Exposure (6 page)

S
HORTLY BEFORE ELEVEN
o’clock, the phone on Nestor Brabanta’s bedside table rings. He has already taken his sleeping tablets, but because calls that come through to his private number at this time of night are unusual, he answers it.

The voice in his ear is coarse and slightly muffled; he thinks he detects a northern accent. At first he assumes it is a long-distance call on a poor connection.

VOICE:
Are your doors locked?

BRABANTA:
I beg your pardon?

VOICE:
You are being robbed, Senator.

BRABANTA:
Who is this?

VOICE:
Someone who keeps a closer eye on your belongings than you do, Senator. As I say, you are being robbed as we speak. Your heart is being broken, and you do not know it.

BRABANTA:
Who the hell is this? How did you get this number? What are you talking about?

VOICE:
One of your horses has been stolen, Senator. Your most valuable horse. Your beautiful golden filly. And right now she is with a big black brute of a stallion.

BRABANTA:
You are a lunatic. I’m hanging up now.

VOICE:
Do you know where your daughter is, Señor Brabanta?

[
BRABANTA
sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed. His drug-induced sleepiness is dispelled by something that feels like a shower of ice. He has sometimes imagined, dreaded, a call like this. The kidnap call.
]

BRABANTA:
Who is this? What do you want?

The line has gone dead.

Brabanta presses the last-call redial buttons, but, as he expected, a robotic voice tells him that the caller withheld his number. He dials Desmerelda’s apartment and gets the answering machine, as usual. He waits, dry-mouthed and impatient, for the beep.

“Darling? Are you there? Pick up the phone. Desmerelda, please pick up the phone. Okay, listen, darling — call me back the instant you hear this. I’m going to try your cell.”

He cannot remember the number and curses himself. He goes to where his dressing gown is draped over a chair and finds his own phone in the pocket. He scrolls down the list of names and when
DES
appears on the display, stabs
CALL
.

“Hi. I can’t take your call at the moment, but —”

Brabanta swears and cuts her message off. Five seconds later, he tries again and waits.

“Desmerelda. It’s Papa. Call me back now. Right now. I don’t care what time it is. This is serious.”

He drops the phone onto the bed and clasps his hands together because they are shaking. It occurs to him that he is one of the best-connected men in the city, and he can’t think whom he can talk to. After a while he takes up the phone again and calls Desmerelda’s so-called personal assistant. He listens to the ringtone for what seems an eternity, and then she answers.

“Hello?”

“Ramona, this is Nestor Brabanta.”

“Señor. Hello. Just a second, I . . .”

There is a little patch of silence; she has put her hand over the mouthpiece. Then he hears her clear her throat.

“Señor, how can I —”

“Ramona, do you know where my daughter is?”

“Um . . . no, I’m afraid I don’t.”

“Why not? Dammit, girl, aren’t you supposed to know? Isn’t that what you’re paid for?”

“Well, I . . . Señor, is there a problem?”

Brabanta’s bedside phone rings.

He says to Ramona, “I’ll call you back.”

BRABANTA:
Desmerelda?

VOICE:
I wouldn’t bother waiting up if I were you, Senator. I don’t think she’ll be calling you back tonight. I imagine that Daddy is the last thing on her mind right now.

BRABANTA:
Listen, whoever you are. If you do anything . . . if any harm comes to my daughter, I’ll find you and kill you. I promise you that. [
A pause. He hears what might be wind or surf, or perhaps just electronic slush.
] How much do you want?

VOICE:
Oh, no. No, no, Senator. Money can’t get back what you’ve lost. You think you can put a price on your reputation? Your honor? Your family name?

BRABANTA:
What the hell are you talking about? Listen, if this is a hoax or —

VOICE:
I just want to put you in the picture.

BRABANTA:
What picture?

VOICE:
King Kong.

BRABANTA:
What?

VOICE:
King Kong.
The movie. You’ve seen it? Of course you have. And I know the bit you remember best. It’s where that dirty great gorilla picks up the half-naked blonde in his paw. Right?

BRABANTA:
What is this crap? Tell me where my daughter is, damn you!

VOICE:
I just did. But you’re not listening. I’m wasting my time. Good night, Senator.

BRABANTA:
Wait! Okay. Please. I’m listening.

VOICE:
That’s better. Where was I? Oh, yes. The pale vulnerable girl in that big black fist. What did you think, Senator, when you saw that? What do men like you and I think when we see that?

BRABANTA:
I don’t know.

