Blood Relations Page 26

  With the click of a disconnect in his ear, George wanted to throw the phone across Ocean Drive. Unethical to talk to you. Hagen had also said he was going to call George’s lawyer and let him know about this. And if anything was going to be worked out, the lawyers would do it. Fuck.

  For a while he watched a blond woman in a thong bikini skating down the middle of the street between the cars. She got to where Eighth Street plugged into Ocean Drive, turned her back toward the intersection, and stood there on her skates making her butt cheeks jump. Drivers tooted their horns and people stared. She was a little fat, George decided. Good legs, but a fat butt.

  Pulling a small address book out of his wallet, George flipped it open. He dialed Klaus Ruffini’s number. One of his lackeys answered the phone. George told her who he was. Klaus wasn’t there. George asked the number for his car or his portable. The woman asked for George’s number. Maybe she could find Klaus. Maybe Klaus would call him back.

  “Maybe you can kiss my ass,” George said. “Tell him to call me.”

  The waiter brought another beer. George talked to the women at the next table. Turned out they were from Australia. Schoolteachers. Finally the phone made a soft brrrp.

  It was Klaus Ruffini. George said, “Yeah. I’ve got a problem. No. We have a problem.” He turned his chair so the women couldn’t hear him.

  “I’m getting pressured in relation to this bond.… You know what bond. Plus my lawyer is costing a fucking fortune. The point is, I could use your assistance.… Twenty thousand.… Look. I am not going to jail, all right?… Well, fuck you very much.… Then I don’t have anything to lose by pleading guilty at the arraignment next week, do I?”

  Over the phone came a long sentence in Italian. It didn’t sound friendly. George said, “Listen to me, Klaus. My lawyer has been in contact with the state attorney.… No, not Mora. The other guy. Hagen. They might offer something on the charges. Maybe even drop them in exchange for my testimony.… Because I’m gettin’ pushed to the fuckin’ wall here.”

  Klaus told him to hold on. Judging from the noises in the background, Klaus was probably having lunch at a sidewalk café. Maybe he was in the next block. He heard people yelling at each other in Italian. A woman’s voice. Then Klaus. Then the woman again.

  Then Klaus came back. He said he would have somebody contact George in the next day or two.

  George pushed in the antenna, folded the telephone, and picked up his beer. He took several deep swallows. His heart was about to jump through his ribs.

  Through the crowd on the sidewalk, and past the cars, he could see the park. Kids skating. An old Jew in a black coat and hat, reading the paper in the shade. Some tourists walking toward the beach with swimsuits on. He watched for a while, but Ali Duncan was gone.

  chapter twenty-one

  Caitlin’s photographs remained inside Frank Tolin’s apartment after he locked his door. Caitlin called that night about them, but he hung up on her. With no alternative, she reprinted the black-and-white negatives in her studio on Lincoln Road. The color work she took to the lab, which charged extra for a rush job. To pay for it, she sold the diamond pendant Frank had given her.

  On Wednesday afternoon when she returned to her studio, her equipment was gone. The enlarger, the developing tanks, the lenses and filters, telephoto and tripod, two camera bodies, film and developing paper—everything but her boxes of negatives and prints.

  There was an envelope on the work bench with a letter typed on Frank Tolin’s law office letterhead: The photographic equipment on the premises, purchased by the undersigned, has been seized to repay monies owed by you to same.…

  Caitlin screamed aloud what Frank could do with his letter.

  That same afternoon she found an eviction notice on her apartment door giving her thirty days to vacate. She ripped the paper into pieces and threw it into the garbage. She still had her old Nikon. She would wear rags if she had to, but she wouldn’t go back to him if he begged on his knees.

  Frank had done that before. Begged her. Sobbed. Wept with his arms around her knees. Oh, God, baby, I’m sorry. Please don’t leave me. I need you, Catie. Hours of this. Phone calls. A soft knock on the door late at night. Or dozens of flowers and pages-long letters of apology. Until she gave in. And for a while, months sometimes, they were good together. Caitlin could usually tell when it was about to get bad. She would say so, and Frank would understand, and they would give each other some room. This time she had waited too long, till breaking away turned ugly.

