Blood Relations (32 page)

He grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet. “You’ll go to New York and stay with your fairy friend, won’t you? But you won’t live with me. I’m only good for what you can get out of me.”

The photographs had slipped out of her hands. She cried out, dropping to the floor, touching them as if they’d broken. “Shut up, will you? Just leave me alone.”

He went over to the coffee table and picked up the photographs she had put there. “I should have a few of these for my place. I’ve paid for them already, haven’t IT’ She rushed toward him, and he held them over his head.

“Come on, Ms. Dom. Fair’s fair. I bet I’ve paid the equivalent of a thousand bucks apiece for these, if you count rent, equipment, and every other Goddamned expenditure I’ve made on your behalf.” He looked at the photo of the black woman playing in the garden hose.

“This is what you call fine-art photography? You’re dreaming.” Caitlin reached for them and he swiveled away. “Now this one of Matthew ought to go over big with the gay crowd on South Beach.” He sent it spinning to the floor.

“Stop it!”

He glanced at a photo of Matthew lying on rumpled sheets, light coming over one shoulder. “What am I seeing? This is your apartment.”

She pulled the picture away. “You’re crazy. I took this at a studio.”

“Uh-uh. No. These are your sheets. I ought to know your sheets. What was Matthew Hagen doing in your bed?”

“I took the sheets to the studio!” She reached for the photograph. “Give me that.”

He pulled it away. “What a terrible liar you are, baby. I know how the light comes in your room. Just like that in the morning. Right? Right? Would you look at the sleepy smile on this kid. I bet you wore him out.”

Her eyes glittered with tears. “Please, Frank. Give me the damned photo.”

Frank was struck by the hilarity of it. “You told me Sullivan was doing him. Did you have a threesome?”

“Oh, God. No.” She bent over as if he’d hit her in the stomach.

“How was it? He was a kid. Let’s see … Fifteen years younger than you. Those young guys can go all night, can’t they? Oh, that’s naughty. Does Sam know? What did you do, Ms. Dorn? Get Matthew into bed because you couldn’t have his daddy?”

Her mouth was open, and finally the words came out. “I despise you. I’ve never really seen that till right now.

What have I been doing? Staying with you, all these years, like I was your fucking whore!”

He ripped the photograph down the middle.

Her fist came toward him faster than he could react.

Stunned for a moment, Frank touched his inner lip with his tongue, tasting salt and heat. She ran, but he grabbed her arm. Then he slapped her. He kept slapping her while she yelled at him. Her hands were up and her hair was flying around her face. She was screaming profanities.

He screamed back. “I know about you and Sam Hagen.

You didn’t think I knew, did you? Cunt.” He shook her.

“Lying bitch. You fucked him. Didn’t you? Answer me!”

“Yes! Yes, I did and I loved it! You’re nothing next to him! He should have left your sorry ass in Vietnam!”

They spun to the floor, crashing into the end table. A lamp went over. She groped for it, raised it above his head. He deflected the lamp, then pushed her to the carpet, hit her again.

Caitlin’s nose was bleeding, a smear of red on her cheek. Frank dragged her across the living room, opened the door, and shoved her through it. He came back with her purse and an armful of clothes. She was on her knees in the hallway, crying. He slammed the door and locked it.

Finally, silence.

Frank sat on the sofa and wept.

clothes, Ali rummaged through a box for a top to wear.

In the bedroom where her roommate let her keep her She had a job today, handing out announcements on Ocean Drive for a party at one of the clubs.

Big smile. Hi! Party at the Gear Box on Thursday. It’s gonna befiun! And the manager had told her not to give them out to obvious tourists or anybody younger than twenty-one; it was a waste of paper.

. Ali was trying to ignore her mother, who was in the living room folding Ali’s sheet and blanket from the convertible sofa, acting motherly.

Her mother’s voice came through the half-open door.

“He talked to me for the longest time. He was so nice, not like a lawyer at all. I know y’all would take to each other.”

She worked in a bank. She’d taken the morning off to drive all the way to South Beach. Ali had noticed her mother’s breath smelled like mints, meaning she’d probably had a drink already. “Honey? Can you hear me in there?”

“I sure can.”

“Well?”

“I don’t want to sue them right now. Mr. Hagen says wait till the trial is over.”

