Courting Trouble (29 page)

Anne wasn’t liking this at all. Gil gone crazy and still no Kevin. “What about Beth Dietz? Did the cops tell her?”

“Rafferty said he would and we’ll know for sure as soon as he calls back.”

Anne sighed, flopping into a chair across the glistening glass coffee table. “What do I do now? How do I defend Chipster? Do I defend Chipster at all? The man is a pig!”

“A slimebucket,” Judy said.

“A liar,” Mary added.

“A client,” Bennie said firmly, and Anne looked over.

“I’m having a déjà vu, Bennie. We had this conversation once already.”

“I guess we’ll keep having it until you understand it, Murphy. Your obligation as a lawyer is to represent your client fully and to the best of your ability. To say nothing false and to elicit nothing false. You have to be his advocate.”

“But he grabbed my stars!”

Bennie seemed unfazed. “I’ll try
Chipster
if you can’t fulfill your ethical obligation to your client. Gil Martin is still and ultimately a client of my law firm.”

“It was the earrings that drove him wild,” Judy added.

Bennie waved everybody into silence. “Murphy, you gonna defend him or do I take over?”

Anne hated the sound of it. It was no-win. “I’ll keep the bastard.”

“Then do it and do it well. Fact is, we really don’t know if Beth Dietz will go along with this scam or not. She may not.”

Anne nodded. “If they have a lousy marriage, she may not care if her husband gets ratted out. This lawsuit is her chance to get Gil back for breaking up with her, and she may not give it up.”

“Unless Dietz makes her,” Judy said somberly. “He may threaten her. We know he can be violent.”

Mary looked grave. “I wouldn’t like to be responsible for someone getting a beating. Especially her. She’s got enough problems now, with Kevin after her.”

Bennie frowned. “You wouldn’t be responsible. He would, and so would she. Beth Dietz gets no sympathy from me for staying with an abusive man. She’s suing my client, and however much of a jerk he may be, I’m on his side. I’m sworn to it, and he’s paying me for it.”

Anne snorted. “Didn’t you just throw him out of the office?”

“I draw the line. He hit on one of my associates. That is
not
happening on my watch. Keep your eye on the prize—the trial.”

Anne considered it. “So we really don’t know which way she’ll go.”

“Right,” Bennie answered. “You have to be ready for whatever they throw at you. Just like any good trial lawyer, you’ll have to think on your feet. You can do it. You have been for the past two days, and very well. With only one minor slip in judgment.”

Anne said it before Bennie did: “Matt.”

Everyone’s gaze went instantly to Anne, three pairs of intelligent eyes in various stages of makeup. Mary’s were full of understanding; Judy’s slightly amused. But Bennie’s had a clear-blue frankness that set Anne squirming. “You’re not seeing him tonight, I hope,” she said.

Oh, no.
Anne had to fish or cut bait. Matt had left two messages on her cell phone, asking her to stay with him. She had returned one, telling him to tell Beth about Kevin. Truly she wanted to crawl into his bed, wrap his long arms around her, and feel safe and protected. Could she admit to any of these feelings in front of everyone? Was it even their business? All of a sudden she had both girlfriends and a boyfriend. Mental note: Once you actually get a personal life, it’s hard to live it.

“I’m not seeing him tonight,” Anne said. It was the right thing to do. Or not to do. “I’m educable. Young, but educable.”

Bennie glowed. “An excellent decision, narrowly avoiding disbarment. You’re learning, girl.”

Anne took a bow. “But where can I spend the night? I mean, I can’t stay with you, Bennie. I have to get Mel out of there before your nose explodes. I guess I could find a hotel.”

“That wouldn’t be safe.” Mary got up from her chair with a new enthusiasm. “I know a great place to hide you. Our safe house!”

Bennie brightened, too. “An excellent idea! Why didn’t I think of it?”

Judy clapped, jumping to her feet. “Perfect!”

Anne was bewildered. “Where are we going? What safe house?”

“You’ll see,” Mary said. “But we can’t go dressed like this. We’ll be killed.”

That’s safe?
Anne thought, but Mary came over and took her by the hand.

I
t was dark by the time Anne and Mary reached the squat rowhouse somewhere in the redbrick warren that was South Philadelphia. They opened the screen door with its scrollwork D in weathered metal, and Vita and Mariano “Matty” DiNunzio flocked to them, hugging and kissing them, clucking and cooing like a pair of old city pigeons. Anne barely had time to set down the Xerox-paper box containing Mel in front of a worn couch. On the front windowsill sat a yellowed plastic figurine of the Virgin Mary, watching over the street from between two tiny, crossed flags, one American and one Italian.

