Blood Relations Page 39

  Yesterday morning, Eugene Ryabin had driven downtown to visit Frank Tolin.

  Tolin’s spacious office was tastefully decorated with antiques. Ryabin had admired them for a moment, then sat in a red leather chair with a high back. He remarked that he and Tolin had last seen each other at Pier Park, the scene of Charlie Sullivan’s death.

  “Did you know him?” Ryabin asked.

  Frank Tolin said, “No, I just came along with Caitlin. She was following her friend Rafael, who was a boyfriend of Sullivan’s. Or ex-boyfriend.” Tolin spoke slowly, perhaps because his lower lip was split. A large purpling bruise darkened the left side of his face, and a bandage angled upward at the corner of his eye.

  “Sullivan was also sleeping with Marty Cass’s wife, Uta Ernst,” Ryabin commented.

  “Yeah. Sullivan went both ways.” The mustache over the injured mouth moved in what might have been a smile. “It’s hard to keep up with that crowd. They all fuck each other, Detective. Pardon my French.”

  “Pardon the question, but are you including Miss Dorn?”

  “I don’t know what the hell Miss Dorn did. Or does. We’re not together anymore.”

  Ryabin knew that, because Sam Hagen had told him. He said, “Is that so?”

  Frank Tolin said, “I’ve got some clients coming at ten o’clock. You said you wanted to ask me about Marty Cass?”

  In response to Ryabin’s questions, Tolin explained that he had met Marty Cass through mutual friends, and that they had done some deals together, but there was only one property left, the Englander Apartments. There was a buyer for the place, some Middle Easterners, but now the sale might be delayed because Cass’s share, ten percent, would have to go through probate. Too bad about Marty, but it had been an inconvenient time for him to get himself killed.

  As he talked Tolin played with a stainless steel letter opener, bouncing the point of it on the desk, making a musical dinging noise. He admitted having gone to see Cass on Saturday morning. He had knocked, but there hadn’t been any answer, and he didn’t go in.

  “Why did you want to talk to him?” Ryabin asked.

  “It was about the property. I hadn’t heard anything in a few days, and I wanted to see how the sale was going.” Tolin set the letter opener aside.

  “Were you on good terms with him?”

  “Sure. We had a pretty good working relationship. We didn’t socialize, but we got along.”

  “Why did Cass have only ten percent of the Englander Apartments?”

  “Where’d you hear about that?”

  “I saw it in documents I took from his file cabinet,” Ryabin explained.

  “Well, he had ten because it was my money that went into it, but he managed the building. I didn’t want to pay him a fee every month, so I said, here, take ten percent, you can have the headaches, not me.” Tolin gestured toward his office. “I’ve got a law practice to run.”

  Ryabin asked, “Did you know that my wife sold you the building?”

  “No kidding. I thought a woman named Rivka owned it. No, wait. She passed away. Then what? Your wife bought it from her?”

  “No. Rivka was my sister-in-law.”

  “My condolences, Detective.”

  Ryabin leaned forward in the chair, frowning. “Excuse me, but what happened to your face?”

  One of Frank Tolin’s hands went automatically to his cheekbone. “A disagreement with a client. It’s dangerous being a lawyer these days.”

  “Did you know Charlie Sullivan, the model?” Ryabin waited for an answer.

  Tolin shook his head, frowning slightly at the change of direction. “Not personally. Why?”

  “And George Fonseca? Someone mentioned that you knew him.” This was pure conjecture, but Ryabin wanted to see what Tolin would say.

  “Someone? The policeman’s best friend. Someone is full of shit, Detective. I never met George Fonseca. Nor can I help you figure out why he and Charlie Sullivan were shot to death. And in case you planned to ask if I own a gun, the answer’s yes. A thirty-eight revolver. Not what you’re looking for. Sorry about that.” His black eyebrows arched. “‘Someone’ must have told me.”

  “Where do you live, Mr. Tolin? Not on Miami Beach.”

  “No. Coconut Grove. I’ve got a condo.”

  Ryabin nodded. “Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to harm Marty Cass?”

