“No, I need that mess.”
“It’s trash.”
“It’s essential.”
“Then forget it.” Marshall stuck the course materials under her arm and a brochure sailed to the floor. She bent over to pick it up and her smooth brow furrowed. “Who gives these legal education courses? Professors?”
“No. Practitioners, other lawyers.”
“Isn’t this the lawyer you’re looking for?”
“What?” Bennie took the slick brochure from Marshall’s outstretched hand. Accounting for Attorneys was its title and under the course description was a thumbnail photo of the instructor. The eyes, the face, and the cleft chin were the same as the pencil sketch. Lyman J. Bullock, Esq., read the caption, and next to it, Bullock amp; Sabard, Attorneys-At-Law.
Bennie reached for the telephone.
24
Alice was waiting in line to use the telephone. In the house she waited in line for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She waited in line to drop off her dirty uniform; she waited in line to pick it up clean. She waited in line to leave the unit and to enter it again. It made her want to kill somebody. Like the bitch in line in front of her, using the phone. Alice didn’t recognize her. She must be from Unit B.
“I have to talk to him,” the inmate said, her voice high with anxiety. She picked at her scalp with long fingernails; her limp, brown hair had grown thin from the habit. “I need to discuss something important with him. I’m his wife.”
Alice felt a drumming in her head. She ignored it and checked the clock on the wall. Fuck. Only five minutes left before she had to get back to the unit. She’d have thrown the wacko off the phone but the guard was watching, his eyes shifting back and forth.
“Just tell him, tell him it’s me. Janine. Neenie. No, no, I have the right number. I know this is his number.”
The phone was on the wall in the hallway, next to the line for the commissary window. The inmates put in special orders and once a week the commissary packed transparent trash bags full of Doritos, potato chips, and Fritos. The dummies gobbled the shit like it was manna from heaven.
“No, no, no. She’s not his wife. I’m his wife. I’m telling you, I made him what he is today. He owes it all to me. He still loves me. Put him on right now.”
There was a line on the right, too, at the drug window. Inmates were lined up to pick up the legal drugs that got them off the illegal drugs, and suburban candy like Prozac and Ativan. The other inmates used the rock that traded freely in the house; the talk about instituting random drug testing never came to anything. Alice had had her stint with powder, then turned her experience into money. She was almost out of here, back in business on her own, the way she always wanted. But right now all she wanted was the goddamn phone. “Say good-bye, Neenie,” she said, reaching over and hanging up the phone as soon as the guard looked away.
The inmate turned. “How dare you? Don’t you know who I am?”
“Shut up or I’ll punch your face in,” Alice muttered. She picked up the phone and pounded in the number, checking her watch while the phone rang on the other end. Only two minutes left. The drug and commissary lines were almost finished. “Let me speak to him now,” she said when Bullock’s secretary picked up.
“Yes,” he said, on the line after a split second.
Alice fake-coughed into the receiver. “I think I caught a cold,” she said. She didn’t say more in case Bullock’s lines were tapped. She didn’t need to, Bullock would understand. They’d worked out a code for the business and for times like this. Alice had given Bullock a name to call if she got into trouble on the inside. They’d try to stop the contract from the outside. It wasn’t exactly Bullock’s element of society, but he’d do it for her because he had no choice.
“A cough?” Bullock said. “Sorry to hear that.”
“Gotta go.” Alice hung up, satisfied for the time being. Bullock was reliable, if nothing else. It was good to have an accountant and lawyer in one shot. Bullock was one of the suits from the Chamber of Commerce who’d wanted to invest in Star. Then Alice found a surer way for him to make a buck, only tax-free.
Alice’s eyes swept the last of the lines and Leonia wasn’t anywhere in sight. Bullock would get to work on the outside, but on the inside she’d have to watch her back. She slipped into the housing unit and headed for her cell.
25
Bennie reached the ground floor of her building with a problem. The press thronged in front of the building and she had to get to Lyman Bullock’s office. She lurked at the elevator bank, unsure how to leave. She couldn’t lead the press to Bullock. If he were Connolly’s lover, she’d be giving away a part of her defense; if he wasn’t, they’d plague him without cause. The lobby, paneled in glossy gray marble, was empty except for an older guard at the security desk. It was Lou Jacobs, a recently retired cop who liked Bennie as much as most cops. Not at all.
“Lou,” Bennie called from the elevator bank. “We got trouble.”
“I ain’t blind,” he said. “I been putting up with those jerks since lunch. Already they’re finding who else is in the building and makin’ up fake appointments.” He scowled at the reporters, his crow’s-feet wrinkling deeply in skin thickened with tan, from weekends on his motorboat. He wore his silvery hair slicked back, and his nose was strong as a seagull’s beak. A compact man, Lou wore his navy-blue uniform with a certain pride, which Bennie liked.
“I have to get out of here, Lou. Can I take the freight elevator?”
“No way. You don’t have freight.”
“Pretend I’m holding a fax machine.”
“Forget it.”
“Come on, Lou. You gonna throw me to the dogs?”
“If I can watch.”
Bennie gritted her teeth. “Either I take the freight or I stand in the lobby and hold a press conference. Your lobby fills up with reporters and your tenants can’t get in or out. You like that better?”
Lou shook his head. “You can’t use the freight. It’s against the rules.”
“Christ, Lou, don’t give me the rules. You want rules or you want reporters? Your choice, bucko.”
Lyman Bullock leapt to his wingtips behind his mahogany desk, his light eyes wide and his small mouth partly open, emphasizing his cleft chin. His pale skin reddened and his neck bulged over a stiff white collar, fastened by a collar pin that threatened asphyxiation. The lawyer’s demeanor told the truth, though he never would. “I don’t know anyone named Alice Connolly,” Bullock said firmly.
“You obviously do, you’re not even a good liar. Didn’t you go to law school?”
“I thought you said you wanted to see me about a case.”
“I do, Alice Connolly’s case.” Bennie hadn’t told Bullock the purpose of her visit when she’d telephoned. She’d just said she was a lawyer in need of ethics advice, with a possible case referral. “We need to talk, Lyman. By the way, is anything short for Lyman?”
“No.”
“Listen, Lyman. I’m not here to disrupt your life or to pry. May I sit down?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Thank you.” Bennie slipped into the Windsor chair across from Bullock’s desk. His office was large and sunny, with English antiques arranged conventionally on a blue patterned Sirook. The ethics business had evidently been good to Lyman Bullock. Lucky for him, lawyers were getting less ethical every day. “We need to talk about Alice Connolly. The man she lived with was murdered and she was charged with the crime. Her trial is next week. I’m her lawyer.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Bullock remained standing, his back stiff as a Chippendale chair. Behind his desk, twin diplomas hung on the wall, evidencing law and accounting degrees, and framed photographs of his family rested on a cherrywood credenza. His wife, with frosted hair and graduated pearls, smiled untroubled from a photo in an engraved silver frame. “I told you,” he repeated, “I don’t know anyone named Alice Connolly.”