“I’ll treat you,” Carrier answered. “The bail commissioner will probably set it at ten grand, since you don’t have a prior record. I’ll get a bond for ten percent.”
Bennie flushed, embarrassed. It was a new low to borrow money from the kids. She felt as if she should go to jail and stay there.
But Detective Maloney was smiling. “Unlock her?” he repeated.
“The handcuffs.” Carrier gestured at Bennie’s chair. “Unlock her. Get her out of the handcuffs.”
“I never used those cuffs before.” Detective Maloney looked over at the bald detective. “Shep, you ever you use those suckers?”
“I thought they were for show,” he answered, and the detectives burst into new laughter.
And Bennie started hollering.
Way too many hours later, after Bennie had been fingerprinted, arraigned, and completely humiliated, the lawyers emerged from the Ninth Precinct into a group of reporters lying in wait.
“We have no comment! No comment!” the associate shouted, and the women broke into a light run ahead of the pack to the curb, where they hailed a Yellow cab, jumped inside, and took off.
When the cab approached their office building, the lawyers weren’t surprised to see a new crowd of reporters and photographers thronged on the sidewalk in front. Bennie knew that they’d be following her everywhere until this died down, and she didn’t want to think about what this was doing to her reputation. It would kill her business, if she still had a business to kill. She flashed on St. Amien’s shocked expression. She was pretty sure Bill Linette had never boosted diamond studs.
Reporters stuck their camera lenses at the cab window, and Carrier finished paying the driver. “We get out of the cab and run for it. That’s all. Got it?”
“Not the plan, kid.” Bennie’s brain was starting to function. “You get out here, go upstairs, and call St. Amien. Tell him it was a mix-up and I’ll explain the details to him later. And try to get the office in order if the cops left it a mess.”
“But what are you going to do?” Carrier had already cracked the backdoor, and the press surged toward the opening, shouting questions:
“Bennie, you gonna plead guilty?” “Bennie, you receiving treatment for this?” “Bennie, Bennie, over here!” “Bennie, just one picture!” “Confirm or deny! Can you confirm or deny?” “Come on, Ben, give us a statement!”
Bennie ignored them. “Go. Call St. Amien first thing.”
Carrier frowned. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to get my life back.”
10
Grun amp; Chase was one of the largest law firms in the city, with almost four hundred lawyers in its Philly headquarters alone, and its thirty-fourth-floor waiting room was another Lawyer Kingdom. If Linette’s offices were France under Louis Quatorze, Grun’s were England under King Henry. The carpet at Grun was a rich, woolly maroon, and the overstuffed couches were covered with shiny striped fabric of emerald green and royal blue. The artwork chronicled a series of British tall ships sailing along the Isle of Whatever, with ink-etched rigging and round cannons poking through the gunwales. Bennie had started her legal career at Grun amp; Chase but hadn’t remembered it being so House of Windsor. She was glad she’d escaped before being thrown into debtors prison.
“Mr. Freminet will see you,” the receptionist said. She turned from her desk with a jowly frown, like a body double for Queen Victoria. Either she was your basic sourpuss, or she’d heard that Bennie was a diamond thief. “His office is down the hall and on the right, in the corner.”
“Thanks,” Bennie said, and hurried down the hall. She passed row after row of secretaries typing away on computer keyboards, plugged into Dictaphone earphones, and she wanted to rescue them all. Except that she couldn’t pay them. She went to the end of the hall and opened the door of the corner office.
“Bennie!” Sam Freminet was a compact, freckled lawyer with a supershort red haircut, in a neat navy blazer and a Looney Tunes tie, and he leapt delightedly from behind his polished glass desk. He met her at the door with a warm, if slightly bony, hug that smelled too strongly of Calvin Klein. “What’s up, doc?”
“Everything, Sam.” Bennie broke the clinch after a moment and flopped into one of the leather Eames chairs in front of Sam’s desk. The chairs coordinated perfectly with the modern glass desk, the sleek Danish bookshelves and credenza, and a brown leather couch containing a plush Pepé Le Pew, Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny with a stuffed carrot, and Elmer Fudd in wabbit season. Sam was a Looney Tunes freak, and Bennie’s oldest friend in the world. But she still didn’t know how to tell him her news. “You’d better close the door.”
“Ooh, good dish, huh? I love it!” Sam closed the door and rubbed slim hands together. “As Bugs would say, ‘Better start scheming.’ That was in ‘Now Hare This,’ by the way.”
Bennie was trying to think of a way to explain. She and Sam had both started at Grun together after graduating from law school, but Sam had survived and become a partner in the bankruptcy department. Now she needed him, personally and professionally. “Well, this isn’t dish, it’s bad news, and I don’t know where to start.”
“Aw, mon petit corned beef,” Sam purred in his best Pepé Le Pew, sliding into the sling chair next to her. He took her hand, and his forget-me-not blue eyes melted with genuine warmth behind hip rimless glasses. “Don’t worry, whatever it is, we’ll fix it.”
“We can’t.”
“Yes we can. We girls can do anything!”
“Wait, that’s not Bugs Bunny, that’s Barbie.”
“I know. I’m mixing icons, but I do love that girl!” Sam waved a small hand. “I had the pink car, the dream house, the whole complex. How do you think I turned out the way I did?”
“Gay?”
“No, a lawyer.”
Bennie laughed, feeling a rush of affection. She stalled in telling him the bad news, not wanting to leave the comfort of the moment. “Sammy, do you look especially good today, or am I just happy to see you?”
“Well, I am positively caliente today. Check me out.” Sam swiveled his skinny shoulders. “Hugo jacket, Versace shirt, Ralph pants. Now that I’m out of the closet, I’m fierce. I’m flaming. I’m Bankruptcy Queen.”
Bennie smiled. “I remember when you had to hide your love away.”
“The dark ages. I couldn’t believe they fell for my straight act. I thought only the army had that kind of denial. Or Liza Minnelli.”
They both laughed, and Bennie felt her tension ebb away. The only good thing about getting older was that you got to have old friends.
“Now, what’s going on, honey?” Sam inched forward on his chair. “What’s the matter?”
“Alice is in town.”
“The bitch is back?” Sam’s tiny eyes blinked behind his tiny glasses, and Bennie began the story, telling about the missing wallet, the double packages, and the diamond earrings, while Sam grew more and more upset, reddening under his freckles. He barely waited for her to finish before he exploded. “Why the fuck is she doing this to you? You didn’t do anything to deserve this! All you ever did was help her! Why, for fuck’s sake?” Sam was never on a curse diet. “She came out of nowhere, charged with murder, and you proved she was innocent!”
“I agree, but God knows how she sees it, or me. She’s a mess. She’s a damaged person.”
“Damaged, what does she have to be damaged about?”
“Maybe being put up for adoption instead of me?” Bennie had wondered about it. Their mother, alone with limited emotional and financial resources, couldn’t handle raising both of the children she had borne, and had kept Bennie. It had to hurt. “Maybe she felt abandoned. After all, my mother chose me over her.”
“Don’t even tell me you feel guilty about that.”
“I do, a little. Sure.”
“What? Why? Let’s review. You got the family with the sick mom-God rest her soul, but she was very sick-and the father who splits at birth. You raised yourself, put yourself through college and law school, and managed to take care of your mother, too. On the other hand, Alice got the nuclear family in north Jersey, with the Eldorado.”