Lisa Scottoline - Look Again

"What do you mean?"

"You told Marcelo I was upset about Courtney, and you told Meredith that I was bad-mouthing Marcelo and Arthur."

"I did no such thing and I want my phone back." Sarah wiggled her hand impatiently, and Ellen slapped the BlackBerry into her palm.

"Meredith told me, and so did Marcelo. Marcelo, Sarah. Our editor. You can get me fired, talking me down to him."

"Oh please." Sarah scoffed. "Meredith misunderstood. I didn't say you said anything bad about them, specifically."

"I didn't say anything about them."

"You called them bastards!" Sarah shot back, leaving Ellen incredulous.

"What? When?"

"In here, before they came for Courtney. You said, "Don't let the bastards get you down."

"Gimme a break, Sarah. It's an expression. My father says it all the time."

"Whatever, you said it." Sarah snorted. "I only told one person in the newsroom."

"One is enough. That's why they call it a newsroom."

"Meredith never talks."

"Everybody talks, these days."

Sarah rolled her eyes. "You're overreacting."

"And what about Marcelo? You told him, too. You said I wasn't a fan of his."

"He asked me how was morale in the newsroom after Courtney got fired. I told him it was bad and that you felt the same way. That's all." Sarah put her hands on her hips. "Are you telling me you didn't feel that way? That you're happy Courtney got fired?"

"Of course not."

"Then what are you whining about?"

"Don't talk to the boss about me, got it?"

Sarah waved her off. "Whatever I said, it's not gonna hurt you. Marcelo wants you around, and you know why."

Ellen reddened, angry. "You know, that's insulting."

"Whatever. We need to talk about the think piece." Sarah straightened up at the sink. "Do us both a favor and use my lead. Call Julia Guest. My job's riding on this, and I'm not about to let you screw me up."

"Don't worry about it. I'll do my part, you do yours."

"You'd better." Sarah brushed past her for the door, and Ellen heard her mutter under her breath.

Ironically, they were saying the exact same thing:

Bitch.

Ellen worked on the homicide piece through lunch, reading Sarah's notes and doing her own research before she made any contacts, but she found it almost impossible to concentrate, distracted by thoughts of Karen Batz. Tonight she'd find the file on Will's adoption, and it had to help fill in some of the blanks. She'd already called Connie, who'd agreed to stay late.

Her gaze returned to the notes on her desk, and she told herself to focus on the task at hand. She had to look busy, too, aware that Marcelo was in his office, holding meetings. She glanced up, and at the exact same moment, Marcelo was looking at her through the glass.

Ellen smiled, flushing, and Marcelo broke their eye contact, returning to his meeting, gesturing with his hands, his shirtsleeves folded carelessly over his forearms. She put her head down and tried to focus. She had only a few hours of daylight left.

She picked up the phone.

Night came early to this neighborhood, the sun fleeing the sky, leaving heaven black and blue, and Ellen circled the block, scribbling notes as she drove. Trash blew in the gutters, swept along by unseen currents, stopping when it flattened against older cars. Sooty brick rowhouses lined broken sidewalks; some houses had graffitied plywood where windows used to be, and others had only black holes, unsightly as missing teeth. Porch roofs sagged, peeling shutters hung crooked, and every home had bars covering its doors. One house had encased its entrance in bars, curved inward at the top like a lion's cage.

A boy had been shot to death on this block of Eisner Street, only two weeks ago. Lateef Williams, age eight.

Ellen turned right onto Eisner, where only one streetlight worked, and it threw a halo over a pile of trash, rubble, and car tires dumped on the corner. She stopped at number 5252, Lateef's house, and his memorial out front was bathed in darkness, the shadows hiding a purple bunny rabbit that sat lopsided against Spider-Man figurines, crayoned drawings, a king-size box of Skittles, sympathy cards, and a mound of spray-painted daisies and sweetheart roses, still in plastic wrap. A sign handwritten in Magic Marker read WE LOVE YOU, TEEF, and a few candles sat around it, unlit in the cold and wind. Lateef Williams was denied the smallest measure of warmth and light, even in death.

Ellen felt a wrench in her chest. She didn't know how many children had been killed in the city last year, but she could never get used to the idea. She never wanted to get to the point at which a child's murder was old news. She fed the car some gas and pulled into a parking space, then gathered her things to meet Lateef's mother.

Laticia Williams was twenty-six, with a slim, pretty face, narrow brown eyes, high cheekbones, and a prominent mouth, devoid of lipstick. Long earrings with wooden beads dangled from her earlobes, showing just under chin-length hair colored reddish. With her jeans, she wore an over-sized black T-shirt that bore her son's photo and the caption, R.i.p. LATEEF.

"I appreciate you coming," Laticia said, setting a mug of coffee in front of Ellen as they sat at her round table. The kitchen was small and neat, the cabinets refaced with dark wood and the Formica counters covered with Pyrex oblongs of cakes, cookie tins, and two pies covered with tinfoil, which Laticia had said were "too ugly" to serve.

"Not at all, I appreciate your talking to me at a time like this," Ellen said, having already expressed her condolences. "The only thing I hate about my job is barging into people's houses at the worst time of their lives. Again, I'm so sorry for your loss."

"Thank you." Laticia sat down with a weary smile, showing the gold rim of her front tooth. "I want it to be in the paper, so everybody know what's happenin'. So they know kids are gettin' killed every day. So it's not just a number, like Powerball."

"That's the point. That's what I'm here to do. Make them see it and understand what it's like to lose Lateef this way."

"I cried all I can cry, we all have. But you know what they don't understand? What they're never gonna understand?"

"Tell me."

"That with me, and with Dianne down the block, who lost her child, it's different. We're mad, too. Mad as all hell. Sick to death of all this dyin'." Laticia's voice rose and fell, with a cadence almost like a prayer. "All the mothers are sick our kids are bein" shot at, like it's a damn shootin' gallery, and it makes no never mind. Ain't nothin' gonna change here, and this is America."

Ellen absorbed her words, and her emotion. She wondered if she could convey all that feeling in the piece.

"It's like Katrina, we're livin' in a different country. We got two sets of rules, two sets of laws, two things you can get outta life, whether you're white or black, rich or poor. That's the thing in a nutshell." Laticia pointed a stiff index finger at Ellen. "You live in America, but I don't. You live in Philadelphia, but I don't."

Ellen didn't know how to respond, so she didn't.

"Where I live, my kid can get shot on the street, and nobody sees nothin'. You wanna blame them, tell people to snitch, I know, but you can't blame people. I can't and I don't. If they snitch, they're dead. Their family's dead. Their kids are dead."

Ellen didn't want to interrupt Laticia with a question. Nothing could be as valuable as what she was saying and she deserved at least that much.

"So I could sit here and tell you all about Teef and how cute he was, "cause he was." Laticia smiled briefly, light returning to her angry eyes, softening them for just an instant. "He was a funny child, a goof-ball. He cracked us up. At the last reunion, he was freestylin', he tore it up. I miss him every minute."