Dead Ringer (11 page)

“Bennie, you seem quiet today.” St. Amien looked over as they walked. Whatever pomade he put on his gray hair made it glint like stainless steel in the sun. The sky above them was clear and cloudless, and he chose to pollute it by lighting up a cigarette from a superwide red-and-white pack. “Thoughts of the meeting?”

Not exactly.
“You go first. What did you think of it?”

“I think Mr. Linette is quite the showman, but I also think we will achieve victory, in the end.” The smoke from his French cigarette smelled like burning ozone.

“Right on both counts. Let’s go back to my office to talk, and we can look over your complaint.” They reached the corner, then turned onto Locust Street, passing a brick rowhouse that had been converted to doctors’ offices, then another with green shutters, lawyers’ offices. The sidewalks thronged with people enjoying the ridiculously pleasant weather; none of the passersby was Alice. Bennie and St. Amien were closing in on her building when she noticed a crowd collecting. Two white police cruisers idled at the curb in front of her office.

“What’s that?” Bennie wondered aloud, and St. Amien looked down the street, squinting slightly through his acrid smoke.

“The police?”

Something’s the matter.
“Oh, no.” Bennie picked up the pace to a light jog, and St. Amien stepped lively on his long legs, loose change jingling unhappily in his pockets. Two cops with light blue shirts stood around the cruiser. Their navy blue hats sat low on their foreheads, but under them Bennie could see the grave set of their mouths.

“Officer!” Bennie yelled when she was only a few feet away, hailing them. Her cell phone started ringing in her purse, but this was no time to answer. She reached the cops, her heart in her throat. “I’m Bennie Rosato. My office is upstairs. What’s the matter? Did something happen to one of my—”

“You’re Ms. Rosato?” one of the cops asked, rapid-fire. He stepped quickly to her, followed by his partner, a black woman.

“She fits the flash,” the female cop said, and Bennie didn’t understand. She had always thought that “flash” meant a description of a fleeing offender, broadcast over police radio. Two more cops emerged suddenly from the second squad car.

“Yes, I’m Bennie Rosato, what’s the matter? What happened?” she asked as St. Amien caught up with her, his chest heaving, his cigarette gone. The crowd stopped to stare. Her cell phone kept ringing. “Are my people all right?”

“Bennie Rosato, you’re under arrest,” said the cop in front, and before she could protest, he’d grabbed her arm and spun her around.

“What are you
talking about?
” Bennie asked, stricken. St. Amien looked stunned, his blue eyes wide behind his glasses. The crowd gathered and gaped.

“We know you’re an attorney, so we don’t expect any trouble.” The female cop came up and joined the first cop, blocking Bennie in against the other two. “Take it nice and easy. Just relax for us now.” The female cop grabbed Bennie’s other arm and together the cops forced her against the car.

“You can’t arrest me! I didn’t do anything!”

“Take it easy, Ms. Rosato. Gotta pat you down,” she said, and Bennie braced her hands against the sun-warmed metal of the cruiser, dropping her briefcase and bag. The female cop recited the Miranda warning as she ran a pair of knowing hands over Bennie’s thighs, and hips, and along her legs. Then around her ears and the back of her neck.

“What am I being arrested for?” Bennie demanded. Her face burned with shame, then resentment. “What do you think you’re doing? I’m entitled to know why I’m being arrested!”

“Don’t make a scene, Ms. Rosato,” one of the cops said from behind her. Suddenly powerful hands yanked her arms from the cruiser, jerked them behind her back, and cinched her wrists together, clamping a pair of tight handcuffs over them.

St. Amien stepped forward, shaken. “Officers, you are making a terrible mistake. This is my attorney.”

“You’re interfering with an arrest, sir.” The cop opened the backdoor of the cruiser and placed Bennie neatly inside by pressing down on her forehead. He slammed the door shut, locking Bennie inside the cage car.

“I want to know why you’re arresting me!” she was yelling, even as she saw Carrier running from the office building toward her, cell phone in hand. Instantly Bennie’s cell began ringing in her purse. Carrier had been calling, not to tell her about Alice, but to warn her about the cops.

But it was too late. The cruiser lurched off bearing her away, and the last face Bennie saw was that of her completely appalled client.

