Final Appeal Read online

  “Do you work with Greg?”

  “Yes. I was supposed to meet him, but he’s late. Do you know a way I could get into his apartment? To wait for him?”

  I hear a cat meow from inside her apartment. “He didn’t come today. He always comes on Sundays.”

  “I know, he got tied up. He asked me to stop by tonight. We just starting seeing each other.”

  “You want to surprise him?”

  “Right.”

  “Interesting. Hold on,” she says, winking at me in a stagey way. “He gave me a key in case he forgets it.” She scuffs into her apartment in Birkenstocks and returns with a key on a ring. “He does forget it sometimes. He’s kind of strange, in that cap and sunglasses all the time. I like her, though.”

  “Her?”

  “Whoops! You didn’t hear it from me! Give him hell!” she says, slapping the key in my palm; then she turns on her heel and scuffs inside. I hear the cat meow again as she closes the door.

  I trudge up the stairs with a sense of dread. I like her, though. Who is she? The shabby carpeted stair winds around to the left, and at the top are two doors, 2A and 2B. The checkbook said 2B, so I slip the key into its lock. It opens easily, eager to reveal its secret, even if I’m not so eager to know it.

  The room is dark, except for a streetlight streaming through the bay windows at the other end of the room. It looks like an efficiency, with a single bed against the wall. A chain hangs down from an overhead light, and I yank it on.

  What I see shocks me.

  All over the apartment, everywhere I look, are toys. Against the wall are white IKEA shelves full of stuffed animals. A plush tiger. Pinocchio. A Steiff lion. Mickey Mouse. They’re crammed onto the shelves in all directions, sticking out by their cartoon feet and white-gloved hands. The lower shelves are stacked with an array of games. Candyland. Don’t Break the Ice. Clue. Monopoly.

  Stunned, I close the door behind me.

  A child’s room. Does Armen have a child? The woman downstairs said he comes on Sundays, like lots of divorced fathers. Like Sam. Is Armen divorced? Was he married before?

  What is this all about?

  I walk stiffly to the middle of the room and pick up a stuffed Dalmatian puppy from the couch. It looks back at me, round-eyed, blank.

  Who is this child? Who is this woman?

  I rummage through the stuffed animals on the shelves, then the games. Toy cats and teddy bears fly off the shelves in my wake. I feel myself getting angry, losing control. Who is this woman? Who is this child?

  I tear the plastic lid off a white toy box full of blocks and root to the bottom. Nothing, except for plastic beads and a pirate’s scabbard.

  I move to a bookshelf next to the toy box, also white. It’s full of children’s books, more than most libraries, and many in hardback. I snatch them out, one by one, enraged. Why didn’t he tell me, that night on the couch? I hear the sound of my own panting and watch with satisfaction as Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are fall to the soft carpet, littering it.

  I take the next book from the shelf. Eloise. There’s a pang deep within my chest; I know this book, but I have yet to buy it for Maddie.

  How do I know Eloise?

  I open it, going through it page by oversized page, trying to remember. I come to a page that at first looks ripped but unfolds at the top. I trace the trail of Eloise from a distant memory, my nail running along the dotted red line that goes up and down on the elevator. I remember a thick fingernail tracing these same travels. See, here she goes. The finger is yellow-stained at the edge with nicotine, and the hand is warm as my own hand rides around on top of his. My father’s hand. See, Princess?

  And then he left.

  I love you.

  Liars, liars all. I let the book fall to the floor.

  Suddenly, I hear a noise at the windows behind me. I turn around, but nothing’s there. I hear the noise again, like a rustling outside. I reach overhead and turn off the light. The room goes black just as a figure climbs onto the porch roof outside the bay window.

  I back up against the wall.

  The figure creeps toward the window, silhouetted in the streetlight. I feel my hackles rise. Someone is about to break in. Who knows about this apartment? Armen’s killer?

  The figure removes the portable screen from the window and places it on the roof without a sound. A professional. The streetlight glistens on his black leather jacket, stretched tight over a powerful back. I watch, dry-mouthed, as he jiggles the center window and it comes open in his hands.

