Mistaken Identity

by Lisa Scottoline

  “Bobby did it, not me.” Joy clucked to the pony and they began walking again. “Why don’t you congratulate him?” she asked, so pointedly that Mary realized she’d been avoiding the child altogether. Why, she didn’t know, but whatever the reason, she felt instantly guilty about it. On many days, Mary woke up guilty.

  “Congratulations, Bobby,” Mary told him, but she couldn’t determine if he’d heard. “Does he understand?”

  “He understands more than you and me,” Joy answered tersely, then looked over. “When you called, you said you needed to talk to me about Jemison, for a case. You didn’t drive all the way out here to talk about quitting.”

  “No? I mean, no.” Mary stopped daydreaming and remembered the Connolly case. “You were at Jemison when Judge Guthrie was there, weren’t you?”

  “Sure. He was one of the gray hairs, in litigation. He was there from forever. He took care of all the old-line house clients. His billings were huge, all of it inherited from the gray hair before him.”

  “Did you work for him?”

  “Only a little, and I wasn’t even on the briefs. He was a nice man.”

  “Then he became a judge.”

  “Yes.” Joy nodded, keeping a hand on Bobby as the pony walked.

  “Were you at Jemison when Henry Burden was there? He was a former D.A.”

  “Sure. He’d been there a year or two when I got there. I never worked for him. He was muy macho. I didn’t need it.”

  “Did Burden work for Guthrie at all?”

  “Sure. He was Guthrie’s boy, totally.”

  “So they were friends?”

  “Not really. Guthrie was a loner in the firm, not political. He was into his family and was always the legal scholar. He wanted to be a judge for a long time. He even published while he practiced and wrote all the articles himself. How incredible is that?”

  Mary put her head down, mulling it over. Dust covered her pumps as they marched next to the pony’s hooves. The clump clump clump was helping her think. “So at some point, Burden comes over from the D.A.’s office. Burden is very connected in city politics, but has no client base. Guthrie has a client base, but isn’t connected in city politics. Guthrie wants to be a judge, but you can’t be a judge without connections. Not in Philadelphia.”

  Joy smiled at Bobby. “Sit up, buddy. Try to sit straight as a board.”

  “So they formed an alliance,” Mary said, thinking aloud. “Burden got Guthrie a judgeship, and Guthrie turned over his clients. As a result, they owe each other, and they also owe a lot of powerful people in the city. Isn’t that interesting?”

  “No, not at all. This is interesting. Ho, Frosty.” The pony halted next to a toy hoop mounted low on the cinderblock wall. Joy handed a lightweight basketball to Bobby, who squinted over his glasses and pitched the ball at the hoop. It veered wildly off course, arced into a wall, and rolled into the center of the ring. Joy ran to fetch it. “Put your hand on Bobby’s leg, Mary!” she called back.

  “Huh? Why?”

  “So he doesn’t fall off!”

  “What?” Mary clamped a panicky hand on the boy’s leg. “Stay on, okay, Bobby? If you fall off, the guilt will kill me.”

  Joy came back with the ball, panting. “You know, Mary, you could quit, too. If you don’t like your job, just quit. Just do it.”

  “I can’t. I’ll fall off the edge of the earth. Now take this child. Put a hand on him. Save him from me.”

  Joy handed Bobby the basketball and placed a confident grip on his leg. “You’ll find another job, you’ll see. In this economy, there’s tons of jobs. We have two openings. You want to work here?”

  “Here?” Mary’s throat caught, and Bobby looked down at her, basketball between his hands, as if waiting for an answer. His eyes were brown, magnified by his dense lenses, and his gaze didn’t waver. Though his expression remained remote, Mary could see that he accorded her the same trust he did Joy, merely because she was an adult. She felt distinctly unworthy. “I don’t think I can,” she answered simply, and the boy turned away.

  27

  It was a business day at the prison and the interview rooms were full. Three-piece suits sat on the left side of the counter and orange jumpsuits on the right. Public defenders huddled with their clients next to tall stacks of accordion files. For their visits, the prison guards became air-traffic controllers, lining up the inmates like jets waiting to land.

