Richard Montanari: Rosary girls

"Jessie."

"I need this shit today, right? I really need this."

Vincent's face softened, as if he'd just remembered what day this was. He opened his mouth to speak, but Jessica raised a hand, cutting him off.

"Don't," she said. "Not today."

"When?"

The truth was, she didn't know. Did she miss him? Desperately. Would she show it? Never in a million years.

"I don't know."

For all his faults-and they were legion-Vincent Balzano knew when to quit with his wife. "C'mon," he said. "Let me give you a ride, at least."

He knew she would refuse, opting out of the Phyllis Diller look a ride to the Roundhouse on a Harley would provide for her.

But he smiled that damn smile, the one that got her into bed in the first place, and she almost-almost-caved.

"I've got to go, Vincent," she said.

She walked around the bike and continued on toward the garage. As tempted as she was to turn around, she resisted. He had cheated on her and now she was the one who felt like shit.

What's wrong with this picture?

While she deliberately fumbled with the keys, drawing it out, she eventually heard the bike start, back up, roar defiantly, and disappear up the street.

When she started the Cherokee, she punched 1060 on the dial. KYW told her that I-95 was jammed. She glanced at the clock. She had time. She'd take Frankford Avenue into town.

As she pulled out of the drive, she saw an EMS van in front of the Arrabiata house across the street. Again. She made eye contact with Lily Arrabiata, and Lily waved. It seemed Carmine Arrabiata was having his weekly false-alarm heart attack, a regular event for as far back as Jessica could remember. It had gotten to the point that the city would no longer send an EMS rescue. The Arrabiatas had to call private ambulances. Lily's wave was twofold. One, to say good morning. The other to tell Jessica that Carmine was fine. At least for the next week or so.

Heading toward Cottman Avenue, Jessica thought about the stupid fight she had just had with Vincent, and how a simple answer to his initial question would've ended the discussion immediately. The night before she had attended a Catholic Food Drive organizational meeting with an old friend of the family, little Davey Pizzino, all five foot one of him. It was a yearly occasion Jessica had attended since she was a teenager, and the farthest thing imaginable from a date, but Vincent didn't need to know that. Davey Pizzino blushed at Summer's Eve commercials. Davey Pizzino, at thirty-eight, was the oldest living virgin east of the Alleghe- nies. Davey Pizzino left at nine thirty.

But the fact that Vincent had probably spied on her pissed her off to no end.

Let him think what he wanted. On the way into center city, Jessica watched the neighborhoods change. No other city she could think of had a personality so split between blight and splendor. No other city clung to the past with more pride, nor demanded the future with more fervor.

She saw a pair of brave joggers working their way up Frankford, and the floodgates opened wide. A torrent of memories and emotions washed over her.

She had begun running with her brother when he was seventeen; she, just a gangly thirteen, loosely constructed of pointy elbows, sharp shoulder blades, and bony kneecaps. For the first year or so she hadn't a prayer of matching either his pace or his stride. Michael Giovanni stood just under six feet and weighed a trim and muscular 180.

In the summer heat, the spring rain, the winter snow they would jog through the streets of South Philly; Michael, always a few steps ahead; Jessica, always struggling to keep up, always in silent awe of his grace. She had beaten him to the steps of St. Paul's once, on her fourteenth birthday, a contest to which Michael had never wavered in his claim of defeat. She knew he had let her win.

Jessica and Michael had lost their mother to breast cancer when Jessica was only five, and from that day forward Michael had been there for every scraped knee, every young girl's heartbreak, every time she had been victimized by some neighborhood bully.

She had been fifteen when Michael had joined the Marine Corps, following in their father's footsteps. She recalled how proud they had all been when he came home in his dress uniform for the first time. Every one of Jessica's girlfriends had been desperately in love with Michael Giovanni, his caramel eyes and easy smile, the confident way he could put old people and children at ease. Everyone knew he would join the police force after his tour of duty, also following in their father's footsteps.

She had been fifteen when Michael, serving in the First Battalion, Eleventh Marines, was killed in Kuwait.

Her father, a thrice-decorated veteran of the police force, a man who still carried his late wife's internment card in his breast pocket, had closed his heart completely that day, a terrain he now tread only in the company of his granddaughter. Although small of stature, Peter Giovanni had stood ten feet tall in the company of his son.

Jessica had been headed to prelaw, then law school, but on the night they received word of Michael's death she knew that she would join the police force.

And now, as she began what was essentially an entirely new career in one of the most respected homicide units of any police department in the country, it looked like law school was a dream relegated to the realm of fantasy.

Maybe one day.

Maybe. By the time Jessica pulled into the parking lot at the Roundhouse, she realized that she didn't recall any of it. Not a single thing. All the cramming in procedure, evidence, the years on the street, everything evacuated her brain.

Did the building get bigger? she wondered.

At the door she caught her reflection in the glass. She was wearing a fairly expensive skirt suit, her best sensible girl-cop shoes. A big difference from the torn jeans and sweatshirts she had favored as an undergrad at Temple, in those giddy years before Vincent, before Sophie, before the academy, before all… this. Not a care in the world, she thought. Now her world was built on worry, framed with concern, with a leaky roof shingled with trepidation.

Although she had entered this building many times, and although she could probably find her way to the bank of elevators blindfolded, it all seemed foreign to her, as if she were seeing it for the first time. The sights, the sounds, the smells all blended into the demented carnival that was this small corner of the Philadelphia justice system.

It was her brother Michael's beautiful face that Jessica saw as she grabbed the handle on the door, an image that would come back to her many times over the next few weeks as the things upon which she had based her whole life became redefined as madness.

Jessica opened the door, stepped inside, thinking:

Watch my back, big brother.

Watch my back.

MONDAY, 7:55 AM

The Homicide unit of the Philadelphia Police Department was located on the first floor of the Roundhouse, the police administration building-or PAB, as it was often called-at Eighth and Race Streets, nicknamed for the round shape of its three-story structure. Even the elevators were round. Criminals were fond of pointing out that, from the air, the building looked like a pair of handcuffs. When a suspicious death occurred anywhere in Philadelphia County, the call came here.

Of the sixty-five detectives in the unit, only a handful were women, a stat the brass were desperate to change.

Everyone knew that, these days, in a department as politically sensitive as the PPD, it wasn't necessarily a person who was promoted, but quite often a statistic, a delegate of some demographic that made the cut.

Jessica knew this. But she also knew that her career on the street was exceptional, and that she had earned her slot on the Homicide Unit, even if she arrived there a few years ahead of the standard decade or so on the job. She had her degree in criminal justice; she had been a more-than- competent uniformed officer, garnering two commendations. If she had to knock a few old-school heads in the unit, so be it. She was ready. She had never backed down from a fight, and she wasn't going to begin now.