  “Not really. You sure it wasn’t a robbery?”

  “We don’t think so,” Ryabin said. “Could you explain to me why Marty Cass’s personal files were out of order? As if someone had been looking through them in a hurry?”

  Tolin said, “No, I can’t.”

  “You said you were at his apartment on Saturday morning.”

  “And I said I didn’t go in.”

  “But we have a statement from a person across the street who says you did.”

  “Good try, Detective.” Tolin made another of his painful smiles. Ryabin reminded himself that Frank Tolin was a trial attorney, skilled in tactics used on witnesses.

  Ryabin said, “Eight o’clock on Saturday morning. On South Beach everyone is asleep. But you drove all the way from Coconut Grove to see him. If you didn’t know Marty Cass so well, why did you think he would be up?”

  “I took a chance.”

  “You didn’t call him first?”

  “No, I figured he’d be there. And he was, wasn’t he? But in no shape to answer the door.” Tolin stood up. “Sorry to cut this short, but I’ve got people coming in. Maybe we can get back together sometime next week.”

  From the chair Ryabin asked, “What was your schedule last Thursday and Friday?”

  “Give me a break.” Chuckling, Tolin walked around his desk. “I was in court.”

  A black leather desk diary occupied a spot next to the telephone. Ryabin went over and picked it up.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  He flipped backward a week. Thursday afternoon, clients from two to four o’clock. Friday morning, a trial starting at nine. Friday afternoon—

  Tolin snatched the book away and slammed it back on his desk. “Why don’t you leave before I file a complaint with Chief Mazik, whom I happen to know personally.” Tolin crossed the room. He tilted slightly to the left, as though protecting cracked ribs.

  At the door to his office he said, “Good luck, Detective. I hope you find the guy. You can take this as gospel: It wasn’t me.”

  Now, standing in the lobby at police headquarters, Gene Ryabin glanced at the big clock over the elevators. 6:20 P.M. Miss Dorn was nearly half an hour late.

  Yesterday afternoon—for the fifth time—he had gone by Klaus Ruffini’s house on the bay side of the island, and for the fifth time Ruffini wouldn’t let him through the gate. This morning his lawyer, Gerald Fine, had complained to the chief about harassment.

  At noon today Nestor Lopez had noticed the bodyguard, Franco, filling up Ruffini’s red Cadillac convertible at a gas station on Fifth Street. He blocked the car with his unmarked sedan and threatened him with arrest for obstruction of justice if he refused to cooperate with a murder investigation. Where had Franco been at 10:00 A.M. on Friday, the precise time of Marty Cass’s death? Having breakfast with Klaus and a few of his friends, including a producer for Miramax Films. Call him up and ask him. What about later in the day? Or the preceding afternoon? Franco had no answer for that.

  Now Ryabin would ask questions of Caitlin Dorn. Often the girlfriend knew things. No longer a girlfriend. Ryabin assumed that Sam Hagen’s reappearance had ended that relationship. And now Sam and his wife had separated. What a drama this had become.

  Dina, who had lost both son and husband, would seek peace in her childhood home. And Sam and Caitlin … Ryabin worried about them. Such love affairs often turned into tragedies. No one could help them now. Ryabin could only watch with the detachment of a man in the autumn of his life, safely beyond reckless passion. His hand went to his shirt pocket, absently caressing his pack of cigarettes. There were five r
emaining. He decided to have one after his interview with Miss Dorn.

  He paced for a while in the lobby, then looked again at the clock. 6:33. Caitlin Dorn wasn’t going to show up.

  chapter thirty-two

  When Sam let her in, Caitlin slid her hands up the lapels of his jacket and locked her arms around his neck. She stood on tiptoes to whisper in his ear. “You don’t know how much I want you right now. Only four days and it seems like a month.” She knew he could smell the perfume she had touched to her skin in the elevator. Her dress was pale green and gauzy, with a low neckline and a woven belt.

