Running from the Law (19 page)

“Didja like what I did about his desk?”

“I liked what you did about the desk.”

“Didja like when I told him I was shocked?”

“I liked when you told him you were shocked.”

“He was gonna call and I
stopped
him!”

“You sure did. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.” It was true, actually. “I mean it.”

Sal squinted against the wind. “Why did we have to leave?”

“Because we found out what we needed to know.”

“Oh.”

“Okay?”

“Okay,” he said, but he seemed to deflate visibly in his seat, like a child after all the birthday presents have been opened.

“You had fun, huh?”

He nodded.

“Fun is good, Uncle Sal.”

He didn’t say anything, just kept squinting as the wind blew his wispy hair around.

“What do you do for fun, Unc?”

He thought for what seemed like a very long time. “I like music.”

“What kind of music? You a rap fan, MC Sal?”

“No, no.” He didn’t even smile.

“What then?”

“Big band. Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey. Like the old 950 Club.”

“What’s the 950 Club?”

“On the radio. In the afternoons.”

“Like now?”

“Yeh,” he said, without checking his watch. “They don’t have Ed Hurst no more, but they got the music.”

I turned on the radio and scanned until I reached the station. Even I recognized the song “Sing, Sing, Sing.” “That’s Benny Goodman, isn’t it?”

“Yeh.”

“I like this song.”

“Your mother, she liked it, too.”

Out of left field. “Did she like music?” I had no idea.

“Loved it.”

“Really?”

He nodded.

I wondered. “What else did she like?”

“She liked to dance. She never sat still. She liked to go, your mother.”

I guess. “That why she left, you think?”

He nodded again.

“Go where, though?”

“Anywhere. She liked action.”

“Action?”

“Attention, like.”

I considered this. A Canadian blonde among the dark Italian butchers, grocers, and bakers, like a yellow diamond on a coal pile. A woman who liked to go, married to a man who wanted only to stay. “She didn’t really fit in, did she?”

“Like a sore thumb.”

“She never would have stayed, would she?”

“Not for long. Vito was the only one who didn’t see it comin’.”

It hurt inside. For my father, then for me. “You don’t think I’m like her, do you?”

“Nah. You got dark hair.”

So he wasn’t Phil Donahue. Morrones weren’t known for their introspection. “I meant her personality, not her looks.”

“Nah.”

“Not even a little?” I almost hit a Saab in front of me for watching him, but Sal’s only reaction was to shake his head. “Uncle Sal?”

“Can you turn up the radio, Ree?”

I laughed. “Is this the end of the conversation, Unc?”

He nodded, then smiled. “She was a wise guy, too.”

Our highway entrance came up suddenly, City Line Avenue onto the Schuylkill Expressway, and I turned onto the on-ramp. I thought about pressing him on the subject, but let it go. It was the longest talk I’d ever had about my mother, and somehow it was enough. More words wouldn’t make it any clearer, or any different. It was up to me to figure out anyway, for myself.

“The radio, Ree?” Sal asked again.

“Sorry,” I said, and cranked the music way up. The clarinet and horns blasted in the wind as Benny Goodman hit the chorus and we hit the open road. At this hour, rush-hour traffic was going the other way. “You can at least catch the end of the song, huh?”

“Yeah. I like the end.” The wind was stronger now that we had picked up speed. I pressed the button to close my window. Sal fished in his jacket pocket and found the Ray-Ban aviators I’d bought him, then slipped them on like a flyboy.

“Lookin’ good, Uncle Sal,” I shouted over the drums.

“You know, Ree, I kinda liked bein’ a lawyer,” he shouted back. “Maybe we’ll do more lawyer stuff.”

Like cheating and lying and perpetrating fraud? “Whatever you say, Mr. Livemore.”

He paused. “Ree?”

“What?”

“Can’t you make this crate move any faster?”

I smiled. Uncle Sal liked to go, too. Everybody did, a little. “Hang on, handsome. Hang on.”

And he did.

Sing, sing, sing.

