Heart of Stone

“Paid for her cab,” Mark replied. “She didn’t want me to, but it’s bad, walking around with a baby that late.”

Margrit flashed a smile and turned her gaze up to the skyline. Hope and fear swept Alban, an unexpected combination of emotion that left a chill behind. For a moment her eyes lighted on him, then went on without recognition or notice. Of course, he thought, though disappointment replaced hope.

“Did you get a receipt?” Margrit asked. “Let me pay you back, anyway. I think Russell will assign somebody to the case, so I can get reimbursed.” She dug into her purse as Mark shook his head.

“Don’t need to, Miss Knight. Didn’t do it just to get my money back. She needed a ride, that’s all.”

Margrit’s smile deepened. “You’re a good man, Mark. Thanks. I didn’t even think of it.” She tugged something out of her purse anyway, palm-size and oddly textured, silver over metallic red, then slid it in her pocket. Alban tipped his head, watching her actions, which were easy enough to be ritual, then brought his attention back to the conversation.

“Been a long day,” the security guard said. “You can’t remember everything.”

“Don’t tell me that.” Margrit walked down the steps, peering up the street for her taxi. “Next thing I know you’ll be telling me I can’t save the world.”

“Wouldn’t bet against you, Miss Knight.”

Margrit grinned over her shoulder at the guard, then looked back up at the sky. “That’s what I like to hear. Thanks.” Her smile faded to a frown. “Mark, was that there before?” She lifted a hand, pointing a gloved finger directly at Alban.

So much for humans never looking up. Stillness was a way of being—not flinching, not moving, requiring no more thought than breathing did. Alban’s heart thudded with the panic of discovery regardless, even as a part of him wanted to laugh at his own fears. His intention was to bring himself to Margrit’s notice. Being found out shouldn’t be alarming, especially when she couldn’t possibly recognize him.

The guard came down the stairs to follow her extended arm. “Musta been, Miss Knight. Don’t remember seeing it, though.”

Margrit dropped her hand slowly and nodded. “I swear I’ve looked out my window a million times at that building and never saw it before.”

“Funny what we notice,” Mark agreed. “Here’s your cab, Miss Knight.” He stepped past her as the vehicle pulled up, and opened the door for her. Margrit gave him a grateful smile and ducked into the car.

A grin, full of unusual wickedness, broke through Alban’s stony expression. He leaped upward, leaving his perch behind, and paused long enough on the rooftop to catch Mark’s bewildered expression when he looked up to find the statue on the ledge gone.

A matter of steps between the taxi and her apartment building’s front door was all the time he had. There’d be no room for prevarication, no chance to back out. He waited on a balcony a few stories up, not wanting the cab driver to catch sight of him and perhaps identify him. Trusting Margrit wouldn’t turn him in was enough of a gamble, though at least it would be difficult for her to catch him, if she was so inclined. The cab pulled away as she scurried up the steps to unlock the front door.

Alban dropped from the balcony, landing in a crouch on the sidewalk a few yards behind her, and pushed to his feet before murmuring, “Margrit.”

She twisted the lock open and stepped inside without looking back. Silver wire glinted at her ear, suddenly resolving: headphones attached to the palm-size metallic-red MP3 player that swung from her wrist. “Mar—!”

The door clicked shut. Alban stepped back with a gasp of disbelieving laughter. No light came on in the front of her apartment. He’d have no chance of catching her in the kitchen without breaking in. He stood staring up at the building, then spread his hands helplessly. “Margrit?”

There was no answer, nor had he expected one. Time held him in its slow grip, watching her window until even he began to feel cold settling onto his skin. Then he shook himself and took to rooftops and sky, returning home in befuddlement.

“You wanted to see me?” Margrit leaned into her boss’s office, trying to look wide-awake and perky. She was getting old. A few days of an upset sleep schedule wasn’t as easy to get by on as it’d been in college.

