"But she'd put them off real nice, not to hurt their feelings. And if they got a little too handy, or came in drunk, she could take any of 'em." Mike straightened in his chair. "You get her offa these charges, tell her she can have her old job back anytime. My business went through the roof when she worked here. Nobody comes here for the food."

"Great, thanks. Did she ever talk to you about a girlfriend named Shayla Jackson?"

"No."

"They were best friends," Vicki said, increasingly puzzled.

"Never heard the name."

Damn. Were Jackson and Bristow friends or not? Somebody was lying or didn't know the truth. "How about Jamal Browning?"

"No."

"Jay-Boy or Teeg?"

"No. She never talked about nobody except her mom. She was a loner."

"Then how do you think she got mixed up in all this? Any idea? I mean, she just got indicted out of the blue?"

"I wonder about that, sometimes. She sure don't deserve what happened to her. I think it's a conspiracy." Mike sucked his teeth. "The way I figure, somebody set her up. I told her so in my last Christmas card, she mention that?"

"Your Christmas card? Yes, she did mention that. She said it was very thoughtful of you."

"I send her mom a card, too. Every year."

Vicki blinked. He hardly looked like the kind of guy to keep a Christmas card list, much less one that included sick mothers. He must have had a major crush on Reheema. Worse than mine on Dan. Vicki hadn't realized how completely pathetic she was until she started investigating.

"She mention that, too? The card to her mom?" Mike's eyebrows lifted in a hopeful way. "I ask because I slipped a few bucks in there, you know, like a Christmas present."

Vicki got an idea. "She never mentioned the card to her mom, which does seem odd. You sure you sent it to the right address? You know, if you send cash to the wrong address, it'll never get to her."

"Hmmm, you're right," Mike said, leaning forward and reaching across the desk to a grimy old-fashioned Rolodex. He flipped though the wheel of plain white cards written in ballpoint, then stopped at one, and Vicki went over to snoop as he read. "Here we go. Arissa Bristow. Her address is 6847 Lincoln. It's in West Philly."

"Sounds right." Vicki made a mental note. "I'll check it with Reheema." "Appreciate it." "One more thing," Vicki said, deep in thought. None of this was making any sense. Reheema wasn't earning much at this crummy deli, so she'd have an obvious need to supplement her income by reselling guns.But the whole picture was out of whack. Reheema fit the profile of a typical straw, but it was hard to believe that a church girl or a social worker would conspire to have an informant killed. "Did anybody else come here, asking you about Reheema?"

"No." "No detectives?" "No." "Cops?" "No." "How about the feds? FBI?" "No." "Another lawyer? A guy named Melendez, or somebody who works for him?" "No." "Well, thanks," Vicki said, mystified. What had Melendez intended to do to defend Reheema anyway? "I appreciate your help, and so will Reheema."

"Sure thing." Mike rose, a bit of gallantry. "You know, I don't believe Reheema would even know how to shoot a gun."

And for a minute, Vicki didn't either, though she had proof positive that Reheema had bought two and sold them.

Clearly, she wasn't finished with her errands yet.

THIRTEEN

Vicki had never been in this neighborhood, but something about it had a familiarity she couldn't place. She was still in West Philly, bundled up in the superbly heated Cabrio. She had no idea why VW had stopped making these cars, but they shouldn't have. First the Cabrio goes, then The Practice.

She had driven about twenty blocks west and a zillion dollars away from the campus of the University of Penn or even Bennye's Sandwich Shop, to this rundown neighborhood. Two-story row houses lined the streets, characteristic of Philly, but they were crumbling and scarred with graffiti. Their wooden front porches sagged, the paint blistered and peeling, and some houses had windows boarded up with plywood. Vicki took a right at the corner for the third time, having no idea where she was exactly because the street sign had been taken down. Then she took a right and another left, passing a vacant lot strewn with concrete rubble, beer cans, and other debris, and she finally found Lincoln Street.

She cruised to read the house numbers, crudely painted directly on the brick, fading but still readable. 6837, 6839. At least she was on the odd-numbered side of the street. She had been in bad neighborhoods before at the D.A.'s office, going to question witnesses with and without police escort. She had learned the best way to deal was to be yourself. A very white girl driving a very white Cabrio, conspicuous as all hell in an African-American neighborhood that had seen better days.

Vicki crossed Washington Street, then Jefferson Street; she detected the pattern, now that she was a big-time gumshoe. The cross streets were presidents' names, but still, they sounded vaguely familiar. In the next second, she remembered. She realized where she had heard about this neighborhood. At home. This was her father's old neighborhood, Devil's Corner. She'd never been here, but the name had always intrigued her. There were hundreds of neighborhoods in Philly, all of them named, but few had any relation to reason.

Vicki looked at the houses with new eyes. Her father never liked to talk about his childhood here. The neighborhood had been Italian and Jewish then, the starting place for upwardly mobile immigrant families who puddle-jumped to the City Line area and, if they were lucky, to the Main Line, the classiest of all neighborhood names.

She remembered that the brick house on the corner of Washington Street had belonged to her father's family. She circled the block, passed the cross street, and found the house, pausing as people do at funerals. It seemed somehow appropriate. Her father's old house on the corner, a squat two stories, stood obviously vacant and hollowed out, a crumbling brick shell, its windows nailed shut with cheap tin. She experienced a pang of sadness at its disrepair, unaccountably, because she had never been inside. She doubted if her father would shed a tear, either; he never talked fondly of his home or this neighborhood, spoke only of it as having "changed," which was his code for "black people moved in." But Vicki wasn't seeing changed; she was seeing leveled.

There was nobody on the street. She checked her watch:

4:26. Granted, it was cold outside and would soon be dark,but kids should be home from school, playing outside. Adults should be going in and out of their houses, too, whether mothers at home or people out of work. But no one was in sight on these blocks. The streets were oddly deserted. Vicki spotted house number 6847. She slipped into a parking space, cut the ignition, and grabbed her bag and got out of the car. She walked to the house, zipping her coat and finger-combing her hair to meet a church lady. She had been such a hit with Misses Bott and Greenwood, this should be a piece of cake.

Vicki walked to the house and climbed up the concrete steps, which needed to be repaved. The red paint on the front door had alligatored, and a tiny window on the door's top panel had been duct-taped in place. Vicki was guessing that Reheema's mother, Arissa Bristow, didn't have much money. Maybe she gave it all to the church. Or it went for medical bills.

Vicki knocked several times and waited patiently on the sunny front stoop; the door had three locks, including two dead bolts, so she knew it would take time to open. Still, she wasn't hearing anything. She waited a minute, then knocked again and called out, "Hello? Mrs. Bristow?"

Suddenly, without being unlocked, the front door opened and behind it stood a tall but frail African-American woman. Like her daughter, she wasn't what Vicki had expected at all.