“Come in, girls! Come in!” Mary’s father was saying. He grabbed Mary, hugged her like a Papa Bear, and rocked her back and forth, all at the same time. “Oh, I love my baby girl!” He was a short, bald, seventysomething-year-old in a white T-shirt, dark Bermuda shorts, and a black belt that was superfluous except that it matched his slip-on slippers. He smiled with joy as he held Mary, and his brown eyes melted like Hershey’s chocolate behind steel-rimmed bifocals. “Our baby’s home! Our girl! Look, Vita, our baby, she’s home!”

But Mary’s tiny mother had wrapped herself around Anne and was caressing her cheek with a papery hand that smelled vaguely of onions. “You are Anna?
Che bellissima!
Such a beautiful girl! More beautiful than your picture!” Mrs. DiNunzio was about her husband’s age, but an Italian accent flavored her English, so the word “picture” came out “pitch.” “
Madonna mia,
she has the face of an angel, Matty! Look at this one! The face of an angel!”

“Wow. Jeez. Thanks.” Anne’s spirits lifted instantly, her energy surged, and she couldn’t stop smiling. She even loved her new name. It was great to have people throw a party just because you walked in the door. Anne hadn’t felt this good in a long time, maybe twenty-eight years. Mental note: I want to be Italian.

“She’s such a beauty, it’s a sin! God bless!” Dense trifocals magnified Mrs. DiNunzio’s small, brown eyes, and her thinning, white hair had been teased into an elaborate coiffure and stuffed into a pink hairnet. Cotton strings from the hairnet straggled down her nape, and she wore a flowered housedress and a full-length flowered apron. But Anne wasn’t playing fashion police. She was too busy being hugged and breathing in a pleasant, if peculiar, combination of Spray-Net and sweet basil. Mrs. DiNunzio stopped stroking Anne’s cheek and stepped back from her, marveling. “You look like inna movies! Like actress inna movies or TV. Look, Matty, she—”

“She’s a beauty, all right!” Mr. DiNunzio agreed, hugging Mary. The DiNunzios talked over each other and nobody seemed to mind. “A princess, she looks like! We’ll take care of her. We’ll take care of them both!”

“Nobody’s gonna hurt you in my house!” Mrs. DiNunzio said, staring up at Anne with suddenly wet eyes. Mary had told her parents about Anne’s situation, and Mrs. DiNunzio was practically crying for her. For a split second, something else flickered in the older woman’s magnified eyes, then it disappeared. “God bless! You stay with us, everyting gonna be all right!” She squeezed Anne tight, trembling with a sympathy that seemed ironically to strengthen her frail frame.

“Thank you,” Anne said again, which was stupid, but Mrs. DiNunzio appeared not to hear. Her eyes had darkened abruptly, and fierce little wrinkles deepened her brow under the pink hairnet.

“You work also for
Benedetta Rosato
! That
witch
, she’s a no good!” Mrs. DiNunzio wagged a finger knotted at the knuckle. On the way over, Mary had told Anne that her mother had arthritis, from years of sewing lampshades in the basement of this very house, her childhood home. Mary’s father had been a tile setter. And they both hated Bennie. “So much trouble she makes! Guns! Crazy men! Benedetta Rosato, is her fault! She no take care of my Maria! Or you! She no—”

“Ma, please don’t start.” Mary emerged from the clinch with her father and looped an arm around her mother. “Let’s not get onto Bennie, right? Like I said on the phone, Anne can stay in my room, in Angie’s bed—”

“Okay, okay. Atsa no problem.” Mrs. DiNunzio patted Anne’s cheek, her anger vanishing as suddenly as a summer thunderstorm. “Is ready, the bed. Clean towels, clean sheets, all clean onna bed, everything ready for you. First we eat, then go to bed. Welcome, Anna!”

“Thank you.”
Time number four?
What else was there to say when people were so nice? “Did Mary tell you? I have a cat, too.”

“Okay, a cat! I like, a cat!” Mrs. DiNunzio peered behind Anne, and Mr. DiNunzio was already shuffling over to the box and opening the top flaps. Mel popped his head out with an unhappy meow, and everybody laughed. Mrs. DiNunzio clapped her hands, then clasped them together in delight. “
Madonna mia!
How pretty, the cat!”

“What a nice kittycat!” Mr. DiNunzio lifted Mel from the box, letting the cat’s back legs hang awkwardly until he finally gathered them up and cuddled Mel against his chest. “Vita, look, he’s a such nice cat.” Mel meowed, working the crowd with Love Cat, and Mr. DiNunzio beamed, his teeth denture-even. “See, Vita? He likes us.”

