Mistaken Identity (27 page)

“That woman, knitting. Who is she?”

“One of the wives.”

“Whose wife?”

“Boy on the bag. Danny Morales.”

“She’s here a lot?”

“All the time. Now, keep your mind on your job here. You come to gossip or box?”

“Box.”

“Then box, woman.”

Judy didn’t have much time. Her boxing lesson was over and she had to get back to the office. She was stretching plausibility with her story of a two-hour doctor’s appointment, even with a gynecologist. They overbooked with less guilt than an airline, but there was a limit. Judy crouched next to her gym bag and packed it slowly, watching the young woman with the knitting. Her husband pounded the speed-bag next to her. Mr. Gaines had said Connolly hung with the wives. Maybe Mrs. Morales knew something.

Ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum,
went the speedbag, smacking the plywood backboard and swinging back for more punishment. Morales punched the bag with the outside of his gloves, his tattooed arms high and his elbows spread sideways like wings. His wife glanced up from her knitting to watch him, though the boxer concentrated on the drubbing he gave the speedbag, lost in a trance sustained by the rhythms of his own violence.

Judy zipped her gym bag closed, straightened up, and walked casually in their direction.
Ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum;
the sound grew louder. She walked past Morales and stopped next to his wife, who didn’t look up from her knitting. “I always wanted to learn to knit,” Judy said loudly.

The young woman looked up in surprise, her lacquered fingers frozen at her row of tight stitches. Morales stopped hitting the speedbag, which flopped back and forth on the squeaking chain, and glared at Judy. “What did you say to her?” he demanded.

“Uh, nothing really,” Judy answered, taken aback. Behind Morales she saw Mr. Gaines, who had stopped coaching another fighter and was watching vigilantly. “I was just trying to learn about knitting.”

“Oh, yeah?” Morales blinked perspiration from his eyes, revealing a prominent brow that crumpled with the force of his anger. “Buy a book.”

“Danny, Danny,” Mr. Gaines called out, shuffling bandy-legged to Morales. He waved an arm in the air as if he were hailing a cab. “Ain’t no call for that now. Tha’s Judy, Judy Forty. She one of my students.”

Morales grinned crookedly. “A chick, takin’ lessons here?”

“She a boxer to me, tha’s all,” Mr. Gaines said. “You should rightly be sayin’ welcome to her. He’p bring her along.”

Judy felt a guilty pang. Mr. Gaines was standing up for her, and she had lied to him. “That’s all right, Coach.”

“No, Danny here can introduce himself, he want to be polite. You might like meetin’ a famous boxer. Danny has twenty-five fights, twenty-four by knockout, only one by decision. He’s comin’ up to his first twelve-rounder in a coupla months.”

Morales relaxed, apparently soothed by his credentials, and nodded at Judy. “Danny Morales. You a friend of Mr. G’s, I’m happy to meet you. Anythin’ you wanna know about this sport, you ask. History, pointers, whatnot. I don’t mind.”

“Thank you, Danny. I didn’t catch your wife’s name,” Judy said, and the young woman smiled, apparently pleased at the unaccustomed attention.

“Ronnie, Ronnie Morales,” she said. “Anytime you want to know about knitting, you just ask.”

Judy took a step closer. “What are you making?”

“A scarf, for Danny.” She put a slim finger to her lips. “But don’t tell him. It’s supposed to be a surprise.”

Morales almost smiled. “Like I didn’t know. She knit me two scarves and a sweater already.”

“You’re a lucky man,” Judy said, and the conversation stalled. She couldn’t talk to Ronnie with her husband there. They had to go where no man could. “Uh, Ronnie, do you know where a ladies’ room is? I know they have a locker room, but we can’t wash up there, can we?”

“It’s around the back. You have to use the janitor’s closet.”

“I didn’t see it. Is it hard to find?”

“Kind of. You want me to show it to you?” Ronnie asked, setting her knitting aside.

