Ice Cap Read Online Free Page B

dark gray tile that extended into the living room, the snow melting off our boots and blending into puddles already formed on the floor. Directly in front of us was a pair of sofas facing each other, separated by a dingy area rug. Zina and Judy sat on one of the sofas and Danny stood a respectful distance to one side. He wrote in his book. Judy held both Zina’s hands in hers. Zina looked up at us as we came forward. Her fine-skinned face was paler than usual, but her eyes were clear and dry. I realized in the better light that she was wearing pajamas made of a heavy gray flannel that I’d mistaken for a sweatsuit.
    Franco started to say he was terribly sorry, but she cut him off. “He was dead when you found him, you are sure,” she said.
    Franco held his hat in front of him with both hands and looked up at the ceiling. Danny watched him carefully.
    â€œYes, Mrs. Buczek. There was no doubt. I’m terribly sorry.”
    â€œYou don’t tell me right away, but you call Jackie. What does that mean?”
    â€œIt means I didn’t know what to do. I’m sorry for that, too.”
    â€œYou think Franco do this?” she asked Judy.
    â€œNo one’s been charged, Mrs. Buczek,” she said. “We’re not assuming foul play.”
    â€œFoul play?”
    â€œThat anyone caused your husband’s death. Or if it was an accident. It’s too early for that.”
    Zina stared off into the middle distance and slowly nodded, as if trying to absorb the information, if not the entire situation. Meanwhile, Judy went through the usual brief: Did Zina have anyone who could stay with her? Anyone she could call? Could they drive her somewhere? Still looking into nothing, Zina shook her head.
    â€œThere’s nowhere for me now. Nowhere to hide.”
    Franco still stood silently, head bowed, hat in hand. The wind blew a spray of snow into a picture window across the room. I looked over and saw the blue lights from the white vans flickering through naked tree limbs and heard the sound of Dayna’s plow rumbling up to the house, the truck’s high beams briefly striking one of Tad’s metal art pieces, this one a type of stork or crane, its long beak pointing back toward the pergola as if aware of, but indifferent to, what lay there.

 
    3
    Burton Lewis was born with more money than even the most enterprising spender could ever spend. His entire family had died off soon after he graduated from law school, so he’d have a right to question the value of the cosmic trade-off. Though he never did, at least not to me.
    Part of his inheritance was a colossal law firm on Wall Street that specialized in what you’d roughly categorize as tax law, but that barely described the actual pursuit: mediating between the wealthiest people on earth and the U.S. government over the price of doing business at the center of the world’s biggest economy.
    Burton liked the work, despite having started his career in a storefront legal defense practice in the South Bronx, an antecedent to the extensive pro bono enterprise he’d built up across the region and for whom I ran the Eastern Suffolk County franchise.
    I liked him, a feeling I concentrated on while avoiding the more intense emotions he could touch in me, which would have been for naught given Burton’s orientation. Nevertheless, he liked me, too, which I had a hard time understanding but was devoutly grateful for.
    â€œSo, no charges levied against Mr. Raffini,” he said to me over the phone when I called him the morning after the to-do at Tad Buczek’s.
    â€œNot yet,” I said, “since there’s no direct evidence Franco had any role in the death.”
    â€œIt was good of you to drive over there, given the conditions. Though impulse control has never been your strong suit.”
    I didn’t try to argue that point. Instead, I shared what Zina had said: “There’s nowhere for me now.