Killer Smile (30 page)

No!
A mail drop? She had driven all the way out here to find a mail drop! She went to the Saracone Investments box, which was stainless steel like the others, and locked, with a little clear window in the top. No mail showed in the window, so it must have been empty, saving both the decision of whether to break in and Mary’s immortal soul. But she couldn’t be stopped now. A dry hole!

She hit the mailbox in frustration. She couldn’t believe an empty mailbox was all there was to Saracone Investments. Where did Justin go to work, and Giovanni before him? Did they work at all? She had seen something like this only once before in her life. At Grun & Chase, her old law firm, she had met a client whose father had made money in the stock market in the early 1950s. The children and grandchildren spent their lives investing and reinvesting the money he’d earned in the fund but were never employed in real jobs. Was that what she was seeing with the Saracones, and Justin? Where had they earned all that money? She couldn’t just give up and go back to the office. She had forgotten how to be a lawyer. And just when she started to like it, too.

Ten minutes later, Mary had successfully located the management office of the industrial park and was standing before a reception desk with a cardboard box she’d had in her trunk. She placed it on the reception desk next to a nameplate that read
TONI BRUNETTI
and waited for the receptionist to get off the phone. It didn’t look like it was going to happen anytime soon. Toni, a young woman with spiky black hair and a fake-diamond stud pierced through her left nostril, had flashed Mary the one-minute sign five minutes ago.

“And then I find out, just this morning when I get his email, that he was seeing her
and
her friend and
all
the chicks from the chat room.
All
of them. Even
hillbillygirl
!”

Mary averted her eyes but there was nothing to see. A plain office with white walls, furnished with a tweedy sofa and chairs, a whitish laminated coffee table, topped off with a dreaded vase of company tulips.

“How could he
do
that?
Hillbillygirl?
Who
knows
what you could catch from a
hillbillygirl
?” Toni tore a Kleenex from a gaily patterned cube on her desk and dabbed at her nose with it. Mary wondered what the deal was with that nose pierce. Did it get in the way of heartbreak?

“I
knew
he was fooling around. He started working out and he got his eyes lasered and his teeth whitened. Since when did he ever care about his eyes or his teeth? Until February, the only thing he cared about was basketball!”

Mary tried not to eavesdrop but she couldn’t help it. The woman’s voice bore the unmistakable inflections of South Philly — adorably warped
o
’s and deliciously nasal
a
’s, and with a name like Brunetti, she was clearly a
paesana
. And unwittingly, Toni was giving Mary a better idea than the one she’d had.

“Oh, yeah, and he bought an Ab-Doer, can you believe that? An Ab-Doer? How could I have been so stupid?” Toni gritted her teeth without smearing her lip liner. “Listen, I gotta go. I’ll call you back, I have to help someone here. Thanks. Bye.” She hug up, sniffed hard, and looked wetly at Mary, who felt a tug for her.

“You want to go freshen up?”

“No, I’m fine.” Toni blinked back tears. “I
so
wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.”

“I
so
understand,” Mary said, ramping up her accent, which had barely survived an Ivy League law school. “You’re from South Philly, aren’t you?”

“You got it. Sixteenth & Wolf.”

“Get out!” Mary grinned. “St. Monica’s? I graduated Goretti, too. What year were you?”

“We moved to Delco for high school. I went to Interboro.”

“It’s all good.” Mary smiled. Having traded both high schools and parishes, the two girls had just transferred billions of information-bytes faster than any Pentium chip. They had learned that they had everything in common, and in fact, might be the same person. “So what are you doin’ out here?” Out here could be west of Fifteenth Street, or Montana.

“My loser boyfriend was from out here.”

“He’ll get his,” Mary said, with a twinge. She felt bad, but she had a mission to accomplish, and she was hoping another white lie wouldn’t hurt. It was a venial sin, at worst. She summoned the frustration of her morning, her newfound hatred of tulips and a pathetic frown. “I can’t believe this, you and I have so much in common. More than you think. I’m in the exact same situation as you, with your boyfriend.”

