“You’re firing me?” Mary felt her jaw drop, and Frank looked down at her. He was taller than she thought, so she stood up, briefcase in hand. He was still taller than she thought.
“Not firing, just telling you to quit.”
“I don’t want to quit.”
“The circolo is my client and we can’t pay you anymore. The money Tony left for the suit is all gone.”
“You haven’t been paying me. I’ve worked this case pro bono for a month now.”
“That okay with Rosato?” Frank laughed uncomfortably, and Mary felt an ember of suspicion flare within her chest. Why would he want to fire a lawyer who was working for free? She put on her game face.
“That’ll be my lookout. You’ll double-check about those files for me?”
“Ain’t gonna happen, Mare.” Frank had already sat back down, but Mary wasn’t buying. If he was hiding something, he was even a worse actor than her father. Frank wanted her off the case, and something smelled fishier than Jersey crabs. Mary couldn’t believe it, not from Frank. He used to treat the softball team to cherry water ice from a stand on Wolf Street, scooped into pleated paper cups with a flat spoon. Evidently, that was then. She set her jaw, picked up her briefcase, purse, and a white box of pastry she’d got at Isgro’s, then managed a same-old-Mary smile.
“Frank, you check on those files for me, or I’m telling my mother on you!”
“You wouldn’t!” he said, with a dry laugh, and Mary left the office.
With the sound of his laughter echoing behind her.
Eight
Mary waited at the bus stop outside Frank’s building. There were more than a few buses traveling Broad Street at this hour, and she would normally grab one and be at work in no time. But this morning, traffic was bumper to bumper, stop and go, and she spotted the C bus five blocks away. Waiting for it gave her time to sort out her thoughts. Frank wanted her off the case. Why?
HONK! Mary started at the horn blast from a Yukon SUV, the driver tailgating a battered Toyota wagon. Traffic was slowing to a complete stop, the cars at the end of the street catching up with the front like an urban inchworm, coming to a standstill that stretched into several minutes. Stoplights blinked red and green with no forward progress. Mary eyed the traffic for the Escalade. It wasn’t in sight. Good.
It was sunny, cool, and clear, good weather for a city with four seasons: fall, winter, spring, and humidity. She decided to hoof it. Her briefcase wasn’t heavy today and neither was the pastry. Philly was so small she could be uptown in twenty minutes, and at this rate maybe even beat the C bus. She headed north, passing people in fresh shirts and pressed pants, carrying newspapers and covered cups of coffee to jobs in the nail parlors, funeral homes, and dry cleaners that lined Broad. A waitress in a black-and-white uniform walked by on her way to the Broad Street Diner, and there were no ties on the street except for her bow tie.
Mary reached the corner and crossed on the red with everybody else, since traffic wasn’t going anywhere. Another block went by before she knew it. Traffic chugged ahead, and she glanced over her shoulder. The C was only three blocks away now, getting closer, plowing cars out of the bus lane. Mary used to be able to beat the C in high school, except when it cheated, like now. Then she did a double-take. There was a black Escalade in the far lane.
She watched the Escalade stop in traffic and stalled to get a look at the driver. She walked slowly, her heart thumping, and swung her pastry box, which would be the acting-casual part. Then the traffic moved on, she slowed her pace almost to a stop, and in one more block she got a glimpse of the Escalade driver – and a dash of coral lip-stick. Same car, different driver. She exhaled with relief. She was being paranoid. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe last night was nothing, too.
She picked up the pace and in no time reached the next corner, then stopped at the corner and looked up at the traffic light. It was red, next to the sign that read NUTT STREET. Amadeo’s street. He and Theresa had lived in a house on Nutt, six blocks down, to the east. Mary didn’t move when the light turned green and the covered cups crossed the street. It was only a short walk. The C bus rolled to a stop that belched hydrocarbons and emitted a hydraulic screech. The bus doors snapped open, letting riders on, but Mary wasn’t among them.
She took a right onto Nutt. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been east of Broad Street, but she knew it didn’t used to look like this. Many of the rowhomes were shells, their front doors boarded up and nailed fast against the urban version of a hurricane. Rusted tin sheets covered punched-out windows, graffiti marred the red-brick facades, and discarded trash lay strewn on the pavement. It made Mary feel sick inside. City Hall was only ten minutes away on foot. How could this happen? By the third block, she had a terrible feeling in the pit of her stomach, and the feeling wasn’t I-Hate-Change. It was a bad enough feeling to have passed I-Hate-Change three feelings ago. It was what loss felt like. Just plain loss.
Two teenage boys slumped toward her on the street, oversize T-shirts flapping like flags, hands shoved into the droopy drawers of the Hilfiger generation, and superwide pant legs overflowing identical Iverson’s. The boys were Asian, their jet hair spiky and gelled, and as they drew closer Mary could hear them speaking to each other in another language. When they reached her, they looked her up and down, this white lawyer bearing a stiff briefcase and a pastry box. They sniffed at her best navy suit and her matching pumps, gritty with pavement dirt. When they had passed her completely, they burst into laughter. She was the foreigner on this block.
Nutt Street, which Mary knew used to be solidly Italian, was evidently Asian now. She passed a corner store with a sign of bright yellow plastic, bearing what she guessed were Korean characters, and on the corner across from it sat a wig store, featuring platinum wigs on featureless Styrofoam heads, behind hand-lettered signs in Korean characters. Mary fought a politically incorrect urge to miss the Italian bakeries and grocery stores that used to anchor the streetcorners, then realized the obvious: Asians were the new immigrants, coming over for the same reason as her own ancestors. For the same reason as Amadeo. That was the part of change that stayed the same. And in the next minute, she found herself standing across from 630 Nutt Street.
Amadeo’s house. She examined the house from the opposite side of the street. It sat in the middle of the north side, illuminated by the morning sun. It stood two stories tall, and the bay window in front was covered by tattered sheers. The two windows on the second-floor bedroom had venetian blinds with slats missing. The brick facade needed repointing, its mortar crumbling like sugar, and black paint blistered off the front door, which showed two deadbolts above the regular door lock. A spongy black rubber mat sat on the front stoop.
Go inside, something told Mary.