Devil's Corner Page 8

  And underneath had been written:

  She didn’t get it. Reheema had been a good student and a track star in high school. When had she gone so wrong? How had she ended up in the FDC? Vicki stared at a photo of Reheema in a black track singlet, in a formal group photo with her teammates. Their singlets read Willowbrook Lady Tigers, and Vicki felt a start of recognition. Willowbrook High was her father’s alma mater! He never talked about his high school days, except to say that he was in chess club, but she knew he’d graduated from Willowbrook.

  Her gaze fell to another snapshot of Reheema, lovely and smiling in the middle of her track pals, and they all stood in front of an old Ford Econoline van with a homemade sign painted on a bedsheet: PENN RELAYS OR BUST. In the driver’s seat of the van sat a tall woman with a mature version of Reheema’s camera-ready features and an equally dazzling smile. The driver had to be Mrs. Bristow, before she’d become a ghost of herself.

  The image turned Vicki’s emotions on their head. She’d thought she knew about crack addiction, but she had learned it from cases she’d tried, in a legal context. She had never seen it up close, viewed as part of a family. And in this case, it wasn’t the daughter who was the user, it was the mother. And Vicki had always thought of criminal defendants as simply “the defendant”; she had never personalized a felon. But here it was, staring her in the face. She was prosecuting a girl who graduated from high school only a year ahead of her, and in National Honor Society, as she had been. A girl who worked a job and was “super-reliable,” as she was. A track star who had borne up, even excelled, under odds that Vicki never had to deal with, like a mother who had disintegrated into powder. And what if Mrs. Bristow had gotten worse after Justice had put her daughter away for the straw purchase?

  What was going on? Was what she was doing right or wrong? Was Reheema guilty or not? Could Vicki help Mrs. Bristow at all? She turned, puzzling, from the bulletin board and left the bedroom. She got halfway down the stairs, and the sight in the first-floor bedroom told her that she didn’t have the right answers.

  In fact, she didn’t even have the right questions.

  FOURTEEN

  Arissa Bristow was gone. The mattress in the makeshift bedroom lay empty. And Vicki’s purse lay on the floor, its contents strewn onto the filthy rug.

  Damn! How could she have been so stupid? She hurried to her purse and kneeled on the rug. Her mascara, eyeliner, a lipstick, her thick black Filofax, her BlackBerry, and, happily, her car keys, had been dumped in a pile. Of course, her wallet was gone and so was her cell phone.

  Vicki sat back on her haunches, angry at herself. She had set her purse down when she thought Mrs. Bristow had stopped breathing and had forgotten about it when she went to the kitchen. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she had fifty bucks in her wallet, a black nylon Kate Spade, which cost a hundred bucks. Luckily, she didn’t carry her checkbook, but she did have three zillion credit cards; Visa, Amex, Ann Taylor, Gap, Lord & Taylor, Nordstrom. Her ATM card and her driver’s license were gone; and worse, so were her DOJ creds, in their little black bifold.

  Vicki couldn’t believe it. Losing her Justice ID was an even bigger deal than losing her license. A guy at work had lost his and had to get authorization from Bale and reapply to Washington for a replacement. She couldn’t even get into the office building without it these days.

  “Argh!” Vicki considered calling 911, but she had no cell. And Mrs. Bristow had no telephone. She threw her stuff back in her purse, scrambled to her feet, and sprinted for the door after Mrs. Bristow. Okay, so I haven’t worked out in a few days. I can still catch a crack addict.

  She ran through the door, her coat flying open, and hurried down the steps onto the sidewalk. It was darkening now and so cold; the sky was a frozen blue. The rising moon was full, casting a cool whiteness. She looked right, then left, down Lincoln Street. The sidewalk was still deserted. The row houses stood silent, not giving up their secrets. Mrs. Bristow wasn’t in sight. It hadn’t been that long. Where had the woman gone? She couldn’t drive; she could barely stand. Was she in a neighbor’s house?

