Lady Killer

by Lisa Scottoline

  “No, sure, you did the right thing.” Mary slipped the BlackBerry in her pocket, where it began to vibrate like crazy. If it were in her pants, she’d be having a really good time.

  Marshall handed her a thick stack of phone messages. “These are for you. I put your mail on your desk, and don’t forget you have the Coradinos coming in fifteen minutes, then the DiTizios and Mrs. Yun.”

  “Thanks. Get my calls, please?” Mary hurried from the well-appointed reception area, passed the gold-plated Rosato & Associates sign, and hustled down the hallway, where her best friend Judy Carrier called out from her office.

  “Mary!” Judy’s lemony blond head popped through her doorway. She had large, sky blue eyes, chopped chin-length hair, and a gap-toothed grin, which somehow looked good on a face as round as a dinner plate. “How about hello? Time for how-was-your-weekend.”

  Mary was about to burst with the news. “Guess who’s in my office right this minute.”

  “Who?” Judy had on a hot pink T-shirt, yellow cargo pants, and kelly green Dansko clogs. Read, dressed like the colorblind.

  “Trash Gambone.”

  “That bitch!” Judy’s eyes flew open. “She’s here?”

  “In the flesh.” Mary appreciated that Judy reacted with the appropriate hate, even though she’d never met Trash. Only a true girlfriend would hate someone on your say-so. In fact, that’s what girlfriends were for.

  “She’s a jerk,” Judy added, for emphasis.

  “A skank.”

  “A slut. What does she want?”

  “I have no idea. Marshall said she was crying.”

  “Goody!” Judy clapped. “Maybe she’s in trouble with the law?”

  “We can only hope.” Mary almost cheered, then caught herself. “Wait. I feel guilty.”

  “Why? She deserves it.”

  “I thought I was nicer than this, but I’m not.”

  “It’s human nature. Delight in the pain of your enemies. The Germans have a word for it. Schadenfreude.”

  “The Catholics do, too. Sin.”

  “It’s not a sin to be human,” Judy said with a smile, but Mary let it go. Of course it was, but she’d given up on saving Judy’s soul. Her clothes alone were sending her straight to hell.

  “I can’t believe Trash needs my help. What should I do?”

  “I smell payback.”

  But deep inside, all Mary smelled was nervous. Trish and the Mean Girls had bullied her during lunch, assembly, and Mass; anywhere you could make someone feel smaller, uglier, and more myopic than she felt already. Was she the only person who had posttraumatic stress syndrome—from high school?

  “Did your dad bring us food?” Judy asked, hopeful.

  “In the conference room.”

  “Woot woot!”

  Mary hurried down the hall, passing Bennie Rosato’s office, which was empty. She was glad that Bennie had a jury trial this week because she didn’t want the boss to see her dark side, which she didn’t realize she had until this very minute. She’d always heard that what goes around, comes around, but she didn’t know that it really happened.

  I smell payback.

  Mary reached for her office door, with its MUST WEAR SHIRTS sign. Lately, she had so many clients from South Philly that the sign had become necessary. She was pretty sure that was a first for a law firm.

  And when she opened the door, her hand was shaking.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Mary stepped into her office, which reeked of perfume and cigarette smoke, Obsession with notes of Marlboro Lights. Trish Gambone was sitting in the club chair opposite the desk, facing away from the door. A curly tangle of raven-haired extensions trailed down the back of her flashy fox jacket, and she wore a black catsuit that ended in black boots, with stiletto heels that met the legal definition of a lethal weapon.

  Trash? “Trish?” Mary closed the door behind her.

  “Hey, Mare.” Trish looked up and swiveled around in the chair, barely over her crying jag. She looked like a streetwise Sophia Loren, but her lovely features were drawn with anguish and her flawless skin mottled under a spray tan. She dabbed a soggy Kleenex to eyes as brown-black as espresso, but they were bloodshot from tears.

  “Are you okay?” Mary asked, hushed.

  “What do you think?” Trish shot back, her voice thick.

  Mary cringed, as if Trish had swung a machete and hacked off her self-esteem. She flashed on them both in their white shirts with Peter Pan collars, heavy blue jumpers with the SMG patch, and white stockings worn with navy-and-white saddle shoes, like Britney Spears before rehab.

  “You look so professional.” Trish checked her out quickly. “Better than you did in school.”

