Daddy's Girl (13 page)

Bzzz
. “Okay.” Hank steered the brush onto his top teeth, holding it in place for ten seconds, which she knew he counted off in his head. For a messy guy, Hank Ballisteri took his dental health very seriously.

“It does seem like there’s a cover-up at the prison, and we may follow up on that legally.”

Bzzzz
. Hank nodded. Four, five, six.

“You know there’s nothing going on between me and Angus. I work with him, and that’s all. The accident wasn’t his fault, obviously. If it
was
an accident.”

“What?” Hank lowered the toothbrush at eight, his mouth foamy with greenish gel. “What do you mean if it
was
an accident?”

Oops
. “I don’t know, exactly.” Nat wasn’t sure yet, and it was late. “It does seem odd that I get a threat not to go to Chester County, then the next time I go to Chester County, I get in a car accident.”

“You got hit in Philadelphia County, and of course it was an accident. That driver was drunk. Your dad would find him by dawn if the cops gave him the plate number.”

“They’re not going to give it to him. It’s police business.”

“If it’s about you, it’s his business.”

“Honestly, no, it’s not,” Nat said, more emphatically than necessary. But that was the whole damn point. “If it’s anybody’s business, it’s my business.”

“Your father is crazy about you. You’re his little girl. You should be grateful he goes to the mat for you.” Hank frowned. “My dad couldn’t be bothered. You don’t know how lucky you are.”

Grrr
. “I need you to understand this. I love my family, but sometimes I get enough Greco. Don’t you?”

“What? You are a Greco.”

“I mean those Grecos. Don’t you ever get tired of being with them? All together, all the time?”

“No.” Hank switched the brush back on and started buzzing. One, two, three.

“But I’m thirty.”

“What does that mean?”
Bzzz
.

“It means I’m glad you’re so close to them, but…” Nat faltered. She used to love the way Hank had embraced her family, and vice versa. He had been her admission ticket into her own house, and with him, they accepted her in a way they hadn’t before. But now she couldn’t pull Hank and her family apart, nor could she make him understand why she’d want to. Bewilderment troubled his usually smooth brow.

“What am I supposed to do, Nat? Blow off your father, your brothers? Quit my job? They’re my business partners. My friends. I love them.”

“I love them, too.”

“Do you?”

“Of course I do.”

“You don’t get sick of people you love.”

“Yes, you do.” Nat felt that knot in her chest tighten, and Hank turned away, switching off the brush and reapplying toothpaste.
Bzzzzzz.
One, two, three.

“What’s important here is you and me. I’m sorry if you felt embarrassed that I hadn’t told you I’d be going to the prison, and I don’t have anything to hide. There’s nothing going on between me and Angus.”

“I know that.” Hank spat into the sink, turned on the water, then moved onto his bicuspids. Five, six. “I still think he’s a loser.”

Ouch
. “Why?”

“The beard? The ponytail? He’s a joke.”

Nat reached over and turned off the water.

“Why do you do that?” Hank frowned, buzzing his teeth. Seven, eight, nine. “You always do that when I brush.”

“Because you take a long time to brush your teeth, and it wastes water to run it while you’re brushing.”

“You’re worried about the water bill now?” Hank moved onto the next tooth and turned the water on again. “I’ll pay you.”

“That’s not the point. It’s the waste. It’s all the water we have on the planet.” Nat turned the faucet off, hard, and Hank looked down at her as if she were nuts.

“Babe, the
planet
, as you put it, is like, 99% water. We could never run out of water.”

“It’s still a shame to waste it. Don’t you care about anything bigger than yourself?”

“Fine.” Hank spat into the sink, switched off the toothbrush, and shoved it, unrinsed, into the plastic caddy. “I think that accident scrambled your brains.”

“Thanks.”

“Sorry, but you’ve been in a foul mood all night. At your folks’ house. Here.”

It was true, and Nat knew it. “Excuse me, but I was in a car accident.”

“How about I give you some time alone?” Hank asked. “Why don’t I go to my place tonight?”