VOICE:
Yes, you do. We imagine our wives in that situation. Or our daughters. Wriggling and squealing. Hmm? Don’t we?

BRABANTA
[
hoarsely
]: Who are you?

VOICE:
Mind you, that King Kong is a real superstar. I read somewhere that he cost a cool fifty million. And right now your daughter must be thinking he was worth every cent. Probably thinks it’s the best present her daddy ever bought her.
[
Click and hum.
]

Brabanta sits holding the phone. After a while it starts to feel slimy, probably because his hand is sweaty. He drops it. Something like a knuckly claw is closing around his heart, and for a terrible moment he loses control of his breathing. He tells himself that there is no damn way he’s going to have a coronary until this thing is sorted out, so he puts on his dressing gown and makes his way downstairs to his study, clutching the banister all the way. He goes to his desk and looks up Diego Mendosa’s number. He calls it, waits for the answering message to end, and says, “This is Nestor. Senator Brabanta. I need to know where Otello is. Call me.”

Diego is standing in the deep shadow of the palms that mark the boundary of the hotel’s private beach. The trees are calmer now; their thick leaves rub together as quietly as fingers. He waits for his phone to bleep and then checks the number that has just tried to call him. Smiling, he picks up his shoes and walks back along the sand, just out of reach of the luminous, turbulent surf.

Desmerelda gets up to use the bathroom. Returning, she realizes that the storm has passed. The curtains move in time with the sea’s slow breathing. She goes to the window. All is darkness apart from a tattered net of stars and the dim lacework where the waves break onto the beach. She catches a brief scent of something rank — seaweed, perhaps — and turns away.

Otello is sleeping, facedown, on the bed. She feels that same little stoppage of breath that took hold of her the first time she saw him.
Black
is a useless word for him. Even in this scarcely lit room, his skin gathers light and transforms it. His cheekbone is shaped by a faint line of indigo. The lamplight on the muscles of his back is both gold and green. The paleness of the upturned palm of his left hand is like a mistake; otherwise his beauty is simply ridiculous. It makes her shudder slightly, and she wraps her arms around herself.

She is used to getting what she wants, but this is different. She is not in control of this.

Fear is part — a large part — of the thrill of it. As if she has stepped through a door to find the sky at a new angle and the colors of familiar things different. As if she no longer knows the name of anything. For the first time in her life she wishes she weren’t famous. But she is. They are. Privacy, let alone secrecy, will not be an option. So.

She picks up the sheet from the floor and drapes it around herself like a cape, then kneels on the bed. The movement brings Otello up through the surface of his sleep. He rolls onto his back and opens his eyes, and as he does so, Desmerelda leans down to him, lifting then releasing the sheet so that it billows, then falls, enclosing them completely. Her face hovers just above his; her eyes have tiny flickers of light in their depths.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey, you.”

He runs his hand up the outside of her arm.

“Listen,” she says. “There’s something I want you to do.”

“Mmm. And what might that be, Señorita Brabanta?”

“I want you to marry me,” she says.

U
MBERTO DA
V
ENECIA
(popularly known as the Duke) is very glad that the private committee room is well soundproofed, because Nestor Brabanta shows no sign of calming down. He won’t sit down, either; he comes back to the table only to bang his fist on it. As chairman of the Rialto board of directors, the Duke has presided over some pretty fiery meetings; he deserves his reputation for soothing diplomacy. But he is beginning to think that the only thing he can do is call the city zoo and get them to send someone over with a tranquilizer gun and the kind of dart that floors a rhino. The other two men present, Ariel Goldmann and Pedro dos Passos, sit staring at their clasped hands like seasick ferry passengers. The mild-mannered Goldmann, apparently appalled by Brabanta’s language, has a face like vanilla pudding. Even so, it is he who tries to interrupt.

“Nestor. Nestor,
please.
Drugs? Witchcraft? This is craziness.”

“You think so? What, you think it’s a
myth,
that stuff? Listen, I’ve been up North. I’ve
seen
what those damned Africans are into. I’ve seen normal people turned into animals, Ariel. So don’t shake your head like that! Not unless you’ve got a better explanation.”

“Look, Otello is a black man from the North, yes, but he’s not, you know, he’s not into that. He’s, well, charming and —”

The Duke thinks,
Oh, God, Ariel.

And sure enough Brabanta flares like oil lobbed onto a fire.