  “Thanks.” Kind of. Mary reminded herself that she wasn’t fifteen years old and there was no such thing as an esteem-whacking machete. She knew she looked better than she had in high school; she had a nice smile now that her braces were off and she’d grown into her strong cheekbones and nose, so that her husband used to call her striking, even beautiful. She’d traded her glasses for contacts, so her round brown eyes showed better, and she’d cut her thick, dark blond hair to her shoulders. She reached only five foot two, but she had a compact, curvy figure. All in all, Mary wasn’t a troll anymore.

  “Sit down, will ya?” Trish blinked wetness from her eyes. “I’m so freaked, I’m runnin’ outta time.”

  “So what’s the matter?” Mary walked around to her desk chair, sat down, and placed her phone messages on the stack of morning mail.

  “I need help. I’m in real trouble.” Trish pursed her perfectly puffy pair of lips, their lipstick long gone. She had always been the sexiest girl in their class, but she looked older than her years. Dark eyeliner emphasized her eyes, and she still had the smallest nose that qualified as Italian-American.

  “Okay, fill me in,” Mary said.

  “First off, I’m not askin’ you for nothin’ I can’t pay for.” Trish swabbed at her eyes, leaning forward in the chair. Her fox jacket parted, revealing a killer body—curvy hips, a tiny waist, and breasts that had been a healthy C cup, even in sixth grade. “I’m not asking you to do anything free ’cause we’re Goretti girls.”

  Don’t worry. “Okay.”

  “I’m the top colorist at Pierre & Magda’s. I make good money. I know lawyers are expensive and I can pay in installments, like lay-away.” Trish pulled another Kleenex from a large black Gucci bag.

  “We’ll work it out.” Mary became vaguely aware that she wasn’t looking directly at Trish, as if eye contact could be dangerous, like with Medusa. She picked up a pen and wrote on her pad, WHAT IF SHE CAN SMELL FEAR?

  “I came to you because you were always a major brain.”

  Mary wrote, WHICH YOU MADE FUN OF, BUT NEVER MIND.

  “It’s my boyfriend, I gotta get away from him. I can’t take it anymore, I hate him, I just hate him.”

  “That’s so terrible.” Mary wrote, THAT’S SO JUICY.

  “He’s a bully.”

  NOW YOU KNOW HOW IT FEELS.

  “My mom had his number from day one, ’cause my dad used to knock her aroun’, and my girlfriends hated him, too. But I didn’t listen to any of ’em. You remember them—Giulia, Missy, and Yolanda.”

  “Sure.” Mary suppressed an eye roll. Giulia Palazzolo, Missy Toohey, and Yolanda Varlecki. The Mean Girls, who evidently took literally the F in BFF.

  “They all hate his guts. They been tellin’ me to leave him, but they don’t know the whole story. Lemme tell it in order or I’ll get messed up. It started with him screamin’ and yellin’ at me, all the time. He’s crazy jealous, even though I’m not runnin’ around, and he calls my cell like thirty times a day. If I don’t pick up, he calls the shop.” Pain etched Trish’s features, and she needed no encouragement to continue, the story pouring out with a force of its own. “He’s drinkin’ more and more, and that makes it worse. He calls me ‘pig,’ ‘whore,’ the whole nine.”

  “That’s terrible.” Mary f
elt a pang of sympathy despite her better judgment.

  “He won’t let me go out except to go to work. The house has to be perfect, the dinner on a table. His clothes have to be perfect. I even iron, everything perfect.” Trish’s words fell over themselves, coming out in an urgent rush with a South Philly accent. “Last year, he started hittin’ me, then he’d feel bad after. Now he hits me all the time, he never feels bad. If I do somethin’ wrong, he hits me. If I do it right, he hits me.”

  “He hits you?” Mary forgot about payback. Trish was desperate, and she was beginning to understand why.

  “He’s smart, too, he hits where you can’t see. Punches my belly, my back. Kicks me on my ass, or my arms, even when I’m on the ground. I tol’ my friends and my mom that he roughs me up a little, but that’s it. I didn’t tell how bad it is, or they’d go crazy. Last week, when he was drunk, he did this.” Trish reached for the collar of her catsuit, pulled the zipper down to her ample cleavage, and moved a heavy gold necklace and her black jersey to the side. Above her breast was a vicious, ugly bruise. “You see this? He bites me during sex. He likes that. It turns him on.”

