Shit. I straightened up, thinking. Outside the windows, long ribbons of mercury vapor streetlights led down Market Street to the train station and the Schuylkill River beyond. I couldn’t think about rowing now. I had to ransack my best friend’s desk.
I turned around and went through the papers next to Daffy Duck on the glass desktop. There were message slips and correspondence, Daffy pens and carrot pencils, but no billing sheets. Damn. I turned and looked around the office.
There was one cabinet left, next to the black leather couch against the wall. It was walnut, too, a smaller version of the credenza. In front of it flopped a king-sized version of yet another cartoon character. I crossed the room, moved aside the toy, and dug into the top drawers. Correspondence files.
I closed it and opened the second drawer. Son of correspondence files.
I tried the third. Beyond correspondence files. This was in the nowhere fast category. I closed the drawer, sat cross-legged on the dense carpet, and thought a minute. Billable time records are a Grun attorney’s most personal papers. Maybe Sam didn’t keep them in hard copy at all, but had them shredded. Or maybe he had them at home. I tried to remember where Sam kept the files in his apartment, but I hadn’t been there in over a year, lately we’d met at restaurants.
My gaze fell on the giant plush toy and I returned it to its home in front of the cabinet. Its huge eyes scowled at me from under the brim of an oversized Stetson, and I righted its redder-than-red handlebar mustache. Its cloth mitts held six-guns. I never liked Yosemite Sam.
Of course! Yosemite Sam! I’d forgotten him. I ran to the computer on Sam’s desk, called up the menu, and punched it in.
“Dagnabbit!” I whispered, scrolling the first page, then the next and the one after that. Lists and lists of bills sent and payments received, lots of money flowing into Grun, all for Sam’s account. He was squeezing the last dollar out of those bankrupts, to the tune of $50,000 a month in billings. Yosemite Sam was doing just fine. In fact, he had to be one of the most productive pardners in the firm. So why did he take money from Mark, and in cash?
I still had no answer. I got out of the computer file and sat back, which was when I spotted something on Sam’s desk. I moved aside the papers and stared at the Steuben bowl. It was full of paperclips, Bugs Bunny thumbtacks, and rubber bands. But there was something else. Something I’d missed before. I dug in the bowl to the flash of color and fished it out. It wiggled between my thumb and forefinger like a pink worm.
A skinny pink balloon. The same kind and color I’d seen on Bill’s arm in the cabin. I felt my mouth go dry. What did it mean?
I gaped at the bowl. A patch of green rubber stuck out, and I fished that balloon out, too. Then a yellow balloon and another pink, a red, and a bright blue, until they were scattered across the desk like so much lethal confetti. I stood shocked in the quiet of my friend’s office. Trying to fathom how Sam could be connected to Bill’s death. It didn’t seem possible, but I was holding the link in my hand.
I thrust the pink balloon in my jacket pocket, replaced the others, then slipped out and broke for the Coast.
25
I grabbed a late-night shower in the firm’s locker room after my discovery. The pink balloon was uppermost in my mind, but I couldn’t complete the connection between Bill and Sam, if there was one. My brain was too tired. The hot water made it worse, enervating me.
How much had I slept in the past few days? I gave up trying to count as I toweled off and dressed, then lay down on the single bed in the room’s so-called rest area. I set my runner’s watch for 5:00A.M., but despite my fatigue I was barely dozing when the beep sounded. I was seeing pink balloons in a nightmare birthday party.
I let myself into the firm’s kitchen for muddy coffee and an early morning bagel. Sam’s connection to Bill’s death nagged at me, though I had a more mundane problem. I had nothing to wear. I’d worn the yellow linen suit two days in a row and it was starting to look like an accordion, and smell worse. By Monday, even the losers would begin to wonder.
So at nine o’clock, coffee and half-eaten bagel before me, I was back in my conference room, on the phone to a personal shopper at a local department store, masquerading as busy lawyer Linda Frost. I ordered clothes and shoes to be delivered ASAP to Grun amp; Chase and even gave the shopper my proxy to pick what she called some “happening” suits.
After I hung up, I typed a memo to Accounting, instructing that a check be drafted payable to the store, the amount to be billed to
I was safe on the Loser Floor, since no losers worked on Saturdays, but once I left the floor it would be duck season. I stuffed Jamie 17 in my purse, scooted under the security gate that came down on the weekends, and punched the button for the elevator. I hopped in as soon as it opened, feeling nervous and exposed, even inside.
I could be recognized by the security guards downstairs or maybe a new guy on the weekend crew. I could be spotted by someone on the street who’d seen my picture in the paper. And what about the cops? Would any be in the vicinity, in the parking garage?
I was running a risk, but I had to. I fumbled in my purse for my sunglasses and slipped them on.
Nowhere to go but down.
I slunk low in the driver’s seat of the bananamobile, waiting across the street from the city hospital. Gargoyles grimaced from its granite facade, but I gathered they didn’t recognize me in my sunglasses. My mother’s appointment wasn’t for an hour or so, but I wanted to make sure she wasn’t being surveilled.
“Right, Jamie 17?”
The kitten only purred in response, fast asleep in my lap. A miracle, considering she’d lapped up half a can of Diet Coke. Poor thing should have been flying on caffeine by now, or her tiny stalagmite-teeth should have dropped out. It was sad, I was turning out to be a bad mother. I stroked her and waited for my own.
They pulled up exactly on time in a Yellow cab. Hattie got out first; a bright spot of orange hair, then turquoise pants with a white scoop-neck shirt. She held out a palm, and my mother moved slowly into the light of day.
She looked up at the sky when she emerged, her mouth agape with wonder and confusion. She was so frail, a wraith in a house-dress and sneakers. Hattie gathered her up in strong arms and practically lifted her up the gray steps into the hospital’s entrance, where they disappeared from view.
I sat in a sort of shock. Hattie had been right. My mother had been dying right before my eyes, but I hadn’t seen it. I fought the urge to follow them and forced myself to watch for the cops. I waited and waited. No squad cars, no unmarked Crown Vic.
Still I waited, stalled in a memory. It’s Thanksgiving dinner at my uncle’s, at a time when the family is still in touch. All of us are seated around the steaming turkey and lasagna, all except my mother. She’s marching in the living room in a tight circle, banging a Kleenex box on her thigh, a madwoman in protest.
Except one of us is dancing with the Kleenex.
And the people around the table, they keep chattering and passing the food as if nothing is happening. Her voice grows louder,