Russell glanced up and gestured her in. “Yes, come in, Margrit, please. Have a seat. I’ve been looking over the notes you took on last night’s petitioner.” He tapped the pile of paperwork she had left, information about Cara and data regarding building codes and wrecking protocols. Looking at it, Margrit felt a surge of satisfaction; squatters’ rights weren’t in her field of expertise, but she thought she’d put together a good preliminary package. “How late were you here?”

She dropped into one of the visitor’s chairs. “I don’t know. One or two. I sent Cara home earlier than that, but I wanted to get some information together for you to look at. It was almost eight when we got here,” she added to herself. Tony should have answered his phone at that hour. It wasn’t too late to call. Work may have caught him, but she wished he’d returned the call. Even a late night would have been nice to share after a triumphant day.

Margrit pulled her mind back to the topic at hand, shrugging. “I asked her everything I could think of and told her I’d try to get you to assign someone to help her. It’s—” “You.”

Margrit straightened in the chair, enough adrenaline washing through her to wake her up fully. “I appreciate the offer, sir, but I’m really not any sort of an expert on housing situations. I was thinking Nichole—”

“If you need her help, I’ll ask her to do what she can. I spent a while on the phone this morning.” He glanced at the clock, which read a little after ten.

Margrit shifted her shoulders guiltily. “I would’ve been in earlier, sir, but—” she cleared her throat and offered a lame smile along with the unvarnished truth “—but I was still sleeping.”

Russell smiled. “It’s all right. None of us were here bright and early. Maybe a little too much celebrating.” He shook his head. “I didn’t mean to reprimand you. You’ve done a fine job here the past few years. You’re exactly the sort of person we need in Legal Aid. Young, dedicated, enthusiastic.”

Pretty, Margrit thought. There were other words, too, that Russell avoided, as her boss and as a male. Descriptors that would be inappropriate to point out as being among her strengths as a lawyer. She nodded slightly, acknowledging his compliments without speaking.

“You make a good public face.” Russell leaned forward. “Which is part of why I want you on this case. As I was saying, I made some phone calls this morning. This building,” he said, nodding toward the stack of papers Margrit had left, “is owned by Eliseo Daisani.”

The air abruptly weighed heavier on Margrit’s shoulders. “The Eliseo Daisani?” As if there might be more than one, she teased herself, trying to deflate a spurt of panic that ballooned in her stomach. “Then it’s even more imperative, sir, that you have someone experienced in this field—”

“I want you. You’re high profile right now, Margrit, and that’ll only help us. This girl, this Cara, approached you directly. It’s a good story for the press.” He sat back, gesturing at her. “You’ll make a good face as an adversary against Daisani’s corporation. We need that, too. And it doesn’t hurt that—”

He broke off, waiting for her to finish his sentence for him. Margrit studied him silently, her gaze level. It took so little time for him to complete it that only someone who knew he expected the defendant to speak for herself would have heard the hesitation. “—you’re black.”

Margrit thinned her lips, then said coolly, “I’m also white and probably American Indian, Russell. Nobody’s going to be fooled by sending me into the Projects. I grew up in Flushing, for God’s sake. Dad’s a surgeon.” She propped her fingers in a steeple in front of her chest, a posture learned from her father. “Mother is a corporate finance manager. I’m not a Cinderella story.”

“Nor am I going to try to sell you as one. Nonetheless, it’s a card to play and I intend to use it to our benefit.”

“Sir.” Margrit could hear the anger in the clipped way she spoke the word. She folded her hands out of their steeple and found them re-forming it above her lap, her fingertips now pointed accusingly at her boss. “By putting me as lead counsel on this you’re trying to make people think, ‘Look, a black girl who’s done well. Now she’s giving back to the little people she came from. Good for her!’ You’re using me to lie by way of public perception.” A shred of guilt whipped through her as she remembered how she’d sized up Cara’s physical appearance as a potential benefit when she climbed on the witness stand. But Margrit pushed the memory away, meeting Russell’s gaze with her own forthright anger.

“Does that mean you’re refusing the case, Counselor?”