9

Only a telltale latex smell signified that the interrogation room at the Ninth Police District had been freshly repainted; otherwise it was a pre-scuffed blue. The room was small, the gray door closed, and fluorescent lighting glared from a ceiling of white tile. A black TV cart with an old Sony portable and VCR occupied one corner, and the only other furniture, three mismatched chairs and a gray Formica desk, had a scavenged look Bennie had seen only in police stations and freshman dorms. She fidgeted in a stainless-steel chair reserved for suspects, unique in that it was bolted to the floor and had a pair of handcuffs hanging from one arm. Judy sat in a swivel chair beside her, acting as defense counsel. As if Bennie Rosato would shut up long enough to let anyone else represent her.

“Theft? Assault?”
she shouted in disbelief, her voice ricocheting around the tiny closed room.
“Reckless endangerment? Receiving stolen goods?”
Bennie almost jumped out of her chair, but Detective Maloney had told her if she did that again he’d cuff her to it. Since he was one of the so-called Hollywood Detectives from SIU, or the Special Investigations Unit, she believed it. These guys came to play. “What are you talking about? I didn’t do—”

“Bennie, please, be quiet,” Carrier said, burying her fingernails in her client’s padded shoulder. “Let the detective ask his questions, and you can answer only if I say.” A sheaf of white papers sat ignored in front of her, the form questionnaire issued by the police, certifying that Bennie had been advised of her right to remain silent. Unfortunately, she was exercising her right to freak out.

“But this is ridiculous! I didn’t steal anything! I would
never
steal anything!” Bennie told Maloney and the other SIU detective, a bald, heavyset man whose name she was too upset to remember. He stood against the wall, taking notes; he was the one who had directed that she and her belongings be searched when they’d first brought her in, but they hadn’t found whatever they’d been looking for. “I would never break the law, I’m a lawyer!”

Carrier squeezed her shoulder again. “Not your best argument, Bennie. Now please, can you be quiet?”

“Settle down, Ms. Rosato. No reason to get worked up.” Detective Maloney remained calm, even relaxed, which was easy because he wasn’t in custody. He was trim and tall, about her age, with longish sandy hair and hazel eyes Bennie would have found attractive if he hadn’t arrested her. He reached into an accordion file folder on the counter and pulled out a typed form she recognized as an incident report, which was the officer’s account of the facts of the crime. He said, “All right, I’ll read this aloud, then I’ll take your client’s statement. If she didn’t do it, we can work it out, okay?”

“Fine,” Carrier answered. Bennie quieted momentarily, and Detective Maloney bent over the report, his neatly scissored bangs falling forward.

“The crime occurred in the Tiffany store, in the Park Hyatt on Broad Street. The store manager gave a statement, and so did his assistant, the saleswoman, and three eyewitnesses. According to the store manager, the perpetrator stole a pair of diamond earrings—diamond studs, they’re called—worth eleven thousand five hundred forty-three dollars from—”

“Earrings?”
Bennie asked, dumbfounded. “This is crazy! I didn’t steal any earrings! There has to be some—”

“Bennie, quiet!” Carrier snapped, and Bennie bit her tongue.

What the hell is going on?

The detective continued reading. “The perpetrator browsed in the store for approximately fifteen minutes, then went to a counter which contained diamond earrings on the first shelf. She asked the saleswoman to show her the earrings, which were more than a carat in weight. The store was very crowded, and customers were waiting to be helped. The perpetrator tried on the earrings. When one of the two security guards stationed at the door went to assist an older lady who had dropped her shopping bag, the perpetrator ran for the exit with the earrings on.”

Oh my God.
Bennie’s mouth went dry. It was
Alice
. Alice had stolen the earrings. Alice posing as Bennie. First the Chinese restaurant, and now this. Bennie knew it in her very marrow, the bones and blood she shared with her twin. The realization shocked her into silence.

“The perpetrator shoved the security guard out of her way, and he fell into a glass display case of Elsa Peretti jewelry, whatever that is. The other security guard gave pursuit down Broad Street, but he lost the perpetrator, who ran down into the Broad Street subway and disappeared.”

Bennie’s thoughts tumbled over one another in confusion. How had Alice done it?
Why
had she done it? What the
fuck?
This wasn’t mischief with credit cards or even tainting her reputation with the judges. These were felony charges. They could ruin her. Alice was upping the ante.

