Matter of Trust Read Free Page B

arraignments and motions and lengthy trial depositions. Sara had shown him that no matter how tough a case got, they always had each other – which was the best lesson he had ever learnt – that, and the one that said if you loved somebody unconditionally, only good could come of it – good in the form of the smiling ball of pink now pulling at the collar of his snow-soaked jersey.
    As for his family, he was pleased that his mother had remained in the family house in Newark after their father’s passing some eight years ago, but he no longer thought of their Down Neck four-bedder as home. The old place was close to his heart, but it was the people he’d grown up withthat had made him the man that he was – never willing to settle, always pushing for the way it should be, rather than the way that it was.
    â€˜Lisa’s here,’ said Sara, waving at David’s younger sister who was making her way toward them, her long black hair whipping around her shoulders in the bitter, late afternoon wind.
    â€˜Hey,’ said David, bending to kiss her. He knew she’d just finished a shift at Mass General’s busy ER unit where she was a nurse. Lisa pulled her niece from David’s grasp, and used her other gloved hand to push her brother a good two feet away.
    â€˜Hey! What kind of greeting is that for your favourite brother?’
    â€˜Who said you’re my favourite?’ she replied. ‘And besides, your face is a mess.’
    â€˜It’s okay, sis.’
    â€˜I know it’s okay, you idiot,’ she grinned. ‘I just didn’t want you kissing me with all that blood and dirt on your face. And if you are about to ask me to stitch you up, big bro,’ she added, now enfolding her niece in a big bear hug, ‘you can forget about me going back to the hospital to grab the analgesic.’
    â€˜That’s okay,’ cut in Tony, obviously unable to stop himself. ‘DC was just telling us he was more of a “bite-down-on-a-stick” guy in any case.’
    â€˜Oh for Christ’s sake,’ said David. ‘I don’t know why I bother.’

3
    Newark, New Jersey; later that night
    â€˜J esus! What the hell, Monroe? I don’t know why I bother.’
    She could just make him out at the top of the stoop to her University Heights apartment building. He was wearing that same scummy red robe he wore every fucking night – the one he never did up at the front, so that his hairy, fat belly was permanently on display.
    â€˜I’m sorry, Mr Super,’ Marilyn said, saluting him with one hand while knocking over a fourth trash can with the other. ‘It’s not me, it’s the fucking mutt.’
    â€˜Bullet is not a mutt, Monroe,’ said the apartment building’s round-faced superintendent, Paul Sacramoni, trying to find a balance between keeping his voice as low as he could and being heard above the dog’s incessant barking. ‘He’s a guard dog paid for by the concerned residents of this building – a pedigree Doberman no less, and he’s just doin’ his job.’
    â€˜He’s a waste of goddamned money. Bullet wouldn’t know an intruder if he fell over one,’ she slurred. ‘’Sides, I said we’d be better off putting in for a security camera, but nobody wanted to listen to me. Our beloved landlord wanted a puppy so he got the building to pay for it, which is why I never put in for him, by the way.’
    â€˜You don’t put in for your rent, Monroe,’ said Paulie, still referring to her by the moniker he had given her when she was just a kid. ‘So not helping out with the dog was a given.’
    â€˜Ironic, isn’t it?’ she said, pushing her white-blonde hair behind her right ear as she stumbled up the stairs and reached out to give the now placid Bullet a pat. ‘For once I got the money to pay for things like this fucking pussy of a mutt and I make