To all my parents, and to Kiki

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Acknowledgments

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by Lisa Scottoline

Praise

Copyright

About the Publisher

1

At times like this I realize I’m too old to be starting over, working with law clerks. I own pantyhose with more mileage than these kids, and better judgment. For example, two of the clerks, Ben Safer and Artie Weiss, are bickering as we speak; never mind that they’re making a scene in an otherwise quiet appellate courtroom, in front of the most expensive members of the Philadelphia bar.

“No arguing in the courtroom,” I tell them, in the same tone I use on my six-year-old. Not that it works with her either.

“He started it, Grace,” Ben says in a firm stage whisper, standing before the bank of leather chairs against the wall. “He told me he’d save me a seat and he didn’t. Now there’s no seats left.”

“Will you move, geek? You’re blocking my sun,” Artie says, not bothering to look up from the sports page. He rarely overexerts himself; he’s sauntered through life to date, relying on his golden-boy good looks, native intelligence, and uncanny jump shot. He throws one strong leg over the other and turns the page, confident he’ll win this argument even if it runs into overtime. Artie, in short, is a winner.

But so is Ben in his own way; he was number two at Chicago Law School, meat grinder of the Midwest. “You told me you’d save me a seat, Weiss,” he says, “so you owe me one. Yours. Get up.”

“Eat me,” Artie says, loud enough to distract the lawyers conferring at the counsel table like a bouquet of bald spots. They’d give him a dirty look if he were anyone else, but because he works for the chief judge they flash capped smiles; you never know which clerk’s got your case on his desk.

“Get up. Now, Weiss.”

“Separate, you two,” I say. “Ben, go sit in the back. Argument’s going to start any minute.”

“Out of the question. I won’t sit in public seating. He said he’d save me a seat, he owes me a seat.”

“It’s not a contract, Ben,” I advise him. For free.

“I understand that. But he should be the one who moves, not me.” He straightens the knot on his tie, already at tourniquet tension; between the squeeze on his neck and the one on his sphincter, the kid’s twisted shut at both ends like a skinny piece of saltwater taffy. “I have a case being argued.”

“So do I, jizzbag,” Artie says, flipping the page.

I like Artie, but the problem with the Artie Weisses of the world is they have no limits. “Artie, did you tell him you’d save him a seat?”

“Why would I do that? Then I’d have to sit next to him.” He gives Ben the finger behind the tent of newspaper.

I draw the line. “Artie, put your finger away.”

“Ooooh, spank me, Grace. Spank me hard. Pull my wittle pants down and throw me over your gorgeous knees.”

“You couldn’t handle it, big guy.”

“Try me.” He leans over with a broad grin.

“I mean it, Artie. You’re on notice.” He doesn’t know I haven’t had sex since my marriage ended three years ago. Nobody’s in the market for a single mother, even a decent-looking one with improved brown hair, authentic blue eyes, and a body that’s staying the course, at least as we speak.

“Come on, sugar,” Artie says, nuzzling my shoulder. “Live the dream.”

“Cut it out.”

“You read the book, now see the movie.”

I turn toward Ben to avoid laughing; it’s not good to laugh when you’re setting limits. “Ben, you know he’s not going to move. The judges will be out any minute. Go find a seat in the back.”

Ben scans the back row where the courthouse groupies sit; it’s a lineup that includes retired men, the truly lunatic, even the homeless. Ben, looking them over, makes no effort to hide his disdain; you’d think he’d been asked to skinny-dip in the Ganges. He turns to me, vaguely desperate. “Let me have your seat, Grace. I’ll take notes for you.”

“No.”

“But my notes are like transcripts. I used to sell them at school.”

“I can take my own notes, thank you.” Ten years as a trial lawyer, I can handle taking notes; taking notes is mostly what I do now as the assistant to the chief judge. I take notes while real lawyers argue, then I go to the library and draft an opinion that real lawyers cite in their next argument. But I’m not complaining. I took this job because it was part-time and I’m not as good a juggler as Joan Lunden, Paula Zahn, and other circus performers.

“How about you, Sarah?” Ben asks the third law clerk, Sarah Whittemore, sitting on my other side. “You don’t have a case this morning. You can sit in the back.”

Fat chance. Sarah smooths a strand of cool blond hair away from her face, revealing a nose so diminutive it’s a wonder she gets any oxygen at all. “Sorry, I need this seat,” she says.

I could have told him that. Sarah wants to represent the downtrodden, not mingle with them.

A paneled door opens near the dais and the court crier, a compact man with a competent air, begins a last-minute check on the microphones at the dais and podium. Ben glances at the back row with dismay. “I can’t sit back there with those people. One of them has a plastic hat on, for God’s sake.”

Artie looks over the top of his paper. “A plastic hat? Where?”

“There.” Ben jerks his thumb toward a bearded man sporting a crinkled cellophane rain bonnet and a black raincoat buttoned to the neck. The man’s collar is flipped up, ready for monsoon season, but it’s not raining in the courtroom today.

“It’s Shake and Bake! He came!” Artie says. His face lights up and he waves at the man with his newspaper. “Go sit with him, Safer, he’s all right.”

“You know that guy, Artie?” I ask, sitting straighter to get a better look. The bearded man grins in a loopy way at the massive gold seal of the United States courts mounted behind the dais, his grubby face tilted to the disk like a black-eyed Susan to the sun.

“Sure. He hangs out at the Y, plays ball with me and Armen. You oughta see his spin move, it’s awesome when he’s not zoned out. I told him to stop by and see the judge on the bench.”

Ben’s dark eyes widen. “You invited that kook to oral argument? How could you do that?”

I don’t say it, but for the first time I agree with Ben. I am becoming a geek, a superannuated geek.

“Why shouldn’t he come to court?” Artie says. “It’s a free country. He’s got rights.” He stands up and signals wildly, as ill-mannered as a golden retriever puppy; Artie’s the pick of the litter out of Harvard, where they evidently do not teach common sense.

The lawyers in the first three rows of the courtroom crane their necks at him, and I tug at the rough khaki of his sport coat. “Artie, don’t embarrass me,” I say.

Sarah leans over. “Artie, you’re crazier than he is. Sit down.”

“He’s not crazy,” Artie says, still signaling.

“He’s wearing Saran Wrap,” I point out.

“He always does. It’s Shake and Bake, man. You gotta love it.”

“Fine,” Ben says. “You like him so much, you go sit with him.”

“Don’t mind if I do. Party on, Safer.” Artie claps Ben on the back and walks toward the back row.

“Please rise!” shouts the crier, standing behind a desk at the side of the dais. “The Honorable Judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.”

A concealed door to the left of the dais swings open, and the judges parade out, resplendent in their swishing black robes. The federal courts decide appeals in three-judge panels, inviting comparison to the three wise men or the three stooges, depending on whether you win or lose. First comes the Honorable Phillip Galanter, tall, thin, and Aryan, with slack jowls like Ed Meese used to have and blond hair thinning to gray. He’s followed by a wizened senior judge, the Honorable Morris Townsend, shuffling slowly along, and finally the Very Honorable and Terribly Handsome Chief Judge Armen Gregorian, my boss.

“Armen looks good up there, doesn’t he?” Sarah says, crossing her legs under the skirt of her sleek slate-gray suit.

He sure as hell does. Towering over the two of them, Armen grins down at the crowd in an easy way. His complexion is tinged with olive; his oversized teeth remind me of an exotic JFK. There are precious few perks in working for the judicial branch, and a boss who looks like a sultan is one of them. I lean near Sarah’s perfumed neck and whisper, “I got first dibs.”

“In your dreams.”

“But you’re too young for him.”

She smirks. “Too young? Is there such a thing?”

“Bitch.” I elbow her in the ovary.

“Oyez! Oyez!” calls the crier. “All persons having business with the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit are admonished to draw near and give their attention, for this court is now in session. God save the United States and this honorable court. Be seated, please.”

The panel sits down and the first appeal begins. Ben takes notes on the argument by the appellant’s lawyer, who had his civil case dismissed by the district court ten floors below us. The young lawyer has been granted ten minutes without questions from the judges to present his argument, but he’s blowing them fast. Armen’s forehead wrinkles with concern; he wants to cut to the chase, but this poor guy can’t get out of the garage.

“A Third Circuit virgin,” Ben says, with the superior snicker of someone who has never done it. I fail to see the humor. I know what it’s like to stand before a judge when the words you memorized don’t seem to come and the ones that do roll down backward through your gullet and tumble out your butt.

“I guess my time is up,” the lawyer says, obviously relieved to see the Christmas light on the podium blink from yellow to red. He thinks the hard part’s over, but he’s dead wrong. The light turns green again. Go!

“Who wants the first question?” Armen says, looking over his colleagues on the panel. He flicks a silky black forelock out of his eyes; he always needs a haircut, it’s part of his sex appeal. “Judge Galanter?”

“Counsel,” Judge Galanter says quickly, “your appeal concerns the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, RICO, but I wonder if you understand why the statute at issue was enacted by Congress.”

“It was passed because of organized crime, Your Honor.”

“The statute was aimed at extortionists, murderers, and loan sharks. The typical organized criminals, correct?”

The young lawyer looks puzzled. “Yes, Judge Galanter.”

“It prohibits a pattern of racketeering activity, the so-called predicate acts, does it not?”

“Yes, sir.”

Armen shifts in his high-backed chair.

“But your client isn’t suing mobsters under RICO, is he, counsel?” Galanter says.

“With all due respect, Your Honor, I think this appeal presents a matter of national importance. It involves the manipulation of—”

“Flower peddlers, isn’t that right, counsel? Not mobsters, not extortionists, not killers. Florists. The ad says, Nothing but the Best for Your Wedding or Bar Mitzvah.” He chuckles, as does the gallery. They have to, he’s an Article III judge, as in Article III of the Constitution; if you don’t laugh, the FBI shows up at your door.

“Yes, the defendants are floral vendors.”

Galanter’s thin lips part in an approximation of a smile and he arches an eyebrow so blond it’s almost invisible. “Floral vendors? Is that a term of art, counsel?”

The gallery laughs again.

“Florists,” the lawyer concedes.

“Thank you. Now, carnations are the bulk of your client’s business, is that correct?” Galanter flips through the appendix with assurance and reads aloud. “‘Pink ones, red ones, even the sprayed ones,’ according to your client’s affidavit. Although I see sweetheart roses did well in February.” He pauses to look significantly at Judge Townsend, but Townsend’s eyes are closed; God knows which way he’ll go on this case. He thinks people enter his dreams to have sex with him, so it’s impossible to tell right now if he’s pondering RICO law or watching lesbians frolic.

