Blood Relations Read online

  Their first son, Dina’s father, was now dying in the worst way, losing his mind slowly to forgetfulness. His sister, old herself, took care of him now in the house on Spring Street. Dina had been reared in that house, two stories with gingerbread trim and a porch that wrapped around the side. There were white lawn chairs under oak trees hung with Spanish moss. Her father had built her a little boat, which she had mostly kept tied to the dock. She took it out sometimes along the bayou, which led through twists and turns to the Gulf of Mexico. Dina hated herself for leaving: As the eldest daughter she should care for Costas, but she didn’t want to go back to Tarpon Springs; the town was too provincial and narrow. Going back would be like exile.

  Wincing against a new throb of pain in her breast, Dina shifted on the walkway.

  She had, for a time, considered suicide, seduced by the idea, flirting with it as she brought the wheels of her car closer and closer to the shoulder of the road. She had poured into her hand all the pills that the doctor had given her. She had unlocked the cabinet where Sam kept his pistol and stared down at it, gray and cold and final.

  Why hadn’t she done it, then? It was not fear of damnation for an unholy act. Dina had not believed in damnation for a long time, not since realizing that there was more of it on earth than she thought possible in the hereafter. Dina didn’t consider herself Orthodox anymore, or a Christian of any variety. Sam had no answers, either. His mother—long dead—had been Jewish, but he followed no religion.

  If she took the pills or pulled the trigger, then what? Nothing. Not even the awareness of nothing. It was much better, she had finally concluded, to remember, and have the pain of it, than to risk having nothing at all.

  Dina blotted her forehead again with her sleeve, then picked up the clippers. She would finish trimming the border, then go in to dinner.

  In the kitchen, Melanie got up from the table to check the heat under the pot roast. Then she crossed the kitchen to look through the sliding glass door again. Her mother was nearly at the end of the walkway. She would have to come in soon, Melanie thought. The sun was about to set. Her father was upstairs changing his clothes. He would be down in a few minutes.

  Melanie had put glasses and plates on the counter, with linen napkins folded like fans, and the good silverware on placemats. She was hoping they could all sit down together. Nobody ate in the dining room anymore, even on holidays. Last year—forget it. Matthew had died in September, and Christmas had been awful. They didn’t eat at the kitchen table because it was piled with papers from her dad’s office, a TV to be fixed that had been there a month, and a bunch of mail. Plus her mother’s briefcase and a stack of tax books. Her mother was a CPA. She used to have a private secretary and her own office, but she’d been sick, and she was just starting back to work full-time.

  Melanie had cleared enough space for her homework. She slid back into her chair, nibbling on a carrot stick. That’s all she would have, salad. Plus maybe a small piece of roast to keep her dad from asking if she wanted to make herself sick, or what. School would be out in three weeks, and all her friends were buying swimsuits. She’d been working on a tan in the backyard, but her thighs were gross. Her mom had mentioned it last night: Melanie, you’re getting chubby.

  A fist under her cheekbone, she read aloud, “Find the values of X where the value of the function of X is zero.” She tapped the eraser end of her pencil on a piece of graph paper.

  Without even opening the book, Matthew could have figured it out. He was awesome. He made straight As, till he started skipping school. Her mother had said Matthew needed a psychologist. Her dad said he needed a goddamn military school. He never did find out some of the stuff Matthew did, like shoplifting, because their mother handled it herself. Melanie knew only because she’d overheard them talking about it. In tenth grade he got suspended for smoking pot, and he told Melanie he would personally kick her butt if she tried it. Then they thought he was suicidal and put him in the hospital. He told Melanie it was an act, what he did, holding the pistol to his head like that. And he laughed. Damn! You should have seen the old man’s reaction.

  On the graph paper, Melanie ticked off ten spaces above the intersection of the x and y axes, then four to the left. “I hate this. I fucking hate it,” she muttered.