Nat paused. She knew this routine by heart. They rarely fought, but when they did, it was simply separate and reconvene the next day, as if nothing had happened, at which point one or the other of them would say they had been tired, that’s all.

“Well, Nat? Your call. You want me to go?”

No. Yes. No. Yes.
“Okay, fine.”

“Good.” Hank brushed past her, banged around in the bedroom getting his clothes and sneakers, and trundled back into the hall half dressed. “Call you tomorrow,” he said as he left.

Nat heard the door close, with a new note of finality.

Y
ou wanted to see me?” Nat asked from the threshold of Vice Dean McConnell’s office. He’d left her a voicemail in the morning and she’d come straightaway, déjà vu all over again.

“Yes, please, do come in.” McConnell gestured to the chair she’d occupied last time, which Nat was starting to think of as hers. She sat down, brushed off her black wool dress, and crossed her legs in the black suede boots that added three inches to her height—and her confidence. She suddenly understood the appeal of cowboy boots.

“Thanks. Good to see you.”

“I’m so sorry about the accident that you and Angus were in. It’s been a difficult week for you. Both of you.” McConnell leaned back in his old-fashioned leather chair. The window behind him overlooked Sansom Street, busy with passersby hurrying to work on this cold, gusty morning. Wind blew through the brittle tree branches, threatening to snap them like dry wishbones. Or maybe it was just Nat’s state of mind. McConnell asked, “How is Angus? I haven’t heard from him since last night.”

“I’m not sure.” Nat felt unsettled. She didn’t like thinking of Angus in the hospital alone. “I called this morning, but there was no answer in his room, and they wouldn’t give me any info over the phone, since I’m not family.”

“He had some internal injuries, I understand.”

“Yes. We’ll know the extent today.”

“Well.” McConnell set some papers aside. “That’s not why I wanted to speak with you. I got a call from the warden about you and Angus. Apparently, you two made inappropriate inquiries to a corrections officer regarding prison operations.” McConnell consulted some handwritten notes on a legal pad. “A Tanisa Shields?”

“Huh? We didn’t make any inquiries of her.”

“So the warden is incorrect? There was no questioning?” McConnell frowned.

“We spoke, but it wasn’t a questioning. It was a conversation.”

“Nevertheless, she has been placed on suspension as a result.”

“She didn’t do anything wrong.” Nat felt terrible. She’d gotten Tanisa in trouble after all.

“You lack standing, Nat. We don’t operate the prison.”

“But she’s being punished for nothing.”

“You’re missing my point.” McConnell’s gaze hardened behind his bifocals. “The warden has requested that neither you nor Angus be permitted back into the prison, until further notice.”

“
What?
He can’t do that.” Nat took it like a blow, for Angus. “He teaches that class, and there are prisoners with active cases.”

“The warden has contacted Widener Law School, which agreed to take over the pending cases.”

“But Angus cares about those prisoners. His class. They know him. They love him there.”

“They’ll get to know another lawyer. Clients change representation all the time.” McConnell eased back in his chair, eyeing her as if from a great distance. He wore the same suit as yesterday, with a different rep tie. “May I speak personally to you?”

No
. “Yes.”

“It’s almost your tenureship year, Nat. We’ll begin meetings soon. Evaluations are being gathered as we speak.” McConnell hunched forward again. “I’ve read your articles on legal history and I’ve always thought of you as one of our finest young legal scholars. We value true scholarship on this faculty. We’re one of the best law schools in the country, and we made our reputation on the excellence of our academic credentials, not our clinical programs.”

Thank you?
Nat didn’t like getting props at Angus’s expense.

“I admit I didn’t appreciate your seminar the other day, the dressing up and such. It’s not my cup of tea. But I understand the need to be relevant. I’m not a relic.”

Uh, yes you are.

“All this running around, at a county prison.” McConnell sniffed. “This isn’t like you, Nat. Not at all.”

“Maybe I’m changing.”
Who said that?

