Jessica looked at her watch. She had twenty minutes to get to court. She’d make it, but she wouldn’t be ready. She had twenty-seven cases on her desk. It was always a toss-up between punctuality and preparedness.
She’d got all of her file folders jammed into her enormous canvas tote when she glanced up to see a man standing in her doorway.
‘Have you got a minute?’ he asked.
‘For you, sir, always,’ Jessica said.
The man smiled. ‘How many times are we going to have to go over the sir business?’
It was true. In all the time Jessica had been with the DA’s office, she had not gotten this part of the decorum correct. When she was a police officer, she’d had to deal with superiors who were sometimes younger than her. She dealt with superiors with whom she often socialized. In a two-badge household there was a lot of crossover. Vincent had his bosses and underlings; Jessica had hers. The way around it in the police department was to refer to the other person by their rank. If you weren’t comfortable calling your superior Joey, you called him Sarge. It was the right amount of familiarity and respect.
Add to that the fact that the automatic response of police officers when talking to the public was sir, or ma’am, no matter what mood you were in, or whether or not they deserved the respect.
It was totally different here. It seemed as if she would have to call her superiors exactly what they wanted her to call them. Saying ‘I think I agree with you, unit chief’ sounded slightly odd.
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I’ll remember in the future.’
The man sat on the edge of her desk, straightened the crease of his pant leg. He was tall and broad-shouldered, had close-cropped light-brown hair, blue eyes, a great smile.
‘I got the summary on the Carter case,’ he said. ‘It was masterful.’
‘Thanks,’ Jessica said. She almost said
sir
, but stopped himself. ‘I have a good team.’
‘Your science was a bit thin.’
It was true. Rourke Hoffman had blown cannonball-sized holes in her witness’s testimony regarding the blood and fibers found on Carter’s clothing, mostly due to the almost non-existent sample size. Still, she’d had to present it.
As rushed as she was, Jessica had no intention of cutting this love fest short. Standing in her office was the unit chief of the homicide division. There were those who believed – and Jessica counted herself among them – that he would not be there for long. Everyone knew he was going to run for district attorney this fall, and everyone believed he would win.
Later this day there was a thinly veiled fund-raiser for him at the Ashburner Inn.
‘Are you coming tonight?’ he asked.
Attendance at the fund-raiser wasn’t mandatory, but it was mandatory.
‘Wouldn’t miss it.’
‘See you there,’ he said, and walked out of her office.
As Jessica was gathering her things, she thought that she could do much worse than to align herself with the next district attorney for the Philadelphia County, Mr James P. Doyle, Esq.
She wondered if she’d ever call him Jimmy.
The Ashburner Inn was a brick-oven gourmet pizza restaurant and bar on Torresdale Avenue and Ashburner Street in the Holmesburg section of the city.
The restaurant nearly earned its name in December 2012 when an electrical problem caused a fire. In the ensuing year the place was remodeled and refitted, and, since the closing of Finnigan’s Wake in Northern Liberties, had become a popular place for police, firefighters and other city personnel.
Jessica had gotten home, cooked dinner, showered and dressed in record time. She’d left her two children and husband in front of the TV with their trays.
When she arrived at just after 6.30, the place was already packed. She recognized fewer than half the people. Cops, lawyers but also union reps, business people and everyone else with an interest in the way justice was meted out in the city of Philadelphia.
It was all but a coronation for ADA James Doyle.
If everything went as planned, he would be the next District Attorney of Philadelphia.
By the time Jimmy Doyle stepped to the front of the crowd, Jessica was on her second Bacardi and Coke and already feeling it. She was getting to be a real lightweight in her old age. Time was when she could knock off five or six drinks, go to bed, get up at 5.30, strap on her Reeboks and do three miles before going to the office.
Those days were gone. She looked at her watch. It was 8.36, five minutes later than the last time she had looked. Despite all the food, and all the people she had not seen outside of a professional basis in a few years, her mind kept returning to the backlog of cases she had piled up on her desk.
Somebody tapped a glass, and the crowd fell silent. Jimmy Doyle looked elegant in a navy-blue suit and burgundy tie.
He began, as expected, by thanking everyone for being there, especially the owners of the restaurant. He acknowledged the bigwigs and movers and shakers.