20

T
obin had chosen an upscale sidewalk restaurant on Main Street in Manayunk, a town along the Schuylkill River, on the outskirts of town. Twenty years ago, Main Street was a gritty strip of shoe and textile wholesalers that served as the backdrop for a hilly clumping of brick row houses. But Manayunk, like all of us, hippened up in the nineties, attracting an annual bicycle race to its hills, restaurants like this one, and countless boutiques vending black clothes. Now there were twelve-cylinder Mercedeses lining the street and ponytails who dressed like Tobin.

“I love it here,” he said as he dumped ketchup onto a ten-dollar cheeseburger and a mound of french fries. “I got a loft down the street, above the interior designer’s.”

“We’re too old for lofts.”

“Speak for yourself, teach.” He dug into his burger with abandon and didn’t seem to mind being on display despite his table manners. More than one woman, walking by, cruised his Nautilus-powered Armani. “So, this is quite a little murder investigation you’re running.”

“You approve? That means so much to me.”

“I knew it would. What’s next?”

“I go motorcycle shopping with Herman tomorrow. We try to find out who bought that blue BMW motorcycle.” I speared a salad composed of greens apparently picked from the shoulder of I-95. I should have asked what a mesclun salad was before I ordered this thing.

“You going with a kosher butcher, on a Saturday?”

“He’s not that kosher.”

He nodded. “Neither am I. So, let’s see, you got Herman the butcher, you got Cam with one arm, you got your little Uncle Sal. It’s a Dream Team.”

“Watch it, pal. That’s my family you’re talking about.”

“Interesting family.”

“You don’t get to define it, I do.”

He wolfed down a canoe of a french fry. “Back off, I’m not criticizing. It’s a big case and it’s just starting. You should be getting your team together, before trial. Take all the help you can get.”

“I am.”

“Except mine.”

I considered this. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“I didn’t ask you to dinner to help you. I asked you to dinner to find out if you’re gonna marry Richie Rich.”

“Who?”

“That slice of white bread you bring to the Christmas party. I heard you live with him.”

I can’t say it took me aback, given his reputation, but I wasn’t prepared for it before the crème brûlée. “You’ll explain to me why this is any of your business.”

“I’m your partner.”

“So are thirty-five other people.”

“And they’re all talking about you behind your back. Is she really gonna marry the judge’s son? They don’t think you can do any better, but I do.”

I guessed from his smirk he was kidding. “You defend me from vicious gossip?”

“At every turn.”

“But then again, you eat Sno-caps for lunch.”

He scarfed down another french fry. “So?”

“So what?”

“So you’re not engaged or you’d have a ring.”

I felt a twinge. “Not engaged.”

“Not only are you not engaged, you’re fighting with him.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because you ignored him at the preliminary hearing and he spent the whole fucking time trying to get your attention.”

I hadn’t noticed. “He did not.”

“And I hear you been together forever.” He sucked ketchup from a finger. “So I’m thinking either Richie Rich won’t marry you or you won’t marry him. And since it’s impossible for me to believe a man won’t marry you, there’s only one thing I want to know.”

Christ. “My favorite color is red, but I won’t tell you my age or weight.”

He looked at me directly. “What’s holding you back?”

“You’re right, it’s silly of me. Sexist, even. I’m thirty-two years old.” Roughly.

“You avoid commitment, like all the other girls?”

“All right, I’ll tell you. I weigh a hundred and five pounds.” Or would, if I worked out.

“Or maybe you don’t love him enough?”

Ouch. Maybe I do. “You’re not getting the message, Tobin. This is none of your business.”

“You want to tell me anyway?”

“Why should I?”

“Because despite the way I look or the way I act with my so-called partners, or the shit you’ve heard about me, I’m a pretty decent guy. And I’m very attracted to you.”

I avoided his dark gaze and watched the candle on the table flicker in its frosted glass. His words were having some effect; my female ego must’ve been bruised more than I thought. “I don’t want to have this conversation.”

“But you are having it.”

“No, I’m not.” I looked away, but the people on the street were walking so close to our table they could see the ragweed in my entree. “Let’s just drop it, okay?”

“You’re telling me this is an arms’-length dinner?”

“Exactly.”

“Professional colleagues? Not even friends? Like in high school, we’re both in chess club or some such shit?”

“You got it.”

“Wonderful.” He drained the beer from its green bottle and looked around for the waitress. “I need another beer.”

“You had three already. I hope you’re walking home.”

“They’re Clausthalers, Mom.”