“Ah!
Charming.
You want to think about that word, Ariel? You want to ask yourself exactly what kind of
charms
persuade a girl who has everything,
everything,
to marry this, this
nigger,
two weeks after meeting him? You ever wonder why black magic is called
black
magic?”

Pedro dos Passos coughs lightly. “Actually —” he begins, but gets no further because Brabanta comes to the table and puts both hands on it and leans across it; his eyes are hot and moist, and his voice is congested. The Duke wonders if the man might be on the verge of a seizure.

“My daughter is a
star.
That’s not sentimentality; it’s a
fact.
She’s worth millions in her own right. You all know that. And she’s my only child. So she has men hitting on her all the time, okay? Nice men. White men. Rich men. Men from the best families. Maybe she sleeps with some of them — I don’t know. I don’t ask. But marriage is an issue we talk about, me and her. Because I understand the pressure she’s under. And you know what she always says? She says she doesn’t believe in marriage. Which, yes, has something to do with me and her mother. I accept that. I do accept that. Then all of a sudden she’s married to a black she hardly even
knows
? And you think this is
natural
? You think something as, as . . .
gross
as that can be explained in normal terms?”

At last he sinks into a chair. He lowers his head onto his hand and surreptitiously wipes an eye with a finger. The Duke has never before seen a senator shed a tear, so he waits a couple of seconds.

“Nestor, you called this meeting. So I assume there is something you want us to do.”

Without looking up, Brabanta says, “For a start, I want this so-called marriage annulled.”

The Duke, who is, among other things, Brabanta’s legal adviser, sighs. “As you asked me to, I’ve looked into that. I’m afraid that, despite its hastiness, the, er, ceremony was perfectly legitimate. Unless, of course, Desmerelda was acting under duress. Or indeed drugged or brainwashed or some such thing.”

“She was! She
must
have been!”

“Unfortunately there is no proof of that. Of course, if
she
were to testify that she was . . . But that seems extremely unlikely.”

Brabanta thrusts his fists forward and sits up straight. “In that case, I want us to sell the black son of a bitch.”

Goldmann and dos Passos react as though both their heads have been tugged by the same length of string. Goldmann opens his mouth, but the Duke lifts a hand to silence him.

“Nestor, my old friend, you know you cannot ask for that. Imagine —”

“No,
you
imagine. Imagine what it would be like if you had to watch that bastard play for your club, knowing that after the game he was going to go home and clamber into bed with
your
daughter. Eh? Could you do that? Could you bear that?”

The Duke, whose two daughters are plump, plain, and inoffensively married, pretends to give Brabanta’s question serious consideration. “I understand your pain, Nestor. Your outrage. We all do.”

Dos Passos and Goldmann nod, solemnly and synchronized.

“But let’s be realistic. We could never persuade the board to sell Otello. Apart from anything else, there would be huge legal and financial problems. And think of the fallout. Think of the effect upon the club. Think about the ridicule in the media. Rialto is bigger than any one of us. It is bigger than
all
of us. Those are not my words. You yourself said that, three months ago, in this very room.”

Brabanta turns his head toward the Duke. He has the look of a fatally wounded bull preparing for a last lunge at the matador.

“Then I’ll resign from the board. I’ll dump my shares on the market.”

The Duke sits back in his chair. He takes his spectacles off and lays them on the table. He gazes at them for a moment or two. Eventually he says, “Yes, you could do that. To spread the pain around. But in the end, who would be hurt the most? I can tell you who would
not
be hurt, and that’s Otello. He’s got a contract tighter than a squid’s rectum. You yourself made sure of that.”

Half an hour later, Ariel Goldmann and Nestor Brabanta descend together in the elevator.

Goldmann feels he should put his arm around the other man’s shoulders but somehow cannot bring himself to do so.

“Nestor, please. Try to allow this rage, this bitterness, to pass. Give it some time. The Duke is right — it’s hurting you more than anyone else. And, you know, the victim who smiles takes something back from the thief.”

“Christ, Ariel.” Brabanta spits the words. “I can’t stand it when you come on like a goddamn hippie rabbi.”

Goldmann flinches visibly.

The elevator doors open onto the VIP parking garage, underground. Brabanta doesn’t get out. Instead, he presses his hand on the button that holds the doors apart. Leans on it, looking sick. “Sorry, Ariel. I shouldn’t have . . .”

Goldmann at last manages to lay his hand on his colleague’s arm. “It’s okay. Forget it.”

Brabanta lifts his head. “Tell me this, though,” he says.“How would you feel if one day
your
little princess presented you with a piccaninny as your first grandchild?”