Lisa Scottoline - Mistaken Identity

“Ay? Somebody there?” asked a voice. Elderly, uncertain, even frightened. It touched her unexpectedly.

“It’s me. Bennie Rosato.”

“Wha?” There was the sound of a dry cough, then footsteps shuffling softly. In the next minute a long figure filled the dark door and opened it wide.

“Hello,” Bennie said, backing the form into the dim room until the lamplight illuminated Winslow’s face. His mouth was full, and his face was lean, lightly tanned, with feathery crow’s-feet. His eyes were large, round, and as sharply blue as Bennie’s. They struck her at once as so familiar, even behind their drugstore eyeglasses, that she impulsively threw open her arms and gave him a hug.

“No!” he shouted, throwing off her arms and recoiling suddenly, knocking an astonished Bennie almost off-balance.

“I’m sorry,” she said, flustered. She wasn’t even sure what had happened, his response had been so immediate, so violent. Bennie’s face flushed with embarrassment and a sort of shame. She didn’t even know why she had hugged him in the first place. “I didn’t mean… I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.” Winslow patted his chest, over a buttoned-up blue workshirt, as if he’d just received a shock.

“I was only-”

“Quite all right.” His wrinkled hand fluttered against his shirt, then moved to right his glasses, though they weren’t crooked. “It’s all right. It’s fine. My. Well.” Winslow coughed again and focused on Bennie. “So, we meet,” he said without ceremony, and Bennie nodded.

“Yes. We do.” She was trying to recover from her faux pas. “Starting off on the right foot,” she said, laughing uncomfortably.

“I thought you might come, when it was over. I didn’t know you’d get here before I left. I was hoping you wouldn’t.” Winslow turned slightly, and Bennie looked down. On the floor stood an ancient tan suitcase, its leather dry and cracked, with a stand-up handle, and next to the suitcase sat a large cardboard box of books. She couldn’t help but notice his scrapbooks weren’t going with him. She had so many questions, she didn’t know where to start.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“South.” Winslow eased his glasses up his long nose with an index finger, its nail dirty.

“Is that all you’re taking?” She was thinking of the clippings, and the note from her mother. Had he even noticed it was gone?

“I must keep packing, if you don’t mind. My books.” He walked to the bookshelf and ran his fingertips over the books’ spines. He stopped when he got to one, tapped it thoughtfully, and slid it off the shelf. Then he went to the box and eased the book into it, spine up. “I must take as many of my books with me as possible.”

“Is this a vacation or what?”

“No, I just came off one of those, though it wasn’t much of a respite, was it?” Winslow smiled tightly, though his voice remained curiously humorless. “You won the case.”

“Yes, I did. How did you know that?”

“I was there.”

“Where?” Bennie blinked, amazed. “I didn’t see you.”

Winslow returned to the bookshelf, the second shelf this time, and after a brief examination, selected a volume and walked back to the cardboard box with it. “That’s why I put Alice onto you,” he said, without looking up from his task. “I knew you’d win.”

“How did you know that? I didn’t know I’d win.”

“Oh, I know all about you. You and Alice. I take care of you both.”

“You do?” Bennie would have found it funny, if it weren’t her life. “How? I never met you before.”

“I take care of my girls. I step in when I’m needed.”

His girls? Bennie didn’t reply. “Alice and I are twins, right?”

“Yes, quite right.” Winslow peered at the shelf and slid out a book, then put it back. “No, not Robert Penn Warren. I can’t take the Warren. Oh, well.”

“My mother left you.”

“A long time ago.” Winslow picked a book off the shelf, rubbed nonexistent dust from the cloth cover with his fingertips, then brought the volume back to the box. “Only room for one more.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Seemed to think I wouldn’t make a good father. Always told me that.” He snorted softly, his head bent as he wedged the book into the box. He had a growing bald spot and his hair, once blond, had thinned to gray and was slicked down, curling over his tight collar. “She had lots of ideas like that. Her own ideas.”

“Was she right?”

“Ask her.”

The statement, coldly delivered, struck bone. “You know I can’t do that,” Bennie said, dry-mouthed.

“No, and so you’ll never know. It’s a lot more complicated than you think, not that it matters now.” Winslow straightened up, went back to the bookshelf, and removed one more book. He seemed to know which one he wanted, and he placed it in the box with an attention Bennie found infuriating.

“I think it matters. I want to know. How could my mother give up a child? How did she do it, even, and how could you let her? Why didn’t you fight for us, or at least take Alice?”

“You’ve made a success of yourself, and Alice is out of jail. All’s well that ends well. Help me with these books, would you? Pick the box up from your side and put it on the couch.” As if he hadn’t heard her, Winslow bent over and lifted the box, but Bennie snatched it from his hands and stood back in anger.

“Stop and answer me,” she said. The heavy box pulled at her shoulders, but she was strengthened by a bitterness she didn’t know she harbored. “Why didn’t you take Alice? Why didn’t you try to see us?”

“Give me my books.” Winslow stretched out his arms, callused palms up.

“Answer me first.”

“Give me my books.” His voice went stern and hard. “My books!”

“Here.” Bennie shoved the box at him, and he stooped slightly as he absorbed its impact. He struggled to set the box down on the couch, a fact Bennie noted with only a smidgen of guilt. “You have your books, now answer me.”

When Winslow straightened, his face was red with effort. “You’re angry.”

“An understatement.”

“You expect me to justify myself,” he said, though his tone remained harsh. “You think I don’t care for you, or Alice.”

“Right. It’s a matter of fact, as the lawyers say. You weren’t there for us and you didn’t try to be.”

“You didn’t need me. You were doing fine. You never gave anyone any trouble. But Alice I had to watch more closely. She would fall in with the wrong men. I had to step in. When I was needed, I was there.”

“What do you mean?”

“When she was sixteen, there was a young man… well, I stepped in. I took care of her. She never knew it was me, I wasn’t looking for credit. I saw the situation that arose, and I dealt with it.”

“How?” Bennie didn’t understand, but she didn’t like the sound of it. “What are you talking about?”

“The details aren’t your concern. I dealt with the situations that arose. When her most recent situation arose, I dealt with that, too.”

“ What recent situation?” Bennie asked, too edgy to be exasperated.

“With that detective, that Della Porta. He was bad for Alice. A hypocrite, a thief. The worst of a bad lot.” Winslow shook his head righteously, but Bennie felt stunned.

“What are you saying?”

“I saw that Alice was falling in with Mr. Della Porta and those others. You were right about them. You figured it out. They were selling cocaine and they involved Alice in their dirty business. They corrupted her.”

Bennie listened, astounded.

“I went to try to convince Mr. Della Porta to let Alice alone. He wouldn’t listen. He refused to let her go. He called me names. He called Alice filthy names, too. Filthy. He said she did horrible things, things I knew no daughter of mine could ever do.”