Devil's Corner Page 3

  “Whenever you’re ready.” Bale nodded. He and Vicki watched Strauss leave, his silhouette tall and lean in the klieglights, framed by the threshold of the front door. His breath made a puff of smoke in the frigid air, and he didn’t even pause in the spot where Morty had been cut down.

  “You like him, Chief?” Vicki asked, watching Strauss go.

  “I got a uniform out there, to take you home,” Bale replied, his dark eyes reflecting the white glare of the TV lights, and the moving shadows.

  As soon as Vicki reached the pavement, reporters hit her like a blast of cold air. “Vicki, any comment?” “Vicki, can you describe the killer?” “Ms. Allegretti, what were you doing here tonight?” “Where were you when Special Agent Morton got shot?” “Vicki, did the ATF agent have any last words?”

  Morty. Vicki kept her head down as she barreled through the crowd, holding up a no-comment hand. She’d run this gauntlet once in the D.A.’s office, but Strauss had been right, this was the bigs. The police presence was double the usual, including dogs and horses, and the media was national, evidently including jackasses.

  “Is it true the woman was pregnant?” “Was this a drug bust?” “Why weren’t the Philly cops there?” “Why were you involved?” “Victoria, look this way! Just one picture, please!”

  Reporters thronged so close that Vicki almost tripped on a black electrical cable powering the bright klieglights, foam-covered microphones, black cameras with rubbery collapsible shades, and whirring videocameras. She caught sight of herself in a monitor, her head floating, oddly disembodied, in the wintry black sky. On the screen, she looked even shorter than five two, which she hadn’t known was physically possible.

  A uniformed cop signaled to her from in front of an idling cruiser. Traffic on the usually busy boulevard had been rerouted to the inner lanes, and behind the cruiser sat a ring of police sawhorses, holding back neighbors and onlookers who were talking, smoking, and calling out questions, despite the frigid temperature. Vicki wished she could find out what they knew about Jackson, Jamal Browning, or comings and goings at the house, but she wasn’t about to canvass the neighborhood within earshot of the media.

  She sprinted for the police car, introduced herself to the cop, and slipped into the warmed-up backseat. The car took off, edging through the crowd until they reached open road. Vicki didn’t say anything as the cruiser sped through the darkened streets. She tried not to feel the ache in her ribs. Or, worse, in her heart.

  In time, the cruiser took a right onto the drive that snaked along the Wissahickon River: they passed lovely old Tudor homes, and in the next few minutes they arrived at her development, East Falls Mews, which was supposed to blend in, but didn’t. Attached town homes of faux stone with ersatz Tudor touches lined the winding streets, newly paved; it was a lame place to live, but the rent was low and it sat just inside the Philly limits, a job requirement for D.A.’s. Lately Vicki had been talking about moving into Center City, so she had a hope of Meeting Somebody, but her social life was the last thing on her mind tonight. That is, until the squad car pulled up in front of her house.

  Because, to her surprise, shivering as he sat on her front step was just the man she wanted to see.

  FIVE

  Once they were inside, Vicki fell into Dan’s embrace, realizing when she was enveloped how much she needed him. She burrowed into the chilled puffiness of his North Face jacket, feeling underneath the hard contours of his chest and the comfort of his strong arms. His open neck smelled of cold air and hard soap, and he was tall and lean, even in the down jacket. She held him as close as was permissible, then pulled away. Theirs was a relationship that drove Vicki crazy, even if it would make Plato himself proud.

  Because Dan Malloy was married.

  Vicki knew the rules: a hug was allowable, if the duration was brief and there was no contact below the waist. A kiss was kosher, if it was on the forehead and she had won a felony conviction. The word that began with L and rhymed with glove was forbidden, unless they were talking about Sicilian pizza, which they both loved. Of course, explosive sex, hot sex, combustible I-have-denied-myself-for-too-long sex, I’ve-been-thinking-about-this-forever sex had never happened. And it wasn’t ever going to, outside of Vicki’s imagination, where it occurred with great frequency and mutual satisfaction.

  “I wanted to make sure you were okay.” Dan held Vicki at arm’s length, searching her face with sky-blue eyes, slightly watery from the cold. His gingery hair, layered with longish sideburns, was a sexy rumple. “You must be dying inside. I always thought Morty was like a father to you.”

