Lisa Scottoline - Mistaken Identity

“Now?” Bennie said, caught off-guard, but Connolly was on her feet.

“Guard!” she called out, turning around. “Yo! Guard!”

Bennie roared away from the prison in the Expedition, distracted. Connolly had given a blood sample at the prison and they’d arranged to send it to the lab to preserve the chain of custody and eliminate contamination. If Connolly would so quickly put it to the test, maybe there was truth to the twin story. There was only one way to find out. Bennie would have to give her own sample. The hospital was on the way back to the office.

She braked at a red light. Cars slowed in the line of noontime traffic and wiggly waves of heat snaked from their hoods. Bennie wasn’t sure what to do. She could go back to the office or stop by the hospital. The results would take a week. She felt her heart beating harder and tried to ignore it. Her face felt flushed and she ratcheted up the air-conditioning. She wanted to know the truth, didn’t she?

Bennie stared at the traffic light, burning bloodred into her brain. She felt as if she were looking into her own heart. When the light turned green, she yanked the steering wheel to the right and headed for the hospital.

The boxing gym was light, with bright sun pouring through its large storefront, though it served only to illuminate every speck of dust and dirt. Judy, in a gray sweatsuit, held out her hands while Mr. Gaines wrapped Ace bandages around her palms and wrists, then stuffed a pair of red boxing gloves on her. They looked like cartoon mittens, except for the duct tape repairing splits at the top. Red headgear covered her forehead and cheeks in cushioned leather, exposing only her eyes. She felt as awkward as the Pillsbury Doughboy when Mr. Gaines began teaching her the fundamentals of a boxing stance.

“Left foot forward, a little out more,” he said.

“Sorry.” Judy corrected her feet. “I can’t twirl spaghetti either.”

Mr. Gaines smiled. “Put your right foot back a little. Gotta get your stance right. Gotta get the fundamentals. Gotta bad stance, you like a house gonna fall down. Got it? Like a house gonna fall down when the wolf comes. You know that story?”

“Sure.” Judy placed her feet where she thought they should be and double-checked in the mirror. The glass reflected a full gym, with maybe ten men training. Most were shadowboxing, but there was a half-hearted sparring match and men using the equipment. The thumping, thudding, and pounding sounds made a constant drumbeat as glove met bag, body, and headgear. A man on the heavy bag shouted “Hah,” “Hah,” each time he connected with a jab, syncopating the rhythms. Judy kept an eye on the boxers as she adjusted her stance. “Better, Mr. Gaines?”

“Good. Right. Now, when you gotta move, you keep your feet in that stance. Got it? Gotta have the foundation or the house gonna fall down.”

“Okay.” Judy obeyed, but it was hard to move in the awkward position and she ended up with her right foot in front. “Damn.”

“S’all right. S’all right, you’ll get it. You gotta work on this. Gotta get this right. Com’ere, lemme show you what I mean.” Mr. Gaines grabbed Judy by her sweatshirt and led her over to a table outside the ring. Paint peeled off the table, which was actually a front door onto which someone had hammered splayed legs, and on the table sat a folded Daily News, a bottle of Mr. Clean, and a plastic jug of water with a dirty glass. Mr. Gaines grabbed the jug and glass from the table, then held both over a steel wastecan full of trash. “Pay attention, now. You payin’ attention?”

“Sure.”

“You gotta be in the right place in the ring. See this?” Mr. Gaines poured water from the jug beside the glass and it splashed into the wastebasket. “See what I mean? Ain’t in the right place. Won’t work. Not he’ppin’. Not doin’ nothin’ for you. Now watch.” Mr. Gaines moved the glass under the stream of water and it filled the glass. “See now? It’s in the right place. All ready. Doin’ the right thing. You gotta be in the right place. Got it?”

“Got it.” Judy smiled. She had already noticed that Mr. Gaines had a way to explain even the simplest principle. She wished he had a way to catch a killer.

“Now let’s get back to work,” he said, and led her back to the mirror. “Get your stance, now. Remember what I told you.”

Judy stood in position, foot-conscious as a girl at her first dance, and checked the mirror. From this angle she spotted something she hadn’t seen before. An attractive young woman sitting against the far wall, knitting. The woman’s hair hung in moussed waves around a delicate oval face, with dark and penciled brows. She wore tight jeans and a waist-length leather jacket with black spike-heeled boots.

“What you lookin’ at?” Mr. Gaines asked, and Judy snapped to attention.

“That woman, knitting. Who is she?”

“One of the wives.”

“Whose wife?”

“Boy on the bag. Danny Morales.”

“She’s here a lot?”

“All the time. Now, keep your mind on your job here. You come to gossip or box?”

“Box.”

“Then box, woman.”

Judy didn’t have much time. Her boxing lesson was over and she had to get back to the office. She was stretching plausibility with her story of a two-hour doctor’s appointment, even with a gynecologist. They overbooked with less guilt than an airline, but there was a limit. Judy crouched next to her gym bag and packed it slowly, watching the young woman with the knitting. Her husband pounded the speed-bag next to her. Mr. Gaines had said Connolly hung with the wives. Maybe Mrs. Morales knew something.

Ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum, went the speedbag, smacking the plywood backboard and swinging back for more punishment. Morales punched the bag with the outside of his gloves, his tattooed arms high and his elbows spread sideways like wings. His wife glanced up from her knitting to watch him, though the boxer concentrated on the drubbing he gave the speedbag, lost in a trance sustained by the rhythms of his own violence.

Judy zipped her gym bag closed, straightened up, and walked casually in their direction. Ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum; the sound grew louder. She walked past Morales and stopped next to his wife, who didn’t look up from her knitting. “I always wanted to learn to knit,” Judy said loudly.

The young woman looked up in surprise, her lacquered fingers frozen at her row of tight stitches. Morales stopped hitting the speedbag, which flopped back and forth on the squeaking chain, and glared at Judy. “What did you say to her?” he demanded.

“Uh, nothing really,” Judy answered, taken aback. Behind Morales she saw Mr. Gaines, who had stopped coaching another fighter and was watching vigilantly. “I was just trying to learn about knitting.”

“Oh, yeah?” Morales blinked perspiration from his eyes, revealing a prominent brow that crumpled with the force of his anger. “Buy a book.”

“Danny, Danny,” Mr. Gaines called out, shuffling bandy-legged to Morales. He waved an arm in the air as if he were hailing a cab. “Ain’t no call for that now. Tha’s Judy, Judy Forty. She one of my students.”

Morales grinned crookedly. “A chick, takin’ lessons here?”

“She a boxer to me, tha’s all,” Mr. Gaines said. “You should rightly be sayin’ welcome to her. He’p bring her along.”

Judy felt a guilty pang. Mr. Gaines was standing up for her, and she had lied to him. “That’s all right, Coach.”

“No, Danny here can introduce himself, he want to be polite. You might like meetin’ a famous boxer. Danny has twenty-five fights, twenty-four by knockout, only one by decision. He’s comin’ up to his first twelve-rounder in a coupla months.”