"We'll find someone else to take over your role," Tom said, lifting his gadget and making the sign of the cross at me with it. "I know it's last minute. Hence, the free lunch and my undying grat.i.tude. What do you say?"

As if it were a question. Tom had been like a father to me. Try like a fairy G.o.dfather.

"I say yes," I said with a smile.

"Marone! How many times I gotta tell you?" he said, reverting to his native Bensonhurst accent as he took an envelope out of his pocket and handed it over. "When you're being bribed, neva eva agree straight offa de bat."

I opened the flap and slid out the two tickets.

And had trouble breathing.

They were double-digit field box seats for tonight's Yankees game. Tonight's YankeesRed Sox game. The first one of the season. The only bigger Yankee fan than me was Emma.

"Oh, Tom," I said woozily. "Oh, wow. I'm..."

"Hungry?" my fairy G.o.d counselor said, winking as he lifted his menu. "Then try the steak frites. Best in the city. Fuggedaboudit."

Chapter 53.

YOU HAD YOUR GOOD DAYS, Peter Fournier thought from his loge-level seat in the unbelievably opulent and immense new Yankee Stadium.

And then you had your perfect days.

"Here we go, Boston! Here we go!" he yelled as loud as he could as Beckett retook the mound.

From the famous facade, to the flat-screen TVs at every turn, to the low bowl-like design that made it seem like you were watching the game from the batting circle, even a die-hard Sawx fan like him couldn't deny the billion-dollar ballpark was baseball's version of paradise on earth. Even after they'd dug up Ortiz's jersey.

But to be here in the eighth inning, the Sox up by three and Beckett still on the mound in a perfect game, was nothing short of miraculous.

Actually, the true topper was having his family there, his gorgeous wife, Vicki, and his two sons, nine-year-old twins, Michael and Scott, with him. As on all their trips to Disney and last year's incredible European jaunt, Team Fournier was having an unforgettable blast.

The Fournier family had been invited to the game by Tom Reilly and Ed O'Connor, two New York FBI agents Peter had met at the FBI's National Academy course years before. He'd actually had them and their families down for a BostonNew York spring training game in Fort Myers, and now it was payback.

The two big, bearlike Feds sat on either side of the Fourniers with their Yankee-fan families. There was a lot of razzing back and forth, but it was all in good clean fun.

Funny the places life took you, Peter thought, smiling as he shook his head at his twin sons. The second oldest in a dest.i.tute family of ten in a South Boston project, Peter had abhorred the idea of ever having a kid.

To be clear, he liked being married just fine. After all, there was nothing more satisfying or fun or clean than having a faithful, monogamous woman in his life. But by age fifty, and now on his third wife, Peter had had the epiphany that he'd actually acquired enough money to completely buffer himself from all the smelly, human unpleasantness of child rearing with a huge house, nannies, and prep schools.

It had worked out even better than planned. He'd never smelled a diaper, let alone changed one. And it was up to him which meaningless ball games or Christmas plays he would attend.

All he needed to concentrate on now was creating as many unforgettable, fun, heartwarming moments as were convenient so his family would give him his s.p.a.ce. Like tonight's doozy. Being Daddy was easy.

Beckett started off the eighth with a four-seamer on the black that Jeter just gaped at. Peter squeezed Vicki's hand as their usually sedate son, Michael, jumped out of his seat with excitement, delivering high-fives.

Beckett went up 0 and 2 as Jeter swung and missed a breaking ball.

Peter looked down at Beckett with spine-tingling reverence. What a warrior. Baseball immortality was now within his grasp, and not even fifty thousand screaming New Yorkers could take it away.

One more. C'mon, Josh. One more, baby. Please, Peter prayed.

Beckett threw another off-speed pitch down and away, and Jeter swung and got under it. Youk went all out from first, but it bounced off the top of the Yankee dugout into the crowd.

d.a.m.n. Just missed, Peter thought. But at least it was just a foul ball.

A beautiful teenaged girl's face filled the JumboTron in centerfield a moment later. She was holding the ball and hopping up and down like she'd just won the lottery.

