Lisa Scottoline - Mistaken Identity

“Tell me somethin’ I don’t know. You think you’re the only one with people in the courtroom?”

“I don’t need people. I was there myself.” Surf didn’t mention the bitch catching up with him outside the courthouse. He didn’t want Citrone to give him shit. “I heard it all.”

“Then you heard Rosato say you’d be testifying against Art.”

“What?” Surf looked at Citrone, shocked. “Me, flip on Art?”

“That’s not true, is it, kid? She’s bluffin’, isn’t she?”

“Of course she is.” Surf’s mouth felt dry. “I mean, of course it ain’t true. You kiddin’?”

“You shoulda stayed away.” Citrone shook his head as he reached into his back pocket, retrieved a slim calf billfold, and plucked out a new twenty from the neatly ordered bills. “Take this in case my partner’s watchin’. Then get lost.”

“Sure, I’ll get lost.” Surf snatched the bill from Citrone’s hand and pocketed it. “I’ll get lost when I get my cut of the half a mil.”

“It’s comin’.”

“Yeah, when is it comin’? I coulda taken my cut off the top. I coulda taken the whole fuckin’ pile, but I didn’t. I brought it to you like a good boy and you said to wait. Fuck, what am I waitin’ for?”

“The right time.”

“What’s that mean? Why can’t we divvy it up now? Then we can all get the fuck outta Dodge.”

“No.”

“Why not, Joe? Fuckin’ explain it to me, old man. You might have to say a whole sentence.”

Citrone’s eyes went flinty. “Every time there’s a meet, there could be a witness. Every time there’s a phone call, there could be a tap. Be patient ’til the situation is under control.”

“Like it was in control last week and the week before that? Della Porta was takin’ money from us, and you didn’t know about it. He was settin’ up that cunt.”

“All along, I knew.”

“So what, you knew? You knew” Surf’s temper gave way and he raised his voice. “You didn’t do dick about it, Citrone. That’s your MO. You know everything, but you don’t do anything.”

“Calm down,” Citrone said quietly, which only made Surf angrier.

“Fuck you. You act like you got muscle, but you got nothin’ goin’ on. Nothin’! ”

Without another word, Citrone turned around and walked away, leaving Surf standing there in the rainy mist, alone with his fear and his rage.

Back at her office, Bennie’s associates yammered away while her tired eyes meandered over a print on the wall of the conference room: Max Schmitt in a Single Scull, Thomas Eakins’s portrait of the rowing lawyer who was the painter’s idol. She found herself looking at Eakins himself, unidentified in his own painting and sculling with effort in the background. Eakins had lived in Bennie’s Fairmount neighborhood, only a block from her, and his mother had had manic depression most of his life, too. Funny.

Bennie’s gaze wandered to the window. She wondered how Eakins felt when his mother died. Why didn’t he paint that? Or her? The night offered no answers, only darkness, and clouds obliterated the stars. Bennie had rowed on nights like this night, when the river flowed as black as the sky, carved into onyx ripples by the wind across its surface. On those nights she felt herself at the very center of a black sphere, suspended above and below a darkness without density.

“Bennie, do we have a blood expert yet?” DiNunzio asked, reading from notes on a yellow legal pad. Carrier sat to her left, swiveling side-to-side with nervous energy. To the right of the associates sat Lou, listening carefully, his chin grizzled gray and wrinkling into his hand.

Bennie came out of her reverie. “I’ll cross their blood expert. It’s a matter of logic, not expertise. I can get him to say what I need.”

“Then that’s it,” Mary said. “There’s only twenty-five things left to do, without the blood expert.”

“By tomorrow morning?” Judy asked. Her Dutch-boy haircut had gone greasy from a day of raking it with her fingers, and her face, usually so game and honest, looked wan.

“No, not tonight,” Bennie said. She stood up and gathered her papers. “All of you are going home, including you, Mr. Jacobs. I’m going to look over my notes for tomorrow one more time, then get out of here. None of us can do good work if we’re dead on our feet.”

Lou stood up, too, and shook his khaki pants down to his loafers. “That makes sense. I’ll finish the two neighbors I have left in the morning, then follow up on Lenihan.”

Bennie looked over. “You really think the neighbors will yield anything? If we can work up something on Lenihan, the neighbors won’t matter.”

“You never know, neighbors see a lot.” Lou flattened his tie with an open hand. “I think I got all the scuttlebutt I can on Lenihan.”

“That he’s a loner who likes the ladies? That he’s in the Eleventh and moving up in the department? Then it’s time to follow him. I need to know where he goes and what he does the next few days. Take pictures, too, Lou. I want proof so I can cross him on it when he denies it.”

Judy nodded, pursing her lips. “If he’s smart, he’ll lay low. Take a vacation.”

Lou shook his head. “It ain’t that easy to get vacation time on the force. You have to apply way in advance.”

“Let’s table this for now,” Bennie said suddenly. “We’re all tired, and two of us are very old. Carrier, DiNunzio, leave your stuff here, you can start fresh in the morning. Vamoose!” She waved the associates out of the conference room, and they stood up and shook off their cramped muscles, giddy at being set free.

“Trial fever,” Bennie explained to Lou, who smiled as they got up from the conference table and left the room.

“I woulda guessed PMS,” he said, and Bennie laughed.

“A related syndrome.” She followed the associates into the empty reception area, where they hit the elevator button. The offices were empty except for the hallway. “Lou, hang with me a minute.”

“No problem,” he said, as the elevator arrived and the associates got inside.

“Good night, Mom and Dad,” they chimed, and the elevator closed smoothly, whisking them downward.

“Pieces of work,” Lou said, as the elevator rattled down the shaft. The building was so quiet they could hear the associates laughing on the way down and the ping of the cab when it reached the lobby floor.

“Yeah, they are.” Bennie folded her arms. “So here’s the problem, Lou. You don’t want to take it to Lenihan, do you?”

“I admit, I ain’t in love with it.”

“Fair enough. Then don’t do it. You stay with the neighbors, do as complete a job as possible. I’ve worked with other investigators, I’ll call one of them.”

“I’m just not convinced it’s what you think, is all. I mean, money under a floor?” Lou shrugged, his hands deep in his pockets. “That wouldn’t be enough to charge a cop with nothin’. The only thing you’re goin’ on is Connolly’s word, and she has no credibility in my book. She’s rotten to the core.”

Bennie flashed on Connolly’s confession to the inmate murders. “She sure is, but she didn’t kill Della Porta.”

“I don’t get you, Rosato.” Lou shook his head, exasperated. “You goin’ to all this trouble to save Connolly, and here she is, dressin’ like you, playin’ to the press, the whole nine yards. You’re even willing to smear a cop, work all night, do everything for her. Why? Because you feel like her twin?”

“No, I don’t.” Bennie couldn’t shake her memory of Connolly’s confession at the prison.

“Then what? You’ve been around, you gotta know. Somebody like Connolly, even if she didn’t kill Della Porta, she killed somebody else, and she’ll kill again, sooner or later. She’s scum. She belongs right where she is.”