  Exactly. Vicki had never felt so completely understood by someone who was so completely married.

  “Jesus, he’s dead. I can’t believe it.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “From TV. It’s impossible that he’s gone.” Dan’s eyes went dazed and his voice husky. His eyes clouded with sadness, and the corners of his flattish lips turned unhappily down, his frown so deep that the freckles dotting his forehead clustered together. “He was such a great guy. A hardworking guy, and fun. He could always make me laugh.”

  Vicki felt a twinge of fresh grief. Dan had really liked Morty, and Morty liked him, too. Of course, everybody liked Dan; he was the Golden Boy of the office. He’d racked up more convictions than anybody in his class, quarterbacked the AUSA football game against the federal marshals, and bought the vanilla sheet cake for the receptionist’s birthday. At thirty-five years old, Dan Malloy had been anointed, and everybody knew it but him.

  “Morty didn’t deserve to die that way,” he said.

  “Nobody does. Neither did she.” Vicki blinked her tears back, postponing them. She didn’t know when she’d feel safe enough to cry. She kept getting extensions of time, a lawyer’s habit.

  “Mariella says she’s really sorry. She’d be here if she could but she’s on call.”

  “Tell her I said thanks.” Vicki hoped this sounded convincing. Dan’s wife, the exotic Dr. Mariella Suarez, was a resident at Hahnemann Hospital; beautiful, willowy, fake-blonde, and constantly on call. She spoke three languages, including her native Portuguese, and was remote even for a surgeon. She was married to the most wonderful man on the planet, to whom she paid no attention, which was why, in the incomprehensible logic of the cosmos, she had him.

  Dan was saying, “You must be beat. I brought wine. Come on, it’s medicinal.” He turned and went into the kitchen, sliding out of his jacket on the way, revealing a gray T-shirt in which he’d undoubtedly been playing basketball. He set the coat on a dining room chair, releasing a subtle odor that gave credence to the pheromone thing.

  Vicki breathed deeply and followed him into the kitchen. She stopped before she got there, taking off her stained trench-coat and laying it over another dining room chair. She couldn’t bear to look at it again, much less wear it. She entered the kitchen, flopped into the wooden chair at the round table, and kicked off her pumps. “I hate high heels.”

  “Me, too.” Dan set the wine on the tile counter and went into her silverware drawer for the corkscrew. He knew exactly where it was, because he was over so often. They had met a year ago, when she’d become an AUSA and got the office next to him, and they’d become close, sharing gossip at lunch and war stories whenever possible. They had dinner after work, too, when Dr. Bitchy was on call; Dan had probably cooked more meals in this kitchen than Vicki had, which made her feel oddly ashamed. She eyed the room in case there was a pop quiz.

  The kitchen measured about twenty feet long and was just wide enough to qualify as a galley. Authentically distressed oak covered the floor, and matching cabinets lined the wall. A halogen light of tangerine Murano glass hung down from the ceiling, casting a soft, if concentrated, glow on the round kitchen table. Dan stood at the indefinite edge of the lamplight in jeans that were too big, which Vicki found secretly charming.

  She watched him pour the wine into two glasses, and it washed bubbling against the side. It was a Chardonnay
, which Dan knew was her favorite, and his thoughtfulness triggered a wave of longing so powerful that she had to swallow, physically forcing it back down her throat. She wished that she could lose herself in him for just one night, but he didn’t think of her that way. Not that it mattered, for those purposes. He could just lie still.

  “Here’s what the doctor ordered.” Dan turned, glasses in hand, and brought them to the table, where he put them down and sat in the other chair. They both lifted their glasses without saying a word, tacitly toasting Morty. Their eyes met, but Vicki broke contact first and took a sip. The cold Chardonnay tingled on her tongue. Cold comfort, but comfort.

  “Thanks for doing this,” Vicki said.

  “What a guy.”

  “Really, it was nice of you. I know you hate Chardonnay.”

  “Not true.” Dan took another sip and rallied, putting the moment behind them. “Chardonnay is classy. Even the word is classy. Chardonnay makes me feel almost as classy as you.”