  She had gone back to him before, when the breakup had been uglier than this. Believing him had been easier than arguing. But not this time. There would be no going back. It was over. Over. Since Sunday she had repeated that to herself like a mantra to make sure that it came true.

  Now Caitlin and the gallery owner, a woman named Paula DeMarco, stood by a table in the rear of the gallery going through mounted photographs for the show on Friday night. They arranged and rearranged, deciding what to put where. Paula was in her late fifties, overweight, and plain. Her arms, bare in a sleeveless black shirt, danced with muscle. She herself was a sculptor, married to an art dealer. In another week she would join her husband for the summer on Long Island.

  Caitlin, nibbling on a thumbnail, nodded toward a street scene. “Maybe it should go there, with the night shot of Collins. Or maybe not.”

  Paula took a long look at her. “What is this? Nerves? Come on. You’ve had shows before.”

  “These photos are so simple. I’m not sure how well they’ll go over.”

  “Simple? They’re more real. They don’t try to be clever, if that’s what you mean.” Paula allowed one further compliment. “These are okay, kid.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Jesus. What a question. Would I show them if they weren’t?” Putting on her bifocals, she made an arrangement of four shots of models halfway through their makeup. “There. How’s that?”

  The gallery, on Lincoln Road a few blocks west of Caitlin’s studio, was a narrow rectangle with big windows, polished wood floors, and stark white walls. On them had been hung three huge red abstract canvases, a collage or two, and some fabric pieces. In the middle of the room was a piece of art that resembled a stack of weathered boards. There was some sculpture, but not by Paula, who sold her pieces in New York. It was all very avant-garde and frighteningly expensive.

  Caitlin felt her beeper buzzing at her waist, and glanced at the display screen. A 547 exchange. She frowned, then remembered what that was. The state attorney’s office.

  “Use my phone,” Paula said, waving her toward the office.

  Sam Hagen answered on the second ring. He wanted to see her regarding Ali Duncan’s case as soon as possible, preferably this afternoon. Caitlin told him there was no way she could drive to Miami; she was working on her show. He said he would come to the Beach. When she told him it wasn’t convenient, he told her to name a time. She let out her breath and told him after five, at the gallery.

  She didn’t want to see Sam Hagen. Didn’t want to see anybody.

  In the tiny bathroom in the office she checked her face. The harsh light over the mirror made her look washed out and tired. The swelling in her upper lip was gone. She pushed back her hair. The purple mark on her cheekbone was hidden under makeup. A long-sleeved linen shirt covered the bruises on her arms. She closed her eyes for a minute.

  If he noticed, he would ask. And she would lie. Sam Hagen wasn’t the kind of man to let it go. He might call Frank. And then? Frank would tell Sam about her and Matthew. But Frank wouldn’t know what he was talking about. He would twist it, get it wrong. Sam wouldn’t understand any more than Frank had. It would be worse with Sam. He wouldn’t become violent. But it would be worse.

  Caitlin leaned on her hands on the sink, her hair falling around her face, thinking of the deceptions that people had to practice on each other. And Paula had just said her photographs were becoming more real. She had to laugh.

  While Paula atten
ded to customers, Caitlin finished the display. Forty-two photographs, many showing ordinary scenes of South Beach, but more of the fashion industry. Models talking, smoking, being made up and dressed and told where to sit or stand. There was one of Matthew Hagen at a marina, his dark hair at jaw level. Loose white slacks and shirt slashed, pinned, and clipped. Tourists in the background staring. He was making faces, laughing at himself, a mixture of innocence and sensuality. The final shot appearing in a German magazine had been in color. Stavros with his sultry glare pasted on, slouching at the railing of a motor yacht. Slick and impersonal, worthy of being tossed into a trash can after the magazine had been read.

  There would be one nude of Matthew in a section devoted to portraits. Caitlin had done a study in black-and-white of his back and hips. His face was turned into the pale arm that circled his head. His hair was longer, flowing in waves to his shoulders. The photo had been taken two weeks before his death. She had not reprinted the photograph of Matthew in her bedroom.