“He’s a nice cat, he likes it here!” Mrs. DiNunzio smiled, her head wobbling only slightly. “Welcome, Anna’s cat!”

Mr. DiNunzio kissed the top of Mel’s sleek head and looked over at Anne. “What’s his name?” Anne told him, but he frowned, wrinkling well past his forehead. For a minute, she thought he hadn’t heard her, but Mary had told her he was wearing his hearing aids nowadays. They sat snugly in his somewhat furry ears. “Mel?” he asked. “Is that a good name for a kittycat, Anna? I never heard of naming a kittycat a people name, like Joe. Or Dom.” His tone wasn’t critical, just honestly confused, and now, so was Anne.

“I didn’t name him. I got him with that name from the shelter.” Anne smiled. “It’s kind of a stupid name, now that I think about it.”

“How ’bout we call him ‘Anna’s cat,’ then?”

Anne laughed. She and Mel had evidently been rechristened. “You got it.”

“Come on, Vita. Let’s get Anna’s cat some milk,” Mr. DiNunzio shuffled out of the living room, holding Mel. “Come, girls. Anna. Come and get something to eat. Did you eat, Mare?”

“No, not yet. Feed us, Pop. We’ve been here five minutes already.” Mary hugged her mother out of the room. “Whatsa matter, Ma? You stop loving me?”

“Don’ be fresh!” her mother said, with a soft chuckle. She turned and grabbed Anne’s hand, and they passed through a darkened dining room and entered a small, bright kitchen, hot with brewing coffee and steaming tomato sauce. Mrs. DiNunzio made a beeline for the stove and began stirring the sauce with a split, wooden spoon, and Anne came up behind her.

“You need some help, Mrs. DiNunzio?” she asked, catching a whiff of the pot. The richness of cooked tomatoes and garlic made her realize how hungry she was. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten and she’d never had home-cooking like this. The tomato sauce was thickly red, with bumpy meatballs bobbing below the surface and hot sausage curling at the ends, churned up by the gentle stirring of the wooden spoon. Anne tried to guess the recipe but it had to be genetic.

“Sit, sit, Anna!” Mrs. DiNunzio waved her off with a spoon covered with steaming sauce, and Mary grabbed Anne by the arm.

“Don’t even think about helping, Anne. She’ll hit you with the nearest utensil. She’s very territorial, my mother. It’s
her
kitchen, right, Pop?”

“Right, baby doll. Soon as I do this, I sit down too.” Mr. DiNunzio had gone to a photo-covered refrigerator for a waxed carton of milk, which he poured into a saucer and set down on an ancient linoleum floor in front of Mel. The cat started lapping away. “Cats, my wife trusts me with. Everything else, she feeds. Go, sit, Anna.”

Anne was about to say thank you for the fifty-fifth time, but settled for “I give up,” as Mary sat both of them down at the table, of Formica with gold flecks. A heavy amber-glass fixture was suspended on a gold-electroplated chain over the table, white refaced cabinets ringed the small room, and faded photos of several popes, Frank Sinatra, and a colorized John F. Kennedy, hung on a wall. On a thumbtack was a church calendar with a huge picture of Jesus Christ, his hair brown ringlets against a cerulean-blue background, and his eyes heavenward. Mental note: Start worshiping something other than shoes.

“Anna, Maria. Is ready, the coffee.” Mrs. DiNunzio set the sauce-covered spoon on a saucer, then lowered the gas underneath the pot. She took a dented, stainless-steel coffeepot from the other burner and brought it to the table, where she poured it steaming into Anne’s cup, then Mary’s and her father’s, who was sitting catty-corner.

“Thanks, Mrs. DiNunzio. This looks awesome.” Anne sniffed the aroma curling from her chipped cup and tried to remember if she had ever seen coffee perked on a stove. It seemed like making fire with twigs. Everyone else took his coffee black, but Anne mixed in cream and sugar from the table, then sipped the mixture. It was hot as hell and even better than Starbucks. “Wow! This tastes great!” she said, in amazement.

“
Grazie!
Drink!” Mrs. DiNunzio went back to the stove, set the coffeepot, and returned to the table, easing into her seat. She didn’t touch her coffee, and her brown eyes had clouded with concern. “So, Anna, the police, they look for this man? He wants to hurt you?”

Mary shot Anne a let-me-handle-this glance. “Yes, Ma, but soon it will be all right. Don’t get all worried,” she said, but Mrs. DiNunzio ignored her, gazing at Anne with an intensity that couldn’t be chalked up to country of origin.

“I see trouble. You have trouble, Anna. Big trouble.” Mrs. DiNunzio leaned over in her chair and reached for Anne’s hand. “Your trouble, you tell me. I help you.”