  Matthew used to come over and help her even after he moved out. He’d never finished high school. He failed his classes his junior year. Their father screamed at him for that and grabbed him by the shirt. Matthew tried to punch him, but he got knocked across the room. Then they both cried and hugged each other. But Matthew started staying away, and finally he moved to an apartment on South Beach. He became a model. Then he died.

  Frowning, Melanie brushed aside some bits of rubber her eraser had left on the graph paper. This was useless, she thought. Totally pointless. She’d call somebody in her math class after dinner and ask how to do it.

  In the backyard her mother stood up and pushed a piece of cardboard across the walkway with her toe. Melanie thought she would be okay when she came in. Usually she was nice; sometimes she could be a total bitch. At least she didn’t cry as much anymore. In fact, she hadn’t taken her pills lately either. There was a prescription bottle that Melanie kept an eye on. One of the girls at school, her mother had tried to kill herself that way. But this girl’s mother was an alcoholic and totally irresponsible besides.

  Footsteps thumped on the stairs, and Melanie looked around. Her dad came into the kitchen in running shoes that looked like he had waded through mud puddles in them. An old towel hung around his neck. She was afraid someone would see him. He wore gray sweatpants cut off at the knees, and a T-shirt with a rip in the pocket. He was starting to get a stomach. He worked out, but it didn’t seem to make a difference. There was a fitness machine in the family room and some charts showing the daily reps he was supposed to do, but half the days were blank. When he was in the army he jumped out of helicopters and ran for miles with an eighty-five-pound pack and an M-16, getting shot at by the VC. He used to tell Matthew about it. That’s what it was like in war, son, and that’s what it’s like in life. You have to be tough. Blah, blah, blah. And when their dad wasn’t watching, Matthew would catch Melanie’s eye and mouth the words, and she would nearly crack up laughing.

  He walked over to the window, looking out.

  She asked, “You’re not going running now, are you?”

  “I thought so, before it gets dark.”

  “There’s pot roast on the stove. It’s leftovers, but I added some more veggies.”

  He was still staring outside. “How’s your mom?”

  “All right, I guess.”

  “You guess?” He looked around.

  “She didn’t go to her appointment.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. She got home about four-thirty and went right outside.”

  He sighed, hanging on to the towel.

  Melanie said, “She’s about done, I think. Then we can eat.”

  Her dad turned his head toward the stove. “What do I smell?”

  “Pot roast.”

  “I’m sorry, you told me.” He came over and kissed her on top of the head and patted her cheek.

  She said, “I put plates and silverware out.”

  “So you did.” He left his hand on her shoulder. “It looks very nice, honey.” He let out a breath like he’d been lifting weights.

  “Did you have a rotten day or something?”

  He didn’t answer, then said, “We lost one. Jury acquitted on a first degree.”

  “Oh. Too bad. What did the guy do?”

  “Threw somebody through a sixth-floor window.” He turned her math book around so he could see it. “How’s school, Mel?”

  “Okay.” Melanie knew that the murder must have been bloody and gruesome. He never told her about those, even if she asked.

  He tapped the book. “Quadratic equations. I remember this.”

  “It’s hard.” She looked up at him.

&nb
sp; “Study the examples,” he said. “That’s what I used to do. If you don’t try it yourself, you won’t learn it.”

  Lecture number 27, she thought. Which meant that he didn’t know how to do it either. She said, “Do you want me to serve the plates?”

  He smiled. “Why not? Let me bring your mother in first.” He tossed his towel over a chair and went out the sliding glass door.

  When Sam called her name, Dina glanced up. There was a streak of dirt across her chin. He wiped it off with his thumb, then bent down to kiss her.

  She smiled, tugging the ragged hem of his sweatpants. “Look at us, Sam. We could be street people, the way we’re dressed.”

