Hardscrabble Road Read Online Free Page B

Sheila must have forgotten and I don’t know where
     she keeps the spare set of keys. I’m sorry. I’m, you know, a law student. I work here part-time. It’s, I don’t know. I’m not
     really up on all the detail stuff with the building and that kind of thing.”
    “Okay,” Kate said. She didn’t need the office right away anyway. She needed the files and he said he had them. She took a
     stack of papers off the seat of the one chair in the center of the room and sat down, stretching her legs out in front of
     her in the long line that had once made Wolf Blitzer say to her, at a party, that if they ever made a movie about her life,
     they’d have to get Sigourney Weaver to play her. She was still wearing her coat. She hated wearing coats indoors. She stood
     up again and took it off.
    “Okay,” she said, sitting down for the second time. “So tell me. Is our client in jail?”
    “No,” Mr. George said. “We managed to get him out on bail. He isn’t really a flight risk, not in the normal sense of the term.
     The trouble with Sherman is that he wanders. He’s not very all there, if that makes sense.”
    “Drug addict?”
    “Alcoholic, mostly,” Mr. George said. “Although, if you ask me, it’s mostly a matter of opportunity. Sherman ingests whatever’s
     around to ingest. Drugs are more expensive than wine, so wine is what he usually has. One of the things we want to do is get
     him to a doctor and have him checked out, but he’s resisting. He says he doesn’t see any point in getting bad news he can’t
     do anything about.”
    “That’s sensible.”
    “It is, really. Sherman can be very sensible, sometimes. Most times,though, he’s not. He does seem to understand that he’s got court dates he has to make.”
    “Where does he live?”
    “We’ve got him put up at an SRO about five blocks from here, but he’s practically never there. He forgets, or maybe he just
     doesn’t want to. Usually, we find him at Holy Innocents over on Farraday Street.”
    “That’s a church?”
    “It’s a Benedictine convent. Sorry, monastery. They call them monasteries, even though it’s a place for nuns.”
    “Benedictine monasteries are usually enclosed,” Kate said. “This one isn’t.”
    “Do you mean cloistered?” Mr. George asked. “No, this one is cloistered. You can’t see most of the nuns to talk to, not even
     the Mother Superior, or whatever she is.”
    “Abbess.”
    “Yes, okay. Abbess. You can’t see her except behind bars, sort of. You go into this room and there’s a wall with bars, but
     not just up and down, also across, like an open waffle—”
    “—It’s called a grille.”
    “That’s it. Margaret Mary told me what the word was, but I forgot.”
    “Who’s Margaret Mary?”
    “A friend of mine. She’s a nun in training. A novice, I think.”
    “At Holy Innocents on Farraday Street?”
    “No,” Mr. George said. “At the Sisters of Divine Grace in upstate New York. It’s not a cloistered order. Anyway, that’s the
     only way you can talk to the nuns, except for two or three of them, who come out. Extern sisters, they’re called. That’s one
     I remember. They have a big barn on their property, heated, and they open it for homeless people when the weather gets cold.
     That’s the Cardinal Archbishop of Philadelphia. His idea, I mean. There used to be a church in the city that did that, and
     he got the idea that all Catholic facilities should do that, so they do. And Sherman likes it there. It’s on the edge of the
     city; it doesn’t hardly look part of the city, really. And they don’t get picky about the state he’s in, or search him for
     drugs or alcohol.”
    “The place must be a zoo.”
    “Apparently not. I’ve been out there a couple of times. It’s very calm. And clean, which I think may be part of the point.
     Anyway, Sherman likes it there better than he likes the SRO, so that’s where we look for him when we want to bring him in
     to court