‘I was born and raised in Philadelphia, specifically in a small neighborhood called Devil’s Pocket. Now, as many of you know, this means two things. If you’re from the Pocket, you don’t last long if you back down from a fight. And the fact that I’m standing here today means that I won at least one more than I lost.’
Polite laughter. Polite applause.
‘But just because I’m a fighter doesn’t mean that I got here on my own. I’ve had a lot of people in my corner. From law enforcement officers to community organizers and activists, to people who work in the fields of health care, social work and yes, even the defense counsel, who have made me be at my best when we squared off at the bar.
‘I’m running for district attorney to make Philadelphia a safer place to live, to work, to raise a family, at a lower cost. The county spends a high percent of its budget on the criminal justice system yet we don’t feel safe in our homes and on our streets. There’s something wrong when the jails have a higher occupancy rate than our hotels, and we still don’t feel safe. People are disillusioned.
‘I will be the first to say that there is a lot of work to be done. My Irish grandmother used to have a saying:
A family of Irish birth will argue and fight. But let a shout come from without and see them all unite.
‘This is how I see the honest, decent, hard-working people of Philadelphia, as a family. Sure, like all families we may have our disagreements on how to get things done, but let us be threatened by a criminal element and you will see a united Philadelphia, a strong Philadelphia, a determined Philadelphia.’
The crowd applauded. When the noise died down, Jimmy took a step forward, one hand in pocket.
‘Today I’ve learned of some tragic news. You all probably know the name of Jacinta Collins. Mrs Collins was the Point Breeze woman, a mother of two, who was gravely injured in an explosion two months ago, her injuries a direct result of a deliberately set explosive. A man was arrested for that crime, a man named Daniel Farren. He is currently awaiting trial on those charges.’
Jimmy Doyle took a moment, continued.
‘I am sorry and saddened to say that Jacinta Collins died today at 4.53 a.m.
‘I’ve learned that the ME will rule that the woman died of sepsis – blood poisoning – but will rule the cause of death as homicide. Her case has been turned over to the homicide division of the PPD.’
Doyle let the news make its rounds among the crowd.
‘The office of the district attorney has been preparing a case against Mr Farren, a case that included the charge of aggravated assault and attempted murder. I am here to say that the charge will now be upgraded to murder in the first degree, and that I will personally try the case.’
Now the murmurs became louder. This was a new one for Jessica and, she suspected, most people in the crowd. Things like this were almost always discussed and announced behind doors.
‘A vigorous prosecution needs a vigorous team, and I’d like to take this opportunity to announce my selection for second chair on this most important case.’
The crowd drew in and held its breath.
‘Second chair will be ADA Jessica Balzano.’
At first, to Jessica, it felt as if all the air had suddenly been sucked out of the room. She felt a tightness in her chest.
Jimmy Doyle raised his glass in her direction. Everyone in the room followed suit. A few moments later there was polite applause.
Jessica felt faint.
‘Are you sure about this?’
Jessica stood at the end of the bar with Jimmy Doyle. She had wisely switched to Diet Cokes.
For years she had trained as a boxer, having even fought a handful of professional fights. There was an old saying in the ring that someone was trying to punch above their weight. Jessica suddenly felt like a featherweight getting in the ring with Joe Frazier.
‘Never been more certain,’ Jimmy said. ‘You’ve been doing good work, and you are ready.’
‘I appreciate your confidence in me.’
‘Add to this your experience on the street as a homicide detective, and you will be our MVP.’
Jessica knew a little about the case. She knew that the defendant, Danny Farren, was a small-time hood from southwest Philly, in and out of jail most of his adult life. The current charge was that he had firebombed a building, ostensibly as retribution upon a man from whom he and his crew had been extorting money, for failure to make a payment. She knew that Farren, as expected, was pleading not guilty, and had not said a word about the case to anyone other than his attorney.
‘The Farren family has been a cancer in this city a long time,’ Jimmy said. ‘It’s time to shut them down for good. I’m going to make a call in about ten minutes, see if we can get a grand jury together in short order. The more we present on Danny Farren, the more will stick.’
It was all moving a bit fast, but Jessica found her resolve returning. She could do this.
‘Tomorrow morning, nine sharp, my office. We’ll bring the walls down around Danny Farren.’
Jessica stood next to her car for a long time, taking this all in. She had just been handed something she’d wanted for a long time. Ever since she was a little girl, actually.
