“Congratulations, Bobby,” Mary told him, but she couldn’t determine if he’d heard. “Does he understand?”
“He understands more than you and me,” Joy answered tersely, then looked over. “When you called, you said you needed to talk to me about Jemison, for a case. You didn’t drive all the way out here to talk about quitting.”
“No? I mean, no.” Mary stopped daydreaming and remembered the Connolly case. “You were at Jemison when Judge Guthrie was there, weren’t you?”
“Sure. He was one of the gray hairs, in litigation. He was there from forever. He took care of all the old-line house clients. His billings were huge, all of it inherited from the gray hair before him.”
“Did you work for him?”
“Only a little, and I wasn’t even on the briefs. He was a nice man.”
“Then he became a judge.”
“Yes.” Joy nodded, keeping a hand on Bobby as the pony walked.
“Were you at Jemison when Henry Burden was there? He was a former D.A.”
“Sure. He’d been there a year or two when I got there. I never worked for him. He was muy macho. I didn’t need it.”
“Did Burden work for Guthrie at all?”
“Sure. He was Guthrie’s boy, totally.”
“So they were friends?”
“Not really. Guthrie was a loner in the firm, not political. He was into his family and was always the legal scholar. He wanted to be a judge for a long time. He even published while he practiced and wrote all the articles himself. How incredible is that?”
Mary put her head down, mulling it over. Dust covered her pumps as they marched next to the pony’s hooves. The clump clump clump was helping her think. “So at some point, Burden comes over from the D.A.’s office. Burden is very connected in city politics, but has no client base. Guthrie has a client base, but isn’t connected in city politics. Guthrie wants to be a judge, but you can’t be a judge without connections. Not in Philadelphia.”
Joy smiled at Bobby. “Sit up, buddy. Try to sit straight as a board.”
“So they formed an alliance,” Mary said, thinking aloud. “Burden got Guthrie a judgeship, and Guthrie turned over his clients. As a result, they owe each other, and they also owe a lot of powerful people in the city. Isn’t that interesting?”
“No, not at all. This is interesting. Ho, Frosty.” The pony halted next to a toy hoop mounted low on the cinderblock wall. Joy handed a lightweight basketball to Bobby, who squinted over his glasses and pitched the ball at the hoop. It veered wildly off course, arced into a wall, and rolled into the center of the ring. Joy ran to fetch it. “Put your hand on Bobby’s leg, Mary!” she called back.
“Huh? Why?”
“So he doesn’t fall off!”
“What?” Mary clamped a panicky hand on the boy’s leg. “Stay on, okay, Bobby? If you fall off, the guilt will kill me.”
Joy came back with the ball, panting. “You know, Mary, you could quit, too. If you don’t like your job, just quit. Just do it.”
“I can’t. I’ll fall off the edge of the earth. Now take this child. Put a hand on him. Save him from me.”
Joy handed Bobby the basketball and placed a confident grip on his leg. “You’ll find another job, you’ll see. In this economy, there’s tons of jobs. We have two openings. You want to work here?”
“Here?” Mary’s throat caught, and Bobby looked down at her, basketball between his hands, as if waiting for an answer. His eyes were brown, magnified by his dense lenses, and his gaze didn’t waver. Though his expression remained remote, Mary could see that he accorded her the same trust he did Joy, merely because she was an adult. She felt distinctly unworthy. “I don’t think I can,” she answered simply, and the boy turned away.
27
It was a business day at the prison and the interview rooms were full. Three-piece suits sat on the left side of the counter and orange jumpsuits on the right. Public defenders huddled with their clients next to tall stacks of accordion files. For their visits, the prison guards became air-traffic controllers, lining up the inmates like jets waiting to land.
“This is a surprise,” Connolly said. She stood up when Bennie banged into the interview room and let the door slam locked behind her. “I didn’t expect you today.”
“Expect me every day.” Bennie tossed her briefcase onto the Formica counter, where it landed with a loud thud, and she dropped into the chair behind it. “We got trouble. How did the press find out you might be my twin?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the way we look?”
“You didn’t tell them?”
“No, of course not.” Connolly sat down. “They’ve been calling here, but your secretary got me a message that said not to talk to the press. Not that they’d let me take those calls anyway.”
Bennie thought about it. It was true, calls in and out of the facility were limited. “Did you tell any friends in here who could have blabbed it?”
“I don’t have any friends.”
“How about on the outside?”
“Like I said.”
Bennie scrutinized Connolly to see if she was telling the truth. Her eyes, another set of Bennie’s eyes, were alert with what looked like genuine surprise, and she sat tense on the edge of the chair, her hands clasped on the counter. A tiny crease in her brow betrayed her anxiety; it looked like the kink that Grady always kidded Bennie about in her own brow. “You have no idea how the press found out?”
“No, not unless somebody in your firm told them.”
“No.” Bennie laced her fingers into a fist over the counter. “Let me ask you another question. Why didn’t you tell me about Lyman Bullock?”
Connolly’s mouth twitched and anger flickered across her features. She leaned back as if absorbing a blow, then seemed to compose herself. “Bullock,” she said with a sigh. “So you know about him.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You didn’t ask.”
“I shouldn’t have to. You’re supposed to tell me everything, and I decide what’s important for the case. You don’t make that decision, I do. I’m your lawyer.”
Connolly’s temper flared. “That doesn’t mean you’re my boss, lording it over me.”
“It’s not about who’s the boss.”
“The fuck it isn’t.”
Bennie bristled. The similarity between her and Connolly’s reaction to authority no longer struck her as a complete surprise. Still, she had a defense to stage. “Look, you called me to represent you, I’m trying to represent you. Knocking myself out to represent you, in fact, and so are my two best associates. Cooperate or die, okay? That incentive enough for you?”
Connolly sulked. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
“Except who you really are.”
Bennie straightened in her chair. “I know who I am.”
“No, you don’t, because you don’t know who I am. I change who you are, and you don’t like that one bit.”
“About the case.” If Connolly was playing a mind game with Bennie, she wouldn’t win. “We’re talking about the case.”
“You don’t like your cage rattled, huh? Well, deal with it.” Connolly stood up, and her chair squeaked noisily on the gritty floor. “That you’re on that side of the table, with your suit and your briefcase, so full of yourself. You think you can come up here and tear me a new asshole, then get back in your car and go home. You don’t want to believe that you’re my twin, huh? That you could have had the lousy luck. That you could have been here. You could have been me.”
“Lyman Bullock,” Bennie said evenly. “Sit down and discuss Lyman Bullock or I leave. When did you start seeing him?”