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But as it passed, Eve looked up and saw Edna Fisk looking at her.
Looking at her, and smiling.
Twenty minutes later, as Eve stood on the dais of the ballroom in which the benefit for the Montrose Shelter for the Homeless was being held, she didn't need to even glance at the speech she'd written. "Tonight," she began, "a woman smiled at me. A woman named Edna Fisk. Let me tell you about her."
Half an hour later, as her speech ended to a wave of applause-and a flurry of checkbooks-Monsignor Terrence McGuire leaned over to whisper in her ear. "I have to tell you, Eve-you're full of more blarney than my father even thought of, and you've got more courage than anyone else I know. But all those people down in the subway aren't like your Edna Fisk-a lot of them are dangerous, and if you get hurt down there, you aren't going to be able to do Montrose House any good at all."
"I'm not going to get hurt," Eve assured him. "I've been riding the subways since I was a little girl, and nothing's ever happened."
"Well, you should consider yourself lucky," the elderly priest went on. "Terrible things happen down there. There was the woman who almost got killed up on the West Side last fall-"
"That wasn't one of my people," Eve Harris cut in. "As I recall, it was an architecture student at Columbia."
"It was not!" another voice cut in angrily. "Jeff didn't do it!"
The priest and the councilwoman turned to see a young woman standing behind them, next to Perry and Carolyn Randall.
"Heather…" Eve heard the Assistant District Attorney say warningly, but the young woman ignored him.
"It was someone else," she said. "Jeff was trying to help Cynthia Allen. The man who attacked her disappeared into the subway tu
Perry Randall's hand tightened on the young woman's arm. "My daughter," he said to Eve, his lips forming a tight smile. "All she said was that she wanted to meet you." He turned to Heather. "This is Councilwoman Harris, Heather."
Eve offered Heather Randall her hand. "You know the young man?"
Heather nodded. "I'm going to marry him."
Eve's eyes flicked toward Perry Randall, and as she was searching for something to say, Randall himself rescued her.
"You can be sure we'll send you an invitation, Eve," he said, keeping his voice just light enough to take the edge off his words. "In the meantime, I think I'd like a drink. Terrific speech, Eve," he added. "You can count on me for ten thousand this year."
"And I'll hold you to it," Eve Harris assured him.
But as the crowd closed around her, Eve found herself watching Heather Randall as she moved toward the bar, and recalled her words: "Jeff said he looked like one of the homeless." One of the homeless… Why did everyone always want to blame the homeless? she wondered.
Why did the homeless always have to take the rap?
But Eve already knew the answer to her own question- the homeless took the rap because they had nobody to defend them.
So she would just have to work harder.
CHAPTER 4
JoA
Jagger.
That was his name: Jagger. He had a first name, but she, along with everyone else at Rikers Island, never used it.
Nor did they use the nickname the other prisoners had given him, back when he had been in the general population.
The Dragger.
Jagger the Dragger.
She hadn't understood it at first; when she first heard it, she assumed he must be in the habit of dragging things out. A lot of the prisoners did that-filling the long hours of their sentences with even longer tales of why they didn't belong here at all, or dragging out their chores in the kitchen, or the laundry, or the dining room, in an effort to avoid going back to their cells. But that wasn't how Jagger had gotten the nickname. He'd come by it far more legitimately.
Initially, JoA
In the photo, a body was lying on a floor in the midst of a pool of blood that all but obliterated the worn-out carpet on which it lay. It was easy to see where all the blood had come from: the body was so badly mutilated that its gender was no longer distinguishable.
Its face was covered with makeup, put on so garishly that it looked like the work of a child.
The muscular arms of the corpse had been shoved through the sleeves of a woman's blouse-a blouse so small that the arms themselves had torn the sleeves to shreds. There was a skirt, too, partially wrapped around the corpse's waist.
"Jagger dressed him up in drag after he killed him," the person who showed JoA
JoA
Right now, though, asleep in his cell, the Dragger looked perfectly harmless.
But she knew that he was not.
If he was, then Bobby Breen would still be alive. But Bobby Breen wasn't alive, because JoA
Jagger had not yet spoken a single word about what had been found in the closet. In fact, he hadn't said a word about anything.
"They want him downtown for evaluation," JoA
Or me, JoA
The captain shrugged. "I figure they're just trying to make him disappear-get him out before anybody has a chance at him. Everybody liked Breen-everybody hates Jagger. So what are you go
So now JoA
"Time to go." Though her voice was low enough not to waken any of the prisoners who might be sleeping, Jagger's eyes snapped open. Sitting up, he locked his eyes on to hers, and, as always, JoA
"Stand up and turn around, back to the door, hands behind your back," she ordered.
Jagger's eyes flicked toward JoA
Only when Jagger's hands were shackled behind him did JoA