“They’re a group of florists. A network of florists.”

“Oh, I see, a ring of florists. Do you think Congress intended even a ring of florists to be covered by this racketeering statute?”

Armen hunches over his microphone. “Counsel, does it really matter what they sell?”

“Go get ’em, boss,” I say under my breath.

“Sir?” says the lawyer. He grabs the side of the podium like a kid stowed away on a sinking ship.

“It wouldn’t make sense to have a rule of law that turned on the occupation of the defendant, would it?”

“No, sir,” says the lawyer, shaking his head.

Armen leans forward, his eyes dark as Turkish coffee. “In fact, after what the Supreme Court said in Scheidler, even a group of abortion protestors can be subject to RICO, isn’t that right, Mr. Noble?”

Galanter glances over at Armen like a jockey on a Thoroughbred. “But Chief Justice Rehnquist made clear in Scheidler that there was a pattern of extortion, of federal crimes. Where’s the federal crimes with the floral conspiracy? Florists wielding pruning shears? Gimme that money or I snip the orchid?” Galanter shudders comically and the gallery laughs on cue.

“But they do threaten society,” the lawyer says, fumbling for the rigging. “Mr. Canavan signed a contract, and they didn’t send him any orders. They intended to drive Canavan Flowers into bankruptcy. It was part of a plan.”

“Your client did file for Chapter Eleven protection, didn’t he?” Armen says.

Suddenly Judge Townsend emits a noisy snort that sounds like an ancient steamboat chugging to life. Armen and Galanter look over as Judge Townsend’s heavy-lidded eyes creak open. “If I may, I have a question,” he says, smacking his dry lips.

“Go right ahead,” Armen says. Galanter forces a well-bred smile.

“Thank you, Chief Judge Gregorian,” Judge Townsend says. He nods graciously. “Now, counselor, why are you letting my colleagues badger you?”

The smile on Galanter’s face freezes in place. The gallery laughs uncertainly.

“Sir?” the lawyer says.

Judge Townsend snorts again and lists gently to the starboard side. “As I see it, the question with this new statute is always the same.”

Ben whispers, “New? RICO was passed in the seventies.”

“The question is always, How is this case different from a case of garden variety fraud? How is it different from other injuries to one’s business, which we decide under the common law?” Judge Townsend waves his wrinkled hand in the air; it cuts a jagged swath. “In other words, have you got some precedent for us? A case to hang your hat on?”

The lawyer reads his notes. “Wait a minute, Your Honor.”

Judge Townsend blinks once, then again. Galanter smooths back the few hairs he has left. The lawyers in the gallery glance at one another. They’re all thinking the same thing: Nobody tells the Third Circuit to wait a minute. The answers are supposed to roll off your tongue. The case is supposed to be at your fingertips. Better you should pee on the counsel table.

“Way to go, Einstein,” Ben says.

“I know I have the case somewhere,” says the attorney, nervously riffling through his legal pad. He should be nervous; the circuit court is the last stop before the Supreme Court, which takes fewer appeals each year. It’s all those speaking engagements.

“Armen’s upset,” Sarah whispers, and I follow her eyes. Armen is looking down, worried about the appeal. The only sound in the tense courtroom is a frantic rustling as the lawyer ransacks the podium. A yellow page sails to the rich navy carpet.

The silence seems to intensify.

Galanter glares at the lawyer’s bent head.

A sound shatters the silence—ticktickticktickticktick—from the back of the courtroom.

The back rows of the gallery turn around. The sound is loud, unmistakable.

Ticktickticktickticktick.

Row after row looks back in disbelief, then in alarm.

Ticktickticktickticktick.

“It’s a bomb!” one of the lawyers shouts.

“A bomb!” yells an older lawyer. “No!”

Ticktickticktickticktick.

The crowded courtroom bursts into chaos. The gallery surges to its feet in confusion and fear. Lawyers grab their briefcases and files. People slam into each other in panic, trying to escape to the exit doors.

“No!” someone shouts. “Stay calm!”

I look wildly toward the back row where Artie was sitting. I can’t see him at all. The mob at the back is pushing and shouting.

Tickticktickticktickticktick.

Ben and other law clerks run for the judges’ exit next to the dais. My heart begins to thunder. Time is slowed, stretched out.

“Artie’s back there!” I shout.

Sarah grabs my arm. “Armen!”

I look back at the dais. Armen stands at the center, shielding his eyes from the overhead lights, squinting into the back row. Judge Townsend is stalled at his chair.

Galanter snatches Armen’s gavel and pounds it on the dais: boom boom boom! “Order! Order, I say!” he bellows, red-faced. He slams the chief judge’s gavel again and again. “Order!”

“Oh, my God,” Armen says, when he realizes what’s happening. “It can’t be.”

2

“Are you saying it was Shake and Bake?” I ask, incredulous.

“Yes. I’m busted. Totally,” Artie says. He flops into his chair in the small law library that serves as the clerks’ office, having been grilled behind closed doors by Armen and an assortment of bureaucrats. “It took the poor guy an hour to stop crying. He was worried he got Armen in trouble, can you believe that?”

“Yes,” Ben says, typing nimbly at his computer keyboard.

“I don’t get it,” I say. “Did he have a bomb?”

“No. He had a shot clock.”

“A what?”

“Actually, he was the shot clock.”

“I still don’t get it.”

“Neither do I,” Sarah says.

“I do, but I don’t care,” Ben says, gulping down his third cup of coffee. He gets in at seven and guzzles the stuff like a thirsty vampire. “The whole thing’s absurd.”

“No, it isn’t,” Artie says. “Not if you think like Shake and Bake.”

“Like a paranoid schizophrenic?” I say.

“Look, Shake and Bake was watching the argument. He knew the lawyer had to answer a question and he thought time was running out, like in basketball. He figured the guy had twenty-four seconds to shoot. It got all crossed up in his head.”

I try not to laugh. “So he starts ticking.”

“Yeah, with his mouth. He was counting off the time.” Artie yanks the knot on his cotton tie from side to side to loosen it.

“That’s ridiculous,” Sarah says.

“Not to a paranoid schizophrenic who loves basketball,” I say, a quick study.

“Right, Grace.” Artie nods and tosses the tie on the briefs scattered across his desk.

“Told you. Absurd,” Ben says, tapping away.

“Is he really schizophrenic?” Sarah leans over the Diet Coke and soft pretzel that constitute her breakfast. These kids eat trash; it gives me the heebie-jeebies.

“I don’t think so,” Artie says, unbuttoning the collar of his work shirt. “He’s like a little kid. Harmless.”

I smile. I own a little kid. They’re not harmless.

“Why do you say he’s harmless?” Sarah asks. “He’s obviously not.”

“Come on, Sar. He’s fine. Shake and Bake can’t even do his laundry. You think he can blow up a building?”

“I do, Weiss,” says a dry voice at the door to the clerks’ office. It’s Eletha Staples, the judge’s Secretary for Life, a willowy, elegant black woman. Prone to drama, Eletha pauses dramatically in the doorway.

“Yo,” Artie says.

“Right, bro. Yo.” Eletha rolls her eyes as she walks into the room, trailing expensive perfume. Her glossy hair is pulled back into a neat bun at the nape of a slim neck. In her trim camel suit she looks more like a judge than a secretary, and the day black women get to be federal appellate judges, she’ll be mistaken for one. “Who you invitin’ next, Charlie Manson?”

“That’s not funny, El.”

Eletha stops in the center of the office and puts a hand on her hip; a quintet of clawlike polka-dotted fingernails stand out on her otherwise classy look. “It’s not funny, bro?”

“No.”

“It’s not funny when you invite a crazy man to court? It’s not funny that some nut boy endangers Armen’s life? Endangers the lives of us all?”

Artie fiddles glumly with his Magic Eight Ball, one of the many toys on his desk. “He’d never hurt any of us, he idolizes Armen. And he’s not a nut boy.”

“He ticks, Artie,” I remind him.

Eletha looks crazed, but she crazes easily. “What are you tellin’ me, he’s not a nut? The man thinks he’s a friggin’ Timex! Why they let him in the courthouse I’ll never know.”

“They have to,” Sarah says. “He has a right to access. It’s in the Constitution.”

“The hell it is,” Ben says, without looking away from his monitor.

“He’s not a nut.” Artie pouts.

Eletha puts a hand to her chest and begins Lamaze breathing to calm herself. I first saw this routine three months ago when she had to interview me for my job, because Armen had gotten stuck in Washington. After she calmed down, we spent an hour swapping ex-husband stories. I touch her arm. “El, keep breathing. Don’t push, it’s too soon.”

She looks down at me, her face suddenly grave. “That’s not the worst of it. Did you hear?”

“Hear what?”

“They filed the appeal in the death penalty case this morning. Hightower. The death warrant expires in a week.” Her words hang in the air for a moment.

“Oh, no.” I sink deeper into the leather chair next to Artie’s desk. I better not get this case. I’m a working mother now; I have enough guilt for an entire hemisphere.

“A week?” Ben says, shaking his neat head. “Of course Hightower waited until the last minute. Wait till the bitter end to file and hope the warrant expires. It’s a game with them.”

Sarah looks over sharply. “It’s only his first appeal.”

“Fine. Let’s make it his last.”

“Ben, he even tried to kill himself. He thought he deserved to die.”

“He did.”

Eletha’s soft brown eyes linger on Ben’s face, but her thoughts are clearly elsewhere. “This case is gonna be a real bitch. The law clerk’s gonna be up all night, Armen’s gonna be up all night, and I’ll be up all night. Last time, I didn’t tell Malcolm why.” Malcolm is Eletha’s son, whose picture she keeps on her desk; he’s an intelligent-looking boy with lightish skin and glasses. “Some things kids don’t have to know.”

I wonder how I’d tell Maddie. What would I say? Honey, Mommy works for a man who decides whether another man should live or die. No, Mommy’s boss is not God, he just looks like him.

“Has Armen served on many death panels?” Sarah asks.

Eletha rubs her forehead. “Too many.”

“Three,” Ben says. “All dissents. The proverbial voice in the wilderness.”

Eletha glances at him. “They were from Delaware, I think. None from Jersey. And we haven’t executed in Pennsylvania since I don’t know when.”

