually at first, then completely. Bennie knew her mother had loved her long after she was well enough to say so, though she barely remembered her mother’s caring for her as a child. Bennie guessed her mother had performed the routine functions that mothers do every day, for there had been evidence of it. Bennie had won awards in elementary school, tiny pins like tie tacks that lay ignored in her jewelry box, for getting good grades and having good penmanship. She had stumbled across one of the tacks this morning, dressing for her mother’s funeral, and it jarred loose a single memory: her mother teaching her cursive writing at the kitchen table, a fleeting picture of the rounded circles and elongated loops of the Palmer method as they swooped above and below the dotted lines.

Like this, Benedetta, her mother would say. Loop the loop, like an airplane.

Sitting in the pew, Bennie found herself inferring her mother’s acts from the evidence, almost like exhibits in a trial. In school photos, Bennie’s hair was always in braids, which she loved, with matching barrettes at the ends. But Bennie didn’t braid her own hair at age six. Somebody had braided her hair every morning. Somebody must have matched those silly barrettes. It had to have been her mother, because there was no one else around. Her mother had done those simple things and undoubtedly more, even as she was struggling with the darkness overcoming her. She had been a mother. Bennie’s mother.

Suddenly pallbearers appeared from nowhere, genuflected in unison, all six of them, three on either side of the casket. Then they stood up and slid the drape from the casket with a discreet flourish, revealing a name engraved on a brass nameplate. CARMELLA ROSATO, it said, and Bennie wiped her eyes and forced herself to think of nothing but ordering that plate and being pleased that the funeral director had been able to obtain the one she wanted, in a modern font. The pallbearers walked the casket down the marble aisle, rolling it behind the priest and altar girls. Grady took Bennie’s arm and walked with her and Hattie behind the casket, through the smoke that lingered in the air like streaks of gray silt in the earth, burning Bennie’s eyes and heart.

After the Mass was over, Bennie sat in the back of the gray limo, sandwiched between a somber Grady and a weepy Hattie, and only then did function return briefly to her brain. She remembered her father and wondered if he’d be at the cemetery, then the thought vanished into the chilly swoosh of the limo’s robust air-conditioning. “Cold in here,” Bennie said, which gave her something to say and think about until they reached the cemetery. Grady held her hand loosely, his profile to the overwide window of the limo, the passing scenery distorted in the convex lenses of his wire-rims.

The three traveled wordlessly to the cemetery, passing through its wrought iron gates, and Bennie looked outside the window for the first time with any interest. Hattie merely grunted. To Hattie’s disapproval, Bennie had rejected the parish cemetery for a suburban memorial park. Hard to quarrel with a rolling lawn dappled with sunlight and a pond with Canada geese, which took leisurely flight, honking against a cloudless sky, as the limo cruised past. No stone angels, granite crucifixes, or mausoleums marred the natural view; the monuments were tastefully recessed, flush with the ground. Bennie knew her mother had never seen this much open land in her life, much less an actual Canada goose, yet something told Bennie her mother deserved to be here, among natural beauty. She was entitled to it, at least, in death.

The grave had been prepared as the limo pulled up, and mounds of rich, clay-veined earth lay heaped around a concrete vault. The entire affair had been set up under an incongruously cheery yellow canopy, which Bennie considered uprooting and shredding with her bare hands. One of the funeral directors waved to her with a gesture more appropriate to an airport runway, and Bennie was propelled toward him and given a single red rose. She stared at it in her hand, and it felt frosty from a florist’s refrigerator. Bennie flashed on her father’s fresh-cut cosmos and looked around reflexively. The memorial park was green and quiet. A warm breeze flickered through the distant trees. Winslow was nowhere in sight, and there were no monuments for him to hide behind. He had not come.

She thought it would matter, but it didn’t. She thought she’d want to see him, but she didn’t. She felt satisfied he wasn’t there, and neither was Connolly. After last night, Connolly’s presence would have profaned this place. In the end it was as it should be, as it had been in the beginning and throughout, just she and her mother, only the two of them, alone together.

Bennie stood beside the glossy casket, trying to stand up straight while the priest droned away, and when he was finished and it came time for her to place the red rose over the brass nameplate, she realized that there was no other person in the world she truly needed, except one. And, oddly, it was someone who could offer her nothing but her own needs, and somehow that had been enough.

CARMELLA ROSATO.

Who rested, finally, in peace.

52

“You dick! You little dick!” Star shoved the squirrelly dude against the alley wall. It was dark, but Star could see the asshole’s head bounce off the brick. “You little fucker!” Star shouted at him.

“No! Don’t kill me! Please, God!” The dude’s hands flew up to where his head got hit and he crumpled in half like a paper doll, falling to his knees on a pile of rotted wood and greasy drywall. The corner was filled with garbage spilling out of Hefty bags. “No, please. Star! It’s fixed, it’s fixed! It’s already fixed!”

“You fucked it up, asshole.” Star came at the man, grabbed him by his skanky-ass hair weave, and slammed his head back against the wall. The man screamed in agony. “You think you’re gonna get a second chance?”

