What Happened to the Bennetts(63)

I began to lose ground, my Civic no match for the BMW. The BMW took off, tearing around Eakins Oval in front of the Art Museum and heading for the expressway.

Traffic stopped at a red light on the parkway. I tried to collect my thoughts but they raced everywhere. I couldn’t shake the horrific image of Hart being struck by the BMW. I took no pleasure in seeing his grisly death. I wondered what Lucinda would say. Whether she would mourn him.

My chest tightened. I realized I hadn’t asked her if she loved him. Maybe I didn’t want to know the answer.

A car honked behind me, and I looked up at the stoplight, which had turned green. I pressed the gas and went forward, without knowing exactly where.

Then I remembered something.

Jason?

I gritted my teeth. Someone had recognized me at the scene. A lot of lawyers in the city knew me. It could have been anyone.

Plus the BMW driver would remember the Civic. And security cameras must have picked up the BMW and the Civic, giving chase. The Philadelphia police would want to know who was driving the Civic.

So would the FBI.

It was time to change things up.





Chapter Thirty-Nine



The convenience store was cramped and dusty, an old indie off the expressway. It was next to a body shop, closed at this hour, but the reason I’d come. The entire store was one long skinny rectangle, and fluorescent lighting flickered overhead, affixed to a sagging drop ceiling. There was no one else in the store and no cashier in sight. An old TV played behind the counter, showing a commercial.

I went through shelves stuffed with sleeves of Slim Jims, shiny turquoise bags of Herr’s chips, and dusty boxes of Pepto-Bismol. The air smelled like cigarette smoke, which never happened anymore in public. The odor took me back in time, since my father used to smoke.

I found what I needed and went to the counter, and an older man appeared from the back, taking a final drag. He caught my eye behind glasses that slipped down a nose with broken capillaries. His gray hair was greasy, and he needed a shave, but the flesh of his cheeks draped a polite smile.

“Can I help you?” He stubbed out his cigarette in a crowded ashtray with a plaid beanbag base.

“Yes, thanks.” I set the stuff on the counter and pulled a twenty from my wallet. “Also, do you know who runs the body shop next door? I need my car repainted and I don’t want to go to some expensive chain.” Of course that wasn’t the real reason. The real reason was that chains kept records.

“Sure. The owner, Ed.” The man opened the cash register and made change. “He’s out for two weeks, gettin’ over an operation.”

I masked my dismay. “I need it sooner.”

“Ed’s cousin has a shop.”

“Can you call him?”

“Sure.”

“Tonight?”

The man didn’t ask why, and I saw myself in his eyes. I was a man who needed a car painted fast, for reasons nobody wanted to know. I sensed I was leaving my old legal world behind and entering one where lawyers conspired with criminals and ended up dead anyway.

The man slid my change and bag across the counter. “I’ll call him.”

“Thanks.” I added, “Got a bathroom?”



* * *



—

In the bathroom, I shaved one strip of my hair, then the next. I had cut it down first with a scissors, then shaved my way through a few razors. Clumps of cut hair and globs of shaving cream filled the small, filthy wastebasket next to the sink. The job was messier and took longer than I expected, but it was working. I was getting balder by the minute. I couldn’t risk being recognized again.

I met my own gaze in the mirror, realizing how much I looked like my father, now that my hair was gone. I had his warm brown eyes, wide-set, and his straight nose and small mouth, bracketed by his laugh lines. The thought gave me comfort, and I found myself smiling. My father had been my best friend, and it had been just him and me for almost as long as I could remember. I had been devastated when he died, and I lived by his advice.

Better safe than sorry.

I watched my smile fade. I couldn’t deny the facts, literally staring me in the face. I had made safe choices, one after the other, on the belief they would protect me and my family. Yet here I was, with my family in pieces and Allison gone. Playing it safe hadn’t kept them safe.

I remembered way back when, I used to wonder why my father idolized Milton Hershey, but never aspired to be him. I sensed he didn’t know if he was capable of it, or simply didn’t want to try. He never tried to swing for the fences, but he could have. He had stayed in his comfort zone, and so had I. I didn’t know if we were afraid of failing, or of succeeding.

I knocked the shavings into the trash, then rinsed off the razor and resumed shaving, my thoughts running free. I had to change my appearance, but I sensed something different was happening, something more. I was stripping down to something essential, revealing my rawest self. I was shedding whatever I used to be.

I was becoming someone else. Maybe who I should have been, all along.

Not my father.

Myself.

I looked at my reflection with new eyes.

No more playing it safe.





Chapter Forty



Remy Whitman Towing & Auto Body was a rectangle of white painted cinder block, grimy with age. The lights were dim, owing to fluorescent lighting that had blown out in sections. The concrete floor was stained and hadn’t been swept in ages. Overflowing Rubbermaid trash cans, red plastic five-gallon canisters, and half-empty jugs of antifreeze lined both walls. Signs on the cinder-block wall read we work with all insurance companies and 100% color match guarantee. Battered gray cabinets with faded decals were in one corner, and a freshly painted car door hung on a metal rack.