Lisa Scottoline - Mistaken Identity

“Lou,” Bennie called from the elevator bank. “We got trouble.”

“I ain’t blind,” he said. “I been putting up with those jerks since lunch. Already they’re finding who else is in the building and makin’ up fake appointments.” He scowled at the reporters, his crow’s-feet wrinkling deeply in skin thickened with tan, from weekends on his motorboat. He wore his silvery hair slicked back, and his nose was strong as a seagull’s beak. A compact man, Lou wore his navy-blue uniform with a certain pride, which Bennie liked.

“I have to get out of here, Lou. Can I take the freight elevator?”

“No way. You don’t have freight.”

“Pretend I’m holding a fax machine.”

“Forget it.”

“Come on, Lou. You gonna throw me to the dogs?”

“If I can watch.”

Bennie gritted her teeth. “Either I take the freight or I stand in the lobby and hold a press conference. Your lobby fills up with reporters and your tenants can’t get in or out. You like that better?”

Lou shook his head. “You can’t use the freight. It’s against the rules.”

“Christ, Lou, don’t give me the rules. You want rules or you want reporters? Your choice, bucko.”

Lyman Bullock leapt to his wingtips behind his mahogany desk, his light eyes wide and his small mouth partly open, emphasizing his cleft chin. His pale skin reddened and his neck bulged over a stiff white collar, fastened by a collar pin that threatened asphyxiation. The lawyer’s demeanor told the truth, though he never would. “I don’t know anyone named Alice Connolly,” Bullock said firmly.

“You obviously do, you’re not even a good liar. Didn’t you go to law school?”

“I thought you said you wanted to see me about a case.”

“I do, Alice Connolly’s case.” Bennie hadn’t told Bullock the purpose of her visit when she’d telephoned. She’d just said she was a lawyer in need of ethics advice, with a possible case referral. “We need to talk, Lyman. By the way, is anything short for Lyman?”

“No.”

“Listen, Lyman. I’m not here to disrupt your life or to pry. May I sit down?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Thank you.” Bennie slipped into the Windsor chair across from Bullock’s desk. His office was large and sunny, with English antiques arranged conventionally on a blue patterned Sirook. The ethics business had evidently been good to Lyman Bullock. Lucky for him, lawyers were getting less ethical every day. “We need to talk about Alice Connolly. The man she lived with was murdered and she was charged with the crime. Her trial is next week. I’m her lawyer.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Bullock remained standing, his back stiff as a Chippendale chair. Behind his desk, twin diplomas hung on the wall, evidencing law and accounting degrees, and framed photographs of his family rested on a cherrywood credenza. His wife, with frosted hair and graduated pearls, smiled untroubled from a photo in an engraved silver frame. “I told you,” he repeated, “I don’t know anyone named Alice Connolly.”

“I have reason to believe you do. You were seen picking her up at the Free Library. You drive a late-model brown Mercedes.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He bent from the waist, only far enough to pick up the phone. “Martha, call security. There’s an intruder in my office.”

“It’s in your best interest to talk to me. If you’ll talk here, we won’t have to chat in court, where there’s an almost criminal lack of good taste.”

“Think twice before you consider serving me with a subpoena. I wouldn’t make a very good witness at all.” Bullock let the telephone receiver clatter to its cradle. “I have a terrible memory. I couldn’t answer any of your questions. It would make you look foolish in front of the jury.”

“You and Alice were having an affair.”

“I don’t know any Alice and I’m offended by such an accusation. I’m a married man.”

“What were you doing then, picking her up at the library?”

“I never did any such a thing.”

“I have an eyewitness.”

“Your witness must have seen someone else.”

“Christ, who are you kidding?” Bennie rose, her anger sparked, as a security guard burst through the door, a blur of black uniform with a revolver drawn.

“Mr. Bullock?” the guard said, looking around for the terrorist he’d been told to expect and finding only a pissed-off blonde.

Bullock waved a soft hand in Bennie’s direction. “Get this woman out of my office immediately. She’s creating a disturbance.”

Bennie knew when she was licked, if only temporarily. “You were Connolly’s lover for a year. She could get the death penalty.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you care about her at all?” she asked, hating the emotion in her voice, but her question was mooted by the security guard, who propelled her from the office.

Back in her building, Bennie stepped off the freight elevator and ran into Lou Jacobs, the security guard. She put up her hands. “Don’t shoot. I won’t do it again, Officer.”

“I don’t give a damn what you do,” Lou said grimly. He carried a cardboard box that held pictures of his grandchildren and the blue squeeze ball he palmed most of the day. “My days of baby-sittin’ you are over.”

“You going somewhere?”

“Looks that way. I’m retired again.”

“You hate being retired. Why did you quit?”

“I didn’t. I got fired.”

“Fired? Why?”

“Breach of company policy. Step aside, please. I got freight.”

Bennie felt stricken. “They fired you because of me?”

“Forget about it. Move over.” Lou edged past her and walked into the elevator cab, draped in blue quilting. He hit the DOWN button, but Bennie held the elevator door.

“But what are you gonna do?”

“I told you. Retire. Take the boat out. Go diving. Ride my bike. Fish.”

“Fish?”

“You know, those things that swim in water.”

“You won’t get another job?”

“It’ll take time. Not many jobs for men my age, even as good-lookin’ as I am. Now step aside,” Lou said, but Bennie didn’t see it that way.

“Lou, I need an investigator. You want the job?”

“You’re kidding.” He smiled dryly.

“No. Not at all.” Bennie nodded toward the entrance where reporters thronged. “You see what I’m dealing with. I need you.”

“On Della Porta? Forget it, he was a cop. Besides, it ain’t like you and me get along.” Lou hit the DOWN button, but Bennie kept a strong hand on the elevator door.

“It ain’t like you and me are getting married.”

“I don’t need your charity.”

“I’ll work your ass off.”

The elevator beeped loudly, and Lou winced. “I’ll think about it. Don’t take it personal.”

“You want it, it’s there. Tomorrow morning, nine o’clock in my office. I’ll match your salary.”

Beep. Lou frowned. “It’s all women up there, isn’t it?”

“Only if you’re all man,” Bennie told him, as the elevator doors closed.

Mary remembered Joy Newcomb as aloof and reserved at law school, which was the last time Mary had seen her. At school, Joy had always worn her dark brown hair back in the same low ponytail and dressed in pressed jeans with white turtlenecks and Fair Isle sweaters, authentically threadbare in the elbows. Joy had gone to Harvard undergrad and was therefore, in Mary’s thinking, automatically smart. Mary felt that almost everyone else in her law school class was automatically smart, and never doubted that Joy Newcomb would make partner, again automatically, in any top-tier firm in the country. So Mary was doubly surprised when she tracked Joy to here.