Suspicion of Guilt (21 page)

"Our father, who we adored," Rudy said, "married within a few months of our mother's death a woman eighteen years younger than he. And then Patrick came into our home, and Monica and I—Well, of course we resented him." Rudy's nostrils flared, and his voice shook.

He added, "We didn't treat Althea very nicely either, to be candid with you. Nor she, us. But in later years we all put our feelings aside. A
rapprochement,
as it were."

Monica leaped up, clutching at her hair. "I cannot fucking believe this is happening."

"Monny, don't." Rudy rushed the two or three steps from the door.

"It's our home!" She buried her face in his T-shirt, and he put his arms around her and rocked her back and forth. "Mama died when we were only children, then that
witch
drove Daddy to his grave, and now Patrick wants to take our
home!”

"Don't, don't, don't." He patted her hair. It sprang back up. His eyes were on Gail, accusing.

"Okay. Okay." Monica stiffly held out an arm, fingers splayed. She wiped her cheeks with the heel of her other hand. "How much does he want? She didn't leave him enough? Fine, Rudy, give him the Degas and the Krasner. Give him whatever the fuck he wants."

"I won't give him one pencil drawing. This is blackmail."

"Rudy, please! I can't stand it!"

His brows knotted, and the lines deepened in his forehead. He drew her back to him, holding her tightly. "It's okay, Monny," he whispered, stroking her hair. "This is the best night. The best."

"Hah!"

"It's going to be all right, I promise." He glared at Gail. "You have succeeded in ruining my sister's show. Happy?" "Not particularly."

'Tell us what you want. Oh, do. Shall we divide the house down the middle with a chain saw? Or shall we give Patrick a shopping cart? What would please him most?"

Brushing the dust off her skirt, Gail walked the short distance to where they stood, shoulder to shoulder, both of them staring defiantly, their hair like dark penumbras around their heads. 'I'll see what he has to say. I can't promise you anything. If there's a settlement, he'll have to approve it."

Monica gritted her teeth. "Tell the sanctimonious snake that there is no fucking way we're gonna give him our house."

A knock sounded on the door.

She yelled, "What? Who is it?"

It was the young man with the blond dreadlocks. He intruded only his head and one shoulder, his hand gripping the edge of the door. "I think you ought to come out here. Now."

"Why?"

"Trou-ble." He sang the syllables. "What's going on?" Rudy asked.

The young man squinted his eyes and smiled. "Your cousin?"

"God
damn
it to hell!" Monica leaped for the door and was gone in a swirl of red, Rudy close behind.

By the time Gail caught up, Rudy and Monica were standing as if turned to stone at the edge of a small crowd gathered along the west wall of the gallery.

The tall, thin figure of Patrick Norris was at its center. The spotlights in the ceiling bounced off his wire-frame glasses, and his extended finger pointed toward an oil painting on the wall, a square of white with faint lines of gray running through it. Not one of Monica's.

"This piece, for example. What is it? Nothing. It's empty of content and meaning. But we wouldn't dare say so, not here. We'd rather pretend to see the Emperor's New Clothes. We'd rather be among the elite—" His fingers curled into quotation marks. "—than the rabble along the parade route. Those slobs from Hialeah and Homestead and Kendall who can't begin to understand art and culture."

Gail groaned. "Oh, my God."

"Patrick, you son of a bitch!" Monica's voice shattered the momentary lull. Electronic music was still twanging from hidden speakers. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

He smiled at her. "Hi, Monica. Don't I recognize this from Aunt Althie's downstairs hall? If you're going to steal her paintings, you could be a little less obvious."

Gail felt a hand on her arm. Anthony. He said, "What's going on?"

"Help me get him out of here, will you?"

"That
is Patrick Norris?"

"Afraid so."

Rudy had shouldered his way through the crowd, which seemed to waver between collective laughter and shock, everybody waiting to see what would happen.

"Get out. Get out now, before I have you thrown out into the street." They stood nearly chest to chest, Rudy half a head shorter, his hands drawn into tight fists.

Patrick smiled, his beard twitching. "Are we getting too close to the truth?" He calmly adjusted his glasses and bent to read the card affixed to the wall beside the painting. "Three thousand dollars. Goodness. This ought to pay the rent for a while. What else did you take out of her house?"