  Vicki sprinted next door and peered in a cracked window, but there was no light inside and the house seemed still. She went to the next house and knocked. No lights were on inside, and nobody answered. She ran to the Cabrio, pulled the keys from her purse, chirped the car unlocked, and hopped in. She’d find the woman faster in the car. She switched on the ignition and zoomed out of the space, going the right way on the one-way street, then taking a right onto Washington Street, another right onto Harrison, then a third right onto Van Buren.

  No Mrs. Bristow. Vicki turned on the heat, and it blew a cold stream into her face. She drove around, looking. The next few minutes were a blur of American presidents until she looked to the right. Behind Lincoln was a narrow street that ran parallel to it, almost an alley. The crooked green sign read

  CATER STREET, but the light at the corner was out. In the moonlight, Vicki could barely see shadows moving on the street, at the far end.

  There. Shuffling toward the shadows was Arissa Bristow, easily recognizable because she wore only her housedress. The poor woman had no coat on and moved through the cold night with surprising speed. Vicki pulled over to the curb, cut the ignition and put her hand on the door handle, about to get out and run after her. Then she stopped herself.

  How would it look? An AUSA running down the street, physically tackling the aged, crack-addicted mother of someone she was prosecuting? Not a great idea. Vicki weighed her options. She wanted her wallet and her phone back, but she wasn’t supposed to be here anyway. Also, she felt a little scared at the prospect of running down a dark street in this neighborhood. I’m not from the suburbs for nothing.

  Then she had a better, or at least a safer, idea. Mrs. Bristow had wanted to smoke, and now, thanks to her new lawyer, she had fifty bucks in cash. There was only one place she would go — to buy more crack. It might be interesting to see where she bought it. Vicki stayed in the driver’s seat and watched Mrs. Bristow travel purposefully up the street, her dress flapping like a flag. Decrepit row houses lined the street; some with lights on, some without. There seemed to be activity five houses down, at what appeared to be at a vacant lot, its entrance partially obscured by bare city trees. Mrs. Bristow approached the trees and turned right, disappearing into the darkness of the vacant lot.

  Vicki’s breath steamed up her windows and she rubbed out a circle on the passenger side. She kept her eyes trained on the trees. A large figure came out of the lot, with another shorter figure. The car got colder, the heat dissipating quickly through the thin convertible skin. Maybe there was a good reason VW stopped making Cabrios. She checked her watch: 6:15. She waited… 6:40. She wondered when Reheema would get released from the FDC. Would she come to see her mother? Vicki tucked her cold hands into her jacket pockets. She developed an ache in her neck from looking to the right so much.

  The sky darkened to blue-black ink but still no Mrs. Bristow. A few people, maybe five or six, went into the lot behind the tree and came out again. The only activity on the block was at the vacant lot. It had to be drug sales, but where was Mrs. Bristow? What if the woman had been hurt or had a seizure of some kind? Or what if Mrs. Bristow had just smoked up and fallen asleep in the lot? She couldn’t survive outside in the night, not at this temperature.

  Vicki was putting two and two together, developing a working theory. Maybe Reheema hadn’t resold the guns, but had given them to her mother, who had sold or traded them for crack. Guns were valuable currency to drug dealers, the engine powering the straw trade. The theory was consistent with what had happened at Vicki’s proffer conference and even jibed with Cavanaugh’s proffer conference. It was possible that Reheema wasn’t giving up the name because she wasn’t about to flip on her own mother.

  BOOM! Suddenly a loud bang came from the window on the driver’s side. Vicki jumped in fright and looked over. A fist pounded on her driver’s-side window. The Cabrio rocked
with the impact. A man in a black hood loomed inches from her face.

  “Get outta here, bitch!” he yelled, but Vicki was already twisting on the ignition and hitting the gas.

  She sped down the street, cranking the Cabrio engine as fast as it could go, and she didn’t stop speeding until her heartbeat returned to normal. At some point she came to a red light, unsure if she was in Atlantic City or maybe Maine, but she didn’t care. She was away from scary guys in hoods. But she had left Mrs. Bristow behind, and that worried her.

