Lisa Scottoline - Final Appeal

“Safer, what the fuck are you doing?” Artie asks. “Are you working? Today ?”

“I’m going on Nexis, that okay with you?”

“What’s Nexis?” Eletha asks, as Sarah suddenly busies herself making a full-fledged tea ceremony out of a single bag of Constant Comment. She has to be the one I heard last night, and she should never play poker.

“Anybody gonna answer me? What’s Nexis?” Eletha plops into a chair like a much heavier woman. Her chin falls into her hand. “Forget it. Who gives a shit?”

“Nexis is a database of newspapers,” I say. “It has magazines, newspapers, wire services. Everything.”

“How do you like that?” Ben says, in his own world as he reads his computer screen. “We’re under HOTTOP. Hightower and the Chief.”

“Christ, Safer!” Artie says.

“I need a translation,” Eletha says.

“HOTTOP stands for hot topics in the news,” I say, the words sour in my mouth. Without thinking twice, I cross to Ben’s computer and press the power switch to OFF. The powerful unit crackles in protest, then fizzles out. “Show some respect, Ben. A man is dead.” I feel a wrenching inside my chest and turn my back on Ben’s surprised expression.

“Way to go, Grace!” Artie says, bursting into applause.

“She’s right,” Eletha says. She stands up and smooths out her skirt. “I don’t even know what we’re still doin’ here. We should all go home. The packing can wait.”

“I can’t believe he’s gone,” Sarah says, standing at the coffeemaker. The only sound is the hot water spurting into the glass pot. Sarah removes the pot a little too soon and the last drops dance across the searing griddle like St. Vitus.

“Let’s not get maudlin, please,” Ben says.

Artie looks as if he’s about to snap, then his brow knits in alarm. “Wait a minute. Grace, does Shake and Bake know about Armen?”

“I have no idea.”

“Oh, fuck. I have to get in to see him. There’s no telling what he’ll do when he hears. Where’s the prison?”

“On the second floor, but they won’t let you in.”

“The hell they won’t. He has a right to counsel, doesn’t he? I’m counsel.” Artie bounds over to the coat rack and tears Ben’s jacket from a wooden hanger, leaving it swinging.

“That’s my best jacket, Weiss,” Ben says.

“I know, dude. Thanks.” He yanks the jacket over his chest. “Sar, lend me your briefcase.”

“You really want to do this?” Sarah hands him a flowered canvas briefcase but Artie pushes it back at her.

“Give me a pad instead. Where’d you say they’re taking him, Grace?”

“Courtroom Fourteen-A, before Katzmann. They’re trying to charge him with trespassing on federal property.”

Artie shakes his head. “I tell ya, these kids today, in and out of trouble. Where did I go wrong, Mom?”

“Don’t ask me, pal.”

“I gave him everything. Summers in Montauk, winters in Miami Beach.” He gives the jacket a reckless tug and Ben flinches.

“Will you at least take it easy?” Ben says.

Eletha covers her eyes. “I didn’t see this. This is not happening.”

“How do I look, Mom?” Artie says to me. He sticks out his arms, and the sleeves ride up to his elbows. “Hot?”

“Smokin’.”

“Excellent.” He sticks a legal pad under his arm and runs out of the clerks’ office. I hear the heavy pounding of his feet as he heads for the outer door. My eyes meet Sarah’s, but she looks down into her steaming mug of tea.

“You okay, Sar?” I ask her. Flush her out. Isn’t that what detectives do?

“Sure.” She takes a quick sip of tea, avoiding my gaze. “Who’s Hightower been reassigned to, Ben?” she asks.

“What makes you think I know?”

“You know Galanter’s clerks. The buzz-cut boys.”

The telephone rings at Eletha’s desk. “Shit,” she says. “Thing’s been ringing all day.” Before I can offer to get it, she kicks off her heels and is padding to her desk.

Ben flicks on the power switch, animating the machine. “Grace, hate me if you must, but I’m logging on again.”

“Tell us who got Hightower, Safer,” Sarah says, but I hold up my hand.

“Sarah, think a minute. Who’s even more conservative than Galanter?”

“Adolf Hitler.”

“On our court, I mean.”

“Judge Foudy.”

“Right. And Galanter would pick somebody to vote with him, now that Armen’s gone. He’d want to stack the deck. Change the result.”

She blinks. “Could he do that?”

“Sure. He’s the chief judge. In an emergency, he picks the panels.”

Ben pounds the keys. “I neither confirm nor deny.”

He doesn’t have to, I know it. Galanter has shifted the majority to himself, blocking Hightower in. No matter which way Robbins goes, it’ll be two votes to one for death. Poor Armen; he didn’t save Hightower’s life after all. I stand up, wanting suddenly to be alone.

“Look at this item,” Ben says, his voice tinged with sarcasm. “What a nice gesture from Senator Susan, and how like a Democrat.”

“What?” Sarah says, and I stop at the doorway.

“From The Washington Post . Says here that Susan tried to donate Bernice to a group called Service Dogs for the Handicapped. I can almost hear the wheelchairs plowing into each other, can’t you?” He laughs so hard he coughs: kack-kack-kack .

“Very funny,” Sarah says.

“Bernice is gone?” I say, surprised to feel a twinge inside.

“Gone but not forgotten,” Ben says, recovering enough to hit another key. “They didn’t want her, evidently. They only take puppies.”

“So where is she?” I ask from the doorway, only half wanting to know.

Ben hits the key again. “It doesn’t say.”

“I know,” Eletha says. She walks into the room, waving a yellow Post-it on her finger. “They just called.”

“Who did?”

She holds the paper in front of my face. On it is a phone number I don’t recognize. “I voted for Susan, but I’ll never forgive myself.”

“She’s too big, Mom,” Maddie says, shuddering in her nightgown. “Look at her teeth .”

Bernice strains against her red collar, which still says A. GREGORIAN; her wagging tail swats my thigh with each beat.

“But I’m holding her, honey. She won’t hurt you, she can’t. Just come over and let her sniff you. She’s all clean now.” I bathed Bernice right after I bathed Maddie, using green flea shampoo they sold me at the dog pound, along with a leash, two steel bowls, and a thirty-dollar trowel for shoveling a megaton of dogshit.

“ Rrronononr, ” Bernice grumbles, a guttural noise that makes Maddie’s blue eyes widen in fear.

“What’s that?”

“She’s talking to you, honey. She wants you to love her.”

“But I don’t love her. I don’t even like her.” Maddie tugs anxiously at the end of a damp strand of hair; her hair looks brown when it’s wet, more like my mother’s original russet color than her own blazing red.

“Aw, can’t you just give her a little pat on the head? Her hair’s washed too.” I scratch Bernice’s newly coiffed crown and she looks back gratefully, her tongue lolling out. “See? Look how happy she is to be with us.”

“But why did we have to take her?”

“Because nobody else would. They all have apartments that don’t allow pets. We’re the only ones with a house who could have a pet.”

“They could move.”

“No. Now come closer.”

She doesn’t budge. “Why couldn’t you just leave her there? In the dog pound.”

“You know what would happen to her. You saw Lady and the Tramp. ”