“About thirty years.” Ben pops the SAVE button with an index finger. “Elmo Smith, for the rape-murder of a Catholic high school girl. But I can’t recall the method.” He pauses just a nanosecond, his mind working as rapidly as the microprocessor. “Pennsylvania executes by lethal injection now, but then—”

“Christ, what difference does it make?” Sarah says, making tea on the spare desk. “Move to Texas, you can watch it on pay-per-view.”

Ben snaps his fingers. “Electrocution, that’s right!”

“Death penalty for twenty, Alex,” Artie says, and Eletha starts to breathe in and out, in and out.

“The death penalty is revenge masquerading as justice,” Sarah says, unwilling to let the grisly subject go. I like Sarah but am coming to understand that not letting anything go is an avocation of hers. It served her well last November; she worked on Armen’s wife’s campaign for the Senate, in which the feminist lawyer came from behind to win by a turned-up nose.

“When we talk about justice,” Ben says, “we shirk thinking in legal terms.”

“I’m impressed, Ben. Did you make that up all by yourself?”

“No. Oliver Wendell Holmes said it.”

Sarah looks nonplussed.

“Played for the Knicks,” Artie says. He launches the Magic Eight Ball on an imaginary trajectory through that great basketball hoop in the sky, that one all men can find when they don’t have a real ball. The air guitar principle.

“It’s irrelevant what happens at this level anyway,” Ben says. “It’s going up to the Court.”

“And what’ll that do to your chances, Safer?” Artie says.

Ben hits a key but says nothing.

“Chances for what?” I say.

“Didn’t you know, Grace? Ben is waiting for a phone call from Justice Scalia. He’s this close to a Supreme Court clerkship.” Artie squints at his forefinger and thumb, held a half-inch apart. “Maybe even this close, am I right, Ben? This close?” He makes his fingers touch.

“Ask the Eight Ball,” Sarah says.

“The Eight Ball! Excellent!” Artie shakes the ball and turns it upside down to read it. “Oh, my God, Ben,” he says in mock horror. “‘Better not tell you now.’ Very mysterious.”

I look at Ben, reading his monitor screen. “Ben, did you really get an interview with Scalia?”

“Yes,” Ben replies, without looking away from the monitor.

“But Grace, Ben has a big problem,” Artie says ominously. “If Armen decides Hightower and the guy don’t fry, we got trouble. Big trouble, right, Ben?”

Ben types away. “Of course not, Weiss. I still have the credentials.”

“You mean like clerking for Armen the Armenian? Husband of Senator Susan, another flamer?” Artie winks slyly at Sarah, and she smiles back. I wonder if they’re sleeping together, and how Sarah squares it with her lust for Armen. Not to mention her alleged allegiance to Armen’s wife.

“The chief has sent clerks to the Court,” Ben says. “He’s very well regarded by the Justices.”

“By the conservative Justices?”

“Depends on what you mean by conservative.”

“Anybody not on life support.”

Ben’s mouth twitches, and I can tell Artie’s hit a nerve. I hold up my hand like a traffic cop. “That’s enough outta you, Weiss. Don’t make me come over there.”

“Who else is on the panel in Hightower?” Sarah says.

Eletha looks at a piece of paper in her hands. She doesn’t notice Ben reading the paper upside down, but I do; Ben spends more time reading upside down than right side up. “Here it is. Gregorian, Robbins, and Galanter.”

“Awesome!” Artie says. “That means Hightower walks. Armen writes the opinion, Robbins joins it, and Galanter pounds sand. Two to one.”

Sarah looks less certain. “Galanter’s a Federalist, but Robbins can go either way on this one.”

“What’s a Federalist?” I ask.

“Fascists. Nazis.”

“Republicans with boners,” Artie adds.

Ben clears his throat. “It’s a conservative organization, Grace. Of which I was an officer in law school, as a matter of fact.”

Suddenly, the door to Armen’s office opens and men talk in low, governmental tones as Armen walks them to the main door of chambers. Artie strains to listen and Ben inhales what’s left of his coffee. Eletha turns around just in time to catch Bernice.

“Roarf! Roarf!” Bernice, a huge Bernese mountain dog, bounds through the door. Yes, Armen brings his shaggy black doggie to work, all hundred pounds of her. He’s the chief judge, so who’s gonna tell him he can’t? Me? You? “Roarf!”

“No! Don’t jump up!” Eletha barks back. The sharp noise stops Bernice in her tracks. Her bushy black tail, white at the tip, switches back and forth; she sneezes with the vigor of a Clydesdale.

“Sit, Bernice. Sit!” Armen says, coming up behind the dog.

Bernice wiggles her wavy hindquarters in response. Her eyes roll around in a white mask that ends in rust-colored markings on her muzzle. Bushy rust eyebrows give her a permanently confused look; appearances are not always deceiving.

“She never sits, Armen,” Eletha says. “I don’t know why you even bother.”

“She used to, she just forgets,” Armen says. “Right, girl?” He scratches the plume of raggy hair behind Bernice’s ears and looks at Artie. “So, Weiss, you shitting bricks?”

Artie sets the Eight Ball down. “Enough to build a house, coach. I’m really sorry.”

“Can’t you grovel better than that? I’m disappointed.”

“Really sorry, coach. I am not worthy.” Artie bends over and touches his forehead to the briefs on his desk. “It’ll never happen again,” he says, his voice muffled.

Armen smiles. “Good enough. Shake and Bake can come to the games, but he has to stay away from the courthouse. If he doesn’t, the marshals will shoot him on sight. Plus I got you out of jail free, so you owe me a beer.”

Artie looks up, relieved. “After the game next week. At Keeton’s.”

“Fine.” Armen’s gaze falls on the papers in Eletha’s hands and his smile fades. “Is that Hightower?”

“Yes.”

He takes the papers and begins to read the first page. His brow wrinkles deeply; I notice that the dark wells under his eyes look even darker today. He’s given to occasional black moods; something will set him off and he’ll brood for a day. It makes you want to comfort him. In bed.

“Chief,” Ben says, “the defendant killed two sisters.”

Armen seems not to hear him. His broad shoulders slump slightly as he reads.

“One was a little girl and one was a teenager, very popular in the town.”

Armen looks up from the memo and his eyes find me. “It’s yours, lady,” he says.

I hear myself suck wind. “Mine?”

“You’re Grace Rossi, right? It’s got your name all over it.”

“Me, on a death penalty case? But I’m part-time.”

“I’ll give you time off later, and don’t whine.”

“But I don’t want to get involved,” I whine.

He half smiles. “Get involved. Somebody’s life is at stake.”

“But why me?”

“I need a lawyer on this one.”

Sarah freezes as she looks at Armen. I can almost hear the squeak of a hinge as her perfect mouth drops open.

3

Empty coffee cups dot the surface of Armen’s conference table, along with sheaves of curly faxes, photocopied cases, and trial transcripts from the Hightower record. We worked straight through dinner and into the night, reading cases and talking through the opinion. Then Armen began to tap out an outline on his laptop and I picked up the habeas petition to check our facts.

It says that Thomas Hightower was seventeen when he cut school to go drinking with a fast crowd, which got him drunk and dared him to kiss the prettiest girl in school. Hightower went to her farm, where he found Sherri Gilpin in the shed. He asked her out, and she laughed at him.

“Date a nigger?” she said. Allegedly.

In a drunken rage, Hightower slapped her and she fell off balance, cracking her skull against a tractor. He tried to give her CPR, at which point her little sister Sally came in and began to cry. Hightower says he panicked. He couldn’t leave witnesses; it would have killed his mother. So he throttled the child, then, full of shame, he got back into his car and drove himself into a tree. Enter the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, which saved his life, reserving for itself the honor of putting him on trial. For death.

Hightower couldn’t afford a lawyer, not that one in the small coal-mining town would represent him anyway. The county judge appointed a kid barely out of night law school to the case, and the jury convicted Hightower of capital murder. During the sentencing hearing, where the jury decides life or death, Hightower’s lawyer argued from the wrong death penalty statute, one that had been ruled unconstitutional three years earlier by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Somehow he had missed that.

The obsolete death statute, the only one presented to this predominantly white jury, said nothing about the fact that a jury could consider Hightower’s youth, his diminished capacity because of alcohol, his lack of a prior criminal record, and the remorse that he demonstrated by his suicide attempt as “mitigating circumstances” in deciding whether to impose the death penalty. The jury took only fifteen minutes to reach its decision. Death.

I set the papers down and look out the huge windows that make up the fourth wall of the office. It’s the dead of night. Orangey street-lamps stretch toward the Delaware River in ribbons. White lights dot the suspension cables on the Ben Franklin Bridge. Traffic signals blink on and off: red, yellow, green. The lights remind me of jewels, twinkling in the black night. I watch them shimmer outside the window and turn the legal issues over in my mind.

The question is whether Hightower’s lawyer was so ineffective that the trial was unfair. Strictly as a legal matter, Hightower probably deserves a new trial; what he deserves as a matter of justice is another matter. This is why I practiced commercial litigation. It has nothing to do with life or death; the questions are black and white, and the right answer is always green.

“Well,” Armen says to himself. “Well, well, well.” He stops typing and reads the last page of his draft. The office is quiet now that Bernice has stopped snoring. I feel like we’re the only people awake, high in the night sky over the twinkly city.

“Well what?”

“I think we’re going to save this kid’s life. What do you think?”

The question takes me aback. “I don’t know. I don’t think of it that way.”

“I do.” He smiles wearily, wrinkling the crows’ feet that make him look older than he is. “I wouldn’t stop if I didn’t think so.”

“Was that your goal?”

“It had to be. His lawyer was incompetent. Anybody else would have gotten him life in prison, instead he’s scheduled to die. They set him up.” He leans back in the chair. Fatigue has stripped something from him: his defenses, maybe, or the professional distance between us. He seems open to me in a way he hasn’t before.

“I didn’t think of it as saving his life. I thought of it as a legal issue.”

“I know that, Grace. That’s why I wanted you on this case. You narrowed your focus to the legalities, divorced yourself from the morality of the thing.”

It stings. “Do you fault me? It’s a legal question, not a moral one.”

“Really? Who said?”

“Holmes.”

“Fuck Holmes,” he says, stretching luxuriously in a blue oxford shirt. His shirtsleeves are bunched at his elbows; his tie is loose. He’s so close I can pick up a trace of his aftershave. “It’s both those things, Grace, law and morality. You can’t separate law from justice. You shouldn’t want to.”

