money if Connolly gets railroaded. They want Connolly to have a lawyer so preoccupied she can’t think straight or work hard. Which only makes me want to work harder, by the way.”
“I see. Well. If you suspect these terrible things, why don’t you go ahead and file a charge?” Judge Guthrie eased his glasses off his nose and cleaned them by blowing softly in one lens then the other, two shallow puffs of breath. “Why storm in here like gangbusters, to no result?”
Bennie paused. Strange. Was he making a suggestion? “I came to give you the benefit of the doubt.”
“Ah.” The judge held up a bony hand, from which his tortoiseshell glasses dangled. “You mean you have no proof. You have only your suspicion, unsubstantiated, and that’s what motivates you. You disagree with my order, so you charge into my office. You come without opposing counsel. You make scurrilous allegations. Lawyers lose their licenses for such conduct, you know.”
“They tried that already. It didn’t work.”
“You are in quite a state, aren’t you?” Judge Guthrie rolled out his leather desk chair and eased into it. His desk was dotted with gift gavels in malachite and crystal, anchored by a large porcelain lamp. Its light glinted on a lacquered set of brass scales, an award from the bar association. “I remember how I felt when my mother passed away. It fell to me to make the arrangements for my mother’s funeral. Yet I worked throughout, at the firm, for I had clients depending on me. It wasn’t a responsibility I took lightly, nor was the responsibility I bore my family. I never take my responsibilities lightly, whether they be to my clients or to my family.”
Bennie struggled to read between the lines. Was someone threatening him or his family? “I am looking out for my client, Judge. I believe she’s being set up for a crime she didn’t commit. I’m not about to let that happen. Neither should you.”
“My, my.” Judge Guthrie replaced his glasses as he gazed out his office window. The Criminal Justice Center was located on a side street in a city struggling to keep business from escaping to the suburbs. There was no view except for the shadowy windows of the vacant office building across the way. The judge seemed momentarily lost to Bennie, and she sensed that if he was involved in a conspiracy, he was being coerced.
“Who are you protecting, Judge? What do they have on you?”
“My, my, my,” Judge Guthrie said, tenting his fingers as he focused outside the window. “Grief is a funny thing. It plays tricks with the brain. It’s an emotional time for you, but you will have to set your emotions to the side. You’re at sixes and sevens, in a tizzy, owing to your terrible loss, but it is time for you to get along now. You have lots of work to do, Ms. Rosato, and very little time to do it in.”
Bennie sighed, torn. “Your Honor, if I’m going to try this case, I’m going to take your friends down. Don’t make me take you down with them.”
“I do hope you feel better, Ms. Rosato. I did send your mother some lovely flowers, you know. Lest you think me a wicked man.” Judge Guthrie swiveled to face Bennie and opened his hands slowly. “I am not a wicked man,” he repeated.
“We are what we do,” she said, and left the judge hiding behind his awards.
“Bennie, any comment on the ruling?” “Bennie, what do you think about Judge Guthrie’s decision?” “Will you appeal the judge’s decision, Ms. Rosato?”
Bennie barreled through the reporters at the courthouse and later outside her office building. They followed her from one place to the next, plaguing her with questions, jostling her, sticking videocams and tape machines in her face. She realized how much her world, at least her inner world, had slowed down since her mother died. She felt oddly like an invalid forced outside, into light and movement, and it disoriented her. She fended the press off with a jittery hand and prayed the cameras wouldn’t broadcast her anxiety.
“No comment,” she murmured as she pushed through the revolving door into her lobby and crossed to the elevator bank. The doors opened, and Bennie took the elevator to her floor. The reception area was as quiet as an oasis, except that everyone was staring at her. Bennie avoided all eyes but Marshall’s, sitting at the reception desk. “Any messages?” Bennie asked simply.
“Yes, sure,” Marshall said. She slipped a strand of hair behind a pierced ear, gathered the mail, and handed it over. “I’m so sorry-”
“Thanks,” Bennie said, accepting the work, if not the expression of sympathy. She had to block it out if she was going to be effective and she’d meant what she told Judge Guthrie. If somebody wanted her paralyzed, then her only response was to move faster. She tucked the papers under her arm and hurried to the conference room.
“Bennie, I’m sorry,” Judy said, her young face soft with sorrow, and Mary looked positively teary.
“I’m really-”
“Sorry,” Bennie supplied, then added, “I know. Thanks. But we’re all up shit’s creek if we don’t get back to work.” She tossed her papers on the conference room table, where they landed with a slap. “Tell me where we are in this case. I got your notes. Mary, you start with the details.”
Mary filled Bennie in on the dismal results of their neighborhood canvassing. When she finished she added, “And Lou’s still out there, so maybe he’ll find out something.”
“Maybe,” Bennie said, and turned to Judy. “Tell me about this drug thing. I got your message about Valencia. Connolly says she doesn’t know her and denies selling drugs.”
“I’m not surprised,” Judy said, and reiterated the details of what Ronnie Morales had told her. “I can go back to the gym to learn more, if you want. I’d like to try to meet some of the other wives, see what I can find out.”
“No, we’re in high gear now. You have to get the paperwork done. Jury instructions, motions
“Tonight is the viewing?” Mary asked. “We’d like to go.”
“Thanks, but neither of you can come. We’ve got a defense to stage.”
Judy frowned. “But we’d like to. We can work afterwards.”
“No.” Bennie headed for the door. “If you’re there, you’re fired. Don’t file anything without my seeing it first. Fax it to me at home or send it by messenger. Call if you have any questions or need anything.”
“Sure,” Judy said, mystified, and Mary nodded as Bennie slipped out the door and hustled to her office to pack her briefcase.
45
Fleur-de-lis of ersatz gilt flocked the wallpaper and the room was long and narrow, almost a coffin itself. Sound from another wake traveled through the thin walls and the cheap nap of the rug betrayed that it was indoor-outdoor carpeting. Covella’s Funeral Home wasn’t the first tier of Italian funeral homes, where the mob wakes were held, but Bennie thought it suited. It was unpretentious and small, like her mother, and if it had bowling trophies displayed on a shelf in the back of the room, so be it. It didn’t matter to Bennie where she mourned her mother. She’d be mourning her the rest of her life.
Bennie sagged in an overstuffed chair in the front row between Hattie and Grady. Her head throbbed dully and her eyes were sore and dry. She was all cried out and hollow inside. The press thronged outside, but they’d been kept at bay by a ring of streetwise morticians. At least it remained quiet inside the funeral home.
Grady squeezed her hand, and Hattie sat on Bennie’s other side. Her yellow hair was the only bright spot on her; the dark skin around her eyes was swollen, and she wore a black pantsuit with short sleeves and a pointed collar that she kept tugging into place. The three of them-Grady, Bennie, and Hattie-constituted the sum total of her mother’s mourners, but Bennie shrugged off any shame about it. She’d been to political wakes, business wakes, and school-reunion wakes, all jam-packed with people who cared little for the body lying amid the flowers. This loss was greater, somehow undiluted, because it was just the three of them huddled together, their heads bent.
Bennie’s thoughts turned to Connolly and she felt pleased that Connolly wasn’t there. Even if Connolly was a blood relative, her presence would have been an insult to her mother’s memory, considering how little the death