  “This is a surprise,” Connolly said. She stood up when Bennie banged into the interview room and let the door slam locked behind her. “I didn’t expect you today.”

  “Expect me every day.” Bennie tossed her briefcase onto the Formica counter, where it landed with a loud thud, and she dropped into the chair behind it. “We got trouble. How did the press find out you might be my twin?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the way we look?”

  “You didn’t tell them?”

  “No, of course not.” Connolly sat down. “They’ve been calling here, but your secretary got me a message that said not to talk to the press. Not that they’d let me take those calls anyway.”

  Bennie thought about it. It was true, calls in and out of the facility were limited. “Did you tell any friends in here who could have blabbed it?”

  “I don’t have any friends.”

  “How about on the outside?”

  “Like I said.”

  Bennie scrutinized Connolly to see if she was telling the truth. Her eyes, another set of Bennie’s eyes, were alert with what looked like genuine surprise, and she sat tense on the edge of the chair, her hands clasped on the counter. A tiny crease in her brow betrayed her anxiety; it looked like the kink that Grady always kidded Bennie about in her own brow. “You have no idea how the press found out?”

  “No, not unless somebody in your firm told them.”

  “No.” Bennie laced her fingers into a fist over the counter. “Let me ask you another question. Why didn’t you tell me about Lyman Bullock?”

  Connolly’s mouth twitched and anger flickered across her features. She leaned back as if absorbing a blow, then seemed to compose herself. “Bullock,” she said with a sigh. “So you know about him.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “I shouldn’t have to. You’re supposed to tell me everything, and I decide what’s important for the case. You don’t make that decision, I do. I’m your lawyer.”

  Connolly’s temper flared. “That doesn’t mean you’re my boss, lording it over me.”

  “It’s not about who’s the boss.”

  “The fuck it isn’t.”

  Bennie bristled. The similarity between her and Connolly’s reaction to authority no longer struck her as a complete surprise. Still, she had a defense to stage. “Look, you called me to represent you, I’m trying to represent you. Knocking myself out to represent you, in fact, and so are my two best associates. Cooperate or die, okay? That incentive enough for you?”

  Connolly sulked. “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything.”

  “Except who you really are.”

  Bennie straightened in her chair. “I know who I am.”

  “No, you don’t, because you don’t know who I am. I change who you are, and you don’t like that one bit.”

  “About the case.” If Connolly was playing a mind game with Bennie, she wouldn’t win. “We’re talking about the case.”

  “You don’t like your cage rattled, huh? Well, deal with it.” Connolly stood up, and her chair squeaked noisily on the gritty floor. “That you’re on that side of the table, with your suit and your briefcase, so full of yourself. You think you can come up here and tear me a new asshole, then get back in your car and go home. You don’t want to believe that you’re my twin, huh? That you could have had the lousy luck. That you could have been here. You could have been me.”

  “Lyman Bullock,” Bennie said evenly. “Sit down and discuss Lyman Bullock or I leave. When did you sta
rt seeing him?”

  Connolly’s lip twisted. “October, that year,” she answered after a minute, and fell defiantly into her chair.

  “Where did you meet him?”

  “On the street. A hot dog stand.”

  “A preppie lawyer, at a hot dog stand? Try again. The truth.”

  Connolly didn’t bat an eye. “We met at the hot dog stand in front of the library. He pulled up in the car, to grab a dog. We got to talking.”

  “Then what?”

  “We had an affair, okay? Surprised I got a man like that?”

  Bennie retrieved a legal pad and ballpoint from her briefcase. “Where did you go with him during the day?”

  “An apartment he kept on the side. I wasn’t the first.”

  “You have a key?”

  “No, I met him there.”

  “How many times a week?”

  “In the beginning, once or twice a week. When he could.”

  Bennie made a note. “You had sex.”

  “No, we played Nintendo.” Connolly didn’t laugh and neither did Bennie. “I’d hang in the apartment, work on my book. It was nicer than the library. The place was loaded. Big-screen TV, nice CD player. Fast computer, a screamer.”

  Bennie set down her pen. “So, you were cheating on Della Porta.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  Connolly shrugged, her expression impassive.

  “I thought you were a woman in love.”