  Mary felt disgusted. She didn’t know where to start. “You have sex—”

  “He makes me. I won’t show you the rest.” Trish zipped up the catsuit, her lower lip trembling. “Last week he said he was gonna kill me, and when I saw the look in his eyes, I knew he meant it. That’s when I realized, like, from a stupid Oprah show, that I’m abused. That girl on TV, that girl’s me.” Suddenly Trish’s voice broke and she stifled a deep sob, pressing the Kleenex to her nose. “You believe that? Me, livin’ afraid all the time, like a little mouse? Like you?”

  Mary’s heart went out to her, despite the insult. “Did you take any pictures of your injuries?”

  “Yeh, I kep’ a diary, too.”

  “Good.” Mary was drafting a restraining order in her mind. She had gotten two in her time, in far less ugly cases. “Did you go to the doctor or the hospital?”

  “No way.” Trish wiped her nose. “He told me he’d kill me if I did.”

  “Your neighbors must hear it, when he yells.” Mary was thinking about potential witnesses.

  “We live next to the corner store, Filantonio’s, only now it’s Korean and they don’t speak English. You remember, back in school, it was my corner.”

  “I remember.” Mary didn’t hang on the corner, she memorized Latin declensions. But back to business. “Do they hear him yelling in the store, do you think?”

  “No, he yells at night when they’re closed, and he has a gun. He carries it, a Glock.” Trish hiccupped another sob. “He points it in my face, he holds it to my head. Yesterday he stuck it down my throat, like he was gaggin’ me.”

  Mary gasped.

  “Don’t worry, I have a gun, too, a Beretta. I bought it a long time ago for protection, and I got one for the girls and my mom, too, for Christmas.”

  In another mood, Mary would have made a joke. One size fits all.

  “Only thing is, he knows how to use one and I don’t. Alls I got to help me shoot straight are the Pink Sisters.” Trish laughed sadly, an abrupt break in the stormclouds. “You remember the Pink Sisters?”

  “Of course.” Mary managed a smile. The Pink Sisters were a cloistered order of nuns in the Fairmont section who would pray for you if you slipped a request in their front gate. They had gotten Mary through the bar exam, her wedding day, and her husband’s funeral. She asked, “When did you go to the convent?”

  “I didn’t. They have a website that takes prayer requests now. You believe that?” Trish smiled, wiping her eyes, and Mary felt a flicker of closeness to her.

  “Incredible. And did you hear there’s no more limbo?”

  “I know, right?” Trish smiled again, and the moment passed, her beautiful face falling into fearful lines, her forehead wrinkled with anxiety. “It’s hell, Mare. I’m walkin’ on eggshells all the time. Yesterday he told me he’s got a big surprise for me on my birthday. That’s today.”

  Yikes. “Happy Birthday.”

  “Yeah. Real happy.” Trish’s lower lip trembled, but she maintained control. “This is why I hadda see you, I’m outta my mind. I think the surprise is he’s gonna propose, and if I say no, he’ll kill me. Tonight.”

  Mary had heard enough. She set down her legal pad. “Trish, you don’t have to live like this another minute. On these facts, especially with your diary, we can get you a restraining order. The court requires a reasonable fear of imminent danger, and we can go over there right now and—”

  “No, I can’t do that.” Trish’s reddish eyes flared with new fear. “I can’t go to court.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s connected.”

  “To what?”

  Trish snorted. “Where’d you grow up? Duh.”

  Whoa. Mary felt stricken. Everybody in South Philly had a love/ hate relationship with the Mob, but her relationship was more hate/ hate, except when it was hate/terrified.

  “He deals drugs for them, heroin and coke.”

  Mary took mental notes. I’M NOT HEARING THIS.

  “Also he’s takin’ a cut on the down.”

  “What’s that mean?” THE MAFIA DOES NOT EXIST.

  “Takin’ money. Skimmin.’ If they find out, he’s dead. They don’t play that.”

  THE MEDIA CREATES A VICIOUS STEREOTYPE OF ITALIAN-AMERICANS.

  “I never sleep anymore. Alls I can see is them breakin’ down the door, shootin’ us both up. He’s not made, so we got no protection. He’s playing craps with my life. If he don’t kill me, they will.”

  IT’S ALL TONY SOPRANO’S FAULT. ALSO AL PACINO’S.

