Looking up at the bridge’s squat outline against the flaming afternoon sun, she marveled at her ability to screw up her own life. To choose this, of all cases, to run after. She could blame it on bad luck, but it was starting to smell like bad judgment. To go after a high-profile, highly political case at a moment of personal crisis? How stupid was that? Muy estúpido, but no turning back now. She had important reasons to stick with it. Three important reasons, and their names were Rosario, Jasmine, and Amanda.
She and Bernadette walked into the dark restaurant, Melanie’s eyes seeing red echoes from the sun. She trailed Bernadette through the thick crowd, stopping every few feet so Bernadette could talk to the VIPs. Bernadette introduced her to everybody she spoke to, shouting over the din of voices and blaring Irish music. They headed to the bar. Melanie leaned against its dull, sticky surface, looking out over the crowd in the dim light as Bernadette held court. Cops were the worst violators of the antismoking laws: a haze of smoke hung over the low-ceilinged room. Except for a couple of other prosecutors she recognized, they were the only women there. Middle-aged men with aggressive ties and slicked-back hair, mostly bosses in the PD and the federal agencies, kept coming over, offering to buy them rounds of drinks. There would be no chance right now to speak with Bernadette privately. Melanie tried not to feel too relieved.
Bernadette threw herself into networking with frenzied abandon. Pretty soon she was on her third scotch, wheeling and dealing, scrounging for business and making promises, flirting and wangling. She was good at it. Melanie nursed a glass of cheap chardonnay and watched the spectacle, all the while picturing Bernadette’s face when she broke the news. By the time they sat down to dinner in the adjoining banquet room, Bernadette was totally smashed. They had lingered so long at the bar that they ended up seated far from the dais, at the back of the long, narrow banquet room. Their table was empty except for two stragglers who sat down across from them. One tall and gaunt, the other with jowls and a beer belly, they greeted Bernadette by name, then fell into animated conversation about the Mets.
“Fucking Siberia. Should’ve saved a seat,” Bernadette complained, her words slurring delicately, her head lolling to one side like a sodden blossom after a rainstorm.
Did it make any sense to tell Bernadette when she was in this condition? She’d be less likely to evaluate things objectively, more likely to lash out at Melanie for being the bearer of bad news. Maybe Melanie should just make an excuse and leave, so she could do her homework properly before dropping the bombshell. She had plenty of good reasons: Dan was still waiting for her at the hospital. Elsie was fuming at home. Steve had left her a message saying he’d gotten them an appointment with that marriage counselor for later this evening. She was pleased by his fast work, but she hadn’t even had time to return his call.
“Hey, Bernadette,” she began tentatively.
Bernadette didn’t hear her; she was too busy signaling the waiter for another drink. Up on the dais, far away, someone tapped on a glass. A powerfully built man with steel gray hair walked up and adjusted a microphone, moving with a boss’s arrogance. He winced at the eardrum-piercing feedback, then began to talk. Melanie raised her voice so she could be heard over the drone of his speech and the bursts of laughter from the crowd.
“Bernadette, listen, I was thinking-”
Bernadette turned to her with a warm smile. She looked so relaxed, so normal, that it made Melanie realize she almost never saw her happy. Suddenly she understood it all. How vulnerable Bernadette was at this moment in her life. How dependent she was on Rommie and how blind to his flaws. In Bernadette’s mind, Rommie was the only thing standing between her and a lonely, empty middle age. Ugh, Melanie couldn’t, she just couldn’t shatter that illusion. And she couldn’t get up and walk out, leaving her boss sitting alone, drunk, at this table. She’d stay, at least until Rommie showed up.
“I was thinking we should talk about the Benson case,” Melanie said.
“Good idea. What new developments do you have to report?” Bernadette dug in her bag and pulled out a cigarette. “Hmm, when are they gonna serve the rubber chicken? I’m starting to get woozy.”
“I found out some surprising stuff about Jed Benson,” Melanie said. She’d start with the easy part, then see where it went. If Bernadette seemed receptive, maybe she would bring up the fingerprint report after all.
“Nothing you could tell me about Jed would surprise me, Melanie.”
“Really?”
“I knew Jed. He definitely had a dark side. Mmmhmm.”
Melanie had been thinking about the Bensons’ bank records, buried in the pile on her desk and just opened. They were not the bank records of an honest man. But there was something lascivious in Bernadette’s tone that made Melanie think she was talking about something else.
“You mean he was a womanizer?” Melanie guessed.
Bernadette’s drink came, and she tossed it back like a sailor. “Yeah! In a big way! He seduced me, you know.”
“Wow. No. I had no idea,” Melanie said. Boy, get Bernadette drunk and no telling what you might learn.
“We’re talking a lot of years ago now. It was a pretty tough experience for me. I’m not saying I wasn’t willing. But I was naive, and he took advantage. Nowadays I’d have a slam-dunk sexual-harassment claim.”
“Why, what did he do?”
“I’d only been on the job a few months, and Jed was the big boss. He was famous and so gorgeous. I had the worst-I mean, the worst-crush on him. I used to look up his court appearances in the calendar and then go hang around outside the courtrooms, waiting for him to come out. I was hot back then, honey, lemme tell you. Jed noticed.”
The waiter interrupted her, setting down plates of greasy chicken parmigiana slathered in runny pink sauce.
“Yuck, look at this shit. I can’t eat this.” Bernadette stubbed out one cigarette and fished in her bag for another, fumbling with her lighter, dropping it on the floor. Melanie leaned over and picked it up.
“I had no idea you were such a smoker, Bernadette.”
“Mmm, when I drink. Keep saying I’ll quit, but it’s hard because Romulado smokes, and we spend a lot of time together.” She slumped back, smoking thoughtfully, staring off into space. “So one day-one evening, actually-I was working late, and Jed just called me up and told me to report to his office. That’s it. He didn’t even give me a reason, right? I thought I was getting chosen for some big case or something. When I got there, the place was deserted, so I just walked right in. He was sitting at his desk, talking to a reporter on the telephone. I sat, and he stared at me while he finished his conversation. The way he looked me up and down, I understood right away why he’d called. You know what they call that?”
“What?” Melanie asked.
Bernadette laughed harshly. “A booty call. A goddamn booty call, right there in the middle of the office. But I fell for it-hook, line, and sinker. His eyes were the most unbelievable shade of green you ever saw, like grass in the springtime. So he gets up, locks the door. Doesn’t say a word, not even hello. What stays with me is the feeling of my skin sticking to that damn leather couch.” She dropped her chin onto her hand and sighed, her hazel eyes cloudy with drink.
“What happened after that?”
“Oh, he’d call now and then. We’d have sex. I kept thinking it would amount to something, you know? I had fantasies he’d leave his wife and marry me. Huh, was I foolish when I was young!” Her cynical laugh didn’t disguise the hurt in her eyes.
“Do you think Nell Benson knew about Jed’s other women?” Melanie asked.
“Unless she was dumb as a stone. But either she wanted to be with him that bad or else she liked the money. So tell me what you found out. You think Nell had him whacked for the insurance proceeds?” Bernadette asked.