She had many memories of visiting a courtroom with her father, watching the wheels of justice turn. She remembered watching the prosecutors present their cases in a slow, methodical manner, leading a jury by the hand through the events of a crime.
Granted, very few of these prosecutors were women, but it never occurred to Jessica that a prosecutor
couldn’t
be a woman, or that her gender would in any way be an obstacle to getting what she wanted.
She’d been on a direct course to law school until that horrible day in 1991 when her brother was killed in Kuwait. Michael Giovanni was going to be the cop, and Jessica Giovanni was going to be the lawyer.
Everything changed on the day Peter Giovanni buried his only son. Within a few years, after getting her undergraduate degree in criminal justice from Temple University, Jessica entered the Philadelphia Police Academy.
She never looked back. Even those times when she testified in court for one of her cases in the homicide unit, feeling a pull in the direction of the state’s table, and the smartly dressed ADAs who worked in the homicide division of the DA’s office.
Now she was there. Granted, she was second chair, but she was second chair to the unit chief, a man who had carved out such a stellar record as a prosecutor that he was the odds-on favorite to be the next District Attorney for the County of Philadelphia.
After that? Mayor Doyle? Governor Doyle?
Senator Doyle?
Jessica got in the car, started it, pulled out onto Torresdale Avenue. It was two blocks later that she realized she hadn’t put her headlights on.
Anjelica Leary didn’t often get her hair done, preferring most days to just pull it back, securing it in a rubber band. She’d lost most of her vanity – all except a nearly pathological belief in cleanliness – many years ago. The world did not look at sixty-eight-year-old women, and understandably so: not everyone had the genes or bone structure, not to mention the pocketbook, of a Hollywood star, now did they?
Still, when she’d woken this morning, a rare day off, she’d found a spring in her step. All was surely not right with the world, but Anjelica Leary could have a good day now and then. She’d earned it.
‘What do you think today, Miss Leary?’
Whenever she pampered herself, she came to Nino Altieri’s spa and salon on Locust Street. Nino was in his late fifties, unabashedly flamboyant, and as gossipy as a Dublin fishwife.
No matter how many times Anjelica had corrected him, he still called her Miss. Regardless of a woman’s age or marital status, every female was a Miss. To that end, and in the name of equality, every man was a Master.
‘Can you make me look like Helen Mirren?’ Anjelica asked.
Nino laughed. ‘You are already more beautiful. I can only enhance what is there, although I fear I may be gilding the lily.’
As Nino wielded his magic, he regaled her with stories about his most recent European adventures, which included stops in Palermo, Malta and Prague.
Anjelica had never been struck with wanderlust – the furthest from Philadelphia she had ever strayed was a week in Myrtle Beach – but as she listened to Joseph’s tales, she could find no reason not to one day soon take a proper vacation, going someplace she’d always wanted to visit. As much as she loved her job, and her patients, neither was really enough to deny her some happiness and adventure.
In the end, she treated herself to a protein treatment and a partial highlight, along with a deep clean and a soft mask.
She window-shopped on Walnut Street for a while, indulged herself with lunch at a small café on Sansom. She didn’t get to Rittenhouse Square that often, and when she did, she was always reminded what a truly venerable and majestic place the city of her birth was.
It was easy to forget when you spent your days with your head down, caught up in the worries and trials of the day.
When she arrived home, she got out her cleaning supplies, for that was what she did on her days off. Before she changed into her old slacks and smock, she went through her closet, looked at the sorry state of her wardrobe. She had two nice dresses, both of them cosseted in dry-cleaning bags for the longest time. She took out her best dress, put it on and was pleasantly surprised to see that it still fit. With her freshly made-over hair and skin, and her deep-magenta frock, she thought she looked good. Still not Helen Mirren, but not bad for an old gal from South Philly.
She tried to imagine herself wearing the dress on the streets of Paris, London, Edinburgh. The thought set her pulse to quicken.
Before long she scolded herself for her schoolgirl folly, made herself a pot of Earl Grey, changed into her dowdy clothes.
As she drank her tea, she flipped on the television. The news said that a neighborhood man, Danny Farren, who was awaiting trial for the firebombing of a store, was now being charged with murder.
Tea finished, she set about her chores. This would have to be a proper cleaning; not a dust and vacuum and shut-the-shower-curtain job, but one that smelled of lemon oil.
Unless she was mistaken about such things – and she rarely was – she would soon be receiving company.