Rough Justice

by Lisa Scottoline

Marta didn’t reach Steere’s Society Hill neighborhood until the Taurus’s clock ticked to 7:01, but she was lucky to get there at all. The traffic jam on Locust had lasted forever, and she’d finally escaped it by driving up on the pavement for half a block and slipping down a side street. A frigid night had fallen and the snow blew harder. The windshield wipers pumped and the defroster had finally succeeded.

  Marta looked for a parking space on the street near Steere’s house. The cars parked at the curb were expensive lumps of snow. Society Hill was the most fashionable residential district in the city but apparently tough to park in. Marta drove around the block looking for a space. Her eyes kept straying to the clock’s glowing digits. 7:04, 7:05, 7:06.

  Fuck. It was getting late. She didn’t have time to screw around with the goddamn car. The space didn’t have to be legal, it just had to be open. There. Marta plowed through the snow and pulled up in front of the bus stop. She twisted off the ignition and climbed out of the car.

  A cold blast hit her like a shock. Wind tore through her suit and raincoat. Snow chilled her shins and soaked her best pumps. Marta would have worn boots but she hadn’t owned any since she was a kid. She spent her adult life going from airport limo to hotel, from cab to courthouse. She hurried down the street in a rut from a car tire.

  The street was narrow, lined with costly colonial brick rowhouses, their restored shutters piled high with picturesque snow. Each house bore a historic cast-iron fire sign, but Marta cared little for history. Her own history would have damned her. One therapist had called her “self-realized” and she’d fired him for it.

  Hey, mister! It’s snowing hard again. Please, mister, stop! A blue station wagon stops. It looks big as a house. The front door opens wide and the man at the wheel wears black glasses and a tie. Marta doesn’t want to get in, even though it’s warm in the station wagon. She has a bad feeling about the driver. Something in his smile. Her mother is too drunk to notice. Praise the Lord, her mother says, and it begins again.

  Marta pushed those memories away. Why were they surfacing now? Was it the snow? Didn’t matter, she had no time for it. When she reached the corner, she squeezed between the parked cars, dumping snow on her legs, and climbed onto the sidewalk. The streets were deserted but lights were ablaze in the rowhouses along the street. Everybody was inside, hunkered down and riding out the storm.

  Marta hurried down the sidewalk, passing first-floor windows. Warm yellow lights glowed through the slats of the wooden shutters. One living room had a fire in the fireplace and its flames flickered on the high ceiling. Marta imagined the families, snug and self-satisfied in their homes; prosperous families, with cabinets full of food. Books lining every room and stacked on every coffee table. Mozart playing softly on the CD player. It was sheer fantasy, and it wasn’t hers. Not anymore.

  Marta shivered and churned ahead. She ducked to avoid the stinging snow and hide her face. Reporters could be waiting at the house, or the cops. She didn’t want to be seen or recognized. Front Street, where Steere lived, was just around the corner. Steere’s street overlooked the expressway and the Delaware River, and as soon as Marta turned onto Front, she caught a snootful of damp, snowy wind.

  She clutched her collar closed and got a bead on Steere’s house, sitting squarely in the middle of the street among other million-dollar houses. Marta slowed her step. She didn’t see anyone in front of the house. A car traveled down the road slowly, and Marta sunk behind her wool collar and turned her face away. When the car had passed and the snowy street was silent again, she headed to Steere’s town house.

  It was a restored colonial of faded brick with bubbly mullioned windows; four stories tall and the grandest on the block, too pretentious for Marta’s taste. Marta adored houses and owned four if you included one condo; Steere’s reminded her of her house in Beacon Hill, which was always cold, dark, and medievally drafty. Steere’s town house was illuminated by a working gaslight next to its paneled front door, which sat off the street behind a six-foot brick wall. A skinny pile of snow lined the top of the wall, and in the middle was a locked gate of iron bars.

  Marta hurried down Front Street to the house, wondering if the live-in maid was home. How else would she get in? The first- and second-floor lights were on, so Marta was hopeful. She reached the front gate, but it was too tall to scale even if she were desperate enough to try. Marta pressed the buzzer mounted next to an intercom in the brick wall. No response. She pressed the buzzer again, harder.

