Courting Trouble raa-9

by Lisa Scottoline

  But Anne was thinking of her plan. “Hey, buddy,” she called to the reporter, “why don’t you ask me what I’m going to do next, now that I’m not dead? Like they do after the Superbowl?”

  “She’s going to Disneyworld!” Mr. Simmons, another neighbor, chimed in, and neighbors behind him closed in, encircling the reporter and cameraman.

  “Yes, ask her what she’s going to do next!” Mr. Monterosso called out.

  Another yelled, “Yes! Print some good news for a change!”

  A third neighbor cried, “You won’t show that on TV, will you? You never run anything nice, even on the holiday.”

  The reporter turned to Anne, chuckling. “Okay, Ms. Murphy! What are you going to do next? Are you going to Disneyworld?”

  “And leave Philly on the Fourth of July? No way!” Anne answered into the camera, knowing it would be aired for Kevin to hear. She thanked God that Bennie hated TV. “Tonight, I’m going to celebrate the country’s birthday, Philly-style! Eat a hoagie at the Dollar-A-Hoagie tent, then watch the fireworks at the Art Museum! Happy Fourth, everybody!”

  The neighbors cheered loudly, laughing and hooting, and Mr. Berman wielded his cane like a drum major. “Now, Mr. Reporter, you have your story! Go print it! Vamoose!”

  “Yeah! Get outta here! You don’t live here! Waltin Street residents only!” Mrs. Berman shouted, and a teenager, the tattooed daughter of a psychology professor, started chanting.

  “Waltin Street rocks! Waltin Street rocks!”

  “Waltin Street rocks! Waltin Street rocks!” the neighbors all began to chant, blasting the reporters and cameraman away with the power of their voices, singing out as one.

  “Waltin Street rocks, Waltin Street rocks!” Anne chanted loudest of all, yelling at the top of her lungs, no longer so Kevin Satorno would hear it but because it made her feel good and happy and a part of a very special group, one that inhabited a block that formed one of the many blocks in the historic grid that built the United States of America. Ben Franklin himself designed the grid, she remembered with a new pride. Mental note: Patriotism is really about belonging, and Anne belonged right here.

  But now it was time to get busy.

  28

  The sun was still high but glowing a late-day orange, scorching a slow descent through the sky. The air had grown oppressively humid, making Anne’s dress stick to her skin. She picked trash up off her street and from between parked cars, and stuffed it into a large Hefty bag, eyeing each person who walked by. She didn’t see Kevin and couldn’t help but feel increasingly tense.

  She kept an eye out for him as she helped her neighbors gather bottles for recycling, fold up aluminum picnic tables, and Saran-Wrap an awesome leftover pasta-and-pepper salad. They all dragged the police sawhorses away from the top of the block, only reluctantly opening to the rest of the city the enclave that had been Waltin Street. Foot traffic increased, spilling into the street as everybody streamed to the Parkway to get the best spaces to watch the fireworks. They carried beach chairs, rolled tatami mats, and spare bedspreads. One kid trailed his father carrying a set of lighted brown punks, tapers that scented the air with their distinctive acrid smell.

  She checked her watch. 7:15. Time was hurrying along and taking her with it. She had seen a schedule of July Fourth events on the Parkway, starting with a “celebrity reading of the Declaration of Independence,” then the Dollar-A-Hoagie sale, which ended at nine o’clock with the fireworks. She figured she would linger on Waltin a while longer, then head over to the Dollar-A-Hoagie tent, where Kevin would know to find her. It was almost time.

  She bent down and picked up a smashed cellophane wrapper of Cherry Nibs, then put it in the trash bag, and, as she leaned over, felt the weight of her Beretta in her pocket. She had almost forgotten about the gun in the rush of good feeling generated by the block party. She began having second thoughts. Was there any other way? No. If this doesn’t end tonight, it will never end. Not until I’m really dead. She stowed the trash in the bag and was moving on to a discarded paper cup when her cell phone rang.

