Paul Levine - Flesh and bones

"I helped her remember! I helped her heal."

"You wanted her to kill Harry Bernhardt!"

"No!"

"You prayed for her to kill him! You made her kill him!"

"No!"

"You programmed her to kill and you set her loose."

"No!"

"You took a confused young woman, pumped her full of drugs until her head spun, then you put a loaded gun in her hands and you aimed it and pulled the trigger."

"No!"

"You killed Harry Bernhardt! You wanted him dead, and you got Chrissy to do your dirty work!"

"He deserved it!" Schein shouted. He looked around, realized he was standing, seemed to notice for the first time the jury staring at him, wide-eyed. "But I'm not a killer. I didn't…"

His voice trailed off, his knees buckled, and he sank into his chair.

The house smelled of tomato sauce, garlic, and melted cheese. I had asked Kip to bring home a couple of pizzas for the nightly war council, so he'd gathered up Tanya from next door, and they bicycled into the downtown Grove. An hour later, they returned with a pizza quattro stagioni (olives, roasted peppers, mushrooms, and artichokes) from Mezzanotte, a pizza musculi (mussels and marinara sauce) from Paulo Luigi's, and a Margherita (fresh tomatoes and basil) from Ats-a-Nice.

"Taste test," Kip proclaimed, carrying the boxes into the house.

During trial, everything tastes like cardboard to me, though I appreciated the theatricality of Kip's gesture. All the pizzas were good, but I'm partial to the basic simplicity of a Margherita. I try to keep both my life and my meals free of excessive clutter. With pizzas, at least, I succeed.

I opened a bottle of Chianti for Doc Riggs and Chrissy, sent Kip and Tanya onto the back porch with a couple of root beers, and popped the porcelain top on a pint of Grolsch for myself.

Chrissy sat on the sofa, her knees tucked up under her chin. She wore one of my old football jerseys, and with her bare feet and no makeup, she looked like a teenager. An unhappy teenager. She had sobbed quietly in the car on the way home from the courthouse, and now she sipped at the wine and stared into space, red-eyed and sniffling.

"I don't know what to believe anymore," she said. "At first, I was so sure. Jake, I could feel it happening, feel his flesh tearing into mine. Even now, when I close my eyes, it seems so real."

Chrissy shuddered, her face filled with such haunting sorrow as to stir something deep inside me. I remembered what she had said the first time we met, how the photographers loved that vulnerable look. Wounded and sexy. Doomed Beauty. I wrapped my arms around her, and she let her cheek rest on my shoulder.

"Regardless of how the trial turns out," she said, "I want you to know how much you mean to me. You're the one man who hasn't tried to use me."

"I'm living inside your skin," I said. "I'd do anything for you."

"You already have. You believe in me, and you're going to win."

"What?"

"Jake, you were brilliant today. You destroyed Larry. You showed what he did to me."

"I proved he had the motive to kill your father. I may have even proved he programmed you to carry out his plan of revenge. But no matter which way we turn, you pulled the trigger."

"What are you saying?" she asked, alarmed.

"We'll be entitled to a jury instruction on the lesser included charges, second-degree murder and manslaughter. A win is a conviction for manslaughter."

"Meaning what?"

"A ten- or eleven-year sentence, out in eight or nine."

"Eight years! No, it's not possible."

Chrissy was shaking her head in childlike disbelief. Dr. Schein might say she was in denial.

I cupped her head in my hands. "Chrissy, that's always been the goal. Either hang the jury or get lucky with a manslaughter verdict. If Abe had offered the plea, we would have taken it, but he's always gone after first-degree murder, life with no possibility of parole."

"Eight years," she repeated. "There must be something you can do. Please tell me there's something."

I looked at her, but there wasn't a thought in my head. No plan, no strategy for an acquittal. But I couldn't tell her that.

"There is something," I said with contrived enthusiasm. "I just didn't want to get your hopes up."

"You'll do it, Jake. I know you will. You would never let me down."

I peeked through the kitchen window toward the backyard. Kip and Tanya were stretched out in the hammock, side by side. Kip's hands were behind his head, just the way I lie there. Maybe it's heredity, maybe environment-who knows? — but the little guy is starting to pick up my gestures and mannerisms. I cracked the window just enough to eavesdrop. I know kids are supposed to have their privacy, but I was worried. I didn't have any idea what stage these two were at, so I wanted to know if they were discussing homework or condoms.

"How many movies can you name with the word 'pizza' in the title?" Tanya asked.

" Mystic Pizza." he shot back without hesitating. "That's an easy one. Bet you don't know who had her first starring role."

"Julia Roberts, unless you count Baja Oklahoma."

"Doesn't count 'cause it was made for cable."

"Yeah, but they showed it in theaters anyway," Tanya said.

Great, the kid had found a soulmate.

They were quiet a moment before Kip said, " The Pizza Triangle with Marcello Mastroianni and Monica Vitti."

"Wow! That's a tough one."

I closed the window just as Charlie came into the kitchen and started clearing my counter of a week's worth of fast food. Dried-out burgers, curled pizza crusts, half-empty cola cups.

"You shouldn't make promises you can't keep," he said, tossing some shriveled French fries into the garbage can.

I shot a look toward the door.

"She's sleeping," he said, "but before she nodded off, she told me you had a great, secret plan. Want to share it with me?"

"Nothing to share," I said.

"Just as I thought." He was folding pizza boxes in half, jamming them into the trash. "She's such a frail thing, Jake."

"That's why I've got to win. She'll never make it in prison. Never."

"You're in a quandary," Charlie said. "You've proved Chrissy is a victim of Schein's manipulations, but you can't get around the fact that she killed her father."

"It's not a fact. It's an assumption made by the medical examiner." Getting out of my doldrums, starting to think like a lawyer.

"Unless you have contrary evidence, my boy, it's a fact."

"It could have been natural heart failure. It could have been medical malpractice. Larry Schein might have killed Harry in the hospital room."

"Proof, Jake! Where's your proof?"

I thought about it a second. "Schein said a couple of squirrelly things in court today, and they're still bothering me."

"A fine piece of lawyering, Jake, in case I failed to mention it. You built a fine ladder, put your hostile witness on the top rung, then knocked it down. He fell pretty hard."

"Thanks. Did you notice his time line's off?"

"How so?"

"Schein rushes out of the Hotel Astor at eleven-oh-five P.M. He gets to the hospital at eleven-forty P.M. It shouldn't take thirty-five minutes to get from the Astor to Mount Sinai."

"It was a Friday night. You know how slow traffic is on South Beach."

"Only if you go up Ocean Drive. The hospital is a straight shot up Alton. Ten to twelve minutes, no problem, especially if you're in a hurry."

"Maybe someone's watch was wrong. Maybe the valet parkers at the Astor were smoking weed or shooting craps."

"Yeah, and maybe Schein stayed to polish off his Grand Marnier souffle, but I think it's screwy."

"What else?" Charlie asked. "What else did Schein say that you found 'squirrelly'? An interesting choice of words."