  There was a crackling through the intercom, then the maid’s voice. “Who is there?” she said, distinctly enough to be at Marta’s ear.

  “This is Ms. Richter, Mr. Steere’s lawyer. I have to come in. Open the gate.” There was a pause, then a metallic click at the gate’s latch. The gate didn’t budge, the mechanism evidently sluggish in the cold. “Try again,” Marta said and gave the gate a solid push. It opened far enough for her to slip through and she climbed the few steps to the front door, which opened slightly.

  The maid stood at the threshold, wrapping a cardigan tightly over her uniform and squinting against the snow. Cold light from the entrance hall silhouetted her thin, short frame. Marta had met her once but had forgotten her name. “Missa Richter,” the maid said. She was an older woman, and Marta vaguely remembered she was Polish or something.

  Marta reached the top step and stamped her feet to defrost her shins. “And you’re—”

  “I go home now. My daughter, she need me. Snow day tomorrow from school,” she chattered as she led Marta into the marble-tiled hall and closed and locked the front door. “I take your coat?”

  “No, I’ll keep it. I need you to help me. I have to find something for Mr. Steere. He asked me to bring it to him.”

  “Okay, okay, whatever you say,” the maid said. Her face was lined with age and wear and her head of fuzzy gray pincurls bobbed. She seemed nervous, but Marta had grown accustomed to making people nervous and used it to good effect.

  “Mr. Steere needs some special papers for his case. He said his girlfriend might have them. Do you know her phone number?”

  “Girlfrien’?” The maid frowned.

  “Yes. I know about his girlfriend. Do you have her number?”

  “I don’t, I have to go now. My daughter, she pick me up.” The maid drew her sweater closer around her bony shoulders.

  “What is his girlfriend’s name? I have to reach her.”

  The maid shook her head, jittery. She glanced behind her and edged into a marble hallway. “I go now.” She turned and hurried away, and Marta went down the hallway after her.

  “Wait! Stop!” Marta hustled past a small elevator and a powder room. “Don’t you want to help Mr. Steere? He’ll be angry if you don’t.”

  Marta found herself at the hall’s end in a cavernous, book-lined library with cherrywood bookshelves extending to the ceiling. Rolling wooden ladders leaned against the shelves and leather wing chairs sat in front of a cold hearth. The library was empty. The maid had vanished. Across the room, double mahogany doors opened onto a spacious formal dining room with white marble floors. A set of modern, high-backed chairs sat around a long glass table dominated by a spiky crystal centerpiece, like a snowflake sculpted of glass. A frosted crystal chandelier cast shards of light around the room.

  Where was the maid? Marta was spooked. She sensed the attack the split second before a pair of powerful hands seized her by the throat, choking the air out of her and lifting her bodily off the ground.

  11

  Bobby Bogosian squeezed the bitch’s throat from behind and lifted her up by the neck. He held her there while she thrashed and grunted, running in the air like a fucking Road Runner cartoon. It wasn’t like Bobby enjoyed the sight, because he didn’t. He knew guys who got off on this shit all right, but to him it was a job. He was a professional. So when he thought the lawyer was gonna suffocate he threw her across the floor and she crashed into the dining room table.

  “No!” she screamed, and Bobby thought it w
as funny how people always said “no.” Like that would do anything. Like he could be persuaded. Just say no. He went after her.

  Bobby covered the room in three bounds and shoved the bitch forward onto the table. Her head hit the glass thing in the middle and sent it crashing to the marble floor in a million pieces. Fuck! Now Bobby was mad. Professionals didn’t make a mess. The fucking thing probably cost a thousand bucks. Fucking bitch.

  She was howling and trying to kick and wiggle away, so he grabbed her hair and turned her around. He yanked her by the front of her blouse and slammed her head back onto the table. One shot, then another. Her eyes rolled around but she wasn’t out yet. Stubborn bitch. Fine. He’d play it that way. Play it as it lays.

  “What the fuck’s the matter with you?” Bobby shouted in her face. “You broke that, you bitch!”

  Marta tried to scream but couldn’t. She gasped for air. Her throat closed. Her head exploded in pain. Tears of fright sprang to her eyes.