“Sure,” Judy said, as casually as possible. “Lead on.”

B
ennie hustled into her office with a freshly poured mug of coffee and pushed aside her phone messages, correspondence, and other case notes. Connolly had become the only priority. It was Thursday, for God’s sake. Bennie slipped out of her jacket and caught sight of the Band-Aid in the crook of her elbow, then fingered the bumpy red blot in the middle. Her blood; Connolly’s blood. In a week she would know if they were the same. The possibility seemed more likely since the test, though Bennie knew her thinking wasn’t completely rational.

She sat down in her padded desk chair, and the sun streamed through the window behind her, reminding her like a tap on the shoulder that the day was almost over. She went through her papers to find the police chronology. It was the weakest part of the prosecution’s case, and she intended to weaken it to the breaking point.

“Incident Report,” read the slip of white paper. These were the papers that Carrier had applied to the court for and which had been released, albeit in severely redacted form. The documents looked as insignificant as newsstand receipts, but were among the most critical documents in a criminal case. Usually they constituted a chronological recounting of the police activity at the crime scene, but in this case they didn’t explain how the hell Reston and McShea got to the scene so fast. There was only one set of documents left to consult, the transcripts of the telephone calls that came into 911.

Bennie pulled the transcripts for that night. The first call had come in at 8:07, with a positive ID. Not so good for the defense, but the caller, a neighbor named Lambertsen, didn’t say when she heard the gunshot. Interesting, because Bennie wanted to pinpoint that. She read down further, to the police response. The first response was a minute later, exactly. Bennie made a note and kept reading. There were more calls reporting the gunshot and Connolly running down the street, which Bennie read with increasing dismay. The Commonwealth would parade these witnesses to the stand. The cumulative effect would devastate the defense.

Bennie shook off her fear. She had to find the soft spots in the prosecution, and they were there, she just sensed it. Sunlight moved onto her papers in an oblique shadow that reminded her of her last visit with her mother and she realized she hadn’t spoken with her mother’s doctor in days. She should call. It would only take a minute. Bennie reached for the phone, punched in the number, and identified herself when they picked up.

“The doctor’s been trying to reach you all morning, Miss Rosato,” said the receptionist.

Bennie was puzzled. The doctor had wanted to reach her? She hadn’t seen his phone message. She tucked the phone in the crook of her neck and thumbed hurriedly through her pink messages. Dr. Provetto, at 9:13
A.M
. Dr. Provetto, at 11:45
A.M
. My God. Why was he calling? Bennie’s heart leapt to her throat the moment she heard the doctor’s voice.

J
udy had discovered that a janitor’s closet was really an open toilet near a string mop. The walls were streaked with grime and a gritty Rubbermaid bucket sat under a streaked washbasin. The toilet paper holder was empty and two half rolls of toilet paper were lined up on the tank next to an old copy of
Sports Illustrated.
Judy washed her hands in the basin. “So,” she asked, “is knitting hard? It looks hard.”

“No, it’s easy.” Ronnie Morales lingered at the door and checked her hair in a cracked mirror over the sink. She wore light eye makeup but no foundation and her skin was poreless over cheekbones that shaped her face like a Valentine’s Day heart. “I taught myself from a book. That’s what Danny meant. I could teach you in five minutes. I even have some needles for you, thick ones to start with. I’ll bring them for you.”

“Thanks,” Judy said, surprised at the offer. It struck her that Ronnie Morales was a woman who needed a friend.

“No problem.” Ronnie folded her arms against the shiny black of her form-fitting leather jacket. “I knit lots of things. Sweaters for Danny and my mom and sister, some baby clothes for my new nephew, and a vest for my grandfather.”

“So you enjoy it.”

“No, I hate it,” Ronnie said with a giggle. “I’ll teach you if you want, but it’s totally boring. Doing your nails is more fun than knitting.”

