“What day? What did I do?”
“It’s what you said.”
“What I
“I don’t have to lie for you, just because you gave me a job!”
“What lie? What are you talking about?”
“Get out of my office! I don’t need you in here, shouting at me.”
I almost laughed, but it hurt too much. “No, Renee. I still own this place.
I walked out of her office, stalked down the hall, and went into my office and slammed the door. I stood there for a moment, shaken. What did Renee tell the cops? What was she talking about? All I remembered was I took her running once. She had started another diet and asked me for help. What happened at Franklin Field? I had to know.
I took a deep breath. There was one way to find out. Retrace my steps. Go for a run. I needed to manage my stress anyway. My head felt like it was going to burst, and I hadn’t exercised since the shit hit the fan. I changed quickly into the running shorts and top I kept in the office, shoved a ten-dollar bill and my keys into the little pocket in my pants, and left the townhouse by the back entrance, ignoring the reporters who’d discovered the back door.
“Any comment, Ms. Rosato?” “Did you do it?” “What about the will?” “Going for a run?” “Ms. Rosato, Ms. Rosato, please!” I sprinted off, leaving the reporters behind, and it wasn’t until I’d turned the corner of the backstreet that I saw him.
Detective Azzic. He sat, smoking, in a dark blue car parked on Twenty-Second Street. He was barely hidden, so he must have wanted me to know he was watching. He expected me to run scared. On the contrary. I sprinted down the row of parked cars until I reached the unmarked Crown Vic.
“Hey, good lookin’,” I said, popping into his open window. “What’s your sign?”
“Leo the Lion.” He stubbed his Merit out in an overflowing ashtray, his mouth a twisted line. “Once I dig in I don’t let go.”
“Sounds sexy. So, what time you get off?”
His eyes remained flinty through leftover smoke. “You think it’s funny, Rosato?”
“No, I think it’s harassment, Azzic. Don’t you have anything better to do? Suspects to beat up? Bribes to take?”
“I’m just doin’ some routine surveillance. Anytime you wanna come down to the division and talk, you can.”
“Is this an invite? Will there be a cheese-ball? And are you gonna wear that weird tie?” I waved at his paisley Countess Mara.
“If you talk, I’ll listen. Leave the Boy Wonder at home. I think you can handle it on your own. I was surprised to see you takin’ orders, big-time lawyer like yourself.”
I smiled. “You’re trying to get my Irish up, Detective, but I’m not Irish. I think.”
His broad shoulder dipped as he started the car’s huge V-8. “You know, I used to wonder why lawyers like you do what you do. Now I just don’t care.”
“It’s cops like you that keep me in business.”
“Oh, we do it, that’s it?” He snorted. “Not the murderers, the rapists, the critters whose money you take.”
“You mean my clients? They have rights, the same as you. The right to an honest police force. The right to a fair trial. I never understood it better than I do now.”
He gunned the breathy engine. “You know what your problem is, Rosato? There’s no right or wrong for you. We can’t get a confession because of you, we can’t get a conviction because of you. You’re on the TV, in the papers, explaining everything away. Me, I was a priest before I was a cop.”
“I was a waitress before I was a lawyer. So what?”
“I know right from wrong.”
“I see, this is God’s law you’re enforcing now. You got a personal relationship with the Chief Justice in the sky. He picked you, out of all the weird ties.”
Azzic shook his head. “You don’t believe in God, do you, Rosato?”
“That’s kind of personal,” I said, to jerk his chain, but the answer was no. I stopped believing when I realized my mother lived a nightmare, every day of her life. Haunted, terrified, every single second.
“All right, don’t answer, I don’t give a fuck. Here’s how it is. I have twenty other cases on my desk, but this is the most important.”
“Is it my perfume?”
“Let me tell you something, funny girl. National clearance rate for homicides is about sixty-five percent. My squad, we run at about seventy-seven. Me personally, I’m doing even better than that. You know what that means?”
“You got a C average? You’ll never get into law school with that, pal.”
“It means I’m on your ass, wherever you go, ’til the day I put you behind bars.”
“Oh yeah? Then catch me if you can, Detective.” I ducked out of the car and took off.
The engine roared as Azzic pulled away from the curb, but I darted across the street and bolted the wrong way up the block. In two one-way streets, up Spruce Street and Pine, I had lost the local constabulary and was running free.
One, two, three, breathe. One, two, three, breathe.
Franklin Field is a football stadium and running track at the eastern edge of Penn’s campus, ringed by bleachers and a high, redbrick wall. I’d been running its steps once a week since college, to increase my wind and build strength for rowing. The electronic score-board was dark this time of year and the bristly Astroturf empty, but the steps were open for anyone crazy enough to run them.
One, two, three, breathe. I pounded from bleacher to bleacher, bench to bench. Straight up, at a fifty-degree grade. We called it running the steps, but running the steps would have been easy compared with running the benches, which were farther apart. I broke a sweat in the humidity of the hazy afternoon. Keep your knees high. One, two, three, breathe.
At the top were old wooden benches that had weathered to gray and splintered. Here and there a new plywood board had been installed, and heavy bolts, black with age and tarnish, stuck incongruously through the new wood. I played a game as I ran up the middle of the benches, sidestepping the bolts and letting my mind wander. It was the only way to remember. And I needed to remember.
One, two, three, breathe. Land on the balls of the feet. I raced up, my footsteps thundering as I reached the vertiginous heights of the stadium. I darted out of the sun and toward the airy top deck, under the painted iron rafters that supported the upper level of the stadium. It was breezy here, dark and cool. Still, up, up, up. Sweat poured down my forehead. My heart pumped like a piston. I’d run hard like this with Renee, that day. I tried to reconstruct it in my mind.
The sun is unseasonably hot. Renee is wearing a pair of navy gym shorts and a T-shirt that’s too thick. She’s sweating, her chest heavy, and a silver chain with a key bounces around her neck as she runs.
I landed on the top bench and stopped a minute, panting, then turned around and ran down again. One, two, three, down. Harder than it looked, going down, trying not to lose your balance a hundred feet from the ground, with your head dizzy from exertion. The bumpy tread on my sneakers gripped the wood of the bench and I bounded down, down, down, leaping from one bench to the next.
One, two, three, breathe. The lowest fifteen benches were of gaudy red and blue plastic, and I aimed for them headlong, past the wooden benches, down through to the plastic. When I reached the bottom I huffed just long enough to turn around again and start back up, an Ivy League Sisyphus.
One, two. I was breathing hard. Trying to maintain my rhythm. Trying to remember. Renee, at about thirty pounds overweight, isn’t able to keep up. She stops and rests, huffing and puffing under the rafters at the top of the stadium. It’s chilly there, cool as under the boardwalk. It feels private, too, almost secretive. She stops to catch her breath and I keep her company. We start talking.
