Blood Relations Read online

  “Even with that, we became friends. It wasn’t sex. Or maybe it was, in some way, and maybe we both knew it, but there was a line there, and we didn’t cross it.

  “Matthew had a hard time making it as a model. He was undisciplined and impatient. I tried to help. I made him a new composite for free, and he looked terrific. He got some work, but it was so hard, finding his way in a business where, really, nobody looks beyond the surface. He was on and off drugs, he was drinking. He got a few good jobs. That was when he bought his motorcycle. He was beginning to be known. People were starting to ask for Stavros. Then I didn’t see him for a while. Someone told me he was involved with Sullivan. I was surprised, and yet I wasn’t. You might want to blame Sullivan for what happened to Matthew, but you can’t, not completely. We all share complicity in what happens to us. Oh, yes, Sullivan had his despicable moments, but he did care for Matthew, as much as Sullivan could have cared for anyone.

  “I don’t know how it happened. I never asked. As I told you, it was brief. I heard through someone else that they’d argued. Then Matthew came to my apartment to pick up some prints I’d made for him. He was having trouble again. He had no money left. I fixed him a sandwich because he hadn’t eaten all day and he was hungry. We had some wine and we talked. He said he wanted to give up. He didn’t know what to do. Sullivan had told him he’d never make it. ‘Stavros, you’re a pathetic little faggot, an irresponsible child.’ That’s what he said. Matthew couldn’t shrug it off because there was enough truth to cut deeply. He was so ashamed. He started to cry. My God, like everything in him had been smashed and it would never be put right again.

  “Yes, I slept with him. I did it because he needed me, and he was yours, and I loved him because he was part of you, and because of who he was, himself. Matthew. I told him to stay with me awhile. He did, for nearly two weeks. That’s when I took the photographs. Just before he died.

  “I’ve never met a man who was so sweet, so innocent, even with everything that had happened to him. He said he’d marry me when he grew up. Isn’t that funny? We both laughed. Then he said no, maybe he’d just be my devoted friend forever. We talked about you. He wanted so much to please you. To have your respect, and for you to know how much he loved you. But he never mentioned you and me, Sam. That would have been cruel, and he wasn’t that way.

  “You want me to tell you he was a slacker and a failure, that he would have died no matter what. That you didn’t lose much. Is that what you want? You said he was lost years ago. No. He was right there all the time. You’re the one who was lost.

  “He didn’t choose to die. He didn’t die because of me or Sullivan or you or his mother or because he had failed you or himself. He died because he was going too fast on his motorcycle. He was happy, Sam. He would have been all right. That’s what you saw in the portraits. That’s what I wanted you to know, and why I showed them to you. He was happy.”

  Caitlin sat for a while, pulling at the strings tied in a decorative knot at the end of her belt. She listened to traffic noises on the street.

  Sam had gotten up as she spoke, and now he was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed.

  Finally he looked at her. His eyes seemed hollow, as though he might fall through them and disappear.

  She said, “I’ll be leaving in a week or so. Rafael’s going to help me drive.”

  “What will you do?” Sam asked.

  “Something will turn up.” Caitlin crossed the room for her bag. “You know, it’s odd. I have nothing left except one old camera and a car with a hundred thousand miles on it, but for the first time in years, I know I’m going to be okay.”

  “That’s good.” He nodded.

  “What about you, Sam?”

  He hadn’t moved from where he leaned against the wall.

  “Me?” He smiled. “I’ll be okay, too.”

  chapter thirty-three

  Eddie Mora wasn’t looking at the photos anymore. He was gazing the length of his office and tapping his tented fingers on his chin. His hands jerked as though brain and muscles had disconnected.

  There was a line of fifteen photographs on Eddie’s desk, clearly showing the state attorney’s deputy chief of administration parked outside the Orange Bowl in the middle of the day with a criminal lawyer who was currently representing a defendant in a highly public sexual battery prosecution. Each picture had the date and time in the lower right-hand corner.

  Sam had explained the situation.

  Eddie finally spoke. “Well. That’s it then.” He glanced down as if a dog had chosen his desk for a place to squat. “Are these duplicates?”

