Damn
, she thought. She’d been running around town for two days and she was dead-tired.
They must sell adapters over there. I’m going to take a chance.
The counterman handed her an
I Love NY
plastic bag stuffed with her last-minute purchases. She swung the door of the drugstore open and stepped out onto the sidewalk. She stood a moment, troubled, wondering why putting the parcels in one bag made them feel lighter than they had separately.
She was about to recount when the traffic light changed and a pedestrian surge carried her across Lexington Avenue. She turned downtown and turned again on East 81st. Halfway down the deserted block, something made her stop. A kind of dim echo. She couldn’t tell if she’d heard it or if she was just remembering it. She’d been aware of it several times this morning.
She glanced behind her. There was nothing moving on the block, not a pedestrian, not a wisp of traffic.
She walked toward her sister Anne’s building, just a little faster now.
It came again—the sound of her own steps, but not quite. There was a split-second delay. As if someone were trying to walk in her footprints.
I’m imagining this
, she told herself.
It’s been a frantic
t
wo days and my mind’s overloaded.
“G’morning, Mrs. Bingham. Beautiful day.”
She smiled at the doorman and hurried into the lobby.
The man with the shaved head stopped at the entrance to 118 East 81st Street.
“Help you?” the doorman challenged.
“I’m from the druggist’s. Mrs. Bingham forgot one of her packages.”
“I’ll see she gets it.”
“She has to sign for it.”
The doorman nodded toward the elevators. “Eleven-E. She just went up.”
TWENTY
12:40 P.M.
T
HE INTERCOM BUZZED LIKE
a fly caught in an electric zapper. Kyra pressed the button.
“Mrs. Bingham, a man from the drugstore is bringing up a package you forgot.”
The doorbell dingdonged. She flipped the dead bolt. A shadowy male figure stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the flickering hall fluorescents. She squinted to make out his face.
He held out a small brown paper-wrapped package.
“Thank you.” She reached for it, but he pulled it away. Almost teasingly.
“You have to sign for it. But I lost my pen.” His voice had a mischievous resonance.
“I’m sure I can find a pen. Just a minute.” She went and foraged through papers on the worktable.
“And I’m out of receipts,” he said. “You’ll have to write one.”
Sighing, she found a pen and a sheet of Anne’s stationery. “What do you want me to write?”
She turned. He was no longer at the door, but standing two feet from her. Light fell slantwise across the shaved skull, the brown eyes glowing with peek-a-boo, I-see-you malevolence.
She took a shocked, lurching step backward. “Get out of here, or I’ll scream. I’m not kidding.”
He unfurled a slow, lopsided grin.
She slashed out with the pen, broad swipes across his chest.
He slapped it from her fingers. A rat-trap of a hand caught her left wrist. “Pick that pen up.”
He twisted her wrist behind her, hard.
She picked up the pen.
“Write exactly what I tell you: ‘Dear Mademoiselle: This is to inform you that Toby’s father, Catch Talbot—’”
“No!” She tried to jerk loose. Couldn’t.
“Write! ‘Catch Talbot has my authorization to pick up Toby after today’s school excursion and bring him home. With many thanks, Kyra Talbot.’”
He shoved an envelope at her. “Address it. ‘Mademoiselle.’”
She obeyed, then handed him the letter and envelope.
He stood there, reading what she had written. She drove the pen at his left eye.
A work-booted foot kicked her leg out from under her. She slammed down against the floor. She cried out.
“Stop screaming.” He picked up a green velvet throw pillow from the sofa. “I’m only going to tell you once.”
She tried to push the pillow away, but it crushed her hands, crushed her face, blotted out light and sound and air. Suffocation pressed down and the pen clattered from her hand.
“And after Dr. Lyle became a regular visitor …” Dotson Elihu faced the witness box, hands in his pockets. “Did you notice any change in the sorts of people the Briars entertained?”
“The people changed.” The doorman’s face was grave. “Till three years ago, the Briars invited decent people. Well-dressed. Said thank-you when you held the door. Tipped you if you called a cab in the rain.”
“And after three years ago?”
“The Briars began getting nonsocialites.”
“What do you mean when you say ‘nonsocialites’?”
“Minority people. Blacks—Hispanics—Orientals. Some dressed practically like street people.”