  Sam’s kiss was brief, but then he held her tightly. She could feel the strength in his arms, holding her as though it really had been a month since they’d seen each other. Or as though it would be a year till the next time. Over his shoulder she noticed the room: terribly anonymous, she thought. But he had said to come to the Holiday Inn downtown, so she hadn’t expected a suite with a marble bathroom.

  When he let her go, Caitlin walked to the dresser to put down her bag. She withdrew a box of crackers, some cheese, a bottle of red wine. “I thought this would be good. It’s nearly dinnertime. And look. More candles.” They filled her hands, six colored-glass holders.

  He stood at the end of the double bed, the bed still tightly made up, and Sam in his dark suit. She put the candles back on the dresser. “What’s wrong?”

  “We need to talk, Caitlin. Sorry it has to be here.” His tone was so neutral she couldn’t read the emotion underneath. “Not much of a room, is it? I couldn’t think of anything else. Neither one of us has our own place to go to.”

  “No, it’s all right.” Then she noticed his right hand. He was wearing a wrist brace and a bandage over his knuckles. “Sam! What have you done to yourself?” She went to see.

  He turned his hand over, looking at it, the thick palm and fingers. “I got this at Frank Tolin’s office. It hurts like hell.” He made a short laugh. “I’m too old to be brawling.”

  “Why did you hit him?” She touched his injured hand. “What did Frank say to you? Something horrible, no doubt. I told you he would.”

  Sam took so long in answering that she knew what he was going to say before the words came out of his mouth. At the core of her body she felt a sudden coldness. The light filtering through the curtains seemed to fade.

  “You said he would lie to me. I told myself that’s what it was. A lie. A bomb he threw at me to even up the score, so why not just ignore it?” Sam exhaled. “I tried to, Caitlin.”

  There were two chairs at the small table by the windows. He sat in one of them and motioned for her to have a seat, but she remained standing. He casually crossed his legs.

  “Frank said you slept with Matthew.”

  When Caitlin didn’t reply, Sam said, “I’ve been a trial lawyer for almost twenty years. I thought I was better at picking up on things. You told me he wasn’t gay. How were you so sure about that? You said you’d taken nude pictures, and it went right over my head. In those portraits you showed me, he was wearing nothing but a pair of jeans. I didn’t pay any special attention at the time. But the way he looked into the lens—at you—”

  Caitlin grabbed the votive candles off the dresser and threw them back into her bag, heard the crack of breaking glass. Pieces flew out onto the dresser. “I’m not a defendant in one of your damned trials. I’m not on the stand. How could you do this? To ask me to come here. Not telling me it was for this.”

  She was reaching for the doorknob when he caught up and swung her around. She gasped and raised an arm over her face.

  “Caitlin, stop. I’m not going to hit you.” His left hand tightened on her elbow. “You’re going to tell me what happened.”

  “Oh, God, Sam. Could it possibly make a difference?”

  He put her on the end of the double bed, standing over her. “I wish I’d done what you told me to. Stay the hell away from Frank. Remain blissfully ignorant. But I didn’t. I’m trying to be fair, to understand.”

  “No. Frank has poisoned us.” She looked up at Sam. “He knows you so well, and he knew what would hurt you most.”

  “And what were you thinking of, Caitlin, when you slept with my son? Did you realize that he knew about us? He did. His mother told him. Did you and Matthew talk about it?”

  She shook her head. “He didn’t tell me he knew about us.”

  “So what was it?” Sam leaned against the dresser. “He was good looking. Young. But you’re still young, aren’t you? A beautiful woman. When I was a kid, I had a thing going with a woman who lived down the road. I used to take care of the orange trees in her backyard. She stared coming outside in her swimsuit, getting a sun-tan, and one day she asked if I’d like to come in for a cold drink.” He laughed. “But she hadn’t been sleeping with my father.”

  “For God’s sake.” Caitlin turned away.

  “When you were with Matthew, was it me you wanted? Or maybe you were still so angry at me for ending our affair that you wanted to get even.”

  “How simple. Yes, maybe that’s it.”