“You may want to reconsider the wisdom of that, dear. Particularly at this juncture in your career.” McConnell smiled politely, and Nat got the message.

Stay outta Chester County.

“Let me tell you a story,” Nat began, standing on the stage before her seminar class. It was her third class of the day, but she felt amazingly energized, still jiggered up after her meeting with McConnell. She’d tried to reach Barb Saunders and Angus again, but no dice. For the time being, she set it aside.

“One day in January, 1962, a prisoner in a Florida jail sat down with a pencil and paper to write a letter. He was fifty-one years old, white, poor, self-educated, a drifter, and by all accounts, stubborn to a fault. He’d been convicted for breaking into the Bay Harbor Pool Room in Panama City, Florida, and stealing money from the cigarette machine and jukebox.”

Anderson tapped away on her laptop, as did Carling, Chu, Gupta and Wykoff.

“Wait a minute, stop typing.” Nat raised a palm. “Everybody stop typing and look up. It’s a story. Just listen.”

Anderson lifted her gaze, as did the others, one by one, reentering.

“Good. Thanks. As I was saying, the prisoner couldn’t afford a lawyer, so at the trial, he asked the judge to appoint one for him. The judge said no and told him that under the law, the poor were entitled to a lawyer only in capital cases or in exceptional circumstances. The judge was right, because that was the law at the time. So the prisoner defended himself at trial, making an array of mistakes, such as calling as his witness the very police officer who had arrested him. He was convicted and sentenced to five years.”

Wykoff frowned, and Chu blinked. Warren’s hand never strayed to her keyboard, for IM-ing.
Kewl
.

“But the prisoner studied law books in the prison library, and no matter how many times the inmate read the Sixth Amendment, he couldn’t square it with the judge’s refusal to give him a lawyer. So he wrote his own habeas petition to the Florida Supreme Court, which was denied, and then, undeterred, he handwrote a letter to the U.S. Supreme Court itself.”

Gupta and McIlhargey were paying attention, at least apparently.

“The Supreme Court took his case and, as was their custom, appointed him a lawyer, one who couldn’t have been more different from the prisoner. Abe Fortas was the quintessential Washington insider, a major partner in a prestigious law firm. He drove a Rolls Royce, and his hero was Justice Brandeis. Fortas would say of Brandeis, ‘He is an angry man—angry at injustice.’”

Bischoff and Warren were listening.

“Fortas got angry about injustice, too, and he argued the prisoner’s case before the Supreme Court. He argued that the Sixth Amendment requires that the indigent be appointed counsel in all state criminal trials. The prisoner and the lawyer were asking the Supreme Court to revolutionize the law of the land. And the Court answered yes.”

Nat spoke without notes because the case always hit home for her, though today she was powered by something extra. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

“In the end, the prisoner got justice. He received a new trial in the Florida court, and a lawyer was appointed to represent him. His lawyer discovered that the state’s star witness, the policeman, had himself been arrested for beating up and robbing another man outside the very same pool room. The prisoner was found innocent. His name was Clarence Earl Gideon. The case was
Gideon v. Wainwright
.”

Gupta and Anderson exchanged glances, and a slow smile spread across Chu’s face.

“In a November 13 letter to Abe Fortas, Gideon wrote, ‘I believe that each era finds an improvement in law, each year brings something new for the benefit of mankind. Maybe this will be one of those small steps forward.’” Nat paused. “Clarence Earl Gideon believed that a single person could change the world, if he had justice on his side. He made history, because he was
right
.”

The huge hall fell silent. The students remained looking at her. Nat had given this lecture for two years and had never gotten this response. It thrilled her, affirming her, the class, and Clarence Earl Gideon, all at once. In the next instant, she put her finger on that something extra.

And finally began to learn something she had been trying to teach.

S
tudents in peaked Tibetan hats, red-and-white-checked keffiyeh scarves, and multicolored hand-knit sweaters clogged Angus’s hospital room. They turned when Nat walked in, looking at her like she was the one dressed crazily, in confidence boots and a black Armani coat. Truth to tell, the coat was a little pretentious, but after losing her toggle coat and camelhair coat, Nat was down to her dress coat, reserved for funerals and foreign films.