  Caitlin wrote notes, made measurements, and walked along the white wall and two movable partitions where on Friday morning she would place the pictures. Then she and Paula discussed prices and double-checked the text in the gallery guide. Finally, Caitlin placed all the photos between sheets of paper in the wide, shallow drawers of a cabinet in the office.

  When she came out it was just after five o’clock, and Sam Hagen was in the gallery looking at one of the big canvasses, ten feet by ten feet. His back was to the room. He had turned up his shirtsleeves. White shirt and dark slacks against a background of vivid red. Wide shoulders like the pediment of a building, supported by columns of muscle resting on solid hips and legs.

  He turned around as she approached. He had loosened his tie, an exquisite silk one with an abstract pattern of leaves. He had told her once he never wanted for ties: the parents of a girl whose murderer he had sent to Death Row kept him well supplied.

  For a long moment neither of them spoke. He had a way of looking at people: unblinking, intense. The first time she’d met him it had unsettled her. She had laughed and told him he had to be scary as hell in a courtroom.

  Caitlin held her tote bag in both hands, bouncing it lightly against her bare shins. “Did I keep you waiting?”

  “A few minutes. Where are your photos?”

  “They go up next week.”

  “Maybe I’ll come see your show.”

  “Should I expect you?”

  He said, “Probably not.” He tilted his head toward the street. “Can I buy you some cappuccino?”

  “Make it a cold beer, I’ll say yes.”

  “I’d prefer that myself,” he said.

  Outside, Caitlin put on her sunglasses. All ten blocks of Lincoln Road had been closed to auto traffic some years ago. Trees had been planted, fountains and benches put in. The mall was quiet now, but by sundown the dinner crowd would be out in force.

  After a bit of discussion they walked east toward Lyon Frères, the French deli where one could sit at small tables inside or out. Better inside this time of day, with the sun still blazing and the temperature stuck at ninety. Caitlin had dressed for the heat in sandals and a short cotton skirt. Her blouse had long sleeves, but linen let the air through.

  “How’s Rafael doing?” Sam asked.

  “Still shaking. He lost Sullivan, then you guys smacked him around. How do you think he’s doing?”

  “They don’t believe he did it,” Sam said.

  “You should tell Rafael, not me.” She added, “At least he isn’t going to agonize over Sullivan anymore. I’m not happy Sullivan’s dead, but it sets Rafael free, at least that.”

  “I understand he’s going to New York,” Sam said.

  “We both are. He has a job doing hair and makeup for a studio photographer. He’ll be staying with his sister in the Village, and they said I could take the couch.” She tilted her head up toward Sam. “I’ll give you my number so you can get in touch about coming back for depositions and the trial. Would the state pay for an airline ticket? I’m a little short of funds these days.”

  “We could work something out.” He walked for a while, then said, “Sounds like you and Frank have split up again.”

  “The way you put that, Sam. As if it’s just another in a long, boring series.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “No. C’est fini. Kaput. Dead, buried, and unmourned.”

  Sam didn’t reply to that. He said, “And what are you going to do in New York? Fashion photography?”

  “Whatever strikes my fancy.”

  “You don’t have a job?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Kind of risky. If you’re so short of funds these days.”

  Caitlin smiled. “Risky? A few years ago, Sam, I went to a conference at NYU on women in photography. By mistake I stumbled into a lecture by someone who had been in rural Pakistan. She’d been attacked for taking photographs of the way women live over there, and she was planning to go back. That’s risk. She was risking her life. And I? I was taking pictures of pretty people in pretty clothes. Do you understand what I mean?”

  Sam was looking at her. “Yes, I think so.”

  “Well, after the lecture was over, people gathered around to speak to her. I couldn’t move out of my chair, I was so stunned. That isn’t too strong a word for what I felt. Stunned. I knew that my life would change. But it didn’t. And it hasn’t. And here I am, thirty-five years old, still taking pictures that have no past and no future, and therefore, as far as I’m concerned, not much of a present.”

  With a hand on her elbow he guided her out of the way of two teenage boys on skates, their open shirts flapping behind them. The surface of the road was smooth, painted in wide, diagonal stripes of black and white. The paint had begun to fade.