“You are?” Toni’s damp eyes widened.

“Yes. That’s why I’m here. I’ve been seeing Justin Saracone, from Saracone Investments. The rich family with the mail drop here, at the end?”

“My God!” Toni’s manicured hand flew to her mouth. “I know that turd! He hits on me every time he comes in — and he’s married! He thinks that smile will get him anywhere.”

“I’m not surprised. He told me he wasn’t married when I met him, so now I’m dumping him.” Mary moved her empty box forward on the counter. “This is his stuff.”

“What is it with men?” Toni asked, bewildered.

“Don’t ask me.”
If I knew any, I’d tell you.
“He’s a pig.”

“A tool.”

“A
dog
.” All this name-calling was making Mary feel unaccountably better. But back to the point. “I came to leave his stuff in his mailbox, but I had a second thought. I want to take it to his
house
. And deliver it to his
wife
!”

“What a great idea!” Toni clapped in delight, as Mary had hoped she would.

“Why should these guys get off scot-free?”

“They shouldn’t!”

“We’re not gonna let them treat us this way, are we?”

“Hell, no!”

“We don’t have to take their crap!”

“No way!”

“We can fight back!” Mary raised her palm, and Toni slapped her five.

“We
will
fight back! Do it! Do it! Do it!”

“I don’t have his home address!”

“I do, it’s in the file!”

“Let me have it!”

Suddenly Toni’s triumphant smile faded and she lowered her hand. “I can’t. Saracone signed up for the lockbox and he pays the bill, but I can’t give you his address. I’m not allowed.”

Damn!
Another casualty of a parochial education. A girl who followed the rules. Mary used to be that. Before Montana.

“Don’t you have his address?”

“No, he never gave it to me. He didn’t want me to know he was married.”

Toni bit her lip. “I really want to give it to you, but I can’t.”

“You sure? We’re homegirls.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, I understand. You’ve been through hell this morning.” Mary picked up the empty box. “I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

“You’re not mad?”

“Not at all. I’ll find another way to get his address.” Mary reached across the counter and gave Toni a warm hug. “And throw that guy out. He doesn’t deserve you.”

“Thanks.”

“Take care now.” Mary turned to go to the door, but Toni called out:

“Yo, wait a minute!”

Mary turned on her heel, with the box.

“Where you going after this?”

“To the office.”

“Where’s your office?”

“Center City.”

“Let me give you directions. I bet you don’t know the shortcut.” Toni beckoned her back to the desk with a polished fingernail, and Mary returned to the counter.

“Shortcut?”

“Yeah. I know a great shortcut back to the expressway.” Toni grabbed a pen and a piece of paper from her desk, then bent her spiky head over the paper and began drawing a wobbly line. “Go this way. It’ll save you half an hour, easy. And if you keep your eyes open on the way — God knows what you’ll find.”

Mary finally came up to speed, with a smile. She watched Toni finish the map, which was a long wiggly line, with no
X
to mark the spot. It was like a treasure hunt for Mensa members. How would she know which house was Saracone’s? “You think I can do this?”

“No worries. You’re from South Philly, so you’ll recognize it right away.” Toni slid the map across the counter, with a sly smile.

Not five minutes later, Mary was in her car, following a convoluted series of switchbacks that could qualify as a shortcut only if your destination were Mars. She drove through gorgeous countryside and passed her umpteenth rolling hill, still ponds with cattails not attached to cats, and immense new mansions, where the only neighbors were Canada geese. She eyed each house on the shortcut, but after six winding miles began to worry that she would never find Justin’s house, or that she had already driven past it by accident. Then she took a right turn as the road wound around a bend, glanced out the window at the house on the curve, and hit the brake.

Mary laughed out loud at the sight. Toni had been right. There would be no mistaking this house, not for a girl from Mercer Street. A huge wrought-iron gate spanned the driveway, and its black bars formed a mile-high, scrollwork S. The same as the screen doors on Mercer Street and every other street in South Philly, only about three billion dollars more expensive.