  “What do you think you’re doin’? Breakin’ things! Trespassin’! You’re a fucking bitch, you know that! You’re a fuckin’ cunt!”

  Marta tried to catch her breath. Who was this man? What was going on? He was tearing the hair right out of her head.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doin’?” Bobby slammed her head against the table again and shoved himself between her legs. He’d pin her to the table with his dick. Let the bitch feel it. See how she liked that.

  Marta felt her legs wrenched open. Her skirt at her waist. No. Not that. She thrashed in his grip. Tried to push him away. Kick him, kill him. He banged her head harder against the table. Marta cried out in agony and terror. She fought with her hands. Clawed the air with her nails.

  “You want to get in my good graces?” Bobby was screaming.

  Marta was groggy from the blows. Her scalp was on fire. Warmth gushed from the back of her head. Blood. Hers. Her fear grew so intense it became remote. It was happening to someone else. She watched the violence as if from above and struggled to get her bearings. Think. Save herself. The man had been waiting in Steere’s house. The man must know Steere. The maid had set her up.

  “You want to get in my good graces? Answer me!” Bobby raged, spitting.

  Above Marta the man’s face was red with fury and hate. Her mind reeled. The man worked for Steere. Steere had sent him to stop her. Then he couldn’t kill her and he couldn’t rape her. She’d have to go on TV when the jury came back. Marta told herself she had the upper hand even though she was getting the shit beat out of her. Power was a state of mind.

  “You want to get in my good graces? Answer me, you cunt!”

  “You have graces?” Marta managed to say.

  Bobby couldn’t believe this whore! When it came time to do her, he might start enjoying his work. He pulled her head forward by her hair and rammed it back against the glass table again and again until she finally went out. It took two more shots than he thought it would.

  Marta gasped as she bent over the sink in her hotel bathroom. Even the slightest movement sent pain arcing though her body. She must have bruised her ribs, and her back was killing her. Her head throbbed and her hands shook as she splashed warm water on her face and let it course down her cheeks. Marta was alive, but she was a prisoner. The thug was sitting in the living room of her hotel suite. He wasn’t leaving until the jury came back.

  Marta splashed more water on her face and tried to collect her thoughts. She’d regained consciousness in the man’s Corvette, and he’d taken her to her hotel and walked her up to her room, pressing a Magnum between her battered ribs. How would she get free of him?

  Marta twisted off the faucet and patted her face dry. Wincing, she reached around the back of her head, where a dozen goose eggs had hatched, and fingered the lumps to see if the bleeding had stopped. She came away with blood on her fingertips, her scalp swollen and tender. All her bruises were in back, hidden; a very professional goon. She opened the medicine cabinet stiffly and gulped three more Advil. Then she caught sight of herself in the bathroom’s large, spotless mirror.

  Marta’s hair was disheveled, her makeup worn off. Her clothes were wrinkled and her gaze vacant. She hadn’t eaten or drunk anything since lunch and her skin had a pinched, unhealthy pallor. Marta knew that face. She looked exactly like her mother after a binge. It was the last person in the world she wanted to be.

  Praise God you picked us up! Our car broke down back a ways. Me and the child here. Her mother pushes Marta into the front seat next to the driver of the blue station wagon. Gets in after her. Marta is thinking, No, that’s not how we do it. You go in first, not me. But her mother is too drunk to remember. She closes them inside. Marta stares at the tall, silver stem of the door lock to make it stay up. The driver’s knee bumps against hers as they drive off in the station wagon.

  Marta shook off the echoes. She had to get going. She checked her watch. 8:30. Time was running out. What could she do? How could she shake him? Would there be more beatings? Something told her no. Steere wanted her paralyzed, not pulverized.

  Marta unlocked the bathroom door and opened it quietly. She peeked through the crack and looked past her bedroom into the living room. She tensed at the sight of the thug even at a distance; her body remembered his blows even as her mind willed them to vanish. He was sitting on the plush sofa, his black cowboy boots crossed on the polished coffee table. He must have been six foot three, with a heavy brow, curly dark hair, and coarse features. He scratched his chest through a beige silk shirt as he read a magazine. He could have been somebody’s lug of a husband but for the leather shoulder holster and Magnum.