  “Keep them,” Sam said. “I have my own set.” Dale Finley had given him doubles but had kept the negatives. Eddie had asked where the hell the photos had come from, but Sam had declined to say. One day there would be a reckoning for this. One day, when Sam was sitting behind the state attorney’s sleek walnut desk, he would pick up the phone and it would be Dale Finley.

  Eddie scooped the photos into a pile, opened a drawer, and dropped them inside.

  Sam said, “I resent being used, Eddie. So call it even, if it makes you feel better.”

  An artery beat in Eddie’s temple. “Nobody expected the girl to go through with it. This case was going to wash out.”

  “But it didn’t,” Sam said. “You sent Dale Finley to scare her off.”

  He made a short laugh. “No, that was his idea.”

  “An investigator doing his own thing can be a liability,” Sam said. “Are you going to take him to Washington? Assuming you make it to Washington.”

  “No, he’s all yours now. You tell yourself you won’t use him, but you will. Finley can be a useful guy to have around. Just don’t turn your back on him.”

  “What about Vicky Duran?”

  Eddie’s hands moved outward in an expansive shrug. “Yes, what about Vicky? You decide, Sam. Soon as I talk to the governor, this will be your job, and Vicky will be your problem.”

  Sam said, “She just wrote her own resignation letter, getting into bed with Jerry Fine.”

  “Here’s some advice. Try to arrange a job for her first. Something with the county, say. A decent salary.” Eddie suddenly grabbed a heavy coffee mug, the closest object, and hurled it across his office. The handle broke on the edge of a bookcase and the mug bounced to the carpet and rolled unevenly to a stop.

  Sam looked back at Eddie, who was straightening his cuffs.

  Eddie’s smile was more of a twitch. “You know, I didn’t mind coming down here to live, but Amalia never liked Miami. The muggy weather, the lack of culture, the insane political landscape. You might not believe this, but what I did was for her. She begged me to find a job somewhere else.”

  “No, Eddie. I don’t believe it, but it sounds very noble of you.” Sam added, “I’m curious about something. Ruffini never told the press about Amalia’s trips to Cuba, even after you allowed the case to proceed against him. Why?”

  Eddie weighed whether to answer, then said, “Because it was too late. I didn’t file the case—you did. I couldn’t very well dismiss it. So what would he gain by opening his mouth about my wife? He’s here on a damn tourist visa. He knew that once I got to Washington, I could have his ass on a plate. So the prosecution had to roll on—unless he could help Victoria Duran take over as state attorney. She would have repaid him by scuttling the case somehow. He and his lawyer were counting on that.”

  Sam said, “If the police link Ruffini to any of these murders, I’ll have to bring your name up. Don’t even think about asking me to keep you out of it.”

  “Ruffini wouldn’t have had them killed,” Eddie said, looking miffed. “Granted, he’s better off with Sullivan and Fonseca dead, but it’s easier to deal with Miss Duncan. And I don’t mean shoot her. I mean bribe her. Give her what she wants. Klaus Ruffini would rather pay her than go through a trial.” Eddie made a sly smile. “He’s afraid of you, Sam. He doesn’t want to face you in court.”

  Sudden
ly eager to get out of there, Sam stood up. “You’ve got some balls, Eddie. How long did you think you could keep the media from finding out what Klaus Ruffini already knew?”

  “Long enough for Senator Kirkland to decide whether it mattered,” Eddie said. “We discussed it last week, when Amalia and I flew up to Michigan to see him. His advisors said not to worry. The average voter doesn’t care about Cuba. He doesn’t care that the vice presidential candidate’s sister-in-law is investing in Cuba. Claudia’s a citizen of Spain; she can do what she wants to. It’s good politics, in fact, to stand up to the Miami exile community. The embargo should have been lifted years ago. Fidel Castro would have been gone as soon as the first McDonald’s opened its doors in Havana.”

  Sam said, “Sorry to point this out, Eddie, but Amalia broke U.S. law going there.”

  “You prove she went. Then we’ll talk.”

  At the door Sam turned around, laughing softly. “Jesus. A small thing. That’s what you told me. Such a small thing. It hardly seemed worth the trouble to hide it.”

