Free Where Nobody Dies by Carolyn Wheat Page A

to. Too many politicians have gotten elected on an anti-Bellfield platform not to.”
    â€œIt just seems so scuzzy. Bellfield’s a bad dude, okay, but why can’t they nail him on their own and investigate Linda’s death because they’re supposed to, not because I’ve got them by the shorts?”
    Riordan grinned. “Why can’t you stop talking like a fourteen-year-old chain snatcher?”
    I grinned back. “Come off it, Matt,” I countered. “You know you’re in this business for the same reason I am—you like the action.”
    â€œTrue,” he acknowledged with a rueful smile. “It’s like a surfer riding a wave—you can’t control the force that moves you, but you can work it, glide along its edge, use its power to your own advantage.”
    â€œSounds dangerous, the way you put it.” My smile began to fade; there had been too many conversations lately in which I’d had the sense that Matt Riordan was heading his surfboard along giant waves too rough even for him to handle.
    The court officer came into the hall to call Matt back inside.
    â€œThink about what I said,” he cautioned, his eyes serious. “The game’s called hardball, and if you want to survive as a criminal lawyer, you’ll have to learn to play it.”
    â€œWhat would you do if you had the tapes?” I asked.
    The famous Riordan grin split his face. “What I always do—bluff.”

6
    I hate open caskets. It’s like watching someone become a junkie—a once-animated face is replaced by a permanent glassy stare.
    I tried to tell myself I wasn’t a ghoul, that I’d be at the funeral anyway, out of respect for my dead tenant. But it was no good; my eyes kept wandering from the casket to the mourners’ faces. Which of them, I wondered, had she blackmailed? Which of them had hated her enough to kill?
    Finally it was my turn to file past the bier. It was lined with gold satin; Linda would have approved of the way it flattered her coloring. But even the gold lining and the expert makeup job couldn’t hide the tiny lines of discontent around the mouth, the crow’s feet near the expressionless eyes. She had the hard permanent smile of a Barbie doll.
    As I turned, I glimpsed Marcy and Dawn standing stiffly in the pew. Dawn towered over her tiny aunt; I had hardly recognized her in her tailored black suit. It was the first time I had ever seen her wearing clothes that fit. It was also the first time I had seen her hair styled. She had a grown-up air about her that went beyond clothes and hair. If, as Millay says, “childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies,” then Dawn was an exile.
    I turned away after a brief nod to the chief mourners. I had come less to mourn than to watch. I resumed my seat in the fourth pew and scrutinized the people filing past the coffin.
    I recognized Art Lucenti at once. Everyone in Brooklyn over the age of six knew Art. His face had beamed at us from our TV screens and our front pages; even our shopping bags proclaimed: LUCENTI FOR CONGRESS . HE ’ S YOUR MAN . His politician’s smile was subdued as he walked slowly up to the coffin and gazed meaningfully down at the body of his late secretary. I could already hear the six o’clock news gushing over the congressman’s touching grief at his tragic loss; we had already had camera crews on Court Street canvassing neighbors who had never met Linda Ritchie for their opinions about her violent death. I knew that whatever Art said for the cameras would reflect nothing of the relief he had to be feeling.
    Aida followed him, looking as demure as possible in a black Chanel suit with a white ruffled blouse. As usual, you felt she could have taken the skirt a size larger. She tried to subdue her sexy walk, but the narrow skirt and high heels created their own engineering, and she attracted every male eye in the church. Yet at the same time