Running From the Law

by Lisa Scottoline

  “No, but—”

  “Boo!”

  He took a step backward.

  “Well, I’m not. Crazy, that is. I may drive a little too fast, I may bet a little too hard, and I may be committing malpractice on a murder case, but I am definitely not crazy.” I held the sketchbook higher, like the Statue of Liberty on Ritalin. “I thought you were cheating on me and I was not crazy. I thought you gave me a virus and I was not crazy.” I advanced on him with the book in the air. “Your Honor, may I approach the witness?”

  “Honey—”

  “Don’t honey me,” I said, which is something I always wanted to say. Then I took aim and hurled the sketchbook directly at his face. He shouted and his arms went up protectively—he was always so good at net—so the book bounced off his fingers and hit another of his treasured watercolors, knocking it askew. He looked over his shoulder at the painting, then back at me angrily.

  “What is going on here?” he asked sternly.

  “Pick up the fucking book and look at it! Chapter One is you asleep naked. Chapter Two is you asleep naked. Chapter Three is you asleep naked, too, so the book is not what you’d call plot-driven. Don’t you just hate literary fiction?”

  He didn’t reply, and plucked the book from our pretentious carpet.

  “It would help if you’d gotten up and done something, Paul. Poured coffee, made a drink. Nuzzled her ear, cleaned her brushes. But I guess you did clean her brushes. You must have or I wouldn’t have this fucking virus.”

  He opened the tan cover of the book, then slowly turned the pages one by one.

  “Now, you piece of shit, you have one minute to tell me why you did this to me. Then you can pack your fucking bags and get out.”

  He couldn’t meet my eye.

  “Forty seconds.” Boy, I felt as good as you can feel when you catch your lover cheating on you. “Thirty seconds.”

  “I can explain,” he said quietly, still looking at the book.

  “So can I. You’re a piece of shit. A tall shit, a very handsome shit, but a shit just the same.”

  “That’s not helpful, Rita.”

  “Fuck you! I’m not trying to be helpful!” I took off my jacket and threw it down on the rug. I cannot explain why I did this, except there was nothing left in my hands to throw. Paul watched my rage striptease with a sort of horrified confusion, then held up a hand.

  “Stop,” he said. “Just stop.”

  “In the name of love?”

  “I had an affair.”

  “No shit, Sherlock! I may not know The Mikado, but I’m smarter than I look.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  I found myself pacing. “Granted, sometimes you have to draw me a picture. Lots of them. Color would have helped, but I recognized you right off. I said to myself, I know that guy. He’s the one who keeps asking me to marry him. That’s what you wanted, right? A commitment? Give me a fucking break!”

  “Do you want to listen to me or do you want to curse at me?”

  “I want to curse at you, you asshole!” I was spitting at him as I yelled, and I did not care that this was unattractive. “And when I’m done cursing at you, I want you to pack your bags!”

  “You said you’d listen.”

  “You had ten seconds and you blew them.” I started to leave the room, but Paul grabbed my arm from behind.

  “Rita, wait.”

  “Get off of me!” I wrenched my arm free. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare touch me.” My whole body shook.

  “Do you want to know why it happened?”

  “You should be on your knees, begging me. You should be begging and saying you’re sorry and groveling at my feet.” I heard my voice grow thick. “Begging and saying you’re sorry.”

  He sighed and stepped back.

  I sighed, too, but only because I sounded so dumb. I didn’t want to sound dumb, or be helpless. A victim. I wiped my eyes. We were silent for a minute.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” he said.

  “Why don’t you shut up?”

  “I’ll get you some water.” Paul went to the kitchen, where I heard the cabinet door open and close and the water go on. By the time he came back with a tumbler in his hand, my body had stopped shaking. “Here,” he said, but I only glared at him in response, so he set the heavy tumbler on the dining room table and sat down at one end. “May I explain now?”

  I plopped into a chair at the other end. Between us was a runway of mahogany, a crystal vase of white roses, and the wreckage of our life together. “Don’t ask me for permission. You didn’t before.”

