close enough to the Bahia Boulevard Bridge that sometimes I walk across it, then stroll four more blocks to the beach. Maybe I should do that to celebrate now—warm my feet in the sand, splash them in the waves. And speaking of missing sex, I should call the man who may or may not still be my lover, invite him over for a glass of champagne and whatever ensues from that, if I can remember how.
But I don't move, I keep staring outside, avoiding real life.
“Shit,” I mutter, getting that queasy feeling about my book again. “It's all wrong. My good guys look like bad guys and my bad guys don't feel bad enough. And there's too much innocence, not enough sin.” My story should feel bloody and dark; instead, there's too much sweetness and light—the two little girls, to begin with. And then there's the victim—victims are always perfect, you know. And there's even Martina Levin, the naïve young crimescene technician. Not to mention the fact that I could hardly get anybody to say anything bad about either of the defendants.
I don't know what to do about it; I can't change real people.
“I give up.” My own life calls. Get on with it.
A few minutes later, I review my phone messages to see who I've ignored for the past three weeks. After I finish a book I usually have to spend a good week saying I'm sorry. Sure enough, I discover a batch of calls I don't want to return, and one that I do. I know I should make the calls related to the book first.
“Do it,” I command myself.
“You are such a bossy bitch.” I pick up the phone and dial the first number on the list. “This is Marie Lightfoot,” I tell the secretary who answers. “Is that you, Frances? Your boss has been—”
“Trying to reach you!” she exclaims. “Did you go out of the country, Marie? Hold on!”
Within seconds he's on the line: Antonio Delano, an assistant state attorney for Howard County—this county, my own. As the lead prosecutor at the Susanna Wing murder trial, Tony's one of the stars of the manuscript that I've just shipped off to New York. There'll be a black-and-white photo of him in my book, and readers will see a small, thirtyish, curly-haired, very Italianlooking man in a suit, staring intensely into the camera over a mess of papers on his desk. Not good-looking in the least, but compelling somehow, if you think intelligence and wit are attractive, which, as it happens, I do.
“Marie! So did you make me six-foot-four in your book?”
He makes a disgusted sound on his end of the line.
“Well, would you?” I demand. “If you'd been on that jury, could you have sent somebody to prison for life, or recommended a death sentence, with only the evidence the jury heard?”
“There's more than one kind of court, Marie.”
“You got me baffled here, Tony.”
“There's the court of public opinion. Look at O. J. Simpson. He's got the mark of Cain on him and he always will, because no matter what that jury in his criminal trial thought, the media tried him and found him guilty as sin. We can do that in this case, too.”
“Now wait a minute, Antonio.”
“Marie, one of our defendants has got the mark of Cain now and the other one should, too. I couldn't get it done in court, and I regret that, but you can still do it. With your book! You can make sure the public understands that they're both equally guilty, even if the jury was too goddamned picky to—”
“And how am I supposed to do that if you couldn't, Tony? I don't have any information that you didn't present. I can't— won't—convict somebody in print if there isn't evidence in fact.”
“Oh, come on, tell me the truth. Don't you think she did it?”
“Sure, yes. I think they're both guilty.”
“Right. Well, there's things I could tell you, Marie.”
That statement sits there all by itself for a long moment.
“Things I wasn't allowed to bring out at trial,” he adds, seductively.
“Really?” I say, dryly, and then quote a country-western lyric,