Mistaken Identity (35 page)

At dawn she drove home and slipped into bed beside a deeply snoring Grady. The sound used to make Bennie smile, but tonight nothing could do that. She didn’t sleep, just lay there, and finally got up to work in her home office, since it was Saturday. Then she showered, dressed, and avoided her lover’s inquiries until it was time to go and bury her mother.

Bennie’s shoulders sagged in the smooth oak pew as she sat through the Mass at the Catholic church in her mother’s old neighborhood. The church was shabby and small; though neat and well kept, with brown marble arches and walls the color of cantaloupe. Red votive candles flickered in stepped rows to the right of the altar, before a statue of the Virgin Mary, which Hattie prayed to before the Mass began. Bennie didn’t bother, on the assumption that her previous prayers had been ignored. The facts spoke for themselves, as lawyers say.

Her mother’s casket remained in the aisle, draped in a white cloth, dignified except for the steel gurney peeking from under the cover. Bennie avoided looking to the left, and still couldn’t completely comprehend that her mother was gone, entertaining a child’s doubt that her mother was in fact in the coffin. Then she remembered: They’d held a brief service at the funeral home, where Bennie had said a final good-bye and lightly rubbed her mother’s hand. She hadn’t even minded that the hand felt cold, even hard, because it was the last time. Then she held Hattie when the funeral director asked them to leave the room, and Bennie knew that they were going to close the casket then and seal her mother inside. So of course her mother was
in there.
Of course.

Bennie chased the thoughts from her head as the Mass began, with heavy organ music and a lone tenor who sang “Ave Maria.” She had always regarded “Ave Maria” as the Church’s trump card at funerals, but resisted tears by concentrating on the goings-on at the altar. Two young girls were assisting at the ceremony, which Bennie noted as a political matter, and she chose not to focus on the words of the old priest. At the end of the Mass, the priest stepped from the altar, his white robes swaying, swinging a large ball of incense that trailed dark and pungent smoke. The smoke filled her nose and brought tears brimming to her eyes, as the priest said something about how her mother was surrendering her body and spirit to Jesus Christ. Bennie knew her mother had surrendered her body and spirit to something quite different, a long time ago, with no choice in the matter. And it wasn’t anything half as benevolent as Jesus Christ.

She tried to think back to before her mother’s illness had taken over, gradually at first, then completely. Bennie knew her mother had loved her long after she was well enough to say so, though she barely remembered her mother’s caring for her as a child. Bennie guessed her mother had performed the routine functions that mothers do every day, for there had been evidence of it. Bennie had won awards in elementary school, tiny pins like tie tacks that lay ignored in her jewelry box, for getting good grades and having good penmanship. She had stumbled across one of the tacks this morning, dressing for her mother’s funeral, and it jarred loose a single memory: her mother teaching her cursive writing at the kitchen table, a fleeting picture of the rounded circles and elongated loops of the Palmer method as they swooped above and below the dotted lines.

Like this, Benedetta,
her mother would say.
Loop the loop, like an airplane.

Sitting in the pew, Bennie found herself inferring her mother’s acts from the evidence, almost like exhibits in a trial. In school photos, Bennie’s hair was always in braids, which she loved, with matching barrettes at the ends. But Bennie didn’t braid her own hair at age six. Somebody had braided her hair every morning. Somebody must have matched those silly barrettes. It had to have been her mother, because there was no one else around. Her mother had done those simple things and undoubtedly more, even as she was struggling with the darkness overcoming her. She had been a mother. Bennie’s mother.

Suddenly pallbearers appeared from nowhere, genuflected in unison, all six of them, three on either side of the casket. Then they stood up and slid the drape from the casket with a discreet flourish, revealing a name engraved on a brass nameplate.
CARMELLA ROSATO
,
it said, and Bennie wiped her eyes and forced herself to think of nothing but ordering that plate and being pleased that the funeral director had been able to obtain the one she wanted, in a modern font. The pallbearers walked the casket down the marble aisle, rolling it behind the priest and altar girls. Grady took Bennie’s arm and walked with her and Hattie behind the casket, through the smoke that lingered in the air like streaks of gray silt in the earth, burning Bennie’s eyes and heart.