  He nodded. “The affair is over.”

  “Of course it is. She’s dead.”

  “It ended a few months ago. It lasted about six months.”

  My stomach twisted. “So your father was sleeping with her at the same time? That’s disgusting. That’s sick!”

  “I didn’t know about that, about him. I broke up with her as soon as I found out.”

  So. “Does your father know?”

  “No. Never. It was a game for her, just a game.”

  “What was it for you?”

  He suppressed whatever he was going to say, then looked away. “I was unhappy.”

  It hurt inside, his saying it out loud. “You didn’t say so, you dick.”

  He winced. “I didn’t know until this happened. I didn’t know why it started or why it ended until it was all over. Then she wanted me to come back to her, she said she was sorry, that it was over with him. That’s when she filed the lawsuit.”

  “For sexual harassment?”

  “She wanted to prove to me that she didn’t care about him. That she loved me. So I would come back.”

  Jesus. “Why didn’t you tell me that? It would have destroyed her case.”

  “Tell you? As Dad’s lawyer or as my lover?”

  Touché. I sipped some water. “So how did it start?”

  “I met her at a sidewalk show. She wanted to know about design, and we talked. She called me later. It just happened. It was wrong. I should have told you I was unhappy.”

  “But you didn’t have the balls.”

  He looked up sharply. “No. I didn’t know then. I know now. I’m telling you now.”

  “Only because I found out.”

  “But I want to deal with it. Let’s see what we have left. I can, Rita. Can you?”

  Fuck you. I wanted to throw the glass right in his face, but I went one better. “She had other lovers, Paul. A regular United Nations.”

  “I know that. I told you, it was all a game with her. She was addicted to it, the excitement. She was self-destructive—”

  “What a bunch of crap. You wouldn’t have broken up with her if you hadn’t found out about your father.”

  He leaned forward. “When I found out about my father was when I finally understood her. Knew who she really was, what was really happening. When the fantasy was over, what was left was a very empty, very damaged woman. And I wanted you.”

  Right. “How did you find out about your father?”

  “I saw a photo from our Bermuda trip. Look, Rita, I’m sorry,” he said, raking back his hair in a gesture uncannily like Fiske’s. “I’ll make it up to you, I swear it. I know why it happened. I didn’t have enough of you, of your time. We need more time together.”

  “Maybe we should buy a motorcycle.”

  He looked at me like I was crazy. “Listen, you’re always running, going off to work. And then there’s poker. No matter what, you go.”

  “Don’t you pin this on me! Take some fucking responsibility, would you? You cheated on me because I play poker? Because I work my ass off? It’s not my fault you were running around!”

  “It’s not about fault, Rita.”

  “That’s what people always say when it’s their fault!” I saw a blur then, a kind of madness rising in my eyes, and I couldn’t see anything else. I stood up. “You cheated and it’s my fault? Are you crazy? Are you stone fucking crazy?”
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  He rubbed his forehead. “You don’t get it.”

  “The hell I don’t. You slept with her, you were living with me at the time. We’re practically engaged—”

  “Practically? That’s the whole problem right there in a nutshell. We’re either engaged or we’re not!”

  “Thank God I didn’t marry you! Thank God that is one mistake I did not make! Now go pack your bags.”

  He looked as if I’d slapped him. “You don’t mean this.”

  “I do too. I’ll be back in two hours. Be gone by then. Leave your keys on the table.” I turned on my heel and walked out of the room.

  “Rita. Rita, wait. Listen,” he said, but I kept walking. One foot in front of the other, out the front door.

  My knees buckled slightly when I got outside, but I walked across the dry lawn and didn’t fall, and didn’t cry. My heart was a tight knot at the center of my chest. I strode to the car and got in, careful to close the door gently. I pulled out of the driveway and drove the speed limit to Lancaster Avenue. And I did not drive aimlessly, I knew just where I was going.

  On the way I made a phone call to Fiske, whom I hadn’t even called about the murder scene, so preoccupied was I with my personal life. I told him tersely what I’d seen, but not about Patricia’s erotic renderings of the NFL or of his own son. He didn’t have to know about that. And not from me.

