Harlem Redux (26 page)

 
So this was Gem’s version of events. David repressed a grim smile. It did not surprise him that Gem would have reversed the roles; it did surprise him that Nella, who seemed so astute, would have believed her. But then, why not? Gem was an attractive woman. It was easy to believe that all men found her appealing. He himself was having a hard time believing that Sweet had continued to resist Gem’s charms.

“What do you know about Jameson Sweet?” he asked.

“Ah,
him
,” she said. She cut her eyes over at David. “You’re thinking of taking him on?”

He made a non-committal movement.

“Well, good luck. Jameson Sweet is an impressive character. Extremely arrogant, but he’s earned the right to be. His given name is actually Jimmy. He elevated himself to Jameson later on. An only child, his family was dirt-poor. They’re from Virginia. His parents never finished school. Had no education to speak of. His father worked on the railroad, was away all the time. The mother took in wash. They were very proud people, clean, stable. They scrimped and saved to send him to school. Sweet himself has worked like a dog since he was a child. He’s a dedicated civil rights attorney, determined to make a difference. By all accounts he has a brilliant future. He’s sharp, cutthroat, and as tough as nails.”

“Sounds good.”

Nella raised an eyebrow … and smiled. “Don’t worry. He isn’t perfect, dear. He doesn’t hold a candle to you—not where it counts.” She frisked him with her eyes again and sighed a sigh that came from her very core. David ignored it.

“What’s his Achilles heel?”

“Come now, what do you think?”

“Money.”

She nodded to compliment him. “Sweet’s drawn to the lush life, but he’s acutely aware of the handicap of his color. He knew he could have never earned it on his own. Privately, when it comes to women, Sweet has an appetite for dark chocolate. But he never let that stop him. He went through a succession of wealthy female friends, sometimes discreetly crossing the color line ... before he found Lilian.”

She watched him as she said this, but he knew his face expressed nothing. Lawyers learn fast to conceal their reactions. Inwardly, of course, his emotions were in flux. She was confirming what he’d supposed. That relieved him; it also worried him. Having his suspicions about Sweet’s character only increased his sense of urgency. He had to find proof of Sweet’s guilt and find it quickly.

Then, there was the matter of Nella herself. Her ability to ferret out information both impressed and appalled him. After grinding out her last cigarette, she had immediately taken out another. He held her lighter for her.

 
“So what happened after Gem’s breakup with Snyder?”

She leaned back and stretched out. “Gem came to me, desperate for a place to hunker down until the uproar blew over. She felt that everyone was talking about her. I assured her it really wasn’t quite that bad, but Gem is certain the world revolves around her. She wanted to use our house in Amagansett. It’s quiet there, very peaceful and beautiful. The perfect setting for a lovely woman who wants to withdraw from the world.”

She exhaled and streams of smoke flowed out of her narrow nostrils. Then she rounded her cherry-bud lips and blew. A smoke ring emerged and floated upward. “That was the last time I saw her. I’m not even sure she stayed at the house a full two weeks. After about eight days, I received a note, saying she’d decided to catch a boat back to Paris. By the time the note arrived, she was gone. Left without even dropping by to see me.” Nella actually sounded injured.

“Who gave her the money to leave?”

“I haven’t a clue. Maybe she sold some of that marvelous jewelry Adrian gave her.”

Nella sat up and ground the smoking cigarette into an ashtray. Standing up, she walked over to her window. David joined her. She had a captivating view of Central Park and lower Manhattan. Together, they looked down on Fifth Avenue. A mixture of cars and carriages snaked down the avenue. It was an impressive vista, but he didn’t really see it. His thoughts were of Gem and Paris. The City of Light seemed unreal and unimaginably distant. What was she doing over there, so far away?

“Perhaps it was neither Jameson nor Adrian that caused her to leave,” Nella said. “Gem was born with wings on her feet. Not even she knows what she’s searching for. But she
is
determined to have a good time finding it.”

Yes, that sounded like Gem. She had never had time to stop in any one place for too long. She’d been running, running, for years. But then, David caught himself, so had he.

“I haven’t heard much from Gem since she went away,” Nella said. “I used to get the occasional postcard, but they stopped a while ago. They always said essentially the same thing: that she’s going to hell in a basket, and loving every minute of it.”

She turned to him and her eyes searched his. “You come here and dredge up memories …Why, you’ve almost managed to make me sad.”

She moved closer to him. Her perfume, a rich heavy musk, filled his nostrils. Then her fingertips were on his crotch, stroking the bulge in his pants. She massaged him and he felt the warmth of her hand even through the material. He looked down at her working hand; then back up at her. There was no mistaking the question in her eyes. And no mistaking the answer in his.

“What’s the matter, Nella? Nikki been away too long?”

“We made a deal. Remember?”

He took her hand by the wrist and moved it away. She yielded with good humor, but raised a warning finger. “I’ll let you slide—this time. But the next time you want answers, be prepared to pay on delivery. And the bill’s still open for what I’ve told you so far.” She raised an eyebrow. “With interest.”

“Good-bye, Nella,” he said, and left.