  “You thought wrong.” She laughed abruptly. “You got the degree, but I got the brains.”

  Bennie didn’t react. “Explain Bullock so I can make it credible to a jury, if it comes out.”

  “I lived with Della Porta but I didn’t love him. I told you I didn’t like being alone. I didn’t love Bullock either. They were just men. I cared about them, but it wasn’t like love, in love songs and all.”

  Bennie thought she sounded adolescent. If songs were the standard, we all were screwed. “When did it end between you and Bullock?”

  “A month before Anthony was murdered.”

  “Did you end it or did he?”

  “We both did. He was traveling all the time on business, for a big case out in Arkansas. He just stopped calling.”

  “You didn’t call him?”

  “No. I wasn’t that interested, and then Anthony got killed.”

  Bennie felt sick and hollow. For Connolly’s life, so empty, and for her defense, in deeper trouble than before. She couldn’t prove that Connolly and Della Porta were lovebirds now, and hoped the D.A. didn’t know that. Maybe she could try another tack. “Bullock knew about Della Porta, right? Wasn’t he jealous of Della Porta?”

  “No. Bullock wanted to buy a share of Star. Wanted me to fix it with Anthony. ’Course, I couldn’t exactly do that.”

  “Buy a share? What do you mean?”

  “Fighters need backers. Anthony was the manager and he got a group of businessmen to put up money for Star. If Star made money, they made money.”

  “Could there be a connection between Bullock and Star?”

  “No way. Bullock didn’t need the coin, believe me.”

  But Bennie was thinking. There was a problem here and it wasn’t that the Bullock theory wouldn’t fly. It was that Connolly wouldn’t fly. Any jury, given half a chance, will find for a defendant they like, but they weren’t going to like Connolly, even if she never said a word in court. The D.A. would be savvy enough to get Connolly’s life, morals, and attitude into evidence, and it could kill her, even if she were innocent of the murder.

  Bennie’s stomach tensed. She had to find some way to sell Connolly to the jury. She looked at Connolly, and the inmate looked back at her with those matching eyes, outlined with eyeliner. It gave her an idea. A gamble, but it was Connolly’s only chance.

  28

  The black plastic hand on the kitchen clock hovered at 5:30, and Mary sat with satisfaction over a plate of steaming spaghetti and bumpy meatballs, with a salad of iceberg lettuce and vinegar-and-oil dressing. The DiNunzio family ate dinner at the same time every night and served pasta four nights a week, except for fish on Fridays, still. Mary felt reassured when things stayed the same, and her parents’ home, which she visited every Wednesday for dinner, was the Church of Things That Stayed the Same. She had brought Judy home for dinner because Mary’s parents adored her, treating her like the tall child they never had. Judy returned the affection, marveling at each visit that Italians really acted Italian. Mary had no defense for it. Some stereotypes rang true for a reason.

  The DiNunzios’ brick rowhouse in South Philly was laid out in a straight line from living room to dining room to kitchen, the rooms strung one after the other like the slippery beads on a favored rosary. The sofa in the living room sagged in the center, its shiny green quilting protected by doilies her mother had crocheted decades ago. The room’s maroon carpet had been worn in a strip down the middle, a missal’s ribbon made by years of walking through the dining room, which was used only on Christmas and Easter. Even as a child, Mary knew something really good had to happen to Jesus Christ for the DiNunzios to eat in the dining room.

  The heart of the house was the kitchen, tiny and shaped like a Mass card. A Formica table with rickety wire legs took up most of the room, and the five of them — Mary’s mother and father, Mary and her twin Angie, and Judy — had to huddle to fit around it for dinner. Refaced wood cabinets ringed the room and Formica counters cracked at the corners, so near to the kitchen table that Mary’s father could stay in his chair and turn up the Lasko fan in the window, which he did. The plastic blades whirred faster but the air remained stifling.

  “Madonne, it’s hot,” said Mary’s father, Mariano DiNunzio. A long time ago, his crew of tilesetters had christened him “Matty,” and it stuck. He was a bald, stocky man with large eyes, a bulbous nose, and an affable smile. He wore Bermuda shorts and a white undershirt, his tummy stretching soft as a cherub’s under the worn cotton. He had tucked a paper napkin in his T-shirt like a bib. “You gettin’ some breeze, Judy?” he asked.