Goddammit. Margrit bit back the words, staring at him. “It means I’d like some time to think about it, sir.”

“I’ll expect a decision by this afternoon. Margrit,” he added, as she stood and stalked toward the door. She turned back, lips compressed. “Your name is already in the news right now. If Cara Delaney or anyone at her building mentions talking to you about this, you may find yourself on Eliseo Daisani’s radar. He’s a powerful man, and information has a way of making its way to the ears of the powerful. Think carefully, but think quickly. If there’s a compelling enough reason behind him wanting this building to come down, you may find yourself with a dangerous enemy.”

“Thank you, sir.” Margrit left his office with her fists clenched, and snatched up her coat on the way out of the building. There was no thinking about her destination; thought might send her in the other direction. She hailed a cab rather than give in to the desire to run her anger out. A dockworker might reasonably show up to an impromptu meeting sweaty and disheveled. A lawyer for Legal Aid couldn’t afford that as a first impression.

Particularly not with the target she had in mind.

Daisani’s personal assistant made heroin chic look like a healthy lifestyle choice. Everything about the woman was thin: her hair, scraped back against her skull into a bun so tight it looked as if it must give her a headache; her eyes, behind rectangle-framed tortoise-shell glasses; her nose, which was pinched enough that Margrit thought she must have a hard time breathing. She was excruciatingly well dressed, but the linen and silk of her suit somehow managed to play up the sharpness of her shoulders and the vicious angles of her collarbones. Margrit, in an ivory suit she’d rescued from the dry cleaners, felt unexpectedly lush in comparison.

“Do you have an appointment?”

Margrit startled, trying not to stare. She’d expected a voice as thin and nasal as the woman, a piercing soprano. Instead she spoke in a warm contralto with bright notes to it, like rich liqueur poured over ice. The tone was professional enough to border on unfriendly, but it couldn’t hide the depth of music in her voice. Margrit’s planned arguments to win an appointment with Daisani were abandoned in favor of a heartfelt, “You have a beautiful voice.”

The thin woman went still for a moment, then flickered a smile that did nothing to relax her features. “Thank you. Do you have an appointment?”

Impatience, Margrit told herself, would get her nowhere. They both knew she didn’t have an appointment, but form had to be met. She proffered a wry smile and shook her head. “I’m afraid not. I was hoping—”

“Mr. Daisani,” the narrow woman said, “is a very busy man.”

“I understand.” Margrit kept the rueful smile, and gestured to one of the lobby chairs. “I’d be glad to wait. I only need a few minutes of his time.”

The woman opened an appointment book of rich, embossed brown leather that complemented the pale wood of the enormous curved desk Eliseo Daisani’s personal assistant was barricaded behind. There was nothing in the office that wasn’t sumptuous. The lobby chairs were antiques, some covered in pale leather, others in rich red velvet that looked so soft Margrit had forced herself not to stop and brush her fingers across it as she entered. The hardwood floors gleamed as if they were polished every night, scuffs removed with prejudice. The walls were paneled wood, as polished as the floors, all of it harkening back to an era decades before Margrit’s own.

Paintings on the walls dated from the twenties, art deco at its finest, with the exception of one discreet portrait of a slim, dusky man behind the assistant’s desk. A woman bearing a striking resemblance to the assistant herself was also in the portrait, her hair cut in a sharp bob that did much more for her thin features than the tense bun this woman wore. Margrit dared a nod at the portrait, asking, “Your grandmother?”

As if she might be surprised by what lay there, the assistant turned to look at the painting. “Vanessa Gray,” she said. “And Dominic Daisani, Mr. Daisani’s father.” The second showing of interest in her, rather than Eliseo Daisani, seemed to thaw a very slender thread within the woman. A note of pride entered her rich voice as she turned back to Margrit. “I was named for her. My family has worked with Mr. Daisani’s family for a long time.” With the slight relaxation, she looked like the before picture of a makeover: there was beauty in her, tightly restrained. Margrit wondered what had made her decide to go the sourpuss route instead of playing up the glamour within.