City of Lies

‘Really, it’s fine. I’m actually grateful that Rogan will be the one to deal with Bandon this time. I probably need some distance.’

‘I’ve got another couple hours of work at the courthouse, but meet at my place when I’m done?’

‘I’m sorry, Max. I’m really tired. Last night wasn’t exactly the Ritz-Carlton, you know?’

‘That’s fine. Why don’t you go home and get some rest, and I’ll come to you.’

‘I don’t think I’ll be very good company.’

‘That’s all right. I’m used to doing all the talking while I watch you chew,’ he said, smiling.

Ellie knew she should be grateful for his response. She should be thankful that he wanted to support her, to comfort her, to watch her sleep the way she’d sometimes catch him in the morning. And she wanted to accept his offer. She wanted to be the kind of woman whose first instinct was to run to a man who cared about her when she was under pressure.

But one of the things she loved about Max was that he seemed to understand her, even when she had trouble understanding herself. And he was comfortable and confident and took everything in stride. Unlike other men she’d dated, she never had to worry about Max making it all about him. It was all the more reason to wish she could give him what he wanted.

‘I’m sorry. Tomorrow, okay? I promise. Tonight I just need to kick the blankets, squish the pillows, drool onto the sheets, and snore like an old fat man. And I really don’t want you to see me like that.’

‘Might kill the magic.’

‘Exactly.’ She held his gaze and brushed his forearm.

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘I’m holding you to it.’

‘You better.’

‘Well, get some rest, all right? You’ve earned it.’

Outside on Twenty-first Street, to the west, Ellie spotted a familiar figure leaning against the white stone of the building, smoking a cigarette. Jess.

She smiled at her older brother as she imagined all of the one-liners he must have come up with at her expense since she’d called him the night before from jail.

‘Hey, you.’ She caught a whiff of smoke and wondered when she’d stop missing it.

He removed an unopened pack of Marlboros from his faded jean jacket and handed them to her.

‘I quit, remember?’ She had, for the most part.

‘I hear they’re currency where you’re from.’

‘Funny.’

‘I’m serious. Anything you want. Soap. Candy. Porn. A shiv. Reefer. The white pony. These bad boys can get you anything on the inside.’ He shook the cigarettes for emphasis.

‘Is that all you got?’ she asked dryly.

‘Of course not. I figured I’d go with the prop comedy first. Let the rest of my lines trickle out over the next few days. Weeks. Months, if necessary.’

‘Oh, good. Something to look forward to.’

‘Are you up for a drink, or are you too jacked up on bootleg hootch from your time in the joint?’

‘Oh, I think I can stay awake long enough for a drink.’

‘You know I only treat at one place.’

‘You know the torment that awaits me in there?’

The bar in question was Plug Uglies, a classic old watering hole around the corner on Third Avenue. Thanks to its proximity to the precinct and an absurdly cheap happy hour, one could always count on finding a row of cops drinking there at this time of day.

‘C’mon. Cheap drinks. A little darts. Some shuffleboard. You’ve got to take your lumps from the house sometime, or it’s only going to fester.’

‘The house. Listen to you with the cop talk.’

‘Jesus, I’ve been spending too much time with you.’

Ellie and Jess had been raised in the same home, with the same intense homicide detective as a father, but had dealt with their police-dominated environment in opposite ways. Jess had rebelled, shunning any kind of hierarchy or ordered regime that might even begin to resemble a law enforcement culture. Ellie, on the other hand, had breathed it all in and had allowed it to define her.

She pulled the wrapper from the Marlboros. Just one drag. She’d earned it.

Chapter Fourteen (#ulink_27b60235-9fb8-5035-b0fb-9b852335bbb1)

6:15 p.m.

Inside the tiny efficiency studio that Glen Forrest Communities called her mother’s ‘apartment’, Katie Battle filled a green-tinted glass with water from the sink and placed it on the small rosewood table that doubled as both nightstand and end table between the empty bed and the chair that her mother currently occupied. Once she received the e-mail about her mother’s latest fall, she’d wrapped up the tour with the Jenning couple and made it to the assisted living center as quickly as she could.

Katie sat on the bed and watched as her mother slowly raised the glass to her lips with a quivering hand.

‘Don’t you…even…think…about grabbing…one of those…ridiculous children’s toys…on top of my icebox.’

Katie had purchased a box of plastic straws for her mother four months earlier, but they still sat unopened on top of the refrigerator. ‘Those are for children,’ her mother had said. ‘I start using one of those, and the next thing I know, you’ll be trying to feed me with a miniature spoon passed off as an airplane.’

Katie noticed that her mother placed her right hand on her chest during the three-second gaps between words. She knew that the falter in her mother’s usually strong voice was the byproduct of doctors tinkering with her heart medication again. They’d assured Katie that the occasional skipped beat wasn’t itself a danger, but she could tell that the irregularities in something we all took for granted – our beating hearts – scared her mother, causing the pauses in her speech.

None of this was easy for Katie’s mother. Phyllis Battle had always been a woman who had known what she wanted. When her first daughter, Barbara, had been killed in a car accident in 1974, she had known – and insisted to her husband – that they would adopt another, even though they had each already celebrated their fiftieth birthdays. And she had known – and insisted to her husband – that they would name the girl Katie, after the confident and independent woman who leaves Robert Redford behind in The Way We Were. And when her husband passed away ten years ago, leaving behind debts he had never mentioned to his wife, Phyllis had known – and insisted to her daughter, Katie – that she would continue to live in the family home alone.

The highest hurdle Katie had ever faced had come a year ago when she told her mother she needed to move. For the first time, someone for once was insisting on something to Phyllis. Katie had eventually won that initial battle between the Battle women, but that didn’t mean her mother was going to forfeit what might remain of the war. No plastic drinking straws. No arts and crafts in the common room with the women whom her mother called the ‘pathetic old biddies’. None of the loose, maintenance-free cotton housedresses that were practically a uniform at Glen Forrest.

And definitely no wheelchairs.

‘Mom, I know you don’t want to hear this, but another fall could be really bad.’

‘I can…take care…of myself.’

‘I know. But you’d find it’s a lot easier if you’d take advantage of some of the things they have here to help you, like a chair, Mom.’