“But then it’s your view of justice, and that varies from judge to judge.”

“I can live with that, it’s in my job description. Judges are supposed to judge. When I read the Eighth Amendment, I think the framers were telling us that government should not torture and kill. That’s the ultimate evil, isn’t it, and it’s impossible to check.” His face darkens.

“I don’t understand,” I say, but I do in part. Armen’s culture is written all over his olive-skinned features, as well as his chambers: the framed documents in a squiggly alphabet on the walls, the picture of Mount Ararat over his desk chair, the oddly ornate lamp bases and brocaded pillows.

“It started piecemeal with the Armenians,” he says, leaning forward. “Our right to speak our own language was taken away. Then our right to worship as Christians. By 1915, they had taken our lives. We were starved, hanged, tortured. Beaten to death, most of us, with that.” He points at a rough-hewn wooden cudgel mounted over the bookshelf.

“I didn’t know.”

“Not many do. Half my people were killed. Half a million of us, wiped out by the Turkish government. All my family, except for my mother.” A flicker of pain furrows his brow.

“I’m sorry.”

He shakes it off. “The point is, government cannot kill its own citizens, not with my help. I know Hightower did a terrible thing. He killed, but I won’t kill him to prove it’s wrong. He should be locked up forever so he never hurts another child. He will be, if I have any say in it.” He seems to catch himself in mid-lecture; then his expression softens. “So thank you, for getting involved.”

“Did I have a choice?”

“No.” He relaxes in the leather chair. “You are involved, you know,” he says quietly.

I see the city lights glowing softly behind him and feel, more than I can understand, that we aren’t talking about the case anymore. “I don’t know—”

“Yes, you do. I’m involved too, Grace. Very involved, as a matter of fact.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I feel my heart start to pound softly. “We can’t do anything about it.”

“Yes, we can. Give me your hand.” He holds out his hand to me.

I look at it, suspended between us, at once a question and an answer. This situation is supposed to be black and white, but it doesn’t feel that way inside.

“Stop thinking. Take it.”

So I do, and it feels strong and warm. He pulls me in to him, as naturally as if we’ve done this a million times before, and in a second I feel myself in his arms and his kiss, gentle on my mouth. Suddenly I hear a noise outside the office and push myself away from his chest. “Did you hear that?”

“What?”

“There was a noise. Maybe the door?”

“Everything’s all right,” he says. He kisses me again and shifts his weight up underneath me but I press him away.

“Wait. Stop. We can’t.”

“Why not?”

There are rules, aren’t there? “You’re married, for starters.”

He smooths my hair back from my forehead and looks everywhere on my face. “Not anymore,” he says. “My marriage is over.”

It’s a shock. “What? How?”

“It was over a long time ago. Susan asked me to stay with her until the election was over, and I did. She’s coming in the morning to sign the papers. We file tomorrow.”

“For divorce?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“It’s true.” He touches my face. “So you’re not in love? Have I been reading you wrong?”

So much for hiding my emotions. “I don’t know. I mean, I think about you, but it’s been so long.”

“How long?”

“Too long to admit.”

“That’s long enough, don’t you think,” he says, kissing me deeply. Before I can object I find myself responding, and then I don’t want to object anymore. I lose myself in his kiss, in his warmth. His hands find their way to my breasts, caressing them as we kiss, arousing me. He begins to unfasten the buttons of my blouse, and I feel a skittishness rise, a sort of shame.

“You sure no one’s out there, in the office?” I say.

“No one.” He undoes the button above my breasts, exposing the string of pearls inside my blouse. I stop his hand and his eyes meet mine, uncomprehending. “I won’t hurt you, Grace,” he says softly. “Let me. Let me love you a little.”

“But I—”

“Shhh. I dream about this, about doing this with you.”

“Armen—”

“Let me. You have to.” He smiles and moves my hands away, placing each one on the armrests of the heavy chair. “Keep your hands there. We’re going to take this slow.”

I feel myself breathing hard, excited and scared. “We can’t do this, not here.”

“Hush.” He unfastens the next button, then the next. “Look at yourself, you’re so beautiful.”

I look down and see a flash of pearls tumbling between my breasts. The scalloped cup of a bra. My skirt hiked way up, past the opaque ivory at the top of my pantyhose. I can’t stand it, being undone like this. I look away, out the window. I expect to see the night sky, but the wall of plate glass reflects a dark-haired man and a lighter-haired woman astride him.

Strangely, it’s easier to bear this way, like in a mirror. I can watch it as if it were happening to someone else.

“It’s all right now,” he whispers.

I watch him slip the silk blouse from my shoulders, freeing one arm and the other, then reaching around and unhooking my bra. I feel my breath stop as he tugs my bra down slowly, as if he’s unveiling something precious and pure. He takes a breast in each hand and teases the nipples, and I feel an exquisite tingle as each one contracts under his thumbs. I encircle his head, this head of too-long hair that I know so well, and he burrows happily between my breasts, nuzzling one and then the other.

I hear myself moan and wrap my legs more tightly around him. He responds, rocking me against the hardness growing in his lap, sucking at one nipple and then the other. I feel wetness where he’s suckled and then a slight chill as he suddenly lifts me up and lays me gently back on his arms across the table. My legs lock around his waist and my hands reach for the edge of the table. My pearls fall to the side, the Hightower papers flutter to the floor, and God knows what else slides off the desk.

Poised over me, he stops suddenly. “You’re not looking at me. Look at me, Grace.”

I watch him in the reflection. I can’t do what he’s asking.

He turns my face to his, and his expression mingles concern and pleasure. “Why won’t you look at me?”

“Is your marriage really over?”

“Yes.”

“You swear it?”

“On my life.” He bends over and kisses me gently, pressing between my legs. “Now let it go, Grace. Let go.”

I close my eyes as my body responds to him. And then my heart.

4

The ringing of a telephone shatters a deep, lovely slumber. I hear it, half in and half out of sleep, not sure whether it’s real.

PPPRRRRRRINNNGGG!

I open my eyes a crack and peer at the clock. Its digital numbers read 7:26 A.M.; I’ve been asleep for two hours. I have four whole minutes left. The phone call is a bad dream.

PPPRRRINNNGGG!

It’s real, not a dream. Who the hell could be calling at this hour? Then I remember: Armen. I feel a rush of warmth and stumble to my bureau, cursing the fact that I don’t have an extension close to the bed like everybody else in America. I wish I could just roll over and hear his voice.

“Honey?” says the voice on the line. It’s not Armen, it’s my mother. “Are you up?”

“Of course not. You know how late I got in, you were baby-sitting. What do you want?”

“I’ve been watching the TV news.” I picture her parked in front of her ancient Zenith, with a glass mug of coffee in one hand and a skinny cigarette in the other.

“Mom, it’s seven-thirty. Did you call to chat?” I flop backward onto my quilt.

“I have news.”

I’m sure. You would not believe the things my mother considers news. Liz Taylor gained weight. Liz Taylor lost weight. “What, Ma?”

“Your boss, Judge Gregorian? He committed suicide this morning.”

I sit bolt upright, as if I’ve been electrocuted. I can’t speak.

“They found him at his townhouse in Society Hill. I didn’t know he lived in Society Hill. They said his house is on the National Register of Historic Places.”

I’m stunned.

“He was at his desk, reading papers in that death penalty case.”

“How—”

“He shot himself.”

No. I close my eyes to the mental picture forming like cancer in my brain.

“There was no suicide note,” she continues. “They called somebody named Judge Galanter, who lives in Rosemont. This Galanter gets to be chief judge now, eh?”

I shake my head. There must be some mistake. “My God,” is all I can say.

“Judge Galanter says the court will continue with its operations as before.”

I think of Galanter, taking over. Then Armen, dead. This can’t be happening.

“Galanter said the Hightower case will be reassigned to another judge. Wasn’t that the case you stayed late on?”

“Who found him?”

“His wife, when she got in from Washington. She’s the one who called the police.”

“Susan found him? Did she say anything? Did they interview her?”

Her response is an abrupt laugh; I imagine a puff of smoke erupting from her mouth. “She’s holding a press conference this morning.”

Susan. A press conference. What is going on? Why would Armen do such a thing? I close my eyes, breathing him in, feeling him still. Just hours ago, he was with me. Inside me.

“Are you there?” my mother asks.

I want to say, I’m not sure.

I’m not sure where I am at all.

5

I pack Maddie off to school in record time and barrel down the expressway into Center City, rattling in my VW station wagon past far more able cars. KYW news radio confirms over and over that Armen committed suicide. I swallow the pain welling up inside and tromp on the gas.

I can’t get to the courthouse doors because of the press, newly arrived to feast on the news. Reporters are everywhere, the TV newspeople waiting around in apricot-colored pancake. Cameramen thread black cables through a group of demonstrators, also new to the scene. There must be forty pickets, walking in a silent circle, saying nothing. I look up at their signs, screaming for justice against a searing blue sky: HIGHTOWER.

But I have to get inside.

“Would you like one?” asks an older man in a checked short-sleeved shirt. He holds a pink flyer in a hand missing a thumb; his face is weatherbeaten like a farmer’s. “It tells about my daughters.”

“Your daughters?” I look up in surprise.

He nods. “Do you have children?”

“Yes. A daughter.”

“How old?”

“Six.” I don’t want to talk to him. I can’t think about Hightower now. I want to get inside.

“Does she like Barney?”

“No, she likes Madeline. The doll.”

The deep creases at his eyes soften into laugh lines. “My little one, Sally? She liked dolls. She had a Barbie, and Barbie’s sister, too. What was the name of that sister doll?” He looks down at a pair of shiny brown shoes and scratches his head between grayish slats of hair. “My wife would know,” he says, his voice trailing off.

“Skipper.”

“Right!” He laughs thickly, a smoker. “That’s right. Skipper. Skipper, that’s the one.”

I seize the moment. “Well, I should go.”

“Sure thing. You hafta get to work.” He thrusts the flyer into my hand. On it is a black-and-white photograph of two pretty girls sitting on a split wooden rail. The typed caption says SHERRI AND SALLY GILPIN. I glance at it, stunned for a second. I knew the way they died, but I didn’t know the way they lived. The younger one, Sally, has a meandering part in her hair like Maddie’s, a giveaway that she hated to have her hair brushed. I can’t take my eyes from the little girl; she was strangled, the life choked out of her. What did Armen say last night? We saved a life.