After the Mass was over, Bennie sat in the back of the gray limo, sandwiched between a somber Grady and a weepy Hattie, and only then did function return briefly to her brain. She remembered her father and wondered if he’d be at the cemetery, then the thought vanished into the chilly swoosh of the limo’s robust air-conditioning. “Cold in here,” Bennie said, which gave her something to say and think about until they reached the cemetery. Grady held her hand loosely, his profile to the overwide window of the limo, the passing scenery distorted in the convex lenses of his wire-rims.

The three traveled wordlessly to the cemetery, passing through its wrought iron gates, and Bennie looked outside the window for the first time with any interest. Hattie merely grunted. To Hattie’s disapproval, Bennie had rejected the parish cemetery for a suburban memorial park. Hard to quarrel with a rolling lawn dappled with sunlight and a pond with Canada geese, which took leisurely flight, honking against a cloudless sky, as the limo cruised past. No stone angels, granite crucifixes, or mausoleums marred the natural view; the monuments were tastefully recessed, flush with the ground. Bennie knew her mother had never seen this much open land in her life, much less an actual Canada goose, yet something told Bennie her mother deserved to be here, among natural beauty. She was entitled to it, at least, in death.

The grave had been prepared as the limo pulled up, and mounds of rich, clay-veined earth lay heaped around a concrete vault. The entire affair had been set up under an incongruously cheery yellow canopy, which Bennie considered uprooting and shredding with her bare hands. One of the funeral directors waved to her with a gesture more appropriate to an airport runway, and Bennie was propelled toward him and given a single red rose. She stared at it in her hand, and it felt frosty from a florist’s refrigerator. Bennie flashed on her father’s fresh-cut cosmos and looked around reflexively. The memorial park was green and quiet. A warm breeze flickered through the distant trees. Winslow was nowhere in sight, and there were no monuments for him to hide behind. He had not come.

She thought it would matter, but it didn’t. She thought she’d want to see him, but she didn’t. She felt satisfied he wasn’t there, and neither was Connolly. After last night, Connolly’s presence would have profaned this place. In the end it was as it should be, as it had been in the beginning and throughout, just she and her mother, only the two of them, alone together.

Bennie stood beside the glossy casket, trying to stand up straight while the priest droned away, and when he was finished and it came time for her to place the red rose over the brass nameplate, she realized that there was no other person in the world she truly needed, except one. And, oddly, it was someone who could offer her nothing but her own needs, and somehow that had been enough.

CARMELLA ROSATO.

Who rested, finally, in peace.

“Y
ou
dick
!
You little
dick
!”
Star shoved the squirrelly dude against the alley wall. It was dark, but Star could see the asshole’s head bounce off the brick. “You little fucker!” Star shouted at him.

“No! Don’t kill me! Please, God!” The dude’s hands flew up to where his head got hit and he crumpled in half like a paper doll, falling to his knees on a pile of rotted wood and greasy drywall. The corner was filled with garbage spilling out of Hefty bags. “No, please. Star! It’s fixed, it’s fixed! It’s already fixed!”

“You fucked it up, asshole.” Star came at the man, grabbed him by his skanky-ass hair weave, and slammed his head back against the wall. The man screamed in agony. “You think you’re gonna get a second chance?”

“I said, we fixed it,” the dude whispered, his voice weak with pain. “It’s a done deal. T-Boy and me, it’s all square.”

“T-Boy? T-Boy?” Star tightened his grip on the hair weave and started to pull. “T-Boy was the one said he’d get it done. Said nothin’ would go wrong, remember? Well, somethin’ went wrong, real wrong! I can read the newspaper! You think I wouldn’t see? The fight is next week!”

