Dead Ringer

eyes. “This is absurd, unprofessional, and not in anyone’s interests. So I have some free legal advice for all of you, and it didn’t originate with me. A lawyer who was smarter than all of us once said, ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ Mr. Linette, Ms. Rosato-and Mr. Mayer and Mr. St. Amien-you all would do well to heed those words.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Bennie answered, again at the same time that Linette did, only he said it louder. Anything you can do I can do better. She was hardly optimistic that Linette would be taking any advice from Judge Sherman, much less Abraham Lincoln.

“Good.” Judge Sherman banged the gavel, then set it down and rose, arranging his robes around his tall frame. “I’ll take the motion under advisement and await briefing by all the parties, to be filed within twenty days. Adjourned, people. Go home and play nice,” he ordered, with a grim set to his mouth, then he left the dais.

Bennie couldn’t help but smile, and when she turned back to St. Amien, he was grinning from ear to Gallic ear. But next to him, Mayer didn’t look so happy. And neither did Linette, who swooped to the front row of the gallery, grabbed his client by the arm, and stalked off without another word. Quinones, Kerpov, and Brenstein departed in a small horde of lawyers, collectively shunning Bennie, but she had expected as much. In fact, she didn’t even blame them. She took her time packing her briefcase to let them all go ahead, to avoid them avoiding her in the elevators. Today she’d made herself a player, leveled the playing field, and gotten the ball.

St. Amien caught up with her at counsel table and slipped a congratulatory arm around her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Fantastique, Bennie! We won, did we not?”

Bennie clicked her briefcase shut with a grin. “They want to kill us, don’t they?”

“Yes.”

“Then we won,” Bennie said, and hardly minded at all when she was rewarded with another peck on the cheek.

15

Bennie left her very satisfied client at the courthouse, grabbed a cab back to the office, and came off the elevator feeling good for the first time in days. She realized when she saw a leftover L.L. Bean box that she hadn’t thought about Alice the whole time she was in court, and she resolved not to let that unresolved situation get her down. She had won, or at least she had struck a blow, and she had to celebrate. She threaded her way through the boxes and found Marshall at the reception desk, hanging up the phone.

“Hey, lady!” Bennie called out. She dropped her briefcase at her feet. “The good guys are making a comeback!”

“I’ll say!” Marshall looked up from the reception desk with an expectant smile. Though on Marshall, every smile was expectant. “I have good news too.”

“What? Tell me.”

“You go first,” she said, so Bennie told her what had happened in court. Marshall responded with a whoop that sent the associates hurrying from their offices to the reception desk. Mary DiNunzio came running with a legal pad, Judy Carrier bore her afternoon Frappuccino in a transparent plastic cup, and Anne Murphy had wrapped her long red hair into a topknot with a pencil. They asked in happy unison what was going on and made girl noises while Bennie told the whole story for a second time. Not that she minded.

“Unreal, huh?” Bennie said, finishing. “I thought Mayer was going to fire Linette right there! He still may.”

“Fire Bull Linette?” DiNunzio’s rich brown eyes went wide. “That’s like firing God!”

Carrier looked over. “God doesn’t work for thirty percent.”

“Neither does Linette,” Murphy cracked, and they all laughed. “And Bennie, did you hear? We’re rich!”

“What?” Bennie looked puzzledly at Marshall. “What happened? Is that your news?”

“We got a check!” The receptionist bent her sleek head over her neat desk, set some correspondence aside, and found an envelope, which she handed to Bennie with a huge grin. “This just came in from PennsyBank. We’re in the money!”

“Really? So soon?” Bennie opened the envelope and pulled out a check payable to her for fifty thousand dollars. But the check wasn’t from her mortgage bank; it was from Sam, with a Post-it attached. She unstuck it and read the note: Bennie, it turns out there is no gay Mafia. Take my check and reimburse me when yours comes in next month. Love, Wascally Wabbit. Bennie felt a rush of gratitude.

“Who sent the money?” Carrier asked as the associates grouped around. “Fifty grand! Where’d that come from?”

“I borrowed it,” Bennie answered, avoiding anyone’s eye. She wasn’t about to tell them she was hocking her house and borrowing from her friend in the meantime. Marshall had probably figured it out, but the associates would have a lifetime to learn reality. And Bennie felt too good to focus on the negative. “It’ll keep us afloat until St. Amien settles. We can pay the rent and the long-distance bill, and buy a Frappuccino or two!” She looked around at their faces, alive with hope. “Ladies, we’re back in business! Carrier, I owe you for my get-out-of-jail card. DiNunzio, I’m paying for your field trip, not you. And Murphy, about your seventeen dollars-”

“Woohoo!” DiNunzio said, clapping, and Murphy brightened.

“We’re okay, and I have more good news, Bennie. You know how you asked me to see about your license, with the felony charges against you? I called the disciplinary board, and if you get the charges dropped, there are no repercussions at all. Your license is fine.”

“Yeah!” Carrier yelped, and the associates began shaking their butts and doing the butter-churn dance, their generation’s reflexive response to any bit of good news, such as Justin Timberlake was single again.

But this time, Bennie joined in.

An hour later Bennie was celebrating Rosato-style, rowing along in a single shell, letting the sights and sounds of the Schuylkill River seep into her bones and soul. She was back to her usual routine of rowing after work every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday morning, and it always felt so good being back in the groove, getting away from courtrooms, clients, and twins. She breathed in the earthy smells of the water, an organic cocktail of muck, minnows, and goose poop, and took another languid stroke, leaning back after dropping her blade into the green- gray water. The late-afternoon sun warmed her sweaty face and shoulders, bare in her white tank.

Sunlight glimmered gold on the tiny ripples of the river, making a gilt edge to the scalloped chop of the waves, as if they were the baroque frame to its glorious natural landscape. On both banks of the river, towering oaks, maples, and cherry trees showed off their new green leaves, reaching into a cobalt blue sky filled with transparent wisps of white clouds, like cotton candy pulled apart by the too-eager hands of children. The grass covering the riverbanks had sprouted a kelly hue, its slender blades weak with youth. Canada geese called in the sky, their honking echoing even in the middle of the river, conducted along the water’s smooth surface as surely as an electrical current, if not quite as scientifically.

Psshlp, splashed Bennie’s oars, cutting the water and spraying cold water onto the bow deck of her boat, a yellow Empacher. Her boat was twenty-seven feet of beautiful, weighing only thirty pounds; the German-made shell was the favorite of elite rowers, and Bennie had scored hers used. She was too skilled a rower to make such a messy splash, but she wasn’t worrying much about her technique today. She was trying to unwind. Get a good mood flowing and forget Linette and Alice. Maybe even her father. And rowing was working its magic, at least by the time she was stroking her way back to the boathouse. She had rowed the seven-mile circuit to the verdigris-colored Falls Bridge and back, but it had taken only two miles for Bennie to feel like herself again.

Psshlp. She leaned back in the hard wooden seat of the scull, pulled the oars into her lower ribs with all her might, and feathered their black rubber handles and pushed them out quickly. A breeze wafted across the water, carrying a chilly undercurrent of winter past and the fresh green gust of spring establishing itself. Bennie breathed it in, let it fill her lungs, and took another powerful stroke. Her thighs ached from the effort, and blood hardened her quads. A rush of good feeling suffused her, flowing like oxygen-rich blood, and she felt almost euphoric. Rowing wasn’t a sport, it was a religion.

Psshlp. She looked downriver, where the trees on the banks were giving way to the