  The gazebo was a few yards farther along the walk. He moved her straw hat out of the way and sat on the middle step. “How was your day?” He noticed that she wasn’t wearing her gardening gloves, and her nails were filthy and cracked. Before, she had been proud of her strong, beautiful hands. Before. Everything was divided into before or after, he had come to realize.

  “I had meetings all day and didn’t get anything done.” She clipped a twig. The hedge was low and green with clumps of red flowers. It ran as straight beside the stones as if she had trimmed it with a laser beam. “And you?”

  “All right.” Sam propped his forearms on his knees. He wanted to tell her about the verdict in the Balmaseda case. Not for sympathy, exactly. Just to tell her. But he wasn’t sure how she would react.

  Sam finally said, “You missed your appointment this afternoon.”

  “Melanie’s tattling on me.”

  “She wasn’t tattling. She’s worried about you. Why didn’t you go?”

  “I didn’t feel like it.”

  “What about next week?”

  “Next week we’ll see.” Dina threw a handful of clippings into a grocery sack. “I went to church this afternoon,” she said in a tone that meant he was to ask her about it.

  “What church?” They didn’t belong to a church in Miami. Dina went several times a year to the cathedral in Tarpon Springs, but never here.

  “St. Sophia’s,” she said, “on my way home. No one was there, except for an old man dusting the sacristy. Then a woman came in to pray. She said the Lord’s Prayer in Greek. On the way out, I lit a candle for Matthew. I could feel him with me, Sam.”

  Studying the pattern in the bricks at his feet, Sam debated whether to suggest they go inside. She had accused him, rightly, of not wanting to talk about their son. For months after he died, all they had done was talk about Matthew. Sam had run out of words.

  “It did me more good than Dr. Berman. Look.” Dina turned on her knees to face Sam directly. On her breast lay a flat silver cross with the three semicircles on each point that made it look so Eastern Orthodox. Sam hadn’t seen it in a long time.

  He didn’t know what to say.

  Dina asked, “Does it bother you?”

  He shook his head. “No. If you want to wear it, go ahead.”

  She smiled. “It wouldn’t go with my suits.” She went back to trimming leaves, and the cross swung with the movement of her arm, ticking on a button. She was wearing one of his old shirts.

  With Dina’s head bowed over the clippers, Sam could see how her hair was coming in gray. It was parted in the middle and pinned behind her neck. Dark brown at the ends, more gray at the crown. He could have traced with a finger the line that indicated when Matthew died. She had aged since last summer. Even so, she was still a striking woman, with dark eyes and a mouth so full and red she didn’t need lipstick.

  He knew he loved her, but in a different way than twenty-some years ago. They’d been through a lot, most of which he didn’t like to dwell on. He had considered divorce more than once; had even talked to a divorce attorney. Nothing had come of it for one reason or another. Kids. The job. Money.

  Then Matthew died, and she fell apart, and that had made him think about what mattered in the long run. Everything has a time, he had finally realized. There’s a point when you can make big changes, and after that you can’t. A few years ago he would let himself get worked up over what-ifs. Sit out here in the gazebo by himself and drink, and then he’d feel like hell, as if his heart was going to give out, or any minute he’d start to cry.

  Where would they be in twenty more years? Sliding toward seventy, an absurd idea. Wherever they were, it wouldn’t be here. The house was too big. When Dina took a leave of absence, too sick to work, Sam had refinanced it. The monthly payments still made him a little light-headed every time he signed the check.

  He watched her for a while, then asked, “Dina, doesn’t your firm have a fair number of clients over on the Beach?” Jacobs Ross & Rendell, of which she was a partner, was the Miami branch of an accounting practice headquartered on Wall Street.

  “Several. Why?”

  “What about Klaus Ruffini?”

  “Ruffini. No, he isn’t one of ours, not directly. I believe someone in the office did a financial forecast for a project he’s involved in. A resort. There was an article in the Herald a few months ago. Didn’t you see it? They want to build a big hotel and several hundred time-share apartments, all very low class, if you ask me. If we’re lucky it will all sink under its own weight.”