  I reach for the apartment key in my raincoat pocket, ready to drive it into his eyes. I feel the scream rising in my throat but suppress it.

  The figure opens the window halfway and climbs into the room, landing silently at the foot of the single bed.

  I back toward the apartment door in the dark, every nerve strained with tension. I can’t see who the intruder is and I don’t care. I must have been out of my mind to come here. I take a step back. Suddenly, I slip on a book and let out an involuntary yelp.

  In a split second, the dark figure is barreling across the room toward me. He slams into my chest with the impact of a freight train, knocking the wind out of me. I cry out in pain and fall back on the hardwood floor. My head cracks hard where it was bumped before.

  I try to scream but a hand clamps down across my mouth so cruelly it bring tears to my eyes. The hand forces my head back down against the floor. His body climbs up on mine, pinning me to the floor. I try frantically to knee him but he’s too strong. A flashlight blazes into my eyes, blinding me.

  “Grace!” says the voice behind the light. “What the fuck?” The hand releases my mouth.

  “Who?”

  “It’s me. Winn.” He shines the flashlight on his bearded face. “What are you doing here?”

  My head begins to ache. “Why did you attack me?” I ask him, wincing. “You hurt my head.”

  “What did you break in for?” He backs off of me.

  “What did you break in for?” I pull my tweed skirt down, trying to recover my dignity. “Jesus H. Christ, I’ve never been so banged up in all my life. Ever since I met you.”

  He stands up and helps me to my feet. “Why didn’t you say who you were?”

  “I didn’t know it was you. Why didn’t you say who you were?”

  “I didn’t know it was you.”

  “Where’s your raincoat?”

  He looks down at the leather coat. “Underneath.” He pulls out an edge to show me, but it’s too dark to see. “I found this in a dumpster a block down, can you believe it? It must’ve cost a couple hundred dollars.”

  “You’ve been undercover too long. Where’s your rain hat?”

  “I don’t wear it on B and E’s. You should sit down. Come on.” He eases me onto the couch and tilts my head back on a crinkly bandanna he pulls from his pocket. “Rest a minute. I’ll find some ice.”

  I grab his lapel before he gets up. “No. No ice. I hate ice.”

  “You need ice.”

  “No. What I need is to yell at you, then I need to sue you. Then I need to yell at you and sue you again.”

  He laughs and sits heavily on the couch next to me. The streetlight illuminates the oil slick coating his nose; I could never go undercover, my pores couldn’t take it. “I’m sorry I jumped you like that,” he says, “but you surprised me.”

  “I surprised you? I’m lawfully on the premises.”

  “How was I supposed to know that? I’ve been watching this place for over a month. The light is never on at night. I came in to catch a killer.”

  “Didn’t you see me go to the door?”

  “I didn’t recognize you. You don’t wear hats, and I never saw you with a briefcase. I thought you were here to see the old woman downstairs. You’re off the reservation, Grace. Way off. Who’s staying with your daughter?”

  “She’s at her father’s. Sunday is father’s day, apparently.”

  He reaches around the back of m
y neck. “Lift up. I want to fix this thing.” I oblige and he folds the bandanna in two.

  “I hate men.”

  “I know, we’re bums. Look at me.”

  “Exactly.”

  He laughs. “Which do you hate more, men or ice?”

  I feel myself smile, the adrenaline ebbing away. “Men. Armen in particular. So he was a father? Who’s the mother?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then how do you know about the apartment? I thought he told you.”

  Hurt and humiliated, the combination platter. “So whose child is it? Tell me.”

  He pauses. “Were you in love with him?”

  I’m glad he can’t see my face. “No. I was in lust with him. I didn’t know him at all, obviously. If my daughter ever does what I did, I’ll kill her.”

  “You were lonely.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Artie told me.”

  I wince. “Terrific. On to more important topics. Is it his child?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the mother?”

  “You want to know? Straight up?” I feel his eyes on me.