Rudy spun him around and aimed for his face. The blow glanced off and sent Patrick's glasses flying. The next caught him in the ribs and both men stumbled into a divider, Patrick with his arms crossed over his head. People screamed. Others came running to see.

"Ay, Dios mio."
Anthony pushed through.

Patrick stumbled and sat down hard on the concrete floor. Rudy's black lace-up boot hit him in the thigh, then again. "Get out, get out, get out!" A woman giggled nervously, her hands to her mouth. Someone yelled to call the police.

Anthony shoved Rudy aside, then bent to grab one of Patrick's arms. Gail took the other, and they pulled him toward the door, his feet bicycling along the concrete.

Around the corner from the gallery was a row of small shops with a brick planter in front. They sat on the edge of it, Gail using Anthony's handkerchief to dab at Patrick's cheekbone where the glasses had cut it. In the dim light the blood appeared dark purple. Anthony paced back and forth brushing dust off the front of his jacket.

"I went," Patrick was saying, "because I suspected this. I thought they might be looting the place already."

"You should have told me," Gail said. "I'd have handled it."

"How?" he challenged. "A restraining order? A piece of paper?"

"No, Patrick, we'd have had them assassinated. Would you please try to remember you have an attorney? Do not do anything on your own. You're in more danger than you realize."

He squinted at her. His glasses were still in the gallery, and his face seemed empty without them. "What are you talking about?"

"The police, for one thing. I talked with a detective in the Beach Police. They believe that Althea was murdered and that you did it."

Patrick's laugh came out as a groan. "I figured that much." He glanced over at Anthony, who had reached the end of the planter, hands on his hips, and was turning back again.

Gail said, "Anthony Quintana's on our side. Besides being my friend, he's a criminal attorney. You may need him."

Anthony gave her a warning look. He would choose his own clients.

"What are the cops going on?" Patrick asked. "If they have any so-called proof, they fabricated it."

"He wouldn't tell me."

"Christ. Somebody put them up to this."

Gail heard Anthony snort, then start pacing again. She asked, "Do you know Howard Odell?"

Patrick shook his head. "No. Who's he?"

"He manages one of the charities in the will, the Easton Charitable Trust. I ran into him tonight by accident. God, what a smarmy bastard. Anyway, he threatened to kill us in the press unless you settle the case."

"Screw that."

Gail raised a hand to quiet him. "Odell says you were arrested for possession of drugs. True?"

"Yes."

She waited. "Well?"

"Heroin and narcotics implements."

"Patrick!"

"The case was dismissed. I was trying to help start a needle-exchange program in Belle Glade, and the cops didn't like it. Belle Glade, which is full of migrant workers, where the AIDS rate is higher than in San Francisco. They'd rather let everybody die from it. Get rid of your undesirables that way."

"Stop ranting, Patrick." Gail folded the handkerchief neatly and laid it on the planter. "Is there anything else you should tell me?'

"No. Nothing like that." He put his forehead on his fists. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get worked up. And I shouldn't have come here, you're right." He looked at her, took her hands in his. "So are you still with me, Gail? Looks like I need you more than ever."

In her peripheral vision, Gail could see Anthony stop walking.

She said, "Four people told me tonight that we're going to lose. Weissman's partner swears she saw Althea and the witnesses come into the office and sign the will. Howard Odell says the judge will rule against us on principle. And your stepcousins say that Althea promised them the house because it belonged to their parents."

Patrick said, "But the will was forged. I know it was. Our document examiner can prove it. That's what counts, isn't it?"

Gail glanced at Anthony, who smiled at her as if to say Patrick had grasped the essential point better than she had.

She sighed. "Yes, Patrick. I'm still with you."

He soundly kissed both her cheeks, then embraced her. "I knew you wouldn't let me down."

Anthony came to a
stop directly in front of Patrick, who let go of Gail and looked up at him. "Quintana. Are you Cuban?"

"Yes."

"Oh, God." He laughed, then shook his head when Anthony continued to stare at him coldly. "It's funny, that's all."

"Why?"

"It just is. Me, a socialist. You, a Miami Cuban. You have to see the humor in it."