Back on the street, he crossed Fifth Avenue and started walking uptown, his shoulders hunched against the cold. It was early evening and the air was frosty, yet many people were out. Black nurses wheeled along their young white charges, chauffeurs walked pampered poodles. David felt so detached from it all, as though he were watching a news reel in which he had no part. Every now and then he had the odd sensation that something had cracked inside him. He could feel pain in his bones. In his fingertips. He wondered how Rachel could accept Lilian’s suicide so easily and be so ready to move on. She did not seem concerned with the why of it. Perhaps it was because she was a nurse: She had learned to deal with death on a daily basis. He wished bitterly that he could be like her.

And he thought of Gem, of her callous indifference to the news of her sister’s death. She was no doubt too busy living the busy, madcap life of an ex-pat, no doubt with the same no good friends who had abandoned her.

You’d think she would’ve learned.

All those years of struggle abroad––she’d run back to it! When he thought of what she’d been through!

She had tried to settle down with the unlikely figure of a Portuguese nobleman, but fate had been against her. Stripped of her status and wealth, Gem had returned to New York. She had hoped to squeeze money out of Lilian, but had run into the obstacle of a husband. She had tried to seduce him, but that had failed, too.

Then she had shifted in an unexpected direction. After having tried to destroy Lilian’s marriage, Gem had ostensibly tried to shore it up: She had helped Lilian improve her appearance and found herself another man.

Why the about-face? Had she really changed?

Gem was apparently penniless when she arrived, but she had found the money to leave. How? From where? Or who?

Nella couldn’t say.

Nella …

Her story was a bit contradictory, wasn’t it? For example, she confirmed that Gem left soon after her breakup with Adrian Snyder. At the same time, Nella claimed that Gem’s departure was unrelated to her failed affair. She was convinced that Gem loved someone else.

A Mr. X.

Who could that be? To his way of thinking, if Gem wasn’t in love with Snyder, then it must have been Sweet. But
Nella was adamant that Gem hated Sweet. She believed Gem’s version of what had happened in the parlor that day. David, however,
 
was certain that Nella was wrong. Gem had reversed the roles. Nella had been astute enough to sense that Gem loved someone, but not enough to see through Gem’s ability to rewrite history.

David’s forehead creased with thought.

 
Sweet was undeniably the type of man Gem was drawn to. And he had rejected her. That would have only served to boost her desire for him.

The creases deepened.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned: a particularly apt saying when applied to Gem. Yet she had apparently swallowed Sweet’s rejection. She had done nothing more than publicly humiliate Lilian and rewrite the tale to favor herself. Given Gem’s ruthless nature, David would have expected her to mount an all-out campaign to bring Sweet either to her bed or to his knees—or both. That she had done so much less—in fact, done nothing—puzzled him.

Gem had been accepting when he would have expected her to fight. She had swallowed rejection by two men, then simply fled town. Unthinkable.

And Lilian, dear Lilian, had acted totally out of character, too. She had rejected the intellectuals and artists whose respect she had worked so hard to attain, then befriended a woman she would have normally disdained. She had gone out smoking and drinking, then tried to fire Annie, a servant she loved. She had told Rachel she was pregnant, but instead of being happy, she had cried. Then she had repressed the memory—or pretended to—when she saw Rachel at the church picnic. But whether she had truly forgotten her claim or pretended to, she was not pregnant last July. So she had either lost the baby or, despite her claim of the doctor’s confirmation, never been pregnant to begin with.

Annie, Rachel, and Nella: Speaking to them had produced more questions than answers. David ran his fingers through his hair distractedly. He was so deep in thought that he barely noticed when a black Lincoln pulled up alongside him. He was oblivious to the hidden hands that drew aside a dark curtain inside the car window and slightly rolled down the window itself. When he finally did look down, it was into the muzzle of a gun.

15.
 
An Outsider Among Outsiders

“Get in.”

David felt a rush of adrenalin that sent his pulse racing. He sensed the blood drain from his brain and with it, his ability to think. His first impulse was to run, but his legs were as immobile as lead. His eyes darted over the street in an automatic search for help. There were plenty of people, but—

“If you make a move, I’ll blow you away.”

The window had been rolled down enough for him to see the speaker, or at least to see his eyes. That wasn’t much, but it was enough to convince him that the man meant business.

He got in.

They blindfolded him and took him on a long, swerving drive. If the purpose of the whole exercise was to disorient him, it succeeded. Blind instinct told him that in forty minutes of driving, they hadn’t traveled forty minutes’ worth of distance, but he couldn’t be sure. In fact, he decided he didn’t want to know. If his safety depended on a certain degree of ignorance, he was willing to play along.

Once at his destination, he was led to a room that smelled of sandalwood. Perfumed hands removed the blindfold. The hands belonged to a lovely woman who smiled at him, then vanished. His eyes went to his host, who sat behind a large, handsome desk, sipping bootlegged brandy and smoking a cigar.

“There was no need to kidnap me,” David said.

“Sorry. Sometimes the boys get a little eager.”

“Why did you want to see me?”

Snyder shrugged eloquently. “Curiosity, partly. Gem would never say much about her family. Naturally, that kindled my interest.” He gestured toward an armchair. “Sit down.”