By the time Judy stopped painting, the moon had thinned to a pale shadow in a gray dawn sky, and she caught two hours’ sleep before she showered, got dressed, and went to work. She felt peaceful, rested, and even eager, all of which was necessary for where she was going.
Chapter 13
It was another perfect day in Philadelphia, which meant they had used up both of them. The sun was high in the clear sky, and the air felt cool. Judy intercepted a cab heading to the new Society Hill hotels, climbed into the backseat, and retrieved her cell phone from a full backpack. She wanted to know if she still had a live client. It seemed relevant, especially in view of where she was going.
“University City, Thirty-eighth and Spruce,” she told the cabbie, intentionally omitting the name of the building. She didn’t want him looking at her funnier than he already was.
A young man, he had a line of cartilage pierces, and his red hair had been knotted into ropy Rasta dreads that sprang like palm fronds from the center of his head. He smelled of reefer and was too cool to approve of her Saturday work uniform of jeans, denim clogs, and a wacky-colored Oilily sweater over a white T-shirt. Judy used to like bad boys that looked like him, but she was happily over that phase, having learned the obvious: that bad boys were simply childish men. She punched in the number for Frank’s cell phone and examined her nails, fingers outstretched, while the phone connected. Rust-colored acrylic paint rimmed her cuticles and the scent of turpentine overwhelmed the cabbie’s pot stink, which was as it should be.
“Hello, Lucia here,” Frank said when he picked up, and his voice sounded tired but reassuringly oxygenated.
“Tell me you’re both alive and well.”
“We’re both alive and one of us is well. He’s cleaning up the first floor as we speak. He already swept the loft and the second-
floor bedrooms. He’s the Energizer Bunny of grandpops.”
“Is he upset?”
“Yes, because we’re out of Hefty trash bags. He wanted to go to the corner for that and coffee, but I told him no.”
“And he listened?”
“Of course not. I had to tie him to a chair. What’s family for? I didn’t think you’d mind.”
Judy smiled. “That’s false imprisonment.”
“Nothing false about it.”
Judy laughed. Frank was fun to talk to. His voice was deep and warm. She wondered whether he was dating anybody and hoped he didn’t like bad girls. Everybody knew what they were. “Have the cops been over?”
“Are you kidding?”
Their first fight. She let it lie. The cab turned west on Walnut Street, the traffic sparse this morning, before the day’s shopping started. “Did the pigeons come back?”
“Not yet.”
“So your grandfather isn’t leaving the house?”
“He has to. I have a job to go to today, so I’m taking him with me. Did you see the newspapers this morning?”
“I’m avoiding them.”
“We’re the big story, unfortunately, and there’s a whole piece on the Coluzzis and the construction company. Pictures of John and Marco. Speculation about who’s taking over now that Angelo’s gone. Wait a minute.” Frank covered the receiver but Judy could hear Pigeon Tony fussing in Italian. “Sorry,” Frank said, when he came back on the line. “He’s not leaving my sight today, no matter what he says.”
“He wants to stay at the house.”
“He’s worried about the birds, but he doesn’t have to be here when they come home, if they come home. I don’t care. I slept on the couch pillows for him, that’s enough. He goes with me today.”
“I agree.” Judy’s cab zipped up Walnut. “Why don’t you get the Tonys to come over? They can wait for the birds.”
“The Tonys?” Frank asked, then laughed softly. “If you think it’s weird that they’re all named Tony, you’re wrong. The only thing that’s weird is that they’re not all named Frank.”
The cab crossed the concrete bridge over the Schuylkill River, which managed to fake a green-blue color today, and reached the Gothic towers of the University of Pennsylvania. They were getting closer. Judy needed information. “Where will you be today, in case I need to see your grandfather?” It was the real reason, but it sounded lame even to her.
“You got a pencil?”
Judy foraged in her leather backpack for a ballpoint pen and her little black Filofax. She found both, evidence of her karma returning, and flipped through the onion-thin pages of the Filofax until she found a blank one. The cabdriver clucked at the Filofax, but Judy didn’t apologize for it. At least it wasn’t a PalmPilot. “Go ahead,” she said, and jotted down the address and directions, then flipped the Filofax closed as the cab turned the corner on Thirty-eighth Street. They were only blocks away. Her stomach tightened. “Frank, listen, I have to go. I’m calling you from the cell.”
“Where are you?”
“You don’t want to know.” She looked out the window as the cab climbed University Avenue. The modern building, of low-slung red brick, squatted directly ahead, incongruous against the cheery blue sky.
“Okay, well, stay outta trouble. Don’t embarrass me like you did yesterday at the courthouse. Your jab needs work.”
Judy laughed, her face flushing warmly. She flipped the Star-TAC closed and tossed it into her backpack. “Pull up in front of that brick building on the right, please,” she said to the cabbie, who glanced back at her.
“But that’s the—”
“I know,” she said grimly, and the cabbie’s eyes met hers in the rearview mirror with a new respect.
Filofax 1, Dope 0.
Although Judy had impressed the cabbie, she had never been to the city morgue before, much less to an autopsy, and she concentrated on concealing that fact from the district attorney next to her, who had introduced himself as Jeff Gold, and Detective Sam Wilkins, the thin cop from the Roundhouse. They seemed undaunted by the glistening stainless-steel table they stood before, with raised edges all around, surprisingly long because it had a drain in one end and a stainless-steel sink. Judy’s gaze ran down the slant in the table toward the drain, and she realized that it wasn’t for water but for blood. Her stomach flip-flopped. She would have had to paint forever to get centered enough for this experience. She summoned up images of mountains, rocks, and forest streams from her landscapes, but nothing helped. Autopsy 1, Art 0.
A stainless-steel organ scale was suspended near Judy’s face and a huge operating room lamp poised over the table, casting a calcium-white brightness on a lineup of medical instruments on a stand at its head. Shiny scalpels, large scissors with a mysterious bulb at one end, and a tool that looked like a wire cutter gleamed in the light. Next to them rested a hammer with an odd hook on one side, a stubby handsaw with a handle like a gun, and an electric tool with a chubby chrome barrel and a rotating blade. A power saw. Judy forced herself to breathe deeply, but formaldehyde and disinfectant cut off fresh air. The operating-room light stung her eyes. Her head throbbed. She gripped the leather strap of her backpack for an anchor, to steady herself for whatever happened next.
The assistant medical examiner, who had introduced himself as Dr. Patel, stood aside as two assistants, both young African-American men in blue scrubs, wheeled over a gurney containing a black body bag. They lifted it from the gurney and placed it on the stainless-steel table with a dull thud that echoed in the quiet morgue. Dr. Patel and an assistant wordlessly positioned the body bag on the table, while the other assistant disappeared with the empty gurney. Judy concentrated on the coroner, not the body bag.