Rough Justice (19 page)

“You’re being modest.”

“No, really,” he said, but Christopher would die before he’d explain what happened. It was hard enough to talk with Marta here in his room, right across from him. In his bedroom. Christopher felt as if she knew how often he thought about her. So many nights he had pictured her here, and now she was. He had to know. “Why did you come to me, Marta?”

“I needed to get to the jury.”

“But why me? Why did you pick me? You didn’t know I was the foreman. You were surprised.”

“I came to you because you were most likely to help.”

“Why did you think that?”

Marta paused, then let it rip. “Because I think you’re attracted to me.”

The hotel room seemed suddenly very still to Christopher. The silence sounded loud. He didn’t know what to say. He could keep his feelings inside, but he’d let so many feelings go in his life, seizing none of them. This feeling, it seemed, should not pass. This feeling had the strength of a runaway horse. It was time to take it in hand. Grab hold and hang on. Cowboy it. “Do you have feelings for me, Marta?” Christopher asked, and his heart felt like it was stuck on his Adam’s apple. “Tell me, yes or no. Because I do have feelings for you.”

This was not a conversation Marta wanted to have right now. Every instinct told her to lead him on, lie to him, even take him to bed if it got her what she wanted. Marta couldn’t imagine telling the truth with the stakes this high. Then she looked at Christopher’s rugged, open face and couldn’t imagine not. He was a decent, kind man, and she was asking him to do something that could get him thrown in prison. He deserved a straight answer. “No. None at all,” she answered. “I don’t even know you.”

“I see,” Christopher said quickly.

Marta swallowed hard, sensing his hurt. Funny how she hurt a little, too. For him. But she had to go forward. “Will you help me anyway?”

T
he white Grand Cherokee stopped in the middle of the street and parked with the engine running. Its white enamel paint camouflaged it in the blowing snow, blurring its boxy outline in the storm. Exhaust snaked in a ghostly cloud from its tailpipe and trailed off in a gust of wind. Its windshield wipers flapped slowly in the snow.

At the end of the block, Judy was kneeling down, pushing the flat end of the cross-country ski to make it go back and forth. The snow came up to the very edge of the little boy’s coat. “Now it’s your turn,” she said to him. “Slide it back to me.”

Without a word, the boy bent over and sent the ski back to Judy. Then she slid it back to him, and he repeated the game with a growing smile. “Did you know my friend Heb?” Judy asked, sailing the ski to him.

The boy nodded and kept his eyes glued to the maroon ski. Mary felt her heartbeat quicken, but she stayed behind Judy and kept her mouth shut. The ski reached the boy, and he caught it in his hand-me-down black glove.

“Heb got hurt, didn’t he?” Judy asked.

“He got shot.” The boy’s eyes moved with the ski. Back and forth. “He dead.”

“Did you see him get shot?”

“No. I didn’t see, I heard. Bang, bang, bang, BANG!” the boy shouted, summoning all the strength in his small body. He shoved the ski hard.

Judy stopped the ski like a shortstop and glanced up at the boy, then at his rowhouse. It faced the bridge, catty-corner to the spot where Darning was killed. She eyeballed the distance from the house to the bridge. About fifty yards. The child could have seen something. “You sure you didn’t see him get shot, now?”

“I was sleepin’. The BANG woke me UP. I heard it out the window.”

Judy gathered from the shout that he felt strongly about it. “Was Heb your friend, too?”

“Yes.” The boy nodded. “He give me street money.”

“He gave you money?”

“He was rich.”

Mary blinked. “What?”

Judy asked, “He was?” She sent the ski across the snow.

“Dennell!” shouted one of the older kids, who was standing in the middle of the street. They had stopped playing and were going inside, abandoning the cardboard sled and snow angels. “Dennell!”

Suddenly, the boy turned around and ran off, kicking up a tiny wake of snow in his path.

“Wait!” Judy called after him, but he didn’t turn back. The lawyers watched the boy run to the older kid and climb the stoop into his house. Their front door slammed closed, echoing in the street, which fell abruptly silent. The wind had picked up and was tossing the flurries this way and that. Down the street sat the Grand Cherokee, parked with its engine rumbling. Lost in the snowy backdrop, its windshield wipers moved back and forth.

Judy straightened up and brushed caked snow from her knees. “Did you hear that? How can a homeless man be rich? Panhandling?”