“Why do you do it, then?” Judy’s hands dripped while she looked around for paper towels.

“For something to do. There’s no TV here. I read the new magazines as soon as they come out, then I got nothing to do when Danny’s trainin’.”

“Do you watch him train every day?” Judy gave up her search and wiped her hands on her sweatpants.

“I have to.” Ronnie squinted in the mirror. “Danny says I’m his good luck charm.”

“He needs luck with a speedbag?”

Ronnie smiled, then stopped like it was against the rules. “He’s a real good fighter. His manager thinks he’ll be famous. Be one of the great ones.”

“Don’t you get bored, though? I mean, even if I loved someone, I might get bored watching him all day.”

“Sure I get bored. That’s why I knit.” Her mouth pursed slightly, wrinkling an upper lip like a Cupid’s bow. “Danny is the jealous type.”

“Then why does he bring you to the gym? There’s nothing but men here.”

“He likes to know where I am. Not that I ever cheated on him or nothin’. Not ever. I never would. I mean,
never
.” Ronnie watched herself in the mirror as she tossed her head. “You’re takin’ lessons with Mr. Gaines?”

“Uh, yeah,” Judy said, catching up with the abrupt change of subject.

“Not many women in the gym, that’s why we don’t have no ladies’ room. Only women here usually are the other wives. Even they don’t come in much anymore.”

“Too bad. I’m new in town. It would be nice to meet them. Make friends.”

“You ain’t missin’ nothin’. They’re like a group, you know. They think they’re all that. There’s Juan’s wife, Maria, and Mickey, he’s a heavyweight, and his wife, Ceilia. Ceilia is a bitch, I tell you. The only nice one was Valencia, Miguel’s girlfriend, but she’s gone.” Ronnie’s smooth forehead wrinkled. “She went to prison.”

“Jeez, prison? What for?”

“They said she was selling coke.”

“Selling cocaine?” Judy hid her surprise. It was amazing how much you could learn from another woman in a ladies’ room, even a crummy ladies’ room.

“I don’t think Valencia did that, though. She was friendly with the wives. She was friendly with everybody, you know. I always wondered, you know, what’s up with them.
They
mighta been doin’ business, you know, from
them
I could believe it. But Valencia would never do nothin’ like that. She was a wonderful mother.”

“You don’t think she sold coke?”

“I can’t say for sure, you know. I only went out with them once, ’cause of Danny. He didn’t like it.” Ronnie’s voice trailed off. “Not Valencia, though. Valencia was a good person, you know. Now this white girl, she acted like she owned Valencia. She was with the man who managed Star. You know, Star.”

“Star?” Judy said, playing dumb, which wasn’t easy for a Law Review editor.

“Star Harald. He’s turning pro next. He’s almost as good as Danny. It was his manager, his girlfriend. I forget her name. This girl, she wasn’t even a wife and she acted like she owned everybody, the whole gym.” Ronnie’s voice grew dishy. “A redhead, dressed like a whore, too. She’s in jail now because she killed him.”

“She killed her boyfriend? How do you know?”

Ronnie moved a curl from her eyes. “Shit. Everybody knows that.”

B
ennie’s world lurched to a stop after she hung up the telephone. Her fingers gripped the walnut edge of her desk and she stiffened in her chair. She knew she was breathing but it was soundless, as if she were afraid to draw breath. Or felt she wasn’t entitled to, now.

Sunlight from her office window fell on her back but she couldn’t feel its warmth. Motes of dust floated through a sunbeam, but she couldn’t focus on them. The shadow cast across the Connolly file was her own, but it looked like a cardboard cutout of a human being. Like a silhouette used for target practice, with a hole blown through its heart.

Bennie fought to keep her breathing even, her head clear, her eyes dry. Square buttons lit up on her phone, silently blinking on and off, and beyond her closed door she could hear the secretaries joking with each other. Everything was the same, yet nothing would be the same from now on.