Beware Beware (16 page)

“What happened?”

“He must have known by the time he asked me that his wife would drink herself useless by the end of the night. When he walked away I started to watch her, and the way she floated, I could tell she was on her way. So when the party wrapped up I lingered, and when everyone left without looking in my direction, I felt a thrill at my invisibility. I'd been decoration all night, and that wasn't about to change.”

It was hard to imagine a room where Daphne Freamon could hide her light, but I took her word for it. “So you stayed over.”

She nodded, gravely, and I didn't press for details.

“Did your relationship continue after that?”

“Sexually? No. But we were not done with each other.”

The office was soundless and stifling. I tapped a long finger of ash into the mouth of an empty soda can.

“Daphne, did you blackmail him?”

Her chest rose and her jaw stiffened at the word. After a pause, she exhaled with a sigh. “I wouldn't call it that. He never did.”

“How did it happen?”

“Let me make one thing clear, at least,” she said. “I was trying to make it as an actress, yes. But I'd discovered by the age of twenty-two that my talent lay in painting.
Beware Beware
was my first sale, but it wasn't some made-up way to get money. I was serious about it. As serious as a twenty-two-year-old could be about anything.”

I nodded. “I've seen it,” I said.

Her eyes grew wide and she blinked once, her dark lashes fanning her high cheeks.

“Joe Tilley's house. I interviewed Willow Hemingway. I thought I recognized your hand in one of the paintings, but the initials were wrong.”

Her jaw came undone. “He hung it up in the house?”

“Right in the guest bathroom. I have to tell you, it's a striking work of art. Might not mean much coming from someone like me, but I'd only really browsed your portfolio once, and my mind made the connection right away.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I am good at what I do.”

“That doesn't change anything.”

“I know.”

“So how did it happen?”

She ran a hand through her hair again. “I don't remember how I phrased it, but I told him a few days later that I was a painter, and that I'd noticed he was something of a collector.”

“Just like that.”

“I may have mentioned a particular painting hanging in the guest bedroom.”

“And that was enough.”

She shrugged. “He banged a cocktail waitress in his house while his wife slept upstairs. We could hear her snoring. He paused whenever the snoring seemed to get quiet.”

I laughed, and she laughed with me before continuing.

“I approached him about the painting because he was too famous to expect to get away with that kind of behavior. But if he'd turned me down, I'm not sure I would have escalated the conversation. I might have pretended it never happened. I might have just disappeared. I don't know. I didn't have to find that out.” She shrugged again. “Anyway, the way it happened, there was room for doubt for both of us. I told myself at the time that I was just taking advantage of an opportunity, that I might never meet another art collector with his means again. As for him, I think he considered himself my patron until the day he died.”

“He wasn't ashamed of it, anyway. He displayed it for anyone to see. Actually,” I tilted my head and disposed of my spent cigarette. “I'm surprised Jamie never put it together.”

“I'm not,” she said. “Jamie isn't the attentive type.”

I nodded, mostly agreeing, and lit another cigarette. “So he bought your painting. Anonymously. Overnight, you became a twenty-two-year-old artist with a million-dollar sale to a mysterious wealthy buyer. And instead of letting that launch your career, you changed your name and left the state. Why?”

“Couple reasons. You just named one.”

“The attention?”

“Yeah, the attention. I think when you subtly blackmail someone, discretion is an unspoken part of the package.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “What's the other?”

“I was tired of Lanya Waters. Lanya Waters was someone things happened to, a sorry, lost loser, and I didn't want to
be
her anymore.”

“I can't say I've never felt like that, but it's never occurred to me to just start being someone else. It doesn't seem possible.”

“You'd be surprised what's possible with a million dollars.”

Despite the open window, the room was getting dense with smoke. “What was that like?” I asked.

She leaned back and thought for a while, her nostrils slightly pinched. When she looked at me again she projected the air of a guru. “Well, are you happy?” she asked. “Do you like your life?”

I laughed. “I don't know.”

“Is it the one you'd choose?”

“Of all possible lives? God, no.”

She nodded, satisfied, like a lawyer who's gotten the desired answer out of a hostile witness. “Then I'd recommend starting over. There's nothing like it.”

“It's not that easy, obviously. I mean how'd you square that with your family?”

“I moved to New York five years ago. I was already losing touch with my family by then.”

“They don't know?”

“I've thought about contacting my mom, but not very hard. I stalk my brothers from time to time on Facebook. I can find them if I want to. I don't want them finding me.” She paused, chewing on the smoky silence. “What else did you find out about me?”

I remembered the haunted, inconclusive social worker's report, the way it hinted at disharmony between stepfather and stepdaughter. My throat felt dry and hoarse with nicotine, and I coughed once, into the sleeve of my shirt.

“I guess my next question is, does Jamie know?”

She shook her head just a couple degrees. It barely looked intentional. “You know the answer to that, don't you? It's why we're here, and Jamie isn't.”

“You got Jamie this writing gig, right? Through a friend of yours?”

She colored. “I did.”

“You couldn't approach Joe directly?”

“I just wanted to help Jamie. I didn't want to get into all … this.”

“I'm not going to sit here and tell you what you can and can't hide from your boyfriend. But I can't continue this investigation with a secret of that size between you. Pretty big conflict of interest.”

She nodded. “No. That's fair.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“Let me think for a minute.”

I finished my Lucky Strike while she sat with her face in one hand, propped up like a fashion model's. She patted her cheek with long fingers and breathed deeply for three minutes.

“I'll tell him,” she said. “I should have told him earlier. This is bigger than me, after all.”

I nodded. “I've found that when someone is murdered, honesty is the best policy.”

“Lot of experience there?”