“Not in this neighborhood, and this was the only place he lived. He slept under the bridge.”

“Welfare would barely support him, much less leave him money to pass out to a kid. Maybe Darning saved the money from his job with the bank.”

“Saved it, from the sixties?” Mary asked. “A bank teller’s salary? Why do you always look for the best in people? What kind of lawyer are you?”

Judy smiled and shook snow from the ski bindings and poles. “Okay, maybe he stole it from the bank when he worked there. Embezzlement, skimming the accounts. Taking bribes to shift the money around.”

“Now you’re talkin’. But what would that have to do with Elliot Steere?”

“Maybe Darning stole it from Steere’s account a long time ago, and when Steere found out he killed him.” Judy bent over and laid the skis on the snow in pairs, but Mary didn’t seem to be taking the hint. Down the street, the white Grand Cherokee waited, undetected. Silent.

“Why wouldn’t Steere report it to the cops?” Mary asked.

“Maybe he wanted to handle things on his own. Maybe he went to talk to Darning about it and things got out of hand.”

“No. It doesn’t sound right. The kid said Darning was rich.”

“You can’t take a little kid’s word on what rich is, Mare. Five dollars is rich to a kid that young.” Judy pressed her boot into her ski clip, leaning on Mary’s shoulder for balance. “Let’s go, girlfriend. Time to roll.”

“The kid said
street money
. Do you know the phrase
street money
?”

“What phrase? He didn’t mean it as a phrase. The kid lives on the same street as Darning, literally. Street money. Get it?” Judy popped the other ski on and slipped her hands into the pole straps. “Come on. Put your skis on.”

“I think the kid was repeating something he heard. Something Darning said. There is a term
street money
.”

“There is? What’s it mean?”

Mary smiled. “You’re so totally, like, Californian. It’s what you pay for votes. You give somebody street money so they can buy votes in their district.”

“Fascinating.”

“Welcome to Philadelphia.”

“Thank you very much.” The wind was gusting hard, and Judy’s ankles were wet and chilled. “Put your skis on, Mare. We’ll discuss it at my apartment.”

Mary tried to find her ski clip with her boot, but the ski kept slipping away. “You know, a lot of those articles I got from my computer search were about Steere and Mayor Walker. How much they hate each other.”

“Yeah, so?” Judy knelt down and steadied Mary’s ski until her boot finally clicked in.

“So maybe it’s a political thing. The election is coming up. Maybe street money was paid or will be. Maybe there’s some political angle to this.”

“Next ski,” Judy said, squinting against the spray of ice particles blowing into her face from the ground. “Let’s go, Mare.” With her eyes half closed, Judy couldn’t see the smoked glass window of the Grand Cherokee sliding down to the halfway point, even if she had been looking.

“Are you listening, Jude? It could be political.”

“Put your fucking boot in the fucking clip.”

“Jeez Louise. Touchy, aren’t we? I’m trying to solve a murder here. It’s not easy.” Mary nosed her other boot down, finally found the clip with her toe, and locked it in.

“Hallelujah.” Judy straightened up, telemarked to turn around, and skied a few feet down the sidewalk to take the lead. “Follow me,” she called back.

“Maybe Darning gets the money from somewhere,” Mary called after her, hobbling through the snow. It was so damn cold. The air was too frigid to breathe. “Someone gave him street money.”

Across the street, the Grand Cherokee’s window edged down past the halfway point. Its tinted glass was mottled with powdery snow. It was too dark to see the driver. The engine idled and exhaust wafted from its tailpipe. The windshield wipers beat harder.

“Let’s get into the street, where it’s easier,” Judy yelled to Mary. She looked for an opening between the cars parked at the curb. Covered with snow, the cars looked like an Almond Joy bar. Judy spotted a space and headed for it, skiing into the street. “Come on, Mare. Try and keep up.”

“Show-off,” Mary muttered.

Judy took off into the middle of the street and skied away from the ruts made by passing cars. The snow was knee-deep in some spots. It had been hours since Judy heard a weather report.

Mary made her way into the street with difficulty. She heard a loud hydraulic cranking and saw a snowplow in the distance, with a yellow caution light flashing on its cab. Maybe they were plowing the streets on the way to Judy’s apartment. It would help. Mary couldn’t believe anybody went cross-country skiing for fun. It was brutal, endless work. For that she could go to the office.

