was large and messy, with two IKEA bureaus on the far wall, their drawers open and overstuffed, and between them an old rocking chair with sweat clothes piled on it. Her bicycle, a yellow Cannondale, leaned against the wall; her boxing gear sat piled in the corner. She could clean up but that wouldn’t improve her mood. She could work the case but she was too distracted. She turned over, facing the opposite wall.
Moonlight streamed through the window, a tall one with mullioned panes, typical of the architecture in this part of town. Judy had moved to Society Hill, the oldest section of the city, as part of her never-ending quest for The Perfect Apartment. The possibilities had narrowed since she got Penny, now a healthy nine-month-old golden retriever, who snored happily at the foot of the bed. No rentals wanted pets and even the largest security deposit didn’t help. She’d ended up in this place, her nicest so far and the fanciest, only because she bartered free legal services to the landlord for a year. He had a tricky boiler in one of his other buildings, but like her other clients, he’d have to wait. She had forgotten to call the GC at Huartzer during business hours and left a message only when she’d finally gotten home. And her antitrust article awaited her at the office. The deadline loomed on Tuesday. Her boss loomed constantly.
Judy sat up in bed. She couldn’t relax. If she did drugs she’d do them now, but she stayed away from that stuff. She was already addicted to M&M’s, a monkey on her back. She could drink a nice chilled glass of pink Zinfandel but that would make her want to dance, not sleep. She had nothing good to read, though the stack of hardcovers on the bedside table threatened to topple. She resolved instantly to buy only books she wanted to read, not books that she should read, and felt suddenly free. Free! She switched on the ginger-jar lamp next to the books and jumped out of bed. Waking, the puppy lifted her head from her oversize paws and put it back down again, knowing where Judy was going and deciding it wasn’t worth the trouble to follow.
She padded out of her bedroom and headed for her studio in the adjoining room, where she flicked on the lights. Like her bedroom, it was large and empty, painted white, but there the similarity ended. It contained no furniture but was filled with multi-layered wooden trays of acrylic paints in tubes, jars of sable paintbrushes in all sizes, and large-format canvases, most of which were finished, propped against the walls.
Bright, bold paintings of natural landscapes dominated her work, painted from memories and photographs of places she had lived. There were mountains she had hiked in Big Sur from when her father was commissioned at Stanford, and rocks she had climbed in Virginia, near the basic-training facility at Quantico; and green, tropical trails through which she had mountain-biked, outside of Pensacola, where they had moved so he could teach initial flight training. The painting resting on the easel showed a secret stream she had discovered curling through the marsh on the way to the Everglades. She surveyed the verdant greens, dense cobalt blues, and hot orange of the painting without the usual satisfaction. What was wrong with it? Judy confronted her art with new eyes in the still apartment. The dark window across the room reflected the naked form of a tall, athletic woman with tousled blond hair.
The reflection caught her eye. She considered pulling the shade, but there was none to pull, and in any event the city was asleep. The full moon was the only thing peeking into her window, shining off the granulated tar roof of the rowhouse across the street and illuminating the aluminum of the gutter like an outline of light. Beyond the rooftop twinkled the lights of the city and the office buildings uptown. For the first time Judy noticed its gritty beauty, in hues of midnight black, cool silver, and bright white. She remembered the colors of the brick on the way to South Philly, from the cab window. She watched the city shimmer before her, then in her mind’s eye, with her own naked form ghosted in the foreground. In time she strode to the easel, picked up the unfinished canvas, and set it aside.
By the time Judy stopped painting, the moon had thinned to a pale shadow in a gray dawn sky, and she caught two hours’ sleep before she showered, got dressed, and went to work. She felt peaceful, rested, and even eager, all of which was necessary for where she was going.
Chapter 13
It was another perfect day in Philadelphia, which meant they had used up both of them. The sun was high in the clear sky, and the air felt cool. Judy intercepted a cab heading to the new Society Hill hotels, climbed into the backseat, and retrieved her cell phone from a full backpack. She wanted to know if she still had a live client. It seemed relevant, especially in view of where she was going.
“University City, Thirty-eighth and Spruce,” she told the cabbie, intentionally omitting the name of the building. She didn’t want him looking at her funnier than he already was.
A young man, he had a line of cartilage pierces, and his red hair had been knotted into ropy Rasta dreads that sprang like palm fronds from the center of his head. He smelled of reefer and was too cool to approve of her Saturday work uniform of jeans, denim clogs, and a wacky-colored Oilily sweater over a white T-shirt. Judy used to like bad boys that looked like him, but she was happily over that phase, having learned the obvious: that bad boys were simply childish men. She punched in the number for Frank’s cell phone and examined her nails, fingers outstretched, while the phone connected. Rust-colored acrylic paint rimmed her cuticles and the scent of turpentine overwhelmed the cabbie’s pot stink, which was as it should be.
“Hello, Lucia here,” Frank said when he picked up, and his voice sounded tired but reassuringly oxygenated.
“Tell me you’re both alive and well.”
“We’re both alive and one of us is well. He’s cleaning up the first floor as we speak. He already swept the loft and the second-
floor bedrooms. He’s the Energizer Bunny of grandpops.”
“Is he upset?”
“Yes, because we’re out of Hefty trash bags. He wanted to go to the corner for that and coffee, but I told him no.”
“And he listened?”
“Of course not. I had to tie him to a chair. What’s family for? I didn’t think you’d mind.”
Judy smiled. “That’s false imprisonment.”
“Nothing false about it.”
Judy laughed. Frank was fun to talk to. His voice was deep and warm. She wondered whether he was dating anybody and hoped he didn’t like bad girls. Everybody knew what they were. “Have the cops been over?”
“Are you kidding?”
Their first fight. She let it lie. The cab turned west on Walnut Street, the traffic sparse this morning, before the day’s shopping started. “Did the pigeons come back?”
“Not yet.”
“So your grandfather isn’t leaving the house?”
“He has to. I have a job to go to today, so I’m taking him with me. Did you see the newspapers this morning?”
“I’m avoiding them.”
“We’re the big story, unfortunately, and there’s a whole piece on the Coluzzis and the construction company. Pictures of John and Marco. Speculation about who’s taking over now that Angelo’s gone. Wait a minute.” Frank covered the receiver but Judy could hear Pigeon Tony fussing in Italian. “Sorry,” Frank said, when he came back on the line. “He’s not leaving my sight today, no matter what he says.”
“He wants to stay at the house.”
“He’s worried about the birds, but he doesn’t have to be here when they come home, if they come home. I don’t care. I slept on the couch pillows for him, that’s enough. He goes with me today.”
“I agree.” Judy’s cab zipped up Walnut. “Why don’t you get the Tonys to come over? They can wait for the birds.”
“The Tonys?” Frank asked, then laughed softly. “If you think it’s weird that they’re all named Tony, you’re wrong. The only thing that’s weird is that they’re not all named Frank.”
The cab crossed the concrete bridge over the Schuylkill River, which managed to fake a green-blue color today, and reached the Gothic towers of the University of Pennsylvania. They were getting closer. Judy needed information. “Where will you be today, in case I need to see your grandfather?” It was the real reason, but it sounded lame even to her.
“You got a pencil?”