  “Tell me what it was, Caitlin.” A piece of blue glass from one of the broken votive candles lay on the dresser. Sam picked it up. “Was it Matthew’s idea? At his age, I was a spec five in the army. I’d worked in my father’s groves since I was twelve years old. I had to earn every dollar I spent. Matthew had everything he wanted, and he couldn’t care less about it. The fact that you and I had been together wouldn’t have meant a damn thing.”

  Sam tossed the glass into her canvas bag. “No. Maybe it did. What better way to make a point than to screw the woman I used to sleep with.”

  “Stop it!” She stood up from the end of the bed and pushed past him. “What did you tell me, Sam? ‘I love you, Caitlin. Be patient. It will all work out this time, Caitlin. I promise.’”

  “I didn’t know about this!” he said. “You deliberately withheld the truth.”

  She laughed. “And you would have been so understanding, wouldn’t you?”

  He closed on her, furious. “My son—the only son I will ever have—is dead. He drank. He took drugs. He got on his motorcycle—after he’d had six or eight shooters at a bar—and he might as well have blown his brains out. So when I ask you—you, Caitlin, who were sleeping with him and presumably knew his state of mind—when I ask you what the hell he was doing, then I expect to get an answer.”

  Sam gripped the back of a chair, then winced and pulled his right hand away. He held it gingerly with the left and cursed under his breath.

  The room fell silent, only the air conditioner buzzing under the window. Caitlin said, “You think he wanted to die.”

  “I don’t know what he wanted,” Sam said.

  “It was an accident.”

  “That’s what I used to tell his mother. Nothing caused it, Dina. Just accept it and buck up, honey. Nothing you can do. It’s not your fault.”

  Caitlin sat down in the other chair, still trembling a little. “You know something? You’re not what I thought, either. Well. I guess we all see what we want to see.”

  “I guess we do.”

  Sam sat on the corner of the bed with his forearms on his knees. His suit coat pulled on his shoulders. His shoes were heavy wing tips with worn-down heels. She smiled slightly and looked away. She had mended her bra strap with the wrong color thread in the rush to get here. They might as well be sitting naked with the curtains pulled open all the way. Candlelight had been prettier.

  She looked back at Sam. “I met Matthew about a year and a half ago. I don’t remember the first time we met because he probably didn’t impress me as being different from any other young male model. He was handsome, but so many of them are. He called himself Stavros. Just that. Stavros. I didn’t know who he was. Then he asked me to do his composite. He said he’d heard about my work, and that his real name was Matthew Hagen. He said he was from Miami, and his father was a big deal at the state attorney’s office. I almost told him I was too busy, find somebody
else to take his pictures. And besides that, he was as arrogant as hell. But I needed the money, so I did it. And I guess I was curious about him, too. Sam Hagen’s son.

  “We saw each other in the business. He was on a few shoots I did. Or I’d see him by accident on the street. That sort of thing. We got to know each other. I didn’t think of him sexually. I’d seen so many beautiful young men, after a while they all run together. Anyway, he was too young. And he was your son. That put him off limits.

  “What surprised me at the time—but now I understand it—he was interested in me. Nothing heavy, just flirtation. He’d kid around, and that was it. We’d talk about whatever would come up. I’d been in the fashion industry for a long time, and I gave him some advice. I lent him money. He usually paid me back. I knew he was into cocaine, but I wouldn’t let him have it around my place. Later on I found out how bad it was and that he was shooting up, too. He said he didn’t do it a lot. He could control it.

  “What I always sensed about Matthew was his anger. Sometimes I’d feel it was directed at me. Now I can see that it probably was. One night he came to my apartment, drunk, and so angry he was shaking. He wouldn’t say much. Then he kissed me. I pushed him away. He was very strong, and he held me down on the sofa and it wasn’t gentle, but I didn’t want to scream and have everyone come running. And for a minute I was thinking about you, and it was so awful. I said, ‘Matthew, please. Please don’t.’ He stopped. Just like that. He got up and left. A couple of days later he came back to apologize. Now I understand. He’d known about you and me all along. He hated me. Hated and desired me. And, yes, it was crazy. It was all tied up with you and his mother and me and what he thought was the wrong I had done to all of you.