  Sam said, “New York. Well, you’ve got enough talent. I wish you the best, Caitlin.”

  The words were right, but she had no idea what Sam Hagen really thought. He could have been sorry to see her go. Or relieved. Or he didn’t give a damn. She let out a breath. “What do you want to talk to me about? I don’t have much time.”

  “Ali Duncan’s case,” he said.

  “You mean what happens now, after Sullivan?”

  Sam nodded. “I want to know why he died. If the other witnesses think he was killed to keep him quiet, they’ll start losing their memories of what happened at the Apocalypse, and then I have no case.”

  She raised her hands, then let them fall. “I have no idea who shot Sullivan.”

  “But you know the people involved with him. Martin Cass’s wife, Uta Ernst. She was one of Sullivan’s sexual partners. Cass refuses to be questioned about the night of the murder. What do you think? A viable suspect?”

  Caitlin took a while to frame an answer. She knew Marty Cass was a blackmailer. He had arranged an arson accidentally resulting in the death of Rivka Levitsky, the sister-in-law of a Miami Beach homicide detective. Say so, and Marty would implicate Frank. And Frank had his own stories to tell.

  Finally, Caitlin said, “Marty Cass is basically a whiner. He might want Sullivan dead, but I don’t think he’s got the nerve to shoot anybody.” That much was true.

  They walked, passing under the shade of a live oak growing in a patch of grass edged by a low pink wall.

  Sam said, “When you came to my office two weeks ago, you said something that stuck in my mind. Cass told you the Miami Beach city manager was going to ask the state attorney not to prosecute. Do you recall that?”

  She hesitated. “It wasn’t Marty Cass who told me. It was Frank, who got it from Marty. Frank said Marty told him the Beach didn’t want the case prosecuted because it would create a bad image. The state attorney would investigate for the sake of appearances, then drop it.”

  Sam’s expression was impenetrable.

  Caitlin went on, “Of course you wouldn’t prosecute. Nobody would believe a girl like Ali Duncan. In fact, everyone wanted her to be quiet and go away. Like Dale Finley from your of
fice. The creepy man with the scar across his chin. After he got through with Ali, she wanted to run out of there. But how is this connected to Sullivan’s death?”

  “I don’t know,” Sam said. “Maybe it isn’t.”

  And if there were a connection, Caitlin thought, Sam wouldn’t tell her. She glanced at him as they walked. His face was shadowed with fatigue, as if he hadn’t slept in days. The lines in his brow had deepened.

  She stopped. “We passed Lyon Frères half a block ago.”

  Sam’s gray eyes were fixed on her. He said, “Sullivan was sleeping with a rival of Klaus Ruffini in the fashion industry, Claudia Otero. What do you know about that?”

  “It’s true. Sullivan and Claudia were lovers for a long time. She’s been married twice that I know of, and never gave up her affair with Sullivan. But do you think Klaus would have Sullivan killed because his wife and Claudia hated each other? That’s a stretch.”

  “Last Sunday,” Sam said, “on my way from the crime scene, I ran into Ruffini. He stopped his car and spoke to me. There were four people with him. Three girls and a muscled, black-haired guy, who looked like a bouncer.”

  Caitlin said, “Franco. His bodyguard.”

  “Ruffini seemed … unconcerned that he might go to prison.”

  “Cocky?”

  “That’s a mild word for it.”

  “Obnoxious? Flaming asshole?”

  “Close,” Sam said. “He acted as if he couldn’t be touched.”

  “Well, that’s Klaus.”

  The water in the fountain nearby sprayed upward from a circle of copper and splashed merrily into a shallow basin painted the turquoise of a swimming pool. Caitlin waited for Sam to speak.

  “What can you tell me about Claudia Otero?” he said.

  Caitlin thought for a while, then said, “She’s damned good at what she does. Very tough businesswoman, too. She’s in her forties, but you’d never guess.” Caitlin held her hand level with her forehead. “About this tall, five-five or so. Black hair, brown eyes, skin like milk. I’ve taken her picture a few times, freelancing for local magazines. She wouldn’t remember me.”