“Wait? Why on earth would he say that, sugar?”

Shugah. Peggy Duncan hadn’t lived in Charleston for twenty years, but every time she got that sticky South Carolina drawl in her voice, Ali knew she wanted something.

Ali said, “If I sue them now, their defense attorneys would bring it up at the trial. I’d look mercenary. That’s what Mr. Hagen says.”

“Oh, Mr. Hagen. All he cares about is winnin’ another case. He doesn’t care about you. What if he loses? Then how are you gonna convince a civil court jury to pay you?

That’s what Mr. Barnett told me. Bring that girl in here right now. Let’s get a settlement out of those boys while we still can.”

Pushing aside the nighties hooked on the back of her roommate’s door, Ali studied herself in the mirror. She had put on a pink top that showed her midriff. Nice with the white shorts, but her shoulders would freckle. She pulled it off, put on a white T-shirt, and tied that in a knot under her bust. Then changed into a pair of green shorts.

Then wiggled into her knee pads.

Her mother was still talking.

“. - - three or four hundred thousand dollars. A million.

Those men have money. Klaus Ruffini has more money than God. Excuse me for saying this, sugar, but if you don’t watch out, they’re gonna have their way with you again, right in the courtroom.”

Ali tried on hats and finally went with the tropical print billed cap, good with red hair. She pulled her ponytail out the back of it.

“Are you gonna be poor the rest of your life? Live like this?”

:‘No. I’m going to be a famous model.”

‘Oh, baby.”

As if her mother had never heard anything so pitiful.

Ali dumped her house key, wallet, lip gloss, and sunscreen into a fanny pack and clipped it around her waist.

Before leaving, she would take a bottle of water out of the fridge, too, so she wouldn’t have to spend money when she got thirsty. But she knew a couple of the waiters at the Booking Table CaM. They would probably slip her a soda. She took her in-line skates and a pair of socks into the living room to put them on.

Now her mother was in the kitchen wiping off the stove with a dishcloth. She wore her uniform for the bank, a blue skirt and a white blouse with a bow, but it made her look too heavy. Her hair was dyed red, the same shade as Ali’s. She hung the dishcloth over the spigot on the sink.

“Honey, you’re such a pretty girl. You’re as pretty as the girls in the magazines. But the Ruffinis know everybody. What work are you gonna get round here now?”

“I have a booking next week.” Ali dusted off the bottoms of her feet and put on her socks. “A back-to-school catalog for Macy’s, so I guess my career has some life in it after all.”

“Oh, baby. A catalog? And it’s June. The season is over. What are you gonna do this summer?” Summah.

Ali shrugged. “I don’t know. Hand out party announcements?”

The front door opened, and her other roommate came in: a blond model named Helga from Frankfurt, wearing a short, flowered dress and carrying a backpack. She had a tattoo around one ankle. Ali told her she had some mail.

“Hi. I’m Ali’s mother, Peggy Duncan.” She was smiling so big her gums showed. “My goodness, you’re tall.”

Helga looked at her. She glanced at Ali and then went into her own room, shuffling through some letters.

Ali glared at her mother as she finished putting on her skates. They were shiny black with hot pink closures like ski boots. “I have to go.” She skated to the refrigerator for her bottle of water, zipped it into her bag, then glided back to pick up the party announcements-five hundred of them about the size of postcards, printed on bright yellow paper.

Her mother put on her jacket and smoothed it over her hips. “Tell me something’. How much do you get paid for this?” She put her purse strap over her shoulder.

“Ten dollars an hour.” They went into the hall and Ali locked the door.

“Ten dollars. I swear, I don’t understand you one bit.”

Ali held on to the balustrade one-handed, carefully picking her way down the steps, which were surfaced in scraps of tile, pink and turquoise and white.

Her mother was right behind her. “This is what I was thinking. You could write a book. Look at the people that made money off of 0. J. Simpson. Get a ghostwriter.

Everybody does it. People would love to read about Marquis Lamont. It could be a bestseller.”

“Ma, nobody cares about him.”

“Well, maybe he isn’t real famous, but if you did a book, Marquis might even help you. He’d get lots of publicity.”

At the sidewalk Ali spun around. “I am not going to write about what they did to me! I don’t even want to talk about it!”

“You don’t have to scream at me.” She sounded hurt.