“You better go, we don’t want you to get fired on our account,” says the man. “God bless you now.”

I nod, rattled, and make my way through the crowd with difficulty. Several of the women in line look at me: solid, sturdy women, their faces plain, without makeup. I avoid them and push open the heavy glass doors to the bustling courthouse lobby. I slip the flyer into my purse and flash a laminated court ID at the marshals at the security desk in front of the elevator bank. Two minutes later, I plow through the heavy door to chambers.

Eletha is sitting at her desk, staring at a blue monitor with a stick-figure rendering of a courthouse made by one of the programmer’s kids. Underneath the picture it says: ORDER IN THE COURT! WELCOME TO THE THIRD CIRCUIT COURT WORD PROCESSING SYSTEM! The door closes behind me, but Eletha doesn’t seem to hear it.

“El?”

She swivels slowly in her chair. Her eyes are puffy, and she rises unsteadily when she sees me. “Grace.”

I go over to her, and she almost collapses into my arms, her bony frame caving in like a rickety house. “It’s okay, Eletha. It’s gonna be okay,” I say, feeling just the opposite.

I rub her back, and her body shakes with high-pitched, wrenching cries. “No, no, no,” is all she says, over and over, and I hold her steady through her weeping. I feel oddly remote in the face of her obvious grief, and realize with a chill I’m acting like my mother did when my father disappeared; nothing has changed, pass the salt.

I ease Eletha into her chair and snatch her some tissues from a flowered box. “Here you go.”

“This is terrible. Just terrible. Armen, God.” She presses the Kleenex into her watery eyes.

“I know.”

“I can’t believe it.”

Neither can I. I don’t say anything.

“I was going to call you when I came in, but I couldn’t.” Her eyes brim over again.

“It’s okay now.”

“Susan called me. This morning. Then the police. Then Galanter. God, how I hate that man!”

“It was Susan who found Armen, right?”

“She came in from Washington and there he was.”

“When did she come in, right before dawn?”

“I guess. I don’t know.” She blows her nose loudly.

“Who told Galanter?”

“I don’t know, why?”

“I don’t understand. I was with Armen until five.”

“So you two worked late.”

“Right.” I avoid her eye; Eletha left at two o’clock. Then I think of the noise I heard, or thought I heard. What time was that? “Eletha, last night after you left, did you come back to the office?”

“No, why?”

“When I was with Armen, I thought I heard somebody out here.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“Didn’t they come into Armen’s office?”

“No. Not that I saw.”

She shakes her head; she’s not wearing any makeup today. “The clerk’s office, the staff attorneys, they got work to do on a death penalty case. Maybe it was one of them, dropping off papers.”

Just then the chambers door opens and in walk Sarah and Artie. They both look like they’ve been crying; I recognize Sarah’s anguished expression as the one I saw in the mirror this morning. She breaks away from Artie and storms into the room.

“Is Ben here?” she shouts, pounding past us to the law clerks’ office, her short cardigan flying. “Where the fuck is Ben?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Eletha, do you?”

“He hasn’t called.”

Sarah punches the doorjamb with a clenched fist. “Damn it! I want to see him, the little prick!”

“Sar, stop,” Artie says. He walks numbly over to Eletha and puts his arm around her. “It’s not going to bring Armen back.”

Sarah strides to the phone on Eletha’s desk and punches in seven numbers without looking at anyone. “I’ve been calling that asshole all morning. Pick it up, you little prick!”

“Relax, Sarah,” I say.

Her blue eyes turn cold. “What do you mean, relax?” She slams down the phone.

“Look, we’re all hurting.”

“Ben’s not, he caused it. He pressured Armen about Hightower so he could get that fucking clerkship. He even showed him that newspaper article, the one about victim’s rights. He knew it would bother Armen. He didn’t care how much.”

“You’re talkin’ crazy,” Eletha says, between sniffles.

Sarah looks from her to me. “Grace, you saw him last night. Was he upset?”

“No,” I say, wanting to change the subject. “I thought I heard a noise—”

“What?” Sarah says. “What kind of noise?”

“I don’t know, a noise. Like someone was here, outside his office. Maybe around three o’clock or later.”

“Did you see anyone?”

“No.”

“So what if you heard a noise?”

“Nothing,” I say. “Unless it was you or Artie. Was it?”

Artie snorts. “At three? We were asleep.” Then he catches himself. “Oh, shit.”

Sarah glares at him. “Nice move, Weiss.”

So it’s true about them. I don’t understand Sarah; sleeping with Artie, but crazy about Armen. And Artie and Armen are so close. Were so close.

“Oh, what’s the difference now?” Artie says. “I don’t care if everybody knows, it’s not like we’re doing anything wrong.” He looks at me and Eletha, his eyes full of pain. “I love her, okay? We fuck like bunnies, okay? Is that okay with you?”

“Sure,” I say. Eletha nods uncertainly.

“See, Sar, the world didn’t end.”

Sarah ignores him and presses REDIAL. “The important thing is to find Ben.”

I walk away from the tense group. I want to see Armen’s office before they do. Alone. I stop in the doorway, bracing myself. Still, I feel a sharp pang at the sight. My gaze wanders over the exotic brocade, the strange-looking documents, and the Armenian books in their paper dust jackets, frayed at the top. The place smells of him still; I can almost feel his presence. I can’t believe he would kill himself. Why didn’t I know? Why didn’t I see it coming?

I enter the room and finger the papers on the conference table. Everything is the way I remember it, except that some of the Hightower papers are gone, the ones he was working on at home. The cases are scattered over the table; the laptop is at the edge. Even the dog hairs on the prayer rug are the same. It reminds me of Bernice. Where was she last night when he killed himself? Where was I, sound asleep?

Suddenly I hear a commotion in the outer office, then shouting. I rush to the door and see Artie shove Ben up against the wall, rattling a group portrait of the appeals court.

“Artie, stop it!” I shout, but Eletha’s already on the spot. She steps in front of Ben, shielding him with her body.

“He deserves it!” Artie says, his chest heaving in a thick sweatshirt. He stands over Ben, who begins to kack-kack-kack in his old man cough, rubbing his head where it hit the wall.

“Back off!” Eletha says, in a voice resonant with authority. A sense of order returns for a moment; Eletha is in charge and we are in chambers. The king is dead, long live the queen. Then it passes.

“Where have you been?” Sarah shouts at Ben, who struggles to his feet, hiding almost comically behind Eletha.

“Go to hell, Sarah. I pulled an all-nighter, so I slept in. Do I need your permission?”

“You worked all night? On what?”

“Germantown Savings. I wanted to finish it.”

“You didn’t hear the phone?”

“No.”

“The fuck you didn’t!” Sarah looks like she’s about to pick up where Artie left off and Eletha wilts between them, her strength spent.

“Okay, Sarah,” I say, “cool it. You want to talk to Ben, do it when you’re calmer.”

Her eyes flash with anger. “Playing Mommy again?”

“Yes, it comes naturally. Now go to your room. Time out until the press conference.” I point to the clerk’s office.

“Press conference?” Eletha says. “Who’s givin’ a press conference?”

I check the clock above the chambers door. “Susan is, in fifteen minutes.”

Eletha’s eyes threaten to tear up again. “How can she? Before Armen’s body is even cold.”

“It’s not like it’s so easy for her,” Sarah says defensively, “but she feels the need to explain. The public has the right to know.”

I feel my heart beat faster. “She’s going to explain why he committed suicide?”

“That’s what she told me on the phone.”

“It’s his business, not the public’s,” Ben says, smoothing his tie.

Eletha looks as surprised as I do. “But how does she know? There was no note.”

“She’s his wife, Eletha,” Sarah says.

His wife. The word digs at me inside. If he hadn’t died, they’d have filed for divorce. Today.

We gather around the old plastic television in the law clerks’ office, watching Senator Susan Waterman take her place at the podium. I suppress a twinge of jealousy and scan her face for a clue about what she’s going to say. Her stoic expression reveals nothing. She looks like a wan version of her academic image; her straight dark-blond hair, unfashionably long, is swept into a loose topknot, and her small, even features are pale, a telegenic contrast to the inky blackness of a knit suit.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she says. She glances up from the podium, unaffected by the barrage of electronic flashes. “My husband, Chief Judge Armen Gregorian of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, died this morning by his own hand, here in Philadelphia. He loved this city, even though it had not always been kind to him. Even though the press had not always been kind to him, and especially of late.” She glares collectively at the press, which dubbed the fierce expression “Susan’s stare” during her campaign.

“They’re all pricks,” Sarah says, but even she sounds spent.

Susan takes a sip of water. “My husband did not leave a note to explain his actions, but it is no mystery to me. Some are already saying he did it because of the press’s criticism of his liberal views, but I assure you that was not the reason. Armen was made of sterner stuff.” She manages a tight smile at the crowded room, having reprimanded and absolved them in one blow.

“I’ve heard others say it was because of the death penalty case he had to decide, and the stress and strain it may have caused him. It would break anyone, but not Armen Gregorian. He was made of sterner stuff.” She lifts her head higher, in tacit tribute. Eletha, in the chair next to me, squeezes my hand.

“On the surface, my husband had everything to live for,” Susan says. “He was the chief judge, and we had a wonderful, happy marriage that was a solid source of comfort and support to us both.”

What is she saying? They were on the brink of divorce.

“But my husband was Armenian. The genocide of the Armenian people is called the forgotten genocide. Most of his family was murdered. His mother survived, only to commit suicide herself. This month—April—is when Armenians remember their tragic history.” She looks around the room. “Like the Holocaust survivors who later died by their own hand, my husband was a victim of hate. Let us pause for a moment of silence to remember Armen Gregorian and to remember that the power of hate can destroy us if we do not fight against it.” The camera lingers on her bowed head.

Sarah begins to sob, and Artie hugs her close.

I lean back in my chair, as if pressed there by a gigantic weight. Armen told me about the genocide, though he didn’t tell me about his mother. But still, would he commit suicide because of it? That night? The genocide was on his mind, but so was Hightower. And me. I feel like crying, but the tears won’t come.

Neither will Ben’s. He looks knowingly at Sarah and Artie, cuddled together.

His dark eyes are bone dry.

6

Judge Galanter’s breath carries the harsh tang of Binaca. Cigar smoke clings to the fine wool of his double-breasted suit. His movements are deliberate and his speech formal, as if he were trying to control each syllable. I know as sure as he’s standing before us, flushed slightly in front of Armen’s desk, that Galanter has been drinking. It evokes another memory of my father, flitting like a ghost across my mind.