  She stuffed the bag under her armpit, dug in her other pocket for the phone, and flipped it open to see who was calling. Matt’s cell phone number glowed on the screen in bright blue digits. She hadn’t answered Bennie’s many calls, but this call she’d take. She pressed Send. “Matt?” she asked, lowering her voice. “Where are you? I’ve been trying—”

  “I got your messages.” His voice sounded anxious. “How are you? Are you okay?”

  “Fine, fine, really.” Anne cupped a hand over her free ear to hear better, and left the noisy street. She told him briefly about her debacle at the Dietz house, omitting the assault-and-battery part. No need to heighten his already heightened protectiveness. “Why did you tell Dietz about us? That was our business!”

  “I had to. I called Beth and told her that Satorno was stalking her, but she didn’t take it seriously, so I went over. I think it was because Bill wasn’t buying it. He has a lot of influence with her.”

  “Duh.”

  “I had to tell Bill what happened to you, to make him believe it. He asked me how I knew so much, and I told him. I had to, or she’d be in danger.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Anne said, chastened by the explanation. Between his client’s safety or his own representation, Matt had made a choice she admired. How could she have been angry at him? “I feel awful that you got fired. What are you going to do?”

  “Clean up the file and hand it over. I think they’ll use Epstein now. Watch out, Anne. The good lawyers are coming.”

  “Bullshit.” Anne bit her lip. “Can I help, or have I screwed things up enough already?”

  “No, you didn’t do this. I did. I admit, I needed to lick my wounds after he fired me, and I wished I’d talked to Beth alone, but it’s okay now. He was my client, too, and he always speaks for Beth. You’re the one I’m worried about. Bennie called my house, saying you had given them the slip. She’s looking for you. She went up to your street to find you and there’s a block party, but some old guy wouldn’t let her in. Even Mary couldn’t sweet-talk him, or Judy.”

  Anne smiled. Mr. Kopowski took no prisoners.

  “She even called the cops, told them to look out for you. Where are you, Anne? You shouldn’t be alone, not with Satorno still loose. I want to see you, to be with you.”

  Anne couldn’t let that happen. She’d involved enough people in this nightmare. “I’m fine, Matt. I don’t need my hand held.” People flowed past her on the sidewalk, her neighbors waving good-bye as they left for the fireworks.

  “This guy is a killer,” Matt was saying. “He could be stalking you right now. Where are you? I hear people in the background.”

  “I’m in a cab, I’m on my way over to your house, right now. Just stay there and wait for me.” It was a good idea, and would keep him in place until she caught Kevin. “I gotta go. Hear that beep? I’m low on batteries.”

  “I don’t hear a beep. I’m worried that you’re going to do something crazy. Bennie said you own a gun. Is she right?”

  “No, guns are scary. They go off by themselves, did you know that? There’s the beep again. I’ll be over as soon as I can. The traffic is a mess. Wait there for me!” Anne pressed the End button, and suddenly another message popped onto the phone screen. one call unanswered, read the blue letters. Probably Bennie again, but it could give a clue as to where she was. Her last two calls had been from her cell, and a mobile Bennie threatened Anne’s plan. She dialed for her voice mail, then listened.

  It was Gil, not Bennie. “Anne, I’m really sorry for what I did last night.” His words sounded slurred and sloppy. “I never shoulda tried to, you know. Jamie’s thrown me out, and I was wondering if I could see you tonight, you know, just to talk it over . . . oh, shit! Willya look at that! I’m in the bar on the corner of Sixteenth and the Parkway, you know the one, and I’m watching you on the TV right now! Damn, you look awesome! I love your—”

  Disgusted, A
nne deleted the message, then hit End, troubled. Gil was only five blocks away and he’d seen the footage about the Dollar-A-Hoagie tent. She could only hope he wouldn’t interfere. She hit the Power button to shut the phone off, then slipped it back into her pocket. She glanced up at the sky, which had grown darker. The sun had dipped below the maple trees, flat rooftops, and loopy antennae. Its dying rays flooded the sky with a fierce orange. It was time to get started.