  I wondered how my father would react to the news, but I figured he’d handle it okay if I didn’t spell out the cheating part. And if I told him about the virus, he’d take his sharpest cleaver and geld the man. I laughed to myself until I thought about what Paul said. About my not being home.

  I pointed the car toward the city, and it struck me for the first time how strange it was that I had no friends my own age. No women friends, even close friends among my partners. We used to make lunch dates, but a deposition or trial would come up. Soon I’d stopped penciling anybody in. I realized I was speeding and eased off the gas.

  I reached the Italian Market, but a sawhorse blocked Eighth Street about a block from my father’s shop. The traffic was clogged and confused. A siren blared close by, and a blue-shirted Philly cop with a thick gut was waving a line up of overheated drivers down Christian Street. No way was I doing that. It would take me an extra twenty minutes to double back to the butcher shop, then another twenty to find a parking space. How would I get to cry on my father’s shoulder by dinner-time?

  I stopped my car in front of the cop and opened the window. “Can’t I get over to Ninth, Officer?”

  He shook his head and waved me on. “Not tonight. Keep it moving, lady.”

  “But I’ll be late if I take the detour.”

  “You can’t get through. There was a shooting and the perp took off. You wanna run into him?”

  “A shooting? Where?”

  “Lady—”

  I felt my pulse quicken. “On Ninth? My father has a butcher shop on Ninth.”

  He looked down at me. “Which one?”

  “Morrone’s. The little one.”

  His face fell. “Pull over, honey,” he said quietly, and waved the other cars past me.

  14

  Right this way,” said a woman cop, as she led me down a corridor in the basement of the hospital.

  I felt drained. I had cried all the tears I could cry. My head was pounding. The only way to get through it was not to experience it. Keep it at a distance. And my emotions, too.

  “You okay, Rita?” the cop asked, turning back as she walked. She had short brown hair, tight features, and no makeup. A hard face but for the kindness in her expression.

  “Fine.”

  “It’ll be over soon.”

  She picked up the pace and I followed. The floor slanted down, like a ramp. Down, then doubling back, and going farther down. We reached the very bottom of the hospital and passed through a wide brown door that swung shut behind us. morgue, said a sign on the door.

  “Hey, Jim,” the cop said to a man in a white coat like a butcher’s. “You ready for us?”

  I stood behind the cop to shield myself from the room. A formaldehyde stink filled my nose. The air was chilled. A chalkboard hung on the wall and it read, inexplicably: HEART, RT. LUNG, LT. LUNG, LIVER, SPLEEN, RT. KIDNEY, LT. KIDNEY, BRAIN, PANCREAS, SPLEEN, THYROID.

  “All set,” said the man, who stood beside a long table made of dull stainless steel. The table had slats across the bottom and a large round drain peeked from underneath them. I didn’t want to think about what went down the drain. Next to the table was a scale with a steel tray hanging underneath its clocklike face. A butcher’s scale.

  “Cold in here,” the cop said.

  The man in white wanted to reply but thought better of it. He punched up his steel glasses with a deft movement, his arm a clinical blur of white.

  “You want another Coke, Rita?” asked the cop.

  I shook my head. No. This wasn’t happening. None of it was happening. The man left for the adjoining room. There was the sound of a door being unlatched, a metallic ca-chunk, then a heavy slam as it sealed shut. I knew those noises from the shop. It was a freezer.

  The man reappeared pushing a gurney. A steel bar surrounded the gurney and a black tarp was slung between the bars. On the tarp rested a white nylon bag with a zipper down the middle. The white bag was lumpy and formless. Smaller than I expected. I hadn’t realized he was so short. Oh God.

  “Why do I have to do this?” I asked them, fighting not to cry. “We know it’s him. It has to be him. They saw.”

  The cop touched my shoulder. “It’s procedure,” she said.

  “Actually, it’s state law,” said the man in white. He began to unzip the bag with a care that suggested he feared something would catch on the inside.