  “I can take it, doc.”

  “The mother is Eletha.”

  I gasp as if the wind were knocked out of me again. I can’t say anything for a minute.

  “Grace?” He touches my arm, but I move it away.

  “The mother is Eletha? The child—”

  “Is Malcolm.”

  Oh, God. “How do you know that?”

  “She dropped him off here.”

  My mind reels. I think of Malcolm’s picture on Eletha’s desk. His lightish skin. Why didn’t I think of it? Armen paid for her tuition, even. “They were married?”

  “No. I checked. Never married.”

  Malcolm, born out of wedlock? “Does Susan know?”

  “I don’t know, I’ve never seen her here. Armen met Malcolm every Sunday.”

  “Since when?”

  “I don’t know that either. They played inside, sometimes he took him to Clark Park. Places he wouldn’t be recognized. He was a good father.”

  My stomach turns over. “Oh, please. He was a liar.”

  “That’s unfair.”

  “How do you know? What was he, Clarence Thomas? God, was I blind.”

  “Don’t judge him until you have all the facts. I knew Armen, too. He was a good man. He went out of his way for me. He got them to let me into the Y, even got me a locker. He didn’t care that I was homeless.”

  “You’re not. And he was a piece of shit.”

  “You don’t believe that or you wouldn’t have protected him.”

  “I protected him? How?”

  “You didn’t tell me about the money. The $650,000. That’s how you knew about the apartment, isn’t it?”

  I sink back into the couch. My head hurts even more. “How do you know about the money?”

  “The IRS found out about the account. It was a fraction of that last year, when he declared it. Gained a lot of weight in twelve months.”

  “It couldn’t be a bribe for Canavan, you know. Armen wanted the case to come out the other way.”

  “I know that and you know that, but the money convinced my boss it was Armen who took the bribe. They figure it’s the reason he killed himself, he couldn’t live with it. He killed himself in April—tax time, they figure. They’re gonna pull the plug on this investigation any day now. The bad guy is already dead.”

  “But you saw Armen at the argument. It was him against Galanter.”

  “They think that was just for show. He hadn’t voted yet, he was killed before he could. If I don’t turn up something very soon, the investigation is over. Armen’s gonna be smeared in every newspaper in the country.”

  “But his killer would go free.”

  “I know, and the world will think Armen was dirty. Including his son.”

  I feel stunned. It was awful before, and now it’s worse. Now it’s Armen and Eletha, my lover and my friend. Were they still seeing each other, sleeping together? What did she mean to him? What did I mean to him? “I don’t know if I’m still in.”

  “I want you out, I told you. You’re in danger.”

  “It’s not that.” I tell him about what happened with Maddie, even about my father. He’s a good listener and stays quiet for a minute after I finish; the last man who listened to me that intently was Armen.

  “So you’re hurt,” he says.

  True. “I always thought he was so honest, so honorable. But here, this place. A child, Malcolm.”

  “He would’ve told you sooner or later.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let me take it from here, you’re in way too deep. All I wanted you to do was answer Galanter’s phone. Now you’re breaking into apartments.”

  “I didn’t break in, I talked my way in.”

  He smiles. “You lied your way in. Not illegal, just immoral.”

  It reminds me of Armen, and our talk that night, over Hightower. Law and morality. You can’t separate them, why would you want to? Then I think of his broad back slumped over his desk. Armen was murdered, and murder is wrong. Illegal and immoral. Nothing I’ve learned tonight changes that, and I’m still the only one who has a chance of getting to Galanter. I rise, unsteadily. “Maybe I’m not out, Rain Man.”

  Winn takes my elbow. “Aw, come on, Grace. I worry about you.”

  “Good. Somebody should.”

  “I mean it.”

  His voice has a softness I’d rather ignore, at least for the time being. “You want to walk me out or you gonna play Batman again?”

  I get no answer, not that I expected one. We end up leaving by the conventional method. He waits for me on the sidewalk while I stop downstairs to return the key. The old woman opens the door carrying the cat, a chubby orange tabby. “I heard you moving the furniture!” she says slyly.