“Mare!” Judy called to her. “You okay?”

Mary tried to answer, but her words were swallowed by the cold wind and the noise from the snow-plow. She struggled against the storm and tried to keep up. It was a lost cause. Snowflakes flew into her eyes. Her hands were wet in her gloves. The blizzard didn’t seem to be letting up. Mary fell behind Judy a few feet, then half a block.

Behind Mary, the tinted window of the white Cherokee slid all the way down. A hand in a leather glove appeared from inside the car and brushed snow from the door frame. A second later, the barrel of a hunting rifle nosed out and pointed down the street.

I
t’s a great truck,
Christopher had told Marta.
Don’t judge it by the way it looks. The tires are new this year. Bridgestones.

Marta identified Christopher’s ancient truck instantly because it was the most disgusting wreck in the hotel garage: a faded blue pickup with a dented white cover over its long bed. Its back fender and body were marred by dings, its doors rusted with cancerous edges, and it cowered in a far corner of the underground garage like a leper. The only bright spot on the truck was its cherry-red bumper sticker:
FARRIERS
SHOE IT BETTER
.

The bumper sticker was Lainie’s idea,
Christopher had said, though Marta could have guessed as much.

She lingered near the garage wall and glanced nervously around for Bogosian. Had she lost him for good? She didn’t think he’d followed her to the hotel because she’d kept checking behind her. Still, she couldn’t be sure. Maybe he was lying in wait like he’d been at Steere’s town house. He knew there was a conjugal visit scheduled, maybe he’d anticipated she’d try to reach the jury. Or maybe Steere had. Still, she had to go.

Marta hurried to the truck, slipped the key in the lock, and climbed inside when the door creaked open. She tossed her purse onto the beat-up passenger seat. The truck was cold and smelled oddly of singed hair. The front seat was littered with empty coffee cups, waxed paper from Dunkin’ Donuts, and cellophane bags of withered carrots. A flashlight rolled on the floor and a large green rubber ball was wedged at the end of the seat.
HORSEBALL
, it said. Huh?

Marta inserted the key, pumped the gas, and twisted on the ignition. The engine made the tiniest click, but didn’t turn over. Christopher had warned her this would happen.

Be patient,
he’d said,
the car hasn’t been driven in two months. And don’t flood the engine.

Marta checked her watch. 10:15. She had to get going. She turned the ignition key again, but no luck.

Give her a minute or two. Talk to her. She likes when you talk to her.

Fuck that. Talk to a truck? Christopher had way too much time on his hands. Marta forced herself to wait and scanned the garage again for Bogosian. The damn windshield was too dirty to see through and she wiped it with a cold fist. A few cars were parked on this level. Bogosian could be behind any one of them, waiting to grab her. She remembered the vise of his hands around her throat, choking the breath from her. Panicky, Marta twisted the ignition key again. The engine didn’t respond.

Stay calm. Give her time.

But Marta didn’t have time. She had to get this truck moving. She had to get away. She looked around. Bogosian could be anywhere. Marta forced herself to wait and tried to imagine what had happened since he’d killed the security guards. The cops had to be swarming all over Rosato & Associates. They’d see Marta’s signature on the log. They’d be looking for her. The press would follow.

She just needs to warm up. Wait, then give it another try.

Marta tried the ignition again, but the engine only coughed. Fuck! Marta had to hit the road. There was no other way. If it would have gotten her anywhere, she would have surfaced and told everything she knew about the guards’ murder, but she couldn’t prove Bogosian was linked to Steere. She couldn’t even prove Bogosian existed. Rocket Docket Rudolph was pushing the Steere case through on greased skids; Marta doubted even a murder in the office would slow him down. Steere would never permit a continuance anyway, and Marta couldn’t run the risk.

Keep trying. Don’t give up.

Words to live by. She twisted the key and the engine finally turned over, rheumatic but alive. Marta slammed the truck into reverse and it stalled while she was backing out. Twice. She finally got it rolling and steered it out of the garage, paying the parking bill with cash.

The truck nosed into the blizzard, which threatened to overwhelm its worn windshield wipers. She was heading north to Steere’s house in New Jersey, following up on her hunch that the beach house was special to Steere and that she’d find some clue there. Some piece of evidence. Something incriminating. She was going to Long Beach Island, wherever that was. Marta needed a map.