Lisa Scottoline - Mistaken Identity

“Okay, sure. I’ll see you when?”

“Soon as I need you. Stay tuned.” Bennie left the interview room, preoccupied. Where did her father live? She hadn’t wondered about it in years. Did she care now? She went through the prison’s exit procedures-a perfunctory pat-down, trip through the metal detector, and signing out-which gave her an idea. It shouldn’t be difficult to find out where her father lived; if he had visited Connolly he’d have to give an address. Bennie should check the prison records, if only to verify Connolly’s story.

“Could I see the visitors’ log book?” Bennie asked, and her hand shook slightly as the black-uniformed guard slid it across the desk.

Alice entered the prison law library, a large gray room carpeted with a thin gray rug, and handed her pass to the guard at the door. She would have only fifteen minutes of unrestricted time here. It would be enough. She spotted Valencia’s mass of oiled curls bent over a law book at the bank of gray metal carrels in the center of the room. The girl was always trying to get her conviction reversed, complaining in letters to Congress, the President, and for some reason, Katie Couric. Valencia’s argument was that mandatory sentencing for coke possession was unfair, mainly because she’d been convicted for it.

Alice laughed to herself. Valencia had known what she was getting into when she took the job. She carried the powder for money and used it to buy Santo the frilliest baby clothes ever made for a boy. Plus a stroller with a plastic cover like an oxygen tent. Not real useful, in Alice’s view, but neither was Valencia, any longer. Alice crossed the room, lined with secondhand case reporters and maroon statute books, and slid into the neighboring carrel. “Hey,” she said, and when Valencia looked up from the law book, her cherry-red mouth broke into a sticky smile.

“I talk to mi madre !” she blurted out, then looked around and lowered her voice. Two other inmates looked up briefly. “Shhhh!” Valencia giggled, holding a matching cherry fingernail to her lips. “Sh! Ees a library.”

“Shhh! Ees a library.” Connolly mimicked her voice almost exactly, and Valencia laughed.

“My mother, she say she got de extra money dees morning! For de tubes! Thank you, thank you!”

“How is Santo doing?”

“She say he has the ’fection, but he so much better. She say he take the medicine every day, ees pink medicine, like bubble gum. He no fight!”

“I told you he’d be okay. Now, you keep the money, tell your mother not to spend it. If he needs the tubes, he’ll have the tubes. You don’t have to worry.” Alice peered at the open law book. “How’s your appeal?”

“Look what I find!” Valencia said, excited. “Look at dees.” She turned the book eagerly toward Alice. It was the report of a legal case, an onionskin page of fine print in two columns.

Alice scoffed. “You’re no lawyer. You can’t understand this stuff.”

“Sure I do.” Valencia nodded, and her scented hair bounced like in the commercials. “De judge say de sentencing unfair. He objec’ to it. He say he no take drug cases anymore. The judge, he quit !”

“Really? A judge quit?”

“ Sí. In New York.”

“New York? That doesn’t help you in Pennsylvania, dummy.”

“ Cómo? ”

“New York law is different from Pennsylvania law, and you’re looking in a federal reporter anyway, which is only about federal law. You don’t know what the fuck you’re doin’.”

Valencia’s sticky lip puckered with disappointment. “I can write it in my letter. I have de cite. ”

“So what? They don’t have to listen to it. It doesn’t mean shit in Philly. God, are you dumb.” Alice reached over and closed Valencia’s book. “I have a better way to help with your appeal.” She leaned closer so the others couldn’t hear and almost choked on the smell of imposter Giorgio. “I have a new lawyer, a great lawyer, and I told her all about you. She has an idea for a new appeal. A new argument. She thinks she can get you out of here.”

“ Díos! ” Valencia blurted out, covering her mouth like a Miss Venezuela contestant. “ Díos mío! ”

“I know. Isn’t it great? Just don’t get too excited yet. I’m meeting with her about you. I gave her your court papers, the ones you gave me from before, and she promised she’d read them and get back to me. Then she wants to meet with you and tell you all about your new appeal.” Alice held up a finger. “You have to keep this quiet. If anybody finds out what I’m doing for you, they’ll want me to do it for them. The lawyer will drop your case in a minute.”

“I no say nothin’.” Valencia glanced quickly around. “You see.”

“Not even to your mother or Miguel. Nobody.”

“Nobody, sí .”

“You’re good at keeping secrets, I know. You’ve proved that to me.” Alice patted her hand, because that usually got a big reaction. “You don’t have to worry about anything. I’m taking care of you and I’m taking care of Santo, too.”

“Than’ God,” Valencia said softly, squeezing Alice’s hand. “Than’ God for you, my friend.”

Bennie hustled across the gray marble lobby of her office building running, pushing thoughts of her father to the back of her mind. It was almost noon. Her pumps clattered across the glistening floor to the elevator bank, where she punched the up button. She had an emergency hearing to stage and the rest of her caseload to either squeeze in, farm out, or get done. She grabbed the first elevator, swimming upstream against the lunchtime crowd, and hurried off the cab into a scene that no longer struck her as remarkable.

Rosato amp; Associates was staffed entirely by women. The receptionist, sitting at a long paneled desk after the glass-walled conference rooms, was a woman, as were all five secretaries and lawyers, their offices arranged around a horseshoe adjoining the reception area. Bennie hadn’t hired only women intentionally, but she thought of the firm as an experiment in what would happen if women ran the world. She wasn’t surprised when it turned out to be less warlike and more color-coordinated, even if the coffee stank, a point that defied both explanation and stereotype.

“Hey, Bennie,” said the receptionist, Marshall. With her hair woven into a long French braid, Marshall looked fragile in a pale-blue dress with a matching ribbed sweater. No appearance was more deceiving; she had run Bennie’s old law firm with a manicured fist and remained the office administrator at Rosato amp; Associates. “We got incoming,” Marshall said, handing Bennie a thick packet of yellow message slips.

“Any word from Judge Guthrie’s chambers about the emergency hearing?” Bennie set her briefcase by her feet and thumbed through the messages.

“Not yet. I have your entry of appearance ready in Connolly. You want to sign it?” Marshall fished a form from a neat stack on her desk and pushed it across the blotter to Bennie, who stuffed the messages under her arm, plucked a ballpoint from a jar, and scribbled her name.

“Way to go. Don’t file it, I have to talk to her old lawyer first, Warren Miller. I called him from the car and left a message. Did he call back?”

“Yep. He’s at Jemison, Crabbe. His message is in there somewhere.”

Bennie frowned. “Miller is at Jemison? Jemison is Judge Guthrie’s old law firm, from before he ascended the bench.”

“That’s not unusual, is it, for a judge to send his old firm a case?”

“It is when it’s a homicide case, going to a white-shoe firm. You can’t make any money on those cases and you have to qualify to be court-appointed. I never heard of Miller.”