“You law clerks can stay on for a week or two,” he says.

“We hadn’t even thought about it,” Artie snaps from the doorway.

“I’ll attribute that crack to your extreme emotional distress, Mr. Weiss.”

Artie looks away from Galanter, out the window. The courthouse flag flies at half mast, flapping in the wind that gusts off the Delaware River.

“Finish up the cases you’re working on. Draft the bench memos as before and hand them in to me. Argued cases will have to be reargued.” Galanter slides a gleaming Mont Blanc from his breast pocket and makes a check in a leather Filofax he’s holding like a missal. I can imagine what it says.

Things to do: Take over. Before noon.

“Next order of business. The office will have to be packed up. How much time will you need, Eletha?”

Eletha sits at the end of the conference table, fuming. “I would have to talk to Susan about that,” she says, crossing her slender arms across her chest.

“Senator Waterman? Already spoke with her. She said it’s up to you. Box the stuff and ship it to the house, she’ll go through it there. How long will it take you? I have to plan my own move.”

“You mean you’re takin’ this office?” Eletha asks.

Galanter jerks his chin upward, as if the folds of his turkey neck were pinched in his collar. “Of course, it’s the chief judge’s. I’d like to be in in two weeks. By the way, I understand the staff attorneys need an extra secretary, so there’s room for you there. Talk to Peter about that.” He makes another check in his Filofax, and Eletha breathes in and out, in and out.

“Judge,” I say. “I was wondering—”

“Of course. I forgot about you. They may need an extra staff attorney downstairs. You should apply. Part-time will be a problem, you’ll have to step up to a normal work week.”

“No. I wanted to ask about Hightower.”

He purses his thin lips. “I’ve reassigned it. The death warrant expires Monday, but we’ll have it decided well in advance.”

“Who was it reassigned to?”

“That information is strictly need-to-know. Did I mention the memorial service?” He shoots a questioning look at Ben, who’s standing against the bookshelves. Ben shakes his head discreetly.

“Not a high priority,” Artie says.

Galanter points at Artie with his pen. “Don’t test me, young man. I’ve just about had it with your lack of respect.”

“Respect?” Artie explodes. “Who are you to talk about respect? Armen just died and you can’t wait to take his office. Can’t wait!”

“Artie,” Sarah says nervously.

“Listen, you,” Galanter says, raising his voice. “This court has to maintain operations. We have a public trust.”

“Fuck you!” Artie shouts, almost in tears. He storms out of the room into his office and slams the door.

“I’ve never seen such conduct in a law clerk! Ever!” Galanter says.

“Judge Galanter.” I start talking, almost reflexively. “Artie and Armen were close. This is hard for him. For us all.” I hear an involuntary catch in my voice, but Galanter’s gaze is fixed in the direction of the clerks’ office. I feel a shiver of fear inside, from somewhere deep, but press it away. “You were saying, Judge, about the memorial service?”

Galanter looks down at me, still lost in his own anger. “What did you say?”

“The memorial service.”

“The memorial service? Oh, yes.” He exhales sharply, regaining control, and returns the pen to his breast pocket. “Memorial service. The day after tomorrow, Thursday. In the ceremonial courtroom. The time’s not fixed yet.”

“Have you heard about the funeral arrangements?”

“No idea. Senator Waterman said she’d call about that. Eletha, get me that memo I sent you.”

Eletha doesn’t move a muscle. “Memo? What memo, Judge?”

Galanter hasn’t drunk enough to miss the challenge in her manner. He tilts his head ever so slightly. “The one about the new sitting schedule. I sent it this morning, on E-mail.”

“I was busy this morning.”

“So was I. Get it now,” he says, staccato.

Eletha leaves the room. In a second she’s slamming her desk drawers unnecessarily.

Galanter hands me some papers from his book. “Xerox these for me and come right back.”

I take the papers and leave the office. When I open the door to the hallway, Eletha’s giving the finger to the wall.

I read the papers on the way to the Xerox machine. It’s a complete sitting schedule, with Armen’s initials crossed out next to his cases and a new judge’s written in. All of Armen’s cases, reassigned so fast it’d make your head spin.

READY TO COPY, the photocopier says. I open the heavy lid, slap the paper onto the glass, and hit the button. The light from the machine rolls calcium white across my face.

Suicide? I don’t understand. They were going to file for divorce, if what Armen said was true. I feel a pang of doubt; would Armen lie? Of course not. Afterward we talked for a long time, holding each other on the couch. He was an honest man, a wonderful man.

READY TO COPY. I hit the button. You don’t kill yourself just because you’re Armenian. Armen was a survivor. And he hated guns, was against keeping them in the house. Where did he get the gun?

READY TO COPY, says the machine again, but I’m not ready to copy. So much has happened. We found and lost each other in one night. I stare at the glass over the shadowy innards of the machine; all I see is my own confused reflection. What was that noise last night, and does it matter?

I turn around and look down the hall, but it’s empty. There are only two occupied judges’ chambers on this whole floor, ours and Galanter’s; the rest are vacant, the chambers of judges who sit nearer their homes in Wilmington and northern New Jersey. Only eleven people work on the entire floor.

Now it’s ten.

A boxy file cabinet sits against the wall next to the judges’ elevator. A few paces to the left is the door to the law clerks’ office. To the right, down the hall, are Galanter’s chambers.

Everything looks perfectly normal.

I step away from the machine and peer at the government-spec brown carpet. There’s nothing on the rug, no trace of anything. I straighten up, feeling stupid. What am I looking for, muddy footprints? Clothing fibers? What am I thinking? I shake my head and turn back to the Xerox machine.

ADD PAPER, it says. The words blink red, like the old pinball machines that go tilt.

Damn it. Why am I the only one who refills this thing? I look in the cabinet next to the machine for a ream of paper, but it’s empty except for the torn wrapper. The law clerks never pick up after themselves. I slam the cabinet door and walk down the hallway back to chambers.

Bbbzzzzzz goes the security camera, as I tramp angrily by.

Then it hits me. I do an about-face and look up at the camera. It’s black and boxy, and looks back at me like a mechanical vulture perched above the judges’ elevator.

The camera’s on all the time, monitored by the federal marshals. It saw everything that happened in the hall last night and probably recorded it, like at ATM machines.

It knows if anyone came into chambers and saw Armen and me together. And it knows who they are.

7

His breast pocket bears a plastic plate that says R. ARRINGTON over the shiny five-star badge of the marshal service. His frame is brawny in its official blue blazer, and his dark skin is slightly pitted up close. “Lunchtime!” I say to him, making an overstuffed tuna hoagie do the cha-cha with a chilly bottle of Snapple lemonade. “All this can be yours.”

He does not look impressed. “No can do, Grace.”

The hoagie and the lemonade jump up and down in frustration. “All I want is two minutes. I look at the monitors, then I’m outta there.”

“There’s twenty monitors, Grace,” he says, sighing deeply. Maryellen, the cashier in the building’s snack shop, cocks her head in our direction. She may be blind, but she’s not deaf. I decide to be more quiet.

“Come on, Ray. You said only one monitor shows our hallway. How long can it take to look at a monitor?”

He folds his thick arms. “Maybe if you tell me why this matters.”

I glance at the jurors behind us buying newspapers, gum, and fountain soda. The ice machine spits chunks into a tall paper cup, and a juror plays mix-and-match to find the right size lid. He’ll never find it; I never can, and I have a J.D. “Let’s just say I want to check security.”

“Come clean, Rossi.”

I consider this. Ray is one of the few marshals who liked Armen; he’s also one of the few African Americans, which I suspect is no coincidence. “Tell you what. Get me in. If it pays off, I’ll tell you why.”

“What am I supposed to tell the marshals?”

“What marshals? You’re the marshal.”

“I’m a CSO, technically. A court security officer. I mean the marshals watching the monitors.”

“Tell ’em I’m checking security, that I’m the administrative law clerk to the chief judge.”

“Grace.” His somber expression reminds me of something I’d rather not dwell on. Armen is gone.

“Forget it, I’ll tell them something. I’ll handle it. Just get me in, I’ll owe you. Big-time.”

Suddenly he snaps his fingers. “I know what you can do for me.”

“Anything.”

“You can introduce me to your fine friend, the lovely Eletha Staples.”

“Eletha? Don’t you know her?”

“I’ve been workin’ here as long as she has, but she won’t give me the time of day. She seein’ anybody?”

I think of Leon, Eletha’s boyfriend, who gives her nothing but grief. “No.”

“Hot dog!” He rubs his hands together; it makes a dry sound. “Lunch. I’ll start with lunch, take it nice and easy. Can you set it up?”

“Deal.” I set the tuna hoagie and Snapple on the counter in front of Maryellen. At the last minute, Ray tosses in two packs of chocolate Tastykakes.

“What are you having today, Grace?” Maryellen says. Her cloudy eyes veer wildly around the room.

“Thanksgiving dinner,” I say to her and she laughs.

After we leave the snack bar, Ray leads me through a labyrinth of hallways to the core of a secured part of the courthouse. It would have been impossible to find this myself, and when I reach the barred entrance I understand why.

It’s a prison.

Sixteen floors from where I work, in the same building. It gives me the creeps. The sign on the barred door says: ONLY COUNSEL MAY VISIT PRISONERS.

We head down another hall, past a room with a number of empty desks in it, and open a door onto a small room, brightly lit by a ceiling of fluorescents. A wall of TV screens dominates the room, giving it a futuristic feel. There must be twenty-five black-and-white TV screens here, trained everywhere throughout the courthouse.

The monitors in the left bank flash on the stairwells at each floor of the building, and the large screens in the middle offer an ever-changing peek into the courtrooms. In 12-A there’s a young woman crying on the witness stand. In 13-A an older man is being sentenced. In 14-A a little boy is testifying.

“It’s like a soap opera, huh, Worrell?” Ray says amiably to the stony-faced marshal watching the screens. He’s a stocky middle-aged man in a black T-shirt that says UNITED STATES MARSHAL SERVICE. It looks more like a get-up for Hell’s Angels, but I do not remark this aloud.

“Ugh,” the man says, his attention focused on the TV pictures of prison cells on the far right. Each cell is numbered and occupied by a man in street clothes, probably awaiting trial. They sit slumped or asleep in their cells; one is a black teenager in an oversized sweatshirt, just a kid. I think of Hightower.