  “You’ll see, Sam, how much you have to hide when you’re in this office. People are absolutely irrational, what they think is important and what isn’t.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you?”

  “Not really. You get used to it.”

  Sam took another look around the office. “I’d appreciate your calling the governor as soon as possible. This afternoon. There are some changes I want to get started on.”

  Eddie’s round face seemed to puff with rage. “Get the fuck out.”

  Almost a year had gone by since Sam Hagen had been inside the Club Deuce with Gene Ryabin, but it was just as dim, with a carefully maintained ambiance of dusty ceiling fans and neon beer signs. It had the same cracked linoleum squares on the floor and probably the same drink coasters under the short leg of the pool table. Still no locks on the bathroom doors. The staff wanted everybody to know they might look in and see who was doing what.

  Gene Ryabin came in about six-thirty, and Sam motioned to him. The crowd was thin on Mondays.

  Ryabin brought his beer to the wall-mounted varnished-plywood bar under the front window. He was grinning, showing the gap in his teeth. “For you, my friend, a token. What is a title? Pah. They respect more a visible sign of your power.” He pulled from his coat pocket a miniature guillotine, which he set on the bar.

  Sam smiled around the lip of the beer bottle at his mouth.

  Ryabin stuck a cigarette in a hole under the blade, then neatly chopped off the filter. It rolled to the floor. “Now. Give me your finger.”

  “What good is a state attorney with a missing digit?”

  “Trust me.” Ryabin spread a hand on his chest. “A magic guillotine. Not one drop of blood if you are truly worthy.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.” Laughing, Sam extended his left hand as Ryabin raised the tiny blade in its tracks. “If this wasn’t my third beer already, I’d never let you do this, Gene.” The blade swept downward, clicked, and seemed to pass through Sam’s index finger. “Not bad.”

  Ryabin was pleased. He showed Sam how the blade pivoted into the frame. “I like to show this in the men’s room at the station.” He slid the toy across the bar, then raised his beer bottle, a salute. “Nastrovye.”

  “Maybe I’ll use it on Beekie Duran,” Sam said. “But her dick might not fit through this little hole here.”

  Ryabin felt inside his coat. “I have also the initial toxicology report on George Fonseca, along with the latest narratives of our investigation.” He handed the folded pages to Sam.

  Sam turned directly to the report from the Metro-Dade toxicologist. Not a full report; that would take a few more weeks. Already, however, the lab had found a cholinesterase inhibitor in Fonseca’s blood. Common name, Parathion. Traces of it had been found in a beer bottle on the floor of the Mustang. A nasty way to die, Sam thought, remembering the vomit and excrement on Fonseca’s body.

  “Nastrovye,” he said and lifted his bottle of Heineken.

  Ryabin grinned down at Sam’s right hand. “A strange coincidence I’m seeing here. Wednesday I went to interview Frank Tolin at his office, and his lip is split and his face is bruised.”

  “Too bad,” Sam said.

  Ryabin asked, “What was it about?”

  Sam took another swallow of beer before answering. “Caitlin Dorn. I went to close the wrongful death case; then we had a discussion about Caitlin.”

  When Sam didn’t elaborate, Ryabin nodded toward the papers on the bar. “My notes from the interview are in there, too. Tolin says he was friendly with Marty Cass, but I don’t think so. When you were working with Tolin, what was your impression?”

  “I didn’t see a problem,” Sam said, “but that was four years ago.” He sat and read the police reports while Ryabin went to get another beer and watch a white-haired woman shoot pool with a leather boy, beating him handily.

  Ryabin pulled out his stool and sat back down. He was short and had to step on the bottom rung to do it gracefully. “What would Miss Dorn have to say about Frank Tolin and Marty Cass, if I asked her?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “She was supposed to come to the station last week, but she didn’t show up. I left messages, but she doesn’t call.”

  At the pool table, the balls rolled and clicked and dropped neatly into the correct pockets. The white-haired woman’s next opponent was a tourist from Scotland who couldn’t stop laughing. Probably high on something, Sam thought.

  He looked back at Ryabin, “I haven’t seen Caitlin since last Thursday.”