“I said, we fixed it,” the dude whispered, his voice weak with pain. “It’s a done deal. T-Boy and me, it’s all square.”

“T-Boy? T-Boy?” Star tightened his grip on the hair weave and started to pull. “T-Boy was the one said he’d get it done. Said nothin’ would go wrong, remember? Well, somethin’ went wrong, real wrong! I can read the newspaper! You think I wouldn’t see? The fight is next week!”

“Wait. No. Please. Listen.” The little shit clawed at Star’s hands as he pulled the weave. “No, oh, no. Please. My plugs, that kills. Please!”

“Everything went wrong, didn’t it? Con’ly whacked your bitch, bitch.” Star kept yanking on the shit’s hair weave. The dude squirmed like a catfish so Star pulled harder. “Con’ly’s alive and your bitch is dead!”

“We’ll fix it, you’ll see. We’ll get her after the trial, inside or out.” The dude went up on tiptoe. His scalp stretched like salt water taffy.

“You gonna look like Don King, bro!” Star shouted, and felt the plugs start to come free in his hands. “How you gonna get to Con’ly in the fuckin’ courthouse?”

“Aah! Stop! No!” Tears rolled down the dude’s cheeks. “My hair! You’re pulling it out!”

“No shit, motherfucker!” Suddenly Star yanked with brute force and a fistful of hair came out. Bloody scalp, hair, and skin stuck to it like glue. “You and T-Boy get to Con’ly, motherfucker! Finish the job you fuckin’ started! I’ll call you and tell you ’xactly what you’re gonna do. You’ll do her and bring me proof!”

“God help me,” the man moaned. Blood bubbled out of his head and dripped over his forehead. He lost consciousness and slid down the brick wall.

“Don’t forget your wig-hat, mama,” Star said, and slammed the rat hair on the dude’s bloody head.

53

“Bennie, I’m real sorry about your mother,” Lou said, riding in the passenger seat of Bennie’s Ford, heading with her to Connolly’s apartment. She had called him at home after the funeral. She told him they had something important to do, despite the hour.

“Thanks. Sorry I called you so late.”

“Don’t matter. It was just me, with a beer and sunflower seeds in front of the Phillies game. They’re losing anyway.” Lou loosened his tie, looking suddenly uncomfortable in his navy-blue jacket and khaki slacks. “You sure you feel up to working?”

“I’m fine.” Bennie steered through Saturday-night traffic, heavy because of the suburbanites heading to the restaurants. They’d drive in from Paoli and other ritzy neighborhoods to gawk at the pierced nipples and purple haircuts. Take a look at the gritty city through the tinted window of a Jag. “Trial’s Monday.”

“But you just had the funeral-”

“I know that, Lou.”

“Gotcha,” he said, and looked over at Rosato, still dressed up in a black suit. Her eyes looked red, but they stayed straight ahead over the steering wheel. She had a job to do, she was doing it. The broad was tough, but Lou respected that. She’d make a good partner, in a way.

“The canvassing went bad, I hear?” Bennie asked.

“For the defense.”

“That’s what Mary said. I read her notes. DiNunzio’s a good lawyer, isn’t she?”

“Whiny, but okay.”

“She gave you a hard time?” Bennie smiled. “For that she gets a raise.”

“You know, if you weren’t having such a bad day, I’d make it worse.”

Bennie laughed, for the first time in years, it seemed. “So what else you doin’ for me?”

“I’m gonna finish canvassing around the block tomorrow.”

“That was my thought. Winchester Street, where the alley comes out. See if anybody saw the arrest. Anything.”

“I know.” Lou looked out the window at the mirror on his side of the Ford. A line of traffic crawled behind them like a caterpillar, and two cars back cruised a black TransAm. Lou had seen it behind them before, around the office. Funny it should be going down South Street, too. He kept an eye on it out of habit. Once a cop, always a cop. Lou couldn’t drive a highway without checking license plates, trying to pick out which car was stolen or had drugs in it. He kept his eyes on the TransAm. “I been thinking about your case, Rosato.”

“What do you think, champ?”

“I think Connolly killed a cop and she’s goin’ down for it.” Lou watched as a navy Town Car behind them peeled off to the right, leaving only a sky-blue BMW convertible between them and the black TransAm. The BMW was a nice little car, a two-seater. “The neighbors I met, they knew what they saw. They’re eyewitnesses, and she ran from the collar.”

“She was afraid of the cops. She had good reason.”

“Only bad guys are afraid of good guys.” Lou’s eyes stayed on the outside mirror. The BMW was sweet, and behind it he could almost make out the driver of the TransAm in the streetlights. A blond kid, good-looking. Lou remembered when he was that young. He owned a used Chevy Biscayne, two-tone, turquoise and white, with a push-button shift on the dash. They didn’t make cars like that anymore. Tanks.

“I agree. Connolly’s as bad as they come, badder than bad, but I don’t think she killed Della Porta. Too much else is going on. Too much I can’t explain.”

