I still couldn’t believe Kate would react so calmly, no woman would. At least I didn’t. “That’s all she said?”
He smiled. “What else was there to say? People are not chesspieces, they move unpredictably. I would never have guessed that Kate would understand this, but she has. She’s promised to stand by me, and she will. My next move was to invite Patricia’s lawyer, Mr. Julicher, to the house—he should arrive at any minute—and I intend to deal with him. Honestly. Justly. Face-to-face.”
“Stan Julicher? Here?”
“I’ll tell him the truth and ask him to back down. If my own wife has no cause for complaint, why should he?”
What? Fiske was making a bad move and ruining my own game. “Wait a minute. Julicher won’t let up.”
“Even after he’s made aware that he’s persecuting an innocent man?”
Talk about naive. “Come on, he’s a publicity hound! He couldn’t care less.”
Fiske’s mouth made a determined line and he folded his arms like a regent. “Then he’ll be made to understand whom he’s dealing with. He’ll understand if he doesn’t cease and desist this harassment in the media, I’ll make my next move. We’ll exchange pieces, I’ll take King for Pawn.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll file suit for libel and defamation. Julicher has gone far beyond any privilege to discuss this matter. I’ll join in suit every radio and television station on which he appeared, every newspaper that carried the words. Checkmate!”
“Fiske—”
“Don’t fret now. My initial strategy is to take the high road. I invited him here, with his women’s groups to boot. But no press, that was my stipulation. He agreed.”
I shook my head. Things were happening too fast. I didn’t know whether to go forward with my own plan or not. Then I remembered my father, and LeVonne. “Fiske, listen to me. I have something to tell you and Kate.”
“I’m right here,” said a clipped voice from the door. It was Kate, followed by Stan Julicher. “Look what the cat dragged in,” she said drolly, and showed Julicher to a wing chair. Then she perched on the arm of her club chair and lit a cigarette.
“Mr. Julicher, I don’t believe we’ve met,” Fiske said, extending a hand. “I am Fiske Hamilton. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Julicher shook it, glancing around at his elegant surroundings. “Good to meet you, sir.”
Fiske cleared his throat. “As I believe I mentioned, I called you here to discuss the Sullivan case as frankly and freely as possible.”
“Fiske,” Kate interrupted, “Rita said she has something to tell us.” She cocked her head toward me. “Don’t you, dear?”
An awkward moment. I didn’t want to tell them with Julicher here. “What I have to say is privileged, Kate.”
“Attorney-client privileged?” Fiske asked.
“Yes, of course.”
Fiske squared his shoulders. “But I have absolutely nothing to hide, Rita. I see no need for secrecy anymore. I’m about to tell Mr. Julicher the truth about Patricia and me. I am innocent of any other wrongdoing. So, please, speak as freely as if we were alone.”
Unthinkable. “Fiske, you’re still a murder suspect. Anything we say here is discoverable if you waive the privilege. Mr. Julicher, if he wanted, could testify—”
“I told you, so be it. Let it come out that I called Mr. Julicher here to clear my name. Let it come out that I met with him, man-to-man, to settle this thing once and for all.”
Julicher edged forward on his chair. “Anything I hear in this room stays in this room.”
I almost laughed. “Come on, Stan. You won’t tell the press as soon as you hit the driveway?”
His eyes went rounder. “I swear it.”
“Bullshit.” There was no reason to trust him. Then I remembered what my mentor Mack had said about publicity, and it gave me an idea. “Tell you what, Stan. You can tell the press everything you hear in this room, but not until Monday afternoon. And I’ll give you an interview about it, an exclusive interview. Imagine it, you interviewing me—former adversaries—on how we broke a murder case.”
Julicher almost fell off his chair. “An exclusive?”
“Yes, on the condition that you can’t breathe a word until I call you on Monday afternoon. If you do, I’ll deny the whole frigging thing. There’ll be egg all over your face.”
“Agreed.”
It would stick, I felt reasonably sure. I glanced at Fiske. Time to start play. “This conversation is confidential, then, to everyone but Paul.”
Smoke curled around Kate’s silver hair. “We haven’t seen Paul today,” she said. “Have you?”
Did she know about us or not? It didn’t matter anymore. “You’ll see him for Sunday brunch, as usual?”
Kate nodded. “Sure.”
“I can’t come, I have LeVonne’s funeral. Tell him about it, will you? I want him to know, see if he thinks it’s logical.” I had planned it this way. I didn’t know if I could bluff Paul, I didn’t want to try.
“Of course.”
“Good. Here’s my plan—”
“A plan?” Fiske said. “To do what?”
“To catch a killer, of course.”
So I took a deep breath and lied, lied, lied. Not too much detail, not too little. Just a single playing card, laid facedown, and a high bet. All the while, a poker face. Adrenaline surged into my veins and my nerves tingled with tension. As best I could tell, they bought the whole damn thing. It felt like the best bluff ever, for the highest stakes.
After all, I was betting my life.