There was something familiar about the girl, Peter thought, squinting at the six-story-tall high-def screen. Something in her smile reminded him of his dearly departed mom's high school yearbook picture. Peter had loved that picture and his mom, despite her inability to keep her legs closed.

Peter watched, riveted, as they replayed the girl's one-handed grab.

They even froze the frame.

Then his Heineken fell straight down out of his hand, splattering his ankles.

Because the good-looking blond woman embracing the teen girl reminded him even more of someone else.

His dead wife, Jeanine.

Chapter 54.

"CAN I BORROW THOSE, SON?" Peter said calmly, despite his galloping heart.

"Sure, Dad," Scott said, immediately handing over the binoculars that one of the Feds had brought.

Raising the gla.s.ses, Peter ignored the thunderous cheer that rose up as Jeter hit a liner into the gap, ruining Beckett's perfect game. He slowly searched into the crowd behind the Yankee dugout, where the foul ball had landed.

He panned over people in suits. Billy Crystal. A bunch of pudgy Yankee fan goons pointing at a little black girl in a Boston cap. The new and improved Rudy, without the comb-over.

He scanned up and down the rows and sections, one by one, methodically. Looked through the crowded aisles.

He didn't spot her. Even after five meticulous minutes. There were too many people, too many faces. None of them was Jeanine.

The woman had only looked like her, and he'd jumped to conclusions, he decided as he handed back the binoculars to his son. It made sense.

He'd been thinking more and more about Jeanine over the last year for some inexplicable reason. He'd even dreamed about her a few times.

In one of the dreams, he was eating dinner with her again by the seawall in their backyard like on their first date. In another, he had his hands around her throat, holding her down under the water on an empty beach as she tried to scratch at him.

All in his head.

When he lowered the binoculars, he saw that A-Rod was on first and Beckett was heading for the showers.

"Now that just sucks!" his son Scott yelled.

Tom Reilly, the Fed beside them, began to do a little victory dance as he giggled uncontrollably.

You know what's even funnier, Tom? Peter felt like asking his FBI pal. The way you let me pump you for information about any large upcoming federal drug interdictions. You know what I do with that information and the other information I casually collect from all your a.s.shole buddies at the DEA, Tom? I sell it to the cartels. Have you heard of air traffic controllers? Yeah, I'm like a drug traffic controller. Beckett might have just blown a perfect game, but I made seven figures last year, Tommy Boy. Tax free. Not bad for a hick Florida cop. Tee-hee.

Peter scruffed his tan son's blond head with a grin.

"Don't worry. It's not the end of the world, Scott," he said. "A man takes disappointment in stride. And what did I tell you about using the S-word?"

"Sorry, Dad," Scott said sheepishly. "I meant to say stinks."

"There you go," Peter said, patting his son gently on his shoulder as he gave Reilly a wink. "Much more appropriate. Always remember, the words we choose reveal our true character."

Chapter 55.

IT WAS A QUARTER TO NINE on Thursday morning when I stepped into a gleaming black gla.s.s office tower at 57th Street and Third Avenue. With a temporary security pa.s.s hanging off my lapel, I smiled at the dozen or so other young Global 100 lawyers who sat as fresh and crisp as sharpened pencils in the twenty-third-floor conference room for the multifirm pro bono meeting.

I scanned the impressive corporate firm names on the place cards, some of which actually represented countries. It was heartening to see lawyers about to do some pro bono work.

If, in fact, that really was what we were going to do.

I hoped it was.

Unfortunately, I'd done pro bono initiatives before in which there were a lot of long expense-account lunch meetings and high-minded dialogues but not too much legit legal work that affected anything or anyone.

Whatever the case, the only thing I knew was that I was going to work my a.s.s off for my boss, Tom Sidirov.

For the Derek Jeter foul ball Emma had snagged last night and for the front-row privilege of watching the Bombers turn a Beckett perfect game into a ninth-inning come-from-behind walk-off Cano grand slam?

I was prepared to work forty hours a day.