Elihu stepped back, putting space between himself and the witness. “Are you saying the Briars admitted street people to their home?”
“Objection.” DiAngeli stood. “Calls for conclusion.”
“Sustained.”
The witness turned to the judge. “Some tenants wouldn’t even ride in the elevator with those people.”
“Mr. LaMontagna.” The judge’s voice was stern. “Don’t talk to me.” The gavel pointed to Elihu. “Talk to him.”
“Mr. LaMontagna.” Elihu flashed a smile that seemed to say,
It’s us guys against her, buddy
. “On that Friday evening before Labor Day, when you announced Mr. Williams, can you say with absolute certainty whose voice answered the intercom? After all, it’s not a high-tech digital intercom, is it?”
The witness gave a laugh. “It sure isn’t.”
“So even though the voice didn’t sound exactly like John Briar’s, it still could have been him and the intercom could have distorted his voice?”
“Objection. Hypothetical.”
“Overruled.”
“Yes, sir, that’s very possible.”
Elihu allowed a moment’s silence for the point to sink in. “Did anyone go up to the apartment with Mr. Williams?”
“No.”
“Did anyone besides Dr. Lyle arrive before or after Mr. Williams and go up to the apartment?”
“I never saw them.”
“Could anyone have gone up to the Briars’ apartment after midnight?”
“Objection. Hypothetical.”
Judge Bernheim sighed. “Mr. Elihu, the information you want could be put on the record with a different question.”
Elihu nodded. “Mr. LaMontagna—based on your seven years’ experience as a door person at 777 Park Avenue—could a visitor have gone up to the Briars’ apartment after midnight?”
“Not unless they had a key to the front door.”
In a gray and pale-green drawing room on the twelfth floor of the Vista Hotel, Tess diAngeli paced with the telephone. “You were supposed to have him here at one-fifteen sharp. It’s one-twenty.”
“He’s watching a movie.”
“What are you two, film critics? I told you to keep a log and not let Mickey out of your sight.”
“For Chrissake, what am I supposed to do, change his diapers? I’m in the theater with him, isn’t that enough?”
“What theater?”
“Adult Playtime. Forty-fourth and Eighth.”
“Can you see him?”
“He’s watching the film. I’m in the lobby with the
Wall Street Journal
.”
Tess gritted in rage. “How long has he been in there?”
“Two hours and seven minutes.”
“If he’s given you the slip, it’ll mean your job.”
“Relax. He’s there.”
“Then get him out right now and get him down here.”
Twenty minutes later, Tess was rehearsing Mickey Williams’s testimony. “And were you sentenced to serve time?”
Seated on the sofa six feet from her, Mickey nodded.
“They put me in a trade school in Texarkana.” Tension pushed his voice high into his adenoids. Coming out of the body of a former running back dressed in too-tight-polo shirt and corduroys, the effect was cartoonish.
We’ll have to dress him better for court
, Tess realized.
Will off-the-rack fit
?
“It was really a kind of reformatory,” Mickey said. “I learned welding.”
On the other side of the room, Tess diAngeli’s assistant rapped a wooden ruler on the edge of the table.
Mickey blinked guiltily. “Did I do it wrong?”
“You said you learned welding before Tess asked.”
Compared to Williams, Brad Chambers was built like a pretzel, but he spoke from the chest, sonorously. Tess wished Mickey and her assistant could trade voices for the duration of the trial.
“You’re speaking just a little too fast, Mickey.” As a courtroom lawyer, she knew that speed of speech was voluntary; pitch of voice, much less so. Yet the two were physiologically linked, and if she could get Mickey to speak slowly, the pitch of his voice would come down. If the voice came down, the jury would be far more apt to believe him. “And whatever you do, don’t
ever
answer a question before I’ve asked it. Because if you get away from the script, you may volunteer something that we haven’t had a chance to discuss. It may seem unimportant, but it could be just the opening the defense needs.”
“In other words, I goofed again.” Mickey’s head drooped. “I’m sorry.”
Tess couldn’t shake the suspicion that this dopiness was deliberate on Mickey’s part.
Why’s he trying to convince me he’s an idiot?
“You didn’t goof. You’re doing fine.”