Lou didn’t say anything. He’d heard about the twin thing. He figured Rosato was getting manipulated by a con. She wasn’t the first lawyer; she wouldn’t be the last. Somebody like Rosato, she wanted to believe, inside. The Ford turned onto Tenth Street, and the blond kid in the TransAm turned, too. Keeping his distance, farther back than he had to. It was standard surveillance procedure, Lou recognized it instantly. “Take three right turns, Rosato,” he said quickly.

“What? That’s a circle.”

“Old cop trick. Humor me.”

Bennie blinked, but steered the Ford right at the next street. “We being followed?”

“Tell you in two right turns.”

She took a right and glanced in the rearview. A convertible sports car. Then a black TransAm. “The sports car?”

“The other,” Lou said, eyeing the TransAm as it followed them to the next corner and turned right. “It’s still on us.”

Bennie’s fingers tightened on the wheel as she coasted to the corner and took another right. The BMW stayed straight and so did the TransAm, behind it. Her mirror went clear. “They’re both gone,” she said, relieved.

“There you go. It was nothing. So why are we going to the crime scene?”

“You’re my investigator. You gotta investigate.” Bennie was choosing her words carefully. She was taking Lou to the apartment so he could find the money under the floor. She couldn’t testify about finding it because she was a lawyer, but Lou could. She didn’t want to corrupt his testimony, so she had to let him find the money on his own.

“You want me to investigate the crime scene, almost a year later?” Lou frowned. “Should be clean by now.”

“Should be.”

“Shouldn’t be anything there.”

“Shouldn’t be.”

“For this you got me in a tie? On a Sunday night? I’m shvitzing.”

“I’ll turn up the air.” Bennie racheted up the Ford’s air-conditioning and pretended she was paying attention to her driving, and Lou laughed softly.

“You’re a lousy liar, Rosato.”

“The worst in the bar association.”

“I wasn’t born yesterday.”

“I could tell, from all the wrinkles,” Bennie said, and turned onto Trose Street. She double-parked and Lou got out, checking for the TransAm. It wasn’t in sight. Kid was probably cruising for girls. Oh, to be young again, he thought, and followed Bennie to the rowhouse.

“So what do you want me to see?” Lou asked, once they were upstairs. His eyes narrowed as he entered the apartment and looked around, appraising it with a professional eye.

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Where am I supposed to see it?”

“Can’t tell you that either.” Bennie closed the door and leaned against it, getting her second wind. It felt almost good to be out with Lou. Doing something; not thinking about her mother. “That’s why you make the big bucks.”

“Ha.” Lou stepped into the center of the room. “Am I warm?”

“No. And I thought you were so smart.”

“No, just handsome.” Lou walked to the left side of the room, where the blanket chest was askew, the way Bennie had left it, to conceal the hole in the floor. “I’m getting warmer, aren’t I?”

“You tell me,” Bennie said. She felt a shiver of excitement as Lou bent over and slid the chest aside with an audible grunt. His testimony would be terrific at trial. He was so credible, so clearly loath to find evidence that pointed away from the accused cop killer. Bennie could only imagine the jury’s reaction when Lou testified about the money he found under the floor of a highly decorated detective. It would be enough evidence of illicit dealing to permit Bennie to prove that Della Porta was killed by competing drug dealers, whether they were police or not. Bennie suppressed her excitement.

“I think I’m getting warmer,” Lou called back as he squatted and pulled up the floorboards Bennie had replaced.

“It’s entirely possible.” Bennie remained at the door, keeping her distance. She wanted his testimony absolutely pure. “Not just another pretty face, are you?”

“Not me.” Lou tossed a strip of stained floorboard aside and it landed with a clatter. “Here we go.”

“Did you find anything?”

“I think so.”

“What is it?”

“A hole.”

“What’s in the hole?”

“Bupkes.”

“What?”

“It’s Yiddish. It means ‘nothing.’ ”

“I know what it means.” Bennie hurried to Lou’s side and stood stricken over the open floor. The hole in the floor was completely empty. The money was gone. Her mouth dropped open. “I left a package of money there. Five hundred thousand dollars, at least.”

“Five hundred grand?” Lou squinted, astonished, from his haunches. “Here? You gotta be kiddin’.”

“No, I found it. I swear.” Bennie’s thoughts raced ahead. What would she do without the money? She couldn’t prove police corruption at trial now, not without Connolly’s testimony, and there was no way she’d put Connolly on the stand. What would Bennie do for a defense?

“Rosato, you feelin’ okay?” Lou rose and brushed down his khakis, wrinkled at the knee like an elephant’s knees. “Your mom, and all. It’s a tough-”

“No. There was money there. I found it and then put it back.”

“When?” Lou asked, and Bennie told him the whole story, everything she knew and everything she had learned. Her defense was falling apart, and it was time to trust someone. Lou’s face fell into grim lines as she spoke, his expression changing from surprise to suspicion. When Bennie finished the account he said nothing, but walked to the wall and flicked off the light overhead, plunging them both into darkness.

“What are you doing?” she asked, as Lou crossed the living room to the window.

“Come here,” he said urgently, and Bennie joined him. A line of cars was parked at the curb on the other side of Trose Street, and she followed Lou’s finger to the one at the end.

A black TransAm.