Innocence

by David Hosp

  He put the bottle down on the snow-covered Italian wrought-iron table and tipped his glass to her. She returned the gesture. Neither of them drank.

  He walked around the perimeter of the deck, the icy crust of the snow crunching beneath his feet. It was a spectacular panoramic view. To the north, he could look out over the esplanade, across the river to the Cambridge shore. To the south, he could look down past the Public Garden to the Common. To the west, an endless string of similarly privileged roof decks stretched out toward the Fens.

  He returned to her and leaned against the wall of the roof house. “Nice spot,” he commented.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’ll warn me if a helicopter is about to land, right?”

  “You’d hear it coming.” She walked over to him, standing close enough to start his heart racing.

  “Seriously, what’s a place like this go for? Three million? More?”

  “Does it matter?” She moved even closer, placing her wineglass on top of a planter that hung off the house. She took his glass from him, putting it down next to hers.

  “It’s gotta matter to someone, otherwise places like this wouldn’t exist.” He was back on his heels, leaning his head farther and farther away, the closer she came. He looked over her shoulder, avoiding eye contact.

  She moved her head to the side, into his line of vision, and he ducked back the other way. She bobbed and weaved with him to force him to look at her. “What the fuck is it?” she asked. “Is it the apartment?”

  “There’s no way around the fact that we’re used to different things,” he said.

  “I could sell it.”

  “No doubt. And make a killing, I’m sure.”

  “What do you want me to say? My father was a very wealthy man before he died. That’s most of what I know about him, for all he was around to deal with me before he died. My mother and I don’t speak. I’m not this goddamned apartment, and this goddamned apartment isn’t me. You think I wouldn’t trade this to have grown up differently?”

  “It’s not the apartment,” he said, still avoiding her eyes.

  “What is it, then?” she asked, leaning in even farther. Her voice was quiet now, raspy and breathless. “Is it me?”

  He shrugged, avoiding her touch.

  “What is it?”

  He looked at her finally. “You could do better.”

  She continued moving in. “I’ve done worse.” She kissed him on the cheek, and he sucked in a chest full of frozen air.

  “You may kill me, you know that?”

  She smiled. “Maybe.” She was up on her toes, and her lips slid across his cheek toward his mouth. Her hands were on his chest. “I don’t think so, though.” She kissed him. His defenses were crumbling, but he still couldn’t bring himself to kiss her back. Maybe he was afraid of hurting her, he thought. In his heart, he knew that wasn’t it.

  Gradually, his muscles relaxed as she continued to kiss him. Whatever fight had been in his body ebbed away, and he drew her in closer to him. Her legs straddled his knee, and he could feel her moving against him. He broke away from her kiss with one final effort and looked deep into her eyes. Then he smiled. “You will kill me,” he assured her.

  “I’ll take my chances,” she replied, looking back at him. It was the most erotic look he’d ever seen, full of longing, and desire, and need. She leaned in close and kissed his cheek again. Then she whispered into his ear, “Besides, whatever doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.”

  z

  Mac walked from the kitchen to the living room in his little house in Quincy off Wollaston Beach. Most of the lights were off; his path was illuminated by the blue flickering of the television. It was tuned to a recording of the Celtics pregame from earlier that evening. He was wearing a dirty T-shirt and his boxer shorts and was carrying a pizza box heavy with a meat lover’s special from the local Italian joint on the strip. He hadn’t bothered to pull the shades; fuck his neighbors. If they wanted to look in, they could see what they could see. What did he care?

  Sad to say, this was now his idea of a perfect evening: a pizza, his recliner, and his beloved Celts. To be sure, the team was a shadow of its former greatness. Back in the day, it had been a team of champions that an old-timer like Mac could be proud of. Bird, McHale, Ainge. In a league overrun with ghetto blasters, the Celtics had proved that a bunch of old white guys could still dominate by playing the game the way it was meant to be played—as a team. They didn’t need flash to win. Show up, do your work, get the job done. To Mac, that was what the Celtics had been about. And the epic battles between the Celtics were about more than Boston versus L.A., more even than east versus west. They were about old versus new; work time versus showtime; white versus black. And the Celtics won more often than not. Those were the days, he thought with a pang of longing.

  Now the Celtics were just another team. For Mac’s money, the decline had started when they put their future in the hands of a coke addict who took his signing bonus right out onto the street and blew his heart open in an overdose. Served them right, really. You get away from your roots, and God will smack you in the head, remind you who’s boss. No big surprise there—that’s the way Mac saw it. He still loved the team, but it wasn’t the same. It would never be the same.

  And so it was with a sense of resignation that he plopped himself down with the pizza balanced on what little lap remained in the ongoing battle with his bulging midriff. The tip-off had just taken place, and he’d just taken his first bite, when the phone rang.

  “Fuck,” he said out loud. He reached over, mouth full, and grabbed the receiver. “Yeah?” he grunted.

  “Salazar still has a lawyer,” the voice said.

  “No shit,” Mac replied. “He’s entitled. It’s in the Constitution.”

  “He can’t get out of prison. You know that.”