  “Moving the furniture?”

  She plucks the key from my hand. “You’re a nineties woman, I’ll tell you that!” The woman shuts the door, and the cat meows in belated agreement.

  23

  Monday morning I push open the glass door into the courthouse lobby. It’s mercifully clear of reporters and crowds, but it looks like martial law has been declared. There are double the number of marshals, and even the lawyers and court employees have to go through the detectors. I join one of the lines, predictably the slowest moving.

  “What gives?” I say to a skinny marshal, when I reach the middle of the line. Jeff stands at his side.

  “New rules, on account of that circus last week.”

  “A little late, isn’t it?”

  “Tell the AO that.”

  In front of me in line is an older woman, thin and tall, with marvelously erect posture. Her gray hair is swept into an elegant French twist and the air around her smells like lilac bushes in June.

  “Line up, now!” roars McLean, at the head of the line. His booming voice sets the woman in front of me trembling. “All bags on the conveyor belt! All bags on the belt! Sir, sir!” he shouts at a heavyset man in a red Phillies windbreaker.

  “Shit,” the man says. He surrenders the wrinkled paper bag to the conveyor belt of the X-ray machine.

  “Say what, sir?”

  Ray looks over from behind the machine. “Don’t be roughin’ up the Phils fans, McLean. We need ’em all, after last season.”

  The marshals laugh, including the fan. But not McLean. “I’m not roughin’ nobody up. I’m doin’ my job.” The fan lumbers through the metal detector, and McLean motions distractedly to the woman in front of me. “You don’t know who’s carryin’ a piece,” he says. “You can’t tell by lookin’.”

  The older woman quivers like Katharine Hepburn.

  “They still haven’t caught the guy who did those shootings,” McLean continues, watching her place a wristwatch with a black cord band into the bin. “You can pack anywhere, even your boot.” He shouts over her
head to the marshal at the monitor, “Billy, you remember that joker, the one with the boot?”

  Billy peers over the top of the monitor. “The cowboy.”

  “Yeah. Some cowboy,” McLean says. “Put your purse on the belt, ma’am.”

  The woman watches with apprehension as her purse disappears into the maw of the machine. As the light turns green, McLean propels her through the metal detector and looks at me. “How’s your head, Ms. Rossi?”

  “Fine, thanks,” I say warily.

  “Put your purse on the belt. Go when the light turns green.”

  “You be nice to her, McLean,” Ray says. “She’s my girl. Grace, you takin’ care of that matter we discussed?”

  Damn. I forgot to talk to Eletha about him. How can I broach it now, when I can barely look her in the eye? “I’m workin’ on it, Ray.” I walk through the metal detector, but it explodes in a ringing alarm.

  “Come back on through,” McLean says. I walk back through the metal detector and the clamor subsides.

  “What’s the deal?”

  “Turned up the sensitivity. Have to do our jobs right.” He winks, but it’s not friendly. “Take off your watch and try it again.”

  I snap off my Seiko, and it clatters into the bin on the counter. I start through the metal detector, but no sooner do I hit the black rubber carpet than the detector erupts in another cacophonous warning. The people in line break ranks to see what’s going on.

  “I think she’s okay,” Ray says, “even if she is a lawyer.” The other marshals laugh.

  “No, can’t take any chances. Ms. Rossi’s been a busy lady, checkin’ up, makin’ sure we’re doin’ our jobs.”

  I glance at Ray, but he looks as surprised as I do. “I was checking security.”

  “I know what you were doing. You wanted to know who was on duty the night Judge Gregorian bought it. Well, you’re lookin’ at him, and I didn’t see nothin’ unusual. Earrings in the box.”

  I drop my hoops into the bin. “Do you check the hallways?”

  “Sure, I patrol.”

  “Did you check our hallway, on eighteen?”

  “Sure did. Nothin’ there.”

  “At what time?”

  “About eleven o’clock, then again around four or so.”