  “What do you know about Ruffini?”

  “He’s from northern Italy. His mother’s Swiss, I think. His father owns a shipping line or a steel mill, something like that. Why are you so interested in Klaus Ruffini?”

  “He’s been accused of sexual battery. He and two other men, in the VIP room of a nightclub on Washington Avenue. Eddie wants me to check it out.”

  A cool smiled curved Dina’s lips. She brushed some leaves out of the cracks between the bricks. A vacuum cleaner could not have done a more thorough job. She said, “Rape. On South Beach, how shocking. They’ll buy her off. Or scare her off.”

  “Probably so.”

  She said, “I see people like that all the time. They do what they want and no one touches them.”

  “Have you met Klaus Ruffini?”

  “Someone pointed him out to me in a restaurant downtown. He was with his wife, a fashion designer. They own Moda Ruffini.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Sam, you really are out of touch in the Justice Building.” Dina tugged on a root. “Moda Ruffini is a clothing store, along the lines of Armani or Versace, but not quite as chic. Matthew tried out for a magazine ad for them, but they didn’t use him.” Dina dropped the root into the bag. “A little strange, isn’t it, that Eddie gave the case to you?”

  “Not really. I’m the only one in the office that people know won’t kiss his ass. He’s trying to dump the case without people thinking he was influenced.”

  She arched a brow. “Was he?”

  Sam shrugged. “The city manager wants the case to go away. Eddie agrees that it should, but he’s trying damned hard not to look cozy with Hal Delucca.”

  “And so he’s letting you do the dirty work.” Dina laughed. “Eddie’s more devious than you are, sweet. Be careful.”

  He didn’t tell her the rest of it, that Eddie Mora might not be the state attorney much longer. That Eddie had hinted at supporting Sam as his successor, in exchange for a little help on this. Sam wasn’t sure how much he was reading into it. He wanted to let it sit for a while.

  Dina shifted the cardboard under her knees. “Who’s the woman? I assume the victim is a female, though one can never be sure over there.”

  “A model, supposedly. Seventeen years old.”

  “Seventeen. My God. She’s a child. Sam, you have to pursue this.”

  “You told me a minute ago there’s no way I could win.”

  “What about statutory rape? She’s under the age of consent.”

  “It doesn’t apply.”

  “Why not?” Dina demanded.

  “Because statutory rape requires a minor of previously chaste character.” Sam said, “This girl isn’t. She went to a nightclub, took drugs, got drunk—”

  “And g
ot what she deserved.”

  “I didn’t say that. I said it’s probably not a case we could win. If the jury won’t buy it, we’ve got nothing.” He watched Dina’s clippers snap at stray twigs. He said, “The jury in the Balmaseda case came back with a verdict.”

  She glanced up, waiting.

  “An acquittal. It took them four hours.”

  “They let him go, after what he did to that little boy?”

  “They had more than a reasonable doubt about who did it, I guess. The judge excluded his confession.” Sam flexed his right hand, rotating his thumb. “They might have voted for second degree, if we’d given them the chance. Joe McGee—he’s the division chief—wanted to go with jury instructions on first degree, and I let him do it. I feel bad about that. It was a risk. I shouldn’t have gambled.”

  Dina made an exasperated laugh. “It isn’t your fault. Balmaseda got away with it. Some people seem to get away with things, don’t they?”

  “Not all of them, or I’d quit this business,” Sam said.

  “He murdered a child and got away with it. How many other criminals like Balmaseda get away with it?”

  Suddenly weary, Sam said, “Let’s go in. I want to hit the sack early. What about you?”

  But Dina was still staring intently at him. “Nothing will happen to Klaus Ruffini either. Don’t dare tell me the girl was responsible. Three men and a seventeen-year-old girl.” Dina’s expression darkened further. “Have you spoken to her?”