Mary pulled the car up a little out of the line of sight, found a sheltering oak tree, and cut the engine, eyeballing the house, which was situated near the street. Thank God that Saracone the Younger didn’t share his father’s obsession with privacy. He lived in a huge mansion, hewn of gray-and-black stone, with a sloping Tudor roof, genuine slate, with little iron stoppers so the cable guy didn’t slide off. A circular gravel driveway curved gracefully in front of a grand, gabled facade, and cars lined the driveway bumper to bumper, too many for one family. There must have been some kind of get-together going on, maybe associated with the father’s funeral.

Mary scanned the lineup of cars for an Escalade, but there wasn’t one.
Whew
. Then she reconsidered, wishing the Escalade were there. It would be better to know where Chico was at all times, rather than not. She suspected he had been sent out of the country, or at least the jurisdiction, after his attack on Keisha. And Mary hoped that he or Melania hadn’t talked to the maid about the funeral planner, because she didn’t want anyone in the Saracone camp to know what she was up to. It was only a matter of time before they did.

There was no traffic on the street, so she sat outside the house a minute, wondering what to do. Crash the party? Sneak around the back? And she wasn’t sure what she’d learn by going in.
No, not yet.
And she had better leads to follow anyway, when she launched the next stage of her investigation.

Starting as soon as she got back to the city.

Only fifty-six more to go.
The late-morning sun peeked through Mary’s office window as she typed at her laptop. She was researching the Saracones’ funeral guests and finding their home addresses. She hit the enter key and checked the monitor.

She copied the information to a new document and penciled a checkmark on the pink sheet, underneath Melania’s Memo. Then she plugged in the next guest’s name, hit enter again, and in a second, the next address and phone number popped onto the screen. Ten addresses and phone numbers, so far. The Internet made all sorts of information public, and home addresses were a warm-up to bra sizes and HDL levels.

“Missed you this morning,” Judy said, appearing in the doorway. She looked remarkably corporate in her blue sleeveless dress, but she still had bedhead, her blonde hair going everywhich way. Mary thought it might be intentional, because nobody but her actually
parted
their hair anymore, especially everybody in whatever generation she was supposed to be in.

“Sorry, I was out.” Mary kept typing.

“Where were you?”

Uh
. “Out.”

“What’re you doin’?” Judy asked, her tone suspicious.

“Stuff.”

“Translation, you’re back on Brandolini. Me, I’ve been in a deposition all morning.
Your
deposition in Alcor.”

“Thanks. How’s it going?”

“It’s all finished, it went great, and you don’t have to feel guilty about it.”

“Then why’d you give me guilt?”

“For fun.”

Mary smiled.

“I also successfully served Premenstrual Tom, and the TRO hearing is next week. It’s yet another deposit in the karma bank for me. I’m beating you, even though you surged ahead with all this pro bono work.” Judy entered the office and came around the desk to snoop. “Guess you know that Keisha’s still unconscious.”

“I called, too.” Mary ignored the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. The way she could help Keisha best was by doing exactly what she was doing. She cut-and-pasted another address into her document.
Fifty-five more to go.
“Bill’s with her, so at least she’s safe.”

“I know.”

“Tell me what the papers say. I didn’t take the time to grab one this morning, and they barely mentioned it on the radio.” Mary had listened on the way in, after the shortcut. The attempt on Keisha’s life rated three whole seconds of airtime, and only because the knifing took place in Rittenhouse Square. “They don’t get excited unless you die.”

“Or you’re white.” Judy shook her head. “The newspaper has the attack as only a small piece. That reporter evidently didn’t make the connection between Keisha and Saracone, so it’s just street crime.”

“For the moment.” Mary kept working.
Fifty-four to go.

“Hear from Gomez?”

“No.” Mary had left two messages.

“Bet he didn’t go to Saracone’s yet.”

“No takers here.”
Fifty-three.
Only one phone unlisted, so far. Mary tried to ignore Judy, who was reading her computer screen, and she braced for the inevitable lecture. “Isn’t this where you tell me this case is too dangerous?”

“No. This is where I make you give me half that list, so that it gets done in this century.”