26
By nightfall I was exhausted, but the game was on. I hated waiting until Monday, but I had no choice. Maybe it was better this way, the time would give the killer a chance to stew. Let him simmer and twist, wondering what my cards really were. Fear would seep in, imagination would dominate reality. If I read the killer right, he was a gutsy player. He would take one risk too many and lose it all. All I had to do was believe. I could do it at the card table and in the courtroom. Could I do it on Monday?
I was more scared than I wanted to admit.
I drove past my empty house but didn’t want to go in.
I checked the hospital, where my father was asleep, under the vigilant eyes of the Pep Boys.
I parked at the Four Seasons, but they had given my room and all the others to a dentists’ convention.
I stopped by the Italian Market, which smelled overripe on this humid night. Saturday was the Market’s busiest day, and the muggy air was dense with the fetid odor of rotted fruit and vegetables. The stalls were dark, closed up. A Mafia trash hauler screeched in the stillness. I pulled up in front of my father’s shop, closed since LeVonne’s murder. A residual strip of crime scene tape hung limply from the door. The neon pig flickered orange in the dark.
I went into the shop and quickly got what I needed, then locked the door again, leaving the closed sign rocking silently. I avoided thinking about how it used to be, with me sitting on the vinyl stool watching my father trim fat or LeVonne smiling silently, over his broomstick. I put my mind on cruise control, and the car as well.
When I finally cut the engine, I was only partly surprised where I ended up.
“You look like you need a drink,” Tobin said. He padded to the kitchen in his bare feet, DREXEL UNIVERSITY T-shirt, and gym shorts.
“Cold water would be fine,” I called after him, sinking into a black leather sofa. The living room was expensively furnished, with exposed brick walls and Japanese black-and-white photographs mounted gallery-style around the room. Legal pads and Xeroxed cases were spread in a semicircle on the maroon rug, next to a Rosti bowl full of candy. “You having M&M’s for dinner?”
“I’m out of Snickers.”
“You ever eat anything without sugar, Tobin?”
He returned with a Pilsner glass of beer and handed it to me. “No, I watch my diet. Especially when I’m working.”
“You were working?”
“I do that, you know.” He eased into a matching chair opposite me. “Drink your fake beer.”
I sipped the beer, which tasted bitter and cold. “It’s too young.”
He rolled his eyes.
“How come you’re alone?”
“I do that, too.”
“On a Saturday night?”
“Did you come here to give me shit or to say hello?”
I didn’t know why I came, in truth. “Both?”
He smiled. “You’re tired.”
I smoothed back my hair and wondered vaguely how bad I looked. “I am. I worked hard today.”
“Too hard to return my calls, I guess.”
“I haven’t been home.”
“I was worried about you. I called you all day. I felt like Lesley Gore. I even waited for the three rings.”
“What are you talking about?” I sipped the beer, and he watched me drink.
“The three rings? Didn’t your mother ever tell you to leave three rings when you got home?”
Let’s not get into it. “No.”
“So what happened? I heard you found the murder weapon. How’d you pull that off?”
“It’s a long story.”
“So tell me.” He leaned forward over his bare knees. “You’re alive, so I guess Richie Rich didn’t kill you.”
I didn’t want to get into that either. “Not yet.”
“You’re talkative tonight.”
I set the beer down. “I just don’t want to talk about Paul.”
He slipped back into the sofa. “What do you want to talk about? Work? Criminal procedure?”
“No.”
“Jujyfruits? Sno-caps? I like Baby Ruth, don’t you? I like New York in June, how about you?”
“No.”
“Then what do you want from me?”
An honest question. I thought of Fiske saying that the Queen took from a distance, by blindsiding. I didn’t want to be that kind of woman. But I didn’t know what kind of woman I wanted to be. “Tobin, I only know one thing for sure.”
“What?”
“I only know what I don’t want from you.”
“Which is?”
“I don’t want you to play any games with me.” Like Paul did.
“I never played games with you, or any woman.”
Sure. “I’ve seen you at office parties. It’s a different date each time.”
He looked stung. “So what if I’ve dated a little?”
“A little? You’re pushing forty.”
“Or a lot? I haven’t met the woman I want to commit to yet. How about you? You bring the same man to the parties, but you’re not committed to him either. So what’s the difference?”
There was none.
“I can’t hear you.” He laughed, cupping a hand to his ear.
I hated to admit it. “Not much, in that regard anyway.”
“In that regard! You know who you remind me of, more than anybody?”
“Cindy Crawford?”
“Me.”
Please.
“We’re alike, you and me,” he continued. “We have a lot in common.”
“We both have ponytails, that’s it.”
“Are you kidding? We have similar backgrounds, we grew up here. We work too hard, we like to laugh. We’re loners. And we’ve never been married, which doesn’t mean we can’t commit.”
Maybe.
“What?” he asked.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“I know. You have a bad habit. You think a lot of things you don’t say. You’re too internal. It all goes on inside your head.”
It took me aback. “Thanks a lot.”
“But it’s true. I watch you. I notice things.” He leaned over, closing the space between us. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re thinking. Right now.”
Fine. “I was thinking, maybe it does mean we can’t commit.”
He winced, but it softened into a smile. “Maybe it does. Want to find out?”
Gulp. “I don’t know.”
He touched my cheek gently.
“I’m not sure.”
