Connolly’s lip twisted. “October, that year,” she answered after a minute, and fell defiantly into her chair.
“Where did you meet him?”
“On the street. A hot dog stand.”
“A preppie lawyer, at a hot dog stand? Try again. The truth.”
Connolly didn’t bat an eye. “We met at the hot dog stand in front of the library. He pulled up in the car, to grab a dog. We got to talking.”
“Then what?”
“We had an affair, okay? Surprised I got a man like that?”
Bennie retrieved a legal pad and ballpoint from her briefcase. “Where did you go with him during the day?”
“An apartment he kept on the side. I wasn’t the first.”
“You have a key?”
“No, I met him there.”
“How many times a week?”
“In the beginning, once or twice a week. When he could.”
Bennie made a note. “You had sex.”
“No, we played Nintendo.” Connolly didn’t laugh and neither did Bennie. “I’d hang in the apartment, work on my book. It was nicer than the library. The place was loaded. Big-screen TV, nice CD player. Fast computer, a screamer.”
Bennie set down her pen. “So, you were cheating on Della Porta.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
Connolly shrugged, her expression impassive.
“I thought you were a woman in love.”
“You thought wrong.” She laughed abruptly. “You got the degree, but I got the brains.”
Bennie didn’t react. “Explain Bullock so I can make it credible to a jury, if it comes out.”
“I lived with Della Porta but I didn’t love him. I told you I didn’t like being alone. I didn’t love Bullock either. They were just men. I cared about them, but it wasn’t like love, in love songs and all.”
Bennie thought she sounded adolescent. If songs were the standard, we all were screwed. “When did it end between you and Bullock?”
“A month before Anthony was murdered.”
“Did you end it or did he?”
“We both did. He was traveling all the time on business, for a big case out in Arkansas. He just stopped calling.”
“You didn’t call him?”
“No. I wasn’t that interested, and then Anthony got killed.”
Bennie felt sick and hollow. For Connolly’s life, so empty, and for her defense, in deeper trouble than before. She couldn’t prove that Connolly and Della Porta were lovebirds now, and hoped the D.A. didn’t know that. Maybe she could try another tack. “Bullock knew about Della Porta, right? Wasn’t he jealous of Della Porta?”
“No. Bullock wanted to buy a share of Star. Wanted me to fix it with Anthony. ’Course, I couldn’t exactly do that.”
“Buy a share? What do you mean?”
“Fighters need backers. Anthony was the manager and he got a group of businessmen to put up money for Star. If Star made money, they made money.”
“Could there be a connection between Bullock and Star?”
“No way. Bullock didn’t need the coin, believe me.”
But Bennie was thinking. There was a problem here and it wasn’t that the Bullock theory wouldn’t fly. It was that Connolly wouldn’t fly. Any jury, given half a chance, will find for a defendant they like, but they weren’t going to like Connolly, even if she never said a word in court. The D.A. would be savvy enough to get Connolly’s life, morals, and attitude into evidence, and it could kill her, even if she were innocent of the murder.
Bennie’s stomach tensed. She had to find some way to sell Connolly to the jury. She looked at Connolly, and the inmate looked back at her with those matching eyes, outlined with eyeliner. It gave her an idea. A gamble, but it was Connolly’s only chance.
28
The black plastic hand on the kitchen clock hovered at 5:30, and Mary sat with satisfaction over a plate of steaming spaghetti and bumpy meatballs, with a salad of iceberg lettuce and vinegar-and-oil dressing. The DiNunzio family ate dinner at the same time every night and served pasta four nights a week, except for fish on Fridays, still. Mary felt reassured when things stayed the same, and her parents’ home, which she visited every Wednesday for dinner, was the Church of Things That Stayed the Same. She had brought Judy home for dinner because Mary’s parents adored her, treating her like the tall child they never had. Judy returned the affection, marveling at each visit that Italians really acted Italian. Mary had no defense for it. Some stereotypes rang true for a reason.
The DiNunzios’ brick rowhouse in South Philly was laid out in a straight line from living room to dining room to kitchen, the rooms strung one after the other like the slippery beads on a favored rosary. The sofa in the living room sagged in the center, its shiny green quilting protected by doilies her mother had crocheted decades ago. The room’s maroon carpet had been worn in a strip down the middle, a missal’s ribbon made by years of walking through the dining room, which was used only on Christmas and Easter. Even as a child, Mary knew something really good had to happen to Jesus Christ for the DiNunzios to eat in the dining room.
The heart of the house was the kitchen, tiny and shaped like a Mass card. A Formica table with rickety wire legs took up most of the room, and the five of them-Mary’s mother and father, Mary and her twin Angie, and Judy-had to huddle to fit around it for dinner. Refaced wood cabinets ringed the room and Formica counters cracked at the corners, so near to the kitchen table that Mary’s father could stay in his chair and turn up the Lasko fan in the window, which he did. The plastic blades whirred faster but the air remained stifling.
“Madonne, it’s hot,” said Mary’s father, Mariano DiNunzio. A long time ago, his crew of tilesetters had christened him “Matty,” and it stuck. He was a bald, stocky man with large eyes, a bulbous nose, and an affable smile. He wore Bermuda shorts and a white undershirt, his tummy stretching soft as a cherub’s under the worn cotton. He had tucked a paper napkin in his T-shirt like a bib. “You gettin’ some breeze, Judy?” he asked.
“Yes, thanks.” Judy was struggling to twirl her spaghetti.
“Good. You’re the guest. We want you to be nice and comfortable.”
“I am,” Judy said, as steaming strands slipped through her fork for the second time. She tried it again, her tongue to the side in concentration.
“You want help with that?” Angie asked. Her dark blond hair was combed into a short ponytail that curved like a comma; she wore an ivory shirt with short sleeves and khaki shorts. Angie looked like a casual-dress version of her twin, though her manner was far from casual.
Mary smirked. “Don’t help her. It’s fun to watch her struggle.”
“Oh, stop,” Angie said. “I’m going to teach her how to twirl.”
“But she’ll run off and tell all the other WASPs. Then where will we be? Fresh out of state secrets.”
Judy fumbled with the spoon as spaghetti slithered off her fork. “I don’t get the spoon part.”
“You don’t need to use the spoon,” Angie said, but Mary waved her off.
“Don’t believe her, Jude, she’s lying. Spoons are key to expert twirling. They don’t let you in the Sons of Italy unless you use a spoon.”
“You don’t need the spoon,” Mary’s father said, and beside him, her mother nodded, pushing bangs like cirrus clouds from a short, bony brow. Vita DiNunzio was losing her hair from years of teasing, which only made her get it teased more often, at the beauty parlor at the corner.
“But spoons are cool,” Mary insisted. “Real dagoes use spoons.”
“Why do you use that term?” Angie snapped, and Mary reflected that her twin had left her sense of humor at the convent, with no hope of recovery since she’d taken a job as a paralegal. Nothing about being a paralegal was funny.
“You know, Ange, you used to be a lot of fun.”
“Like you?”
“Exactly like me,” Mary said, and her meaning wasn’t lost on Angie, who averted her eyes.