“This is Grace Rossi, Worrell. She’s a lawyer, works for the appeals court. She wants to see—”

“I want to see the monitors,” I say with faux authority. “It’s a security check for the new chief judge.”

Worrell begins to laugh at one of the prisoners, a Muslim crouched over in prayer. “Say it loud, brother. You’re gonna need it.” Ray looks sideways at the monitor.

“Where’s the screen for the eighteenth floor?” I ask.

“That one.” He points to one of the screens. The bottom of the screen reads 16-B. In the high-resolution picture, a young secretary pauses to tug up her slip. Worrell chuckles. “They forget Big Brother’s watching.”

Of course they forget; I did. So did whoever came into our chambers, if anyone. I watch the picture flicker to 17-B. It’s a view of the hallway outside the judges’ elevator on the seventeenth floor. On the wall hangs a fake parchment copy of the Constitution. Our floor is next.

“Yeow!” Ray hoots as soon as the scene changes. Eletha is photocopying at the Xerox machine, her back to the camera. Her skirt clings softly to her curves, and with her back turned you can’t see how haggard she looks today. “Now ain’t that pretty?” he says, in a tone men usually reserve for touchdown passes and vintage Corvettes.

Worrell grunts. “She’s all right.”

Ray gives him a solid shove. “Listen to you, ‘She’s all right.’ Shit, man! She’s more than all right, she’s fine. And she’s mine, all mine. Right, Grace? Grace?”

“Right,” I say, preoccupied by the scene on the TV screen, which shows Eletha walking down the hall and into chambers. Bingo. The camera would have seen whoever came into chambers last night, wherever they came from. “Where’s the tape?”

Worrell looks at me blankly. “What tape?”

“The tape. The tape of what the camera saw last night.”

“We don’t tape.”

“What?”

“There’s no tape, lady.”

“I don’t understand.” I look at Ray for confirmation.

“I coulda told you that, Grace,” he says.

I don’t believe this. “At the MAC machine they tape. Even in the Seven-Eleven they tape.”

“Seven-Eleven’s got the money. This is the U.S. government. You’re lucky we got the goddamn judges.”

Ray looks embarrassed. “Downstairs we tape. The monitors at the security desk, they tape the stairwell and the judges’ garage. Just not here.”

“But somebody watches the monitors at night, don’t they?”

Worrell leans back in the creaky chair, plainly amused. “Guess again.”

“Maybe we should go,” Ray says.

“Hold on. There’s no night shift?” I hear myself sounding like an outraged customer.

“We got a fella walks around the halls,” Worrell says, “but that’s it. One marshal. The government don’t have the money for somebody to watch TV all night.” His face slackens as he returns to the screens.

“All right. Who was the marshal last night, walking the halls?”

“McLean, I think.”

“McLean? Is he the big one with the mustache?” The Mutt of the Mutt-and-Jeff marshals I see in the mornings.

Worrell nods. “Don’t you guys got some work to do?”

“Let’s go, Grace,” Ray says.

“Sure. Thanks,” I say, disappointed. So much for the short answer. We start toward the door but Worrell erupts into raucous laughter.

“Holy shit, what a case this one is.”

Ray glances at the monitor, then scowls. “I’d love a piece of that guy. He’s not crazy, he knows just what he’s doin.’ Jerkin’ us around.”

I look back. One of the prisoners is smack in the middle of cell seven, standing on his head. “Jesus.”

“What a country,” Worrell says. “That jerk’s gettin’ a nice bed for the night, and you know who’s gonna pay for it? You and me. The taxpayers. For him they got the money. For us, no. You talk to your boss about that, okay, lady?”

But I don’t answer. I recognize the man in the cell. “Ray, let’s go.”

8

“Shake and Bake is in jail?” Artie says, shocked.

“Show me where, Grace.”

“You can’t visit him.”

“What do you mean I can’t visit him?”

Eletha looks over wearily, dead on her feet against the bookcase in the law clerks’ office. “That lunatic is the last thing you should be worried about today.”

“Grace,” Sarah calls from her desk, “what were you doing in the security office?”

“I wanted to see the cameras.”

“What cameras?”

“You know, the ones in the hallways. I wanted to see who’s on the other side.”

“Why?”

“I was curious. I wanted to know if they saw anything peculiar.”

“Is this about the noise?” Sarah asks.

Ben looks up from the newspaper accounts of Armen’s death. “What noise?”

“I heard a noise last night, so I wanted to see the tapes, only—”

“Tapes?” Sarah asks. “You mean of what they see in the cameras?” She flushes slightly, and I play a hunch I didn’t even know I had.

“Yes. They tape everything, for security reasons. Like at Seven-Eleven.”

“They do?”

“Sure.” I look at Eletha. “Right, El? They tape from those cameras.”

“If you say so,” Eletha says, playing along. “They keep the tapes?”

Thanks, El. “Yep, in a vault. They said they’d show me tomorrow.”

Ben presses a button on his computer keyboard. The modem sings a computer song as he logs on to Lexis, the legal research database. “Surprised the government has the money.”

“Safer, what the fuck are you doing?” Artie asks. “Are you working? Today?”

“I’m going on Nexis, that okay with you?”

“What’s Nexis?” Eletha asks, as Sarah suddenly busies herself making a full-fledged tea ceremony out of a single bag of Constant Comment. She has to be the one I heard last night, and she should never play poker.

“Anybody gonna answer me? What’s Nexis?” Eletha plops into a chair like a much heavier woman. Her chin falls into her hand. “Forget it. Who gives a shit?”

“Nexis is a database of newspapers,” I say. “It has magazines, newspapers, wire services. Everything.”

“How do you like that?” Ben says, in his own world as he reads his computer screen. “We’re under HOTTOP. Hightower and the Chief.”

“Christ, Safer!” Artie says.

“I need a translation,” Eletha says.

“HOTTOP stands for hot topics in the news,” I say, the words sour in my mouth. Without thinking twice, I cross to Ben’s computer and press the power switch to OFF. The powerful unit crackles in protest, then fizzles out. “Show some respect, Ben. A man is dead.” I feel a wrenching inside my chest and turn my back on Ben’s surprised expression.

“Way to go, Grace!” Artie says, bursting into applause.

“She’s right,” Eletha says. She stands up and smooths out her skirt. “I don’t even know what we’re still doin’ here. We should all go home. The packing can wait.”

“I can’t believe he’s gone,” Sarah says, standing at the coffeemaker. The only sound is the hot water spurting into the glass pot. Sarah removes the pot a little too soon and the last drops dance across the searing griddle like St. Vitus.

“Let’s not get maudlin, please,” Ben says.

Artie looks as if he’s about to snap, then his brow knits in alarm. “Wait a minute. Grace, does Shake and Bake know about Armen?”

“I have no idea.”

“Oh, fuck. I have to get in to see him. There’s no telling what he’ll do when he hears. Where’s the prison?”

“On the second floor, but they won’t let you in.”

“The hell they won’t. He has a right to counsel, doesn’t he? I’m counsel.” Artie bounds over to the coat rack and tears Ben’s jacket from a wooden hanger, leaving it swinging.

“That’s my best jacket, Weiss,” Ben says.

“I know, dude. Thanks.” He yanks the jacket over his chest. “Sar, lend me your briefcase.”

“You really want to do this?” Sarah hands him a flowered canvas briefcase but Artie pushes it back at her.

“Give me a pad instead. Where’d you say they’re taking him, Grace?”

“Courtroom Fourteen-A, before Katzmann. They’re trying to charge him with trespassing on federal property.”

Artie shakes his head. “I tell ya, these kids today, in and out of trouble. Where did I go wrong, Mom?”

“Don’t ask me, pal.”

“I gave him everything. Summers in Montauk, winters in Miami Beach.” He gives the jacket a reckless tug and Ben flinches.

“Will you at least take it easy?” Ben says.

Eletha covers her eyes. “I didn’t see this. This is not happening.”

“How do I look, Mom?” Artie says to me. He sticks out his arms, and the sleeves ride up to his elbows. “Hot?”

“Smokin’.”

“Excellent.” He sticks a legal pad under his arm and runs out of the clerks’ office. I hear the heavy pounding of his feet as he heads for the outer door. My eyes meet Sarah’s, but she looks down into her steaming mug of tea.

“You okay, Sar?” I ask her. Flush her out. Isn’t that what detectives do?

“Sure.” She takes a quick sip of tea, avoiding my gaze. “Who’s Hightower been reassigned to, Ben?” she asks.

“What makes you think I know?”

“You know Galanter’s clerks. The buzz-cut boys.”

The telephone rings at Eletha’s desk. “Shit,” she says. “Thing’s been ringing all day.” Before I can offer to get it, she kicks off her heels and is padding to her desk.

Ben flicks on the power switch, animating the machine. “Grace, hate me if you must, but I’m logging on again.”

“Tell us who got Hightower, Safer,” Sarah says, but I hold up my hand.

“Sarah, think a minute. Who’s even more conservative than Galanter?”

“Adolf Hitler.”

“On our court, I mean.”

“Judge Foudy.”

“Right. And Galanter would pick somebody to vote with him, now that Armen’s gone. He’d want to stack the deck. Change the result.”

She blinks. “Could he do that?”

“Sure. He’s the chief judge. In an emergency, he picks the panels.”

Ben pounds the keys. “I neither confirm nor deny.”

He doesn’t have to, I know it. Galanter has shifted the majority to himself, blocking Hightower in. No matter which way Robbins goes, it’ll be two votes to one for death. Poor Armen; he didn’t save Hightower’s life after all. I stand up, wanting suddenly to be alone.

“Look at this item,” Ben says, his voice tinged with sarcasm. “What a nice gesture from Senator Susan, and how like a Democrat.”

“What?” Sarah says, and I stop at the doorway.

“From The Washington Post. Says here that Susan tried to donate Bernice to a group called Service Dogs for the Handicapped. I can almost hear the wheelchairs plowing into each other, can’t you?” He laughs so hard he coughs: kack-kack-kack.

“Very funny,” Sarah says.

“Bernice is gone?” I say, surprised to feel a twinge inside.

“Gone but not forgotten,” Ben says, recovering enough to hit another key. “They didn’t want her, evidently. They only take puppies.”

“So where is she?” I ask from the doorway, only half wanting to know.

Ben hits the key again. “It doesn’t say.”

“I know,” Eletha says. She walks into the room, waving a yellow Post-it on her finger. “They just called.”