  “She doesn’t return your calls, either?”

  “I haven’t called.”

  Ryabin was playing with a cigarette, but he didn’t light it. “Does this mean that I can’t ask you to find out from her about Frank Tolin and Marty Cass?”

  “I’ll let you do it.” Sam finished his beer. “When you talk to her, Gene, ask where Ali Duncan is. I think we may have a problem. Her mother says she doesn’t know where Ali went, but I have my doubts. I don’t know if she’s dead or in hiding, or if Klaus came up with the right numbers.”

  “Did you tell Eddie Mora?” Ryabin asked.

  “Not till after the announcement hits the paper tomorrow about my appointment. Maybe I can bring her back, maybe not. Eddie was right, Gene. The case is a loser. The son of a bitch was right.”

  chapter thirty-four

  “I’m sorry for getting back in touch with you.” Caitlin Dorn escorted Ryabin into the foyer. “I’ve been so busy getting ready to leave.”

  He followed her long strides and swirling cotton skirt down a narrow, tiled hallway, through a living room reminiscent of an Italian country villa, then to a patio overlooking the intracoastal. Across the narrow stretch of water, luxury hotels lined the northern end of Miami Beach.

  The house, she explained, belonged to a friend of hers, Paula DeMarco, who owned a gallery on Lincoln Road. Ms. DeMarco had already gone back to New York, but her relatives resided here year-round, none of them home at present.

  There was a conversation area in the shade. A fountain gurgled into a fern-draped swimming pool, and marble sculptures of headless torsos guarded the access to the dock, where a mildewed sailboat was tied. While Caitlin Dorn poured them glasses of peach-flavored iced tea, Ryabin looked around for a place to hang his jacket, finally folding it over the arm of his chair, a monstrous painted wood thing resembling a child’s crayon drawing of a chair. The entire house, he had noticed on the way through it, was jammed with such oddities. Beside the steps, tiled in pieces of broken dishes, a black Doberman lifted its lip at Ryabin and a low growl rumbled in its throat. Caitlin told the dog to be quiet.

  “When do you go to New York?” Ryabin asked. He smiled at her over his glass.

  “This weekend, I hope.” She sat in a matching chair and crossed her legs. Such long, slender legs. “I have some jobs to finish.”

  “Taking more pictures of beautiful young people. Such bother.
”

  She laughed. “No, tonight I’m shooting a birthday party. A twenty-year-old boy. It’s not what I like to do, but—well, Mom and Dad are loaded. She told me they’ve hired a live rock band.”

  “For my son’s birthday I sent a card.” Ryabin noticed that between the chairs was a red metal ashtray that looked like an open mouth. He reached for his pack of cigarettes, then returned them to his pocket. He had promised to smoke ten a day, no more, then the next month, eight. Already he was regretting this, but he had never broken a promise to Anna.

  “Miss Dorn, do you know where Ali Duncan is? Sam Hagen says he can’t find her.”

  Caitlin Dorn’s mouth fell open a little. “My God. I haven’t heard from her either. So that’s it. She’s gone. About a week ago she told me that Tereza Ruffini had offered her a job modeling for a French magazine. I think she must have taken it.”

  Ryabin put his glass of tea on the flat yellow arm of the chair. “I am guessing from what you tell me that Ali Duncan won’t be back to testify against Tereza’s husband.”

  “Oh, Ali.” Caitlin Dorn pulled up a knee and rested her elbow on it. Then she laughed. “She made them pay her. I wonder how much? No, she won’t be back, not till her money runs out, and if she’s smart, that won’t be for a long time. Poor Sam. All that effort for nothing.” She reached for her glass, took a sip, then said, “I heard on the news last night that he’s been appointed interim state attorney. So I guess he isn’t ‘poor Sam’ after all. Next time you see him, say I sent my congratulations.”

  For a few seconds her green eyes seemed to gaze vacantly at the patio, then she fixed them on Ryabin. “You said you had some questions about Marty Cass.”

  He inquired what she knew about him, and she repeated essentially the same facts he himself had already uncovered in his investigation several weeks ago for Sam Hagen. Then he asked her if she knew Klaus Ruffini.