“What’s that?”

“Denial beer. Nonalcoholic, like me. It was not always thus.”

I hadn’t known. “Really?”

“Really.” He gave up on the waitress and faced me. He suddenly looked tired, which made him look more human, worn in. “So, what’s the status of the murder investigation so far?”

“I have some suspicions, but more questions than anything else. Nothing really logical.”

“Murder is never logical. It’s emotional.”

“But you can use logic to solve it.”

“No, you can’t. To think like a killer you have to think emotionally. Murder is reactive, an emotional reaction to something. You have to figure out what set it off.”

I remembered Paul, his confidence in deductive reasoning. “How do you know this, Tobin? The guys you defended were lowlifes. They committed murder on drugs or while they were drinking, right?”

“Don’t be such a snob. Smart people commit murder. White people commit murder, too.”

“I didn’t say they didn’t—”

“Murder is an irrational reaction to a given set of circumstances. It can be planned out, premeditated, or happen in an instant, but it’s still emotional. And the emotions are strongest when it’s a love relationship—boy meets girl, boy kills girl when she runs around.”

I thought of Paul again, this time with a chill, and reconsidered what I was doing here. If Tobin was going to help me, and it seemed like he could, then I’d have to confide in him. Part of me didn’t trust him, but part of me wanted to take the risk. So I took a deep breath and told him the whole story, about Fiske’s affair with Patricia, and, because he listened so thoughtfully, even about Paul and Patricia. I told it as calmly as I could, and when I had finished, picked up my wineglass with a hand that shook only slightly.

“Holy shit,” Tobin said.

“You got that right. So I guess what I have is Kate, Paul, and maybe Fiske, with motive out the wazoo and no credible alibi. Then I have a motorcycle rider to track down, the other boyfriends to question, and no murder weapon.”

“That’s one way to look at it. If you’re blind. Willfully.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you have a prime suspect you don’t want to deal with. Richie Rich.”

No. “Paul?”

“Come on, Rita, look at the payoff. Whacking that girl solves everything for him. He silences the girl, the lawsuit drops out, and he gets off the hook.”

“Why would Paul want the lawsuit ended?”

“Because it could expose him, too. Tell the whole world he was screwing his father’s girlfriend. How would that play out in the vanilla suburbs? He has his own business, doesn’t he? A reputation to protect?”

“But why would he kill her?”

“He pays her back for fucking around on him. For fucking up his life. Look, he lost you, didn’t he?”

Did he? “Still, Paul is close to his father. He wouldn’t frame his own father for murder.”

“Not even if Daddy is screwing his girlfriend and cheating on Mommy? Maybe he’s figuring you’ll get Daddy off the hook. Wake up and smell the reality.”

I couldn’t believe it. “Tobin, I saw what was done to that woman. Paul is not capable of that. He just isn’t.”

“Almost anybody is capable of it, given the right set of circumstances. Where was Richie Rich that day?”

“Running errands.”

“Sounds airtight to me,” he said abruptly, then looked away at the passing traffic. The sun was gone, the crowd had died down. The diners had been replaced by couples holding paper cones of water ice, window-shopping up and down Main Street. Manayunk, being near the river and its own snaky canal, stayed reasonably cool at night. The candle on the table danced in its glass cup.

Tobin turned back and his eyes met mine. “I think you’re in deep shit, good lookin’.”

“Why? I have months before the trial.”

“I’m not worried about the trial, you got the trial covered. If you prove what you told me about the Jag and raise the question of the motorcyclist, you got reasonable doubt. I could win that case. You probably could, too.”

“I’m ignoring your arrogance.”

“Everyone does.”

Testosterone should be a controlled substance. “I want to find the motorcycle rider and question him.”

“No. You’re better off not finding him. Leave him wherever he is. Use him like a nice big question mark at the trial, to beef up the reasonable doubt. A black kid on a motorcycle on the run? He’s more useful to you lost than found, especially with a white Main Line jury. It’s like a gift. Happy Hanukkah.”

“But what if he committed the murder?”

“Not your problem. You’re the judge’s lawyer. Get the judge off.”

So much for justice.

“Listen, Rita, the biggest problem is that you’re trying to catch a killer and you’re way too up-close-and-personal.”