Running from the Law (24 page)

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

C
ity 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.

Municipal workers, just released for lunch, chattered past me in the courtyard. Attorneys with briefcases whispered as they hurried by, coaching their clients on the noon break from trial. Police strolled in groups of two and three, at City Hall to testify in criminal trials. I figured this courtyard would be the safest place in the city to meet a murderer. I may sleep with lawyers, but I’m not totally crazy.

Underneath my sturdy pumps was the black center of the huge compass that was painted on the floor of the courtyard. The compass’s black directional spikes, limned with crackling gold paint, pointed at the four arched entrances to the courtyard. I faced south toward my father’s store and waited for the killer, suppressing the sensation that I was standing in the middle of a target. Smack-dab on the bull’s-eye.

People poured through the south arch of the courtyard, but no one looked familiar. No one approached me. Could the killer be watching from the building? I scanned the windows. In some the blinds were drawn, in some they were slightly askew. Two women workers stood in a large window on the first floor, chatting. No killers in City Hall unless you counted the budget deficit.

Beyond the top tier of windows, the sky was a clear blue. A hot sun glinted on the large mirrored ball suspended over the center of the compass. The mirrored ball was an unusual sight, a sparkling globe oddly incongruous in the marble courtyard. The object of the ball was to see yourself as part of the whole city in its fish-eye lens, but the lesson was lost on the kids who made toothy faces into it.

The lesson was lost on me as well. I valued the mirror ball because I could see all four courtyard entrances in it at the same time. I checked my backup in the ball as it swung slightly in a warm breeze. Cam lurked under the south arch, slouching under a Phillies cap. Herman leaned against the west arch, fake-reading the
Daily News.
Sal stood under the north arch in his Ray-Bans, eating a soft pretzel. No one had the east arch because I’d run out of senior citizens. I’d had to enlist David and his friend to watch my father in the hospital.

I shifted on my feet and glanced at my watch: 11:55.

I scanned the crowds coming through the courtyard. If the bluff worked, the killer would come through one of the entrances at noon. Then one of the backup men would tail him, ready to grab him and scream bloody murder as soon as I gave the high sign. I hoped the killer turned out to be the rasta-haired motorcyclist. I didn’t know how I would feel if it were Paul, now that the time had come.

11:58. I fingered the plastic Baggie in one of my blazer pockets. It held my father’s knife, the one that looked like the murder weapon. Then I checked the Polaroids in the other pocket, pictures I’d taken yesterday of my father’s knife in a lab-like setting. I gritted my teeth. I was ready. Was the killer? I rocked on my pumps and tried not to sweat on the bull’s-eye.

Suddenly there was a commotion under the west arch. I tensed. Had Herman spotted the killer? The crowd under the arch scattered and a trio of bare-chested teenagers broke free, rowdy, play-fighting. Two cops, walking by, looked back, then said something to each other and moved on. I breathed a relieved sigh.

12:01.

He was late. Maybe he wouldn’t come at all, maybe he wouldn’t fall for it. The bluff was that I’d kept the real murder weapon, had it tested privately, and turned up some telltale DNA. I said I’d trade the weapon, and my silence, for my father’s life. It wasn’t a bad bluff. How could the killer be sure the knife, apparently old and well-used, was absolutely clean? It would be too big a risk to take, even for a risk-taker.

12:06. I checked the entrances again. East, south, west, north. Everything looked normal. Herman gave me a discreet nod over his tabloid, knowing I must have been rattled by the teenagers.

I waited. 12:08.

Maybe it wasn’t a good bluff after all. Maybe the killer had cleaned the knife completely, or borrowed it. Maybe I’d lost my touch. Then something caught my eye behind an older couple ahead of me. The quick flutter of a Phillies cap. It was Cam, signaling. The couple looked normal enough, tourists with a street map, pointing at the mirrored ball. But over the man’s shoulder was a figure I recognized.

Paul. Oh God. I felt my stomach turn over. Not him.

He barreled toward me. His face was anxious, his features strained. His clothes were disheveled and his eyes looked bloodshot as he elbowed the tourists aside.

I told myself to stay calm. “Paul?” I still couldn’t believe it was him all along.