  “Don’t start.” Vicki smiled. It was a running joke between them. Her parents were prominent lawyers who ran a prosperous firm in Center City, and Dan had grown up in a working-class city neighborhood, Juniata, and his father was a ne’er-do-well who had served time for petty forgery. Dan had a chip on his shoulder about his family, but it didn’t matter to Vicki, except that it reminded her of her parents. She fleetingly considered calling to tell them she was okay, but they generally went to bed by ten o’clock.

  “So, you want to talk about what happened?” Dan looked at her so intensely, it could qualify as foreplay in most jurisdictions. Just not the Platonic jurisdiction.

  “In a minute.”

  “Fair enough. I was worried about you.”

  “You’d better.” Vicki always shrugged off any nice thing Dan said, even borderline flirting. He would never have cheated, and she wouldn’t want an affair with him; frankly, not only because of her morals, which went out the window when he wore those jeans, but because she wanted to be number one. What trial lawyer would settle for number two? The name for number two is loser.

  “They said on the TV news that you ‘narrowly escaped with your life.’ ” Dan made quote marks in the air, but didn’t smile. “Is that true?”

  Vicki flashed on the guns. It struck her that she had faced two tonight, which should count as narrowly, if not miraculously. “Yes.”

  “Were you scared?”

  “My underwear is clean.”

  Dan laughed. “That was an overshare.”

  “I’m proud of that. It wasn’t easy.”

  “I try not to think about your underwear.”

  Don’t try so hard. Vicki watched him drink his wine, which was almost half gone, and a silence fell between them. She fought her customary urge to entertain him by filling in the conversational gap, but she didn’t want to turn Morty’s death into another war story. And she knew it was a bad habit, her jumping up and down for him. Always reaching for him, inside. Unrequited didn’t begin to describe her feelings for him. Unrequited wasn’t even the warm-up act.

  “I switched around the channels, to get the story.” Dan drained his wineglass. “They had video from outside the house, and interviews. Strauss was on, too, before he went in.”

  Vicki didn’t comment. Dan liked Strauss.

  “Did you see him?”

  “The cheese? Yes. Bale was there, too, and he didn’t fire me.”

  “How could he? It wasn’t your fault.”

  Vicki couldn’t say as much. She took a sip of wine, but it didn’t help.

  “On TV, they showed your picture. The one from orientation. You looked great. One of the anchors said you were ‘attractive’ and ‘a rising star.’ ”

  “Did they mention I was single?”

  “They must have forgotten,” Dan said, slurring his words slightly, and Vicki eyed him, amused.

  “Hey, did you have dinner tonight?”

  “No. I shot hoops and we went out for a beer after. Why?”

  “Your mouth stopped working a few words ago.” Vicki smiled. It was another running joke. “Face it, Malloy. You’re a girl.”

  “No! I had a few beers is all. Then I saw the TV, I didn’t wait for the burger.” Dan’s freckled skin flushed pink. “I suck at being Irish.”

  “It’s the Jesuit in you.”

  “No, it’s all your fault, Vick.”

  “Mine?”

  “I spend too much time with you.”

  “Not possible,” Vicki said, then caught herself. It was the wine talking and it had accidentally said something true. She felt like her slip was showing and she didn’t even wear slips.

  Dan looked down for a moment, into his empty glass. Then he looked up, taking her in, but saying nothing.

  “What?” Vicki asked.

  “I went to the house tonight, but the FBI wouldn’t let me in. That was one mother crime scene. They didn’t honor my ID, the scene was so restricted.”

  Dan had been there? “You were at my CI’s house tonight? How’d you know where it was?”

  “The street name was on the TV, and you mentioned where you were going, remember? You tell me everything.”

  Not everything, handsome.

  “I waited outside at the scene for a while. I figured they were taking your statement, so I came here. I knew you had to come home. I picked up the wine on the way. Anyway, I had a lot of time to think about, well, how it would be if you had been killed tonight. I mean, you could have been murdered.”

  But Morty was. Morty was the cop.

  “It made me think about what my life would be like.” Dan paused, his lips pursed and his gaze unfailingly blue and steady. “If you had, you know. It made me think about some things. Like how I feel about you.”