I was gathering up coffee and info folders when I caught a bright flash of red hair in my peripheral vision.

"No way!" I squealed.

"Yes way, Jose," my pretty porcelain-skinned friend, Mary Ann Pontano, said as we bear-hugged. "Thank G.o.d. I just might be able to get through conference h.e.l.l after all."

I laughed as I hugged her again.

She'd been my first New York friend. She was my next-door neighbor in the c.r.a.ppy apartment I'd gotten on 117th Street in Spanish Harlem two weeks after I'd gotten off the Greyhound at the Port Authority.

Being the only single women and non-Spanish-speaking people in residence, we gravitated toward each other. Especially when we had to do laundry in the Silence of the Lambsstyle bas.e.m.e.nt laundry room. She'd helped me find a waitressing job and a pediatrician for Em. She was actually the one who'd encouraged me to become a paralegal all those years ago.

"It's been way, way too long, Mary Ann," I said.

Mary Ann smiled. She still looked more like an Iraq War news anch.o.r.ette than a combat Iraq War vet and ex-NYPD cop. She'd parlayed her toughness and good looks into a plum international-law-firm investigator job.

"That's fine," Mary Ann said. "I know you greedy, capitalist corporate-lawyer types. Not a minute to spare counting all that filthy lucre. No time for the peasants."

"Well, Mary Ann," I said. "We can't all be keeping it real in the hood up there in Scarsdale with our dentist husband and two toddlers."

"It's Bronxville, OK?" Mary Ann said. "Get it right. Bronxville eats those soccer-mom b.i.t.c.hes from Scarsdale alive. Anyway, what are we doing here again?"

"We're here to save some lives, that's what," said a short, friendly-looking man with an unruly mop of black hair, who burst into the conference room with a legal box.

"Welcome to Mission Exonerate NYC, everyone," he said, dropping the box onto the table with a tremendous thud. "Since time is money, I won't waste any. I'm the initiative cofounder and director, Carl Fouhy. You are the brightest legal minds in New York City, I take it. Or at least, New York's currently most dispensable legal minds. Whatever the case, I need you and, more important, the men and women who are right now facing imminent execution need you even more."

He hit the lights as a bright PowerPoint board hummed out of the ceiling.

The faces of tough yet defeated-looking men and women began to slideshow.

"You would not believe the amount of witness misidentification and forensic-science misconduct that we've found in some of these capital cases," Fouhy explained. "That's even before getting into some of the flat-out s.h.i.+tty defense lawyering we've uncovered.

"There are cases of counselors failing to investigate witnesses or call experts. Of defense lawyers actually being intoxicated and falling asleep during trial. That's where you folks come in. You will level the playing field for these mostly poor, mostly uneducated men and women."

He lifted the lid of the box, took out thick yellow envelopes, and began to drop them one by one in front of us.

"These are your a.s.signed cases. You can open them momentarily, when you leave. On the first page, you will find the accused's current attorney. We want you to work in conjunction with him. Your job is advisory, to go and do a face-to-face with each defense attorney. See that everything has been covered, the police report, the appeals. We're looking for mistakes, people. Catching a mistake may save someone's life.

"Now, if someone will hit the lights, I'll go over a couple of test cases in which we've overturned executions. We'll review the process and then, basically, you're on your own. Any questions, myself or the initiative's policy advisers, Jane Burkhart and Teddy Simmons, can be reached. Otherwise, I'm confident you guys will figure it out. Improvise and overcome, people. Save a life!"

Chapter 56.

"AND I THOUGHT speed dating was fast," Mary Ann said as we unloaded at Starbucks on Third Avenue half an hour later with Jane Joyce, a lawyer at Mary Ann's firm.

"On your mark, get set, go," I said as we all pulled out our a.s.signed cases.

I flipped through a thick mound of pages. My case concerned a man named Randall King who was on death row for murdering two armored-car guards in a Waterbury, Connecticut, holdup. I showed Mary Ann the mug shot of the bullnecked, malevolent, cornrowed convict.

"Wow, they gave me a bank robber," I said. "Lucky me. This is going to be fun."