  “No judge is gonna let him out. Certainly not Cavanaugh. Not with what he did. Not with the shit they’ve got.”

  “That’s not good enough.”

  “Fuck you.” Mac couldn’t help himself, but he knew taking the offensive was probably a bad strategy.

  “If that’s the way you want it . . .” The voice trailed off.

  “This isn’t what we bargained for. None of it. Not the shit you’re doing. And sure as hell not what you’re asking me to do.”

  “If you believe this is merely a request, that may be part of the problem. I must not be making myself clear. If you need a reminder, that can be arranged.”

  Mac considered his response carefully. “I don’t need a reminder. Let me work on it.”

  “Fine. Work on it. But remember, we’re on a very tight time line.”

  “I know.”

  “Things have gone too far for hesitation.”

  “All right. I know. I’ll contact you soon.”

  “Do that. You don’t want me to have to contact you.” The line went dead.

  Mac threw the phone on the floor. He looked down at his pizza, but he’d lost his appetite. He looked up at the television. The game was only minutes old, and the Celtics were already down by eight—to the Grizzlies, no less.

  “Fuck,” he said out loud again. The world had changed when he wasn’t looking. And it wasn’t for the better.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Tuesday, December 18, 2007

  Finn woke early the next morning. Truth be told, he hadn’t really slept at all. He’d just lain in bed, replaying every conversation he’d had with Mark Dobson over and over in his head. Every rational impulse told him that he bore no responsibility for the young man’s death, but for some reason, he couldn’t let go of his guilt.

  By four thirty he was up and moving, in and out of the shower for a quick rinse, scarfing down a piece of dry toast, and out the door by five. It was still pitch-black when he unlocked the door to his office.

  He sat down at his desk and pulled out a yellow legal pad and stared at it. His goal was to organize his thoughts on the Salazar case. In his h
ead, the questions and issues were free-flowing, swirling out of control, like bits of paper in a city wind. They would do him little good in that form, and his hope was that by reducing them to writing he might impose some order on them, which might allow him to proceed in some sort of logical manner.

  As always, he started with the assumption—the required belief— that his client was telling him the truth, and that Salazar was, therefore, innocent. Finn pulled the pad toward him and began scribbling across the page. Then he paused and looked at what he’d written.

  Madeline Steele identified the wrong man.

  He thought about it. Below that, he wrote a simple but important question.

  Why?

  After another pause, he started on a fresh line.

  How did Salazar’s print get on Steele’s gun?

  Underneath that:

  Framed?

  He sat back in his chair and picked up the pad, examining what he’d written. It was a start, but that was all. There were so many other pieces to this, pieces that didn’t seem to fit, no matter how hard he tried to force them. Slapping the pad back onto the desk, he began scribbling furiously, channeling any notion that popped into his head down onto the paper without thought or analysis.

  Who had a motive to kill Steele?

  Who had a motive to kill Dobson?

  Who had a motive to frame Salazar?

  Is Salazar a member of VDS?

  Are there cops involved?

  Macintyre?

  What did Salazar tell Dobson?

  What was it like growing up blind and fatherless?

  Would Salazar have been deported?

  Finn wrote out all the questions in a stream. When the questions ran dry, he stared at the piece of paper for a long time. It was a good list of questions; a hard list of questions. Somewhere in there were the right questions, and the right answers would free his client and, to some degree, himself.

  He drew a bold line under the questions and wrote in large capital letters: task list. He underlined that and then wrote out a list.

  Question Madeline Steele

  Hire fingerprint expert/evaluate fingerprint match

  Interview Salazar family

  Interview trial witnesses

  Research VDS

  Contact DNA testing lab

  He tore off the sheet of paper, put away the legal pad, and put his new lists in the center of his empty desk. Now, at least, they had a plan to follow. Well, perhaps not so much a plan as a list of random activities, but Finn’s general view was that one of the most important aspects of preparing a case was to keep your feet moving at all times. Even if you weren’t sure exactly where the goal line was, without motion, you’d never advance the ball, and mere intellectualism would never accomplish that. Advancing the ball took legwork.

  He stood up and looked at his watch. Six thirty. He’d been at the office for well over an hour, and it was still dark out. At least the donut shop around the corner would be open. That was one of the things he loved about New England: There was a donut shop on every block. He had no idea what it was about the circular puffs of dough that so tantalized people in the region, but he was as much a victim as anyone, so who was he to complain? He also needed coffee to really start the day, and while there was a machine in the office, only Lissa could make it function. Served him right for going top-of-the-line. It had more buttons and switches than any car he’d ever driven. No matter. He’d head around the corner and pick up some coffee and a dozen mixed donuts. Both Kozlowski and Lissa generally arrived early, so the breakfast and the coffee would still be fresh when they arrived.

  Finn put on his coat and wrapped a scarf around his neck. He already felt better than he had the night before. Things were moving, at least, and with only a week to find some answers, motion was desperately needed. As he stepped out onto the sidewalk, he felt as though he had a sense of purpose for the first time since he’d read the headline about Dobson’s murder.

  z

  Kozlowski lay on his back on Lissa Krantz’s bed. A sheet was pulled over his hips, leaving his legs and torso bare. Covering himself was an unconscious nod to etiquette that was probably unnecessary, given their activities over the preceding six hours. Still, when Lissa had gotten up and walked into the bathroom, he’d felt a little odd lying alone in all his splendor.