“More than I would like.”

*   *   *

Daphne left to talk to Jamie, and I stayed back with my thoughts and cigarettes. The interview had gone about as well as I might have hoped. I'd gone in expecting the worst and come out with a story I could work with. I still had questions, but the biggest was one there was no use in asking: What kind of a liar was Daphne Freamon? If she'd told a few lies to protect the secrets of her past, then we were on the same page now, and I could trust her going forward. But if she was a liar at her core, then there was not one piece of her I should believe.

There was nothing to do but split the difference. I had to be cautious, but it would have been callous and unreasonable to call her a monster and shut the whole thing down. Besides, I liked her, and my instinct saw something good in her, glowing fiercely beneath every layer. Maybe it was the Marlowe in me—weary as he was, the man had a stubborn belief in people, that they could be decent, worth helping, worth saving. He suffered a lot for that belief.

 

Ten

I called Lori on my way out of the office. It was eleven o'clock, and visiting hours were over. She was home, alone, and I had to get back to her. Her voice sounded funny on the phone, wispy and hoarse with exhaustion.

Isaac was okay, whatever that meant. He was alive, and there would be no permanent damage. It chilled me that these were blessings.

He did have a broken rib and a smashed cheekbone, and he'd spend the night in the hospital.

That's all I found out before Lori told me we'd talk at home. When I got there, she was in her room with the door near closed, huddled under the covers trying to will herself asleep. I knocked gently and she rustled in her sheets.

“Are you up?” I asked.

Her voice came through the covers in a thin hum.

“Can I come in?”

She shuffled and turned on her bedside lamp. In the yellow glow, her eyes retreated between puffy lids. She was done now, but she had cried for a long time.

I took the light as an invitation and walked to the side of her bed. She sat hugging her knees over the blanket, and I remembered finding my sister like this, curled up with cramps and moaning for a hot-water bottle. It was a sad sight.

She wiggled over and made room for me on the bed, and I sat down and held her hand. She rested her head against my arm, and when she spoke I couldn't see her face.

“Isaac and I aren't seeing each other anymore,” she said. “For now, anyway.”

My shoulder stiffened, and I felt her head respond to its movement.

“He broke up with you over this?” My knee-jerk reaction was one of disgust—disgust at his weakness, his failure of masculinity. I hated that my mind set out in that direction, but I realized, too, that I was bound to discredit anyone who hurt Lori, by whatever means I could invent.

“No,” she said. “It was my idea.”

“What happened?”

“I went to see him at the hospital, and he looked … pitiful.”

“It was bad?”

“They went for his face,” she said. “They messed it up. You can barely see him under there.”

I thought of the stories of horrid old crones, plotting in dark rooms and alleys to ruin the looks of pretty girls. As if women were the only ones capable of petty, hateful jealousies, as if women were as likely as men to exact physical revenge.

“It'll heal, though?”

She nodded tentatively. “Though to be honest, I don't see how.”

“So you dumped him because he was ugly, huh?”

She colored and started to huff. “
Unni
, you know that isn't true.”

“Of course I do. I was joking, sweet girl. I'm sorry.” I smiled and stroked her hair. It was filmy with grease. “But why, then?”

“Because I'm scared,” she said. “I don't think it's safe for Isaac if I keep seeing him.”

I shook my head. “That's messed up.”

“I know. But it's true. You'd do the same thing.”

“I don't know. It would make me sick. I don't like the idea of buckling to a thug.”

“It's not about buckling. I just won't put someone else in danger for my principles' sake.”

“Did you tell him that was why you were breaking up with him?” There was a whiff of Korean soap opera to this whole setup—the selfless heroine was always breaking up with some idiot man to protect him from one thing or another, usually cancer-related heartache. She would tell him she didn't love him with a tear in one eye. The present danger was far more concrete, but I wondered if Lori had the bug for drama lodged in her bones.

“Of course I did,” she said.

“And he didn't object?”

“He did, kind of weakly. I could tell he was relieved.”

“Did that upset you?”

“No,” she said. “He's a sweet boy, you know? Not a fighting bone in his body. I like that about him, and if he were the kind of guy who would duke it out for me with a total
ggangpae
I wouldn't even be interested.”

“I'm sorry, though. It must suck.”

“It does.”

“Are you sure it was Winfred?”

She nodded. “He wasn't trying to hide it.”

“Who were the other guys?”

“I don't know.”

“Korean?”

“One of them. I guess the other one was Mexican or Filipino or something.”

“How did it happen?”

“Isaac was over here today. We had a brunch date and just came back here to hang out. He went home around five, and when he got to his place and parked, another car parked behind him.”

“You mean he was followed? From our house?”

A small shiver flitted across her body. “That's what we think.”

“So what happened then? They just got out of the car and started whaling on him?”

“Basically. Someone, I think Winfred, asked, ‘Are you Isaac?' and he said yes. Didn't even think not to.”

“I mean yeah, why would he have?”

“As soon as he got a good look at them he got scared. Three big guys. Isaac's so skinny. He says he couldn't have taken one of them.”

“Did they say anything else? ‘Stay away from my girl' or whatever?”

“No, they just started beating on him.”

“How long?”

“Not long. But any longer and they might've killed him.” The whine of oncoming tears seeped into her voice. “He can't handle another beating.”

“He can't just press charges?”

“I asked him that. He's too scared. We don't even know who the other two are. If Winfred gets arrested, they still know where Isaac lives.”

“Do we even know who Winfred is? I mean, did you talk to your
samchun
today?”

“I called him, yeah.”

“Well, what did he have to say for himself?”

“He kept asking me if I was sure, and when I said I was, he just got really quiet.”