“Who did?”

She holds the paper in front of my face. On it is a phone number I don’t recognize. “I voted for Susan, but I’ll never forgive myself.”

9

“She’s too big, Mom,” Maddie says, shuddering in her nightgown. “Look at her teeth.”

Bernice strains against her red collar, which still says A. GREGORIAN; her wagging tail swats my thigh with each beat.

“But I’m holding her, honey. She won’t hurt you, she can’t. Just come over and let her sniff you. She’s all clean now.” I bathed Bernice right after I bathed Maddie, using green flea shampoo they sold me at the dog pound, along with a leash, two steel bowls, and a thirty-dollar trowel for shoveling a megaton of dogshit.

“Rrronononr,” Bernice grumbles, a guttural noise that makes Maddie’s blue eyes widen in fear.

“What’s that?”

“She’s talking to you, honey. She wants you to love her.”

“But I don’t love her. I don’t even like her.” Maddie tugs anxiously at the end of a damp strand of hair; her hair looks brown when it’s wet, more like my mother’s original russet color than her own blazing red.

“Aw, can’t you just give her a little pat on the head? Her hair’s washed too.” I scratch Bernice’s newly coiffed crown and she looks back gratefully, her tongue lolling out. “See? Look how happy she is to be with us.”

“But why did we have to take her?”

“Because nobody else would. They all have apartments that don’t allow pets. We’re the only ones with a house who could have a pet.”

“They could move.”

“No. Now come closer.”

She doesn’t budge. “Why couldn’t you just leave her there? In the dog pound.”

“You know what would happen to her. You saw Lady and the Tramp.”

“They don’t do that right away, Mom. They wait about six or five weeks.”

“No, they don’t wait that long.”

“Somebody else could have adopted her.”

“I don’t think anybody would have. You should have seen her in the cage.” I flash on the scene at the pound; Bernice penned by herself, barking frantically next to a streetwise pit bull. “Nobody would have taken her, Maddie. Most people like puppies, not dogs.”

“I like puppies. Little puppies.”

I sigh. I got my second wind when I washed Bernice, but the day’s awful events and my own fatigue are catching up with me.

“It’s not my fault, Mom.” Maddie pouts. “She’s scary.”

“I know, you’re being very brave. How about you go up to bed now? You look tired.”

“I’m not tired. You always say I’m tired when I’m not.”

“All right, you’re not tired, but I am. Go up to bed, and I’ll be right up.”

She makes a wide arc around Bernice, then scurries upstairs, and I take the disappointed dog into the kitchen and put her behind an old plastic baby gate. She whimpers behind the fence, but I don’t look back. I reach Maddie’s room just as she turns off the light and hops into bed. “She’s so big, Mom,” she says, a small voice in the dark.

I sit down at the edge of the narrow bunk bed and let my weariness wash over me. I smooth Maddie’s damp bangs back over the uneven part in her hair. It reminds me of Sally Gilpin, and I feel grateful to have my daughter with me, however terrified she is of big dogs. That much is right in the world. “I understand, baby.”

“Where will she sleep?” Maddie says, digging in her mouth with a finger, worrying a loose tooth from its moorings.

A good question, only one of the hundred I haven’t answered. “I have it all figured out.”

“Mom, look,” she says with difficulty, owing to the fist in her mouth. Her eyes glitter in the dim light from the hallway. Huge round eyes, like Sam’s; my color but his shape. Across the bridge of her nose is a constellation of tiny freckles too faint to see in the dark.

“Look at what?”

“Look.” She moves her hand, pointing at one of her front teeth, which has been wrenched to the left.

“Gross, Maddie. It’s not ready. Put it back the way it was, please.”

“Everyone else has their teeth out. My whole class.”

“But you’re younger, remember? Because of when your birthday is.”

“Duh, Mom.”

“Duh, Mads.”

She punches the tooth back into place with a red-polished fingernail. “It doesn’t even hurt when I do that tooth thing. I like to stick my tongue up in the top.” Which is exactly what she does next.

“Stop, Maddie.”

“You know how there’s like the top of your teeth? And you can stick your tongue in the top and wiggle it around?”

“Kind of.”

“Well, I like to stick my tongue in there and make like buck teeth.”

“Terrific. Just do it with your tongue, not your finger, okay? And don’t show it to me or I’ll barf.”

“Why can’t I use my finger? It works better.”

“You’ll give yourself an infection.”

“No, I won’t.”

“Fine. Don’t blame me when your mouth explodes.”

She giggles.

“You think that’s funny?”

She nods and giggles again, so I reach under the covers and tickle her under her nightgown. “No. No tickling!” she says.

“But you love to be tickled.”

“No, I hate it. Madeline likes it. You can tickle her.” She fishes under the thin blanket and locates her Madeline doll, which she shoves at my chest. “Tickle her.”

I look down at the soft rag doll with its wide-brimmed yellow felt hat. Madeline has a face like a dinner plate, with wide-set black dots for eyes and a smile stitched in bumpy red thread. Her orange yarn hair is the same color as Maddie’s, but we didn’t name Maddie after the Ludwig Bemelmans books, we named her after Sam’s grandmother. When I gave Maddie the doll at age three, they became inseparable. “You really do look like Madeline, you know?” I say. “Except for the hat.”

“No, I don’t. She looks like me. I look like myself.”

I laugh. “You’re right.” I lean over and give her a quick kiss. Her breath smells of peanut butter. “Did you brush?” I ask, second-rate sleuth that I am.

“I don’t have to brush if I don’t want to.”

“Oh, really? Who said?”

“Daddy. He told me it was my decision.” Her tone elides into the adolescent sneer that comes prematurely to six-year-old girls.

“Don’t be fresh.”

“Don’t be fresh. Don’t be fresh. Daddy says you can break the rules sometimes.”

“Oh, he does, does he?” Easy for Sam to say. After his highly suspect charitable deductions, fidelity was the second rule he broke. Sam is a high-powered lawyer who lost interest in me at about the same time I became a mother and quit being a high-powered lawyer myself; ironically, I thought that was just when I was getting interesting.

“Gretchen says that if your tooth comes out too soon, you have to wait a long time for a new tooth to grow.” She twists a hank of Madeline’s yarn hair around her finger.

“Is Gretchen a girl in your class?”

“Gretchen knows about bugs and gerbils. She knows about why it’s a hamster and not a gerbil. She has three teeth out. Madeline likes her.”

“Then she must be nice.”

“She is. She has long hair, really long. Down to here.” She makes a chop at her upper arm. “She wears a jumper.”

Like Madeline. “Do you eat lunch with her?”

“Sometimes. Not usually. Usually I’m alone.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know that much people, so nobody ever sits next to me.”

I try to remember what I read in that parenting book. Talk so your kid will listen, listen so your kid will talk; it’s catchy, but it means nothing. “What can we do about that?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugs.

I forget what the book says to do when they shrug. “Would you like to have Gretchen over? Maybe one of the days I’m off from work?”

“She won’t come.”

“You don’t know that unless you ask.”

“But I don’t know her exactly as a best friend, okay?”

“But, honey, that’s how you get to know someone.”

“Mom, I already told you!” She turns away.

I am at a loss. There is no chapter on your child having no friends. I even spied on her at recess last month after I went food shopping. The other first graders swung from monkey bars and chased each other; Maddie played by herself, digging with a stick in the hard dirt. Her Madeline doll was propped up against a nearby tree. I found myself thinking, If she’s digging a grave for the doll, I’m phoning a shrink. Instead I telephoned her teacher that night.

“She’ll be fine,” she said. “Give her time.”

“But it’s March already. I’m doing everything I can. I help out in the classroom. I did the plant sale and the bake sale.”

“Have you set up any play dates for her?”

“Every time I suggest that, she bursts into tears.”

“Keep at it.”

“But isn’t there anything else I can do?”

“Let it run its course. She’s on the young side.”

“But she was fine last year, in kindergarten. She was even younger.”

“Weren’t you home then?”

Ouch. Then my alimony ran out and almost all my savings; with child support, I can swing part-time. “Yes, I only work three days a week, and she has her grandmother in the afternoon. It’s not like she’s with a stranger.”

“She’s just having some trouble with the adjustment.”

Well, duh, I thought to myself.

But I didn’t say it.

Bernice’s ears prick up at the sound of a soft knock at the front door and she takes off, barking away, back paws skidding on the hardwood floor. In a minute, there’s the chatter of a key in the lock; it has to be Ricki Steinmetz, my best friend. She’s the only one with a key besides my mother.

“Rick, wait!” I shout, but it’s too late.

The door swings open and Bernice bounds onto Ricki’s shoulders. “Aaaiieee!” Ricki screams in surprise.

“Bernice, no!” I yank the dog from Ricki’s beige linen suit, leaving distinct rake marks in the shoulder pads, and hustle Ricki and Bernice inside before my neighbors call the landlord.

“Is that a dog?” Ricki says, backing up.

I hold a finger to my lips and listen upstairs to hear if Bernice’s barking woke Maddie. Ricki understands and shuts up, her mouth setting into a disapproving dash of burgundy lipstick. There’s no sound from Maddie’s room. Bernice chuffs loudly on Ricki’s cordovan mules.

Ricki gasps. “Did you see that? She threw up on my shoes!”

“She just sneezed.”

“These are Joan and David!”

“Come in the kitchen, would you?” I take Bernice by the collar and walk her like Quasimodo into the kitchen. “What are you doing here? It’s almost nine o’clock.”

Ricki snatches a paper napkin from the holder on the dining room table and follows me into the kitchen. “Didn’t your mother tell you I called? I wanted to come over and see how you were, after what happened,” she says, wiping her shoe. Ricki is a family therapist who takes clothing as seriously as codependency. She still looks put together even after a day of seeing clients; her white silk T-shirt remains unwrinkled, her lips lined. In fact, she’d look perfect if she didn’t have those rake marks on her shoulders and that goober on her shoes.

“It’ll dry.”

“Disgusting.” She slips on the shoe. “It’s the judge’s dog, isn’t it?”

“Yep.”

“Tell me you’re taking it to the pound.”

“Nope. I own it. Her.”

She stands stock-still. “You’re kidding me.”

“Don’t start with the dog. I heard it from my mother, I heard it from my daughter. You came over to be supportive, so start being supportive.” I sit down on one of the pine stools at the counter in my makeshift eat-in kitchen, and Bernice stands beside me, tail wagging. I scratch her head.

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