Lisa Scottoline - Dead Ringer

“Does this matter?”

“And you walk like a man.”

“I’m trying to get somewhere!”

“You’re all alone. No man will ever marry you.”

Whoa . Bennie bristled. “Now she’s getting personal.”

“You should leave immediately.”

“She has nerve, throwing me out of my own conference room.”

Cavuto met Bennie’s eye. “She didn’t say you should leave, I did.”

“Why? It’s my conference room. She should leave, not me.” Bennie folded her arms. “I’m as capable as anyone of being childish. I have a First Amendment right to be childish.”

Cavuto shook his head. “Rethink your position. I know Vita DiNunzio. She can go on like this for an hour or more. She only gets stronger as she goes, like a house on fire.”

Bennie eyed the scene. The group was practically wrestling Mrs. DiNunzio to the ground, and she was still yelling. Her finger stuck up from the throng, like the Statue of Liberty in a hurricane.

Cavuto tsk-tsk ed. “At some point, she gets completely out of control. A whole city block can be consumed. She’s a natural force.”

Bennie snorted. “Okay, tell Mary I’ll meet her in my office. I’ll get back to you about the Brandolini representation. You put me on the spot here, you know.”

“Forgive me, but it’s for a good cause. Buona fortuna .”

“For that I don’t need a translation.” Bennie gave him a pat on the back, then went back to her office to find her goddamn wallet.

Bennie combed the dhurrie rug and crawled under her desk and chairs. She wasn’t giving up on that Filofax. She didn’t have time to replace her driver’s license, and she needed an organizer to feel organized. She went over every cluttered surface, then peeked under stacks of correspondence, old court decisions, and law books. She rummaged through every drawer in her desk and didn’t find the wallet, but did find an old picture of her ex-boyfriend, Grady Wells, from a weekend trip to Cape May. She stopped at the sight of the photo. Maybe if they’d spent more weekends together. That was what he’d said anyway, but she’d had a business to run.

Just then came a timid knock on the door, and Bennie didn’t have to guess who it was. The secretary was out, Carrier knocked like a freight train, and Murphy never knocked at all. Bennie shoved the photo in the drawer and closed it quickly, so as not to reveal that she had Normal Human Emotions and/or Chinks in the Armor. She called out, “You’re fired, DiNunzio!”

No laughter came from outside the door.

“I’m only kidding! Come in, silly!”

The door opened slowly, and a stricken Mary DiNunzio peeked inside. “I’m not coming in if you’re going to fire me.”

“I’m not going to fire you.” Bennie waved her inside. “Come in and sit down.”

“Thank you, thank you so much, Bennie, I can explain everything. First off, I’m really sorry and my mother is not crazy.” DiNunzio hurried to the club chair across from the desk, perching on the edge of the seat cushion. Her words tumbled over each other and she gestured as rapidly as sign language. “She’s really great, and I love her a lot, but I never would have let her come to the meeting if I had known she was going to act that way. She said she’d behave, but I guess she couldn’t control herself, because she’s very old school, you heard her accent, she wasn’t even born here, and she gets a little upset and emotional because she loves me and she worries about me, and I’m really sorry. I can’t believe she did that and I’m so embarrassed and so sorry. Really sorry. Did I say that already?”

“Yes. You-”

“I feel just awful. I’m so embarrassed, I know you must be so embarrassed. It was just so embarrassing .”

“No, I’m an adult, and a lawyer. I can deal-”

“I mean, to have someone yelling at you, right in front of everybody, right in the office, and the whole thing was like a nightmare, I couldn’t believe it was happening. It was awful! My mother says she’s sorry and my father says he’s sorry and we’re all so upset that it happened.” Mary teared up, but all Bennie had was a cup of cold coffee, so she handed it across her desk. The associate drank some and made a face. “Ugh! This tastes terrible.”

“I know. I’m trying to shut you up.”

“It worked.” She set down the mug. “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too. Now can we get over it? You know I’m not good at the comforting thing. I-”

“But I should be comforting you .” Mary’s eyes welled up again. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You were just trying to help me and-”

“Please shut up! ” Bennie shouted, startling the associate into a tearstained silence. “Thank you. Now, settle down and listen. Your mother has good cause to be angry at me. I gather it’s because of the trouble I’ve gotten you into on some of our cases.”

“But that’s not your fault, and I tried to explain it to her. Working on those cases was my decision, and things happened. She just worries because I work here. She wants me to quit.”

“You can do whatever you like.” Bennie couldn’t imagine the place without DiNunzio, but she wasn’t about to guilt-trip the kid. “Do you want to work somewhere where your mom wouldn’t worry?”

“That’s impossible. She’d worry no matter what I did. She worried about my sister Angie, and she was a nun in a cloistered convent.”

Bennie said nothing. She was thinking about her mother, who had been so ill and had passed two years ago. Bennie still missed her every day.

“Besides, I like the work we do, even if sometimes I get into trouble. I mean, we’re doing justice. We actually do justice.” The associate’s mouth set with determination. “I think I’m getting better at being a lawyer, over time. I know I’m trying, and I don’t want to stop. And today I brought in a new client, all by myself.”

Bennie smiled. She’d never heard DiNunzio speak with such pride. It seemed like a cue for Bennie to say something she’d never said, even at the associate’s performance reviews, when maybe she’d been too bogged down in the details of brief writing. “DiNunzio, I think you’re a far better lawyer than you know. You have the mind, and the heart, to be one of the best of your generation.”

Mary almost started crying again.

“Also your hair doesn’t glow in the dark.”

Mary smiled, but tears threatened still.

“Don’t give a second thought to what just happened with your mom. I’m sure we can work it out. I’ll take her to lunch and have a little chat.”

“No!” Mary’s eyes flared with new alarm. “I mean, thanks, but I don’t think so. My mother doesn’t go out to lunch.”

“Why not?”

“It’s outside.”

“Outside what?”

“Her kitchen.”

“Of course it is.” Bennie thought again of her own mother. Depression had kept her confined to bed, often for months, in the era before Prozac and Paxil, when nothing seemed to work. “Why doesn’t she go out? Is she ill?”

“No way. You saw her.”

“Is she agoraphobic?”

“No, she’s Italian.”

Bennie let it go. “Okay. Then I’ll take her to an Italian restaurant. Get her a nice plate of pasta.”

“No, she would never eat someone else’s gravy. Unless it was a blood relative.”

“Okay, we won’t go out. I’ll go over to see her. That’s in.”

“No.” Mary shuddered. “No talking, no seeing.”

“Why not?” To Bennie, the whole thing seemed unusually complicated. “I want to make peace. We can reason together. I have great faith in the power of words.”