'Be better if I can talk with him here,' I said.
'Why?'
'Bring him in, sit in a conference room, give him a decent lunch, have Hawk join us. Anybody in Corrections owe you a favor?'
'Hawk?'
'Might ease the black-white thing a little.'
'Yeah, I can pull that off. He'll probably have to be shackled.'
'Leg irons only,' I said. 'And no guards in the room.'
'Ellis is kind of a dangerous guy,' Rita said.
'You can be right outside,' I said.
'Yeah… Hawk with anybody?'
'Always, and not for long,' I said. 'I don't think he's husband material.'
'No,' Rita said, 'he's not. Be a hell of a weekend, though.'
'I've heard that about you,' I said.
'Really? Where?'
'I think it was written in pencil on the wall of a holding cell in the Dedham jail,' I said.
Rita grinned.
'And the sad thing is, I wrote it.'
Chapter 2
'AND I HAVE to face it,' Marcy Vance told me, 'a lot of this is my fault.'
We were sitting on stools at a high table for two in a sandwich shop on State Street, looking at the lunch menu.
'How so,' I said.
'Have you read the transcript?' she said.
I nodded.
'He wanted to plea-bargain,' Marcy said. 'I told him no. If he were innocent, we should fight. He said they were going to convict him anyway. I wanted to prove him wrong, prove to him that the system would work. I even put him on the stand. He's not an articulate man, but I believed in his innocence and I felt that, you know, truth will out.'
'Everybody starts out young,' I said.
I was considering the club sandwich.
'I started out younger than most,' she said.
She was a lanky woman, still younger than most. Not thirty yet, with pale skin and green eyes, and straight brown hair efficiently cut. There was a hint of freckles that no suntan had ever intensified. Her hands were big, with long fingers. She wore no jewelry, and her only makeup was a pale lip gloss.
'And I asked one of the detectives in cross-examination a question that permitted him to mention Ellis's record. The judge allowed it. Said if I were going to ask questions to which I didn't know the answer, I was going to have to live with the consequences.'
'But it's Ellis that's living with them.'
'Yes.'
It was a given that if I had a club sandwich, I would get some of it on my shirt. What was under consideration was whether I cared or not, which was related to how I felt about Marcy. Which I hadn't decided.
'Why do you think he's innocent?'
'He said so. I believed him.'
'That's it?'
'And it doesn't fit. His previous assaults were on black women in his neighborhood. The rest of his record is all of a piece. Petty street crime, extortion, possession with intent, that sort of thing, all within a mile of Ruggles Station.'
The waitress was rushed. She didn't want to wait for me to evaluate my feelings about Marcy before I ordered. Marcy ordered carrot soup. I played it safe.
'Ham on light rye, mustard,' I said. 'Side of coleslaw. Decaf coffee.'
The waitress flat-heeled away at high speed and slapped our order on the service counter. There were maybe ten other order slips already there.
'Ellis own a car?' I said.
'No.'
'He got a credit card?'
