Final Appeal (13 page)

“Where did Artie go to school, if you know him so well?”

“That’s a no-brainer, it’s the first thing he tells anybody. Now open the door, I’m backing up against the wall. See?”

I look through the slit but see only the dark edge of a coat. “Go over to the sink and turn the water on. Keep pressing on the faucet top, so I know you’re at the other end of the room, away from the door.”

“Very clever. You go to Harvard too?” I hear the sound of footsteps, then the water being turned on.

“Are you pushing the top?”

“What?” he shouts. “You know I can’t hear you when the water’s running.”

I’m beginning to hate this guy. I open the thumbscrew and peek out of the door. I freeze on the spot. I can’t believe my eyes.

It’s Shake and Bake. He’s standing at the faucet in the ladies’ room, complete with beard, cellophane rain bonnet, and black raincoat.

My God. A paranoid schizophrenic. I slam the door closed and bolt it. He must have stolen the driver’s license. “Get out! You’re not supposed to be in the courthouse! I’m going to scream!”

“Fuck!” I hear him shout. I look through the crack and watch him release the faucet in disgust, then slap it. “Fucking fuck!”

“You’re not allowed in here!”

He turns toward the closed door. “It
is
me, I’m with the FBI,” he says, in a voice as cultivated as someone named Thaddeus Colwin III would have. “Look, I ran the water, didn’t I? Would a crazed killer do that? Open the door. Please.”

“You? Shake and Bake? A federal agent?” I watch him through the crack.

“Open the door,” he says. He slips the rain bonnet off the back of his head like a major leaguer after a strikeout. “Please.”

“If you’re an FBI agent, why did you make that scene at the oral argument, with the bomb?”

“It was part of my ingenious master plan.”

I can’t tell if he’s kidding. “What plan?”

“Trust me, I’m smarter than I look.”

“Smart? It got you banished from the courthouse.”

“But it got me in good with the reporters, and that’s very useful to me right now. Please come out. We don’t have much time.”

“We?”

“
Please
.”

I open the door a bit. “So you’re a federal agent or a schizophrenic impersonating a Quaker.”

His expression settles into businesslike lines behind the grimy beard. “You were close to Armen, right?”

I can’t get over the incongruity of such an educated voice coming out of a bag man. “A reporter just asked me that.”

“Were you close to him?”

“Wait a minute. Does Artie know about you?”

“No. No one does, except you.”

“Why me?”

“Because I need you.”

“What for?”

His eyes look slightly bloodshot in the harsh overhead lights. “This is confidential. All of it.”

“Fine. What?”

“Are you going to work for Judge Galanter?”

“Possibly. How did you know that?”

“You told Sarah, Sarah told Artie, Artie told me.”

“They teach you that at Quantico? Whisper down the lane?”

“Hey, whatever works. It’s the only rule in this game.” He breaks into a crooked grin, but I don’t like his insouciance. Or his scummy teeth.

“You know, Artie really likes you. He worried about you when you were in jail.”

“I know.”

“He risked his career pretending to be your lawyer.”

He purses his authentically parched lips. “Don’t worry about me and Artie, okay? I have a job to do, he’ll understand.”

“Oh, I see. Manly men, ye be. So what’s the story?”

“I’m undercover in an investigation supervised by the Justice Department. I can’t tell you the details, I shouldn’t even be meeting with you myself. All I can tell you is that it concerns charges of official corruption.”

I feel my nausea resurge. “Corruption?”

“In the judiciary.”

I think of the checkbook nestled in my Carter’s at home. Armen’s checkbook. “What kind of corruption?”

“Bribery, obstruction of justice.”

Oh, God. “A federal appellate judge? Those are impeachable offenses.”

“They’re also crimes, so I couldn’t care less if he loses his job. I need you to help me look for certain evidence.”

“What’s the matter with a search warrant?”

“I don’t have enough for probable cause, not yet.” His face grows tense. “What time is it anyway? I can’t wear a watch on this job.”

I glance at my wrist. “Noon.”

“Shit. I have to be at the shelter, otherwise they run out of sandwiches. If you’d come out of the goddamn stall earlier—”

“What kind of evidence are you talking about?” I say, but he’s busy yanking out the bottom of a ratty T-shirt so that it shows under his faded
WHITE WATER KINGDOM
sweatshirt.

