Where Nobody Dies by Carolyn Wheat Page A

about as easy to come by as CIA documents, and it became apparent how the press had missed the boat. The question was, how much would Aida or her husband have paid to keep it that way? Publicly kicking drugs may be a good way for a fading country singer to get on talk shows, but it does less than nothing for the image of a congressman’s wife.
    The only strike against Aida during the campaign had been the no-show job. Everybody has them, but for Aida her position as a member of the Mayor’s Committee on Minority Housing at twenty thousand a year had become a major scandal. For one thing, the ever-forgetful Art had neglected to put it on his financial statement, an oversight he hastily remedied. In Linda’s file were a couple of letters from the Department of Investigation asking Aida to come in for fingerprinting and financial disclosure, normal prerequisites for any city job, but she’d resigned when the storm of controversy broke.
    I stood up and took a stretch, arching my back like a cat’s and unkinking the muscles I’d just realized were coiled as tight as a spring. What the hell, I wondered, was I going to do with this mess? Put my coat on, walk out onto Court Street, and march up to the Eighty-fourth Precinct? Ask for Detective Button and turn the garbage over to somebody paid to collect it? And then what? Watch while the papers ate Art and Aida Lucenti for breakfast, lunch and dinner? Catch the eleven o’clock news to get the latest on the Blackmail Secretary?
    That stopped me cold. I stared out the window at the steel-gray sky and realized that I’d be trashing Linda’s reputation without any real guarantee that it would help Brad Ritchie. What I’d be giving Dawn would be a mother to be ashamed of, as well as a father behind bars.
    I couldn’t do it. No way could I add to Dawn’s suffering for no good reason. Whatever action I took with respect to the blackmail material, I decided, had to be for the sole purpose of presenting the police with an alternative to Brad Ritchie as Linda’s murderer.
    It meant work. It meant questioning the blackmail victims until I had something to take to Detective Button. One quick thought: I’d start with Bellfield and the Lucentis. As Linda’s employers, they were likely to show up at her funeral, where I might get a chance to talk to them with reasonable discretion.
    Having a plan felt good. The helpless paralysis that had enveloped me ever since I’d sat on Dawn’s bed and lied to her began to lift. I might not be able to comfort her in her loss or secure her a guardian, but maybe—just maybe—I could give her back her father.

5
    What I needed was coffee. Coffee and a quiet place, far away from Kings County Criminal Court, in which to discuss Aida Valentin Lucenti with my old friend, Pat Flaherty. What I had was Part GP1 and a client named Derrick Sinclair.
    â€œI ain’t did nothin’.”
    I stared at him through the bars of the pen behind the courtroom. “A classic defense,” I murmured, frustration turning on my sarcasm button. Hilary Quayle could have taken my correspondence course. “Is that ‘I ain’t did nothin’, I was just the lookout’? Or, like the kid rapist I once had, is it ‘I ain’t did nothin’, I just held her down’?”
    â€œI told you,” Derrick replied doggedly. “All I did was ask the lady for a cigarette. Since when they make that a crime?”
    â€œHow about when the guy you’re with goes behind the lady and rips off her gold chain while you’ve got her stopped?”
    â€œHow’m I s’posed to know he gonna do that?” Derrick countered, his eyes measuring me.
    â€œMight I suggest a little light reading?” I asked with a laugh. “Starting with your rap sheet. You and this guy Ralph Salazar have been busted twice before for the same thing. You’d better start carrying your own