When Ali started off on her skates, her mother trotted behind in her pumps, holding her purse against her side so it wouldn’t bounce. “Now what am I supposed to tell Mr. Barnett? He says you have a claim for damages. You ought to make them pay. What good will it do if they just end up in jail? You can use the money to do something for yourself. You could go to college.”

Ali curved around a man walking his dog. “Ma, please.

Stop following me.”

“I spent two hours of my time consulting with an attorney about you. Trying to help. I drove all the way down here-”

“I don’t care!” Ali skated faster. “Leave me alone!”

At the corner she looked back and saw her mother leaning against a light pole, her chest rising and falling. Then her mother cupped her hands at her mouth. “You’d better think about it, Miss Priss! Nobody’s gonna do a thing for you but yourself in this world!”

Ali waited for a car to pass, then skated off the curb and across the intersection.

On the terrace of the News CaM, his usual place for lunch, George Fonseca drank a beer and watched Ali Duncan handing out pieces of yellow paper to people on the sidewalk. He knew what it was for, a party at the Gear Box, which he had been hired to plan. But Ali wouldn’t know that.

She hadn’t spotted him among the tourists and regulars who filled the restaurant and spilled out onto the sidewalk at closely packed umbrella tables. He sat at a small table on the terrace just behind four women with English accents. The skin on their arms and thighs looked like raw beef.

He watched Ali spin around on her skates. If he went over to talk to her, just to say hi, how’s it going?, he would be thrown in jail. At the bond hearing the prosecutor, Samuel Hagen, had looked at him as if he were garbage, then said to the judge, Would the court instruct Mr. Fonseca that any attempt to contact the victim will result in immediate revocation of his bond.

Even on the terrace, with a ceiling fan whirling overhead, George was sweating. This was only the first of June, and the temperature was already over ninety degrees. He pushed away the remains of his grilled tuna sandwich, which tasted like a piece of wet cardboard. He had no appetite. Alberto had called him last night, wanting to know if he was going to get paid back for putting up the bond, or what. Had Ruffini come through? Where was the ten grand? George had told him not to worry; he’d have it next week.

Ten grand plus another thousand in interest so far.

George had considered, but only for a minute, getting out of Miami. He didn’t think he could get far enough.

When it was all over, then he would leave. Maybe go to California, start over. He had heard someone say, You go to L.A. if you want to be somebody, to New York if you are somebody, and you’re in Miami if you used to be somebody.

He leaned to one side to see around the sunburned Englishwomen. Ali Duncan was down the street fifty yards now, still handing out party announcements. And talking to another skater, a guy with a red bandanna around his head. No shirt. Dark tan, long black hair. He looked Japanese. But he was too tall to be Japanese. Ali was smiling at him. George finished his beer, remembering where he’d seen the guy: having lunch at the Seahorse Grill with Charlie Sullivan, now deceased. George wondered if Ali’s new buddy was gay.

They skated across the street, weaving between the cars, then hopped up on the wide sidewalk that curved through Lummus Park. They zipped past the swings, where little kids were being pushed by their mothers, then around some sea grape trees. They sat on the coral rock wall bordering the beach for a minute; then the guy started showing off. Somebody had left a plywood ramp, and he was skating backward off it, doing a turn in the air.

He stood about six, six-two in the skates. He wouldn’t be as strong as George, but he’d be quick. George thought he could probably take him down.

George unfolded his portable phone, pulled up the antenna, and got the number of the state attorney’s office from information.

“Let me talk to Samuel Hagen. He’s one of your prosecutors.”

He waited. Another female voice said, “Major Crimes.”

“Is this Samuel Hagen’s office? … Is he in? Let me talk to him…. Never mind my name. Tell him it’s regarding Ali Duncan’s case … Duncan … No, I’m not a reporter…. A possible witness, okay? Tell him that.”

The waiter came by and cleared the table. George ordered another beer. Then in the phone he heard a man say he was Sam Hagen, and who was this?

George cupped his hand around the mouthpiece to keep out the noise. “This is somebody interested in the Duncan matter. I have a hypothetical question for you…. It doesn’t matter who I am. Here’s the question. In a criminal case, and you’ve got more than one defendant, what if you decide you want to get one of them to testify for the state? What do you do? Offer to drop the charges?”