The following week, I introduced Tommy to my now-retired partner and founder of my law firm, Lou Mastardi, who agreed to hire Tommy as our firm’s investigator. Tommy lived with us for the next six weeks—Gabby was two at the time—while he reintroduced himself to freedom. The adjustment was not an easy one. He seemed to be on edge all the time, always looking over his shoulder. He would wake up in the middle of the night and walk outside to our patio. More than once I woke to find Piper gone from our bed, and spied her through the window sitting next to Tommy, talking quietly. It warmed my heart to see Piper helping my brother make his return to society. I believed that she played a critical role, both then and throughout the ensuing years, in bringing back the brother I’d last seen before our father’s illness and death.
Sometimes, though, and I hate to admit this, I felt a pang of jealousy. Tommy bared his soul to Piper. I got that, to a point. Piper is a nurturer and I—Lord knows—am not. But I am Tommy’s brother, and I would have thought that, even if he couldn’t bring himself to open himself up fully to me, he could have shared more than he did. What came to irk me even more was my suspicion that Piper herself shared things with Tommy that she didn’t tell me, her husband. Call me a dinosaur, but I think I should be her main sounding board and soul mate. I pressed Piper about this a few times, but she always shrugged it off or threw it back at me, complaining that I spent my weekends on the golf course rather than out in our garden, like Tommy often did. Needless to say, this type of response did not reassure me. But I did my best to push down my angst, securing it in one of my many mental lockboxes.
“Are you going to call Tommy or not?” Piper says, her back to me as she scrapes the omelet out of the frying pan.
“I’ll call him from the car,” I answer. “I’m sure he’s fine.”
Half an hour later, on the way to the office, I do call Tommy’s cell phone. I get the usual message, and I leave my own, asking him to call me back.
Angie is on the phone when I arrive at the firm. She flags me down and tells the person on the other end to hold on because I’d just arrived. “It’s Patti Cassidy,” Angie says. “She wants to know if you have a comment on that dead cop.” I nod and tell Angie to put the reporter through to my office.
“Patti, how are you?” I begin, using my sweetest voice.
“Sorry, Mick, but if we could just cut to the chase, I have to get my part of the article together ASAP for the website. Or someone else’s name is going on it.”
“Okay, here’s my quote: Officer Lipinski’s murder only underscores that some very bad actors are as unhappy with the people involved in the grand-jury investigation as they were with Jennifer Yamura for reporting it.”
There’s a pause at the other end of the line. “Is that going to be your defense in the Hanson case? That Jennifer Yamura was murdered by people connected with the police drug ring? Are you going on record with that?”
“Not a chance,” I say. “You—and everyone else—will learn at trial why David Hanson couldn’t have murdered Yamura.”
I click off and speed-dial Tommy. Again, I get his voice mail. I hang up without leaving a message.
Stressed, I decide to go for a run. My ten-mile routine run along the Schuylkill River usually relaxes me. But today it’s no help. I just can’t clear my mind of the widening rift between Piper and me, and the canyon separating me from my brother.
Halfway through my run, I cross the Falls Bridge to head back to town on West River Drive. The minute I turn the corner, I see the darkness enveloping the sky to the east. The clouds already cover Center City and are heading my way. Before I get a mile down the drive, I can hear it coming. A wall of rain pounds the ground a hundred yards from me. Then fifty, then the rain is upon me. Instantly, I’m soaked. It’s so thick I can barely make out the headlights of the cars approaching to my right.
When I arrive at the lobby of my building, the guard at the front desk, with whom I’ve exchanged greetings a hundred times, casts me a suspicious look, wondering who this street person is trespassing in his gleaming marble-and-chrome environment. I show him my access card. It’s soaked, so it doesn’t scan, and he has to key in the elevator for me.
In the men’s room, I use paper towels in a futile effort to dry off. Eventually, I give up and return to my office.
I try again to reach Tommy and curse when I hear his voice mail. I call home. Piper tells me that she still hasn’t heard from Tommy, either. I tell Piper I’m going to drive up to his trailer in Jim Thorpe. She says to be careful. I think about that. Tommy is definitely sharing things with Piper that he hasn’t with me.
An hour later, I’m driving down a rough path called Lizard Creek Road. I turn into Tommy’s campground and pass some big-ass RVs that cost more than most people’s homes, and continue until I find the turnoff for Tommy’s campsite. I see the weathered picnic table sitting next to his trailer, covered with a canvas tarp. As I pull up, a man sits down at the table, gnawing on a corncob. But that man is not Tommy. Neither Tommy nor his pickup is anywhere to be seen.
I step out of the car. The air is sweet with the smell of freshly barbequed chicken. The man sitting at the picnic table puts down the cob, wipes his hands on a paper towel, and stands. He walks toward me as I park my car and get out.
“Hello, Mick,” he says, extending his hand.
“Hey, Lawrence,” I say, extending my own hand. “Long time no see.”
Lieutenant Lawrence Washington smiles. “Long time nobody see.”
Lawrence is a tall, proud-shouldered African American. His hair, now almost fully gray, is cut short. He is neither light-skinned nor dark-skinned. His reserved and mannerly demeanor has always shone in sharp contrast to his chosen line of work. Let’s just say I have never heard someone address Lawrence as Larry.
“Where’s Tommy?”
Lawrence takes a seat, rests his arms on the table, and folds his hands. “Oh, he’s around. Had to go down to the store, get some supplies.”
“In the middle of dinner?”
Lawrence smiles again but doesn’t answer. Tommy knew I was coming. Piper must have gotten through to him on his phone. Maybe she’d been in contact with him this whole time. Maybe she just wanted me to come up here to see him. Or, as it turns out, not see him until after Lawrence and I have had a little sit-down. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but I’m starting to feel that this whole thing has been orchestrated.
“So what is it we’re supposed to talk about?” I ask Lawrence.
“You’re a sharp one, Mick. You always were.”
I’m running out of patience. “Come on, man. What are you doing here? Or, if you want, we can talk about Stanley Lipinski.”
“Stanley Lipinski is what I’m doing here. I do not want to end up like him, which I surely would if I’d have stuck around.”
“There’s witness protection,” I say. “Like Terrance Johnson.”
Lawrence smirks. “Provided by the police. Police protecting you from the police. Not a good formula, by my math. I don’t hold out much hope for young Terrance.”
I nod, take a seat, and look at the big paper plate of barbequed chicken on the table. Lawrence tells me to help myself. He picks up his corn on the cob, and we eat together in silence until he’s finished.