  He rubbed his wide chest as he reflected on what had happened between the two of them. In many ways, it seemed odd. They had nothing in common. Nothing. They came from different backgrounds, different economic situations, different cultural and religious upbringings. And then there was the age difference. Fifteen years was probably not considered drastic by most people in today’s world, but Kozlowski didn’t consider himself part of “most people.” To him, fifteen years seemed like an eternity. It felt like a gulf potentially too wide to bridge. It felt like cradle robbing.

  And then there was the other thing—the sex. Would she really be satisfied with someone older? It hadn’t seemed as though it had bothered her the night before. If anything, she’d seemed very pleased with . . . everything. And yet he had no real basis from which to judge. His experience with her was such an anomaly in his life that he had no frame of reference to determine whether he was evaluating her reactions accurately. He’d had only a few “lady friends” in his lifetime, and they had been nothing like Lissa. They’d been demure and proper: good marriage material, as his mother used to say in heavily accented English. When he’d been intimate with them, it had been perfectly pleasant, but there had been little communication, no experimentation, and never an encore.

  His evening with Lissa had been a different experience entirely. They hadn’t slept. Ever. They had crawled over each other nonstop throughout the evening, doing things to each other he’d only read about. While they were together, it hadn’t occurred to him to worry about his performance—about whether or not she was being satisfied. He’d been too busy trying to keep up.

  Not that it had seemed difficult. He’d simply done what seemed natural, following his body’s impulses and reacting instinctively to her movements, matching the rhythm of her body and the intensity of the expressions of ecstasy on her face. If those expressions were any indication, then he’d performed acceptably for her. And yet there was no way he could be sure. He’d heard about women faking pleasure to make their partners feel better about themselves. Lissa’s reactions had seemed genuine, but how could he know?

  He stretched his arms over his head and let go of his doubts. Doubts wouldn’t help him, and there was nothing he could do about it now. It wasn’t in his nature to dig too far down emotionally, anyway. In personal relationships, he’d always found it easier to accept people at face value unless they gave him reason to question. Lissa Krantz had done nothing to raise his suspicions, so he thought it better to enjoy the memories of the evening for what they were.

  z

  Lissa looked at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. “Holy shit,” she whispered to herself. Then she laughed, putting a hand over her mouth to muffle the sound. “Holy fucking shit.”

  She ran her hands over her body, tracing some of the infinite paths Tom Kozlowski had blazed during the night, closing her eyes as she relived the experience in her mind. She ran her fingertips over her hips and around the curves of the small of her back, then up her sides and over her breasts, feeling her nipples stiffen at her touch, as they had at his.

  From her breasts, one hand crawled down her abdomen, making her stomach flutter in anticipation as it wandered farther down. When she touched herself between her legs, she paused as the electricity flared up her spine. She let her hand linger there, as his had, touching herself lightly, with a curiosity that mimicked his as she teased herself, swallowing a moan as her entire body shuddered.

  She took her hand away and leaned forward on the sink. She shouldn’t be doing this; she could tell that she’d be walking gingerly for a day or two as it was. It had been worth it, though. She laughed quietly again at her reflection.
She probably had more sexual experience than any three friends of hers combined, but this had been completely different. Her evening had been a total immersion in pleasure and abandon. As much as her body ached from it, it still wanted more.

  She opened the door and stepped out of the bathroom, walking over to sit on the side of the bed. He was lying there, eyes closed, hands behind his head. She touched his thigh, and his eyes opened. She wondered what he was thinking, whether he was having any regrets. It wouldn’t be unusual, she knew from experience.

  “Tired?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “I probably will be later, but not now.”

  “Me, neither.” She leaned over and kissed his cheek, then immediately regretted it. “I had fun.”

  “Me, too.”

  She looked away from him. “We probably shouldn’t tell Finn. It’d only freak the shit out of him.”

  “Okay.”

  “Besides, it’s not like this has to be some big fucking deal.” She’d given the same assurance to dozens of men in the past. This time it rang hollow to her.

  He frowned. “If you say so.”

  “I mean, it’s just a night, right? It’s not like we’re dating or anything.”

  “Okay.” They were quiet for a moment. He reached out and stroked the inside of her leg. It was all she could do to keep herself from collapsing into him. “You dumping me already?” he asked.

  A hint of relief nudged her. “No,” she said quickly. “I just didn’t want . . . No. I don’t want you to feel trapped, is all.”

  He continued touching her, his hand sliding up her leg. “I’ll let you know if that becomes a problem.”

  She smiled and slid her own hand up his thigh, underneath the narrow slip of sheet covering his hips. He was hard, and her smile widened as she ran the tips of her fingers lightly up and down over him. Then she pulled aside the sheet and climbed up on her knees, straddling him without letting their bodies touch.