"I stay out of politics."

"Life is politics. Everything is political. You have to pick a
side. You have to choose, because in the middle there's only zeros."

Gail said, "You can't make judgments. You don't know who he is or what he believes in."

Anthony's expression darkened and his accent peppered his words. "Don't explain me to him. Don't ask me to represent him. He is an idiot. Are we finished now? I would like to go home."

Patrick looked at Gail. "Is he always this proprietary?"

"Butt out, Patrick," she said.

Under his satin comforter, Anthony explained how the machine worked. The $4,500 machine made of branches and twigs and leaves, with the gears and pulleys and screws that turned so smoothly, rolling over and over each other,
arriba y abajo y arriba,
and how the shaft was carved so precisely, so delicately, that it fit perfectly into the housing,
adentro y afuera y adentro
... truly a work of art.

He moved his mouth from her lips to her ear.
"Te quiero."

"Do you?"

"Do I what?"

She took his hair, lifted his head to see him. "Love me. Do you love me?"

"I just said so."

"We only say it when we're making love. It doesn't count then."

"It counts. Why not?"

"Don't pretend not to understand."

"Yes, Gail. I love you."

"You're saying that because I asked you to."

"Okay, I'll say it tomorrow while you're having your coffee."

She slid down far enough to nuzzle her face into his chest. "Patrick is right, you know. People have to make choices."

"What a pathetic excuse for a man. He only makes speeches, and those are irrational."

"You know what I mean."

Anthony rolled over to lie flat on his back. He exhaled heavily.
"Me vuelves loco."

"Poor baby. Completely crazy." She kissed him, then propped herself on one elbow. "Talk to me," she said.

"About what?"

"I don't know." She was silent for a while. "Anything."

"Philosophy? Politics."

"Stop it, will you?" Gail sat up.

Laughing softly, he reached for her, drew her down to him, and put his arms around her. "I know. Art."

"Be serious."

"I am." His hand cupped her breast, squeezed. Then slid between her legs. "The machine we saw tonight—did you notice the flowers?"

Gail closed her eyes and nodded. "Yes. I did notice that."

"How realistic. How the petals opened?"

"Oh, yes."

Chapter Thirteen

Monday morning it rained, a steady gray drizzle that brought the first real evidence that summer had finally ended. Even by noon the temperature was only eighty degrees. Gail took a cab back from a hearing at the courthouse, shook her umbrella under the awning, then went straight up to see Eric Ramsay on the sixteenth floor.

He had a small office between the computer room and personnel, with the windows of the building next door to look at. New associates would often start in the woods like this, then move closer, if they lasted. In the deserted corridor Gail could make out a low-level hum, the nerve system of Hartwell Black, its ganglia and synapses: computers whirring around the clock, printers buzzing for accounting, billing, word processing.

Eric's door was open. He wasn't there, but the light was on, and his color monitor glowed with figures. Gail hadn't been up here in weeks, and the office seemed more cluttered than ever. Besides the usual books and files and legal magazines that crammed the shelves, there were a miniature pool table on his credenza, a basketball hoop over the teak trash can, and a stack of
Wall Street Journals
beside his chair. The chair was stainless steel and black leather, and it had cost $1,200. Gail knew that because he had mentioned it to her twice. He had also complained about the measly starting salary of $55,000 for new associates. There were no family photos in his office. A fern sat in the window, unwatered, dropping tiny curls of brown on the sill.

"Hello, boss. Looking for me?" When Gail turned in the doorway, Eric moved past her with a stack of books under one arm.

"Yes. I want to tell you about my adventures with Rudy and Monica Tillett." She set her umbrella against the wall and her briefcase beside it. "I was also wondering if you finished the motions for deposition in the Norris case."

"Almost. This afternoon."

"Come on, Eric. You said you'd have it done this morning."

Eric dropped the stack of books on his desk. "Friday at six-thirty Cy Mackey dumped this shit on me. He said he had to go out of town on an emergency and he needed it by noon today." Eric motioned toward the computer screen. "I'm about done. I was here till four-thirty this morning. You know what Cy's emergency was? He took his girlfriend to Cozumel for the weekend. Schoenfeld's law clerk just told me."