“What evidence do you have that my client committed this robbery?” Carrier was asking, and the detective scoffed.

“Other than the whole shebang on surveillance tape? Tiffany had three cameras on that counter, and your client is on each one.”

“I wanna see that tape!” Bennie blurted out. She had to see it for herself. With her own eyes.

Carrier cleared her throat. “Detective, may we see the videotape?”

“Fine.” Detective Maloney opened the accordion file and extracted a black Fuji videotape. He got up holding the tape, brushed down his dark slacks with a practiced hand, and walked over to the TV cart with the ancient VHS machine. He slid the tape inside, turned on the TV, and pressed Play.

Everybody turned toward the screen, which showed a busy main room in Tiffany: a grainy view of lush carpeting, attractive shoppers, and display cases full of diamond bracelets and earrings. Suddenly a woman entered from the left side of the picture and threaded her way through the customers. Her face wasn’t visible, because her back was turned from the surveillance camera, but the woman was fully as tall as Bennie, her shoulders equally square, and she was wearing the same suit Bennie had on today, her trademark khaki. The woman’s hair was Bennie’s shade of honey blond, and it had been pinned up in a carbon copy of Bennie’s messy twist. She stopped in front of a display case, her back still to the camera.

“The beauty shot is in one, two, three,” Detective Maloney counted down, and the woman turned on cue and faced the security camera dead-on for several seconds, as if she were posing for a photograph. The detective snorted. “There you are, Ms. Rosato.”

“That’s her,” Bennie said, voicing her thoughts aloud. It was Alice. She
had
come back. Here was proof positive. Bennie felt stunned. “That’s my—”

“Please be quiet and watch the tape, Bennie,” Carrier warned, and Bennie looked over. On-screen, Alice was putting on the diamond earrings and examining her face—Bennie’s face—in a square mirror sitting on the glass counter, tilted up. An older woman with a cane dropped a shopping bag, spilling its contents of wrapped boxes, and a security guard went to help her. The saleswoman turned away for a moment, and all of a sudden Alice bolted from the counter, knocking over a customer in the process. She punched the guard by the door before he could move to stop her, sending him sprawling backward against a display case, and flew out the door.

Bennie shifted her gaze to the top of the screen, where a black band ran with a date and time. It was today’s date, and the time ticked off: 10:30:10, 10:30:11, 10:30:12. Her heart sank. She had no alibi. At that time, she had been walking back from the federal courthouse, alone. Tiffany lay between the courthouse and her office, on the way. It was more than possible for Bennie to have been there at ten-thirty, stealing diamonds. Alice couldn’t have planned it that way, could she? Did she have people helping her? And who was that older woman who dropped her shopping bag at the exact right moment? Was she in on it, too?

Detective Maloney reached over and turned off the TV. “Let’s get real, Ms. Rosato. It’s you on the tape, I can see that with my own eyes. The manager IDed you positively and two of the eyewitnesses recognized you from TV. You’re wearing the clothes you have on in the video. Your hair is the same too.” He put his hands on his hips. “So cut the shit. Give the earrings back, you’ll get a couple years’ probation—”

“Detective,” Bennie interrupted, “the woman on the tape isn’t me, it’s my twin. I didn’t take the earrings, she did.”

Carrier clamped a hand over her client’s. “Bennie, please don’t make any more statements. You know better than to—”

“But that’s not me on that tape!” Bennie knew Carrier was right, but she couldn’t help herself. Alice had turned her life upside down. She appealed to Maloney as the bald detective took rapid notes. “Detective, I have a twin, an
identical
twin, named Alice Connelly. This is criminal impersonation, clear and simple. Alice Connelly is pretending to be me. I want these charges dropped!”

Carrier squeezed her hand. “Bennie, please let me handle this. You’re not going to convince him. We should just end this interrogation.”

But Detective Maloney was looking directly at Bennie, amused, if not intrigued. “Ms. Rosato, are you telling me it’s not you on the tape, it’s your
twin?
”

“It’s a matter of record, Maloney. Her name is Alice Connelly.”

Carrier leaned forward. “Detective, this interview is over. My client isn’t answering any more questions. Let’s get her arraigned so I can post bail and get her out of here.”

Detective Maloney snorted. “You really have a twin, Rosato?”