Mickey beamed.
“Now, I’m going to ask you once again: Were you sentenced to serve time?”
“They put me in a trade school in Texarkana.” Much better. The words were slow, the voice mid-range. “It was a kind of reformatory.”
“What did you learn in Texarkana?”
“I learned welding.”
Tess glanced at her legal pad. There were still three pages of points to cover, and barely ten minutes left of her lunch hour. “How long were you in this institution?”
“Three years—till a minister and his wife adopted me.”
Brad Chambers’s ruler rapped again on the table.
“You answered before I asked,” Tess said.
“Shit.” Mickey blushed. “Sorry. It’s just that there’s so much to remember. …”
“Mickey, would you excuse us a moment?” Bertram Bogdan, Justice Department trial consultant, rose from the easy chair, brushing the wrinkles out of his dark suit. “Have yourself a glass of soda.”
Tess and Brad followed Bogdan into the bedroom. He shut the door. “Mickey’s voice is going to be a real turn-off for the jurors. It rises under tension, so let’s keep him from tensing up.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t got that kind of control over him.”
“It’s not him we have to control, Tess.” Bogdan’s dark eyes nailed her. “It’s you.”
That interested Tess, because it struck her as 180 degrees bass-ackwards. Yet the government was paying Bogdan $1,250 for one hour of consulting: as much as they paid Tess for a week’s backbreaking trial work. He must be doing something right.
“When you’re making eye contact,” Bogdan said, “Mickey’s okay. When you break eye contact he feels he’s annoyed you and that’s when the whining, begging tone starts. Are you aware how much you’re avoiding eye contact? Do you know the reason?”
Now that she thought of it, she realized he was right. “This is an awful thing to say about my own witness. He embarrasses me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It’s something physical. He’s so big and messy—and that shaved head looks like a rat’s ass.”
“Then you’re just going to have to repeat to yourself,
I am proud of this witness
.”
“
I am proud of this witness
,” Tess muttered. She’d been working fifteen minutes a day with Bogdan’s affirmation cards, and they struck her as government-subsidized voodoo. “
He is a credit to the case
.”
“If you believe it,” Bogdan said, “the witness believes it. And if the witness believes it, the jurors believe it.”
When they returned to the drawing room, Mickey was hunched over the coffee table, glum-faced.
“What’s the matter?” Tess said.
“Corey’s a good person.” A deep sigh came out of Mickey. The right vocal quality, at last. “And I’m saying
shitty
things about him.”
“He’s not a good person.” Tess’s eyes locked onto Mickey’s.
I’m dealing with a child
, she reminded herself.
And I am proud of this child.
“He’s not good in any morally or legally meaningful sense of the term.”
“He was good to me and I’m being rotten to him.” Mickey’s voice was climbing again. “He saved my life and I’m—”
“No, Mickey,” Tess said. “Five days from now you’ll be saving your own life.”
At 2:30
P.M.
, the blue government ’94 Pontiac pulled up at the curb in front of 60 Centre Street. Tess diAngeli stuffed papers into her briefcase and stepped out of the car. “Thanks for the lift.”
“Always a pleasure, ma’am.” Mickey closed the passenger door and watched Tess race up the courthouse steps.
“Nice legs,” his guard commented.
“They’re all right.” Mickey burped quietly into his fist. “Let’s get out of here.”
The guard eased back into traffic, peeled left, and headed uptown on Lafayette. Two blocks north of Canal, Mickey told him to pull over.
“Go see a movie.” Mickey handed the guard forty dollars. “And leave the keys in the car.”
TWENTY-ONE
2:30
P.M.
“T
HE PEOPLE CALL FELIX
Logan.”
A well-tailored, overweight man in his thirties stepped up to the witness stand and took the oath. Tess diAngeli asked him to describe his work.
“I was John and Amalia Briar’s lawyer. At present I represent their estate.”
Tess diAngeli handed the witness a document and asked if he had ever seen it before.
“This is Amalia Briar’s last will and testament. I drew it up for her.”
“Whom did Amalia Briar name as her beneficiary?”
“John and Amalia Briar each wrote wills leaving their estates to the other.”
“Was there any stipulation in John Briar’s will as to the length of time his wife had to survive him in order to inherit?”