  Anne removed the trash bag from under her arm, closed the drawstring, and set the bag down with the others, near the front of the alley. She couldn’t help noticing it was the same alley that she’d scooted down in her Uncle Sam stovepipe, now so long ago. She took off for the Parkway, pausing as she passed her house, with flowers still on the stoop. She knew what lay beyond her front door and flashed on the blood spattered on the entrance hall. The obscenity of the murder. The stench of death. Willa had died there, and now her killer would be brought to justice. Anne bowed her head, then slipped off into the twilight.

  She joined the crowd flowing to the Parkway, scanning the people as she walked, remembering the details of Kevin’s newly dark hair and the shape of his head, watching for even the least sign of him. God knew what he’d be wearing. Something that blended in. She looked around. There were three hundred flag T-shirts in the moving crowd. Anne scooted along to catch up and check out as many as she could. None of them was Kevin.

  She kept walking, slipping her hand inside her pocket for the Beretta, to reassure herself. She headed with the crowd onto the Ben Franklin Parkway, where the rowhouses disappeared. Eight lanes of the boulevard opened onto a sky washed with hazy pinks, aquamarine blues, and the most transparent of amethysts. Dusk settled, hard to discern, visible only in contrast to bright spots of unexpected light; the red glowing tip of a lighted cigarette, the hot pink of a child’s neon bracelet, a white pool of flashlight borne by a sensible older couple.

  The geometric skyline of the city had been colored red, white, and blue for the holiday. The lighted sign at the top of the Peco Building read happy fourth in a continuous loop of dotted lights. The night air was filled with talk, laughter, and babies crying, and the breeze scented with insect repellent and domestic beer. To Anne’s right was the Art Museum, the immense Grecian building usually bathed in tasteful amber spotlights, now colored a gaudy red-white-and-blue, with lasers that roamed the night sky. The huge limestone staircase that Rocky Balboa scaled in the movie was hidden by a massive temporary scaffolding, a stage of stainless steel, and panels of stage lighting. A warm-up band played on the stage, their electric guitars twanging through the speaker system mounted on the trees.

  Anne checked her watch. 8:00. It was almost dark. She was running late. She picked up the pace as she crossed the Parkway’s baseball diamond, set up for kids’ T-ball but now covered with blankets, collapsible chaise lounges, and the citizenry of Philadelphia, eagerly awaiting fireworks. She picked her way through the vendors dispensing sodas, hot dogs, cotton candy, funnel cakes, and Mr. Softee. Anybody who wanted a hoagie for dinner would already be thronging across the street at the tent, and Anne made a beeline for it, as a drum solo thundered through the loudspeakers and reverberated in the night air.

  She crossed the street with difficulty, as the crowd began cheering the band off, wanting the celebrities who were going to read the Declaration of Independence. A million people were expected at the fireworks and it was almost impossible to make it through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd. Anne kept her hand on the Beretta in her pocket and pressed past people’s sweaty backs and chests, making her way across the Parkway to Eakins Oval, a circle of grass, gardens, and fountains that fronted the Art Museum.

  The reading of the Declaration of Independence was starting, and, even in the street accent of a rap star, its words remained beautiful: “When in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth . . .”

  Anne craned her neck above the crowds to see where she was going, getting a bead on the dark statue of George Washington on horseback. He rode at the center of the largest circular fountain on Eakins Oval, flanked by two smaller circular fountains squirting red, white, and blue lighted water. The white plastic canopy of the huge Dollar-A-Hoagie tent was right behind it, and mobbed. Damn. How would Kevin find her in that mob? And could she really draw a gun in a crowd? Maybe this hadn’t been the best plan, but there was no changing it now. She could handle the gun and keep the safety on. Kevin wouldn’t know better, and it would make sure no one got hurt.