  She drove a few blocks until she spotted an Exxon station, then dug around in the car seat and retrieved a red scrunchy, a chipped grape Chiclet, and what she had wanted in the first place. She popped the Chiclet, got out of the car, and headed for the phone booth. Frigid air hit her like a blast; she hadn’t realized what a cocoon the Cabrio had been. She opened the booth’s squeaky collapsible door, which had left its runners long ago, fed the pay phone, and dialed her own cell phone. It was picked up after two rings.

  “Yo,” said a man’s voice, and Vicki was pissed. Mrs. Bristow had already unloaded the phone?

  “That’s my cell phone, pal! Who are you?” she shouted, but the man hung up. She pressed redial and when he picked up, she shouted again, “Where’s Arissa—”

  He hung up again, and Vicki let it go. She took a deep breath outside the phone booth and exhaled deeply, taking mental inventory and watching her breath cloud around her like a chain smoker. She should call the cops, but that would reveal she’d been with Mrs. Bristow. Odds were that Bale wouldn’t find out, but why risk it? Also, what could the cops do? Wallets got stolen all the time. Poor Kate Spade.

  The air felt cold, the lights of Center City twinkled far away. Vicki was in West Philly, halfway out to suburbs like the Main Line. She had no wallet, no cell, no money, and no credit cards. She’d have to cancel them ASAP. She felt exhausted, hungry, and dumb. She could use a little comfort. She had gas in the car because she never let the tank get too low, on the advice of women’s magazines. She moved her sleeve aside to check the time: 7:30.

  She could be there in no time.

  PART TWO

  The names of the streets are mostly to be taken from the things that grow in the country, as Vine Street, Mulberry Street, Chestnut Street, and the like.

  — WILLIAM PENN,

  Instructions to His Commissioners, 1681

  Q: What type of crack or what quality of crack did you see on Brooklyn Street? Was it good, was it bad?

  A: What type of crack?

  Q: Was it good quality or poor quality?

  A: Oh yeah, the best work in the city.

  Q: The best work in the city? What does “best work” mean?

  A: The best crack in the city.

  Q: Is that just that the amount you sold was good in terms of volume, or was it the actual quality?

  A: Quality.

  — DAVID WEST,

  United States v. Williams,

  United States District Court, Eastern District of

  Pennsylvania, Criminal Docket No. 2–172, February

  23, 2004, Notes of Testimony at 736–737

  FIFTEEN

  “Honey, I’m home!” Vicki called out, unlocking the front door, which opened to the shrill barking of a dog and the warning beep of a burglar alarm, set in case a psycho killer dropped in for Glenlivet, neat. She went to the keypad to disable the alarm before it went off, while her parents’ Welsh corgi sprinted into the entrance hall and attacked her shoe.

  “Ruby, no!” Vicki said over the beeping, shaking her toe to get the dog off. She punched her mother’s birthday into the white keypad, but the alarm went off, erupting into earsplitting sound. She shook her foot but the corgi hung on, a nasty blur of tan and white. Her startled parents rushed in from the kitchen.

  “Mom! Dad! Did you change the alarm code?” Vicki yelled over the din.

  “Yes, it’s my birthday now!” her father shouted, wincing. Vicki was trying to remember her father’s birthday but it was too noisy to think. Her father hurried past her to the keypad and punched in the new code, mercifully silencing the alarm, if not the corgi.

  “Ruby, no!” her mother said, but the dog growled and shook her head, with Vicki’s toe still in her teeth. “Ruby, no!”

  “Why does she do this?” Vicki couldn’t help but laugh, finally freeing her pump. She had no idea what had possessed her parents to buy this dog. Every time she came home, the dog attacked her toe, heels, and ankles. Either the animal had no long-term memory or her name was Ruby, no! “Mom, doesn’t she know me yet?”

  “She’s a herding dog.”

  “So?”

  “Ruby, no! Ruby, no!” Her mother bent over in her white silk blouse and full navy skirt, tugging the determined dog by her red leather collar.

  “Why does she bite me? I’m family.”

  “That’s why she’s herding you.”

  “She’s insane,” Vicki said, reaching down to pet the puppy, who only scampered away, barking and play-bowing on her short legs. She had eyes like brown marbles, legs like stumps, and a body like a Tater Tot. She kept nipping, trying to bite Vicki’s toe. Adorable, for an attack dwarf.

