Lisa Scottoline: Killer Smile

Finally the ringing stopped. The conference room fell silent again. Mary waited for the silence to seem more like friendly-silence and less like scary-silence, but that wasn’t happening. The reception area was still dark. She tried to relax but couldn’t. She glanced over her shoulder even though she was thirty-two stories up. It was dark outside, and in the onyx mirror of the windows, she saw the sparkling new conference room, a messy table dotted with Styrofoam coffee cups, and a Drama Queen with a law degree.

I’ll come down there and shoot

Mary turned back, picked up the phone, and pressed in Bennie’s cell number. Again there was no answer, so she left another warning, slightly more hysterical. She hung up and checked her watch again. 10:36. It was late. She didn’t want to sit here while he called back again. She couldn’t concentrate anyway. Time to go. She got out of the chair, stuffed her briefcase with documents, grabbed her purse, and left the conference room.

Leather chairs and a matching couch loomed in the darkened reception area, and Mary scooted past the terrifying furniture for the elevator, which didn’t come fast enough. Once inside, she breathed a little easier, and when the elevator reached the lobby, she stepped off and glanced around, her pulse slowing to normal. The fake-marble lobby was bright and empty, except for a fake-granite security desk manned by a guard too sleepy for her comfort level. Bobby Troncello, an amateur boxer Mary knew from the neighborhood, undoubtedly dozing over the sports page.

“Wake up, Bobby,” she said, making a beeline for the desk. She set her briefcase on its glistening surface and peeked over the edge. “We got trouble.”

“What do you mean?” Bobby looked up, edging the maroon cap he hated over his thick eyebrows. His brown eyes were glassy-wet, his nose wide and dotted with large pores, and his mouth a slash that was usually swollen from the gym. The Daily News lay open on his desk, tabloid-size, its pages cut in a soft zigzag fringe, and a can of Coke warmed beside an oily white wrapper from a cheesesteak dinner. Only the end of the long hoagie roll remained, with a brownish knob like an elbow.

“I just got a phone call from a very angry man named Tom Cott. I don’t know what he looks like, but he threatened to come here tonight and shoot me.”

“Uh-oh.” Bobby’s forehead knit unhappily.

“You’re supposed to tell me not to worry.”

“Don’t worry, Mare. Bennie already told us to watch out for this Cott guy. Nobody gets upstairs, you know that. He comes in my lobby, I’ll take care of him myself. I wouldn’t let anybody hurt my homegirl.”

Mary smiled, almost reassured. “He went to Bennie’s house tonight. He said he looked her up in the phone book. I called her and left a message warning her, but I’m worried.”

“About Rosato ? I’d worry about him .” Bobby laughed, rising to stretch arms that strained against the seams of his maroon blazer. His lapels parted as he reached up, releasing a heady combination of Drakkar Noir and fried onions. “If that knucklehead tussles with her, she’ll kick his ass from here to Broad Street.”

“But he said he’d shoot me, or us. I think.” Mary couldn’t remember much Premenstrual Tom had said after shoot , and his calling her a whore bothered her more than it should have, especially when it was part of a death threat in general. “What if he has a gun? What if he goes to Bennie’s house with a gun?”

“So what? Rosato carries concealed.” Bobby snorted. “She’d bust a cap in him before he could find his pants pocket.”

Strangely, I feel worse. “Is this your best stuff, Bobby?”

“Don’t worry, everything’s fine. You been workin’ too hard, night after night. Lemme get you a cab.” Bobby grabbed Mary’s briefcase, walked around the security desk, and looped an aromatic arm around her shoulder. “By the way, what did you decide about my friend Jimmy? You gonna let me hook you up?”

Mary hid her dismay. Bobby had been trying to fix her up with his fellow boxers, a continuous loop of Joeys, Billys, and a stray Pooch. Lately, everybody was playing matchmaker, as if they’d all decided Mary wasn’t allowed to be a Young Widow anymore. She hadn’t known there was an official cut-off.

“I told you about Jimmy. We went to Bishop Neumann together, he’s a real nice guy. Works his dad’s plumbing business, got a nice car. Season tickets to the Eagles. Club level , Mare.”

“Thanks, but I don’t think so.”

“You sure?” Bobby led her to the polished brass door, opened it for her, and gentled her outside onto the sidewalk. The night air felt crisp, and there was almost no traffic at this hour. Rosato amp; Associates had moved to nicer offices uptown since they started doing class action work, and the ritzy new location made it easier to get cabs. Bobby hailed one almost instantly. “Come on, Mare, whyn’t you give Jimmy a shot?”

Mary smiled. “Give him a shot? You’re a poet.”

“You gotta get back in the saddle, girl.” Bobby opened the cab door with a wink.

Yowza . “Another time, thanks.” Mary tucked herself inside the backseat of the cab, waved good-bye to Bobby, and gave her address to the cabbie, a bald, older man. He merely nodded in response, strangely taciturn for a Philadelphia cab-driver, and for a minute she thought he didn’t speak English, but his ID card read John Tucker. They lurched off, rattling through the dark, empty streets of the city, and the cab took on an oddly hollow feel in the interior. Or maybe it was just too clean inside. The black carpet reeked of strawberry spray, the vinyl seat shone with Armor All, and the seat belt actually worked. It was all too topsy-turvy for Philly, and Mary felt dis-oriented.

“You keep your cab very clean,” she said pleasantly, but he didn’t answer. Maybe he hadn’t heard.

“This cab is so neat!” she said, louder, but he still didn’t say anything, so she let it go and slipped lower in the seat, glancing out the window as they barreled up Walnut past a darkened Burberry’s and Kiehl’s. A few businesspeople walked down the street, the men with ties loosened, the women with purses swinging. A raggedy homeless man shouted from the corner of Eighteenth and Walnut, reminding Mary of Premenstrual Tom. She reached in her purse, retrieved her cell, and pressed redial for Bennie. Again the boss didn’t answer, and she left another message. She flipped the phone closed and watched the rearview mirror for the cabbie’s reaction. He said nothing, but his gaze shifted hard-eyed to the right. They traveled in silence to her neighborhood, and he swung the cab more roughly than necessary onto her street. Mary felt unaccountably as if she’d wronged him, so when they pulled up in front of her house, she handed him a ten-dollar bill on a six-dollar fare.

“Keep the change,” she said, but he only nodded again. She opened the door, gathered her belongings, and had barely climbed out of the cab before the cabbie hit the gas and sped off, leaving her alone at the curb.

I’ll come down there and shoot

The voice echoed in Mary’s head, and then it struck her: Premenstrual Tom could have looked up where she lived. He knew her name; she was in the phone book, too. The realization startled her, then she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before. He could be here, on her street. Watching her. Right now. With a gun.

Her gaze swept the street, a skinny alley lined with small brick trinities. Its one streetlight, at the far end of the street, wasn’t bright enough to reassure her. Some of her neighbors had mounted lights beside their front doors, but they cast little illumination except on their own front stoops. The sidewalks were vacant. Everybody was inside. A few city trees planted at curbside rustled in the breeze, and Mary sized them up with suspicion. Their trunks looked too thin for someone to hide behind, but Premenstrual Tom could be skinny. If he wasn’t retaining water.