  “And, trust me, he knows how to use that gun.”

  YOU DIDN’T JUST SAY THAT.

  “I don’t know what to do.” Trish’s voice thinned with fright. “I’m dyin’ here. What do I do? You get my problem?”

  “Yes—it’s how do you break up with a mobster, right?”

  “Right!” Trish wailed. “It’s, like, no-win. What do I do? I’m trapped.”

  Mary’s thoughts raced ahead. “Hold on, not yet. How about we go to the cops? I’m sure you have information they could use, and we can get you into the witness-protection program—”

  “Are you nuts?” Trish fairly shouted. “He’ll kill me. They’ll kill me!”

  “You can’t be sure of that.”

  “I’m sure, believe me. What are you, stupid?”

  Mary let it go. There had to be a solution. “You sure you won’t go to court? We can get the protective order and—”

  “They’re not worth the paper they’re printed on.”

  “But maybe he’d pay attention to it, knowing you’d haul him into court. He certainly doesn’t want that exposure.”

  “He’d kill me before I got there. Wise up! You’re not helpin’!” Trish started to get upset again, her eyes welling up.

  “Stay calm. We can figure this out. How about you get out of town? Just go.”

  “Where’m I gonna go? He’ll find me wherever I go.”

  “No he won’t.”

  “Yeah, he will, and what do I do when I get where I’m goin’?” Trish threw up her hands. “What’m I supposed to do? Leave my mom, my friends, my job? It took me years to build up my book at work. I don’t wanna leave my life.”

  “Your life is on the line, Trish.”

  “It won’t work anyway, Mare. He’ll find me. He won’t stop until he does.” Trish edged forward on the seat. “Mare, don’t you get it? Nothin’ you’re sayin’ will work. The man is an animal, and you’re talkin’ law!”

  “I’m a lawyer,” Mary said, nonplussed.

  “Well, the law isn’t helpin’! You’re smart, think of somethin’!”

  Mary wracked her brain. “Okay, wait, listen. If you don’t want a legal solution, then I’m telling you what I’d do. Go far away. Take a vacation. I’ll even lend you some money.”

  “This is what you’re tellin’ me, Ein
stein? Get outta town?” Suddenly Trish leaped to her boots. “How’s that different from the witness protection?”

  “It’s not like witness protection, that’s forever. I’m saying just go for a while, a month or two.” Mary rose behind her desk, softening her tone. She’d never seen Trish have a moment’s self-doubt, much less a meltdown. “By the time you come back, he’ll have cooled down and—”

  “It won’t work. He loves me. He’s obsessed. He’s not gonna get over it, Mare.” Trish shook her head, then covered her face with her hands. “I can’t believe this is really happening. I can’t believe this is my life. He was so sweet, so great, in high school. Why didn’t I see it then?”

  “Stay calm, Trish—”

  “We always thought we’d get married, everybody did.” Trish uncovered her face, and her skin was flushed with emotion, her eyes frantic. “How did I get myself into this? You remember how nice he was? How sweet?”

  “I don’t know him.”

  “Yes, you do. He went to Neumann.”

  Great. Bishop Neumann, Goretti’s brother school, was graduating mobsters now. Mary wished for her legal pad. WONDER WHAT HE GOT IN RELIGION?

  “What was I thinking?” Trish raked manicured fingernails through big hair. “I thought I was so lucky. He was the hottest thing. We were so in love.” Then Trish said his name.

  Oh my God. Mary’s heart stopped. The room slipped out of focus.

  Trish was saying, “We dated in high school, senior year, remember?”

  So did we.

  “I broke up with him but then I went back. What a mistake. He was obsessed with me even then, I used to think he was so romantic. Now I know he’s crazy.” Trish kept shaking her head, then stopped abruptly. “So what are you tellin’ me to do, Mare?”

  Mary snapped out of it. “If you won’t leave or go to court—”

  “I can’t! He’ll kill me! Tonight!” Trish hollered, full bore, all of her anguish channeled now to rage. “And you’ll sit there and do nothin’!”

  “The only way out is—”

  “I need help! Help me!”

  “I’m trying but—”

  “Screw you, Holy Mary!” Trish exploded. “That’s what we all used to call you, you know that? Holy Mary, Mother of God! Little Miss Perfect, that’s you! Thanks for nothin’!” She whirled around, grabbed her purse, and stalked to the door, then flung it open and left.