  Huh? Vicki told herself to stay calm. Dan had never said anything about any feelings for her, and she had certainly never told him about her crush on him. Suddenly the moment was upon them, after a year of getting closer and closer.

  “So I wanted to tell you tonight, more than anything, how I feel. Because now I know that all that crap they talk about is true.”

  Vicki said nothing, but her heartbeat stepped up. Dan had stopped slurring his words, he was concentrating so fiercely.

  “You know that crap they say? That you never know when life can be taken or what’s going to happen? That everything you have can be gone in one minute, and it will be too late? That crap?”

  Vicki was pretty sure she was breathing but she wouldn’t swear to it.

  “Well, it’s true. You can’t take anyone for granted. You have to tell people how you feel about them when they’re alive, because tomorrow’s not guaranteed to anyone.” Dan leaned over and placed his hand on hers.

  Oh my God.

  “Well, what I realized is that I can’t imagine my life if you weren’t in it.”

  Vicki officially stopped breathing.

  “You’re my best friend in the world.”

  Vicki’s mouth went dry. She waited a minute. She wasn’t sure what she’d heard, then she wasn’t sure whether Dan was finished. But he wasn’t saying anything more. Maybe he wasn’t finished anyway? He couldn’t have been, because he hadn’t said what she needed to hear, which was:

  I love you.

  “You look weird.” Dan cocked his head. “You think it’s strange to have a best friend who’s a girl?”

  “Not at all,” Vicki answered flatly. She slid her hand out from under his and got up for more wine. She would have to start drinking heavily, if they were going to keep being Friends Without Benefits.

  Later, before she eased her aching body into bed, Vicki called her parents and left a message on both of their cell phones, because she knew it was the first thing they checked each morning. In the messages she told them not to worry about anything they heard on TV, online, or on the car radio into work, because she was fine.

  Vicki didn’t mention that she was hopelessly in love with a very married man or that, first thing in the morning, she was g
oing to investigate a triple homicide.

  SIX

  The William Green Federal Building was a modern redbrick edifice that anchored Sixth and Arch streets, attached to the United States Courthouse and situated at the center of a new court complex that Vicki thought of as a Justice Mall. The Neiman Marcus of the Justice Mall would be the Constitution Center, a glitzy shrine to sell the Bill of Rights, and the Gap would be the Federal Detention Center, a generic column of gray stone, except for its horizontal window slits. The FDC almost didn’t get built because nobody wanted a federal prison reminding the shoppers — er, tourists — that the City of Brotherly Love was also the City of Brotherly Robbery and Weapons Offenses. But the FDC was ultimately approved because officials agreed to construct a secret underground tunnel from the prison to the federal building, so the shoppers wouldn’t know. It was through this tunnel that defendant Reheema Bristow was being escorted this morning.

  Vicki waited in a plastic bucket chair in a proffer room on the secured fourth floor of the federal building. They were called proffer rooms because defendants “proffered” here, i.e., offered to tell the government incriminating information, off the record, in return for immunity or a recommendation to the judge for a downward departure on their sentence. This proffer room was unfortunately identical to the others: white boxes, uniformly windowless and airless, containing brown Formica conference tables and a few mismatched chairs.

  Vicki collected her thoughts. The straw purchase case might have collapsed, but she wasn’t dropping the charges until after she had questioned Bristow just one time. Nobody would be the wiser; the defense didn’t know the identity of the confidential informant because Vicki wasn’t required to divulge until right before trial or even before the CI took the stand, if witness intimidation was an issue. She was bending the rules a little, but Morty’s death provided more than enough motivation. She’d thought of the plan last night when she couldn’t sleep, replaying the awful shootings in her mind.

  She crossed her legs and willed herself to stay centered; the record showed that Bristow could be provocative. Straws weren’t usually held in custody, but Bristow had turned her temporary detention into an almost year-long stay by mouthing off to the magistrate judge during her hearing. Whatever Bristow brought this morning, Vicki could handle it. She brushed an imaginary hair off her black wool suit, her hair swept back into a black barrette and curling loosely at the nape of her neck. She had picked out the outfit on autopilot, then realized she was dressed in mourning. Only determination held raw grief at bay.