  “Yes, thanks.” Judy was struggling to twirl her spaghetti.

  “Good. You’re the guest. We want you to be nice and comfortable.”

  “I am,” Judy said, as steaming strands slipped through her fork for the second time. She tried it again, her tongue to the side in concentration.

  “You want help with that?” Angie asked. Her dark blond hair was combed into a short ponytail that curved like a comma; she wore an ivory shirt with short sleeves and khaki shorts. Angie looked like a casual-dress version of her twin, though her manner was far from casual.

  Mary smirked. “Don’t help her. It’s fun to watch her struggle.”

  “Oh, stop,” Angie said. “I’m going to teach her how to twirl.”

  “But she’ll run off and tell all the other WASPs. Then where will we be? Fresh out of state secrets.”

  Judy fumbled with the spoon as spaghetti slithered off her fork. “I don’t get the spoon part.”

  “You don’t need to use the spoon,” Angie said, but Mary waved her off.

  “Don’t believe her, Jude, she’s lying. Spoons are key to expert twirling. They don’t let you in the Sons of Italy unless you use a spoon.”

  “You don’t need the spoon,” Mary’s father said, and beside him, her mother nodded, pushing bangs like cirrus clouds from a short, bony brow. Vita DiNunzio was losing her hair from years of teasing, which only made her get it teased more often, at the beauty parlor at the corner.

  “But spoons are cool,” Mary insisted. “Real dagoes use spoons.”

  “Why do you use that term?” Angie snapped, and Mary reflected that her twin had left her sense of humor at the convent, with no hope of recovery since she’d taken a job as a paralegal. Nothing about being a paralegal was funny.

  “You know, Ange, you used to be a lot of fun.”

  “Like you?”

  “Exactly like me,” Mary said, and her meaning wasn’t lost on Angi
e, who averted her eyes.

  “Girls, girls,” their mother said, her tone a warning.

  Mary bit her tongue. Her chest felt tight. She didn’t know how to reach Angie, though they’d been so close as kids. Mary had always treasured their twinness, seeing it as unique and special, but the bond that Mary viewed as security, like moorings to a boat, Angie saw as confinement, the tether to the puppy. Angie had spent most of her adult life tugging at that leash, fighting to slip free of it completely. Mary regretted the loss, and the wound had been reopened by the Connolly case; Bennie was embracing a twin she had never known, just as Angie was pushing her away.

  “Judy,” Angie said, “put the spoon down and pick up some spaghetti on your fork. Pick up just a little and twirl it against the side of the plate.”

  Judy pierced a few strands of spaghetti with her fork, her expression grimmer than anybody’s eating spaghetti should be. “I’m a Stanford grad. I should be able to do this.”

  “But you can’t,” Mary told her. “Because you won’t use the spoon.”

  “Mary,” Angie warned, in the same tone their mother had used.

  Mary’s face flushed. She felt suddenly warm in the tiny kitchen. Hot tomato sauce — “gravy” in the vernacular — bubbled in the dented metal saucepan on the stove and residual steam from a pot of spaghetti water curled into the air. The aroma filling the small kitchen — sharp with oregano, sweet with basil, chunky with sausage — that seemed so fragrant when Mary first came home now smelled cloying. “You know,” she said, “some people don’t eat spaghetti when it’s hot out. They think it makes them hotter to eat spaghetti.”

  Mary’s mother looked over, squinting behind her glasses. “What you mean, no spaghett’?”

  “No spaghetti in summer. If we ate cold things for dinner, we’d feel cooler.”

  “Drink your water,” said her mother, and beside her, her father frowned deeply, his forehead fairly cleaving in two.

  “What are you talkin’, a cold dinner? Cold isn’t dinner. If it’s cold, it can’t be dinner.”

  “That’s not true, Pop,” Mary said, not sure why she was pressing such an inane point. She loved spaghetti in any weather. She would’ve eaten it in a steambath. “In restaurants they have cold dinners, like cold salmon with a salad. Sometimes they serve the salad warm.”