  I covered my mouth and turned away. Behind me was a black counter and underneath it a bank of ugly green cabinets. The zippering sound reverberated off the cold walls. Then the noise stopped suddenly and there was silence.

  “Miss?” said a professional voice. The man in white.

  I wondered how many times he’d said this, and to whom. To mothers and fathers and daughters and friends. Miss? Look at the body of someone you loved. Or someone you know. Or someone you hardly knew but who has no one else to mourn him, or even to identify his remains. Miss?

  “Is this him, Miss?”

  I made myself turn back.

  It was a dark face that shone under the harsh white light, framed by the white body bag. He looked like a black child, sleeping in a snowy receiving blanket. He was a black child.

  “Is this LeVonne Jenkins?” the man asked.

  No, it’s not LeVonne. LeVonne was only in tenth grade, so it can’t be him. It shouldn’t be him. I nodded, yes.

  And began to cry.

  Later, I waited in the ultramodern waiting room with my head against the cold glass wall, slouching in a mauve chair that promised more comfort than it gave. The waiting room was empty except for a TV, and Rescue 911 was returning from commercial. A woman, drowning, screamed for help. I felt raw inside, exhausted. I drew my jacket closer around my shoulders.

  The operation had started an hour ago, and they told me it would be a long one. Difficult. A surgeon gave me the odds, like a gambler, and they weren’t good. I picked up a battered magazine from the glass coffee table, looking for distraction. Highlights, a children’s magazine. Hippos wearing Hawaiian leis danced across the cover, at an animal luau. I opened the magazine.

  At midpage was a comic strip. GOOFUS AND GALLANT, said the title. In the panel, a young boy climbed a set of porch steps. In the middle of the steps was a roller skate. Goofus leaves his toys on the step, said the caption. The next panel showed another young boy rolling a bike down the sidewalk, heading for the garage. Gallant puts his bicycle away, so no one trips over it.

  I got it. You could have a lobotomy and still get it.

  I looked up. Nothing was there, except a face. Not Rescue 911 or the chairs or the receptionist at a desk in the hal
lway. Just his face.

  In life it was the face of a young boy, growing into a man. A boy with none of the glaring faults of a lout like Goofus, a boy with none of the bogus suburban qualities of Gallant. A boy who would have burst into laughter at the absurdity of Goofus and Gallant, even though he was a boy who rarely burst into laughter. Who would have learned nothing from this inane pair, and who could have taught them volumes. I threw the Highlights across the room, startling the receptionist.

  LeVonne.

  LeVonne had died at the hospital almost as soon as they wheeled him off the ambulance. Two bullets had torn through his chest, one shearing the aorta. If my father lived through his operation, the first thing he would do is ask about LeVonne. Then the news would kill him.

  “Rita,” called a man’s voice.

  I looked up. Herman Meyer was thundering into the waiting room, in madras shorts and a thin white T-shirt. A bewildered Uncle Sal scurried next to him, almost identically dressed, supported by Herman’s tanned arm. Cam Lopo was right behind them, holding a bouquet of sprayed mums. I got up to meet them and hugged Sal, whose bony back felt like a wren’s in my embrace.

  “He’s gonna be all right, isn’t he?” Sal asked.

  “What happened?” Herman said. “They operating?”

  “What’d they say?” Cam asked.

  I released Sal and regained my composure. It was almost worse, their being here. Seeing how upset they were, Uncle Sal especially. “I don’t know more than I told you on the phone. He got shot in the chest, it hit his pulmonary vein. They’re going to stitch him up.”

  “You said nicked it, on the phone. Nicked it. That doesn’t sound too bad,” Sal said.

  Jesus. How to prepare him? I couldn’t even prepare myself. “It’s a serious injury. He’d lost a lot of blood by the time they got him here.”

  “All I know is, they better catch the guy who did this to him,” Cam said.

  Sal blinked sadly. “He killed LeVonne. I can’t believe it.”

  Herman shook his head. “The bastard. If the cops don’t get him, I will. I swear it.” They stood together, forming an aged phalanx of determination, but I didn’t want to think about retribution just yet.