“Do I look pathetic enough? I only made seven bucks yesterday. All this bullshit about not encouraging us.”

“Tell me more about the investigation. Is Galanter the only suspect?”

“No, and that’s all you need to know. Don’t tell anybody we talked. Give me back Tom Cruise.” He slips on his rain bonnet and ties it under his chin like a babushka. “After all, I’m the Rain Man.”

“I get it.” I hand him the wallet, which he slips into a pocket sewn into the folds of his trousers. “What if I want to call you?”

“You can’t. I’m homeless, remember?” He pushes his pants down around his hips and starts to leave the bathroom. “I have to go. I’ll explain it all later.”

“Do you think Armen was murdered?”

His face falls suddenly behind its hobo’s mask. “Why do you ask?”

“Why don’t you answer?”

“Maybe.”

I feel my heart pounding. “Do you think it has to do with your investigation?”

“Maybe.”

I think of Armen, lying face forward on his desk. Did he really take money for a case? There are so many questions, and only one thing is clear. It hurts inside.

“I miss him too,” the agent says. Then he opens the ladies’ room door and slouches out.

15

M
addie’s gone outside to play, and my mother hands me her dinner dish for rinsing. The child left more peas than I thought. Puckered now, they careen randomly on the surface of the dish. “Let’s talk about Dad,” I say, taking the plate.

“Let’s not,” my mother says. She walks back into the dining room without meeting my eye. I watch her receding form, soft and shapeless in a pink acrylic sweatsuit. The back says
NUMBER ONE GRANDMA
. She bought it for herself.

“Why not?” I call after her.

“It’s not that time of year yet.”

At least she’s in a good mood. “What do you mean?” I maneuver Maddie’s plate into the wire dishwasher rack. Bernice, standing at her now-customary place at the dishwasher door, sniffs the plate, disappointed to find it clean already.

“You’re early,” my mother says, returning with my messy plate of waxy mashed potatoes. “You usually don’t start with those questions till Christmas.” Her mouth is a tight smile; wrinkles radiate like tiny scars from the edges of her lips.

“I could be late, did you ever think of it that way? I mean, is the glass half empty or half full?” I take the plate and she turns silently on her heel. “Depends on your perspective, Ma, right?” I watch the water splash harmlessly off an insoluble potato mound, then stow the dish in the rack to let Bernice finish the job.

My mother comes back as Bernice is in mid-meal. “Don’t let the dog do that, Grace! It’s unsanitary. We eat off those dishes. Shoo, shoo!” She bangs a glass down on the counter and takes a swipe at Bernice, who backs up, confused.

“It’s all right, Ma. It’s going into the dishwasher.”

“They’re not even cheap dishes, they’re expensive dishes. It’s unhealthy. The germs.”

“The hot water kills the germs.”

Her frown deepens as she eyes Bernice, who’s licking her chops sheepishly. “When I sit at your table, I don’t like to think I’m eating off a dog dish.”

“It’s not like I feed her from the dish.”

“It’s the same thing. You’re lucky my mother can’t see this. You know what she would do? She would set your place at the table with the dog’s dish.”

She never talks about her childhood. “Your mother would do that?”

“She sure would. My mother was spiteful. She’d explain it to you this way. If your dish is good enough to feed the animal, then you don’t mind eating out of the dog’s dish. Believe me, Grace, she would.” She shakes her head and walks into the dining room. “It’s so common.”

I would remind her that we’re common, that she manicured nails to support us, but this is family history long since revised; she tells people she was in the beauty industry, whatever that is. “Is the table clear, Ma?” Bernice trots back to the dishwasher, but I wave her off.

“One left.” She comes back in and hands me her own plate. It doesn’t need rinsing; you would never know anybody ate off it.

“Tell me about my father.”

Her frown is replaced by a cynical smile. “What do you have to know? He had dark hair, he wore it slicked back. He was Sicilian, he might as well have been black. He was younger than me, so I should have known. End of story.”

“Do you miss him ever?”

Her smile, weak to start out with, now fades completely. “No.”

“Were you ever happy?”

“No.”