  A young movie actress was saying, with microphone feedback, “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—”

  Anne took heart. More beautiful words had never been written. She had the right to happiness, to liberty, to life. She had a great job, a nice neighborhood, girlfriends, and a new romance. She was entitled to all of these things, and Kevin was taking them away. She navigated around a family on their blanket, steadying their little boy with a palm on his warm head, then kept going, stumbling on kicked-off sneakers and shoes in the darkness, parting the crowd, at a celebrity-struck standstill.

  A Broadway actor was launching into, “But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.”

  Damn right! Anne was protecting her future security. The hoagie tent lay less that fifty feet ahead, and she checked the crowd for Kevin as she barreled through it. It wasn’t easy to see, now that night had fallen. The only lights came from the old-fashioned gaslights near the fountains on the Oval and the intermittent lasers sweeping the sky.

  A blond starlet was mustering colonial outrage: “The History of the present King of Great-Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World. He has refused his Assent to laws . . .”

  Anne plowed her way to the tent. Toward Kevin. He had refused to assent to laws, too. She just couldn’t live this way any longer. She felt unhinged and jittery. Exhausted and adrenalized from the last few days. She had a funny taste in her mouth, and wetness appeared under her arms and on her forehead. Her knees felt loose but she powered forward.

  A distinguished Academy Award winner was saying, “He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers . . . .”

  The litany of injustices resonated, and the fact that they had been perpetrated by the King of England was only a technicality. Anne was going to rectify injustice. Catch the bad guy and put him away forever. Get justice for herself and for Willa. And now, for Beth.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Anne said to a man in her way, picking up speed, fueled by increasing anger through the packed crowd. She looked for Kevin but didn’t see him. He was out there, she knew it. She could sense him, a dark vibration. She held her head high so he could see her.

  Thirty yards, then twenty. The hoagie tent lay right ahead. Anne started to hustle, undaunted by the crowd, jostling people in her path. She could hear the chatter at the hoagie tent. Smell the tang of spices and fresh processed meats through the cigarette smoke and beer.

  She reached the line at the end of the hoagie tent, took her place, and tried to arrange her face into a happy mask, so she could look like she was having fun. She kept her hand cradled around the Beretta and squinted through the laser beams at the crowd. She had a better vantage point in the line at the tent. Everybody was facing the stage and the celebrities, gawking, pointing, and taking pictures. She eyed as many faces as possible, studying their features under Phillies caps, foam cro
wns, deelyboppers, and American-flag hats. Nobody was moving except for the people hurrying to the hoagie tent.

  The Declaration continued: “We, therefore, the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly Publish and Declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States . . .”

  The line shifted forward, but Anne couldn’t see under the dark tent. When was the end of the Declaration of Independence? She should have known but she didn’t. The fireworks would start right after. When would Kevin make his move? Her heart began to pound. She felt exposed, vulnerable, even in full view of everyone. Where were the cops?

  The line went forward, moving fast, and Anne could finally see under the tent. An army of people, maybe fifty, were dressed in white uniforms and paper bifold hats with Stars and Stripes, and they were handing out hoagies as fast as they could, collecting the dollars in exchange and stuffing them into a barrel to be donated to Children’s Hospital. Two cops stood behind the barrel, their arms folded in their short-sleeved summer uniforms. Great!

  The Declaration sounded as if it were concluding. “And for the support of this declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

  The crowd clapped and cheered wildly. The cops turned around and clapped, and the hoagie line burst into applause, becoming agitated now, anticipating the fireworks, wanting to get their sandwich and hurry back to their blankets. The noise was deafening, but the fact that everyone was clapping at once helped Anne. Because over there, across the sea of heads, stood a lone man who wasn’t clapping. Her gaze shot immediately to him.

  He was tall and wore a dark T-shirt. She recognized the shape of his head, even though he had shaved off all of his hair. His shorn head shone skull-white in the gaslight. His expression was determined, his shoulders muscular and pumped. He turned suddenly toward the tent, and a stray ray of blood-red light sliced his face, illuminating it.