“Chill. My friend has a lot of money on you. A lot of money. He ain’t the kind of friend you fuck with.”
“I ain’t the kind of friend you fuck with! Motherfuck!” Star rumbled like a volcano inside. Didn’t mean nothin’ to the dude Star fought Golden Gloves, was the next Tyson. Nigger could never get over. Star twisted the Caddy to the curb and jerked open the passenger door. “Get out, freak!”
“What? In this neighborhood?” the dude said, his voice panicky.
“I said, get out!” Star shoved the asshole onto the sidewalk and slammed the door closed. “Better run, motherfucker! It’s gettin’ dark out.”
9
“I’ll represent you, on two conditions.” Bennie set her briefcase on the Formica counter, yanked out a metal chair, and faced Connolly. The inmate was smiling, though her eyes remained icy, and Bennie tried to ignore the resemblance between them. “Number one, you have to tell me the truth. I have to know more about you than anyone else in that courtroom.”
“That should be easy,” Connolly said, standing on her side of the counter. “You already do. We’re twins.”
“Which brings me to condition number two. The only way I can represent you is if we keep the case, and only the case, in focus.” Bennie unzipped her briefcase and retrieved a legal pad. “Table the twin issue. I have to prepare your defense. That has to be paramount.”
“Does this mean the photos convinced you?”
“It means it doesn’t matter to the court case. Now, sit down and let’s get the facts.” Bennie gestured to Connolly, who sank slowly into the chair opposite her, her brow knit in disappointment.
“It matters to me,” she said. “I still want to meet my mother. My real mother.”
“Look, if we take time talking about personal issues, you won’t be alive to meet anybody. You answer my questions and we’ll do fine. It’s Tuesday already. We have less than a week until trial unless I can get a continuance. I have a hundred things to do on this case, in addition to my other cases.”
“Just tell me one thing. What is our-my-our-mother like?”
Bennie glared her into silence. “I have some background questions for you. Ever been addicted to drugs or alcohol?”
“No.”
“Any prior convictions, or been arrested or questioned for any reason?”
“No.”
“You were raised where?”
“New Jersey. Vineland.”
Bennie made a note. “Went to Vineland public schools?”
“Yes.”
“Quick rundown of your childhood.”
Connolly nodded. “Okay. Strictly business, I get it. I was an okay student, not great, a B, C student. I lived with my parents, at least I thought they were my parents. They never told me I was adopted. They were weird, no friends or anything, real quiet. I don’t remember a lot about my childhood except that we had a great dog. I love dogs, crazy about them.”
Bennie thought of her golden retriever. “Go on.”
“That’s it, basically. I wasn’t that close to my parents, and my mother, not my real mother, was sick a lot. She had multiple sclerosis. They both died in a car crash when I was nineteen. I was about to start college, at Rutgers, on full scholarship.”
Bennie couldn’t help but notice that Connolly’s youth echoed hers. “How’d you get a full scholarship? They’re hard to come by.”
“Basketball.”
“Athletic?” Bennie hid her surprise. Her own scholarship to Penn had been academic, but if they’d been giving them out for women’s rowing she would have gotten one. “How’d you do?”
“Lousy. I blew out my knee. Never lived up to potential, that was what the coach said. I dropped out when the scholarship wasn’t renewed. I was an English major.”
So had Bennie been, but she wasn’t about to mention that. “Ever been married or divorced?”
“No.”
“Ever lived with anybody?”
“Not before Anthony.”
Bennie made a note. “Okay. Tell me how you met Della Porta.”
“In a laundromat in town, when I first came to Philly. He was washing towels, tons of towels, and drinking coffee. I’m a coffee freak, so we started talking.”
Bennie didn’t say anything. She was a coffee fanatic. The similarities were impossible to ignore, or was she looking for them? “When did you and Anthony start living together?”
“We dated for about a half year before I moved in. I had been living with him for about a year when he was killed.”
Bennie didn’t have to make a note. It was a year ago that she and Grady bought the money pit. “How did you and Anthony get along?”
“Great. We were happy. He was a great guy.”
“No fights?”
“No more than normal. We were happy. Really.”
“Ever talk marriage?”
“A little, but nothing definite,” Connolly answered, and Bennie thought of herself and Grady. If Connolly and Della Porta were renovating a house, Bennie would kill herself.
“Okay, what happened the night Anthony was killed?”
“I came home from the library and he was lying there, dead. There was so much blood.” Connolly’s voice trembled. “It was horrible.”
“What time did you come in?”
“About eight at night. I’d been at the Free Library all day. I always used to leave at six-thirty and it takes an hour or so to walk home.”
“Did you work at the library?”
“No. I wrote there, on the computer, because it was quieter than the apartment, with the construction going on across the street. And the room in the library was real pretty, with ironwork all around.”
“What were you writing?”
“A novel. I was almost finished with the first draft. It was sort of literary fiction, I guess you’d call it.”
“Where’s the book now? Do the police have it?”
“I think they took the disk, but the book was protected with a password. If they insert the disk and use the wrong password, it’ll erase.”
“Your whole book will erase? All your work, wasted? You don’t have a hard copy?”
“I wasn’t far enough along. It wasn’t much good anyway, and I have bigger worries right now, like proving I’m innocent.”
It seemed strange. Bennie jotted a note to check the property receipts when she got the D.A.’s file. She wanted to know everything the police had seized. “All right, back to the night Anthony was killed. You found him. What did you see?”
“He was lying on his back, facing up, and there was the most awful expression on his face.” Connolly looked away, her attention apparently focused on the memory. “There was so much blood on the rug, on the couch, on the wall. At first I just stood there in shock, then I went over to him. I knelt beside him and I saw he was dead.”
“How did you know that?”
“You could tell. God. There was a hole right in his forehead, like someone had… drilled it.” Connolly bit her lip, which was a light, glossy pink. “I didn’t know what to do. I just knelt over him. I guess I was in shock. Then I ran out.”
Bennie scrutinized Connolly’s expression, limned with grief. She couldn’t determine whether Connolly was telling the truth. Bennie was usually able to pick up lying in her clients, but the resemblance between her and this client was screwing up her shit detector. She worried that Connolly wasn’t the woman she appeared to be, even though the woman she appeared to be was Bennie. “You ran out? You didn’t call the police?”
“Not a smart move, I know.” Connolly brushed her hair back with nails that had been filed into neat half-moons. “I was in a panic. I was worried whoever did it was still in the apartment. I wanted to get out of there.”
“What did you do when you ran out?”
“I ran down the street. Then I saw a cop car coming around the corner and I freaked out. I ran into the alley at the end of the street and out the other side.”