  Marta turned out the light and left the bathroom. The thug didn’t look up from his magazine, and she eased onto her bed in front of the TV. A special news report was on. The mayor was holding a press conference, and she only half watched as a woman reporter shouted a question at him. Marta recognized the reporter from the Steere trial, a prom-pretty brunette named Alix Locke. Alix had dogged Marta for an exclusive interview, but Marta never gave exclusives, it was like making someone else the star. She feigned interest in the press conference while she tried to come up with her next move.

  “Mr. Mayor,” Alix said into a tall microphone in the aisle, “it’s a yes-or-no question. Is there room in the budget to plow the side streets after this blizzard?”

  If Mayor Walker was annoyed, it didn’t show. He stood lanky, fit, and relaxed as a talk-show host. In the rep tie and rolled-up shirtsleeves he wore most of the time, the mayor was neither a handsome man nor an ugly one, with bright blue eyes, thick dark hair, and an electable smile. More persona than person, the image Mayor Walker projected was of a hardworking overgrown kid, just crazy enough to try and reverse the fortunes of a major American city. “Yes,” the mayor answered, “there’s ample room in the budget to plow the side streets, Alix. Didn’t you read my budget? It’s almost as good as Tom Clancy.”

  The reporters laughed and wrote it down. The press loved Mayor Walker, who, as far as Marta could tell, was a whiz at public relations. He kept his sentences short and grinned for every photo. He ate cannoli from an Italian bakery and fresh peaches from a Korean fruit stand; he was the first to check out a book from a new branch of the Free Library and the last to pet the anaconda at the Philadelphia Zoo. Most important, the mayor knew the secret to dealing with reporters: make their job easy, so they can go drink.

  But Alix Locke wasn’t smiling. “With all due respect, those residents who are snowed in may not find that funny when November rolls around.”

  The mayor’s smile faded. “The residents of this city know it’s not an issue of money. The issue is whether we can get the plows down the narrow streets. As you know, there are countless streets in this historic city which are barely one lane wide. It doesn’t leave much room for a plow. With those streets, all we can do is our best.”

  “What exactly does that mean, Mr. Mayor?”

  “It means that conventional snowplows won’t fit down th
e street. They’re too wide. We have to use the narrow plows and we’re arranging now to buy them.”

  The reporters nodded and scribbled. Alix Locke pursed her lips and fumbled for a follow-up question. Marta leaned sideways and checked on the thug. He was still reading his magazine. Dog World? The man beat her to a pulp but he was kind to animals? Somebody explain this.

  On TV, Alix Locke was doing her best Brenda Starr. “Mr. Mayor, you knew this problem would arise because it did last year. So the city had a year to order those snowplows. Why weren’t they ordered and delivered by this storm?”

  Marta stared at the TV images without seeing them. How would she get out of here? Then she had an idea.

  12

  Marta zapped the reporter into silence with the remote control and walked with discomfort to the living room. The thug looked up from his magazine, squinting slightly, and Marta stood at a distance, the nervousness in her smile genuine. She leaned on a large, paneled entertainment center near the telephone for support. “I have to call the office,” she said. “You said no phone calls. What’s a girl to do?”

  “No calls.”

  “It’s about the Steere case. It’s important, and if I don’t check in my associates will start to wonder. I said I’d be back at seven o’clock. I’m pretty punctual, and they know that.”

  “Tough shit.”

  “If I don’t show up, they’ll think something happened in the blizzard. Maybe they’ll call 911.”

  The thug peered over the glossy magazine and his flat brown eyes registered skepticism. “So?”

  “So they know this is my hotel. They may come here looking for me, maybe send someone. You want to explain who you are? Why I’m here?”

  “Shut the fuck up already.” The goon set down the magazine. “What’s the phone number?” Marta told him the number and watched as he plunked them into a Trimline phone on the end table, looking remarkably like a gorilla at a miniature piano. “Get on the extension and talk,” he said, gesturing. “Keep it short. I’ll be listening. Anything funny and it’s over.”