Deidre lifted an untweezed eyebrow. “Hi, Professor Greco,” she said coolly, standing nearest the bed. All the other students parted deferentially.

“Natalie! You’re just in time for ice chips.” Angus craned his neck from his pillow in his hospital gown. He sported a new bandage and wasn’t on an IV any longer, but he still had the splint in the crook of his arm and that golden tangle at his collar.

“Hey, pal.” Nat made her way to the bed, and Angus’s eyes lit up.

“You look pretty.”

Nat’s cheeks warmed. “Thanks. How’re you feeling?”

“Good news! I may get to keep my spleen.”

“Juice included?”

Angus laughed, and so did the students, though they hadn’t been present for the joke.

“I worried when I couldn’t get through.”

“No, I’m alive. I slept all morning. I think one of the nurses put a Rufie in my apple juice.”

Deirdre shoved Angus’s arm playfully. “That’s sexist.”

“Really? Guess what? You flunk.” Angus smiled wearily. “Deidre, why don’t you take everybody to the vending machines and give me a few minutes with Professor Greco.”

“Woot, woot!” hooted one of male students, triggering new laughter.

Deidre quickly masked a scowl. “We’ll be right back,” she said, as they shuffled out en masse, laughing and talking.

“Hey, you,” Angus said softly. The room fell quiet, and the window behind him showed an evening sky the color of frozen blueberries.

“Hey back at you.” Nat pulled over a chair, vaguely uneasy. It felt as if something had changed between them, but she figured it was her imagination.

“Love the boots.”

Or not
. “Now I see why you wear yours.”

“Why?”

“Attitude.”

“No, laziness. Attitude, I was born with.” Angus cocked his head, eyeing her. “You look so happy. What’s going on with you, girl?”

Damned if I know.
“I had a couple of good classes today, and even my seminar went really well.”

“Good for you! Making inroads, huh? I knew you would. They’re coming around.”

“Maybe.” Nat felt happy inside. “It’s just nice, is all. To connect that way.”

“It’s why we teach, isn’t it?”

“Exactly.” Nat hadn’t realized it before today.

“What was the class about?” Angus shifted up on his pillow, interested.

“Gideon.”

“Great case. Wonderful movie, too, with Henry Fonda.”

“I believe it, because it’s a great story.”

“All cases are great stories, I think.”

Nat nodded. It was fun to talk about work without having to explain everything.

“So what happened?”

“So when I told them the story of the case, we actually had a moment. I don’t even really know what happened myself.”

“They
got
it.”

“Yes, right.” Nat thought about it. “I taught it, and they understood it, and for a minute, we met somewhere in the space between us, between me on the stage and them in their seats. It was like the lecture had an academic hang time.” She shrugged. “That’s the only way I can describe it.”

“How about love?”

Gulp?
“What do you mean?”

“It’s love. It’s not that the students love us or that we love them. It’s that we both love the same material—whatever principle you’re trying to teach them—and in turn, it connects us.” Angus made a full-circle movement with his hand. “We actually share that moment in time. It’s a connection of human minds, and souls.”

“Right.” Nat felt caught up in his words, then stopped herself. Was she losing it? She had to get off the topic. “Well. Anyway, did you really mean it when you said that the car accident might not be an accident?”

“Yes. It’s not a coincidence.” Angus shook his head. “We were warned off, and the next day we almost got killed. If we put it together with what we think about Upchurch’s murder, it makes sense. Somebody doesn’t want us digging any deeper, somebody associated with Graf or the prison.”

Nat thought of her meeting with McConnell. “Then here’s another coincidence, one you won’t like.” She told Angus the news that he was banned from the prison, and his cheeks flushed as red as his bruises.

“Damn him! That bastard! He can’t do that.”

“McConnell or Machik?”