“Wait. No. Please. Listen.” The little shit clawed at Star’s hands as he pulled the weave. “No, oh, no. Please. My plugs, that kills. Please!”

“Everything went wrong, didn’t it? Con’ly whacked your bitch, bitch.” Star kept yanking on the shit’s hair weave. The dude squirmed like a catfish so Star pulled harder. “Con’ly’s alive and your bitch is dead!”

“We’ll fix it, you’ll see. We’ll get her after the trial, inside or out.” The dude went up on tiptoe. His scalp stretched like salt water taffy.

“You gonna look like Don King, bro!” Star shouted, and felt the plugs start to come free in his hands. “How you gonna get to Con’ly in the fuckin’ courthouse?”

“Aah! Stop! No!” Tears rolled down the dude’s cheeks. “My hair! You’re
pulling it out
!”

“No shit, motherfucker!” Suddenly Star yanked with brute force and a fistful of hair came out. Bloody scalp, hair, and skin stuck to it like glue. “You and T-Boy get to Con’ly, motherfucker! Finish the job you fuckin’ started! I’ll call you and tell you ’xactly what you’re gonna do. You’ll do her and bring me proof!”

“God help me,” the man moaned. Blood bubbled out of his head and dripped over his forehead. He lost consciousness and slid down the brick wall.

“Don’t forget your wig-hat, mama,” Star said, and slammed the rat hair on the dude’s bloody head.

“B
ennie, I’m real sorry about your mother,” Lou said, riding in the passenger seat of Bennie’s Ford, heading with her to Connolly’s apartment. She had called him at home after the funeral. She told him they had something important to do, despite the hour.

“Thanks. Sorry I called you so late.”

“Don’t matter. It was just me, with a beer and sunflower seeds in front of the Phillies game. They’re losing anyway.” Lou loosened his tie, looking suddenly uncomfortable in his navy-blue jacket and khaki slacks. “You sure you feel up to working?”

“I’m fine.” Bennie steered through Saturday-night traffic, heavy because of the suburbanites heading to the restaurants. They’d drive in from Paoli and other ritzy neighborhoods to gawk at the pierced nipples and purple haircuts. Take a look at the gritty city through the tinted window of a Jag. “Trial’s Monday.”

“But you just had the funeral—”

“I know that, Lou.”

“Gotcha,” he said, and looked over at Rosato, still dressed up in a black suit. Her eyes looked red, but they stayed straight ahead over the steering wheel. She had a job to do, she was doing it. The broad was tough, but Lou respected that. She’d make a good partner, in a way.

“The canvassing went bad, I hear?” Bennie asked.

“For the defense.”

“That’s what Mary said. I read her notes. DiNunzio’s a good lawyer, isn’t she?”

“Whiny, but okay.”

“She gave you a hard time?” Bennie smiled. “For that she gets a raise.”

“You know, if you weren’t having such a bad day, I’d make it worse.”

Bennie laughed, for the first time in years, it seemed. “So what else you doin’ for me?”

“I’m gonna finish canvassing around the block tomorrow.”

“That was my thought. Winchester Street, where the alley comes out. See if anybody saw the arrest. Anything.”

“I know.” Lou looked out the window at the mirror on his side of the Ford. A line of traffic crawled behind them like a caterpillar, and two cars back cruised a black TransAm. Lou had seen it behind them before, around the office. Funny it should be going down South Street, too. He kept an eye on it out of habit. Once a cop, always a cop. Lou couldn’t drive a highway without checking license plates, trying to pick out which car was stolen or had drugs in it. He kept his eyes on the TransAm. “I been thinking about your case, Rosato.”

“What do you think, champ?”

“I think Connolly killed a cop and she’s goin’ down for it.” Lou watched as a navy Town Car behind them peeled off to the right, leaving only a sky-blue BMW convertible between them and the black TransAm. The BMW was a nice little car, a two-seater. “The neighbors I met, they knew what they saw. They’re eyewitnesses, and she ran from the collar.”