Mercy

state of unease. She had tried to mask her own feelings with humor, sometimes even flirting with him. That was just a defense mechanism that she had adopted precisely because she did feel so uncomfortable in his presence.

The phone rang.

“Alex Sedaka’s office.”

“Hi, it’s Lee Kelly here.”

Lee was a fifty-five-year-old career burglar and by all accounts a good one. Considering how prolific he was, he got arrested surprisingly little.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Kelly?”

“I’m calling from the Park Police Station on Waller Street. I’ve been busted and I need Alex to rep me at the arraignment.”

“Mr. Sedaka isn’t here at the moment, I’m afraid, and he won’t be available all day.”

“But I need him.”

“Mr. Kelly, I don’t mean to be rude but there’s no way Mr. Sedaka can see you today. I don’t know if you’ve been following the news but we have a client on death row and unless we can get a stay of execution he’s going to be fried at one minute past midnight. So I think you can understand that right now you’re very low on our list of priorities.”

“Maybe he can fit me in? I mean, it’s only a few minutes in court.”

“I’ll pass it on to him, Mr. Kelly. But I strongly advise you to use one of those local attorneys at the arraignment court to get you bail and then Alex can take over as attorney of record when he’s not under so much pressure.”

“You want me to put my ass in a sling for one of those courthouse scavengers? No way, Jose.”

“Well all I can do is pass on your message — ”

“There’s no need to pass it on. I’ve got his cell phone number, so I can — ”

“No, Mr. Kelly, please don’t call him now, he won’t — ”

The line went dead.

18:51 PDT

“I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me the name of this friend?”

“It’s not important.”

“I don’t mean to pry. It’s just that I have a client…”

He shook his head, realizing the futility of it. Anita already knew about that. Just then his cell phone rang. He looked at the display. The Park Police Station. That meant it was probably a client. He couldn’t handle it right now and in any case they should call the office.

He pressed the red button, sending the call through to voicemail.

Anita Morgan was staring at him.

“May I ask you a question, Mr. Sedaka?”

“Sure.”

“What exactly are you trying to find out? I mean, what does all this have to do with the death of Dorothy Olsen?”

“I don’t really know. It’s just that Clayton Burrow may be innocent. And that implies that someone else is guilty.”

“And who do you think that someone might be?”

“Well we’ve discovered evidence that she had a troubled relationship with her father.”

“And you think Edgar might have killed her?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“Well I wouldn’t know about their relationship. We divorced in 1979 and never saw each other after that.”

“Never?”

“There was no need to. We didn’t have any other children and there was a lot of bitterness. I blamed him for Jimmy too, remember.”

“Yes, but was Edgar capable of deliberate cruelty?”

“As distinct from what? Accidental cruelty?”

“Or callous indifference.”

“To tell you the truth, Mr. Sedaka, I don’t know. He was a deeply troubled man. He could be moody at the best of times — and especially so after Jimmy’s death.”

“Well if he knew that Jimmy wasn’t his son, that must have played on his mind too.”

“Oh absolutely.”

A thought entered Alex’s head.

“There’s just one thing I don’t understand. If Edgar was sterile, how come he had another son with Esther?”

Anita was about to say something when she stopped dead. He noticed her swallowing and suppressing a smile, as if a new thought had entered her head.

“I notice that you said a son.”

“I meant Jonathan.”

“I know who you mean. But you didn’t express any surprise over Dorothy.”

Alex blushed and squirmed with embarrassment, remembering what Esther had told him about the one-night stand at the frat party. He realized that he had inadvertently breached a confidence. But he had more important things on his mind right now.

“I can’t talk about it.”

“Oh it’s all right!” said Anita with a teasing smile that rolled back the years. “I know that neither of them was his biological children.”

Alex responded with a smile of his own, out of sheer relief.

“I guess I’ll have to ask Esther about it.”

Anita because enthusiastic.

“Well actually I may be able to help.”

“About the fathers of Dorothy and Jonathan?”

“I don’t know about Dorothy, but I can tell you about Jonathan.”

“Yes?”

Anita sat down on the armchair, prompting Alex to sit back down on the sofa.

“About three years after Dorothy was born Esther came to me in despair. She told me how bitter and angry Edgar was, how he alternated between rage and self-pity, sarcasm and depression. She thought he suffered from bi-polar disorder — I think they called it manic-depression in those days. She told me that he wanted a son and seemed to blame both her and Dorothy for the fact that he didn’t have one. She said she’d tried everything to get pregnant again but it just wasn’t happening. But by that stage the family had become completely dysfunctional. She’d even resorted to getting Dorothy to dress up as a boy in the hope that it would placate his anger. But that only made him worse.”

She paused. Alex sat forward.

“Go on.”

“Well at that point I told her that it wasn’t her fault. I mean, I didn’t pry or ask her who Dorothy’s father was, but I told her about Edgar firing blanks. That surprised her, but it also frightened her because she realized that her secret was out with me — part of it at least. I think she may have suspected that Edgar wasn’t Dorothy’s father before, but I confirmed it. She spent the next two or three minutes crying in my arms and then she disengaged and realized that Jimmy couldn’t have been his son either.”

“And he would have known that too. He would also have known from the moment Esther told him she was pregnant with Dorothy that she had cheated on him.”