He nodded. “That’s honest.”
“I don’t want to play any games with you, either.”
“You don’t have to. In fact, you shouldn’t, because I don’t like that.”
Women taking indirectly.
“Rita, spit it out.”
I remembered Patricia’s high-risk game, then what Paul had said, about poker being such a safe game. Patricia and me; how much were we alike, how much were we different? And my mother, too. “Don’t you like women who play games, Tobin? Women who like action? Don’t you find them exciting? Adventurous? The thrill of risk, all that?”
“No,” he said flatly.
“Tell me why.”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?”
“Not to me.”
He reached for my hand and took it in his. It felt warm, different. Not as refined as Paul’s, but still strong. “The way I see it, risk—real risk—is not playing any games at all. Real risk is you, coming here. Real risk is you and me.”
It made me edgy.
“If you really want to take a risk, then you have to start telling me what you’re thinking. You have to stop playing games.” He paused, tracing a bumpy vein on my hand with his forefinger. He was so close I could smell the summer heat on his brow. “I hope you can do that, because I would really like to try. With you.”
I listened to his words, heard the timbre of his voice near my ear, the slight roughness there. It was all new, this, and everything about him was new. The rules were different now, there was no game at all. I wanted to avoid the mistakes I’d made with Paul. I wanted to be different, too. So I did the first thing that came into my mind.
I leaned over and kissed him.
It turned out to be exactly the right thing.
And later, when we made love in his soft bed, that was all different, too. His smells, his sounds. I let him touch me, and take me, and I closed my eyes and took pleasure in him without pretending I was anywhere else, or in another time. I didn’t have to hide any doubts about him. I didn’t have to avoid any feelings of distrust or anger. Or pain, and fear.
In the end I cried a little, and he held me close and made me laugh. Tumbled me around, handled me. Then hoisted me up and onto him with both arms, steadying me. Held me fast to him with his hands at my hips, moving me, encouraging me. I took him freely then. Justly. Directly. And every time I tried to turn out the light, he stopped me.
But I like it that way, I told him.
Learn a new way, he said. He wouldn’t be denied.
So I learned about that, too.
27
I didn’t ask Tobin to come with me to LeVonne’s funeral because I didn’t know how, or even if, he’d fit into my life. Nor did I tell him about the plan I had set in motion for Monday. It was my thing with Cam, Herman, and Uncle Sal. They sat next to me in an oak pew toward the back, their gray heads bent during the service.
It was an overcast afternoon, muting the rich colors of the stained-glass windows. The church was spacious and dignified, but spare and dim. The only light was afforded by hanging brass fixtures, mounted too high to do much good. Oak beams braced the vaulted ceiling and there was a decorative carved arch over the altar. In front of the altar, elevated from the floor, was a coffin. In it lay a small, dark figure.
LeVonne.
He rested in a cushion of soft, ivory muslin, and his fine hands had been placed one over the other. He was dressed in a gray suit and black tie, with a white shirt that was too big in the collar. His lips were pressed together, as they had been so often in life, but without his eyes open, the warmth of human expression was gone from his features. As the service began, the funeral director draped a white cloth over his face. I don’t know why. It didn’t help any.
LeVonne’s grandmother wept in the front row, supported by her lady friends and a heavyset nurse in a white dress and starchy
cap. Only a handful of mourners were present, fanning themselves with cardboard paddles that advertised the funeral home. An uncle and two cousins were there, but no mother or father. There were neighbors, but only one or two boys from LeVonne’s class. His teacher said the turnout would have been better if he had passed during the school year, like a boy killed last month in crossfire between gangs. I told her I understood, but I didn’t.
I listened to the organ music playing softly and watched the women weeping, rocking, holding their right hands high in the warm air as the preacher gave the eulogy. He spoke in a subdued baritone about how LeVonne had attended church each week with his grandmother, although he’d been too “soft-spoken” to sing in the choir. The preacher talked about how LeVonne worked hard in school and at Popeye’s Fried Chicken, then how he got a job at the butcher shop, where he seemed to “find a home.” And how he loved Star Trek and Batman, though he always got stuck playing Robin.
At the end, the preacher told us to celebrate LeVonne’s life and to take comfort in his death. To believe LeVonne’s death happened for a reason only God could know. And when he said that, I stopped crying and wiped my eyes. I knew better, you see.
I knew the reason for LeVonne’s death, and it had nothing to do with a divine plan. It was a matter of ballistics and bullet markings and soft tissue. It wasn’t about faith, it was about science. It was knowable, and proven. LeVonne died because a man fired a bullet into his heart, and this man had been promised money by another man to do so. And ultimately, the reason for LeVonne’s death traced back not to my father, for whom LeVonne had given his life, but to me. I was the reason LeVonne was at the front of the church, under a bower of small white roses.
And though I couldn’t bring him back or change any of that, I could take responsibility for it. I could set it right.
And I would. Tomorrow, at noon.
28
City Hall is a massive Victorian building hewn of white marble, with a slate mansard roof and dormers. Built in the center of the grid that is Philadelphia, it contains eight floors of courtrooms and administrative offices that wrap around an enclosed courtyard.