Free The Good Lawyer: A Novel by Thomas Benigno

grabbed the phone.
    “Who are you calling?” she asked.
    “Dario’s. We’re going to be late, and there’s only twelve tables in the whole restaurant.”
    Eleanor looked scared, like a child about to admit something awful. “Nick…”
    In a pause that brought my world crashing down, I imagined her a black widow. We had made love; now she was going to kill me. Not with a knife or a gun, but slowly…by leaving me. She was going back to Atlanta to marry some rich guy or…maybe just to get away from the likes of me. We were getting too serious. Her father hadn’t raised this perfect young woman to marry some greaseball from Long Island. If she were my daughter I’d have pulled the plug on this romance too, never mind Uncle Rocco.
    “I understand Eleanor. Maybe we are going too fast.” The inflection in my voice revealed my own uncertainty.
    She looked confused and even more frightened. “Too fast? Do you think we’re going too fast?”
    I caved easily. “Is this something we have control over?”
    “I guess not.” She smiled weakly as I cradled her in my arms. She then said softly: “I love you, Nick.”
    With heartfelt meaning every word, I said what I had never said before to anyone, ever: “I love you, too.”
    Life would never feel as good, nor have more wonder, and magic, and exhilaration. I was frightened before she spoke, and more frightened after, for I knew then I could never survive losing her.
    We kissed, Dario’s all but forgotten, until we fell asleep. I awoke with a jolt half an hour later.
    The thought of Mom coming home and finding Eleanor post coitus sent me vaulting out of bed.
    She searched the covers for her bra and panties. “Nick, what if you got your own place?”
    “It’s been me and Mom my whole life. We respect each other.”
    She pulled me close and laughed like a schoolgirl into my chest and neck “Such a good son.”
    Later that night I drove us to Jones Beach in Eleanor’s BMW. We arrived at exactly midnight. The temperature had dropped below forty so we grabbed a quilt, wrapped ourselves in it, and walked along the boardwalk of field six. It was desolate—I knew it would be.
    Eleanor questioned the wisdom of such a brazen confrontation with the cold and the wind colder still, rushing at us from the ocean’s blackness.
    “The quilt will keep us warm if we stay close,” I said.
    She smiled and cuddled under it as we walked along the rail.
    A city block of darkened beach lay between us and the shoreline, where the sound of cresting waves rushed at us and dissolved away. We paused by a boardwalk lamp and gazed into endless blackness.
    What could be more horrifying, I thought, than to be dropped in the middle of that darkness and left to die, or drown in a panic, or float as prey for whatever horrible creatures roamed the ocean’s depth where the darkest secrets lie.
    I was trembling. My thoughts shifted to the junkyard behind P.S. 92—its heaping debris piled higher than its dilapidated fences. Secrets were there too, contrived and stirring, like a spreading contagion.
    Eleanor pulled me closer, and with one sweet smile she drove away these pawing meandering thoughts.
    But they would soon return, and when they did, she would not be present to save me from them.

Chapter 16
     
    T he Bronx Supreme Court is a classic courthouse structure. Towering columns hold up an ancient Greco-Roman architectural design. Over fifty wide stone steps lead up to the entrances in front and back and on the Grand Concourse side of the building. Midway up these steps, I heard someone call out to me in a loud hoarse voice. It was my uncle, Rocco Alonzo.
    I cringed.
    A black limousine sat at the curb on 161st Street just off the corner. Uncle Rocco, in black suit, white shirt (top button opened), and black patent leather shoes, began to scale the stone steps with two younger Italians in overcoats a few feet behind.
    “That’s my nephew Nickie.” The two henchmen looked at me blankly. “He’s