“Both! Either!” Angus’s eyes flashed a brilliant blue. “That externship program has served almost every inmate at the prison at one time or another. They can’t just cut it off.”

“Widener’s going to step in.”

“The hell they are! That’s
my
program! What about my students? Those kids?” Angus pointed at the door, wincing as he tried to get up from the bed. “They benefit from representing inmates there. They came to us because of the clinic!”

“Don’t get upset.” Nat felt for him. “Lie back. Let me get you some water.”

“No, thanks.” Angus smacked the bedsheets in frustration. “I have to get out of here. I’m so cut off. My cell phone died. I lost my Black-Berry in the crash. I’m lying here like a fish, and they’re undoing everything I’ve done.”

“We’ll take care of it when the dean gets back.” Nat went to the bedside tray table, poured water from a tan plastic pitcher into a Styrofoam cup, and handed it to him, which was when she noticed a wetness in his eyes, a sheen that he blinked rapidly away. Her heart went out to him. “Here you go.”

Angus nodded and accepted it, drinking thirstily. He cleared his throat, keeping his head down. Nat remained silent, standing over him. She couldn’t see his face from this angle, only his tawny strands of hair. She let her gaze travel to the muscular roundness of his heavy shoulder, the cut of a thick bicep, and the freckles covering his arm, then felt her throat catch with a distinct, albeit unwanted, thought:

What a beautiful man.

“Thanks.” Angus recovered and handed her the cup.

“You’re welcome,” Nat answered, getting back in control. “More water?”

“No. Thanks.”

“Feel better?” She set the cup on the table, and suddenly Angus reached for her free hand. His hand felt warm on top of hers, connecting them, and she didn’t move her hand away.

“Natalie, listen,” he said, his voice husky. He looked up, his eyes dry and intensely blue. “I have to tell you—”

“Excuse me?” came a female voice from the door.

Angus dropped Nat’s hand, and they both turned. It was Deirdre, leading the Mongol horde of students. She looked from Angus to Nat and scowled.

“Sorry to interrupt, but your dinner has arrived.”

“Dinner?” Angus checked the wall clock. “It’s only five o’clock.”

Natalie, listen, I have to tell you…what?

“The trays are here.” Deidre helped the orderly slide a full tray of food from the tall rack and brought it to the bedside table herself. “Dinner is served,” she said. “Roast chicken, peas, and a salad. Yum.”

Rrring! Rrring!
Nat startled. It was her cell phone. She pulled it from her purse.

“You can’t answer that here,” Deirdre said. “Cell phones aren’t allowed.”

Thank you, India.
Nat checked the display, praying it wasn’t Hank, not here. But she didn’t recognize the phone number. She opened the phone.

In the background, Angus was saying, “I’m sure it’s fine, Deirdre. We won’t bust Professor Greco.”

“Hello?” Nat put her hand over her other ear and walked toward the door, while a woman’s voice came on the line.

“Ms. Greco? This is Barb Saunders.”

Nat turned and caught Angus’s eye, mouthing “Barb.” Into the phone, she asked, “How are you?”

“Not great. Can you come over tonight?” Barb’s voice sounded so choked that Nat almost felt like crying herself. “I need to talk to you. There’s so much I want to know, about, you know, the end.”

“Yes, I’ll come. What time?”

“How long will it take you to get here? I’m sorry about the short notice, but I can’t risk another headache.”

“I’m halfway there now. It’ll take me half an hour or so.”

“Thanks so much. See you soon,” Barb said, and hung up.

Nat flipped the phone closed.

“You gonna go?” Angus asked, and Nat didn’t hesitate.

“Yes.”

“Please wait until I can go with you,” he said, and the students looked back and forth, like stepkids between Daddy and New Mommy.

“She can’t wait. Sorry.”

“Then be careful.” Angus looked disapproving. “Look out for black Ford pickups. Call me here as soon as you can.”

“Okay,” Nat said, grabbing her bag, as Deidre and the students closed the circle.

Natalie, listen.