“Not even before he started drinking?”

“He always drank. He drank from the beginning.”

“So tell me—”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Tell me about his drinking, then. It’s hard to remember.”

“Good. It’s better you don’t.” She does an about-face and heads out of the room. I brace myself as she returns with another glass.

“I remember that he drank Crown Royal.”

Her face reddens but her expression remains rigid. She sets the glass down. “He drank everything. Beer. Wine. Whiskey. Cough syrup.” She pushes back a steel-colored curl. “You know all this. Why do we have to go over and over it?”

“I remembered something about Crown Royal. It used to come in a purple sack with gold letters.”

Her eyelids flutter. “It still does. You know that from now, not before.”

“He gave me the sacks for purses,” I say, the sentence popping out of my mouth of its own force, a memory I didn’t know I had until this very moment. “For dress-up.” I scan her face for verification, but it’s a perfect blank. “Remember?”

“No.”

“The purses? The gold braid on the side?”

“No.”

“There was a drawstring.”

She turns to go, but I grab her arm. My grasp is rougher than I intended, and in the half second she looks back I catch a fleeting expression on her face. This one I can read: fear. She’s afraid I’m going to hit her. Suddenly I understand.

“Did he hit you, Mom?” I ask, horrified. Outraged.

“Why are you doing this?” Her forehead creases with anxiety. She tries to wrench her arm free but I hold her tighter, almost involuntarily.

“I have to know. Did he hit you?”

“It’s
my business
.” She yanks her arm from my grasp and backs unsteadily away from me toward the refrigerator door. Behind her is a jumble of crayon rainbows and happy-face suns. Maddie’s drawings. “
My
business.”

“It’s my business, too!”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Mom, there’s no shame in it. It’s not your fault.”

“None of this is your concern.”

“I knew he left us, I never knew why. Is that why? Did you throw him out because he beat you? I’m not blaming you, I just want to know.”

“Stop! Stop it right now!” She holds up a veined hand, her finger pads curled over like the tines on a hand rake. Years of nicotine, the doctor told her.

“Ma—”

“You let me be!” She hurries out of the room but I follow her, almost panicky. To make it better, to make it worse, I don’t even know.

“Ma, it’s just that I’ve been wondering—”

She whirls around and silences me with a crooked index finger. Her face, for the first time in my memory, is full of pain, and she fights for control. “Let it drop. What’s done is done. Going over it doesn’t do me any good, doesn’t do anybody any good.”

“Did he hit
me
too, Ma?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Something happened the other day at the office, and I remembered.”

Her chest heaves like a boxer’s under the silly sweatshirt. “Grace Deasey—”

“Grace Deasey
Rossi
, Mom. I had a father, and I would like to know what he did to me. That
is
my business.”

She snatches her purse from a chair and almost runs to the front door. “You’re out of your mind. You’ll drive me out of mine if I let you. But I won’t let you.”

“Ma—”

“No,” she says simply and walks out.

NUMBER ONE GRANDMA
winks at me as the door slams closed behind her.

16

“L
et’s do it,” Eletha says grimly as we encounter the first wave of reporters along the wall of the outer lobby to the courthouse.

“Grace! Grace Rossi!” one of them shouts.

Shocked, I turn toward the voice. It’s the reporter from the day before, Sandy Faber. He’s wearing the same sport jacket and more stubble. “Remember what I said, Ms. Rossi?”

“Which judge does she work for?” one of the women reporters asks. He ignores her, so she shouts at me. “Who do you work for, Ms. Rossi? Do you have any comment on
Hightower?
Why did it take so long to get the transcripts of the oral argument?”

“Holy shit,” I hear Eletha mutter beside me.

I push forward away from the reporters, but the lunchtime crowd is barely trickling out the narrow courthouse doors.

“Come on, Ms. Rossi!” Faber shouts. “You gonna talk to me? Come on. Gimme a break here.”

The heads of three other reporters snap in my direction. I feel Eletha’s hand on my forearm.

“Who do you work for, Judge Meyerson? Judge Redd?” the woman shouts at me. “I can find out, you know.”

“No comment,” I say.

“Aw,” the woman says, “just tell me who you work for. It’s Simmons, right? That’s who? Simmons?”