  “Why didn’t you call first, Victoria?” her father asked. He was still dressed from work in suit pants and a starched white shirt, but his Brioni tie was loose, which qualified for him as casual dress. His straight, dark hair, growing sparse on top, matched dark eyebrows that capped small brown eyes. His nose curved like a hawk and his lips were thin, with a small scar on the top lip that appeared when he frowned, as now. “We didn’t know you were coming.”

  “I have only the four lamb chops, honey,” her mother added, with plain regret. Her greenish eyes softened in spite of the surgically enhanced lift at their corners, and her hair, chin-length, curved gently under her chin and shone like jet in the light of the entrance hall’s chandelier. “We’re on the South Beach Diet, so we have to watch. I would have bought more if you’d called ahead.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t get a chance.” Vicki wouldn’t tell them she’d been stalking crack addicts. She had long ago stopped telling her parents anything. In fact, she was hoping she’d get to eat a full dinner before her father brought up what happened last night. “I was close by and figured I’d stop in. If there’s no dinner, that’s okay.”

  “Nonsense, you can have one of my chops,” her mother offered, putting a silk-swathed arm around Vicki and giving her a brief hug. “Come in, we were just about to sit down.” She smelled like Chanel and felt just as elegant, but it freed the dog to bite Vicki’s foot.

  “Mom, your dog hates me,” she said as they walked into the dining room, which had an oval walnut table as its polished center, surrounded by Chippendale chairs and red wallpaper blooming with etched Chinese poppies. Against the far wall sat a mahogany sideboard, and the rug was a silk Oriental, a red-and-white pattern that complemented the Mandarin-hued borders of her parents’ china, now set with cooling food in two place settings.

  “Ruby just wants you to stay with the group.”

  “She bites!”

  “Herds,” her mother corrected, and they fell into step, with the dog herding Vicki’s heel.

  “Why doesn’t she just lick my face like a normal dog?” Vicki remembered the neurotic poodle from her childhood, which looked like a saint next to this one. “Peppy never did that.”

  “Ruby has different instincts. She bites you only so you’ll do what she wants.”

  “The control freak of dogs.”

  “Oh, hush.” Her mother released Vicki with a smile and turned to the swinging door to the kitchen, in the back of the house. Ruby let go of Vicki’s heel and scooted after her. “Sit down while I get you a plate. I’ll be right back.”

  “Can I help?”

  “No, thanks. Keep your father company,” she called back airily, her navy silk skirt billowing gracefully behind her, her waist still svelte. Vicki became aware that her father was watching her mother with similar admiration.
They stood in the large dining room, saying nothing, and she wondered if there would ever come a time when she felt completely comfortable alone with her father, without her mother to fill in the silences. There was only one subject that she and her father ever agreed on:

  “Mom looks great, doesn’t she?” Vicki asked, but it wasn’t a question.

  “Absolutely. She goes to Curves now.”

  “There’s a Curves here? Where?”

  “On Lancaster Avenue, near the tile place. And Eadeh, the rug place.”

  “I see those Curves commercials all the time.” Vicki was putting herself to sleep with her own conversation. She was filling up the air with words until her mother got back and rescued them from each other. What was taking her so long?

  “Eadeh has very nice rugs. Very nice Oriental rugs.”

  “I heard that.”

  “She loves Curves. She goes three times a week. Here. Let’s sit. Dinner’s getting cold.” Her father pulled out his chair at the head of the table and sat down behind his plate, which held two medium-rare chops of New Zealand lamb, three florets of barely steamed broccoli, and a portion-controlled tossed salad, sparingly dressed with vinaigrette. Vicki sat down, and he gestured at his plate. “Your mother put us on South Beach, and she’s right. We eat twenty grams of carbs a day, no more. It’s much healthier than Atkins.”

  “I’m sure,” Vicki said, but she hungrily wished she belonged to one of those Italian families in the Olive Garden commercials, who ate piles of spaghetti with hearty red tomato sauce. Her parents wouldn’t be caught dead in an Olive Garden and now they were the only Italians in the world who didn’t eat pasta.